Data Engineer Contract Job Trends in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
UK > UK excluding London

The median Data Engineer daily rate in the UK excluding London is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 February 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 94 184
Rank change year-on-year -37 +90 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 373 343 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.91% 2.52% 1.16%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.10% 2.73% 1.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 275 233 187
10th Percentile £358 £311 £313
25th Percentile £402 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.04% -4.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £597
90th Percentile £588 £648 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 10
10th Percentile £32.12 £25.14 £36.53
25th Percentile £38.13 £25.21 £37.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £26.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.83% -57.60% -
75th Percentile £65.69 £27.91 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.13 £28.19 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £60.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% +7.44% -3.20%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK excluding London

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the UK excluding London. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK excluding London with a recognized job title 17,747 12,563 19,585
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.81% 92.48% 93.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,776 7,515 12,355
10th Percentile £214 £210 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £490
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% -2.65% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,862 649 1,895
10th Percentile £14.09 £15.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.96 £20.30 £16.12
Median hourly rate £27.77 £31.76 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -12.56% -11.78% +10.77%
75th Percentile £61.25 £63.75 £62.48
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £29.65 £33.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -10.17% -5.71% -

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 6 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 6 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK excluding London

Data Engineer
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Data Engineer within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 6 February 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Midlands -11 121 £500 +2.25% 45
North of England -34 108 £463 - 92
West Midlands -8 106 £513 +3.54% 37
North West -19 62 £415 -6.48% 53
Scotland +7 49 £450 +1.41% 27
South West -1 49 £525 +5.00% 40
South East -48 47 £496 -5.48% 109
Yorkshire -41 33 £500 -2.44% 33
Wales -7 17 £410 -18.00% 5
East Midlands -19 15 £450 +20.81% 8
North East -14 13 £450 -14.29% 8
East of England -39 5 £563 +76.76% 13
Northern Ireland -5 1 £430 -21.82%
Data Engineer
UK

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London

For the 6 months to 6 February 2026, Data Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the UK excluding London region featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 195 (52.28%) SQL
2 183 (49.06%) Python
3 154 (41.29%) ETL
4 146 (39.14%) Data Engineering
5 139 (37.27%) Data Pipeline
6 137 (36.73%) Analytics
7 122 (32.71%) Azure
8 114 (30.56%) Data Modelling
9 105 (28.15%) CI/CD
10 89 (23.86%) AWS
11 88 (23.59%) Security Cleared
12 85 (22.79%) Data Quality
12 85 (22.79%) Databricks
13 82 (21.98%) Business Intelligence
14 79 (21.18%) Problem-Solving
15 77 (20.64%) DevOps
16 76 (20.38%) SC Cleared
17 74 (19.84%) Agile
18 68 (18.23%) Data Warehouse
19 65 (17.43%) PySpark
20 63 (16.89%) Power Platform
21 59 (15.82%) Power BI
22 52 (13.94%) Azure Data Factory
23 50 (13.40%) Git
24 49 (13.14%) Oracle
25 47 (12.60%) Apache Airflow
26 46 (12.33%) Data Science
26 46 (12.33%) Snowflake
27 45 (12.06%) Microsoft
28 44 (11.80%) Data Integration

