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 £480, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 January 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 148 97 190
Rank change year-on-year -51 +93 -15
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 317 341 237
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 1.71% 2.45% 1.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.89% 2.65% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 236 228 178
10th Percentile £351 £313 £313
25th Percentile £406 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £478 £505
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% -5.30% -3.81%
75th Percentile £543 £550 £609
90th Percentile £613 £641 £688
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 4 5
10th Percentile £27.80 £25.14 £40.15
25th Percentile £30.49 £25.21 £58.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.51% -59.23% -1.89%
75th Percentile £69.25 £27.91 £67.50
90th Percentile £75.10 £28.19 -
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £53.75 £60.50
% change year-on-year -19.07% -11.16% -3.97%

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 16,765 12,859 18,485
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.65% 92.44% 93.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 10,293 7,626 11,799
10th Percentile £213 £213 £213
25th Percentile £375 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
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 1,694 701 1,496
10th Percentile £14.00 £15.22 £13.46
25th Percentile £17.78 £20.30 £17.72
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £44.20
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -26.47% +52.41%
75th Percentile £60.00 £64.10 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.56 £75.20
UK median hourly rate £27.50 £32.50 £41.37
% change year-on-year -15.38% -21.43% +18.19%

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 17 January 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 17 January 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 17 January 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
North of England -48 99 £463 +2.78% 61
Midlands -16 97 £520 +6.23% 32
West Midlands -18 84 £525 +6.06% 23
North West -25 54 £405 -8.99% 36
Scotland +4 44 £450 +1.98% 20
South West -3 43 £550 +22.22% 44
South East -53 33 £475 -11.63% 139
Yorkshire -41 32 £500 +5.26% 15
Wales -9 13 £418 -16.50% 11
North East -10 13 £450 -1.64% 12
East Midlands -22 13 £455 +24.91% 9
East of England -31 6 £625 +96.54% 43
Northern Ireland -3 1 £430 -13.57% 5
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 17 January 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.

1 173 (54.57%) Python
2 170 (53.63%) SQL
3 130 (41.01%) ETL
4 123 (38.80%) Data Pipeline
5 116 (36.59%) Data Engineering
6 113 (35.65%) Analytics
7 112 (35.33%) Azure
8 100 (31.55%) CI/CD
9 92 (29.02%) Data Modelling
10 86 (27.13%) AWS
11 83 (26.18%) Databricks
12 75 (23.66%) DevOps
13 73 (23.03%) Agile
13 73 (23.03%) Business Intelligence
14 72 (22.71%) Data Quality
15 69 (21.77%) Security Cleared
16 68 (21.45%) Problem-Solving
17 61 (19.24%) Data Warehouse
17 61 (19.24%) SC Cleared
18 59 (18.61%) PySpark
19 54 (17.03%) Power Platform
20 50 (15.77%) Power BI
21 48 (15.14%) Git
22 47 (14.83%) Snowflake
23 45 (14.20%) Azure Data Factory
23 45 (14.20%) Docker
24 44 (13.88%) Data Integration
24 44 (13.88%) Kubernetes
24 44 (13.88%) Test Automation
25 43 (13.56%) Oracle

