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 £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 7 February 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 128 98 181
Rank change year-on-year -30 +83 -4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 371 344 252
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.90% 2.53% 1.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.10% 2.73% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 277 232 194
10th Percentile £358 £310 £308
25th Percentile £402 £390 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -2.44%
75th Percentile £538 £562 £588
90th Percentile £583 £638 £684
UK median daily rate £500 £523 £525
% change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 4 10
10th Percentile £32.12 £25.14 £36.53
25th Percentile £38.13 £25.21 £37.50
Median hourly rate £53.75 £26.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.83% -57.60% -
75th Percentile £65.69 £27.91 £66.25
90th Percentile £74.13 £28.19 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £60.50
% change year-on-year -19.23% +7.44% -3.20%

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 17,686 12,585 19,730
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.73% 92.53% 93.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,736 7,513 12,433
10th Percentile £215 £210 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £365
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £476 £490
Median % change year-on-year -0.21% -2.86% -2.00%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £595
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,871 650 1,917
10th Percentile £14.12 £15.22 £12.86
25th Percentile £18.11 £20.30 £16.12
Median hourly rate £28.00 £32.13 £35.95
Median % change year-on-year -12.85% -10.63% +8.94%
75th Percentile £61.41 £64.40 £62.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £74.47 £73.24
UK median hourly rate £29.82 £33.77 £35.00
% change year-on-year -11.69% -3.51% -

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 7 February 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 7 February 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 7 February 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 -12 120 £500 +4.82% 41
North of England -40 109 £466 +0.81% 90
West Midlands -12 105 £513 +4.59% 33
North West -20 62 £415 -5.14% 52
Scotland +9 50 £450 +1.41% 27
South East -39 48 £496 -5.48% 109
South West -7 45 £525 +5.00% 36
Yorkshire -39 33 £500 -2.44% 30
Wales -6 17 £410 -18.00% 5
East Midlands -21 15 £450 +20.40% 8
North East -14 14 £450 -14.29% 10
East of England -37 5 £510 +60.26% 13
Northern Ireland 0 1 £430 -21.82%
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 7 February 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.

1 193 (52.02%) SQL
2 183 (49.33%) Python
3 156 (42.05%) ETL
4 145 (39.08%) Data Engineering
5 140 (37.74%) Data Pipeline
6 137 (36.93%) Analytics
7 122 (32.88%) Azure
8 114 (30.73%) Data Modelling
9 105 (28.30%) CI/CD
10 88 (23.72%) AWS
10 88 (23.72%) Security Cleared
11 86 (23.18%) Data Quality
12 84 (22.64%) Business Intelligence
12 84 (22.64%) Databricks
13 77 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
14 76 (20.49%) DevOps
14 76 (20.49%) SC Cleared
15 73 (19.68%) Agile
16 69 (18.60%) Data Warehouse
17 65 (17.52%) Power Platform
18 64 (17.25%) PySpark
19 60 (16.17%) Power BI
20 53 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
21 49 (13.21%) Git
21 49 (13.21%) Oracle
22 48 (12.94%) Apache Airflow
23 47 (12.67%) Data Science
23 47 (12.67%) Snowflake
24 45 (12.13%) Data Integration
24 45 (12.13%) Microsoft

