Data Engineer Contract Job Trends

Data Engineer
UK

The median Data Engineer daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 131 98
Rank change year-on-year +61 -33 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,895 719 895
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.49% 2.18% 2.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.78% 2.40% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,262 511 634
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £625
90th Percentile £674 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 14 9
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £75.63 -
90th Percentile £70.90 £103.25 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +53.91% -66.25% +40.35%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. 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 with a recognized job title 50,111 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,702 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,778 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +5.88%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer over the 6 months to 16 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 16 September 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
England +62 1,661 £500 - 1,827
UK excluding London +93 855 £475 - 944
London +25 830 £525 - 982
Work from Home +51 550 £500 +3.90% 730
Midlands +79 341 £469 +4.22% 130
West Midlands +63 271 £469 +6.59% 89
North of England +22 200 £500 +5.26% 300
South East +27 131 £459 -4.62% 203
North West +20 110 £525 +10.53% 166
South West +11 99 £525 +5.00% 97
Yorkshire -1 73 £475 -6.17% 95
East Midlands +37 70 £450 +1.98% 41
Scotland 0 63 £425 -8.11% 89
East of England +13 40 £463 -38.33% 75
North East -27 18 £510 +20.71% 39
Wales 0 17 £513 +8.47% 16
Northern Ireland +4 2 £410 -18.00% 36
Channel Islands - 1 - -

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 September 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 featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 951 (50.18%) SQL
2 825 (43.54%) Python
3 824 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
4 740 (39.05%) Data Engineering
5 662 (34.93%) Data Modelling
6 658 (34.72%) ETL
7 652 (34.41%) Analytics
8 583 (30.77%) Azure
9 582 (30.71%) AWS
10 484 (25.54%) Data Quality
10 484 (25.54%) Security Cleared
11 451 (23.80%) CI/CD
12 421 (22.22%) SC Cleared
13 398 (21.00%) Databricks
14 333 (17.57%) Agile
15 323 (17.04%) Data Warehouse
16 311 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
17 307 (16.20%) DevOps
18 306 (16.15%) Migration
19 293 (15.46%) AI
20 265 (13.98%) Data Governance
21 264 (13.93%) PySpark
22 253 (13.35%) Power Platform
23 247 (13.03%) Power BI
24 245 (12.93%) Data Transformation
25 241 (12.72%) Data Integration
25 241 (12.72%) Microsoft
26 237 (12.51%) Validation
27 232 (12.24%) Snowflake
28 225 (11.87%) dbt

