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 £485, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 October 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 165 132
Rank change year-on-year +89 -33 +51
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 854 247 306
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.03% 1.56% 1.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.33% 1.75% 1.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 493 170 202
10th Percentile £363 £349 £315
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £555 £538 £579
90th Percentile £636 £625 £630
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 £95.00
% change year-on-year -14.76% -44.74% +53.85%

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 25,622 14,143 16,048
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.96% 89.57% 92.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,785 8,692 9,132
10th Percentile £300 £206 £220
25th Percentile £413 £363 £367
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £588
90th Percentile £688 £671 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,538 1,337 1,218
10th Percentile £14.22 £13.50 £14.73
25th Percentile £19.00 £16.38 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%
75th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £66.25
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
% change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%

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 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 12 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 12 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 +72 320 £469 -6.20% 77
West Midlands +59 236 £469 -6.20% 50
North of England +33 200 £525 +10.53% 236
South East +20 123 £459 -0.76% 122
South West +31 119 £525 +3.70% 63
North West +24 106 £525 +20.69% 121
East Midlands +42 84 £388 -16.22% 27
Yorkshire +11 76 £505 -0.25% 62
Scotland +6 74 £525 +16.67% 58
East of England +9 37 £525 -16.00% 34
North East -27 19 £510 +23.64% 53
Wales -6 18 £550 +11.11% 15
Northern Ireland +4 1 - - 28
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 12 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.

1 381 (44.61%) SQL
2 321 (37.59%) Data Pipeline
3 286 (33.49%) Data Engineering
4 284 (33.26%) Python
5 272 (31.85%) Analytics
6 269 (31.50%) Data Modelling
6 269 (31.50%) ETL
7 236 (27.63%) AWS
8 225 (26.35%) Security Cleared
9 207 (24.24%) Azure
10 185 (21.66%) SC Cleared
11 176 (20.61%) Data Quality
12 148 (17.33%) CI/CD
13 147 (17.21%) Data Integration
14 146 (17.10%) Databricks
15 136 (15.93%) Migration
16 130 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
17 127 (14.87%) DevOps
18 126 (14.75%) Agile
19 114 (13.35%) AI
20 111 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
21 109 (12.76%) Validation
22 100 (11.71%) Power Platform
23 96 (11.24%) Power BI
24 95 (11.12%) Data Governance
24 95 (11.12%) Microsoft
25 94 (11.01%) Data Warehouse
26 89 (10.42%) Data Transformation
27 81 (9.48%) Oracle
28 80 (9.37%) Snowflake

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 (6.32%) Apache
2 47 (5.50%) Apache Spark
3 44 (5.15%) Apache Airflow
4 25 (2.93%) SAS
5 23 (2.69%) Confluence
6 7 (0.82%) Palantir Foundry
7 5 (0.59%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.35%) Apache Superset
8 3 (0.35%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.12%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 11 (1.29%) 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
1 236 (27.63%) AWS
2 207 (24.24%) Azure
3 100 (11.71%) Power Platform
4 80 (9.37%) Snowflake
5 73 (8.55%) Azure Data Factory
6 66 (7.73%) GCP
7 64 (7.49%) dbt
8 51 (5.97%) Amazon S3
9 42 (4.92%) Serverless
10 34 (3.98%) AWS Lambda
11 30 (3.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 28 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
13 27 (3.16%) GitHub
14 19 (2.22%) Amazon EMR
15 17 (1.99%) AWS CloudFormation
16 16 (1.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 14 (1.64%) Azure Databricks
18 13 (1.52%) AWS Step Functions
19 12 (1.41%) GitHub Actions
20 9 (1.05%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 20 (2.34%) BGP
1 20 (2.34%) DMZ
1 20 (2.34%) DNS
1 20 (2.34%) Multicast
1 20 (2.34%) 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 96 (11.24%) Power BI
2 94 (11.01%) Data Warehouse
3 59 (6.91%) Pentaho
4 53 (6.21%) Metadata
5 48 (5.62%) Data Lake
6 29 (3.40%) Amazon Redshift
6 29 (3.40%) SQL Server
7 28 (3.28%) Amazon Athena
8 26 (3.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 25 (2.93%) Big Data
10 22 (2.58%) BigQuery
10 22 (2.58%) Relational Database
11 18 (2.11%) Oracle Database
12 17 (1.99%) Delta Lake
13 16 (1.87%) Azure SQL Database
14 15 (1.76%) Hadoop
15 14 (1.64%) Snowflake Schema
16 13 (1.52%) DynamoDB
17 12 (1.41%) Amazon RDS
17 12 (1.41%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 60 (7.03%) GitLab
2 54 (6.32%) Git
3 33 (3.86%) JIRA
4 19 (2.22%) 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 (16.28%) Social Skills
2 95 (11.12%) Analytical Skills
3 93 (10.89%) Public Sector
4 53 (6.21%) Finance
5 39 (4.57%) Banking
6 19 (2.22%) 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 75 (8.78%) PySpark
2 64 (7.49%) Terraform
3 39 (4.57%) Kafka
4 16 (1.87%) 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 43 (5.04%) Cloud Native
2 26 (3.04%) Data Structures
3 20 (2.34%) 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%) Enterprise Software
11 3 (0.35%) IoT
11 3 (0.35%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 20 (2.34%) Unix
2 13 (1.52%) Linux
3 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
3 2 (0.23%) Windows
4 1 (0.12%) VMS
4 1 (0.12%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 321 (37.59%) Data Pipeline
2 286 (33.49%) Data Engineering
3 272 (31.85%) Analytics
4 269 (31.50%) Data Modelling
4 269 (31.50%) ETL
5 148 (17.33%) CI/CD
6 147 (17.21%) Data Integration
7 136 (15.93%) Migration
8 130 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
9 127 (14.87%) DevOps
10 126 (14.75%) Agile
11 114 (13.35%) AI
12 111 (13.00%) Problem-Solving
13 109 (12.76%) Validation
14 95 (11.12%) Data Governance
15 89 (10.42%) Data Transformation
16 79 (9.25%) Decision-Making
17 74 (8.67%) Data Migration
18 72 (8.43%) Test Automation
19 63 (7.38%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 381 (44.61%) SQL
2 284 (33.26%) Python
3 23 (2.69%) Java
4 22 (2.58%) PL/SQL
5 15 (1.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 14 (1.64%) Bash
7 13 (1.52%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.17%) Scala
9 9 (1.05%) 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
1 225 (26.35%) Security Cleared
2 185 (21.66%) SC Cleared
3 28 (3.28%) DV Cleared
4 22 (2.58%) Degree
5 18 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 6 (0.70%) AWS Certification
9 4 (0.47%) CISM
9 4 (0.47%) CISSP
9 4 (0.47%) City & Guilds
10 3 (0.35%) CEH
10 3 (0.35%) Master's Degree
10 3 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.12%) CISA
11 1 (0.12%) CRISC
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 1 (0.12%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.12%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (20.61%) Data Quality
2 41 (4.80%) QA
3 13 (1.52%) 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 28 (3.28%) Docker
2 1 (0.12%) HDFS
2 1 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 31 (3.63%) Kubernetes
2 16 (1.87%) 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 (17.10%) Databricks
2 95 (11.12%) Microsoft
3 81 (9.48%) Oracle
4 64 (7.49%) Talend
5 45 (5.27%) Informatica
6 30 (3.51%) Google
7 24 (2.81%) Denodo
8 20 (2.34%) Cisco
8 20 (2.34%) F5
9 18 (2.11%) Salesforce
10 15 (1.76%) 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