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 £471, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 4 August 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 162 119
Rank change year-on-year +99 -43 +29
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 921 241 331
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.41% 1.59% 1.79%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.70% 1.76% 1.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 162 243
10th Percentile £368 £322 £170
25th Percentile £413 £410 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.79% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £536 £544
90th Percentile £600 £625 £612
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £514
% change year-on-year - -2.68% -6.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 5 25
10th Percentile £20.30 £17.96 £45.30
25th Percentile £30.96 £18.22 £72.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -66.25% +63.27%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.70 -
90th Percentile £74.38 £79.48 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -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 24,892 13,726 16,993
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.13% 90.37% 92.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,077 8,432 10,367
10th Percentile £305 £215 £220
25th Percentile £410 £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 £684
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,948 1,207 1,773
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.32 £14.00
25th Percentile £20.75 £16.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.90
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -42.71% +17.07%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +67 396 £465 +4.49% 45
West Midlands +59 344 £460 +2.22% 31
North of England +37 234 £500 +5.26% 102
North West +25 136 £525 +10.53% 41
South East +15 127 £467 +3.78% 101
South West +5 85 £525 +10.53% 38
Yorkshire -4 75 £475 - 30
Scotland +26 66 £430 +0.47% 12
East Midlands +24 52 £500 +19.05% 14
East of England +8 36 £520 +63.52% 14
North East -21 24 £520 +23.08% 32
Wales 0 17 £488 +9.55% 12
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 5
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 4 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.

1 423 (45.93%) SQL
2 346 (37.57%) Data Pipeline
3 309 (33.55%) Analytics
4 307 (33.33%) ETL
5 280 (30.40%) Data Engineering
6 276 (29.97%) Python
7 273 (29.64%) Security Cleared
8 272 (29.53%) Data Modelling
9 228 (24.76%) SC Cleared
10 220 (23.89%) Azure
11 204 (22.15%) AWS
12 194 (21.06%) Data Quality
13 178 (19.33%) Business Intelligence
14 176 (19.11%) CI/CD
15 161 (17.48%) Data Integration
16 149 (16.18%) Agile
17 142 (15.42%) Databricks
18 133 (14.44%) Migration
19 128 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
20 116 (12.60%) DevOps
21 115 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
22 113 (12.27%) Oracle
22 113 (12.27%) Power Platform
23 109 (11.83%) Power BI
24 107 (11.62%) Microsoft
25 103 (11.18%) Talend
26 100 (10.86%) Validation
27 98 (10.64%) Data Governance
28 95 (10.31%) Git
29 93 (10.10%) PySpark

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 67 (7.27%) SAS
2 47 (5.10%) Apache Spark
3 35 (3.80%) Apache
4 32 (3.47%) Apache Airflow
5 23 (2.50%) Confluence
6 6 (0.65%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.33%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.22%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 10 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.54%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.54%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.43%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.43%) 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
1 220 (23.89%) Azure
2 204 (22.15%) AWS
3 113 (12.27%) Power Platform
4 90 (9.77%) Azure Data Factory
5 75 (8.14%) Snowflake
6 50 (5.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 48 (5.21%) GCP
8 43 (4.67%) Amazon S3
9 41 (4.45%) dbt
10 37 (4.02%) Serverless
11 30 (3.26%) Azure DevOps
12 26 (2.82%) AWS Lambda
13 25 (2.71%) GitHub
14 17 (1.85%) OpenShift
15 15 (1.63%) Matillion
16 14 (1.52%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.41%) Amazon EMR
18 11 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 11 (1.19%) AWS Step Functions
18 11 (1.19%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 31 (3.37%) DNS
1 31 (3.37%) VPN
2 30 (3.26%) BGP
2 30 (3.26%) DMZ
2 30 (3.26%) Multicast
3 8 (0.87%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.65%) Firewall
5 5 (0.54%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.54%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.43%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.43%) Wireless
7 3 (0.33%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 115 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
2 109 (11.83%) Power BI
3 87 (9.45%) Pentaho
4 51 (5.54%) Data Lake
5 43 (4.67%) Amazon Redshift
6 40 (4.34%) SQL Server
7 39 (4.23%) Metadata
8 30 (3.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 29 (3.15%) Big Data
10 25 (2.71%) Relational Database
11 24 (2.61%) Hadoop
12 23 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
12 23 (2.50%) Delta Lake
13 22 (2.39%) Azure SQL Database
