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 12 June 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 139 129
Rank change year-on-year +73 -10 +35
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 778 251 335
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.05% 1.89% 1.57%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.32% 2.06% 1.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 188 249
10th Percentile £366 £314 £169
25th Percentile £413 £400 £199
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £533 £538
90th Percentile £598 £632 £588
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 4 33
10th Percentile £19.34 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £36.25 £18.11 £58.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -35.39% -0.66%
75th Percentile £59.75 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -10.60%

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 23,404 12,162 19,671
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.87% 91.62% 92.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,454 7,672 11,752
10th Percentile £303 £220 £213
25th Percentile £405 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £594 £575 £590
90th Percentile £688 £650 £680
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.68% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,701 916 2,515
10th Percentile £14.82 £13.50 £12.63
25th Percentile £20.25 £16.95 £15.92
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -4.76%
75th Percentile £67.50 £60.00 £62.83
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £74.37
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £27.64 £37.50
% change year-on-year +55.57% -26.29% -16.67%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 +48 312 £469 +4.22% 38
West Midlands +49 293 £468 +1.63% 29
North of England +17 209 £465 -2.11% 56
North West +23 129 £480 +1.05% 28
South East +2 110 £475 +11.76% 66
South West +17 82 £506 +3.69% 27
Scotland +19 63 £425 -6.85% 7
Yorkshire -18 59 £465 +3.33% 14
Wales +4 22 £450 +3.45% 10
North East -21 21 £450 - 14
East of England -16 19 £520 +63.52% 10
East Midlands -17 19 £525 +28.05% 9
Northern Ireland +5 4 £410 -18.00% 5
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 12 June 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.

1 398 (51.16%) SQL
2 299 (38.43%) Data Pipeline
3 285 (36.63%) Analytics
4 281 (36.12%) ETL
5 266 (34.19%) Data Engineering
6 258 (33.16%) Security Cleared
7 253 (32.52%) Python
8 243 (31.23%) Data Modelling
9 216 (27.76%) SC Cleared
10 185 (23.78%) Azure
11 173 (22.24%) Business Intelligence
12 166 (21.34%) Data Quality
13 161 (20.69%) AWS
13 161 (20.69%) CI/CD
14 138 (17.74%) Agile
15 134 (17.22%) Data Integration
16 132 (16.97%) Databricks
17 121 (15.55%) Problem-Solving
18 114 (14.65%) Power Platform
19 113 (14.52%) Oracle
20 109 (14.01%) Power BI
21 106 (13.62%) Talend
22 103 (13.24%) Data Warehouse
23 100 (12.85%) DevOps
24 99 (12.72%) Migration
25 94 (12.08%) Git
26 93 (11.95%) PySpark
27 82 (10.54%) Microsoft
27 82 (10.54%) Pentaho
28 78 (10.03%) Azure Data Factory

