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 £470, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 5 March 2026.

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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 108 96 159
Rank change year-on-year -12 +63 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 486 335 289
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.29% 2.55% 1.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.51% 2.76% 1.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 365 236 217
10th Percentile £358 £311 £170
25th Percentile £402 £381 £393
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.05% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £544 £544 £564
90th Percentile £608 £638 £675
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 21
10th Percentile £35.38 £20.97 £37.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £25.09 £40.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £26.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +102.83% -59.23% +4.00%
75th Percentile £72.38 £27.75 £80.00
90th Percentile £78.60 £28.13 -
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £42.50 £62.36
% change year-on-year +29.41% -31.84% -1.42%

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 19,397 12,137 19,357
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.45% 92.23% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 11,592 7,585 12,081
10th Percentile £248 £209 £213
25th Percentile £385 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £475 £487
Median % change year-on-year +1.32% -2.46% -2.60%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £594
90th Percentile £675 £672 £683
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,080 666 2,012
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.27 £12.82
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £15.75
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year - -7.14% -10.26%
75th Percentile £65.00 £65.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £74.30 £75.00 £71.90
UK median hourly rate £33.50 £34.00 £34.00
% change year-on-year -1.47% - -16.05%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 +10 189 £492 +3.58% 63
West Midlands +8 170 £499 +1.99% 46
North of England -22 140 £450 -2.70% 92
North West -10 86 £425 -4.23% 47
South East -43 56 £506 +3.85% 114
Scotland +14 54 £402 -8.11% 18
South West -13 47 £538 +7.50% 47
Yorkshire -41 40 £484 -3.25% 32
Wales -6 20 £418 -16.50% 5
East Midlands -20 19 £450 +20.00% 16
North East -10 14 £450 -14.29% 14
East of England -40 9 £565 +77.67% 18
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 -
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 5 March 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.

1 269 (55.35%) SQL
2 221 (45.47%) ETL
3 214 (44.03%) Python
4 201 (41.36%) Data Pipeline
5 193 (39.71%) Analytics
6 190 (39.09%) Data Engineering
7 168 (34.57%) Data Modelling
8 151 (31.07%) Azure
9 139 (28.60%) Security Cleared
10 133 (27.37%) CI/CD
11 128 (26.34%) Data Quality
12 120 (24.69%) Business Intelligence
13 119 (24.49%) SC Cleared
14 107 (22.02%) AWS
15 105 (21.60%) Agile
16 104 (21.40%) Problem-Solving
17 103 (21.19%) DevOps
18 97 (19.96%) Databricks
19 79 (16.26%) Data Warehouse
20 76 (15.64%) Power Platform
21 73 (15.02%) Git
21 73 (15.02%) PySpark
22 72 (14.81%) Data Integration
22 72 (14.81%) Oracle
23 70 (14.40%) Azure Data Factory
23 70 (14.40%) Power BI
24 68 (13.99%) Talend
25 63 (12.96%) Kubernetes
26 59 (12.14%) Pentaho
27 58 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement

