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 £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 2 December 2025.

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

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 162 117 184
Rank change year-on-year -45 +67 -7
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 295 323 258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.66% 2.03% 1.28%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.85% 2.20% 1.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 205 205 207
10th Percentile £351 £356 £400
25th Percentile £405 £428 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £562 £575 £619
90th Percentile £625 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £530 £530
% change year-on-year -5.66% - -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 4 3
10th Percentile £27.55 £25.14 £31.33
25th Percentile £29.88 £25.21 £36.69
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% -45.92% -18.33%
75th Percentile £55.25 £27.91 £58.69
90th Percentile £63.65 £28.19 £62.48
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £50.50 £61.43
% change year-on-year -13.86% -17.79% +2.38%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 15,952 14,684 18,955
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.03% 92.35% 93.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,856 8,504 12,427
10th Percentile £208 £214 £213
25th Percentile £363 £373 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £496 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.14% -0.90% -
75th Percentile £575 £598 £600
90th Percentile £675 £678 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,571 966 1,251
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.21 £14.42
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.12 £18.50
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.97% +78.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.45 £72.50 £77.00
UK median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -20.45% +44.26%

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025.

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 2 December 2025. 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
North of England -46 83 £463 - 79
Midlands -16 82 £519 +4.75% 50
West Midlands -22 68 £520 +4.00% 41
Scotland +29 51 £450 +1.12% 22
North West -20 41 £415 -7.78% 48
South West +7 37 £550 +22.22% 18
South East -44 35 £478 -13.18% 121
Yorkshire -32 34 £513 +5.67% 23
East Midlands -8 14 £455 +27.81% 8
Wales -13 12 £425 -15.00% 10
North East -7 8 £425 +13.64% 8
East of England -25 6 £625 +95.31% 14
Northern Ireland -5 1 - -
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 2 December 2025, 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.

1 178 (60.34%) Python
2 167 (56.61%) SQL
3 127 (43.05%) ETL
4 118 (40.00%) Data Pipeline
5 107 (36.27%) Data Engineering
6 99 (33.56%) CI/CD
7 97 (32.88%) Azure
8 96 (32.54%) Analytics
9 93 (31.53%) AWS
10 87 (29.49%) Data Modelling
11 73 (24.75%) Databricks
12 72 (24.41%) DevOps
13 68 (23.05%) Data Warehouse
14 66 (22.37%) Agile
15 65 (22.03%) Business Intelligence
16 63 (21.36%) Data Quality
17 60 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
18 54 (18.31%) PySpark
19 51 (17.29%) Security Cleared
20 48 (16.27%) Power Platform
21 47 (15.93%) Apache Airflow
22 46 (15.59%) Power BI
22 46 (15.59%) Snowflake
23 45 (15.25%) Jenkins
23 45 (15.25%) Kubernetes
24 44 (14.92%) SC Cleared
24 44 (14.92%) Test Automation
25 43 (14.58%) Azure Data Factory
25 43 (14.58%) Docker
26 41 (13.90%) Git

