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 £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 February 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 94 181
Rank change year-on-year -28 +87 -4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 386 347 253
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.94% 2.56% 1.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.14% 2.77% 1.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 288 237 195
10th Percentile £355 £312 £306
25th Percentile £402 £381 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £550 £558 £588
90th Percentile £600 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £517 £525
% change year-on-year -3.33% -1.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 10
10th Percentile £32.12 £25.14 £36.53
25th Percentile £38.13 £25.21 £37.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £26.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.83% -57.60% -
75th Percentile £65.69 £27.91 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.13 £28.19 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £53.50 £65.00 £56.50
% change year-on-year -17.69% +15.04% -9.60%

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 18,069 12,519 19,396
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.84% 92.52% 93.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,923 7,535 12,173
10th Percentile £220 £210 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £489
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% -2.35% -2.20%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £597
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,916 646 1,902
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.26 £20.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.13 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.87% -8.20% -
75th Percentile £62.73 £64.50 £61.62
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.60 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £30.00 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.76% -2.86% -2.23%

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 12 February 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 12 February 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 12 February 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 -14 121 £500 +4.82% 64
North of England -37 115 £450 -2.70% 92
West Midlands -16 106 £513 +4.59% 53
North West -12 66 £415 -5.14% 54
Scotland +14 54 £450 +1.41% 27
South East -41 52 £513 -2.38% 104
South West -10 46 £525 +5.00% 38
Yorkshire -40 36 £488 -4.88% 28
Wales -6 17 £410 -18.00% 3
East Midlands -18 15 £450 +20.00% 11
North East -15 13 £463 -11.90% 12
East of England -40 5 £510 +60.38% 15
Northern Ireland -3 1 £430 -21.82%
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 12 February 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.

1 200 (51.81%) SQL
2 191 (49.48%) Python
3 161 (41.71%) ETL
4 155 (40.16%) Data Engineering
5 146 (37.82%) Data Pipeline
6 144 (37.31%) Analytics
7 127 (32.90%) Azure
8 125 (32.38%) Data Modelling
9 105 (27.20%) CI/CD
10 90 (23.32%) Data Quality
11 89 (23.06%) Security Cleared
12 88 (22.80%) AWS
13 87 (22.54%) Databricks
14 84 (21.76%) Business Intelligence
14 84 (21.76%) Problem-Solving
15 78 (20.21%) Agile
15 78 (20.21%) DevOps
16 76 (19.69%) SC Cleared
17 70 (18.13%) Data Warehouse
18 68 (17.62%) PySpark
19 65 (16.84%) Power Platform
20 60 (15.54%) Power BI
21 56 (14.51%) Azure Data Factory
22 49 (12.69%) Data Science
22 49 (12.69%) Git
22 49 (12.69%) Oracle
23 48 (12.44%) Microsoft
23 48 (12.44%) Snowflake
24 47 (12.18%) Apache Airflow
25 46 (11.92%) Data Integration

