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 £470, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 July 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 142 128
Rank change year-on-year +77 -14 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 915 256 336
As % of all contract jobs in the UK excluding London 3.38% 1.71% 1.65%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.67% 1.89% 1.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 583 178 248
10th Percentile £363 £332 £170
25th Percentile £413 £405 £204
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -1.08% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £544 £538 £544
90th Percentile £600 £625 £600
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £513
% change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 4 30
10th Percentile £19.34 £17.92 £37.50
25th Percentile £36.25 £18.11 £58.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.18% -37.47% +58.16%
75th Percentile £69.50 £79.03 £80.00
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 24,932 13,528 18,748
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.13% 90.59% 92.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 14,213 8,353 11,384
10th Percentile £305 £216 £213
25th Percentile £408 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
75th Percentile £600 £575 £595
90th Percentile £688 £650 £675
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,871 1,145 2,187
10th Percentile £15.13 £13.50 £12.88
25th Percentile £20.77 £16.50 £16.37
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +78.93% -37.63% +1.90%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.44 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.96% -37.13% -6.98%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +61 379 £460 +1.10% 35
West Midlands +46 332 £459 -0.22% 23
North of England +30 229 £478 +0.53% 82
North West +18 134 £525 +10.53% 37
South East +14 129 £470 +10.59% 83
South West +11 95 £525 +5.00% 28
Yorkshire -6 73 £475 - 22
Scotland +25 72 £425 -1.39% 8
East Midlands +17 47 £500 +19.05% 12
East of England +7 33 £565 +77.67% 13
North East -20 23 £515 +17.71% 23
Wales +3 20 £475 +6.74% 11
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00%
Data Engineer
UK

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

For the 6 months to 19 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 (46.67%) SQL
2 342 (37.38%) Data Pipeline
3 319 (34.86%) Analytics
4 317 (34.64%) ETL
5 294 (32.13%) Data Engineering
6 279 (30.49%) Data Modelling
6 279 (30.49%) Security Cleared
7 278 (30.38%) Python
8 229 (25.03%) SC Cleared
9 213 (23.28%) Azure
10 199 (21.75%) AWS
11 192 (20.98%) Data Quality
12 178 (19.45%) Business Intelligence
13 177 (19.34%) CI/CD
14 152 (16.61%) Data Integration
15 147 (16.07%) Agile
16 142 (15.52%) Databricks
17 129 (14.10%) Migration
18 128 (13.99%) Problem-Solving
19 120 (13.11%) Data Warehouse
20 118 (12.90%) Power Platform
21 117 (12.79%) Oracle
22 114 (12.46%) Power BI
23 112 (12.24%) DevOps
24 102 (11.15%) Microsoft
24 102 (11.15%) Talend
25 100 (10.93%) Validation
26 99 (10.82%) Data Governance
27 98 (10.71%) PySpark
28 91 (9.95%) 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 (6.78%) SAS
2 54 (5.90%) Apache Spark
3 41 (4.48%) Apache Airflow
4 37 (4.04%) Apache
5 23 (2.51%) 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 (1.09%) 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
1 213 (23.28%) Azure
2 199 (21.75%) AWS
3 118 (12.90%) Power Platform
4 89 (9.73%) Azure Data Factory
5 77 (8.42%) Snowflake
6 50 (5.46%) GCP
7 49 (5.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 46 (5.03%) dbt
9 45 (4.92%) Amazon S3
10 39 (4.26%) Serverless
11 30 (3.28%) Azure DevOps
12 28 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
12 28 (3.06%) GitHub
13 18 (1.97%) OpenShift
14 17 (1.86%) Matillion
15 15 (1.64%) GitHub Actions
16 14 (1.53%) Amazon EMR
17 12 (1.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 11 (1.20%) Azure Functions
19 10 (1.09%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 33 (3.61%) DNS
1 33 (3.61%) VPN
2 32 (3.50%) BGP