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 212 (11.19%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (7.92%) Apache Spark
3 130 (6.86%) Apache
4 58 (3.06%) SAS
5 47 (2.48%) Confluence
6 16 (0.84%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.11%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.11%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.11%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.053%) Liferay
10 1 (0.053%) Luigi
10 1 (0.053%) nginx
10 1 (0.053%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.053%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
3 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.32%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.11%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.11%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.11%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.053%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.053%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.053%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.053%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.053%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.053%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 583 (30.77%) Azure
2 582 (30.71%) AWS
3 253 (13.35%) Power Platform
4 232 (12.24%) Snowflake
5 225 (11.87%) dbt
6 212 (11.19%) Azure Data Factory
7 191 (10.08%) GCP
8 171 (9.02%) Amazon S3
9 134 (7.07%) Serverless
10 123 (6.49%) Azure DevOps
11 121 (6.39%) AWS Lambda
11 121 (6.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 112 (5.91%) GitHub
13 67 (3.54%) Azure Databricks
14 54 (2.85%) Amazon EMR
15 45 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
16 40 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (1.64%) AWS Step Functions
18 29 (1.53%) Amazon Kinesis
18 29 (1.53%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.32%) BGP
1 25 (1.32%) DMZ
1 25 (1.32%) DNS
1 25 (1.32%) Multicast
1 25 (1.32%) VPN
2 10 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
3 8 (0.42%) Firewall
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.053%) HTTP
7 1 (0.053%) LTE
7 1 (0.053%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 323 (17.04%) Data Warehouse
2 247 (13.03%) Power BI
3 161 (8.50%) Data Lake
4 135 (7.12%) Metadata
5 113 (5.96%) BigQuery
6 92 (4.85%) Amazon Redshift
7 84 (4.43%) Delta Lake
8 83 (4.38%) Amazon Athena
9 81 (4.27%) SQL Server
10 75 (3.96%) Big Data
11 66 (3.48%) Pentaho
12 65 (3.43%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (3.17%) Relational Database
13 60 (3.17%) Tableau
14 59 (3.11%) Snowflake Schema
15 49 (2.59%) NoSQL
16 43 (2.27%) Azure SQL Database
16 43 (2.27%) Oracle Database
17 40 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (2.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 167 (8.81%) Git
2 100 (5.28%) GitLab
3 72 (3.80%) JIRA
4 34 (1.79%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.06%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.42%) Postman
8 7 (0.37%) Bitbucket
9 6 (0.32%) SonarQube
10 5 (0.26%) Selenium
11 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
11 4 (0.21%) ERwin
12 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 3 (0.16%) Newman
12 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
13 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
13 2 (0.11%) RStudio
13 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
13 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
14 1 (0.053%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 312 (16.46%) Social Skills
2 304 (16.04%) Finance
3 211 (11.13%) Analytical Skills
4 160 (8.44%) Public Sector
5 117 (6.17%) Banking
6 34 (1.79%) Marketing
7 31 (1.64%) Retail
8 29 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
9 23 (1.21%) Telecoms
10 21 (1.11%) Automotive
10 21 (1.11%) Front Office
10 21 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 20 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.00%) Law
13 17 (0.90%) Manufacturing
13 17 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (0.69%) Police
15 12 (0.63%) Legal
16 10 (0.53%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (13.93%) PySpark
2 192 (10.13%) Terraform
3 127 (6.70%) Kafka
4 33 (1.74%) JSON
4 33 (1.74%) REST
5 28 (1.48%) Pandas
6 23 (1.21%) Spring
6 23 (1.21%) Spring Boot
6 23 (1.21%) XML
7 19 (1.00%) Great Expectations
8 18 (0.95%) Apache Beam
9 15 (0.79%) LangChain
9 15 (0.79%) React
10 14 (0.74%) RESTful
11 12 (0.63%) pytest
12 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.53%) .NET
13 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.53%) PyTorch
13 10 (0.53%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 147 (7.76%) Cloud Native
2 67 (3.54%) Data Structures
3 63 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
4 45 (2.37%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.37%) AI Agents
5 26 (1.37%) Product Ownership
6 24 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (1.21%) NHS
8 22 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
9 19 (1.00%) Reference Data
10 18 (0.95%) Management Information System
11 16 (0.84%) Reinsurance
12 14 (0.74%) Algorithms
13 11 (0.58%) Clustering
13 11 (0.58%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.53%) Data Fabric
14 10 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
14 10 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
15 9 (0.47%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 60 (3.17%) Unix
2 43 (2.27%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.053%) VMS
5 1 (0.053%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 824 (43.48%) Data Pipeline
2 740 (39.05%) Data Engineering
3 662 (34.93%) Data Modelling
4 658 (34.72%) ETL
5 652 (34.41%) Analytics
6 451 (23.80%) CI/CD
7 333 (17.57%) Agile
8 311 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
9 307 (16.20%) DevOps
10 306 (16.15%) Migration
11 293 (15.46%) AI
12 265 (13.98%) Data Governance
13 245 (12.93%) Data Transformation
14 241 (12.72%) Data Integration
15 237 (12.51%) Validation
16 206 (10.87%) Problem-Solving
17 176 (9.29%) Machine Learning
18 173 (9.13%) Lakehouse
19 171 (9.02%) Data Science
19 171 (9.02%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 951 (50.18%) SQL
2 825 (43.54%) Python
3 113 (5.96%) Java
4 70 (3.69%) Scala
5 51 (2.69%) PL/SQL
6 34 (1.79%) T-SQL
7 33 (1.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 29 (1.53%) Shell Script
9 22 (1.16%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.16%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.11%) Bash
11 14 (0.74%) R
12 11 (0.58%) C#
13 10 (0.53%) Bicep
14 9 (0.47%) TypeScript
15 7 (0.37%) Go
16 5 (0.26%) Korn
17 3 (0.16%) COBOL
17 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
17 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 484 (25.54%) Security Cleared
2 421 (22.22%) SC Cleared
3 49 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.11%) Degree
5 26 (1.37%) DV Cleared
6 23 (1.21%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 10 (0.53%) SnowPro
10 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.37%) Master's Degree
13 6 (0.32%) CISM
13 6 (0.32%) CISSP
14 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
14 5 (0.26%) CEH
15 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
16 1 (0.053%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.053%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (25.54%) Data Quality
2 72 (3.80%) QA
3 38 (2.01%) GDPR
4 17 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.32%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.16%) MiFID
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.053%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.053%) IFRS
11 1 (0.053%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.053%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.053%) PMO
11 1 (0.053%) SOC 2
System Software
1 113 (5.96%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.053%) RACF
Systems Management
1 86 (4.54%) Kubernetes
2 38 (2.01%) Grafana
3 17 (0.90%) Ansible
4 13 (0.69%) Control-M
5 10 (0.53%) Kibana
6 6 (0.32%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.11%) logstash
7 2 (0.11%) Puppet
8 1 (0.053%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 398 (21.00%) Databricks
2 241 (12.72%) Microsoft
3 160 (8.44%) Oracle
4 101 (5.33%) Informatica
5 94 (4.96%) Talend
6 81 (4.27%) Google
7 51 (2.69%) Denodo
8 35 (1.85%) Salesforce
9 26 (1.37%) Palantir
9 26 (1.37%) SAP
10 25 (1.32%) Cisco
10 25 (1.32%) F5
11 24 (1.27%) Foundry
12 15 (0.79%) Splunk
13 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
13 9 (0.47%) IBM
14 8 (0.42%) Alteryx
14 8 (0.42%) OpenAI
14 8 (0.42%) Sage
15 7 (0.37%) Cloudera