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 7 August 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 160 124
Rank change year-on-year +98 -36 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 924 242 325
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.38% 1.59% 1.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.67% 1.76% 1.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 574 164 237
10th Percentile £368 £325 £170
25th Percentile £413 £412 £206
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £471 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.79% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £550
90th Percentile £600 £629 £612
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £520
% change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
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 25,181 13,750 16,926
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.11% 90.38% 92.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,223 8,471 10,336
10th Percentile £305 £217 £219
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 £685
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,004 1,202 1,766
10th Percentile £14.56 £13.35 £14.05
25th Percentile £20.48 £16.50 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +15.89%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% -

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +64 399 £465 +2.20% 56
West Midlands +60 346 £460 - 33
North of England +32 236 £490 +3.16% 104
North West +32 139 £525 +10.53% 41
South East +18 129 £467 +3.78% 118
South West +13 85 £525 +10.53% 37
Yorkshire -2 75 £465 -2.11% 31
Scotland +28 65 £440 +2.80% 15
East Midlands +23 53 £500 +19.05% 23
East of England +2 35 £520 +61.74% 16
North East -24 23 £515 +21.89% 33
Wales +4 16 £500 +12.36% 14
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 4
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 7 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.

1 417 (45.13%) SQL
2 346 (37.45%) Data Pipeline
3 308 (33.33%) Analytics
4 303 (32.79%) ETL
5 282 (30.52%) Data Engineering
6 279 (30.19%) Security Cleared
7 272 (29.44%) Data Modelling
8 270 (29.22%) Python
9 233 (25.22%) SC Cleared
10 220 (23.81%) Azure
11 205 (22.19%) AWS
12 194 (21.00%) Data Quality
13 177 (19.16%) Business Intelligence
14 171 (18.51%) CI/CD
15 164 (17.75%) Data Integration
16 149 (16.13%) Agile
17 141 (15.26%) Databricks
18 135 (14.61%) Migration
19 128 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
20 119 (12.88%) DevOps
21 114 (12.34%) Data Warehouse
22 112 (12.12%) Oracle
23 111 (12.01%) Power Platform
24 108 (11.69%) Power BI
25 107 (11.58%) Microsoft
26 102 (11.04%) Talend
27 101 (10.93%) Validation
28 99 (10.71%) Data Governance
29 95 (10.28%) Git
30 91 (9.85%) 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 (7.25%) SAS
2 47 (5.09%) Apache Spark
3 33 (3.57%) Apache Airflow
4 30 (3.25%) Apache
5 23 (2.49%) Confluence
6 6 (0.65%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.32%) Apache Superset
7 3 (0.32%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 10 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.54%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.54%) Infor LN
2 4 (0.43%) NetSuite
2 4 (0.43%) Sage X3
3 3 (0.32%) 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%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 220 (23.81%) Azure
2 205 (22.19%) AWS
3 111 (12.01%) Power Platform
4 89 (9.63%) Azure Data Factory
5 76 (8.23%) Snowflake
6 47 (5.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 46 (4.98%) GCP
8 43 (4.65%) Amazon S3
9 40 (4.33%) dbt
10 35 (3.79%) Serverless
11 30 (3.25%) Azure DevOps
12 26 (2.81%) AWS Lambda
13 24 (2.60%) GitHub
14 17 (1.84%) OpenShift
15 15 (1.62%) Matillion
16 13 (1.41%) Amazon EMR
16 13 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
17 11 (1.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 11 (1.19%) AWS Step Functions
17 11 (1.19%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 32 (3.46%) DNS
1 32 (3.46%) VPN
2 31 (3.35%) BGP
2 31 (3.35%) DMZ
2 31 (3.35%) 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 (0.32%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 114 (12.34%) Data Warehouse
2 108 (11.69%) Power BI
3 88 (9.52%) Pentaho
4 48 (5.19%) Data Lake
5 43 (4.65%) Amazon Redshift
6 40 (4.33%) Metadata
7 39 (4.22%) SQL Server
8 29 (3.14%) Big Data
9 28 (3.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 27 (2.92%) Relational Database
11 25 (2.71%) Hadoop
12 23 (2.49%) Amazon Athena
13 22 (2.38%) MySQL
14 21 (2.27%) Delta Lake
15 20 (2.16%) Azure SQL Database
16 17 (1.84%) BusinessObjects
16 17 (1.84%) Tableau
17 15 (1.62%) NoSQL
17 15 (1.62%) Oracle Database
17 15 (1.62%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 95 (10.28%) Git
