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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 75 115 138
Rank change year-on-year +40 +23 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 713 282 319
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 2.89% 2.21% 1.56%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.14% 2.41% 1.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 488 213 234
10th Percentile £374 £281 £163
25th Percentile £413 £400 £189
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £538
90th Percentile £588 £625 £588
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 50 4 34
10th Percentile £19.01 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £37.51 £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 £68.56 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.40 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year -17.65% -1.92% -13.91%

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 22,693 11,713 18,887
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.90% 91.75% 92.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,114 7,503 11,508
10th Percentile £300 £213 £213
25th Percentile £402 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £594
90th Percentile £684 £650 £688
UK median daily rate £513 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +0.99% -3.33% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,586 817 2,329
10th Percentile £14.64 £13.94 £12.50
25th Percentile £19.91 £17.30 £15.75
Median hourly rate £43.69 £26.34 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.90% -34.16% -5.88%
75th Percentile £66.81 £62.50 £61.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.50 £27.97 £36.50
% change year-on-year +51.98% -23.38% -18.89%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 +42 294 £469 +3.08% 38
West Midlands +36 276 £469 +1.85% 27
North of England -1 198 £465 -0.80% 73
North West +3 125 £480 +1.05% 25
South East -3 95 £500 +14.29% 66
South West +4 72 £500 - 30
Yorkshire -28 56 £465 +3.33% 27
Scotland +14 55 £428 -5.00% 9
Wales +6 21 £463 +124.17% 14
East of England -26 19 £520 +63.52% 3
East Midlands -19 18 £525 +26.51% 11
North East -20 17 £450 -5.26% 22
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 7
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 25 May 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.

1 366 (51.33%) SQL
2 275 (38.57%) Data Pipeline
3 270 (37.87%) Analytics
4 269 (37.73%) ETL
5 249 (34.92%) Data Engineering
6 245 (34.36%) Security Cleared
7 230 (32.26%) Data Modelling
8 228 (31.98%) Python
9 206 (28.89%) SC Cleared
10 174 (24.40%) Azure
11 165 (23.14%) Business Intelligence
12 154 (21.60%) Data Quality
13 141 (19.78%) CI/CD
14 135 (18.93%) AWS
15 132 (18.51%) Agile
16 124 (17.39%) Data Integration
17 118 (16.55%) Databricks
18 115 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
19 112 (15.71%) Power Platform
20 107 (15.01%) Power BI
21 99 (13.88%) Oracle
22 96 (13.46%) DevOps
22 96 (13.46%) Talend
23 92 (12.90%) Data Warehouse
24 89 (12.48%) Migration
25 88 (12.34%) Git
26 83 (11.64%) PySpark
27 75 (10.52%) Azure Data Factory
27 75 (10.52%) Pentaho
28 74 (10.38%) 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 63 (8.84%) SAS
2 46 (6.45%) Apache Spark
3 42 (5.89%) Apache Airflow
4 35 (4.91%) Apache
5 19 (2.66%) Confluence
6 4 (0.56%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.14%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.14%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.70%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Infor LN
1 2 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.14%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.14%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.14%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
2 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 174 (24.40%) Azure
2 135 (18.93%) AWS
3 112 (15.71%) Power Platform
4 75 (10.52%) Azure Data Factory
5 62 (8.70%) Snowflake
6 44 (6.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 38 (5.33%) GCP
8 36 (5.05%) dbt
9 32 (4.49%) Amazon S3
10 28 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
11 25 (3.51%) GitHub
12 24 (3.37%) Serverless
13 19 (2.66%) OpenShift
14 18 (2.52%) AWS Lambda
15 16 (2.24%) Matillion
16 12 (1.68%) Amazon EMR
16 12 (1.68%) GitHub Actions
17 9 (1.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 9 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
18 8 (1.12%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 33 (4.63%) DNS
1 33 (4.63%) VPN
2 32 (4.49%) BGP
2 32 (4.49%) DMZ
2 32 (4.49%) Multicast
3 8 (1.12%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.70%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.70%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.56%) Wireless
6 3 (0.42%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 107 (15.01%) Power BI
2 92 (12.90%) Data Warehouse
3 75 (10.52%) Pentaho
4 44 (6.17%) Data Lake
5 35 (4.91%) Big Data
5 35 (4.91%) SQL Server
6 34 (4.77%) Amazon Redshift
7 26 (3.65%) Hadoop
7 26 (3.65%) Metadata
8 25 (3.51%) Delta Lake
9 24 (3.37%) MySQL
9 24 (3.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 22 (3.09%) Relational Database
11 20 (2.81%) Azure SQL Database
12 19 (2.66%) NoSQL
12 19 (2.66%) PostgreSQL
13 18 (2.52%) Snowflake Schema
13 18 (2.52%) Tableau
14 15 (2.10%) Amazon Athena
14 15 (2.10%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 88 (12.34%) Git
