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 3 February 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 94 192
Rank change year-on-year -41 +98 -16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 361 338 244
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.87% 2.50% 1.15%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.05% 2.71% 1.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 267 226 186
10th Percentile £358 £298 £313
25th Percentile £405 £392 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -4.05% -2.44%
75th Percentile £545 £558 £600
90th Percentile £593 £644 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -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 £52.50 £65.00 £60.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% +7.44% -3.20%

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 17,567 12,495 19,734
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.79% 92.49% 93.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,698 7,401 12,450
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £368
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £478 £493
Median % change year-on-year -0.52% -3.14% -1.40%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £598
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 1,827 657 1,897
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £17.88 £20.30 £16.12
Median hourly rate £27.50 £31.76 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year -13.41% -11.89% +15.01%
75th Percentile £62.05 £63.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £29.65 £33.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -10.17% -7.04% +1.43%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -13 118 £513 +4.80% 45
North of England -43 105 £466 +0.81% 86
West Midlands -6 104 £515 +3.00% 35
North West -26 59 £425 -2.86% 56
South West -3 49 £550 +10.00% 40
Scotland +6 47 £450 +1.41% 28
South East -49 43 £480 -9.65% 122
Yorkshire -36 33 £500 -2.44% 24
Wales -4 16 £410 -18.00% 2
East Midlands -21 14 £455 +22.15% 10
North East -13 13 £450 -16.28% 8
East of England -32 5 £563 +76.76% 20
Northern Ireland -1 1 £430 -21.82% 1
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 183 (50.69%) SQL
2 176 (48.75%) Python
3 154 (42.66%) ETL
4 139 (38.50%) Data Engineering
5 135 (37.40%) Data Pipeline
6 132 (36.57%) Analytics
7 119 (32.96%) Azure
8 110 (30.47%) Data Modelling
9 105 (29.09%) CI/CD
10 93 (25.76%) Security Cleared
11 88 (24.38%) AWS
12 82 (22.71%) Databricks
13 81 (22.44%) Data Quality
13 81 (22.44%) SC Cleared
14 79 (21.88%) Business Intelligence
14 79 (21.88%) DevOps
15 77 (21.33%) Problem-Solving
16 74 (20.50%) Agile
17 62 (17.17%) Data Warehouse
17 62 (17.17%) PySpark
18 59 (16.34%) Power Platform
19 55 (15.24%) Power BI
20 52 (14.40%) Oracle
21 48 (13.30%) Apache Airflow
21 48 (13.30%) Git
22 46 (12.74%) Azure Data Factory
22 46 (12.74%) Docker
22 46 (12.74%) Kubernetes
22 46 (12.74%) Snowflake
23 45 (12.47%) 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 48 (13.30%) Apache Airflow
2 29 (8.03%) Apache Spark
3 26 (7.20%) Apache
4 22 (6.09%) SAS
5 8 (2.22%) Confluence
6 5 (1.39%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.39%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.83%) IIS
8 1 (0.28%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.28%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.28%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.28%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 119 (32.96%) Azure
2 88 (24.38%) AWS
3 59 (16.34%) Power Platform
4 46 (12.74%) Azure Data Factory
4 46 (12.74%) Snowflake
5 31 (8.59%) dbt
6 28 (7.76%) Serverless
7 26 (7.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 26 (7.20%) GCP
8 25 (6.93%) GitHub
9 20 (5.54%) Amazon S3
9 20 (5.54%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (4.43%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (3.88%) AWS CloudFormation
12 9 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (2.22%) Amazon SageMaker
13 8 (2.22%) Matillion
13 8 (2.22%) Prefect
14 7 (1.94%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (1.94%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.49%) BGP
1 9 (2.49%) DMZ
1 9 (2.49%) DNS
1 9 (2.49%) Multicast
1 9 (2.49%) VPN
2 2 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.28%) Internet
3 1 (0.28%) LAN
3 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.28%) WAN
3 1 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (17.17%) Data Warehouse
2 55 (15.24%) Power BI
3 35 (9.70%) Data Lake
3 35 (9.70%) Pentaho
4 27 (7.48%) PostgreSQL
5 26 (7.20%) Big Data
6 23 (6.37%) NoSQL
7 22 (6.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 20 (5.54%) Hadoop
9 16 (4.43%) Elasticsearch
10 15 (4.16%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (4.16%) SQL Server
11 14 (3.88%) Delta Lake
11 14 (3.88%) Relational Database
12 13 (3.60%) Data Mining
13 12 (3.32%) Azure SQL Database
14 10 (2.77%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (2.77%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 9 (2.49%) Apache Hive
15 9 (2.49%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 48 (13.30%) Git
2 41 (11.36%) Jenkins
3 29 (8.03%) GitLab
4 27 (7.48%) JIRA
5 5 (1.39%) DBeaver
