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 £486, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 9 October 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 171 130
Rank change year-on-year +92 -41 +57
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 852 246 309
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 1.55% 1.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.33% 1.74% 1.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 491 170 205
10th Percentile £363 £343 £316
25th Percentile £413 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.32% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £575
90th Percentile £630 £625 £628
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 3 1
10th Percentile £21.25 £19.43 -
25th Percentile £30.96 £21.90 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +66.67% -55.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.00 -
90th Percentile £70.00 £69.60 -
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £77.50
% change year-on-year -14.76% -32.26% +25.51%

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 25,589 14,176 16,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.99% 89.46% 92.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,801 8,703 9,184
10th Percentile £300 £209 £220
25th Percentile £413 £362 £372
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £494
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.85% -1.20%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £670 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,503 1,334 1,250
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.51 £14.73
25th Percentile £19.00 £16.31 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.96
Median % change year-on-year +66.84% -41.80% -3.47%
75th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £66.61
90th Percentile £78.70 £69.65 £74.00
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.57
% change year-on-year +65.84% -39.49% -6.60%

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 9 October 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 9 October 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 9 October 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 +75 319 £469 -1.26% 92
West Midlands +57 235 £469 -6.20% 60
North of England +31 202 £525 +13.51% 258
South East +20 121 £459 -0.76% 136
South West +38 120 £525 +2.44% 71
North West +20 107 £525 +22.09% 132
East Midlands +38 84 £388 -16.22% 30
Yorkshire +7 77 £510 -0.49% 74
Scotland 0 73 £519 +15.28% 75
East of England +4 37 £525 -16.00% 38
North East -29 19 £510 +22.52% 52
Wales -1 17 £531 +7.32% 17
Northern Ireland +6 1 - - 25
Channel Islands - 1 - -
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 9 October 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.

1 380 (44.60%) SQL
2 324 (38.03%) Data Pipeline
3 285 (33.45%) Data Engineering
4 283 (33.22%) Python
5 274 (32.16%) Analytics
6 268 (31.46%) Data Modelling
7 267 (31.34%) ETL
8 233 (27.35%) AWS
9 223 (26.17%) Security Cleared
10 209 (24.53%) Azure
11 183 (21.48%) SC Cleared
12 175 (20.54%) Data Quality
13 147 (17.25%) CI/CD
14 146 (17.14%) Databricks
15 145 (17.02%) Data Integration
16 135 (15.85%) Migration
17 132 (15.49%) Business Intelligence
18 126 (14.79%) DevOps
19 123 (14.44%) Agile
20 114 (13.38%) AI
21 111 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
22 107 (12.56%) Validation
23 102 (11.97%) Power Platform
24 98 (11.50%) Power BI
25 96 (11.27%) Microsoft
26 95 (11.15%) Data Warehouse
27 93 (10.92%) Data Governance
28 87 (10.21%) Data Transformation
29 81 (9.51%) Oracle
30 80 (9.39%) Decision-Making

