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 15 November 2025.

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

6 months to
15 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 166 125 173
Rank change year-on-year -41 +48 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 283 317 277
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.63% 1.90% 1.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.81% 2.06% 1.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 201 203 225
10th Percentile £347 £360 £400
25th Percentile £402 £435 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £550 £583 £600
90th Percentile £625 £648 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £540 £540
% change year-on-year -7.41% - -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 2
10th Percentile £21.07 £25.14 £47.56
25th Percentile £26.00 £25.21 £50.47
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £57.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% -53.51% -5.00%
75th Percentile £69.25 £27.91 £61.84
90th Percentile £75.70 £28.19 £63.74
UK median hourly rate £48.00 £34.93 £61.75
% change year-on-year +37.44% -43.44% +5.11%

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 15,618 15,385 19,532
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.75% 92.25% 93.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,681 8,827 12,943
10th Percentile £207 £220 £213
25th Percentile £363 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £676 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,532 1,057 1,264
10th Percentile £13.75 £15.00 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.22 £20.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +85.26%
75th Percentile £53.75 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -30.14% -19.10% +58.28%

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 15 November 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 15 November 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 15 November 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 -26 78 £450 -8.63% 60
Midlands -19 77 £515 +5.48% 66
West Midlands -21 63 £519 +5.82% 55
Scotland +16 47 £425 -15.00% 30
South West +9 39 £550 -4.35% 26
North West -17 35 £403 -17.44% 33
Yorkshire -26 35 £500 +3.09% 20
South East -38 35 £475 -13.64% 106
East Midlands -11 13 £460 +29.21% 10
Wales -15 10 £425 -15.00% 11
North East -5 8 £425 -27.35% 7
East of England -31 6 £625 +79.86% 22
Northern Ireland -4 1 - -
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 15 November 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.

