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 3 June 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 71 124 137
Rank change year-on-year +53 +13 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 746 266 326
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.00% 2.07% 1.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.26% 2.25% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 516 204 242
10th Percentile £369 £281 £163
25th Percentile £413 £395 £199
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £461 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.68% +2.50% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £513 £538
90th Percentile £600 £621 £588
UK median daily rate £500 £490 £500
% change year-on-year +1.99% -1.95% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 4 33
10th Percentile £19.34 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £36.25 £18.11 £58.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -35.39% -0.66%
75th Percentile £65.63 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%

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 22,867 11,810 19,265
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.82% 91.69% 92.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,128 7,518 11,619
10th Percentile £300 £213 £213
25th Percentile £403 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £594
90th Percentile £677 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £504 £525
% change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,652 862 2,432
10th Percentile £14.65 £13.56 £12.50
25th Percentile £20.07 £16.95 £15.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.39% -36.94% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.09 £62.50
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
% change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 +47 305 £469 +4.22% 39
West Midlands +42 288 £469 +1.96% 27
North of England +2 201 £465 -2.11% 96
North West +12 125 £480 +1.05% 45
South East +7 102 £475 +14.87% 98
South West +10 76 £500 +1.27% 33
Scotland +18 61 £460 +1.10% 9
Yorkshire -25 58 £465 +3.33% 26
Wales +5 22 £450 +118.11% 8
East of England -24 19 £520 +63.52% 9
North East -21 18 £450 -5.26% 26
East Midlands -24 17 £525 +28.05% 12
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 16
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 June 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.

1 385 (51.61%) SQL
2 284 (38.07%) Data Pipeline
3 278 (37.27%) Analytics
4 275 (36.86%) ETL
5 255 (34.18%) Data Engineering
5 255 (34.18%) Security Cleared
6 239 (32.04%) Data Modelling
7 235 (31.50%) Python
8 213 (28.55%) SC Cleared
9 180 (24.13%) Azure
10 167 (22.39%) Business Intelligence
11 159 (21.31%) Data Quality
12 151 (20.24%) CI/CD
13 147 (19.71%) AWS
14 139 (18.63%) Agile
15 132 (17.69%) Data Integration
16 128 (17.16%) Databricks
17 120 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
18 113 (15.15%) Power Platform
19 110 (14.75%) Oracle
20 108 (14.48%) Power BI
21 105 (14.08%) Talend
22 100 (13.40%) DevOps
23 94 (12.60%) Data Warehouse
24 93 (12.47%) Migration
25 91 (12.20%) Git
26 87 (11.66%) PySpark
27 81 (10.86%) Pentaho
28 79 (10.59%) Microsoft
29 78 (10.46%) Azure Data Factory

