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 22 July 2026.

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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 150 134
Rank change year-on-year +86 -16 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 912 251 328
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.38% 1.69% 1.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.67% 1.86% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 580 173 242
10th Percentile £363 £324 £170
25th Percentile £413 £408 £201
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £544 £538 £544
90th Percentile £600 £625 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £519
% change year-on-year - -3.65% -5.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 4 28
10th Percentile £19.34 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £35.63 £18.11 £59.69
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +63.27%
75th Percentile £69.00 £79.03 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%

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 24,857 13,481 18,336
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.15% 90.59% 92.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,161 8,320 11,167
10th Percentile £305 £215 £215
25th Percentile £408 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,866 1,153 2,085
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.50 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.00 £16.67 £16.58
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +4.53%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -8.57%

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 22 July 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 22 July 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 22 July 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 +57 383 £459 -0.22% 41
West Midlands +52 336 £459 -0.22% 29
North of England +21 228 £478 +0.53% 85
North West +23 133 £525 +10.53% 42
South East +19 127 £470 +10.47% 103
South West +12 90 £525 +5.00% 35
Scotland +23 73 £425 -1.39% 11
Yorkshire -4 73 £475 - 19
East Midlands +18 47 £475 +13.10% 12
East of England +4 33 £565 +78.52% 14
North East -20 23 £515 +17.71% 24
Wales -1 19 £475 +6.74% 12
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 2
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 22 July 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.