13 22 (2.39%) MySQL
14 18 (1.95%) BigQuery
15 17 (1.85%) BusinessObjects
15 17 (1.85%) Tableau
16 16 (1.74%) Snowflake Schema
17 15 (1.63%) NoSQL
Development Applications
1 95 (10.31%) Git
2 60 (6.51%) GitLab
3 46 (4.99%) JIRA
4 36 (3.91%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.76%) Postman
6 5 (0.54%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.33%) Newman
9 2 (0.22%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.11%) ERwin
10 1 (0.11%) MLflow
10 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.11%) Toad
General
1 145 (15.74%) Social Skills
2 98 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
3 91 (9.88%) Public Sector
4 61 (6.62%) Finance
5 40 (4.34%) Banking
6 21 (2.28%) Marketing
7 20 (2.17%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.06%) Automotive
9 18 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
10 17 (1.85%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.52%) Manufacturing
12 13 (1.41%) Aerospace
12 13 (1.41%) Retail
13 11 (1.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.54%) Billing
14 5 (0.54%) Front Office
14 5 (0.54%) Local Government
14 5 (0.54%) Police
15 4 (0.43%) Law
15 4 (0.43%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (10.10%) PySpark
2 62 (6.73%) Kafka
3 18 (1.95%) JSON
4 13 (1.41%) Pandas
5 10 (1.09%) Streamlit
5 10 (1.09%) XML
6 7 (0.76%) Apache Avro
6 7 (0.76%) Apache Beam
6 7 (0.76%) Protocol Buffers
7 6 (0.65%) Apache NiFi
7 6 (0.65%) REST
7 6 (0.65%) RESTful
8 5 (0.54%) Great Expectations
8 5 (0.54%) OpenTelemetry
9 4 (0.43%) AWS CDK
9 4 (0.43%) Node.js
9 4 (0.43%) pytest
9 4 (0.43%) YAML
10 3 (0.33%) AngularJS
10 3 (0.33%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 36 (3.91%) Cloud Native
2 27 (2.93%) Data Structures
2 27 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
3 14 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
4 9 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
4 9 (0.98%) Driving Licence
4 9 (0.98%) Management Information System
4 9 (0.98%) NHS
5 7 (0.76%) Clustering
5 7 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
5 7 (0.76%) Onboarding
5 7 (0.76%) Product Ownership
5 7 (0.76%) Reference Data
6 6 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (0.54%) Data Centre
8 4 (0.43%) Data Fabric
8 4 (0.43%) Fibre Optics
8 4 (0.43%) Hybrid Cloud
8 4 (0.43%) iPad
9 3 (0.33%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.34%) Unix
2 14 (1.52%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 346 (37.57%) Data Pipeline
2 309 (33.55%) Analytics
3 307 (33.33%) ETL
4 280 (30.40%) Data Engineering
5 272 (29.53%) Data Modelling
6 178 (19.33%) Business Intelligence
7 176 (19.11%) CI/CD
8 161 (17.48%) Data Integration
9 149 (16.18%) Agile
10 133 (14.44%) Migration
11 128 (13.90%) Problem-Solving
12 116 (12.60%) DevOps
13 100 (10.86%) Validation
14 98 (10.64%) Data Governance
15 81 (8.79%) AI
15 81 (8.79%) Decision-Making
16 78 (8.47%) Test Automation
17 72 (7.82%) Data Transformation
18 68 (7.38%) Data Migration
18 68 (7.38%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 423 (45.93%) SQL
2 276 (29.97%) Python
3 35 (3.80%) PL/SQL
4 31 (3.37%) Java
5 20 (2.17%) Bash
6 16 (1.74%) Shell Script
7 14 (1.52%) T-SQL
8 13 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 10 (1.09%) PowerShell
10 6 (0.65%) Scala
11 4 (0.43%) Bicep
12 3 (0.33%) C#
13 2 (0.22%) HiveQL
13 2 (0.22%) JavaScript
14 1 (0.11%) C++
14 1 (0.11%) COBOL
14 1 (0.11%) Go
14 1 (0.11%) Perl
14 1 (0.11%) R
Qualifications
1 273 (29.64%) Security Cleared
2 228 (24.76%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
4 16 (1.74%) Degree
4 16 (1.74%) DV Cleared
5 8 (0.87%) City & Guilds
6 6 (0.65%) Computer Science Degree
7 4 (0.43%) BICSI Certification
7 4 (0.43%) CISM
7 4 (0.43%) CISSP
7 4 (0.43%) SnowPro
8 3 (0.33%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.33%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.33%) CEH
8 3 (0.33%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.11%) CCIE
9 1 (0.11%) CCNP
9 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 194 (21.06%) Data Quality
2 22 (2.39%) QA
3 15 (1.63%) GDPR
4 10 (1.09%) SLA
5 5 (0.54%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.54%) FATCA
6 4 (0.43%) HIPAA
6 4 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.11%) GMP
8 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.11%) NIST
8 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 45 (4.89%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
3 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 54 (5.86%) Terraform
2 48 (5.21%) Kubernetes
3 35 (3.80%) Grafana
4 10 (1.09%) Ansible
4 10 (1.09%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.22%) Apache Ranger
5 2 (0.22%) Control-M
5 2 (0.22%) Rancher
6 1 (0.11%) Kibana
6 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 142 (15.42%) Databricks
2 113 (12.27%) Oracle
3 107 (11.62%) Microsoft
4 103 (11.18%) Talend
5 73 (7.93%) Informatica
6 52 (5.65%) Denodo
7 32 (3.47%) Cisco
7 32 (3.47%) F5
8 20 (2.17%) SAP
9 17 (1.85%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.52%) Cloudera
10 14 (1.52%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.30%) Google
11 12 (1.30%) Splunk
12 9 (0.98%) Sage
13 6 (0.65%) Dynatrace
13 6 (0.65%) Infor
13 6 (0.65%) InterSystems
14 5 (0.54%) SYSPRO
15 4 (0.43%) Palantir