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 65 (8.71%) SAS
2 47 (6.30%) Apache Spark
3 41 (5.50%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (4.69%) Apache
5 24 (3.22%) Confluence
6 5 (0.67%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.13%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.67%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.13%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.13%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 180 (24.13%) Azure
2 147 (19.71%) AWS
3 113 (15.15%) Power Platform
4 78 (10.46%) Azure Data Factory
5 65 (8.71%) Snowflake
6 43 (5.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 38 (5.09%) GCP
8 37 (4.96%) Amazon S3
9 36 (4.83%) dbt
10 30 (4.02%) Azure DevOps
11 26 (3.49%) Serverless
12 25 (3.35%) GitHub
13 19 (2.55%) AWS Lambda
13 19 (2.55%) OpenShift
14 17 (2.28%) Matillion
15 13 (1.74%) Amazon EMR
16 12 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
17 10 (1.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 9 (1.21%) Amazon EC2
19 8 (1.07%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 33 (4.42%) DNS
1 33 (4.42%) VPN
2 32 (4.29%) BGP
2 32 (4.29%) DMZ
2 32 (4.29%) Multicast
3 8 (1.07%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.67%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.67%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.54%) Wireless
6 3 (0.40%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (14.48%) Power BI
2 94 (12.60%) Data Warehouse
3 81 (10.86%) Pentaho
4 44 (5.90%) Data Lake
5 36 (4.83%) Amazon Redshift
6 35 (4.69%) Big Data
6 35 (4.69%) SQL Server
7 27 (3.62%) MySQL
8 26 (3.49%) Hadoop
8 26 (3.49%) Metadata
9 25 (3.35%) Delta Lake
9 25 (3.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 23 (3.08%) Azure SQL Database
10 23 (3.08%) Relational Database
11 19 (2.55%) NoSQL
11 19 (2.55%) Tableau
12 18 (2.41%) PostgreSQL
12 18 (2.41%) Snowflake Schema
13 16 (2.14%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (2.01%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 91 (12.20%) Git
2 58 (7.77%) GitLab
3 47 (6.30%) JIRA
4 34 (4.56%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.80%) Postman
6 5 (0.67%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.40%) Newman
9 2 (0.27%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.13%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.13%) ERwin
10 1 (0.13%) JUnit
General
1 117 (15.68%) Social Skills
2 78 (10.46%) Analytical Skills
3 71 (9.52%) Public Sector
4 62 (8.31%) Finance
5 40 (5.36%) Banking
6 22 (2.95%) Investment Banking
7 15 (2.01%) Documentation Skills
8 14 (1.88%) Aerospace
9 12 (1.61%) Manufacturing
10 11 (1.47%) Marketing
10 11 (1.47%) Retail
11 8 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 5 (0.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.54%) Local Government
14 3 (0.40%) Automotive
14 3 (0.40%) Front Office
14 3 (0.40%) Law
14 3 (0.40%) Legal
15 2 (0.27%) Advertising
15 2 (0.27%) Aviation
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 87 (11.66%) PySpark
2 61 (8.18%) Kafka
3 22 (2.95%) JSON
4 14 (1.88%) REST
5 13 (1.74%) Pandas
6 12 (1.61%) XML
7 8 (1.07%) Apache Avro
7 8 (1.07%) Protocol Buffers
8 7 (0.94%) Apache Beam
8 7 (0.94%) Streamlit
9 6 (0.80%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (0.80%) Node.js
9 6 (0.80%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (0.67%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.67%) pytest
10 5 (0.67%) RESTful
10 5 (0.67%) YAML
11 4 (0.54%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.54%) AWS CDK
11 4 (0.54%) React
Miscellaneous
1 32 (4.29%) Cloud Native
2 21 (2.82%) Data Structures
3 18 (2.41%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
4 13 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
5 11 (1.47%) Clustering
6 10 (1.34%) Product Ownership
7 9 (1.21%) Driving Licence
8 8 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
9 7 (0.94%) NHS
10 6 (0.80%) Data Centre
10 6 (0.80%) Linux Command Line
10 6 (0.80%) Onboarding
11 5 (0.67%) Hybrid Cloud
12 4 (0.54%) Data Fabric
12 4 (0.54%) Fibre Optics
12 4 (0.54%) iPad
12 4 (0.54%) Life Science
12 4 (0.54%) Public Cloud
12 4 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.50%) Unix
2 14 (1.88%) Linux
3 2 (0.27%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.13%) VMS
4 1 (0.13%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 284 (38.07%) Data Pipeline
2 278 (37.27%) Analytics
3 275 (36.86%) ETL
4 255 (34.18%) Data Engineering
5 239 (32.04%) Data Modelling
6 167 (22.39%) Business Intelligence
7 151 (20.24%) CI/CD
8 139 (18.63%) Agile
9 132 (17.69%) Data Integration
10 120 (16.09%) Problem-Solving
11 100 (13.40%) DevOps
12 93 (12.47%) Migration
13 75 (10.05%) Data Governance
14 72 (9.65%) Validation
15 68 (9.12%) Scrum
16 65 (8.71%) AI
16 65 (8.71%) Test Automation
17 56 (7.51%) Decision-Making
18 52 (6.97%) Continuous Improvement
19 50 (6.70%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 385 (51.61%) SQL
2 235 (31.50%) Python
3 34 (4.56%) PL/SQL
4 33 (4.42%) Java
5 17 (2.28%) Shell Script
6 16 (2.14%) Bash
7 12 (1.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (1.34%) PowerShell
9 9 (1.21%) T-SQL
10 6 (0.80%) C#
10 6 (0.80%) Scala
11 5 (0.67%) Bicep
12 3 (0.40%) Go
13 2 (0.27%) HiveQL
13 2 (0.27%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.13%) C++
14 1 (0.13%) COBOL
14 1 (0.13%) Groovy
14 1 (0.13%) Perl
14 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 255 (34.18%) Security Cleared
2 213 (28.55%) SC Cleared
3 19 (2.55%) Degree
4 15 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.47%) DV Cleared
6 8 (1.07%) City & Guilds
7 5 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.67%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.54%) BICSI Certification
9 3 (0.40%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.40%) IBM Certification
9 3 (0.40%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.13%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CCIE
10 1 (0.13%) CCNP
10 1 (0.13%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CISM
10 1 (0.13%) CISSP
10 1 (0.13%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.13%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 159 (21.31%) Data Quality
2 18 (2.41%) QA
3 12 (1.61%) GDPR
4 9 (1.21%) SLA
5 8 (1.07%) FATCA
6 4 (0.54%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) Basel III
8 1 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.13%) GMP
8 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.13%) NIST
8 1 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (5.63%) Docker
2 3 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.27%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 43 (5.76%) Kubernetes
2 39 (5.23%) Grafana
3 38 (5.09%) Terraform
4 11 (1.47%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.21%) Ansible
6 3 (0.40%) Rancher
7 2 (0.27%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.27%) Control-M
7 2 (0.27%) Kibana
7 2 (0.27%) logstash
Vendors
1 128 (17.16%) Databricks
2 110 (14.75%) Oracle
3 105 (14.08%) Talend
4 79 (10.59%) Microsoft
5 73 (9.79%) Informatica
6 53 (7.10%) Denodo
7 34 (4.56%) Cisco
7 34 (4.56%) F5
8 16 (2.14%) ServiceNow
8 16 (2.14%) Splunk
9 15 (2.01%) SAP
10 12 (1.61%) Cloudera
10 12 (1.61%) Google
11 8 (1.07%) Alteryx
12 6 (0.80%) Dynatrace
12 6 (0.80%) InterSystems
13 5 (0.67%) Sage
14 4 (0.54%) Dataiku
14 4 (0.54%) IBM
14 4 (0.54%) Infor