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 (15.93%) Apache Airflow
2 28 (9.49%) Apache Spark
3 27 (9.15%) Apache
4 16 (5.42%) SAS
5 8 (2.71%) Confluence
6 7 (2.37%) Oracle Application Server
7 5 (1.69%) Apache Pig
8 3 (1.02%) IIS
9 2 (0.68%) Documentum
9 2 (0.68%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.34%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.34%) Jupyter
Applications
1 2 (0.68%) Windchill
2 1 (0.34%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.34%) SPSS
2 1 (0.34%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.68%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 97 (32.88%) Azure
2 93 (31.53%) AWS
3 48 (16.27%) Power Platform
4 46 (15.59%) Snowflake
5 43 (14.58%) Azure Data Factory
6 33 (11.19%) GCP
7 27 (9.15%) GitHub
8 26 (8.81%) Amazon S3
9 24 (8.14%) Serverless
10 23 (7.80%) dbt
11 22 (7.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 17 (5.76%) AWS Lambda
13 12 (4.07%) AWS CloudFormation
14 11 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
15 10 (3.39%) Azure DevOps
16 8 (2.71%) Amazon SageMaker
17 7 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
17 7 (2.37%) Amazon ECS
17 7 (2.37%) CloudBees
18 6 (2.03%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.36%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.02%) MQTT
2 3 (1.02%) SSH
2 3 (1.02%) Structured Cabling
3 2 (0.68%) DNS
3 2 (0.68%) SSL
3 2 (0.68%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.34%) Internet
4 1 (0.34%) LAN
4 1 (0.34%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (23.05%) Data Warehouse
2 46 (15.59%) Power BI
3 31 (10.51%) Data Lake
4 30 (10.17%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (9.83%) Big Data
6 28 (9.49%) NoSQL
7 23 (7.80%) Pentaho
8 22 (7.46%) Hadoop
9 20 (6.78%) Amazon Redshift
9 20 (6.78%) Relational Database
10 18 (6.10%) Delta Lake
11 14 (4.75%) Elasticsearch
12 13 (4.41%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (4.41%) Data Mining
13 12 (4.07%) SQL Server
14 10 (3.39%) Tableau
15 9 (3.05%) Azure SQL Database
16 8 (2.71%) MongoDB
16 8 (2.71%) RDBMS
16 8 (2.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 45 (15.25%) Jenkins
2 41 (13.90%) Git
3 26 (8.81%) GitLab
4 25 (8.47%) JIRA
5 8 (2.71%) MLflow
6 7 (2.37%) DBeaver
7 5 (1.69%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (1.36%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.02%) Artifactory
9 3 (1.02%) Bitbucket
9 3 (1.02%) Cucumber
9 3 (1.02%) Poetry
9 3 (1.02%) PyCharm
9 3 (1.02%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.68%) JMeter
10 2 (0.68%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.68%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.34%) JUnit
11 1 (0.34%) Mockito
11 1 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 66 (22.37%) Social Skills
2 37 (12.54%) Analytical Skills
3 35 (11.86%) Finance
4 21 (7.12%) Public Sector
5 17 (5.76%) Banking
6 6 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
7 4 (1.36%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
8 3 (1.02%) Legal
8 3 (1.02%) Manufacturing
8 3 (1.02%) Tech for Good
9 2 (0.68%) Aerospace
9 2 (0.68%) Health Technology
9 2 (0.68%) Pharmaceutical
9 2 (0.68%) Retail
10 1 (0.34%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.34%) Law
10 1 (0.34%) Local Government
10 1 (0.34%) Marketing
10 1 (0.34%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (18.31%) PySpark
2 27 (9.15%) Kafka
3 15 (5.08%) RESTful
4 13 (4.41%) Flask
4 13 (4.41%) Pandas
5 12 (4.07%) NumPy
6 11 (3.73%) REST
7 10 (3.39%) Keycloak
8 7 (2.37%) OpenTelemetry
8 7 (2.37%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 6 (2.03%) Elastic Stack
9 6 (2.03%) HTML
10 5 (1.69%) Apache NiFi
10 5 (1.69%) Node.js
10 5 (1.69%) OAuth
10 5 (1.69%) OAuth2
11 4 (1.36%) JSON
11 4 (1.36%) pytest
11 4 (1.36%) PyTorch
11 4 (1.36%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 24 (8.14%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.08%) Replication
3 14 (4.75%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (4.41%) Algorithms
4 13 (4.41%) Product Ownership
5 10 (3.39%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (3.05%) Data Protection Act
7 6 (2.03%) Clustering
7 6 (2.03%) Data Structures
7 6 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
7 6 (2.03%) NHS
8 4 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
8 4 (1.36%) IoT
9 3 (1.02%) AI Agents
9 3 (1.02%) Driving Licence
9 3 (1.02%) Fibre Optics
9 3 (1.02%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.02%) Private Cloud
10 2 (0.68%) Distributed Architecture
10 2 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.44%) Linux
2 11 (3.73%) Unix
3 2 (0.68%) Windows
3 2 (0.68%) Windows Server
3 2 (0.68%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 127 (43.05%) ETL
2 118 (40.00%) Data Pipeline
3 107 (36.27%) Data Engineering
4 99 (33.56%) CI/CD
5 96 (32.54%) Analytics
6 87 (29.49%) Data Modelling
7 72 (24.41%) DevOps
8 66 (22.37%) Agile
9 65 (22.03%) Business Intelligence
10 60 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
11 44 (14.92%) Test Automation
12 39 (13.22%) Machine Learning
13 37 (12.54%) Data Integration
14 35 (11.86%) Visualisation
15 31 (10.51%) Data Science
16 30 (10.17%) Performance Tuning
16 30 (10.17%) Scrum
17 27 (9.15%) Continuous Improvement
17 27 (9.15%) Data Architecture
17 27 (9.15%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 178 (60.34%) Python
2 167 (56.61%) SQL
3 28 (9.49%) Java
4 19 (6.44%) Scala
5 12 (4.07%) Bash
5 12 (4.07%) PL/SQL
6 10 (3.39%) Go
7 6 (2.03%) R
8 5 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.36%) Groovy
9 4 (1.36%) JavaScript
9 4 (1.36%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 3 (1.02%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.68%) ABAP
12 1 (0.34%) Bicep
12 1 (0.34%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 51 (17.29%) Security Cleared
2 44 (14.92%) SC Cleared
3 11 (3.73%) AWS Certification
3 11 (3.73%) Azure Certification
3 11 (3.73%) Degree
4 8 (2.71%) Master's Degree
5 4 (1.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
6 1 (0.34%) DV Cleared
6 1 (0.34%) HND
6 1 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
6 1 (0.34%) MCP
6 1 (0.34%) SnowPro
6 1 (0.34%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 63 (21.36%) Data Quality
2 8 (2.71%) GDPR
3 7 (2.37%) QA
4 3 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.34%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.34%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.34%) NCSC
5 1 (0.34%) NIST
5 1 (0.34%) WCAG
System Software
1 43 (14.58%) Docker
2 3 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.68%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 45 (15.25%) Kubernetes
2 27 (9.15%) Terraform
3 11 (3.73%) Ansible
4 10 (3.39%) Grafana
5 8 (2.71%) NetBackup
6 6 (2.03%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.69%) Kibana
8 3 (1.02%) Argo
8 3 (1.02%) Istio
8 3 (1.02%) Kustomize
8 3 (1.02%) logstash
9 2 (0.68%) Control-M
10 1 (0.34%) Puppet
Vendors
1 73 (24.75%) Databricks
2 38 (12.88%) Oracle
3 35 (11.86%) Microsoft
4 27 (9.15%) Talend
5 15 (5.08%) Denodo
6 14 (4.75%) Informatica
7 11 (3.73%) Red Hat
8 9 (3.05%) Google
9 8 (2.71%) Commvault
10 7 (2.37%) IBM
10 7 (2.37%) Veritas
11 6 (2.03%) Cloudera
11 6 (2.03%) Confluent
12 5 (1.69%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.69%) Splunk
13 3 (1.02%) Salesforce
13 3 (1.02%) SAP
14 2 (0.68%) EMC
14 2 (0.68%) McAfee
14 2 (0.68%) Sophos