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 £495, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 25 December 2025.

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

6 months to
25 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 148 103 184
Rank change year-on-year -45 +81 -14
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 304 337 241
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.66% 2.27% 1.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.84% 2.46% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 217 224 189
10th Percentile £350 £316 £350
25th Percentile £405 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £490 £513
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -4.39% -2.38%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £613 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 4
10th Percentile £28.33 £25.14 £33.11
25th Percentile £31.81 £25.21 £41.16
Median hourly rate £51.00 £26.50 £57.00
Median % change year-on-year +92.45% -53.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £71.69 £27.91 £65.63
90th Percentile £76.08 £28.19 £66.75
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £50.50 £61.43
% change year-on-year +4.95% -17.79% +0.29%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 16,533 13,703 18,229
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.19% 92.36% 93.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,143 8,169 11,841
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £373 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £680 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,668 777 1,255
10th Percentile £13.88 £15.30 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.50 £20.26 £18.73
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -29.62% +84.72%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £71.51 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.20 £33.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -23.64% -26.67% +45.77%

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025.

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 December 2025. 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
North of England -51 91 £466 +3.61% 136
Midlands -15 87 £519 +5.97% 72
West Midlands -15 73 £525 +5.00% 46
Scotland +15 50 £450 +2.86% 13
North West -30 46 £425 -4.49% 80
South West -2 40 £550 +17.33% 65
South East -69 34 £478 -13.18% 171
Yorkshire -38 33 £500 +5.26% 33
East Midlands -13 14 £455 +27.81% 24
North East -8 12 £450 -1.64% 23
Wales -14 11 £460 -8.00% 8
East of England -31 6 £625 +96.54% 62
Northern Ireland -6 1 £430 -13.57% 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 December 2025, 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.

1 179 (58.88%) Python
2 165 (54.28%) SQL
3 131 (43.09%) ETL
4 124 (40.79%) Data Pipeline
5 114 (37.50%) Data Engineering
6 108 (35.53%) Azure
7 104 (34.21%) Analytics
8 96 (31.58%) CI/CD
9 91 (29.93%) Data Modelling
10 88 (28.95%) AWS
11 81 (26.64%) Databricks
12 74 (24.34%) DevOps
13 70 (23.03%) Business Intelligence
14 69 (22.70%) Agile
15 68 (22.37%) Data Warehouse
16 64 (21.05%) Data Quality
16 64 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
17 56 (18.42%) PySpark
18 53 (17.43%) Power Platform
18 53 (17.43%) Security Cleared
19 49 (16.12%) Power BI
20 46 (15.13%) Apache Airflow
20 46 (15.13%) Azure Data Factory
20 46 (15.13%) Git
20 46 (15.13%) SC Cleared
21 45 (14.80%) Docker
22 44 (14.47%) Kubernetes
22 44 (14.47%) Snowflake
23 43 (14.14%) Jenkins
24 42 (13.82%) Test Automation

