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 7 July 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 139 139
Rank change year-on-year +78 0 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 881 259 337
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.30% 1.80% 1.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.59% 1.97% 1.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 184 250
10th Percentile £363 £315 £170
25th Percentile £413 £402 £201
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.50% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £544 £527 £538
90th Percentile £600 £621 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £500
% change year-on-year - - -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 4 31
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% +53.06%
75th Percentile £68.00 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.61 -
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £66.25
% change year-on-year -4.76% -20.75% -7.02%

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 24,539 13,115 19,430
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.04% 91.07% 92.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 13,992 8,149 11,675
10th Percentile £303 £220 £213
25th Percentile £406 £363 £370
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £493
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £595
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £520 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,842 1,060 2,398
10th Percentile £15.05 £13.50 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.51 £16.84 £16.00
Median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.94% -37.13% +1.14%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £74.51
UK median hourly rate £42.59 £26.45 £37.50
% change year-on-year +61.03% -29.47% -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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +53 365 £463 +2.78% 63
West Midlands +48 324 £459 -0.22% 36
North of England +26 223 £475 - 100
North West +22 134 £513 +7.89% 60
South East +17 127 £475 +11.76% 93
South West +15 89 £525 +5.00% 42
Scotland +21 69 £425 -9.33% 10
Yorkshire -8 68 £475 - 22
East Midlands +12 41 £525 +28.05% 28
East of England -15 26 £543 +70.60% 17
Wales +3 23 £438 +0.57% 10
North East -23 21 £510 +16.57% 21
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 10
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 7 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.

1 419 (47.56%) SQL
2 329 (37.34%) Data Pipeline
3 315 (35.75%) Analytics
4 307 (34.85%) ETL
5 287 (32.58%) Data Engineering
6 275 (31.21%) Python
6 275 (31.21%) Security Cleared
7 263 (29.85%) Data Modelling
8 226 (25.65%) SC Cleared
9 209 (23.72%) Azure
10 188 (21.34%) AWS
11 185 (21.00%) Data Quality
12 175 (19.86%) Business Intelligence
12 175 (19.86%) CI/CD
13 148 (16.80%) Agile
14 144 (16.35%) Data Integration
15 142 (16.12%) Databricks
16 129 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
17 118 (13.39%) Oracle
18 117 (13.28%) Migration
19 114 (12.94%) Power Platform
20 110 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
20 110 (12.49%) Power BI
21 109 (12.37%) Talend
22 106 (12.03%) DevOps
23 101 (11.46%) PySpark
24 94 (10.67%) Microsoft
25 92 (10.44%) Data Governance
25 92 (10.44%) Git
26 91 (10.33%) Validation