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 66 (8.48%) SAS
2 48 (6.17%) Apache Spark
3 40 (5.14%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (4.37%) Apache
5 24 (3.08%) Confluence
6 5 (0.64%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.26%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.13%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.64%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 3 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (0.39%) Infor LN
2 2 (0.26%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.26%) Sage X3
2 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.13%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.13%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.13%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 185 (23.78%) Azure
2 161 (20.69%) AWS
3 114 (14.65%) Power Platform
4 78 (10.03%) Azure Data Factory
5 69 (8.87%) Snowflake
6 43 (5.53%) GCP
7 42 (5.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 41 (5.27%) dbt
9 40 (5.14%) Amazon S3
10 33 (4.24%) Serverless
11 30 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
12 27 (3.47%) GitHub
13 23 (2.96%) AWS Lambda
14 20 (2.57%) Matillion
15 18 (2.31%) OpenShift
16 14 (1.80%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (1.67%) Amazon EMR
18 10 (1.29%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 9 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
19 9 (1.16%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 34 (4.37%) DNS
1 34 (4.37%) VPN
2 33 (4.24%) BGP
2 33 (4.24%) DMZ
2 33 (4.24%) Multicast
3 8 (1.03%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.64%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.64%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.51%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.51%) Wireless
6 3 (0.39%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 109 (14.01%) Power BI
2 103 (13.24%) Data Warehouse
3 82 (10.54%) Pentaho
4 46 (5.91%) Data Lake
5 42 (5.40%) Amazon Redshift
6 35 (4.50%) SQL Server
7 34 (4.37%) Big Data
8 27 (3.47%) MySQL
9 25 (3.21%) Delta Lake
9 25 (3.21%) Hadoop
9 25 (3.21%) Metadata
9 25 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 23 (2.96%) Relational Database
11 22 (2.83%) Azure SQL Database
12 21 (2.70%) Amazon Athena
13 19 (2.44%) NoSQL
13 19 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
13 19 (2.44%) Tableau
14 15 (1.93%) BusinessObjects
14 15 (1.93%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 94 (12.08%) Git
2 57 (7.33%) GitLab
3 47 (6.04%) JIRA
4 34 (4.37%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.90%) Postman
6 5 (0.64%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.51%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.39%) Newman
9 2 (0.26%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.13%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.13%) ERwin
10 1 (0.13%) JUnit
General
1 127 (16.32%) Social Skills
2 82 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
3 76 (9.77%) Public Sector
4 64 (8.23%) Finance
5 43 (5.53%) Banking
6 23 (2.96%) Investment Banking
7 17 (2.19%) Documentation Skills
8 16 (2.06%) Marketing
9 13 (1.67%) Aerospace
10 12 (1.54%) Manufacturing
10 12 (1.54%) Retail
11 10 (1.29%) Telecoms
12 8 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.64%) Automotive
14 4 (0.51%) Legal
14 4 (0.51%) Local Government
15 3 (0.39%) Billing
15 3 (0.39%) Front Office
15 3 (0.39%) Law
16 2 (0.26%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 93 (11.95%) PySpark
2 61 (7.84%) Kafka
3 23 (2.96%) JSON
4 13 (1.67%) Pandas
4 13 (1.67%) XML
5 11 (1.41%) REST
6 8 (1.03%) Apache Avro
6 8 (1.03%) Protocol Buffers
7 7 (0.90%) Apache Beam
7 7 (0.90%) Streamlit
8 6 (0.77%) Node.js
8 6 (0.77%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (0.77%) RESTful
9 5 (0.64%) Great Expectations
9 5 (0.64%) pytest
9 5 (0.64%) YAML
10 4 (0.51%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.51%) Apache NiFi
10 4 (0.51%) React
11 3 (0.39%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 32 (4.11%) Cloud Native
2 22 (2.83%) Data Structures
3 19 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
4 15 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (1.80%) Distributed Systems
6 11 (1.41%) Clustering
7 9 (1.16%) Driving Licence
7 9 (1.16%) Product Ownership
8 8 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
8 8 (1.03%) NHS
9 6 (0.77%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.77%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (0.77%) Onboarding
10 5 (0.64%) Hybrid Cloud
11 4 (0.51%) Data Fabric
11 4 (0.51%) iPad
11 4 (0.51%) Life Science
11 4 (0.51%) Management Information System
11 4 (0.51%) Public Cloud
11 4 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (5.27%) Unix
2 13 (1.67%) Linux
3 2 (0.26%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.13%) VMS
4 1 (0.13%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (38.43%) Data Pipeline
2 285 (36.63%) Analytics
3 281 (36.12%) ETL
4 266 (34.19%) Data Engineering
5 243 (31.23%) Data Modelling
6 173 (22.24%) Business Intelligence
7 161 (20.69%) CI/CD
8 138 (17.74%) Agile
9 134 (17.22%) Data Integration
10 121 (15.55%) Problem-Solving
11 100 (12.85%) DevOps
12 99 (12.72%) Migration
13 76 (9.77%) Validation
14 75 (9.64%) Data Governance
15 70 (9.00%) AI
16 67 (8.61%) Test Automation
17 66 (8.48%) Scrum
18 58 (7.46%) Data Science
18 58 (7.46%) Decision-Making
19 56 (7.20%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 398 (51.16%) SQL
2 253 (32.52%) Python
3 36 (4.63%) PL/SQL
4 34 (4.37%) Java
5 17 (2.19%) Bash
5 17 (2.19%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.29%) PowerShell
8 9 (1.16%) T-SQL
9 6 (0.77%) Scala
10 5 (0.64%) Bicep
10 5 (0.64%) C#
11 2 (0.26%) Go
11 2 (0.26%) HiveQL
11 2 (0.26%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.13%) C++
12 1 (0.13%) COBOL
12 1 (0.13%) Perl
12 1 (0.13%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 258 (33.16%) Security Cleared
2 216 (27.76%) SC Cleared
3 18 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (2.31%) Degree
4 11 (1.41%) DV Cleared
5 8 (1.03%) City & Guilds
6 5 (0.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (0.64%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.51%) BICSI Certification
8 3 (0.39%) IBM Certification
8 3 (0.39%) SnowPro
9 2 (0.26%) Azure Certification
10 1 (0.13%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CCIE
10 1 (0.13%) CCNP
10 1 (0.13%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.13%) CISM
10 1 (0.13%) CISSP
10 1 (0.13%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.13%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 166 (21.34%) Data Quality
2 18 (2.31%) QA
3 12 (1.54%) GDPR
4 10 (1.29%) SLA
5 8 (1.03%) FATCA
6 3 (0.39%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) Basel III
8 1 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.13%) GMP
8 1 (0.13%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.13%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.13%) NIST
8 1 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 41 (5.27%) Docker
2 3 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.26%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 46 (5.91%) Terraform
2 44 (5.66%) Kubernetes
3 37 (4.76%) Grafana
4 10 (1.29%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.03%) Ansible
6 3 (0.39%) Rancher
7 2 (0.26%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.26%) Control-M
Vendors
1 132 (16.97%) Databricks
2 113 (14.52%) Oracle
3 106 (13.62%) Talend
4 82 (10.54%) Microsoft
5 73 (9.38%) Informatica
6 53 (6.81%) Denodo
7 35 (4.50%) Cisco
7 35 (4.50%) F5
8 16 (2.06%) Splunk
9 15 (1.93%) SAP
9 15 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 14 (1.80%) Cloudera
11 12 (1.54%) Google
12 8 (1.03%) Alteryx
12 8 (1.03%) Salesforce
13 7 (0.90%) Sage
14 6 (0.77%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.77%) InterSystems
15 4 (0.51%) IBM
15 4 (0.51%) Infor