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 54 (6.34%) Apache
2 47 (5.52%) Apache Spark
3 44 (5.16%) Apache Airflow
4 23 (2.70%) Confluence
4 23 (2.70%) SAS
5 7 (0.82%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (0.59%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.35%) Apache Superset
7 3 (0.35%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
8 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 12 (1.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.12%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.59%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.47%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.47%) Sage X3
3 4 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.12%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.12%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 233 (27.35%) AWS
2 209 (24.53%) Azure
3 102 (11.97%) Power Platform
4 80 (9.39%) Snowflake
5 74 (8.69%) Azure Data Factory
6 66 (7.75%) GCP
7 63 (7.39%) dbt
8 51 (5.99%) Amazon S3
9 42 (4.93%) Serverless
10 34 (3.99%) AWS Lambda
11 32 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 29 (3.40%) Azure DevOps
13 27 (3.17%) GitHub
14 19 (2.23%) Amazon EMR
15 17 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
16 16 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 14 (1.64%) Azure Databricks
18 13 (1.53%) AWS Step Functions
19 12 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
20 9 (1.06%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.35%) BGP
1 20 (2.35%) DMZ
1 20 (2.35%) DNS
1 20 (2.35%) Multicast
1 20 (2.35%) VPN
2 6 (0.70%) Firewall
3 4 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (0.47%) Wireless
4 3 (0.35%) Intrusion Detection
5 2 (0.23%) Structured Cabling
6 1 (0.12%) Broadband
6 1 (0.12%) HTTP
6 1 (0.12%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 98 (11.50%) Power BI
2 95 (11.15%) Data Warehouse
3 57 (6.69%) Pentaho
4 53 (6.22%) Metadata
5 47 (5.52%) Data Lake
6 29 (3.40%) Amazon Redshift
7 28 (3.29%) Amazon Athena
7 28 (3.29%) SQL Server
8 25 (2.93%) Big Data
8 25 (2.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 22 (2.58%) BigQuery
9 22 (2.58%) Relational Database
10 18 (2.11%) Delta Lake
10 18 (2.11%) Oracle Database
11 16 (1.88%) Azure SQL Database
12 15 (1.76%) Hadoop
13 14 (1.64%) Snowflake Schema
14 13 (1.53%) DynamoDB
15 12 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
15 12 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 60 (7.04%) GitLab
2 52 (6.10%) Git
3 33 (3.87%) JIRA
4 17 (2.00%) Jenkins
5 8 (0.94%) Postman
6 6 (0.70%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.35%) Newman
8 2 (0.23%) RStudio
8 2 (0.23%) Yeoman
9 1 (0.12%) MLflow
9 1 (0.12%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
9 1 (0.12%) Toad
General
1 139 (16.31%) Social Skills
2 95 (11.15%) Analytical Skills
3 93 (10.92%) Public Sector
4 53 (6.22%) Finance
5 38 (4.46%) Banking
6 19 (2.23%) Automotive
7 18 (2.11%) Investment Banking
7 18 (2.11%) Marketing
8 14 (1.64%) Aerospace
9 11 (1.29%) Telecoms
10 10 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
10 10 (1.17%) Retail
11 8 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 8 (0.94%) Manufacturing
12 7 (0.82%) Law
12 7 (0.82%) Military
13 5 (0.59%) Front Office
13 5 (0.59%) Police
14 4 (0.47%) Billing
15 3 (0.35%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (9.15%) PySpark
2 64 (7.51%) Terraform
3 39 (4.58%) Kafka
4 16 (1.88%) JSON
5 15 (1.76%) REST
6 12 (1.41%) Apache NiFi
7 10 (1.17%) Pandas
7 10 (1.17%) Streamlit
7 10 (1.17%) XML
8 8 (0.94%) RESTful
9 5 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
9 5 (0.59%) pytest
10 4 (0.47%) Great Expectations
10 4 (0.47%) Keycloak
11 3 (0.35%) .NET
11 3 (0.35%) AWS CDK
11 3 (0.35%) Spring
11 3 (0.35%) Spring Boot
11 3 (0.35%) XML Schema
12 2 (0.23%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 41 (4.81%) Cloud Native
2 26 (3.05%) Data Structures
3 20 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
4 12 (1.41%) Management Information System
5 11 (1.29%) Onboarding
5 11 (1.29%) Reference Data
6 8 (0.94%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (0.82%) Data Protection Act
7 7 (0.82%) NHS
8 6 (0.70%) Algorithms
8 6 (0.70%) Data Fabric
8 6 (0.70%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (0.70%) Product Ownership
9 5 (0.59%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.47%) Derivative
10 4 (0.47%) Driving Licence
10 4 (0.47%) iPad
11 3 (0.35%) IoT
11 3 (0.35%) Life Science
11 3 (0.35%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.35%) Unix
2 13 (1.53%) Linux
3 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.23%) Windows
4 1 (0.12%) VMS
4 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 324 (38.03%) Data Pipeline
2 285 (33.45%) Data Engineering
3 274 (32.16%) Analytics
4 268 (31.46%) Data Modelling
5 267 (31.34%) ETL
6 147 (17.25%) CI/CD
7 145 (17.02%) Data Integration
8 135 (15.85%) Migration
9 132 (15.49%) Business Intelligence
10 126 (14.79%) DevOps
11 123 (14.44%) Agile
12 114 (13.38%) AI
13 111 (13.03%) Problem-Solving
14 107 (12.56%) Validation
15 93 (10.92%) Data Governance
16 87 (10.21%) Data Transformation
17 80 (9.39%) Decision-Making
18 72 (8.45%) Data Migration
18 72 (8.45%) Test Automation
19 62 (7.28%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 380 (44.60%) SQL
2 283 (33.22%) Python
3 23 (2.70%) Java
4 22 (2.58%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 14 (1.64%) Bash
7 13 (1.53%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.17%) Scala
9 9 (1.06%) PowerShell
10 4 (0.47%) Bicep
10 4 (0.47%) Go
10 4 (0.47%) R
10 4 (0.47%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.23%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.12%) C++
12 1 (0.12%) COBOL
12 1 (0.12%) Perl
12 1 (0.12%) PHP
Qualifications
1 223 (26.17%) Security Cleared
2 183 (21.48%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.29%) DV Cleared
4 22 (2.58%) Degree
5 18 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.47%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.47%) CISM
8 4 (0.47%) CISSP
8 4 (0.47%) City & Guilds
9 3 (0.35%) CEH
9 3 (0.35%) Master's Degree
9 3 (0.35%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.12%) CISA
10 1 (0.12%) CRISC
10 1 (0.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 1 (0.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.12%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 175 (20.54%) Data Quality
2 41 (4.81%) QA
3 11 (1.29%) GDPR
4 6 (0.70%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
5 5 (0.59%) FATCA
5 5 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 5 (0.59%) SLA
6 3 (0.35%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.12%) COBIT
7 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.12%) GRC
7 1 (0.12%) NIST
7 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
7 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 26 (3.05%) Docker
2 1 (0.12%) HDFS
2 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (3.40%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.88%) Grafana
3 14 (1.64%) Ansible
4 3 (0.35%) logstash
4 3 (0.35%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.23%) Control-M
5 2 (0.23%) Kibana
6 1 (0.12%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 146 (17.14%) Databricks
2 96 (11.27%) Microsoft
3 81 (9.51%) Oracle
4 62 (7.28%) Talend
5 45 (5.28%) Informatica
6 30 (3.52%) Google
7 22 (2.58%) Denodo
8 20 (2.35%) Cisco
8 20 (2.35%) F5
9 18 (2.11%) Salesforce
10 16 (1.88%) SAP
11 10 (1.17%) Palantir
12 7 (0.82%) Foundry
12 7 (0.82%) Sage
13 6 (0.70%) InterSystems
13 6 (0.70%) SYSPRO
14 5 (0.59%) Cloudera
14 5 (0.59%) Infor
15 4 (0.47%) Dynatrace
15 4 (0.47%) PagerDuty