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 £469, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 February 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 97 176
Rank change year-on-year -25 +79 -15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 413 341 265
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.04% 2.54% 1.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.24% 2.74% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 307 233 199
10th Percentile £357 £311 £195
25th Percentile £402 £381 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £588
90th Percentile £600 £635 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 15
10th Percentile £32.77 £20.97 £31.65
25th Percentile £45.94 £25.09 £37.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £26.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.83% -57.60% -
75th Percentile £70.69 £27.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £76.20 £28.13 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £54.50 £53.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year +1.40% -11.16% -5.47%

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 18,440 12,431 19,281
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.04% 92.47% 93.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,090 7,554 12,054
10th Percentile £225 £210 £213
25th Percentile £380 £363 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £478 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +0.63% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £576 £588 £595
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 1,972 627 1,928
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.44 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.48 £20.97 £16.00
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -7.80% -0.48%
75th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £61.81
90th Percentile £72.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK median hourly rate £31.18 £34.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -8.31% -2.86% -9.09%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -14 138 £500 +4.82% 69
West Midlands -10 124 £500 +1.01% 50
North of England -33 123 £450 - 91
North West -7 74 £425 -2.86% 54
Scotland +12 54 £438 -1.41% 26
South East -41 53 £513 -2.38% 119
South West -5 47 £538 +7.50% 42
Yorkshire -34 35 £481 +1.32% 30
Wales -10 18 £410 -18.00% 5
North East -14 14 £450 -14.29% 8
East Midlands -22 14 £431 +15.00% 19
East of England -40 6 £520 +63.52% 16
Northern Ireland -1 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 19 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.

1 219 (53.03%) SQL
2 199 (48.18%) Python
3 177 (42.86%) ETL
4 171 (41.40%) Data Engineering
5 161 (38.98%) Data Pipeline
6 151 (36.56%) Analytics
7 137 (33.17%) Data Modelling
8 134 (32.45%) Azure
9 112 (27.12%) CI/CD
10 107 (25.91%) Security Cleared
11 102 (24.70%) AWS
12 100 (24.21%) Data Quality
13 91 (22.03%) Business Intelligence
13 91 (22.03%) SC Cleared
14 90 (21.79%) Databricks
15 87 (21.07%) Problem-Solving
16 83 (20.10%) Agile
16 83 (20.10%) DevOps
17 71 (17.19%) PySpark
18 70 (16.95%) Data Warehouse
19 68 (16.46%) Power Platform
20 62 (15.01%) Power BI
21 60 (14.53%) Azure Data Factory
22 57 (13.80%) Oracle
23 54 (13.08%) Data Integration
23 54 (13.08%) Git
24 51 (12.35%) Microsoft
25 48 (11.62%) Talend
26 47 (11.38%) Data Governance
26 47 (11.38%) Data Science