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 47 (9.67%) SAS
2 44 (9.05%) Apache Airflow
3 38 (7.82%) Apache Spark
4 29 (5.97%) Apache
5 9 (1.85%) Confluence
6 3 (0.62%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.62%) Oracle Application Server
7 1 (0.21%) Apache Pig
7 1 (0.21%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.21%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.21%) Elite 3E
1 1 (0.21%) NEC Housing
Cloud Services
1 151 (31.07%) Azure
2 107 (22.02%) AWS
3 76 (15.64%) Power Platform
4 70 (14.40%) Azure Data Factory
5 50 (10.29%) Snowflake
6 37 (7.61%) dbt
7 36 (7.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 30 (6.17%) GCP
8 30 (6.17%) Serverless
9 29 (5.97%) GitHub
10 23 (4.73%) Amazon S3
11 20 (4.12%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (4.12%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (2.88%) AWS CloudFormation
13 11 (2.26%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (2.26%) OpenShift
14 10 (2.06%) Matillion
15 9 (1.85%) Amazon ECS
15 9 (1.85%) AWS Step Functions
15 9 (1.85%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.50%) DNS
1 17 (3.50%) VPN
2 16 (3.29%) BGP
2 16 (3.29%) DMZ
2 16 (3.29%) Multicast
3 2 (0.41%) Structured Cabling
4 1 (0.21%) Internet
4 1 (0.21%) LAN
4 1 (0.21%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.21%) WAN
4 1 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 79 (16.26%) Data Warehouse
2 70 (14.40%) Power BI
3 59 (12.14%) Pentaho
4 43 (8.85%) Data Lake
5 31 (6.38%) PostgreSQL
6 25 (5.14%) Big Data
7 24 (4.94%) Hadoop
8 23 (4.73%) Amazon Redshift
8 23 (4.73%) NoSQL
9 20 (4.12%) SQL Server
10 19 (3.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 18 (3.70%) Delta Lake
11 18 (3.70%) Relational Database
12 16 (3.29%) Amazon RDS
12 16 (3.29%) Elasticsearch
13 15 (3.09%) Azure SQL Database
13 15 (3.09%) BigQuery
14 14 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (2.47%) Metadata
16 11 (2.26%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 73 (15.02%) Git
2 49 (10.08%) Jenkins
3 38 (7.82%) GitLab
4 34 (7.00%) JIRA
5 6 (1.23%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.82%) MLflow
7 3 (0.62%) Cucumber
7 3 (0.62%) DBeaver
7 3 (0.62%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.41%) JMeter
8 2 (0.41%) JUnit
8 2 (0.41%) Visual Studio Code
8 2 (0.41%) Zephyr
9 1 (0.21%) Deequ
9 1 (0.21%) Maven
9 1 (0.21%) Mockito
9 1 (0.21%) Selenium
9 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 87 (17.90%) Social Skills
2 52 (10.70%) Analytical Skills
3 49 (10.08%) Public Sector
4 47 (9.67%) Finance
5 24 (4.94%) Banking
6 11 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.06%) Investment Banking
8 7 (1.44%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.03%) Retail
10 4 (0.82%) Marketing
11 3 (0.62%) Aerospace
11 3 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.62%) Law
11 3 (0.62%) Legal
12 2 (0.41%) Advertising
12 2 (0.41%) Health Technology
12 2 (0.41%) Local Government
12 2 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.41%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 73 (15.02%) PySpark
2 47 (9.67%) Kafka
3 15 (3.09%) JSON
3 15 (3.09%) REST
4 12 (2.47%) Keycloak
5 11 (2.26%) Pandas
6 9 (1.85%) Node.js
7 7 (1.44%) Apache NiFi
7 7 (1.44%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (1.23%) Apache Avro
8 6 (1.23%) Apache Beam
8 6 (1.23%) NumPy
8 6 (1.23%) Protocol Buffers
8 6 (1.23%) pytest
8 6 (1.23%) RESTful
8 6 (1.23%) Streamlit
8 6 (1.23%) XML
8 6 (1.23%) YAML
9 5 (1.03%) Flask
9 5 (1.03%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.38%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.91%) Distributed Systems
3 18 (3.70%) Hybrid Cloud
4 16 (3.29%) Clustering
5 15 (3.09%) Product Ownership
6 13 (2.67%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.47%) Replication
8 9 (1.85%) Data Structures
9 8 (1.65%) Algorithms
10 7 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.23%) Onboarding
12 5 (1.03%) NHS
13 4 (0.82%) Data Centre
13 4 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
13 4 (0.82%) Management Information System
13 4 (0.82%) Public Cloud
14 3 (0.62%) Distributed Computing
14 3 (0.62%) Driving Licence
15 2 (0.41%) IoT
15 2 (0.41%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 19 (3.91%) Unix
2 11 (2.26%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 221 (45.47%) ETL
2 201 (41.36%) Data Pipeline
3 193 (39.71%) Analytics
4 190 (39.09%) Data Engineering
5 168 (34.57%) Data Modelling
6 133 (27.37%) CI/CD
7 120 (24.69%) Business Intelligence
8 105 (21.60%) Agile
9 104 (21.40%) Problem-Solving
10 103 (21.19%) DevOps
11 72 (14.81%) Data Integration
12 58 (11.93%) Continuous Improvement
12 58 (11.93%) Data Governance
13 57 (11.73%) Test Automation
14 54 (11.11%) Scrum
15 50 (10.29%) Data Science
16 48 (9.88%) Performance Tuning
17 43 (8.85%) Data Analytics
17 43 (8.85%) Migration
18 41 (8.44%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 269 (55.35%) SQL
2 214 (44.03%) Python
3 40 (8.23%) Java
4 18 (3.70%) PL/SQL
5 14 (2.88%) Go
6 11 (2.26%) Bash
6 11 (2.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (2.06%) Shell Script
7 10 (2.06%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.23%) Bicep
8 6 (1.23%) C#
8 6 (1.23%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.03%) R
9 5 (1.03%) Scala
10 4 (0.82%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.41%) HiveQL
11 2 (0.41%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.21%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 139 (28.60%) Security Cleared
2 119 (24.49%) SC Cleared
3 14 (2.88%) Azure Certification
3 14 (2.88%) Degree
4 9 (1.85%) AWS Certification
5 7 (1.44%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (0.82%) DV Cleared
6 4 (0.82%) Master's Degree
7 3 (0.62%) IBM Certification
8 1 (0.21%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.21%) CCIE
8 1 (0.21%) CCNP
8 1 (0.21%) Cisco Certification
8 1 (0.21%) CISM
8 1 (0.21%) CISSP
8 1 (0.21%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.21%) ITIL Certification
8 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.21%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 128 (26.34%) Data Quality
2 12 (2.47%) GDPR
3 10 (2.06%) QA
4 5 (1.03%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.62%) FATCA
6 2 (0.41%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.41%) NIST
6 2 (0.41%) SLA
7 1 (0.21%) Basel III
7 1 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.21%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.21%) GMP
7 1 (0.21%) NCSC
7 1 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 57 (11.73%) Docker
2 2 (0.41%) HDFS
2 2 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 63 (12.96%) Kubernetes
2 33 (6.79%) Terraform
3 14 (2.88%) Grafana
4 11 (2.26%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.85%) Ansible
6 5 (1.03%) Kibana
7 4 (0.82%) NetBackup
8 3 (0.62%) Control-M
8 3 (0.62%) logstash
8 3 (0.62%) Rancher
9 1 (0.21%) Puppet
Vendors
1 97 (19.96%) Databricks
2 72 (14.81%) Oracle
3 68 (13.99%) Talend
4 56 (11.52%) Microsoft
5 41 (8.44%) Informatica
6 33 (6.79%) Denodo
7 19 (3.91%) Cisco
8 18 (3.70%) F5
9 15 (3.09%) Splunk
10 10 (2.06%) ServiceNow
11 9 (1.85%) Google
12 8 (1.65%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.65%) IBM
13 7 (1.44%) Alteryx
14 5 (1.03%) Confluent
14 5 (1.03%) SAP
15 4 (0.82%) Commvault
15 4 (0.82%) Dataiku
15 4 (0.82%) Red Hat
16 3 (0.62%) Sage