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 23 September 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 126 95
Rank change year-on-year +57 -31 +29
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,908 717 899
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 2.19% 2.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.77% 2.41% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,274 511 639
10th Percentile £375 £363 £374
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 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 13 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £57.31
Median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.05% -34.38% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.75 £80.00 £84.38
90th Percentile £71.50 £105.50 £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 50,606 29,766 35,027
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.26% 91.04% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,920 18,783 21,484
10th Percentile £325 £276 £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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £733 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,907 1,587 1,616
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.79
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.69
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.65 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £43.97
% change year-on-year +69.49% -42.97% +0.50%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +69 1,674 £500 -2.44% 1,639
UK excluding London +92 864 £475 - 873
London +32 834 £525 - 846
Work from Home +44 551 £500 +1.78% 660
Midlands +77 338 £469 +1.41% 132
West Midlands +68 266 £469 -0.21% 85
North of England +26 208 £510 +7.37% 280
South East +27 127 £459 +2.00% 197
North West +19 109 £525 +10.53% 165
South West +22 105 £525 +5.00% 88
Yorkshire +4 80 £500 - 73
East Midlands +30 72 £419 -9.46% 47
Scotland +3 66 £440 -4.86% 70
East of England +6 40 £475 -36.67% 54
North East -24 20 £450 +8.11% 42
Wales -3 17 £513 +3.54% 15
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 37
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 23 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.

1 961 (50.37%) SQL
2 827 (43.34%) Python
3 826 (43.29%) Data Pipeline
4 743 (38.94%) Data Engineering
5 667 (34.96%) Data Modelling
6 665 (34.85%) ETL
7 655 (34.33%) Analytics
8 591 (30.97%) AWS
9 589 (30.87%) Azure
10 488 (25.58%) Security Cleared
11 485 (25.42%) Data Quality
12 450 (23.58%) CI/CD
13 422 (22.12%) SC Cleared
14 403 (21.12%) Databricks
15 339 (17.77%) Agile
16 323 (16.93%) Data Warehouse
17 309 (16.19%) Migration
18 307 (16.09%) Business Intelligence
18 307 (16.09%) DevOps
19 298 (15.62%) AI
20 262 (13.73%) PySpark
21 257 (13.47%) Data Governance
22 251 (13.16%) Data Transformation
23 249 (13.05%) Validation
24 248 (13.00%) Power Platform
25 247 (12.95%) Data Integration
26 245 (12.84%) Microsoft
27 241 (12.63%) Power BI
28 236 (12.37%) Snowflake
29 230 (12.05%) 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
1 215 (11.27%) Apache Airflow
2 155 (8.12%) Apache Spark
3 133 (6.97%) Apache
4 59 (3.09%) SAS
5 47 (2.46%) Confluence
6 18 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.68%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) nginx
11 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.052%) 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 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) 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 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.052%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 591 (30.97%) AWS
2 589 (30.87%) Azure
3 248 (13.00%) Power Platform
4 236 (12.37%) Snowflake
5 230 (12.05%) dbt
6 214 (11.22%) Azure Data Factory
7 193 (10.12%) GCP
8 170 (8.91%) Amazon S3
9 134 (7.02%) Serverless
10 122 (6.39%) Azure DevOps
11 121 (6.34%) AWS Lambda
11 121 (6.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 107 (5.61%) GitHub
13 66 (3.46%) Azure Databricks
14 55 (2.88%) Amazon EMR
15 46 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
18 29 (1.52%) Amazon Kinesis
19 28 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.21%) BGP
1 23 (1.21%) DMZ
1 23 (1.21%) DNS
1 23 (1.21%) Multicast
1 23 (1.21%) VPN
2 8 (0.42%) Firewall
3 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
3 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
4 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.21%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.21%) Wireless
6 1 (0.052%) HTTP
6 1 (0.052%) LTE
6 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 323 (16.93%) Data Warehouse
2 241 (12.63%) Power BI
3 162 (8.49%) Data Lake
4 131 (6.87%) Metadata
5 114 (5.97%) BigQuery
6 92 (4.82%) Amazon Redshift
7 86 (4.51%) Delta Lake
8 85 (4.45%) Amazon Athena
9 78 (4.09%) Big Data
9 78 (4.09%) SQL Server
10 67 (3.51%) PostgreSQL
11 66 (3.46%) Pentaho
12 60 (3.14%) Relational Database
12 60 (3.14%) Snowflake Schema
13 57 (2.99%) Tableau
14 53 (2.78%) NoSQL
15 43 (2.25%) Oracle Database
16 41 (2.15%) Azure SQL Database
17 39 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 174 (9.12%) Git
2 98 (5.14%) GitLab
3 70 (3.67%) JIRA
4 36 (1.89%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.10%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.42%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) Selenium
