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 £469, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 July 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 149 123
Rank change year-on-year +84 -26 +38
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 912 253 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.37% 1.69% 1.74%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.66% 1.87% 1.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 578 173 252
10th Percentile £363 £324 £170
25th Percentile £413 £410 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £538
90th Percentile £600 £629 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 4 28
10th Percentile £19.53 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.94 £18.11 £59.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +63.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.03 -
90th Percentile £74.88 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%

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 24,951 13,562 17,904
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.13% 90.56% 92.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,214 8,367 10,947
10th Percentile £305 £217 £213
25th Percentile £408 £363 £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 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,882 1,165 1,985
10th Percentile £15.06 £13.50 £13.25
25th Percentile £21.00 £16.50 £17.25
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.04%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.85 £25.15 £41.50
% change year-on-year +70.39% -39.40% -5.26%

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 +57 388 £459 -0.22% 51
West Midlands +56 338 £459 -0.22% 37
North of England +25 226 £475 - 95
North West +16 131 £525 +10.53% 44
South East +11 125 £469 +10.35% 100
South West +14 88 £525 +3.70% 33
Scotland +22 73 £428 -0.12% 10
Yorkshire -10 73 £470 -1.05% 20
East Midlands +20 50 £475 +13.10% 14
East of England +6 35 £565 +77.67% 15
North East -25 23 £515 +21.18% 32
Wales -1 18 £475 +6.74% 11
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 2
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 July 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.

1 427 (46.82%) SQL
2 340 (37.28%) Data Pipeline
3 312 (34.21%) Analytics
4 305 (33.44%) ETL
5 291 (31.91%) Data Engineering
6 281 (30.81%) Python
7 274 (30.04%) Security Cleared
8 268 (29.39%) Data Modelling
9 226 (24.78%) SC Cleared
10 215 (23.57%) Azure
11 202 (22.15%) AWS
12 194 (21.27%) Data Quality
13 176 (19.30%) CI/CD
14 171 (18.75%) Business Intelligence
15 150 (16.45%) Data Integration
16 145 (15.90%) Agile
17 137 (15.02%) Databricks
18 130 (14.25%) Migration
19 127 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
20 120 (13.16%) Data Warehouse
21 116 (12.72%) Oracle
22 111 (12.17%) DevOps
22 111 (12.17%) Power Platform
23 107 (11.73%) Power BI
24 102 (11.18%) Microsoft
24 102 (11.18%) Talend
24 102 (11.18%) Validation
25 100 (10.96%) Data Governance
26 95 (10.42%) PySpark
27 92 (10.09%) Git