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 (11.14%) Apache Airflow
2 32 (7.75%) Apache Spark
3 29 (7.02%) Apache
4 27 (6.54%) SAS
5 5 (1.21%) Confluence
6 4 (0.97%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.73%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.48%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.24%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.24%) IIS
9 1 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.24%) Elite 3E
1 1 (0.24%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 134 (32.45%) Azure
2 102 (24.70%) AWS
3 68 (16.46%) Power Platform
4 60 (14.53%) Azure Data Factory
5 47 (11.38%) Snowflake
6 36 (8.72%) dbt
7 32 (7.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 31 (7.51%) Serverless
9 27 (6.54%) GitHub
10 26 (6.30%) GCP
11 23 (5.57%) Amazon S3
11 23 (5.57%) AWS Lambda
12 17 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
13 16 (3.87%) AWS CloudFormation
14 10 (2.42%) Amazon ECS
14 10 (2.42%) AWS Step Functions
14 10 (2.42%) GitHub Actions
15 9 (2.18%) Prefect
16 8 (1.94%) Amazon SageMaker
17 7 (1.69%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 14 (3.39%) DNS
2 13 (3.15%) BGP
2 13 (3.15%) DMZ
2 13 (3.15%) Multicast
2 13 (3.15%) VPN
3 2 (0.48%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.24%) Internet
4 1 (0.24%) LAN
4 1 (0.24%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.24%) WAN
4 1 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (16.95%) Data Warehouse
2 62 (15.01%) Power BI
3 40 (9.69%) Data Lake
3 40 (9.69%) Pentaho
4 27 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
5 25 (6.05%) Big Data
6 22 (5.33%) Amazon Redshift
7 20 (4.84%) NoSQL
8 19 (4.60%) Hadoop
9 17 (4.12%) Amazon RDS
10 16 (3.87%) Delta Lake
10 16 (3.87%) Elasticsearch
10 16 (3.87%) SQL Server
11 15 (3.63%) Relational Database
11 15 (3.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 13 (3.15%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (3.15%) BigQuery
12 13 (3.15%) Snowflake Schema
13 12 (2.91%) Metadata
14 9 (2.18%) Data Mining
Development Applications
1 54 (13.08%) Git
2 36 (8.72%) Jenkins
3 29 (7.02%) GitLab
4 21 (5.08%) JIRA
5 5 (1.21%) MLflow
6 4 (0.97%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.97%) DBeaver
7 3 (0.73%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.73%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.48%) JMeter
8 2 (0.48%) JUnit
8 2 (0.48%) Visual Studio Code
8 2 (0.48%) Zephyr
9 1 (0.24%) Deequ
9 1 (0.24%) Maven
9 1 (0.24%) Mockito
9 1 (0.24%) Selenium
9 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 78 (18.89%) Social Skills
2 45 (10.90%) Analytical Skills
3 42 (10.17%) Finance
4 40 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 23 (5.57%) Banking
6 11 (2.66%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (2.18%) Investment Banking
8 6 (1.45%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.73%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.73%) Law
9 3 (0.73%) Legal
9 3 (0.73%) Retail
10 2 (0.48%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.48%) Local Government
10 2 (0.48%) Marketing
10 2 (0.48%) Military
10 2 (0.48%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.48%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (17.19%) PySpark
2 43 (10.41%) Kafka
3 16 (3.87%) JSON
3 16 (3.87%) REST
4 12 (2.91%) Keycloak
5 10 (2.42%) Pandas
6 8 (1.94%) OpenTelemetry
6 8 (1.94%) RESTful
7 7 (1.69%) Node.js
7 7 (1.69%) NumPy
7 7 (1.69%) XML
8 6 (1.45%) Apache Avro
8 6 (1.45%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (1.45%) Flask
8 6 (1.45%) HTML
8 6 (1.45%) Protocol Buffers
8 6 (1.45%) Streamlit
9 5 (1.21%) Apache Beam
9 5 (1.21%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 5 (1.21%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 28 (6.78%) Cloud Native
2 18 (4.36%) Distributed Systems
2 18 (4.36%) Hybrid Cloud
3 15 (3.63%) Clustering
4 14 (3.39%) Product Ownership
4 14 (3.39%) Replication
5 12 (2.91%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (2.66%) Algorithms
7 8 (1.94%) Data Structures
8 5 (1.21%) NHS
9 4 (0.97%) Data Centre
9 4 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
9 4 (0.97%) Management Information System
9 4 (0.97%) Onboarding
9 4 (0.97%) Public Cloud
10 3 (0.73%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (0.73%) Driving Licence
11 2 (0.48%) Renewable Energy
11 2 (0.48%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 18 (4.36%) Unix
2 13 (3.15%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 177 (42.86%) ETL
2 171 (41.40%) Data Engineering
3 161 (38.98%) Data Pipeline
4 151 (36.56%) Analytics
5 137 (33.17%) Data Modelling
6 112 (27.12%) CI/CD
7 91 (22.03%) Business Intelligence
8 87 (21.07%) Problem-Solving
9 83 (20.10%) Agile
9 83 (20.10%) DevOps
10 54 (13.08%) Data Integration
11 47 (11.38%) Data Governance
11 47 (11.38%) Data Science
12 46 (11.14%) Continuous Improvement
13 44 (10.65%) Performance Tuning
14 39 (9.44%) Migration
15 38 (9.20%) Data Transformation
16 34 (8.23%) Machine Learning
16 34 (8.23%) Test Automation
17 30 (7.26%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 219 (53.03%) SQL
2 199 (48.18%) Python
3 38 (9.20%) Java
4 17 (4.12%) PL/SQL
5 13 (3.15%) Go
6 10 (2.42%) Shell Script
7 9 (2.18%) Bash
7 9 (2.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.18%) T-SQL
8 8 (1.94%) Scala
9 6 (1.45%) Bicep
9 6 (1.45%) C#
10 5 (1.21%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.21%) R
11 4 (0.97%) JavaScript
12 2 (0.48%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.24%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 107 (25.91%) Security Cleared
2 91 (22.03%) SC Cleared
3 13 (3.15%) Azure Certification
4 12 (2.91%) Degree
5 10 (2.42%) AWS Certification
6 6 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (0.97%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.73%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.48%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.24%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.24%) CCIE
10 1 (0.24%) CCNP
10 1 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.24%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (24.21%) Data Quality
2 11 (2.66%) GDPR
3 10 (2.42%) QA
4 4 (0.97%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.73%) FATCA
6 2 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.24%) Basel III
7 1 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.24%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.24%) GMP
7 1 (0.24%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.24%) NCSC
7 1 (0.24%) NIST
7 1 (0.24%) SLA
7 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (10.17%) Docker
2 3 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 47 (11.38%) Kubernetes
2 35 (8.47%) Terraform
3 11 (2.66%) Prometheus
4 10 (2.42%) Grafana
5 7 (1.69%) Ansible
6 5 (1.21%) Kibana
7 4 (0.97%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.73%) Control-M
8 3 (0.73%) logstash
9 1 (0.24%) Puppet
9 1 (0.24%) Rancher
Vendors
1 90 (21.79%) Databricks
2 57 (13.80%) Oracle
3 51 (12.35%) Microsoft
4 48 (11.62%) Talend
5 29 (7.02%) Informatica
6 20 (4.84%) Denodo
7 15 (3.63%) Cisco
8 14 (3.39%) F5
9 12 (2.91%) Splunk
10 10 (2.42%) IBM
11 8 (1.94%) Cloudera
11 8 (1.94%) Google
12 7 (1.69%) Alteryx
12 7 (1.69%) Confluent
13 6 (1.45%) ServiceNow
14 4 (0.97%) Commvault
14 4 (0.97%) Dataiku
14 4 (0.97%) Red Hat
15 3 (0.73%) SAP
15 3 (0.73%) Veritas