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 £470, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 August 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 160 128
Rank change year-on-year +91 -32 +40
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 882 236 314
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.19% 1.54% 1.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.48% 1.71% 1.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 529 160 226
10th Percentile £362 £349 £170
25th Percentile £413 £413 £310
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% -1.04% -8.57%
75th Percentile £538 £529 £550
90th Percentile £590 £614 £625
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 4 17
10th Percentile £19.91 £20.25 £52.20
25th Percentile £30.96 £23.95 £72.50
Median hourly rate £44.75 £52.85 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.33% -33.94% +63.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.03 -
90th Percentile £71.50 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -14.76% -30.00% +5.26%

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 25,349 13,790 16,770
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.69% 90.04% 92.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,259 8,454 10,091
10th Percentile £303 £213 £220
25th Percentile £410 £360 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,067 1,263 1,650
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.29 £13.86
25th Percentile £20.31 £16.38 £18.20
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +7.50%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.85 £73.65 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £41.92 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +66.68% -41.51% -1.58%

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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 +64 368 £465 +0.81% 39
West Midlands +63 308 £465 -3.13% 28
North of England +31 220 £478 +0.53% 82
South East +25 130 £463 +2.78% 96
North West +34 126 £525 +10.53% 31
South West +6 88 £525 +5.00% 34
Yorkshire -5 74 £465 -4.62% 24
East Midlands +23 60 £450 +1.98% 11
Scotland +16 60 £450 +4.41% 13
East of England +12 40 £475 +5.56% 13
North East -25 21 £515 +21.89% 28
Wales 0 17 £488 +9.55% 7
Northern Ireland +3 3 £410 -18.00% 3
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 August 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.

1 378 (42.86%) SQL
2 324 (36.73%) Data Pipeline
3 284 (32.20%) Analytics
4 271 (30.73%) ETL
5 261 (29.59%) Data Engineering
6 250 (28.34%) Data Modelling
7 248 (28.12%) Python
8 246 (27.89%) Security Cleared
9 217 (24.60%) Azure
10 204 (23.13%) SC Cleared
11 198 (22.45%) AWS
12 181 (20.52%) Data Quality
13 159 (18.03%) Business Intelligence
14 150 (17.01%) Data Integration
15 148 (16.78%) CI/CD
16 142 (16.10%) Databricks
17 134 (15.19%) Migration
18 121 (13.72%) Agile
19 116 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
20 109 (12.36%) Power Platform
21 108 (12.24%) Data Warehouse
22 105 (11.90%) Power BI
23 104 (11.79%) DevOps
23 104 (11.79%) Microsoft
24 101 (11.45%) Validation
25 96 (10.88%) Data Governance
26 95 (10.77%) Oracle
27 85 (9.64%) AI
28 84 (9.52%) PySpark
29 81 (9.18%) Decision-Making