1 427 (46.82%) SQL
2 342 (37.50%) Data Pipeline
3 316 (34.65%) Analytics
4 307 (33.66%) ETL
5 293 (32.13%) Data Engineering
6 280 (30.70%) Python
7 273 (29.93%) Security Cleared
8 269 (29.50%) Data Modelling
9 225 (24.67%) SC Cleared
10 216 (23.68%) Azure
11 199 (21.82%) AWS
12 193 (21.16%) Data Quality
13 176 (19.30%) CI/CD
14 170 (18.64%) Business Intelligence
15 152 (16.67%) Data Integration
16 147 (16.12%) Agile
17 138 (15.13%) Databricks
18 130 (14.25%) Migration
19 127 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
20 120 (13.16%) Data Warehouse
21 116 (12.72%) Oracle
22 111 (12.17%) DevOps
23 110 (12.06%) Power Platform
24 106 (11.62%) Power BI
25 104 (11.40%) Microsoft
26 102 (11.18%) Talend
27 100 (10.96%) Validation
28 98 (10.75%) Data Governance
29 97 (10.64%) PySpark
30 92 (10.09%) 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 62 (6.80%) SAS
2 54 (5.92%) Apache Spark
3 41 (4.50%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (4.06%) Apache
5 23 (2.52%) Confluence
6 5 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint
Applications
1 10 (1.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.55%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.55%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.44%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.44%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.33%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.11%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.11%) NEC Housing
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.11%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 216 (23.68%) Azure
2 199 (21.82%) AWS
3 110 (12.06%) Power Platform
4 90 (9.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 77 (8.44%) Snowflake
6 50 (5.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 50 (5.48%) GCP
7 47 (5.15%) dbt
8 45 (4.93%) Amazon S3
9 39 (4.28%) Serverless
10 30 (3.29%) Azure DevOps
11 28 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
12 27 (2.96%) GitHub
13 18 (1.97%) OpenShift
14 16 (1.75%) Matillion
15 15 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
16 13 (1.43%) Amazon EMR
17 12 (1.32%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 11 (1.21%) AWS CloudFormation
18 11 (1.21%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (3.51%) DNS
1 32 (3.51%) VPN
2 31 (3.40%) BGP
2 31 (3.40%) DMZ
2 31 (3.40%) Multicast
3 8 (0.88%) Structured Cabling
4 6 (0.66%) Firewall
5 5 (0.55%) PuTTY
5 5 (0.55%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.44%) Wireless
7 3 (0.33%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (13.16%) Data Warehouse
2 106 (11.62%) Power BI
3 81 (8.88%) Pentaho
4 49 (5.37%) Data Lake
5 46 (5.04%) Amazon Redshift
6 40 (4.39%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.95%) Metadata
8 33 (3.62%) Big Data
9 29 (3.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 25 (2.74%) Delta Lake
10 25 (2.74%) Hadoop
10 25 (2.74%) MySQL
10 25 (2.74%) Relational Database
11 23 (2.52%) Amazon Athena
12 21 (2.30%) Azure SQL Database
13 19 (2.08%) Tableau
14 18 (1.97%) BigQuery
14 18 (1.97%) NoSQL
15 17 (1.86%) BusinessObjects
15 17 (1.86%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 92 (10.09%) Git
2 57 (6.25%) GitLab
3 45 (4.93%) JIRA
4 31 (3.40%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.77%) Postman
6 5 (0.55%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.44%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.33%) Newman
9 2 (0.22%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.22%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.11%) ERwin
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MLflow
10 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 142 (15.57%) Social Skills
2 94 (10.31%) Analytical Skills
3 82 (8.99%) Public Sector
4 63 (6.91%) Finance
5 42 (4.61%) Banking
6 22 (2.41%) Marketing
7 21 (2.30%) Investment Banking
8 19 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
9 17 (1.86%) Automotive
9 17 (1.86%) Telecoms
10 13 (1.43%) Manufacturing
10 13 (1.43%) Retail
11 12 (1.32%) Aerospace
11 12 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.55%) Billing
12 5 (0.55%) Front Office
12 5 (0.55%) Local Government
12 5 (0.55%) Police
13 4 (0.44%) Legal
14 3 (0.33%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (10.64%) PySpark
2 64 (7.02%) Kafka
3 22 (2.41%) JSON
4 13 (1.43%) XML
5 12 (1.32%) Pandas
6 10 (1.10%) Streamlit
7 8 (0.88%) Apache Avro
7 8 (0.88%) Protocol Buffers
8 7 (0.77%) Apache Beam
8 7 (0.77%) REST
9 6 (0.66%) Apache NiFi
9 6 (0.66%) Node.js
9 6 (0.66%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (0.66%) RESTful
10 5 (0.55%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.55%) pytest
10 5 (0.55%) YAML
11 4 (0.44%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.44%) AWS CDK
11 4 (0.44%) React
Miscellaneous
1 35 (3.84%) Cloud Native
2 26 (2.85%) Legacy Systems
3 25 (2.74%) Data Structures
4 16 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (0.99%) Clustering
6 9 (0.99%) Driving Licence
6 9 (0.99%) NHS
7 8 (0.88%) Onboarding
7 8 (0.88%) Product Ownership
8 7 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
8 7 (0.77%) Management Information System
9 6 (0.66%) Data Centre
9 6 (0.66%) Linux Command Line
10 5 (0.55%) Hybrid Cloud
10 5 (0.55%) Reference Data
11 4 (0.44%) Data Fabric
11 4 (0.44%) Fibre Optics
11 4 (0.44%) iPad
11 4 (0.44%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 40 (4.39%) Unix
2 14 (1.54%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 342 (37.50%) Data Pipeline
2 316 (34.65%) Analytics
3 307 (33.66%) ETL
4 293 (32.13%) Data Engineering
5 269 (29.50%) Data Modelling
6 176 (19.30%) CI/CD
7 170 (18.64%) Business Intelligence
8 152 (16.67%) Data Integration
9 147 (16.12%) Agile
10 130 (14.25%) Migration
11 127 (13.93%) Problem-Solving
12 111 (12.17%) DevOps
13 100 (10.96%) Validation
14 98 (10.75%) Data Governance
15 84 (9.21%) AI
16 76 (8.33%) Data Transformation
16 76 (8.33%) Decision-Making
17 74 (8.11%) Test Automation
18 69 (7.57%) Data Science
19 65 (7.13%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 427 (46.82%) SQL
2 280 (30.70%) Python
3 39 (4.28%) Java
4 37 (4.06%) PL/SQL
5 19 (2.08%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.75%) Bash
7 12 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 12 (1.32%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.10%) PowerShell
9 6 (0.66%) Scala
10 5 (0.55%) Bicep
11 4 (0.44%) C#
12 2 (0.22%) Go
12 2 (0.22%) HiveQL
12 2 (0.22%) JavaScript
13 1 (0.11%) C++
13 1 (0.11%) COBOL
13 1 (0.11%) Perl
13 1 (0.11%) R
13 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 273 (29.93%) Security Cleared
2 225 (24.67%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.30%) Degree
4 20 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.86%) DV Cleared
6 8 (0.88%) City & Guilds
7 7 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (0.66%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.44%) BICSI Certification
9 4 (0.44%) CISM
9 4 (0.44%) CISSP
9 4 (0.44%) SnowPro
10 3 (0.33%) Azure Certification
10 3 (0.33%) CEH
10 3 (0.33%) IBM Certification
11 2 (0.22%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.11%) CCIE
12 1 (0.11%) CCNP
12 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 193 (21.16%) Data Quality
2 21 (2.30%) QA
3 16 (1.75%) GDPR
4 10 (1.10%) SLA
5 8 (0.88%) FATCA
6 6 (0.66%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.22%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.11%) GMP
10 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.11%) NIST
10 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 40 (4.39%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
2 2 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (6.14%) Terraform
2 45 (4.93%) Kubernetes
3 36 (3.95%) Grafana
4 11 (1.21%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.10%) Ansible
6 3 (0.33%) Control-M
6 3 (0.33%) Rancher
7 2 (0.22%) Apache Ranger
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 138 (15.13%) Databricks
2 116 (12.72%) Oracle
3 104 (11.40%) Microsoft
4 102 (11.18%) Talend
5 77 (8.44%) Informatica
6 48 (5.26%) Denodo
7 33 (3.62%) Cisco
7 33 (3.62%) F5
8 19 (2.08%) SAP
9 17 (1.86%) Salesforce
10 15 (1.64%) ServiceNow
10 15 (1.64%) Splunk
11 14 (1.54%) Cloudera
12 11 (1.21%) Google
13 10 (1.10%) Sage
14 6 (0.66%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.66%) Infor
14 6 (0.66%) InterSystems
15 5 (0.55%) Alteryx
16 4 (0.44%) Palantir