5 5 (1.39%) MLflow
6 3 (0.83%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.83%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.83%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.55%) JMeter
7 2 (0.55%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.55%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.28%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.28%) Deequ
8 1 (0.28%) JUnit
8 1 (0.28%) Maven
8 1 (0.28%) Mockito
8 1 (0.28%) Selenium
8 1 (0.28%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 68 (18.84%) Social Skills
2 42 (11.63%) Analytical Skills
3 40 (11.08%) Finance
4 32 (8.86%) Public Sector
5 23 (6.37%) Banking
6 7 (1.94%) Documentation Skills
6 7 (1.94%) Investment Banking
7 4 (1.11%) Manufacturing
8 3 (0.83%) Aerospace
8 3 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (0.83%) Legal
9 2 (0.55%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.55%) Law
9 2 (0.55%) Marketing
9 2 (0.55%) Presentation Skills
9 2 (0.55%) Retail
10 1 (0.28%) Games
10 1 (0.28%) Military
10 1 (0.28%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (17.17%) PySpark
2 30 (8.31%) Kafka
3 17 (4.71%) REST
4 12 (3.32%) Keycloak
5 11 (3.05%) RESTful
6 10 (2.77%) JSON
7 9 (2.49%) Pandas
8 8 (2.22%) NumPy
9 7 (1.94%) Flask
10 6 (1.66%) Apache NiFi
10 6 (1.66%) HTML
10 6 (1.66%) Node.js
10 6 (1.66%) OpenTelemetry
10 6 (1.66%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 5 (1.39%) XML
12 4 (1.11%) pytest
12 4 (1.11%) PyTorch
12 4 (1.11%) TensorFlow
13 3 (0.83%) OAuth2
13 3 (0.83%) SpaCy
Miscellaneous
1 23 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.16%) Algorithms
2 15 (4.16%) Product Ownership
2 15 (4.16%) Replication
3 14 (3.88%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.60%) Data Protection Act
5 11 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.22%) Clustering
7 7 (1.94%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.66%) Greenfield Project
9 5 (1.39%) NHS
10 4 (1.11%) Distributed Computing
10 4 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
10 4 (1.11%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.11%) Public Cloud
11 3 (0.83%) Data Centre
11 3 (0.83%) IoT
11 3 (0.83%) Management Information System
12 2 (0.55%) CCTV
12 2 (0.55%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.16%) Unix
2 14 (3.88%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (42.66%) ETL
2 139 (38.50%) Data Engineering
3 135 (37.40%) Data Pipeline
4 132 (36.57%) Analytics
5 110 (30.47%) Data Modelling
6 105 (29.09%) CI/CD
7 79 (21.88%) Business Intelligence
7 79 (21.88%) DevOps
8 77 (21.33%) Problem-Solving
9 74 (20.50%) Agile
10 45 (12.47%) Data Integration
11 42 (11.63%) Test Automation
12 40 (11.08%) Continuous Improvement
13 39 (10.80%) Data Science
14 38 (10.53%) Machine Learning
15 37 (10.25%) Data Governance
15 37 (10.25%) Performance Tuning
16 33 (9.14%) Scrum
17 32 (8.86%) Data Transformation
18 30 (8.31%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 183 (50.69%) SQL
2 176 (48.75%) Python
3 34 (9.42%) Java
4 14 (3.88%) Scala
5 13 (3.60%) Go
5 13 (3.60%) PL/SQL
6 8 (2.22%) Shell Script
7 7 (1.94%) Bash
8 6 (1.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 6 (1.66%) T-SQL
9 5 (1.39%) R
10 4 (1.11%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.83%) Bicep
12 2 (0.55%) C#
12 2 (0.55%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.28%) Cypher
13 1 (0.28%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 93 (25.76%) Security Cleared
2 81 (22.44%) SC Cleared
3 14 (3.88%) Azure Certification
4 11 (3.05%) Degree
5 9 (2.49%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.39%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.83%) Computer Science Degree
7 3 (0.83%) IBM Certification
8 2 (0.55%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 1 (0.28%) Numerate Degree
9 1 (0.28%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 81 (22.44%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.49%) GDPR
3 6 (1.66%) QA
4 3 (0.83%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.83%) FATCA
5 2 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.28%) Basel III
6 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.28%) EU AI Act
6 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.28%) NCSC
6 1 (0.28%) NIST
6 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 46 (12.74%) Docker
2 5 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.55%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 46 (12.74%) Kubernetes
2 28 (7.76%) Terraform
3 10 (2.77%) Ansible
4 9 (2.49%) Grafana
5 7 (1.94%) NetBackup
6 5 (1.39%) Kibana
6 5 (1.39%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.83%) Control-M
7 3 (0.83%) logstash
8 1 (0.28%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.28%) Puppet
8 1 (0.28%) Rancher
Vendors
1 82 (22.71%) Databricks
2 52 (14.40%) Oracle
3 45 (12.47%) Microsoft
4 40 (11.08%) Talend
5 23 (6.37%) Denodo
6 18 (4.99%) Informatica
7 10 (2.77%) Cisco
7 10 (2.77%) IBM
8 9 (2.49%) F5
8 9 (2.49%) Splunk
9 8 (2.22%) Google
10 7 (1.94%) Alteryx
10 7 (1.94%) Commvault
10 7 (1.94%) Red Hat
11 6 (1.66%) Confluent
11 6 (1.66%) Veritas
12 5 (1.39%) ServiceNow
13 4 (1.11%) Dataiku
14 3 (0.83%) Cloudera
14 3 (0.83%) Salesforce