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 (7.49%) SAS
2 52 (5.90%) Apache Spark
3 37 (4.20%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (4.09%) Apache
5 24 (2.72%) Confluence
6 5 (0.57%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.23%) Apache Superset
7 2 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.11%) SharePoint
Applications
1 7 (0.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (0.57%) Notepad++
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (0.57%) Infor LN
3 4 (0.45%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.45%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.11%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.11%) FIS Private Capital Suite
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
1 209 (23.72%) Azure
2 188 (21.34%) AWS
3 114 (12.94%) Power Platform
4 85 (9.65%) Azure Data Factory
5 72 (8.17%) Snowflake
6 49 (5.56%) GCP
7 46 (5.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 44 (4.99%) dbt
9 43 (4.88%) Amazon S3
10 37 (4.20%) Serverless
11 28 (3.18%) Azure DevOps
11 28 (3.18%) GitHub
12 26 (2.95%) AWS Lambda
13 18 (2.04%) Matillion
13 18 (2.04%) OpenShift
14 15 (1.70%) GitHub Actions
15 14 (1.59%) Amazon EMR
16 11 (1.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 11 (1.25%) Azure Functions
17 9 (1.02%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.97%) DNS
1 35 (3.97%) VPN
2 34 (3.86%) BGP
2 34 (3.86%) DMZ
2 34 (3.86%) Multicast
3 8 (0.91%) Structured Cabling
4 5 (0.57%) Firewall
4 5 (0.57%) PuTTY
4 5 (0.57%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.45%) Wireless
6 2 (0.23%) Intrusion Detection
Database & Business Intelligence
1 110 (12.49%) Data Warehouse
1 110 (12.49%) Power BI
2 85 (9.65%) Pentaho
3 46 (5.22%) Data Lake
4 45 (5.11%) Amazon Redshift
5 35 (3.97%) SQL Server
6 33 (3.75%) Big Data
7 28 (3.18%) Metadata
7 28 (3.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 27 (3.06%) MySQL
9 25 (2.84%) Hadoop
9 25 (2.84%) Relational Database
10 24 (2.72%) Delta Lake
11 22 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
12 20 (2.27%) Azure SQL Database
13 19 (2.16%) Tableau
14 18 (2.04%) NoSQL
14 18 (2.04%) Snowflake Schema
15 17 (1.93%) BigQuery
15 17 (1.93%) BusinessObjects
Development Applications
1 92 (10.44%) Git
2 59 (6.70%) GitLab
3 46 (5.22%) JIRA
4 33 (3.75%) Jenkins
5 7 (0.79%) Postman
6 5 (0.57%) Artifactory
7 4 (0.45%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.34%) Newman
9 2 (0.23%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.23%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.11%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.11%) ERwin
10 1 (0.11%) JUnit
10 1 (0.11%) MLflow
General
1 143 (16.23%) Social Skills
2 89 (10.10%) Analytical Skills
3 83 (9.42%) Public Sector
4 66 (7.49%) Finance
5 43 (4.88%) Banking
6 22 (2.50%) Investment Banking
7 21 (2.38%) Marketing
8 19 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
9 15 (1.70%) Automotive
9 15 (1.70%) Telecoms
10 14 (1.59%) Manufacturing
11 13 (1.48%) Aerospace
11 13 (1.48%) Retail
12 12 (1.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.57%) Billing
13 5 (0.57%) Front Office
13 5 (0.57%) Legal
13 5 (0.57%) Police
14 4 (0.45%) Local Government
15 3 (0.34%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (11.46%) PySpark
2 63 (7.15%) Kafka
3 23 (2.61%) JSON
4 13 (1.48%) XML
5 12 (1.36%) Pandas
6 10 (1.14%) Streamlit
7 8 (0.91%) Apache Avro
7 8 (0.91%) Protocol Buffers
7 8 (0.91%) REST
8 7 (0.79%) Apache Beam
9 6 (0.68%) Node.js
9 6 (0.68%) OpenTelemetry
9 6 (0.68%) RESTful
10 5 (0.57%) Apache NiFi
10 5 (0.57%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.57%) pytest
10 5 (0.57%) YAML
11 4 (0.45%) AngularJS
11 4 (0.45%) React
12 3 (0.34%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 34 (3.86%) Cloud Native
2 23 (2.61%) Data Structures
3 22 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
4 16 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (1.02%) Clustering
6 9 (1.02%) Driving Licence
6 9 (1.02%) NHS
6 9 (1.02%) Product Ownership
7 8 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
8 6 (0.68%) Data Centre
8 6 (0.68%) Linux Command Line
8 6 (0.68%) Onboarding
9 5 (0.57%) Hybrid Cloud
10 4 (0.45%) Data Fabric
10 4 (0.45%) iPad
10 4 (0.45%) Life Science
10 4 (0.45%) Public Cloud
10 4 (0.45%) Renewable Energy
10 4 (0.45%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 41 (4.65%) Unix
2 12 (1.36%) Linux
3 2 (0.23%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 329 (37.34%) Data Pipeline
2 315 (35.75%) Analytics
3 307 (34.85%) ETL
4 287 (32.58%) Data Engineering
5 263 (29.85%) Data Modelling
6 175 (19.86%) Business Intelligence
6 175 (19.86%) CI/CD
7 148 (16.80%) Agile
8 144 (16.35%) Data Integration
9 129 (14.64%) Problem-Solving
10 117 (13.28%) Migration
11 106 (12.03%) DevOps
12 92 (10.44%) Data Governance
13 91 (10.33%) Validation
14 83 (9.42%) AI
15 76 (8.63%) Test Automation
16 75 (8.51%) Decision-Making
17 74 (8.40%) Data Transformation
18 67 (7.60%) Scrum
19 64 (7.26%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 419 (47.56%) SQL
2 275 (31.21%) Python
3 38 (4.31%) Java
4 36 (4.09%) PL/SQL
5 17 (1.93%) Bash
5 17 (1.93%) Shell Script
6 12 (1.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (1.14%) PowerShell
8 8 (0.91%) T-SQL
9 6 (0.68%) Scala
10 5 (0.57%) Bicep
10 5 (0.57%) C#
11 2 (0.23%) Go
11 2 (0.23%) HiveQL
11 2 (0.23%) JavaScript
12 1 (0.11%) C++
12 1 (0.11%) COBOL
12 1 (0.11%) Perl
12 1 (0.11%) R
12 1 (0.11%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 275 (31.21%) Security Cleared
2 226 (25.65%) SC Cleared
3 20 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
3 20 (2.27%) Degree
4 15 (1.70%) DV Cleared
5 8 (0.91%) City & Guilds
6 7 (0.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (0.57%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.45%) BICSI Certification
8 4 (0.45%) SnowPro
9 3 (0.34%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.34%) CISM
9 3 (0.34%) CISSP
9 3 (0.34%) IBM Certification
10 2 (0.23%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.23%) CEH
11 1 (0.11%) CCIE
11 1 (0.11%) CCNP
11 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 185 (21.00%) Data Quality
2 22 (2.50%) QA
3 15 (1.70%) GDPR
4 10 (1.14%) SLA
5 8 (0.91%) FATCA
6 4 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.34%) Accessibility
7 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.11%) GMP
9 1 (0.11%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.11%) NIST
9 1 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.11%) WCAG
System Software
1 44 (4.99%) Docker
2 3 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.23%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 53 (6.02%) Terraform
2 47 (5.33%) Kubernetes
3 38 (4.31%) Grafana
4 11 (1.25%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.14%) Ansible
6 3 (0.34%) Rancher
7 2 (0.23%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.23%) Control-M
8 1 (0.11%) Kibana
8 1 (0.11%) logstash
Vendors
1 142 (16.12%) Databricks
2 118 (13.39%) Oracle
3 109 (12.37%) Talend
4 94 (10.67%) Microsoft
5 77 (8.74%) Informatica
6 53 (6.02%) Denodo
7 36 (4.09%) Cisco
7 36 (4.09%) F5
8 18 (2.04%) SAP
9 17 (1.93%) Salesforce
10 16 (1.82%) Splunk
11 15 (1.70%) ServiceNow
12 14 (1.59%) Cloudera
13 11 (1.25%) Google
14 10 (1.14%) Sage
15 9 (1.02%) Alteryx
16 6 (0.68%) Dynatrace
16 6 (0.68%) Infor
16 6 (0.68%) InterSystems
17 4 (0.45%) IBM