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 48 (12.94%) Apache Airflow
2 32 (8.63%) Apache
3 31 (8.36%) Apache Spark
4 18 (4.85%) SAS
5 7 (1.89%) Confluence
6 5 (1.35%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.35%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.81%) IIS
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.27%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.27%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.27%) Chatbot
2 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
1 1 (0.27%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 122 (32.88%) Azure
2 88 (23.72%) AWS
3 65 (17.52%) Power Platform
4 53 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
5 47 (12.67%) Snowflake
6 32 (8.63%) dbt
7 29 (7.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 28 (7.55%) Serverless
9 27 (7.28%) GCP
9 27 (7.28%) GitHub
10 20 (5.39%) AWS Lambda
11 19 (5.12%) Amazon S3
12 16 (4.31%) Azure DevOps
13 14 (3.77%) AWS CloudFormation
14 10 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
15 9 (2.43%) Prefect
16 8 (2.16%) Amazon ECS
16 8 (2.16%) Amazon SageMaker
16 8 (2.16%) Matillion
17 7 (1.89%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.70%) BGP
1 10 (2.70%) DMZ
1 10 (2.70%) DNS
1 10 (2.70%) Multicast
1 10 (2.70%) VPN
2 2 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.27%) Internet
3 1 (0.27%) LAN
3 1 (0.27%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.27%) WAN
3 1 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (18.60%) Data Warehouse
2 60 (16.17%) Power BI
3 39 (10.51%) Data Lake
4 31 (8.36%) Pentaho
5 28 (7.55%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (7.01%) Big Data
7 22 (5.93%) Amazon Redshift
7 22 (5.93%) NoSQL
8 20 (5.39%) Hadoop
9 16 (4.31%) Delta Lake
9 16 (4.31%) Elasticsearch
10 15 (4.04%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (4.04%) SQL Server
11 14 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
11 14 (3.77%) Relational Database
12 13 (3.50%) BigQuery
12 13 (3.50%) Data Mining
12 13 (3.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 12 (3.23%) Snowflake Schema
14 9 (2.43%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 49 (13.21%) Git
2 37 (9.97%) Jenkins
3 28 (7.55%) GitLab
4 22 (5.93%) JIRA
5 5 (1.35%) DBeaver
5 5 (1.35%) MLflow
6 3 (0.81%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.81%) Cucumber
6 3 (0.81%) Visual Studio
7 2 (0.54%) JMeter
7 2 (0.54%) JUnit
7 2 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.54%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.27%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.27%) Deequ
8 1 (0.27%) Maven
8 1 (0.27%) Mockito
8 1 (0.27%) Selenium
8 1 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 70 (18.87%) Social Skills
2 45 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
3 43 (11.59%) Finance
4 31 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 23 (6.20%) Banking
6 8 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
7 7 (1.89%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.08%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.81%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.81%) Legal
9 3 (0.81%) Marketing
10 2 (0.54%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.54%) Law
10 2 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.54%) Retail
11 1 (0.27%) Games
11 1 (0.27%) Publishing
11 1 (0.27%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (17.25%) PySpark
2 37 (9.97%) Kafka
3 17 (4.58%) REST
4 12 (3.23%) JSON
4 12 (3.23%) Keycloak
5 10 (2.70%) Pandas
5 10 (2.70%) RESTful
6 8 (2.16%) NumPy
7 7 (1.89%) Flask
7 7 (1.89%) Node.js
7 7 (1.89%) XML
8 6 (1.62%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (1.62%) HTML
8 6 (1.62%) OpenTelemetry
8 6 (1.62%) Oracle GoldenGate
9 5 (1.35%) Apache Beam
9 5 (1.35%) pytest
10 4 (1.08%) PyTorch
10 4 (1.08%) TensorFlow
10 4 (1.08%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 26 (7.01%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.04%) Algorithms
2 15 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (4.04%) Product Ownership
2 15 (4.04%) Replication
3 14 (3.77%) Clustering
3 14 (3.77%) Hybrid Cloud
4 13 (3.50%) Data Protection Act
5 7 (1.89%) Data Structures
6 5 (1.35%) NHS
7 4 (1.08%) Distributed Computing
7 4 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.08%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.08%) Management Information System
7 4 (1.08%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.08%) Public Cloud
8 3 (0.81%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.54%) Driving Licence
9 2 (0.54%) Renewable Energy
9 2 (0.54%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.04%) Unix
2 14 (3.77%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 156 (42.05%) ETL
2 145 (39.08%) Data Engineering
3 140 (37.74%) Data Pipeline
4 137 (36.93%) Analytics
5 114 (30.73%) Data Modelling
6 105 (28.30%) CI/CD
7 84 (22.64%) Business Intelligence
8 77 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
9 76 (20.49%) DevOps
10 73 (19.68%) Agile
11 47 (12.67%) Data Science
12 45 (12.13%) Data Integration
13 42 (11.32%) Data Governance
14 41 (11.05%) Continuous Improvement
15 39 (10.51%) Performance Tuning
16 38 (10.24%) Machine Learning
17 37 (9.97%) Data Transformation
18 35 (9.43%) Test Automation
19 30 (8.09%) Data Architecture
19 30 (8.09%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 193 (52.02%) SQL
2 183 (49.33%) Python
3 40 (10.78%) Java
4 15 (4.04%) PL/SQL
5 13 (3.50%) Go
5 13 (3.50%) Scala
6 9 (2.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.16%) Shell Script
7 8 (2.16%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.62%) Bash
9 5 (1.35%) Bicep
9 5 (1.35%) C#
9 5 (1.35%) R
10 4 (1.08%) JavaScript
11 2 (0.54%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.54%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.27%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 88 (23.72%) Security Cleared
2 76 (20.49%) SC Cleared
3 14 (3.77%) Azure Certification
4 12 (3.23%) Degree
5 10 (2.70%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.35%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.08%) Computer Science Degree
8 3 (0.81%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
9 2 (0.54%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 1 (0.27%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.27%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 86 (23.18%) Data Quality
2 10 (2.70%) QA
3 9 (2.43%) GDPR
4 4 (1.08%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.81%) FATCA
6 2 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.27%) Basel III
7 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
7 1 (0.27%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.27%) GMP
7 1 (0.27%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.27%) NCSC
7 1 (0.27%) NIST
7 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 41 (11.05%) Docker
2 5 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 42 (11.32%) Kubernetes
2 33 (8.89%) Terraform
3 9 (2.43%) Ansible
3 9 (2.43%) Grafana
4 6 (1.62%) NetBackup
5 5 (1.35%) Kibana
5 5 (1.35%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.81%) Control-M
6 3 (0.81%) logstash
7 1 (0.27%) Kustomize
7 1 (0.27%) Puppet
7 1 (0.27%) Rancher
Vendors
1 84 (22.64%) Databricks
2 49 (13.21%) Oracle
3 45 (12.13%) Microsoft
4 37 (9.97%) Talend
5 19 (5.12%) Denodo
5 19 (5.12%) Informatica
6 11 (2.96%) Cisco
7 10 (2.70%) F5
7 10 (2.70%) IBM
8 9 (2.43%) Splunk
9 8 (2.16%) Google
10 7 (1.89%) Alteryx
10 7 (1.89%) Confluent
11 6 (1.62%) Commvault
11 6 (1.62%) Red Hat
12 5 (1.35%) ServiceNow
12 5 (1.35%) Veritas
13 4 (1.08%) Dataiku
14 3 (0.81%) Cloudera
14 3 (0.81%) Salesforce