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the UK excluding London by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 47 (12.60%) Apache Airflow
2 31 (8.31%) Apache
3 30 (8.04%) Apache Spark
4 19 (5.09%) SAS
5 7 (1.88%) Confluence
6 5 (1.34%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.34%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.80%) IIS
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.27%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 122 (32.71%) Azure
2 89 (23.86%) AWS
3 63 (16.89%) Power Platform
4 52 (13.94%) Azure Data Factory
5 46 (12.33%) Snowflake
6 31 (8.31%) dbt
7 29 (7.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 29 (7.77%) GCP
8 28 (7.51%) Serverless
9 27 (7.24%) GitHub
10 20 (5.36%) Amazon S3
10 20 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
11 16 (4.29%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (3.75%) AWS CloudFormation
13 10 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (2.41%) Prefect
15 8 (2.14%) Amazon ECS
15 8 (2.14%) Amazon SageMaker
15 8 (2.14%) Matillion
16 7 (1.88%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.68%) BGP
1 10 (2.68%) DMZ
1 10 (2.68%) DNS
1 10 (2.68%) Multicast
1 10 (2.68%) VPN
2 2 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.27%) Internet
3 1 (0.27%) LAN
3 1 (0.27%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.27%) WAN
3 1 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (18.23%) Data Warehouse
2 59 (15.82%) Power BI
3 38 (10.19%) Data Lake
4 32 (8.58%) Pentaho
5 28 (7.51%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (6.70%) Big Data
7 23 (6.17%) NoSQL
8 22 (5.90%) Amazon Redshift
9 20 (5.36%) Hadoop
10 17 (4.56%) SQL Server
11 16 (4.29%) Elasticsearch
12 15 (4.02%) Amazon RDS
12 15 (4.02%) Delta Lake
13 14 (3.75%) Azure SQL Database
13 14 (3.75%) Relational Database
14 13 (3.49%) BigQuery
14 13 (3.49%) Data Mining
15 12 (3.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 11 (2.95%) Snowflake Schema
17 9 (2.41%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 50 (13.40%) Git
2 38 (10.19%) Jenkins
3 28 (7.51%) GitLab
4 23 (6.17%) JIRA
5 5 (1.34%) DBeaver
5 5 (1.34%) MLflow
6 3 (0.80%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.80%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.80%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.54%) JMeter
7 2 (0.54%) JUnit
7 2 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.54%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.27%) Deequ
8 1 (0.27%) Maven
8 1 (0.27%) Mockito
8 1 (0.27%) Selenium
8 1 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 69 (18.50%) Social Skills
2 46 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
3 41 (10.99%) Finance
4 31 (8.31%) Public Sector
5 23 (6.17%) Banking
6 7 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
6 7 (1.88%) Investment Banking
7 4 (1.07%) Manufacturing
8 3 (0.80%) Aerospace
8 3 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.80%) Legal
9 2 (0.54%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.54%) Law
9 2 (0.54%) Marketing
9 2 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.54%) Retail
10 1 (0.27%) Local Government
10 1 (0.27%) Military
10 1 (0.27%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 65 (17.43%) PySpark
2 36 (9.65%) Kafka
3 17 (4.56%) REST
4 12 (3.22%) JSON
4 12 (3.22%) Keycloak
5 10 (2.68%) Pandas
5 10 (2.68%) RESTful
6 8 (2.14%) NumPy
7 7 (1.88%) Flask
7 7 (1.88%) Node.js
7 7 (1.88%) XML
8 6 (1.61%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (1.61%) HTML
8 6 (1.61%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (1.61%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 5 (1.34%) Apache Beam
9 5 (1.34%) pytest
10 4 (1.07%) PyTorch
10 4 (1.07%) TensorFlow
10 4 (1.07%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.97%) Cloud Native
2 16 (4.29%) Data Protection Act
3 15 (4.02%) Algorithms
3 15 (4.02%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (4.02%) Product Ownership
3 15 (4.02%) Replication
4 14 (3.75%) Clustering
4 14 (3.75%) Hybrid Cloud
5 7 (1.88%) Data Structures
6 6 (1.61%) Greenfield Project
7 5 (1.34%) NHS
8 4 (1.07%) Distributed Computing
8 4 (1.07%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.07%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.07%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.07%) Public Cloud
9 3 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
9 3 (0.80%) Data Centre
9 3 (0.80%) IoT
10 2 (0.54%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.02%) Unix
2 14 (3.75%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (41.29%) ETL
2 146 (39.14%) Data Engineering
3 139 (37.27%) Data Pipeline
4 137 (36.73%) Analytics
5 114 (30.56%) Data Modelling
6 105 (28.15%) CI/CD
7 82 (21.98%) Business Intelligence
8 79 (21.18%) Problem-Solving
9 77 (20.64%) DevOps
10 74 (19.84%) Agile
11 46 (12.33%) Data Science
12 44 (11.80%) Data Integration
13 41 (10.99%) Continuous Improvement
13 41 (10.99%) Data Governance
14 40 (10.72%) Performance Tuning
15 38 (10.19%) Machine Learning
16 36 (9.65%) Data Transformation
17 35 (9.38%) Test Automation
18 30 (8.04%) Data Architecture
18 30 (8.04%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 195 (52.28%) SQL
2 183 (49.06%) Python
3 40 (10.72%) Java
4 15 (4.02%) PL/SQL
5 14 (3.75%) Scala
6 13 (3.49%) Go
7 9 (2.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (2.14%) Shell Script
8 8 (2.14%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.61%) Bash
10 5 (1.34%) Bicep
10 5 (1.34%) C#
10 5 (1.34%) R
11 4 (1.07%) JavaScript
12 3 (0.80%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.54%) PowerShell
14 1 (0.27%) Cypher
14 1 (0.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 88 (23.59%) Security Cleared
2 76 (20.38%) SC Cleared
3 14 (3.75%) Azure Certification
4 12 (3.22%) Degree
5 10 (2.68%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.34%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.80%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.54%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.27%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.27%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (22.79%) Data Quality
2 10 (2.68%) QA
3 9 (2.41%) GDPR
4 4 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.80%) FATCA
6 2 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.27%) Basel III
7 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.27%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.27%) NCSC
7 1 (0.27%) NIST
7 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 43 (11.53%) Docker
2 5 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (11.53%) Kubernetes
2 33 (8.85%) Terraform
3 9 (2.41%) Ansible
3 9 (2.41%) Grafana
4 6 (1.61%) NetBackup
5 5 (1.34%) Kibana
5 5 (1.34%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.80%) Control-M
6 3 (0.80%) logstash
7 1 (0.27%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.27%) Puppet
7 1 (0.27%) Rancher
Vendors
1 85 (22.79%) Databricks
2 49 (13.14%) Oracle
3 45 (12.06%) Microsoft
4 37 (9.92%) Talend
5 20 (5.36%) Denodo
6 18 (4.83%) Informatica
7 11 (2.95%) Cisco
7 11 (2.95%) Google
8 10 (2.68%) F5
8 10 (2.68%) IBM
9 9 (2.41%) Splunk
10 7 (1.88%) Alteryx
10 7 (1.88%) Confluent
11 6 (1.61%) Commvault
11 6 (1.61%) Red Hat
12 5 (1.34%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.34%) Veritas
13 4 (1.07%) Dataiku
14 3 (0.80%) Cloudera
14 3 (0.80%) Salesforce