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 25 June 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 137 140
Rank change year-on-year +72 +3 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 828 252 338
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.18% 1.86% 1.59%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.46% 2.04% 1.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 547 182 248
10th Percentile £363 £315 £170
25th Percentile £412 £402 £199
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £539 £530 £538
90th Percentile £600 £630 £588
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 4 32
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 23,929 12,368 19,637
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.91% 91.42% 92.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,711 7,769 11,718
10th Percentile £303 £220 £213
25th Percentile £406 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £594
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £519 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +3.80% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,758 959 2,494
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.46 £12.60
25th Percentile £20.35 £16.65 £15.97
Median hourly rate £44.75 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.93% -37.13% -
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.55 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £74.48
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £27.13 £37.50
% change year-on-year +60.37% -27.67% -12.79%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +50 332 £468 +3.94% 57
West Midlands +47 301 £460 - 35
North of England +11 213 £475 - 64
North West +17 131 £500 +5.26% 33
South East +14 123 £475 +11.76% 78
South West +7 89 £506 +1.20% 35
Scotland +25 66 £425 -9.33% 8
Yorkshire -17 63 £470 -1.05% 15
East Midlands 0 31 £525 +28.05% 22
East of England -16 23 £520 +63.52% 17
Wales +8 22 £450 +3.45% 9
North East -23 19 £500 +14.29% 16
Northern Ireland +2 3 £410 -18.00% 1
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 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.

1 409 (49.40%) SQL
2 310 (37.44%) Data Pipeline
3 299 (36.11%) Analytics
4 284 (34.30%) ETL
5 270 (32.61%) Data Engineering
6 264 (31.88%) Python
7 263 (31.76%) Security Cleared
8 247 (29.83%) Data Modelling
9 217 (26.21%) SC Cleared
10 191 (23.07%) Azure
11 176 (21.26%) AWS
12 174 (21.01%) Data Quality
13 173 (20.89%) Business Intelligence
14 169 (20.41%) CI/CD
15 143 (17.27%) Agile
16 138 (16.67%) Data Integration
17 134 (16.18%) Databricks
18 126 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
19 118 (14.25%) Oracle
20 111 (13.41%) Power Platform
21 109 (13.16%) Talend
22 108 (13.04%) Power BI
23 104 (12.56%) Data Warehouse
23 104 (12.56%) DevOps
23 104 (12.56%) Migration
24 99 (11.96%) PySpark
25 92 (11.11%) Git
26 88 (10.63%) Microsoft
27 85 (10.27%) Pentaho
28 81 (9.78%) Data Governance

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 (7.97%) SAS
2 49 (5.92%) Apache Spark
3 37 (4.47%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (4.11%) Apache
5 24 (2.90%) Confluence
6 5 (0.60%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.24%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.12%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.60%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
1 5 (0.60%) Infor LN
2 3 (0.36%) NetSuite
2 3 (0.36%) Sage X3
2 3 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.12%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.12%) FIS Private Capital Suite
3 1 (0.12%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.12%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 191 (23.07%) Azure
2 176 (21.26%) AWS
3 111 (13.41%) Power Platform
4 79 (9.54%) Azure Data Factory
5 71 (8.57%) Snowflake
6 47 (5.68%) GCP
7 41 (4.95%) Amazon S3
7 41 (4.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 41 (4.95%) dbt
8 34 (4.11%) Serverless
9 30 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
10 27 (3.26%) GitHub
11 24 (2.90%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (2.42%) Matillion
13 18 (2.17%) OpenShift
14 14 (1.69%) GitHub Actions
15 13 (1.57%) Amazon EMR
16 11 (1.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 10 (1.21%) Azure Functions
18 9 (1.09%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 34 (4.11%) DNS
1 34 (4.11%) VPN
2 33 (3.99%) BGP
2 33 (3.99%) DMZ
2 33 (3.99%) Multicast
3 8 (0.97%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.60%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.60%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.48%) Firewall
5 4 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.48%) Wireless
6 1 (0.12%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (13.04%) Power BI
2 104 (12.56%) Data Warehouse
3 85 (10.27%) Pentaho
4 44 (5.31%) Amazon Redshift
5 41 (4.95%) Data Lake
6 33 (3.99%) Big Data
6 33 (3.99%) SQL Server
7 27 (3.26%) MySQL
8 25 (3.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 24 (2.90%) Hadoop
9 24 (2.90%) Metadata
9 24 (2.90%) Relational Database
10 23 (2.78%) Delta Lake
11 21 (2.54%) Amazon Athena
12 20 (2.42%) Azure SQL Database
13 19 (2.29%) Snowflake Schema
14 18 (2.17%) NoSQL
14 18 (2.17%) Tableau
15 15 (1.81%) BusinessObjects
15 15 (1.81%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 92 (11.11%) Git
2 58 (7.00%) GitLab
3 47 (5.68%) JIRA
4 34 (4.11%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.85%) Postman