1 174 (61.48%) Python
2 160 (56.54%) SQL
3 125 (44.17%) ETL
4 114 (40.28%) Data Pipeline
5 104 (36.75%) Data Engineering
6 98 (34.63%) CI/CD
7 94 (33.22%) Azure
8 92 (32.51%) AWS
9 87 (30.74%) Analytics
10 82 (28.98%) Data Modelling
11 72 (25.44%) Data Warehouse
11 72 (25.44%) Databricks
12 69 (24.38%) DevOps
13 65 (22.97%) Business Intelligence
14 64 (22.61%) Data Quality
15 60 (21.20%) Agile
16 56 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
17 49 (17.31%) Power Platform
17 49 (17.31%) PySpark
18 47 (16.61%) Power BI
18 47 (16.61%) Security Cleared
19 45 (15.90%) Snowflake
20 44 (15.55%) Apache Airflow
21 42 (14.84%) Azure Data Factory
22 41 (14.49%) Kubernetes
23 40 (14.13%) Jenkins
24 39 (13.78%) Docker
24 39 (13.78%) Machine Learning
24 39 (13.78%) SC Cleared
25 38 (13.43%) 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 44 (15.55%) Apache Airflow
2 27 (9.54%) Apache
3 26 (9.19%) Apache Spark
4 11 (3.89%) SAS
5 8 (2.83%) Confluence
6 7 (2.47%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (1.77%) Apache Pig
8 3 (1.06%) IIS
9 2 (0.71%) Documentum
9 2 (0.71%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.35%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.35%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Windchill
2 1 (0.35%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.35%) SPSS
2 1 (0.35%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.35%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 94 (33.22%) Azure
2 92 (32.51%) AWS
3 49 (17.31%) Power Platform
4 45 (15.90%) Snowflake
5 42 (14.84%) Azure Data Factory
6 32 (11.31%) GCP
7 26 (9.19%) Amazon S3
7 26 (9.19%) Serverless
8 24 (8.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 24 (8.48%) GitHub
9 20 (7.07%) dbt
10 19 (6.71%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.89%) AWS CloudFormation
11 11 (3.89%) Azure DevOps
12 9 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (2.83%) Amazon SageMaker
14 7 (2.47%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.47%) Amazon EMR
14 7 (2.47%) Cloud Computing
14 7 (2.47%) CloudBees
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.77%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.06%) MQTT
2 3 (1.06%) SSH
2 3 (1.06%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.71%) DNS
3 2 (0.71%) SSL
3 2 (0.71%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.35%) 802.11
4 1 (0.35%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.35%) Firewall
4 1 (0.35%) Internet
4 1 (0.35%) LAN
4 1 (0.35%) WAN
4 1 (0.35%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (25.44%) Data Warehouse
2 47 (16.61%) Power BI
3 32 (11.31%) Data Lake
4 30 (10.60%) NoSQL
5 29 (10.25%) PostgreSQL
6 28 (9.89%) Big Data
7 23 (8.13%) Relational Database
8 21 (7.42%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (7.42%) Hadoop
9 18 (6.36%) Delta Lake
9 18 (6.36%) Pentaho
10 17 (6.01%) SQL Server
11 13 (4.59%) Amazon RDS
11 13 (4.59%) Elasticsearch
12 12 (4.24%) Data Mining
13 10 (3.53%) Tableau
14 9 (3.18%) Azure SQL Database
15 8 (2.83%) MongoDB
15 8 (2.83%) RDBMS
15 8 (2.83%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 40 (14.13%) Jenkins
2 36 (12.72%) Git
3 24 (8.48%) GitLab
4 20 (7.07%) JIRA
5 8 (2.83%) MLflow
6 7 (2.47%) DBeaver
7 5 (1.77%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (1.41%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.06%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.06%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.06%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.06%) Poetry
9 3 (1.06%) PyCharm
9 3 (1.06%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.71%) JMeter
10 2 (0.71%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.71%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.35%) JUnit
11 1 (0.35%) Maven
11 1 (0.35%) Selenium
General
1 64 (22.61%) Social Skills
2 37 (13.07%) Analytical Skills
3 30 (10.60%) Finance
4 19 (6.71%) Public Sector
5 17 (6.01%) Banking
6 6 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.41%) Influencing Skills
7 4 (1.41%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.06%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
8 3 (1.06%) Retail
8 3 (1.06%) Tech for Good
9 2 (0.71%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.71%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.71%) Legal
9 2 (0.71%) Marketing
9 2 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.35%) Advertising
10 1 (0.35%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (17.31%) PySpark
2 25 (8.83%) Kafka
3 15 (5.30%) RESTful
4 13 (4.59%) Flask
4 13 (4.59%) Pandas
5 12 (4.24%) NumPy
6 9 (3.18%) REST
7 8 (2.83%) Keycloak
8 7 (2.47%) Elastic Stack
8 7 (2.47%) HTML
8 7 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (2.47%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 6 (2.12%) Apache NiFi
10 5 (1.77%) OAuth
10 5 (1.77%) OAuth2
11 4 (1.41%) FastAPI
11 4 (1.41%) JSON
11 4 (1.41%) PyTorch
11 4 (1.41%) TensorFlow
12 3 (1.06%) JDBC
Miscellaneous
1 23 (8.13%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.65%) Replication
3 14 (4.95%) Product Ownership
4 13 (4.59%) Algorithms
5 12 (4.24%) Hybrid Cloud
6 10 (3.53%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
8 6 (2.12%) Clustering
8 6 (2.12%) Data Structures
8 6 (2.12%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.12%) NHS
9 5 (1.77%) IoT
10 4 (1.41%) Driving Licence
11 3 (1.06%) AI Agents
11 3 (1.06%) Data Fabric
11 3 (1.06%) Fibre Optics
11 3 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (1.06%) Private Cloud
12 2 (0.71%) Data Centre
12 2 (0.71%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.42%) Linux
2 11 (3.89%) Unix
3 2 (0.71%) Windows
3 2 (0.71%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (44.17%) ETL
2 114 (40.28%) Data Pipeline
3 104 (36.75%) Data Engineering
4 98 (34.63%) CI/CD
5 87 (30.74%) Analytics
6 82 (28.98%) Data Modelling
7 69 (24.38%) DevOps
8 65 (22.97%) Business Intelligence
9 60 (21.20%) Agile
10 56 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
11 39 (13.78%) Machine Learning
12 38 (13.43%) Test Automation
13 37 (13.07%) Data Integration
13 37 (13.07%) Visualisation
14 32 (11.31%) Data Science
15 31 (10.95%) Data Governance
15 31 (10.95%) Performance Tuning
16 27 (9.54%) Data Transformation
17 26 (9.19%) AI
17 26 (9.19%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 174 (61.48%) Python
2 160 (56.54%) SQL
3 32 (11.31%) Java
4 21 (7.42%) Scala
5 12 (4.24%) Bash
5 12 (4.24%) PL/SQL
6 8 (2.83%) Go
7 5 (1.77%) JavaScript
7 5 (1.77%) R
7 5 (1.77%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (1.41%) Groovy
8 4 (1.41%) T-SQL
9 3 (1.06%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.71%) ABAP
11 1 (0.35%) Bicep
11 1 (0.35%) C#
11 1 (0.35%) Cypher
11 1 (0.35%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 47 (16.61%) Security Cleared
2 39 (13.78%) SC Cleared
3 14 (4.95%) Degree
4 13 (4.59%) AWS Certification
5 9 (3.18%) Azure Certification
6 8 (2.83%) Master's Degree
7 6 (2.12%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (1.06%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 2 (0.71%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.35%) HND
10 1 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.35%) MCP
10 1 (0.35%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.35%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (22.61%) Data Quality
2 8 (2.83%) GDPR
3 6 (2.12%) QA
4 3 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.35%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.35%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.35%) ISO 19650
5 1 (0.35%) NCSC
5 1 (0.35%) NIST
5 1 (0.35%) PMO
5 1 (0.35%) WCAG
System Software
1 39 (13.78%) Docker
2 3 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.71%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 41 (14.49%) Kubernetes
2 26 (9.19%) Terraform
3 11 (3.89%) Ansible
3 11 (3.89%) Grafana
4 8 (2.83%) NetBackup
5 7 (2.47%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.12%) Kibana
7 4 (1.41%) logstash
8 3 (1.06%) Argo
8 3 (1.06%) Istio
8 3 (1.06%) Kustomize
9 2 (0.71%) Control-M
10 1 (0.35%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.35%) Puppet
Vendors
1 72 (25.44%) Databricks
2 36 (12.72%) Oracle
3 32 (11.31%) Microsoft
4 24 (8.48%) Talend
5 14 (4.95%) Informatica
6 11 (3.89%) Red Hat
7 10 (3.53%) Denodo
7 10 (3.53%) Google
8 8 (2.83%) Commvault
8 8 (2.83%) IBM
9 7 (2.47%) Veritas
10 6 (2.12%) Cloudera
10 6 (2.12%) Confluent
11 5 (1.77%) ServiceNow
11 5 (1.77%) Splunk
12 4 (1.41%) Salesforce
13 3 (1.06%) SAP
14 2 (0.71%) Cisco
14 2 (0.71%) EMC
14 2 (0.71%) McAfee