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 46 (15.13%) Apache Airflow
2 30 (9.87%) Apache Spark
3 29 (9.54%) Apache
4 15 (4.93%) SAS
5 8 (2.63%) Confluence
6 6 (1.97%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (1.64%) Apache Pig
8 3 (0.99%) IIS
9 1 (0.33%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.33%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (0.33%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.33%) SPSS
1 1 (0.33%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 108 (35.53%) Azure
2 88 (28.95%) AWS
3 53 (17.43%) Power Platform
4 46 (15.13%) Azure Data Factory
5 44 (14.47%) Snowflake
6 31 (10.20%) GCP
7 28 (9.21%) GitHub
8 26 (8.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 25 (8.22%) dbt
9 25 (8.22%) Serverless
10 24 (7.89%) Amazon S3
11 17 (5.59%) AWS Lambda
12 13 (4.28%) AWS CloudFormation
13 12 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
13 12 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
14 8 (2.63%) Amazon SageMaker
15 7 (2.30%) Amazon ECS
15 7 (2.30%) AWS Step Functions
15 7 (2.30%) CloudBees
15 7 (2.30%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.32%) DNS
1 4 (1.32%) TCP/IP
2 3 (0.99%) MQTT
2 3 (0.99%) SSH
2 3 (0.99%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.66%) BGP
3 2 (0.66%) DMZ
3 2 (0.66%) Multicast
3 2 (0.66%) SSL
3 2 (0.66%) VPN
3 2 (0.66%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.33%) Internet
4 1 (0.33%) LAN
4 1 (0.33%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (22.37%) Data Warehouse
2 49 (16.12%) Power BI
3 36 (11.84%) Data Lake
4 31 (10.20%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (9.87%) Big Data
6 27 (8.88%) NoSQL
7 25 (8.22%) Hadoop
8 23 (7.57%) Pentaho
9 19 (6.25%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (5.92%) Elasticsearch
10 18 (5.92%) Relational Database
11 16 (5.26%) Delta Lake
12 13 (4.28%) Data Mining
12 13 (4.28%) SQL Server
13 12 (3.95%) Amazon RDS
14 11 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
15 9 (2.96%) BigQuery
15 9 (2.96%) Tableau
16 8 (2.63%) RDBMS
16 8 (2.63%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 46 (15.13%) Git
2 43 (14.14%) Jenkins
3 26 (8.55%) GitLab
4 24 (7.89%) JIRA
5 8 (2.63%) MLflow
6 6 (1.97%) DBeaver
7 5 (1.64%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (1.32%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.99%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.99%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.99%) Poetry
9 3 (0.99%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.99%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.66%) Artifactory
10 2 (0.66%) JMeter
10 2 (0.66%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.66%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.33%) JUnit
11 1 (0.33%) Mockito
11 1 (0.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 62 (20.39%) Social Skills
2 37 (12.17%) Finance
3 35 (11.51%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (6.91%) Public Sector
5 18 (5.92%) Banking
6 6 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
7 3 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
7 3 (0.99%) Investment Banking
7 3 (0.99%) Legal
7 3 (0.99%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.66%) Aerospace
8 2 (0.66%) Health Technology
8 2 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
8 2 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.66%) Retail
8 2 (0.66%) Tech for Good
8 2 (0.66%) Telecoms
9 1 (0.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 1 (0.33%) Law
9 1 (0.33%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 56 (18.42%) PySpark
2 30 (9.87%) Kafka
3 16 (5.26%) REST
4 14 (4.61%) RESTful
5 13 (4.28%) Pandas
6 12 (3.95%) Flask
6 12 (3.95%) Keycloak
6 12 (3.95%) NumPy
7 8 (2.63%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (2.30%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (1.97%) HTML
9 6 (1.97%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (1.97%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 5 (1.64%) JSON
10 5 (1.64%) Node.js
11 4 (1.32%) OAuth
11 4 (1.32%) OAuth2
11 4 (1.32%) pytest
12 3 (0.99%) Apache Avro
12 3 (0.99%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.24%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.26%) Replication
3 14 (4.61%) Algorithms
3 14 (4.61%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (2.30%) Clustering
8 6 (1.97%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.97%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (1.97%) NHS
9 4 (1.32%) IoT
10 3 (0.99%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (0.99%) Driving Licence
10 3 (0.99%) Fibre Optics
11 2 (0.66%) AI Agents
11 2 (0.66%) Distributed Architecture
11 2 (0.66%) Legacy Applications
11 2 (0.66%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.25%) Linux
2 8 (2.63%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (43.09%) ETL
2 124 (40.79%) Data Pipeline
3 114 (37.50%) Data Engineering
4 104 (34.21%) Analytics
5 96 (31.58%) CI/CD
6 91 (29.93%) Data Modelling
7 74 (24.34%) DevOps
8 70 (23.03%) Business Intelligence
9 69 (22.70%) Agile
10 64 (21.05%) Problem-Solving
11 42 (13.82%) Test Automation
12 39 (12.83%) Data Integration
13 38 (12.50%) Machine Learning
14 37 (12.17%) Visualisation
15 34 (11.18%) Performance Tuning
16 31 (10.20%) Scrum
17 30 (9.87%) Continuous Improvement
17 30 (9.87%) Data Governance
18 29 (9.54%) Data Science
19 27 (8.88%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 179 (58.88%) Python
2 165 (54.28%) SQL
3 29 (9.54%) Java
4 16 (5.26%) Scala
5 13 (4.28%) PL/SQL
6 12 (3.95%) Bash
6 12 (3.95%) Go
7 6 (1.97%) R
8 5 (1.64%) Groovy
8 5 (1.64%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.32%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.32%) T-SQL
10 3 (0.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (0.99%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.66%) ABAP
11 2 (0.66%) Bicep
12 1 (0.33%) C#
12 1 (0.33%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 53 (17.43%) Security Cleared
2 46 (15.13%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.28%) Azure Certification
4 10 (3.29%) AWS Certification
5 7 (2.30%) Degree
6 5 (1.64%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (0.66%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.33%) HND
9 1 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.33%) MCP
9 1 (0.33%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (21.05%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.96%) GDPR
3 6 (1.97%) QA
4 4 (1.32%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.66%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.33%) Basel III
6 1 (0.33%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.33%) NCSC
6 1 (0.33%) NIST
6 1 (0.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 45 (14.80%) Docker
2 3 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.66%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 44 (14.47%) Kubernetes
2 29 (9.54%) Terraform
3 12 (3.95%) Ansible
4 11 (3.62%) Grafana
5 8 (2.63%) NetBackup
6 7 (2.30%) Kibana
7 6 (1.97%) Prometheus
8 5 (1.64%) logstash
9 3 (0.99%) Argo
9 3 (0.99%) Istio
10 2 (0.66%) Control-M
10 2 (0.66%) Kustomize
11 1 (0.33%) Puppet
Vendors
1 81 (26.64%) Databricks
2 39 (12.83%) Oracle
3 35 (11.51%) Microsoft
4 25 (8.22%) Talend
5 15 (4.93%) Denodo
6 11 (3.62%) Informatica
6 11 (3.62%) Red Hat
7 9 (2.96%) Google
8 8 (2.63%) Commvault
9 7 (2.30%) IBM
9 7 (2.30%) Veritas
10 6 (1.97%) Cloudera
10 6 (1.97%) Confluent
10 6 (1.97%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.64%) Splunk
12 4 (1.32%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.32%) SAP
13 3 (0.99%) Cisco
14 2 (0.66%) Brio
14 2 (0.66%) Foundry