6 5 (0.60%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.48%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.36%) Newman
9 2 (0.24%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.12%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.12%) ERwin
10 1 (0.12%) JUnit
General
1 137 (16.55%) Social Skills
2 86 (10.39%) Analytical Skills
3 78 (9.42%) Public Sector
4 64 (7.73%) Finance
5 42 (5.07%) Banking
6 22 (2.66%) Investment Banking
7 19 (2.29%) Marketing
8 18 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
9 13 (1.57%) Aerospace
9 13 (1.57%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.57%) Telecoms
10 12 (1.45%) Automotive
10 12 (1.45%) Retail
11 10 (1.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.48%) Billing
12 4 (0.48%) Legal
12 4 (0.48%) Local Government
13 3 (0.36%) Front Office
13 3 (0.36%) Law
14 2 (0.24%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (11.96%) PySpark
2 61 (7.37%) Kafka
3 22 (2.66%) JSON
4 13 (1.57%) Pandas
4 13 (1.57%) XML
5 10 (1.21%) Streamlit
6 9 (1.09%) REST
7 8 (0.97%) Apache Avro
7 8 (0.97%) Protocol Buffers
8 7 (0.85%) Apache Beam
9 6 (0.72%) Node.js
9 6 (0.72%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (0.72%) RESTful
10 5 (0.60%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.60%) pytest
10 5 (0.60%) YAML
11 4 (0.48%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.48%) Apache NiFi
11 4 (0.48%) React
12 3 (0.36%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 32 (3.86%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.78%) Data Structures
3 19 (2.29%) Legacy Systems
4 15 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
4 15 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (1.21%) Clustering
6 9 (1.09%) Driving Licence
6 9 (1.09%) Product Ownership
7 8 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
7 8 (0.97%) NHS
8 6 (0.72%) Data Centre
8 6 (0.72%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (0.72%) Onboarding
9 5 (0.60%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.48%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.48%) Fibre Optics
10 4 (0.48%) iPad
10 4 (0.48%) Life Science
10 4 (0.48%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.48%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.95%) Unix
2 12 (1.45%) Linux
3 2 (0.24%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.12%) VMS
4 1 (0.12%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 310 (37.44%) Data Pipeline
2 299 (36.11%) Analytics
3 284 (34.30%) ETL
4 270 (32.61%) Data Engineering
5 247 (29.83%) Data Modelling
6 173 (20.89%) Business Intelligence
7 169 (20.41%) CI/CD
8 143 (17.27%) Agile
9 138 (16.67%) Data Integration
10 126 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
11 104 (12.56%) DevOps
11 104 (12.56%) Migration
12 81 (9.78%) Data Governance
13 77 (9.30%) AI
13 77 (9.30%) Validation
14 71 (8.57%) Test Automation
15 66 (7.97%) Decision-Making
15 66 (7.97%) Scrum
16 62 (7.49%) Data Science
17 61 (7.37%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 409 (49.40%) SQL
2 264 (31.88%) Python
3 37 (4.47%) Java
4 36 (4.35%) PL/SQL
5 17 (2.05%) Bash
5 17 (2.05%) Shell Script
6 13 (1.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.21%) PowerShell
8 9 (1.09%) T-SQL
9 6 (0.72%) Scala
10 5 (0.60%) C#
11 4 (0.48%) Bicep
12 2 (0.24%) Go
12 2 (0.24%) HiveQL
12 2 (0.24%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.12%) C++
13 1 (0.12%) COBOL
13 1 (0.12%) Perl
13 1 (0.12%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 263 (31.76%) Security Cleared
2 217 (26.21%) SC Cleared
3 18 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
3 18 (2.17%) Degree
4 13 (1.57%) DV Cleared
5 8 (0.97%) City & Guilds
6 5 (0.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (0.60%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.48%) BICSI Certification
7 4 (0.48%) SnowPro
8 3 (0.36%) IBM Certification
9 2 (0.24%) Azure Certification
9 2 (0.24%) CISM
9 2 (0.24%) CISSP
10 1 (0.12%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.12%) CCIE
10 1 (0.12%) CCNP
10 1 (0.12%) CEH
10 1 (0.12%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.12%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 174 (21.01%) Data Quality
2 19 (2.29%) QA
3 13 (1.57%) GDPR
4 10 (1.21%) SLA
5 8 (0.97%) FATCA
6 3 (0.36%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.24%) Disclosure Scotland
7 2 (0.24%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.12%) GMP
8 1 (0.12%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.12%) NIST
8 1 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.12%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (5.07%) Docker
2 3 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.24%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 48 (5.80%) Terraform
2 45 (5.43%) Kubernetes
3 37 (4.47%) Grafana
4 10 (1.21%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.97%) Ansible
6 3 (0.36%) Rancher
7 2 (0.24%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.24%) Control-M
Vendors
1 134 (16.18%) Databricks
2 118 (14.25%) Oracle
3 109 (13.16%) Talend
4 88 (10.63%) Microsoft
5 74 (8.94%) Informatica
6 54 (6.52%) Denodo
7 35 (4.23%) Cisco
7 35 (4.23%) F5
8 16 (1.93%) SAP
8 16 (1.93%) Splunk
9 15 (1.81%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.81%) ServiceNow
10 14 (1.69%) Cloudera
11 11 (1.33%) Google
12 8 (0.97%) Alteryx
12 8 (0.97%) Sage
13 6 (0.72%) Dynatrace
13 6 (0.72%) Infor
13 6 (0.72%) InterSystems
14 4 (0.48%) IBM