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 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 66 118 97
Rank change year-on-year +52 -21 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,930 752 959
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.66% 2.30% 2.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.95% 2.52% 2.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,305 538 718
10th Percentile £375 £369 £219
25th Percentile £425 £425 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £519
Median % change year-on-year - -3.65% -5.65%
75th Percentile £588 £582 £613
90th Percentile £650 £685 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 10 35
10th Percentile £20.30 £18.18 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.88 £44.50 £48.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.83 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +63.27%

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 48,829 29,898 38,441
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.63% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,477 19,026 24,867
10th Percentile £325 £283 £295
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £730 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,429 2,436
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +73.72% -37.13% -8.57%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.52 £73.75 £74.47
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +4.53%

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 22 July 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 22 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 17 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 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
England +58 1,701 £500 - 423
UK excluding London +86 912 £469 -1.26% 304
London +32 822 £525 - 182
Work from Home +43 574 £500 +5.26% 172
Midlands +57 383 £459 -0.22% 43
West Midlands +52 336 £459 -0.22% 29
North of England +21 228 £478 +0.53% 85
North West +23 133 £525 +10.53% 41
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 - 20
East Midlands +18 47 £475 +13.10% 14
East of England +4 33 £565 +78.52% 14
North East -20 23 £515 +17.71% 24
Wales -1 19 £475 +6.74% 13
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

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 featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 994 (51.50%) SQL
2 845 (43.78%) Python
3 814 (42.18%) Data Pipeline
4 717 (37.15%) Data Engineering
5 697 (36.11%) Analytics
6 677 (35.08%) ETL
7 642 (33.26%) Data Modelling
8 597 (30.93%) Azure
9 548 (28.39%) AWS
10 519 (26.89%) Security Cleared
11 472 (24.46%) Data Quality
12 453 (23.47%) CI/CD
13 449 (23.26%) SC Cleared
14 373 (19.33%) Databricks
15 353 (18.29%) Business Intelligence
16 339 (17.56%) Agile
17 322 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
18 312 (16.17%) DevOps
19 300 (15.54%) Migration
20 283 (14.66%) Power Platform
21 269 (13.94%) Data Governance
22 268 (13.89%) Power BI
23 261 (13.52%) PySpark
24 244 (12.64%) Microsoft
25 229 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
26 228 (11.81%) AI
27 225 (11.66%) Validation
28 224 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
29 218 (11.30%) Data Integration
30 204 (10.57%) Snowflake