2 61 (6.60%) GitLab
3 46 (4.98%) JIRA
4 36 (3.90%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.76%) Postman
6 5 (0.54%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.43%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.32%) 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
1 147 (15.91%) Social Skills
2 99 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
3 92 (9.96%) Public Sector
4 60 (6.49%) Finance
5 42 (4.55%) Banking
6 21 (2.27%) Investment Banking
7 20 (2.16%) Marketing
8 19 (2.06%) Automotive
9 17 (1.84%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (1.73%) Telecoms
11 14 (1.52%) Aerospace
11 14 (1.52%) Manufacturing
12 13 (1.41%) Retail
13 10 (1.08%) 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%) Advertising
15 4 (0.43%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (9.85%) PySpark
2 56 (6.06%) Kafka
3 16 (1.73%) JSON
4 12 (1.30%) Pandas
5 10 (1.08%) Streamlit
6 8 (0.87%) XML
7 7 (0.76%) Apache Avro
7 7 (0.76%) Protocol Buffers
8 6 (0.65%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (0.65%) REST
8 6 (0.65%) RESTful
9 5 (0.54%) Great Expectations
9 5 (0.54%) OpenTelemetry
10 4 (0.43%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.43%) Node.js
10 4 (0.43%) pytest
11 3 (0.32%) .NET
11 3 (0.32%) AngularJS
11 3 (0.32%) Spring
11 3 (0.32%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 34 (3.68%) Cloud Native
2 29 (3.14%) Data Structures
3 27 (2.92%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (1.19%) Distributed Systems
5 9 (0.97%) Driving Licence
5 9 (0.97%) Management Information System
5 9 (0.97%) NHS
6 8 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (0.87%) Onboarding
7 7 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
7 7 (0.76%) Product Ownership
7 7 (0.76%) Reference Data
8 6 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
9 5 (0.54%) Data Centre
10 4 (0.43%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.43%) Fibre Optics
10 4 (0.43%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.43%) iPad
11 3 (0.32%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.32%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.44%) 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 (37.45%) Data Pipeline
2 308 (33.33%) Analytics
3 303 (32.79%) ETL
4 282 (30.52%) Data Engineering
5 272 (29.44%) Data Modelling
6 177 (19.16%) Business Intelligence
7 171 (18.51%) CI/CD
8 164 (17.75%) Data Integration
9 149 (16.13%) Agile
10 135 (14.61%) Migration
11 128 (13.85%) Problem-Solving
12 119 (12.88%) DevOps
13 101 (10.93%) Validation
14 99 (10.71%) Data Governance
15 84 (9.09%) AI
16 81 (8.77%) Decision-Making
17 78 (8.44%) Test Automation
18 72 (7.79%) Data Transformation
19 68 (7.36%) Data Migration
19 68 (7.36%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 417 (45.13%) SQL
2 270 (29.22%) Python
3 35 (3.79%) PL/SQL
4 27 (2.92%) Java
5 21 (2.27%) Bash
6 16 (1.73%) Shell Script
7 13 (1.41%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (0.87%) PowerShell
10 7 (0.76%) Scala
11 2 (0.22%) Bicep
11 2 (0.22%) HiveQL
11 2 (0.22%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.11%) C#
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) COBOL
12 1 (0.11%) Go
12 1 (0.11%) Perl
12 1 (0.11%) R
Qualifications
1 279 (30.19%) Security Cleared
2 233 (25.22%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
4 19 (2.06%) Degree
5 16 (1.73%) DV Cleared
6 9 (0.97%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.87%) City & Guilds
8 4 (0.43%) BICSI Certification
8 4 (0.43%) CISM
8 4 (0.43%) CISSP
8 4 (0.43%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.32%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.32%) CEH
9 3 (0.32%) Master's Degree
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 (21.00%) Data Quality
2 20 (2.16%) QA
3 15 (1.62%) GDPR
4 10 (1.08%) 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%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.11%) NIST
8 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 45 (4.87%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
3 1 (0.11%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 49 (5.30%) Terraform
2 48 (5.19%) Kubernetes
3 35 (3.79%) Grafana
4 10 (1.08%) Ansible
4 10 (1.08%) 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
1 141 (15.26%) Databricks
2 112 (12.12%) Oracle
3 107 (11.58%) Microsoft
4 102 (11.04%) Talend
5 72 (7.79%) Informatica
6 52 (5.63%) Denodo
7 33 (3.57%) Cisco
7 33 (3.57%) F5
8 20 (2.16%) SAP
9 17 (1.84%) Salesforce
10 14 (1.52%) Cloudera
10 14 (1.52%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.30%) Google
11 12 (1.30%) Splunk
12 9 (0.97%) Sage
13 6 (0.65%) Dynatrace
13 6 (0.65%) Infor
13 6 (0.65%) InterSystems
13 6 (0.65%) SYSPRO
14 4 (0.43%) Palantir