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 44 (4.99%) SAS
2 36 (4.08%) Apache Spark
3 33 (3.74%) Apache Airflow
4 31 (3.51%) Apache
5 19 (2.15%) Confluence
6 5 (0.57%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (0.34%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.34%) SharePoint
Applications
1 12 (1.36%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.57%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.57%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.57%) Infor LN
2 4 (0.45%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.45%) Sage X3
3 3 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.11%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 217 (24.60%) Azure
2 198 (22.45%) AWS
3 109 (12.36%) Power Platform
4 78 (8.84%) Azure Data Factory
5 71 (8.05%) Snowflake
6 48 (5.44%) GCP
7 41 (4.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 39 (4.42%) Amazon S3
9 34 (3.85%) dbt
10 33 (3.74%) Serverless
11 29 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (3.06%) GitHub
13 25 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
14 15 (1.70%) Matillion
15 12 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
16 11 (1.25%) Amazon EMR
17 10 (1.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 10 (1.13%) AWS CloudFormation
17 10 (1.13%) Power Automate
18 9 (1.02%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 32 (3.63%) VPN
2 31 (3.51%) BGP
2 31 (3.51%) DMZ
2 31 (3.51%) DNS
2 31 (3.51%) Multicast
3 10 (1.13%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.68%) Firewall
5 5 (0.57%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.57%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.45%) Wireless
7 3 (0.34%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.11%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (12.24%) Data Warehouse
2 105 (11.90%) Power BI
3 66 (7.48%) Pentaho
4 48 (5.44%) Data Lake
5 42 (4.76%) Metadata
6 41 (4.65%) Amazon Redshift
7 37 (4.20%) SQL Server
8 29 (3.29%) Relational Database
9 28 (3.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 26 (2.95%) Big Data
11 21 (2.38%) Amazon Athena
11 21 (2.38%) Azure SQL Database
12 20 (2.27%) Delta Lake
12 20 (2.27%) MySQL
13 17 (1.93%) BigQuery
13 17 (1.93%) Tableau
14 16 (1.81%) Hadoop
15 15 (1.70%) BusinessObjects
15 15 (1.70%) Oracle Database
16 14 (1.59%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 78 (8.84%) Git
2 50 (5.67%) GitLab
3 37 (4.20%) JIRA
4 23 (2.61%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.79%) Postman
6 5 (0.57%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.34%) Newman
8 2 (0.23%) Yeoman
9 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.11%) ERwin
9 1 (0.11%) MLflow
9 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.11%) Toad
General
1 142 (16.10%) Social Skills
2 100 (11.34%) Analytical Skills
3 88 (9.98%) Public Sector
4 62 (7.03%) Finance
5 41 (4.65%) Banking
6 21 (2.38%) Investment Banking
7 20 (2.27%) Marketing
8 19 (2.15%) Automotive
9 15 (1.70%) Aerospace
9 15 (1.70%) Telecoms
10 14 (1.59%) Documentation Skills
11 12 (1.36%) Manufacturing
12 11 (1.25%) Retail
13 10 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 6 (0.68%) Law
15 5 (0.57%) Billing
15 5 (0.57%) Front Office
15 5 (0.57%) Police
16 4 (0.45%) Legal
16 4 (0.45%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (9.52%) PySpark
2 51 (5.78%) Terraform
3 47 (5.33%) Kafka
4 16 (1.81%) JSON
5 12 (1.36%) Pandas
6 10 (1.13%) XML
7 9 (1.02%) Streamlit
8 8 (0.91%) REST
9 7 (0.79%) RESTful
10 6 (0.68%) Apache NiFi
11 5 (0.57%) Great Expectations
12 4 (0.45%) Apache Avro
12 4 (0.45%) AWS CDK
12 4 (0.45%) Spring
12 4 (0.45%) Spring Boot
13 3 (0.34%) .NET
13 3 (0.34%) AngularJS
13 3 (0.34%) Elastic Stack
13 3 (0.34%) Node.js
13 3 (0.34%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 33 (3.74%) Cloud Native
2 32 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
3 27 (3.06%) Data Structures
4 11 (1.25%) Management Information System
4 11 (1.25%) Reference Data
5 10 (1.13%) NHS
6 8 (0.91%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (0.91%) Driving Licence
6 8 (0.91%) Onboarding
7 7 (0.79%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (0.68%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (0.68%) Product Ownership
9 5 (0.57%) Linux Command Line
10 4 (0.45%) Data Centre
10 4 (0.45%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.45%) Fibre Optics
10 4 (0.45%) iPad
11 3 (0.34%) Derivative
11 3 (0.34%) Life Science
11 3 (0.34%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 35 (3.97%) Unix
2 14 (1.59%) Linux
3 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 324 (36.73%) Data Pipeline
2 284 (32.20%) Analytics
3 271 (30.73%) ETL
4 261 (29.59%) Data Engineering
5 250 (28.34%) Data Modelling
6 159 (18.03%) Business Intelligence
7 150 (17.01%) Data Integration
8 148 (16.78%) CI/CD
9 134 (15.19%) Migration
10 121 (13.72%) Agile
11 116 (13.15%) Problem-Solving
12 104 (11.79%) DevOps
13 101 (11.45%) Validation
14 96 (10.88%) Data Governance
15 85 (9.64%) AI
16 81 (9.18%) Decision-Making
17 75 (8.50%) Data Transformation
18 70 (7.94%) Data Migration
19 62 (7.03%) Test Automation
20 59 (6.69%) Platform Engineering
Programming Languages
1 378 (42.86%) SQL
2 248 (28.12%) Python
3 31 (3.51%) PL/SQL
4 25 (2.83%) Java
5 15 (1.70%) Bash
6 13 (1.47%) Shell Script
6 13 (1.47%) T-SQL
7 12 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 9 (1.02%) Scala
9 5 (0.57%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.23%) JavaScript
11 1 (0.11%) Bicep
11 1 (0.11%) C++
11 1 (0.11%) COBOL
11 1 (0.11%) Go
11 1 (0.11%) Perl
11 1 (0.11%) R
Qualifications
1 246 (27.89%) Security Cleared
2 204 (23.13%) SC Cleared
3 17 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
3 17 (1.93%) Degree
4 15 (1.70%) DV Cleared
5 8 (0.91%) City & Guilds
5 8 (0.91%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (0.45%) BICSI Certification
6 4 (0.45%) SnowPro
7 3 (0.34%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.34%) CEH
7 3 (0.34%) CISM
7 3 (0.34%) CISSP
7 3 (0.34%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.23%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (20.52%) Data Quality
2 24 (2.72%) QA
3 14 (1.59%) GDPR
4 9 (1.02%) SLA
5 5 (0.57%) FATCA
6 4 (0.45%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.11%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 32 (3.63%) Docker
2 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 31 (3.51%) Grafana
2 29 (3.29%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.02%) Ansible
4 3 (0.34%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.23%) Apache Ranger
5 2 (0.23%) Control-M
5 2 (0.23%) logstash
6 1 (0.11%) Kibana
6 1 (0.11%) Rancher
Vendors
1 142 (16.10%) Databricks
2 104 (11.79%) Microsoft
3 95 (10.77%) Oracle
4 79 (8.96%) Talend
5 56 (6.35%) Informatica
6 42 (4.76%) Denodo
7 32 (3.63%) Cisco
7 32 (3.63%) F5
8 19 (2.15%) SAP
9 17 (1.93%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.59%) Google
11 12 (1.36%) ServiceNow
12 9 (1.02%) Cloudera
13 8 (0.91%) Sage
14 6 (0.68%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.68%) InterSystems
14 6 (0.68%) Palantir
14 6 (0.68%) SYSPRO
15 5 (0.57%) Infor
16 4 (0.45%) Foundry