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 47 (12.18%) Apache Airflow
2 32 (8.29%) Apache
3 30 (7.77%) Apache Spark
4 18 (4.66%) SAS
5 6 (1.55%) Confluence
6 5 (1.30%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.30%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.78%) IIS
8 1 (0.26%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.26%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.26%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.26%) Elite 3E
1 1 (0.26%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 127 (32.90%) Azure
2 88 (22.80%) AWS
3 65 (16.84%) Power Platform
4 56 (14.51%) Azure Data Factory
5 48 (12.44%) Snowflake
6 33 (8.55%) dbt
7 29 (7.51%) Serverless
8 28 (7.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 27 (6.99%) GitHub
10 26 (6.74%) GCP
11 21 (5.44%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (5.18%) Amazon S3
13 16 (4.15%) Azure DevOps
14 15 (3.89%) AWS CloudFormation
15 10 (2.59%) GitHub Actions
16 9 (2.33%) Amazon ECS
16 9 (2.33%) Prefect
17 8 (2.07%) Amazon SageMaker
17 8 (2.07%) AWS Step Functions
17 8 (2.07%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.11%) DNS
2 11 (2.85%) BGP
2 11 (2.85%) DMZ
2 11 (2.85%) Multicast
2 11 (2.85%) VPN
3 2 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.26%) Internet
4 1 (0.26%) LAN
4 1 (0.26%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.26%) WAN
4 1 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (18.13%) Data Warehouse
2 60 (15.54%) Power BI
3 38 (9.84%) Data Lake
4 31 (8.03%) Pentaho
5 28 (7.25%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (6.48%) Big Data
7 22 (5.70%) Amazon Redshift
7 22 (5.70%) NoSQL
8 20 (5.18%) Hadoop
9 16 (4.15%) Delta Lake
9 16 (4.15%) Elasticsearch
10 15 (3.89%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (3.89%) SQL Server
11 14 (3.63%) Relational Database
12 13 (3.37%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (3.37%) BigQuery
12 13 (3.37%) Data Mining
12 13 (3.37%) Snowflake Schema
12 13 (3.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 9 (2.33%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 49 (12.69%) Git
2 36 (9.33%) Jenkins
3 27 (6.99%) GitLab
4 21 (5.44%) JIRA
5 5 (1.30%) DBeaver
5 5 (1.30%) MLflow
6 3 (0.78%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.78%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.78%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.52%) JMeter
7 2 (0.52%) JUnit
7 2 (0.52%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.52%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.26%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.26%) Deequ
8 1 (0.26%) Maven
8 1 (0.26%) Mockito
8 1 (0.26%) Selenium
8 1 (0.26%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 75 (19.43%) Social Skills
2 46 (11.92%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (11.14%) Finance
4 33 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 24 (6.22%) Banking
6 10 (2.59%) Documentation Skills
7 8 (2.07%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.30%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.78%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.78%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.78%) Legal
9 3 (0.78%) Marketing
10 2 (0.52%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.52%) Law
10 2 (0.52%) Local Government
10 2 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.52%) Retail
10 2 (0.52%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.26%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (17.62%) PySpark
2 40 (10.36%) Kafka
3 17 (4.40%) REST
4 15 (3.89%) JSON
5 12 (3.11%) Keycloak
6 10 (2.59%) OpenTelemetry
6 10 (2.59%) Pandas
6 10 (2.59%) RESTful
7 8 (2.07%) NumPy
8 7 (1.81%) Flask
8 7 (1.81%) Node.js
8 7 (1.81%) XML
9 6 (1.55%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (1.55%) HTML
9 6 (1.55%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 6 (1.55%) Streamlit
10 5 (1.30%) Apache Avro
10 5 (1.30%) Apache Beam
10 5 (1.30%) Protocol Buffers
10 5 (1.30%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 26 (6.74%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.40%) Hybrid Cloud
3 16 (4.15%) Distributed Systems
4 15 (3.89%) Algorithms
4 15 (3.89%) Clustering
4 15 (3.89%) Product Ownership
4 15 (3.89%) Replication
5 13 (3.37%) Data Protection Act
6 8 (2.07%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.30%) NHS
8 4 (1.04%) Data Centre
8 4 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (1.04%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.04%) Management Information System
8 4 (1.04%) Onboarding
8 4 (1.04%) Public Cloud
9 3 (0.78%) Distributed Computing
9 3 (0.78%) Driving Licence
10 2 (0.52%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.52%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 15 (3.89%) Unix
2 14 (3.63%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 161 (41.71%) ETL
2 155 (40.16%) Data Engineering
3 146 (37.82%) Data Pipeline
4 144 (37.31%) Analytics
5 125 (32.38%) Data Modelling
6 105 (27.20%) CI/CD
7 84 (21.76%) Business Intelligence
7 84 (21.76%) Problem-Solving
8 78 (20.21%) Agile
8 78 (20.21%) DevOps
9 49 (12.69%) Data Science
10 46 (11.92%) Data Integration
11 45 (11.66%) Data Governance
12 43 (11.14%) Continuous Improvement
13 40 (10.36%) Performance Tuning
14 37 (9.59%) Data Transformation
14 37 (9.59%) Machine Learning
15 35 (9.07%) Migration
16 34 (8.81%) Test Automation
17 32 (8.29%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 200 (51.81%) SQL
2 191 (49.48%) Python
3 40 (10.36%) Java
4 16 (4.15%) PL/SQL
5 13 (3.37%) Go
6 12 (3.11%) Scala
7 9 (2.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (2.07%) Shell Script
8 8 (2.07%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.55%) C#
10 5 (1.30%) Bash
10 5 (1.30%) Bicep
10 5 (1.30%) R
11 4 (1.04%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.52%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.52%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.26%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 89 (23.06%) Security Cleared
2 76 (19.69%) SC Cleared
3 13 (3.37%) Azure Certification
4 12 (3.11%) Degree
5 10 (2.59%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.30%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.78%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.52%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.26%) CCIE
10 1 (0.26%) CCNP
10 1 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.26%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.26%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 90 (23.32%) Data Quality
2 10 (2.59%) QA
3 9 (2.33%) GDPR
4 4 (1.04%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.78%) FATCA
6 2 (0.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.26%) Basel III
7 1 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.26%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.26%) GMP
7 1 (0.26%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.26%) NCSC
7 1 (0.26%) NIST
7 1 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 40 (10.36%) Docker
2 5 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 45 (11.66%) Kubernetes
2 33 (8.55%) Terraform
3 10 (2.59%) Grafana
3 10 (2.59%) Prometheus
4 8 (2.07%) Ansible
5 5 (1.30%) Kibana
5 5 (1.30%) NetBackup
6 3 (0.78%) Control-M
6 3 (0.78%) logstash
7 1 (0.26%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.26%) Puppet
7 1 (0.26%) Rancher
Vendors
1 87 (22.54%) Databricks
2 49 (12.69%) Oracle
3 48 (12.44%) Microsoft
4 37 (9.59%) Talend
5 19 (4.92%) Denodo
5 19 (4.92%) Informatica
6 13 (3.37%) Cisco
6 13 (3.37%) Splunk
7 12 (3.11%) F5
8 10 (2.59%) IBM
9 8 (2.07%) Google
10 7 (1.81%) Alteryx
10 7 (1.81%) Confluent
11 5 (1.30%) Commvault
11 5 (1.30%) Red Hat
11 5 (1.30%) ServiceNow
12 4 (1.04%) Dataiku
12 4 (1.04%) Veritas
13 3 (0.78%) Cloudera
13 3 (0.78%) Salesforce