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 41 (12.93%) Apache Airflow
2 27 (8.52%) Apache
3 24 (7.57%) Apache Spark
4 21 (6.62%) SAS
5 9 (2.84%) Confluence
6 5 (1.58%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.58%) Oracle Application Server
7 3 (0.95%) IIS
8 1 (0.32%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
Applications
1 1 (0.32%) Chatbot
1 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.32%) SPSS
1 1 (0.32%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.63%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.32%) Elite 3E
Cloud Services
1 112 (35.33%) Azure
2 86 (27.13%) AWS
3 54 (17.03%) Power Platform
4 47 (14.83%) Snowflake
5 45 (14.20%) Azure Data Factory
6 27 (8.52%) dbt
7 25 (7.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 25 (7.89%) GCP
7 25 (7.89%) Serverless
8 23 (7.26%) GitHub
9 19 (5.99%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (4.10%) AWS CloudFormation
13 8 (2.52%) Amazon SageMaker
13 8 (2.52%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (2.52%) Prefect
14 7 (2.21%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.21%) AWS Step Functions
14 7 (2.21%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.58%) BGP
1 5 (1.58%) DMZ
1 5 (1.58%) DNS
1 5 (1.58%) Multicast
1 5 (1.58%) VPN
2 2 (0.63%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.32%) Internet
3 1 (0.32%) LAN
3 1 (0.32%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.32%) WAN
3 1 (0.32%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (19.24%) Data Warehouse
2 50 (15.77%) Power BI
3 34 (10.73%) Data Lake
4 31 (9.78%) Pentaho
5 25 (7.89%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (7.26%) Big Data
7 22 (6.94%) NoSQL
8 21 (6.62%) Hadoop
9 18 (5.68%) Amazon Redshift
10 16 (5.05%) Elasticsearch
11 15 (4.73%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (4.10%) Azure SQL Database
12 13 (4.10%) SQL Server
13 12 (3.79%) Data Mining
13 12 (3.79%) Delta Lake
13 12 (3.79%) Relational Database
14 10 (3.15%) Snowflake Schema
15 9 (2.84%) BigQuery
16 8 (2.52%) RDBMS
17 7 (2.21%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 48 (15.14%) Git
2 42 (13.25%) Jenkins
3 29 (9.15%) GitLab
4 26 (8.20%) JIRA
5 5 (1.58%) DBeaver
5 5 (1.58%) MLflow
6 3 (0.95%) Bitbucket
6 3 (0.95%) Cucumber
7 2 (0.63%) JMeter
7 2 (0.63%) Visual Studio Code
7 2 (0.63%) Zephyr
8 1 (0.32%) Artifactory
8 1 (0.32%) Deequ
8 1 (0.32%) JUnit
8 1 (0.32%) Maven
8 1 (0.32%) Mockito
8 1 (0.32%) Selenium
8 1 (0.32%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.32%) Visual Studio
General
1 60 (18.93%) Social Skills
2 38 (11.99%) Finance
3 36 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (8.20%) Public Sector
5 20 (6.31%) Banking
6 6 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
7 5 (1.58%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.26%) Legal
8 4 (1.26%) Manufacturing
9 3 (0.95%) Aerospace
9 3 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.63%) Health Technology
10 2 (0.63%) Law
10 2 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
10 2 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
10 2 (0.63%) Retail
10 2 (0.63%) Tech for Good
11 1 (0.32%) Games
11 1 (0.32%) Military
11 1 (0.32%) Publishing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (18.61%) PySpark
2 27 (8.52%) Kafka
3 18 (5.68%) REST
4 13 (4.10%) RESTful
5 12 (3.79%) Keycloak
6 10 (3.15%) Pandas
7 9 (2.84%) NumPy
8 7 (2.21%) Flask
9 6 (1.89%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (1.89%) HTML
9 6 (1.89%) JSON
10 5 (1.58%) Node.js
10 5 (1.58%) OpenTelemetry
10 5 (1.58%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 4 (1.26%) pytest
12 3 (0.95%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (0.95%) JDBC
12 3 (0.95%) Middleware
12 3 (0.95%) OAuth2
12 3 (0.95%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 23 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.73%) Product Ownership
3 14 (4.42%) Algorithms
3 14 (4.42%) Replication
4 13 (4.10%) Hybrid Cloud
5 10 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
6 9 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.52%) Clustering
8 7 (2.21%) Greenfield Project
9 6 (1.89%) Data Structures
9 6 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.89%) NHS
10 4 (1.26%) IoT
11 3 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (0.95%) Management Information System
11 3 (0.95%) Onboarding
12 2 (0.63%) CCTV
12 2 (0.63%) Distributed Architecture
12 2 (0.63%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.63%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 15 (4.73%) Linux
2 11 (3.47%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (41.01%) ETL
2 123 (38.80%) Data Pipeline
3 116 (36.59%) Data Engineering
4 113 (35.65%) Analytics
5 100 (31.55%) CI/CD
6 92 (29.02%) Data Modelling
7 75 (23.66%) DevOps
8 73 (23.03%) Agile
8 73 (23.03%) Business Intelligence
9 68 (21.45%) Problem-Solving
10 44 (13.88%) Data Integration
10 44 (13.88%) Test Automation
11 36 (11.36%) Continuous Improvement
11 36 (11.36%) Machine Learning
12 34 (10.73%) Performance Tuning
12 34 (10.73%) Scrum
13 31 (9.78%) Data Science
14 30 (9.46%) Data Governance
15 29 (9.15%) Data Analytics
15 29 (9.15%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 173 (54.57%) Python
2 170 (53.63%) SQL
3 26 (8.20%) Java
4 14 (4.42%) PL/SQL
4 14 (4.42%) Scala
5 12 (3.79%) Go
6 8 (2.52%) Bash
7 6 (1.89%) T-SQL
8 5 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 5 (1.58%) R
8 5 (1.58%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.26%) JavaScript
10 3 (0.95%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.63%) ABAP
11 2 (0.63%) Bicep
11 2 (0.63%) C#
12 1 (0.32%) Cypher
12 1 (0.32%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 69 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 61 (19.24%) SC Cleared
3 13 (4.10%) Azure Certification
4 9 (2.84%) AWS Certification
5 6 (1.89%) Degree
6 2 (0.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 2 (0.63%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.32%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.32%) HND
7 1 (0.32%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (0.32%) MCP
7 1 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (22.71%) Data Quality
2 7 (2.21%) GDPR
2 7 (2.21%) QA
3 3 (0.95%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.32%) Basel III
4 1 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (0.32%) EU AI Act
4 1 (0.32%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 1 (0.32%) NCSC
4 1 (0.32%) NIST
4 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 45 (14.20%) Docker
2 4 (1.26%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.63%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 44 (13.88%) Kubernetes
2 29 (9.15%) Terraform
3 11 (3.47%) Ansible
4 8 (2.52%) Grafana
4 8 (2.52%) NetBackup
5 5 (1.58%) Kibana
6 4 (1.26%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.95%) logstash
8 2 (0.63%) Control-M
9 1 (0.32%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.32%) Puppet
Vendors
1 83 (26.18%) Databricks
2 43 (13.56%) Oracle
3 36 (11.36%) Microsoft
4 35 (11.04%) Talend
5 21 (6.62%) Denodo
6 15 (4.73%) Informatica
7 9 (2.84%) Google
8 8 (2.52%) Commvault
8 8 (2.52%) Red Hat
9 7 (2.21%) IBM
9 7 (2.21%) Veritas
10 6 (1.89%) Cisco
10 6 (1.89%) Confluent
10 6 (1.89%) ServiceNow
10 6 (1.89%) Splunk
11 5 (1.58%) F5
12 4 (1.26%) SAP
13 3 (0.95%) Cloudera
13 3 (0.95%) Salesforce
14 2 (0.63%) Palantir