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
1 177 (9.17%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (7.72%) Apache Spark
3 112 (5.80%) Apache
4 85 (4.40%) SAS
5 51 (2.64%) Confluence
6 12 (0.62%) Palantir Foundry
6 12 (0.62%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.052%) Camunda
9 1 (0.052%) Liferay
9 1 (0.052%) Luigi
9 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.62%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.052%) iTrent
6 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.052%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.052%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 597 (30.93%) Azure
2 548 (28.39%) AWS
3 283 (14.66%) Power Platform
4 229 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 204 (10.57%) Snowflake
6 192 (9.95%) dbt
7 171 (8.86%) Amazon S3
7 171 (8.86%) GCP
8 150 (7.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 136 (7.05%) Azure DevOps
10 121 (6.27%) Serverless
11 108 (5.60%) GitHub
12 102 (5.28%) AWS Lambda
13 56 (2.90%) Amazon EMR
14 45 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
15 35 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 27 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
16 27 (1.40%) Matillion
17 26 (1.35%) Amazon Kinesis
18 24 (1.24%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.66%) DNS
1 32 (1.66%) VPN
2 31 (1.61%) BGP
2 31 (1.61%) DMZ
2 31 (1.61%) Multicast
3 10 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 8 (0.41%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.21%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.052%) 4G
7 1 (0.052%) 5G
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 322 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
2 268 (13.89%) Power BI
3 175 (9.07%) Data Lake
4 105 (5.44%) Amazon Redshift
5 103 (5.34%) Metadata
6 97 (5.03%) BigQuery
6 97 (5.03%) SQL Server
7 91 (4.72%) Delta Lake
8 87 (4.51%) Big Data
8 87 (4.51%) Pentaho
9 74 (3.83%) Tableau
10 70 (3.63%) Amazon Athena
11 66 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
11 66 (3.42%) Snowflake Schema
12 57 (2.95%) Azure SQL Database
13 55 (2.85%) Relational Database
13 55 (2.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 53 (2.75%) NoSQL
15 38 (1.97%) Hadoop
16 36 (1.87%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 184 (9.53%) Git
2 97 (5.03%) GitLab
3 86 (4.46%) JIRA
4 47 (2.44%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.41%) MLflow
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.10%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.052%) ERwin
11 1 (0.052%) JUnit
11 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.052%) Selenium
General
1 309 (16.01%) Finance
2 301 (15.60%) Social Skills
3 215 (11.14%) Analytical Skills
4 161 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 106 (5.49%) Banking
6 35 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 35 (1.81%) Marketing
7 29 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (1.40%) Retail
9 26 (1.35%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.19%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.98%) Manufacturing
12 17 (0.88%) Automotive
12 17 (0.88%) Front Office
12 17 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.73%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.57%) Publishing
15 10 (0.52%) Legal
16 9 (0.47%) Billing
17 8 (0.41%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (13.52%) PySpark
2 142 (7.36%) Kafka
3 37 (1.92%) Pandas
4 35 (1.81%) JSON
5 27 (1.40%) REST
6 22 (1.14%) Spring
6 22 (1.14%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.09%) Great Expectations
7 21 (1.09%) XML
8 18 (0.93%) Apache Beam
8 18 (0.93%) YAML
9 13 (0.67%) Apache Avro
9 13 (0.67%) React
10 12 (0.62%) RESTful
10 12 (0.62%) Streamlit
11 11 (0.57%) scikit-learn
12 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.52%) pytest
13 9 (0.47%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.47%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.20%) Cloud Native
2 70 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
3 62 (3.21%) Data Structures
4 35 (1.81%) Onboarding
5 34 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (1.30%) NHS
7 24 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
8 21 (1.09%) Product Ownership
9 19 (0.98%) Clustering
9 19 (0.98%) Reinsurance
10 18 (0.93%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (0.67%) Reference Data
12 11 (0.57%) Life Science
12 11 (0.57%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.52%) Algorithms
13 10 (0.52%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.52%) Replication
13 10 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.47%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 67 (3.47%) Unix
2 47 (2.44%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 814 (42.18%) Data Pipeline
2 717 (37.15%) Data Engineering
3 697 (36.11%) Analytics
4 677 (35.08%) ETL
5 642 (33.26%) Data Modelling
6 453 (23.47%) CI/CD
7 353 (18.29%) Business Intelligence
8 339 (17.56%) Agile
9 312 (16.17%) DevOps
10 300 (15.54%) Migration
11 269 (13.94%) Data Governance
12 228 (11.81%) AI
13 225 (11.66%) Validation
14 224 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
15 218 (11.30%) Data Integration
16 193 (10.00%) Data Science
17 188 (9.74%) Data Transformation
18 174 (9.02%) Decision-Making
19 152 (7.88%) Test Automation
20 148 (7.67%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 994 (51.50%) SQL
2 845 (43.78%) Python
3 124 (6.42%) Java
4 60 (3.11%) Scala
5 58 (3.01%) PL/SQL
6 38 (1.97%) T-SQL
7 37 (1.92%) Shell Script
8 30 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.40%) Bash
10 26 (1.35%) C#
11 24 (1.24%) PowerShell
12 16 (0.83%) JavaScript
13 14 (0.73%) R
14 13 (0.67%) Bicep
15 8 (0.41%) TypeScript
16 7 (0.36%) Go
17 2 (0.10%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.10%) LookML
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 519 (26.89%) Security Cleared
2 449 (23.26%) SC Cleared
3 50 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 47 (2.44%) Degree
5 25 (1.30%) Azure Certification
6 24 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 19 (0.98%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.73%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.36%) CISSP
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
13 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
14 4 (0.21%) CEH
15 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
16 1 (0.052%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (24.46%) Data Quality
2 60 (3.11%) QA
3 52 (2.69%) GDPR
4 23 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.62%) SLA
6 9 (0.47%) FATCA
7 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.16%) GMP
10 3 (0.16%) MiFID
11 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.10%) EMIR
11 2 (0.10%) PMO
11 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.10%) WCAG
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 101 (5.23%) Docker
2 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 187 (9.69%) Terraform
2 83 (4.30%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.64%) Grafana
4 14 (0.73%) Ansible
5 13 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.47%) Kibana
7 6 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.16%) Rancher
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.10%) logstash
9 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.052%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.052%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.052%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.052%) Puppet
10 1 (0.052%) QRadar
Vendors
1 373 (19.33%) Databricks
2 244 (12.64%) Microsoft
3 168 (8.70%) Oracle
4 139 (7.20%) Informatica
5 123 (6.37%) Talend
6 66 (3.42%) Denodo
6 66 (3.42%) Google
7 33 (1.71%) Cisco
7 33 (1.71%) F5
7 33 (1.71%) SAP
8 28 (1.45%) Salesforce
9 25 (1.30%) Splunk
10 23 (1.19%) Palantir
11 18 (0.93%) Cloudera
12 16 (0.83%) Foundry
12 16 (0.83%) ServiceNow
13 14 (0.73%) IBM
14 12 (0.62%) Sage
15 10 (0.52%) Alteryx
16 9 (0.47%) MuleSoft