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.21%) ERwin
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
10 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.10%) RStudio
11 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 316 (16.56%) Social Skills
2 302 (15.83%) Finance
3 217 (11.37%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (8.70%) Public Sector
5 124 (6.50%) Banking
6 34 (1.78%) Marketing
7 32 (1.68%) Retail
8 29 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (1.21%) Investment Banking
10 22 (1.15%) Aerospace
10 22 (1.15%) Automotive
10 22 (1.15%) Front Office
10 22 (1.15%) Telecoms
11 20 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
11 20 (1.05%) Law
12 18 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 17 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (0.68%) Police
15 12 (0.63%) Legal
15 12 (0.63%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (13.73%) PySpark
2 194 (10.17%) Terraform
3 128 (6.71%) Kafka
4 33 (1.73%) REST
5 30 (1.57%) JSON
6 29 (1.52%) Pandas
7 23 (1.21%) Spring
7 23 (1.21%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.15%) XML
9 18 (0.94%) Apache Beam
9 18 (0.94%) Great Expectations
10 16 (0.84%) LangChain
11 14 (0.73%) RESTful
12 13 (0.68%) pytest
12 13 (0.68%) React
13 11 (0.58%) PyTorch
13 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
14 10 (0.52%) .NET
14 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
15 9 (0.47%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.76%) Cloud Native
2 68 (3.56%) Data Structures
3 62 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
4 49 (2.57%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.36%) AI Agents
6 25 (1.31%) Product Ownership
7 23 (1.21%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (1.21%) NHS
8 22 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
9 19 (1.00%) Reference Data
10 18 (0.94%) Management Information System
11 16 (0.84%) Reinsurance
12 15 (0.79%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.52%) Data Fabric
15 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
16 9 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
16 9 (0.47%) Distributed Computing
16 9 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 62 (3.25%) Unix
2 43 (2.25%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
5 1 (0.052%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 826 (43.29%) Data Pipeline
2 743 (38.94%) Data Engineering
3 667 (34.96%) Data Modelling
4 665 (34.85%) ETL
5 655 (34.33%) Analytics
6 450 (23.58%) CI/CD
7 339 (17.77%) Agile
8 309 (16.19%) Migration
9 307 (16.09%) Business Intelligence
9 307 (16.09%) DevOps
10 298 (15.62%) AI
11 257 (13.47%) Data Governance
12 251 (13.16%) Data Transformation
13 249 (13.05%) Validation
14 247 (12.95%) Data Integration
15 205 (10.74%) Problem-Solving
16 181 (9.49%) Machine Learning
17 175 (9.17%) Data Science
18 171 (8.96%) Decision-Making
18 171 (8.96%) Lakehouse
Programming Languages
1 961 (50.37%) SQL
2 827 (43.34%) Python
3 107 (5.61%) Java
4 72 (3.77%) Scala
5 51 (2.67%) PL/SQL
6 35 (1.83%) T-SQL
7 32 (1.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 30 (1.57%) Shell Script
9 24 (1.26%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.15%) Bash
10 22 (1.15%) JavaScript
11 15 (0.79%) R
12 10 (0.52%) Bicep
12 10 (0.52%) C#
13 9 (0.47%) TypeScript
14 8 (0.42%) Go
15 5 (0.26%) Korn
16 3 (0.16%) COBOL
16 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 488 (25.58%) Security Cleared
2 422 (22.12%) SC Cleared
3 52 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
4 39 (2.04%) Degree
5 29 (1.52%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 20 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 9 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.42%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.31%) CISM
11 6 (0.31%) CISSP
12 5 (0.26%) CEH
13 4 (0.21%) City & Guilds
13 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.052%) Numerate Degree
14 1 (0.052%) Tableau Certification
14 1 (0.052%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 485 (25.42%) Data Quality
2 74 (3.88%) QA
3 36 (1.89%) GDPR
4 17 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.16%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.052%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.052%) PMO
System Software
1 115 (6.03%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.052%) HDFS
4 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 87 (4.56%) Kubernetes
2 39 (2.04%) Grafana
3 18 (0.94%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
4 13 (0.68%) Kibana
5 6 (0.31%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.10%) logstash
6 2 (0.10%) Puppet
7 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 403 (21.12%) Databricks
2 245 (12.84%) Microsoft
3 164 (8.60%) Oracle
4 102 (5.35%) Informatica
5 93 (4.87%) Talend
6 83 (4.35%) Google
7 50 (2.62%) Denodo
8 35 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 29 (1.52%) Palantir
10 27 (1.42%) Foundry
11 26 (1.36%) SAP
12 23 (1.21%) Cisco
12 23 (1.21%) F5
13 15 (0.79%) Splunk
14 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
14 9 (0.47%) IBM
14 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.42%) Cloudera
15 8 (0.42%) Sage
16 7 (0.37%) InterSystems