2 49 (6.87%) GitLab
3 45 (6.31%) JIRA
4 31 (4.35%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.56%) Bitbucket
5 4 (0.56%) Postman
6 3 (0.42%) Artifactory
6 3 (0.42%) Newman
7 2 (0.28%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.14%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.14%) ERwin
8 1 (0.14%) JUnit
General
1 111 (15.57%) Social Skills
2 76 (10.66%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (9.12%) Public Sector
4 60 (8.42%) Finance
5 40 (5.61%) Banking
6 22 (3.09%) Investment Banking
7 15 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
8 14 (1.96%) Aerospace
9 12 (1.68%) Manufacturing
10 10 (1.40%) Retail
11 8 (1.12%) Telecoms
12 7 (0.98%) Marketing
13 4 (0.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.56%) Local Government
14 3 (0.42%) Front Office
14 3 (0.42%) Law
15 2 (0.28%) Advertising
15 2 (0.28%) Automotive
15 2 (0.28%) Aviation
15 2 (0.28%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 83 (11.64%) PySpark
2 63 (8.84%) Kafka
3 20 (2.81%) JSON
4 14 (1.96%) REST
5 13 (1.82%) Pandas
6 10 (1.40%) XML
7 8 (1.12%) Apache Avro
7 8 (1.12%) Apache Beam
7 8 (1.12%) Protocol Buffers
8 6 (0.84%) Apache NiFi
8 6 (0.84%) Node.js
8 6 (0.84%) OpenTelemetry
9 5 (0.70%) Great Expectations
9 5 (0.70%) pytest
9 5 (0.70%) YAML
10 4 (0.56%) AngularJS
10 4 (0.56%) AWS CDK
10 4 (0.56%) React
10 4 (0.56%) Streamlit
11 3 (0.42%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 30 (4.21%) Cloud Native
2 19 (2.66%) Data Structures
3 18 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
4 13 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (1.54%) Clustering
6 11 (1.54%) Product Ownership
7 9 (1.26%) Driving Licence
7 9 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (0.98%) NHS
9 6 (0.84%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.84%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
9 6 (0.84%) Onboarding
10 4 (0.56%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.56%) Distributed Computing
10 4 (0.56%) Fibre Optics
10 4 (0.56%) iPad
10 4 (0.56%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 38 (5.33%) Unix
2 11 (1.54%) Linux
3 2 (0.28%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.14%) VMS
4 1 (0.14%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 275 (38.57%) Data Pipeline
2 270 (37.87%) Analytics
3 269 (37.73%) ETL
4 249 (34.92%) Data Engineering
5 230 (32.26%) Data Modelling
6 165 (23.14%) Business Intelligence
7 141 (19.78%) CI/CD
8 132 (18.51%) Agile
9 124 (17.39%) Data Integration
10 115 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
11 96 (13.46%) DevOps
12 89 (12.48%) Migration
13 71 (9.96%) Data Governance
14 69 (9.68%) Validation
15 67 (9.40%) Scrum
16 62 (8.70%) AI
17 59 (8.27%) Test Automation
18 55 (7.71%) Decision-Making
19 51 (7.15%) Continuous Improvement
20 47 (6.59%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 366 (51.33%) SQL
2 228 (31.98%) Python
3 33 (4.63%) Java
4 29 (4.07%) PL/SQL
5 17 (2.38%) Shell Script
6 15 (2.10%) Bash
7 10 (1.40%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.40%) PowerShell
8 9 (1.26%) T-SQL
9 6 (0.84%) C#
9 6 (0.84%) Scala
10 5 (0.70%) Bicep
10 5 (0.70%) Go
11 2 (0.28%) HiveQL
11 2 (0.28%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.14%) C++
12 1 (0.14%) COBOL
12 1 (0.14%) Groovy
12 1 (0.14%) Perl
12 1 (0.14%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 245 (34.36%) Security Cleared
2 206 (28.89%) SC Cleared
3 19 (2.66%) Degree
4 14 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
5 10 (1.40%) DV Cleared
6 8 (1.12%) City & Guilds
7 5 (0.70%) Azure Certification
7 5 (0.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.70%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.56%) BICSI Certification
9 3 (0.42%) IBM Certification
9 3 (0.42%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.14%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.14%) CCIE
10 1 (0.14%) CCNP
10 1 (0.14%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.14%) CISM
10 1 (0.14%) CISSP
10 1 (0.14%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.14%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (21.60%) Data Quality
2 16 (2.24%) QA
3 14 (1.96%) GDPR
4 8 (1.12%) FATCA
4 8 (1.12%) SLA
5 4 (0.56%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.14%) Basel III
8 1 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.14%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.14%) GMP
8 1 (0.14%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.14%) NIST
8 1 (0.14%) SNOMED CT
8 1 (0.14%) WCAG
System Software
1 42 (5.89%) Docker
2 3 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.28%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 44 (6.17%) Kubernetes
2 39 (5.47%) Grafana
3 37 (5.19%) Terraform
4 11 (1.54%) Prometheus
5 9 (1.26%) Ansible
6 3 (0.42%) Rancher
7 2 (0.28%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.28%) Control-M
7 2 (0.28%) Kibana
7 2 (0.28%) logstash
Vendors
1 118 (16.55%) Databricks
2 99 (13.88%) Oracle
3 96 (13.46%) Talend
4 74 (10.38%) Microsoft
5 68 (9.54%) Informatica
6 51 (7.15%) Denodo
7 34 (4.77%) Cisco
7 34 (4.77%) F5
8 16 (2.24%) Splunk
9 14 (1.96%) SAP
10 13 (1.82%) ServiceNow
11 12 (1.68%) Google
12 11 (1.54%) Cloudera
13 8 (1.12%) Alteryx
14 6 (0.84%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.84%) InterSystems
15 5 (0.70%) Sage
16 4 (0.56%) Dataiku
16 4 (0.56%) IBM
17 3 (0.42%) Infor