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 62 (6.80%) SAS
2 53 (5.81%) Apache Spark
3 40 (4.39%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (3.95%) Apache
5 23 (2.52%) Confluence
6 5 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint
Applications
1 11 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.55%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.55%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.44%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.44%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.11%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.11%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 215 (23.57%) Azure
2 202 (22.15%) AWS
3 111 (12.17%) Power Platform
4 90 (9.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 77 (8.44%) Snowflake
6 50 (5.48%) GCP
7 49 (5.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 46 (5.04%) dbt
9 45 (4.93%) Amazon S3
10 39 (4.28%) Serverless
11 30 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
12 28 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
13 27 (2.96%) GitHub
14 18 (1.97%) OpenShift
15 16 (1.75%) Matillion
16 15 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.43%) Amazon EMR
18 12 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 11 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
19 11 (1.21%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (3.51%) DNS
1 32 (3.51%) VPN
2 31 (3.40%) BGP
2 31 (3.40%) DMZ
2 31 (3.40%) Multicast
3 8 (0.88%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.66%) Firewall
5 5 (0.55%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.55%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.44%) Wireless
7 3 (0.33%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (13.16%) Data Warehouse
2 107 (11.73%) Power BI
3 81 (8.88%) Pentaho
4 49 (5.37%) Data Lake
5 46 (5.04%) Amazon Redshift
6 39 (4.28%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.95%) Metadata
8 32 (3.51%) Big Data
9 29 (3.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 26 (2.85%) Relational Database
11 25 (2.74%) Hadoop
11 25 (2.74%) MySQL
12 24 (2.63%) Delta Lake
13 23 (2.52%) Amazon Athena
14 21 (2.30%) Azure SQL Database
15 19 (2.08%) Tableau
16 18 (1.97%) BigQuery
16 18 (1.97%) NoSQL
17 17 (1.86%) BusinessObjects
17 17 (1.86%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 92 (10.09%) Git
2 57 (6.25%) GitLab
3 45 (4.93%) JIRA
4 31 (3.40%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.77%) Postman
6 5 (0.55%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.44%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.33%) Newman
9 2 (0.22%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.22%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.11%) ERwin
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MLflow
10 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 142 (15.57%) Social Skills
2 94 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
3 82 (8.99%) Public Sector
4 63 (6.91%) Finance
5 42 (4.61%) Banking
6 22 (2.41%) Marketing
7 21 (2.30%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
9 18 (1.97%) Automotive
10 17 (1.86%) Telecoms
11 13 (1.43%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.43%) Retail
12 12 (1.32%) Aerospace
13 11 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.55%) Billing
14 5 (0.55%) Front Office
14 5 (0.55%) Local Government
14 5 (0.55%) Police
15 4 (0.44%) Legal
16 3 (0.33%) Advertising
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 95 (10.42%) PySpark
2 64 (7.02%) Kafka
3 22 (2.41%) JSON
4 13 (1.43%) Pandas
4 13 (1.43%) XML
5 10 (1.10%) Streamlit
6 8 (0.88%) Apache Avro
6 8 (0.88%) Protocol Buffers
7 7 (0.77%) Apache Beam
8 6 (0.66%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (0.66%) Node.js
8 6 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (0.66%) REST
8 6 (0.66%) RESTful
9 5 (0.55%) Great Expectations
9 5 (0.55%) pytest
9 5 (0.55%) YAML
10 4 (0.44%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.44%) React
Miscellaneous
1 35 (3.84%) Cloud Native
2 27 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
3 25 (2.74%) Data Structures
4 16 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (0.99%) Clustering
6 9 (0.99%) Driving Licence
6 9 (0.99%) NHS
6 9 (0.99%) Product Ownership
7 8 (0.88%) Management Information System
7 8 (0.88%) Onboarding
8 7 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
9 6 (0.66%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.66%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (0.66%) Reference Data
10 5 (0.55%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.44%) Data Fabric
11 4 (0.44%) iPad
11 4 (0.44%) Life Science
11 4 (0.44%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.39%) Unix
2 14 (1.54%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 340 (37.28%) Data Pipeline
2 312 (34.21%) Analytics
3 305 (33.44%) ETL
4 291 (31.91%) Data Engineering
5 268 (29.39%) Data Modelling
6 176 (19.30%) CI/CD
7 171 (18.75%) Business Intelligence
8 150 (16.45%) Data Integration
9 145 (15.90%) Agile
10 130 (14.25%) Migration
11 127 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
12 111 (12.17%) DevOps
13 102 (11.18%) Validation
14 100 (10.96%) Data Governance
15 84 (9.21%) AI
16 79 (8.66%) Decision-Making
17 74 (8.11%) Data Transformation
17 74 (8.11%) Test Automation
18 67 (7.35%) Data Science
19 65 (7.13%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 427 (46.82%) SQL
2 281 (30.81%) Python
3 38 (4.17%) Java
4 37 (4.06%) PL/SQL
5 19 (2.08%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.75%) Bash
7 13 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 12 (1.32%) T-SQL
9 10 (1.10%) PowerShell
10 6 (0.66%) Scala
11 5 (0.55%) Bicep
12 4 (0.44%) C#
13 2 (0.22%) Go
13 2 (0.22%) HiveQL
13 2 (0.22%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.11%) C++
14 1 (0.11%) COBOL
14 1 (0.11%) Perl
14 1 (0.11%) R
14 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 274 (30.04%) Security Cleared
2 226 (24.78%) SC Cleared
3 20 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.08%) Degree
5 17 (1.86%) DV Cleared
6 8 (0.88%) City & Guilds
7 6 (0.66%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (0.66%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.44%) BICSI Certification
8 4 (0.44%) CISM
8 4 (0.44%) CISSP
8 4 (0.44%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.33%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.33%) CEH
9 3 (0.33%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.22%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.11%) CCIE
11 1 (0.11%) CCNP
11 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 194 (21.27%) Data Quality
2 23 (2.52%) QA
3 16 (1.75%) GDPR
4 10 (1.10%) SLA
5 8 (0.88%) FATCA
6 6 (0.66%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.11%) GMP
10 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.11%) NIST
10 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 40 (4.39%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
2 2 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (6.14%) Terraform
2 45 (4.93%) Kubernetes
3 36 (3.95%) Grafana
4 11 (1.21%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.10%) Ansible
6 3 (0.33%) Control-M
6 3 (0.33%) Rancher
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 137 (15.02%) Databricks
2 116 (12.72%) Oracle
3 102 (11.18%) Microsoft
3 102 (11.18%) Talend
4 77 (8.44%) Informatica
5 48 (5.26%) Denodo
6 33 (3.62%) Cisco
6 33 (3.62%) F5
7 19 (2.08%) SAP
8 17 (1.86%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.64%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.64%) Splunk
10 14 (1.54%) Cloudera
11 11 (1.21%) Google
12 10 (1.10%) Sage
13 6 (0.66%) Dynatrace
13 6 (0.66%) Infor
13 6 (0.66%) InterSystems
14 4 (0.44%) PagerDuty
14 4 (0.44%) Palantir