2 32 (3.50%) DMZ
2 32 (3.50%) Multicast
3 8 (0.87%) 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 (13.11%) Data Warehouse
2 114 (12.46%) Power BI
3 81 (8.85%) Pentaho
4 48 (5.25%) Data Lake
5 46 (5.03%) Amazon Redshift
6 40 (4.37%) SQL Server
7 36 (3.93%) Metadata
8 34 (3.72%) Big Data
9 31 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 25 (2.73%) Delta Lake
10 25 (2.73%) Hadoop
10 25 (2.73%) MySQL
10 25 (2.73%) Relational Database
11 22 (2.40%) 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 91 (9.95%) Git
2 57 (6.23%) GitLab
3 45 (4.92%) JIRA
4 31 (3.39%) 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
General
1 144 (15.74%) Social Skills
2 95 (10.38%) Analytical Skills
3 84 (9.18%) Public Sector
4 65 (7.10%) Finance
5 41 (4.48%) Banking
6 21 (2.30%) Investment Banking
6 21 (2.30%) Marketing
7 19 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
8 17 (1.86%) Automotive
8 17 (1.86%) Telecoms
9 13 (1.42%) Manufacturing
9 13 (1.42%) Retail
10 12 (1.31%) Aerospace
10 12 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (0.55%) Billing
11 5 (0.55%) Front Office
11 5 (0.55%) Local Government
11 5 (0.55%) Police
12 4 (0.44%) Legal
13 3 (0.33%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (10.71%) PySpark
2 64 (6.99%) Kafka
3 22 (2.40%) JSON
4 13 (1.42%) XML
5 12 (1.31%) Pandas
6 10 (1.09%) Streamlit
7 8 (0.87%) Apache Avro
7 8 (0.87%) 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 (3.83%) Cloud Native
2 26 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (2.62%) Data Structures
4 16 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
6 9 (0.98%) Clustering
6 9 (0.98%) Driving Licence
6 9 (0.98%) NHS
7 8 (0.87%) Onboarding
7 8 (0.87%) 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%) iPad
11 4 (0.44%) Public Cloud
11 4 (0.44%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 39 (4.26%) Unix
2 13 (1.42%) Linux
3 2 (0.22%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.11%) VMS
4 1 (0.11%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 342 (37.38%) Data Pipeline
2 319 (34.86%) Analytics
3 317 (34.64%) ETL
4 294 (32.13%) Data Engineering
5 279 (30.49%) Data Modelling
6 178 (19.45%) Business Intelligence
7 177 (19.34%) CI/CD
8 152 (16.61%) Data Integration
9 147 (16.07%) Agile
10 129 (14.10%) Migration
11 128 (13.99%) Problem-Solving
12 112 (12.24%) DevOps
13 100 (10.93%) Validation
14 99 (10.82%) Data Governance
15 85 (9.29%) AI
16 79 (8.63%) Data Transformation
17 75 (8.20%) Decision-Making
18 74 (8.09%) Test Automation
19 67 (7.32%) Data Science
20 65 (7.10%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 427 (46.67%) SQL
2 278 (30.38%) Python
3 40 (4.37%) Java
4 37 (4.04%) PL/SQL
5 18 (1.97%) Shell Script
6 16 (1.75%) Bash
7 12 (1.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 12 (1.31%) T-SQL
8 10 (1.09%) 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
1 279 (30.49%) Security Cleared
2 229 (25.03%) SC Cleared
3 21 (2.30%) Degree
4 20 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (1.86%) DV Cleared
6 8 (0.87%) City & Guilds
7 7 (0.77%) Computer Science Degree
8 5 (0.55%) 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%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.11%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 192 (20.98%) Data Quality
2 21 (2.30%) QA
3 16 (1.75%) GDPR
4 10 (1.09%) SLA
5 8 (0.87%) 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 41 (4.48%) Docker
2 2 (0.22%) HDFS
2 2 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 56 (6.12%) Terraform
2 45 (4.92%) Kubernetes
3 36 (3.93%) Grafana
4 11 (1.20%) Prometheus
5 10 (1.09%) 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
1 142 (15.52%) Databricks
2 117 (12.79%) Oracle
3 102 (11.15%) Microsoft
3 102 (11.15%) Talend
4 77 (8.42%) Informatica
5 48 (5.25%) Denodo
6 34 (3.72%) Cisco
6 34 (3.72%) F5
7 18 (1.97%) SAP
8 17 (1.86%) Salesforce
9 15 (1.64%) ServiceNow
9 15 (1.64%) Splunk
10 14 (1.53%) Cloudera
11 11 (1.20%) Google
12 10 (1.09%) Sage
13 8 (0.87%) Alteryx
14 6 (0.66%) Dynatrace
14 6 (0.66%) Infor
14 6 (0.66%) InterSystems
15 4 (0.44%) Palantir