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 15 October 2025.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 125 100 134
Rank change year-on-year -25 +34 -9
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 750 891 928
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.26% 2.37% 1.95%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.49% 2.55% 2.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 534 621 695
10th Percentile £363 £363 £407
25th Percentile £413 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -3.64% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £650
90th Percentile £694 £688 £717
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 5 12
10th Percentile £25.34 £53.55 £35.06
25th Percentile £35.25 £60.00 £38.79
Median hourly rate £52.50 £95.00 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year -44.74% +53.85% +14.35%
75th Percentile £80.00 £97.50 £68.44
90th Percentile £105.50 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £60.00 £57.00
% change year-on-year -55.00% +5.26% +3.64%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,175 35,003 44,817
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.87% 92.96% 93.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,066 21,137 30,622
10th Percentile £275 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,652 1,436 1,528
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.08 £14.60
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £41.27 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -39.05% -8.30% +69.56%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £68.52 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £42.50 £44.50
% change year-on-year -41.18% -4.49% +97.78%

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 15 October 2025.

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 15 October 2025.

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 15 October 2025. 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 -32 628 £513 -6.82% 400
London -13 399 £525 -8.70% 151
UK excluding London -35 249 £475 -5.00% 353
Work from Home -22 239 £475 -7.32% 213
North of England -24 70 £475 -3.55% 107
Midlands -23 53 £500 +11.73% 44
Scotland +26 45 £450 -10.00% 19
West Midlands -20 41 £504 +2.81% 29
South West +15 39 £513 -4.65% 28
Yorkshire -12 34 £513 +5.67% 36
South East -31 33 £475 -12.64% 135
North West -26 29 £435 -10.77% 56
East Midlands -9 10 £463 +23.33% 15
Wales -12 9 £470 -6.00% 12
North East -3 8 £416 -28.85% 16
East of England -17 5 £625 +66.67% 15
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 2

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

For the 6 months to 15 October 2025, 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.

1 501 (66.80%) Python
2 458 (61.07%) SQL
3 352 (46.93%) Data Pipeline
4 336 (44.80%) Azure
5 310 (41.33%) ETL
6 291 (38.80%) Data Engineering
7 276 (36.80%) AWS
8 254 (33.87%) Data Modelling
9 234 (31.20%) Databricks
10 224 (29.87%) Analytics
11 219 (29.20%) CI/CD
12 185 (24.67%) Data Quality
13 177 (23.60%) Data Warehouse
14 166 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
15 161 (21.47%) Social Skills
16 152 (20.27%) DevOps
17 149 (19.87%) Security Cleared
18 148 (19.73%) Azure Data Factory
19 141 (18.80%) Agile
20 136 (18.13%) PySpark
20 136 (18.13%) Power Platform
21 135 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
22 133 (17.73%) Power BI
23 132 (17.60%) Apache Airflow
24 131 (17.47%) Data Science
25 128 (17.07%) Finance
26 117 (15.60%) SC Cleared
27 111 (14.80%) Snowflake
28 106 (14.13%) GCP
29 103 (13.73%) Analytical Skills

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
1 132 (17.60%) Apache Airflow
2 85 (11.33%) Apache Spark
3 67 (8.93%) Apache
4 24 (3.20%) Confluence
5 10 (1.33%) SAS
5 10 (1.33%) SharePoint
6 8 (1.07%) Oracle Application Server
7 6 (0.80%) Apache Pig
8 5 (0.67%) IIS
8 5 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 4 (0.53%) Luigi
10 3 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.27%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.27%) Documentum
12 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 6 (0.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.27%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.27%) Windchill
4 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.13%) SPSS
4 1 (0.13%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.40%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.27%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.13%) Endur
3 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.13%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.13%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.13%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 336 (44.80%) Azure
2 276 (36.80%) AWS
3 148 (19.73%) Azure Data Factory
4 136 (18.13%) Power Platform
5 111 (14.80%) Snowflake
6 106 (14.13%) GCP
7 101 (13.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 91 (12.13%) dbt
9 69 (9.20%) Amazon S3
10 68 (9.07%) GitHub
11 61 (8.13%) Serverless
12 49 (6.53%) Azure DevOps
13 37 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
14 34 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
15 18 (2.40%) AWS CloudFormation
16 16 (2.13%) Amazon EMR
16 16 (2.13%) Amazon Kinesis
16 16 (2.13%) Microsoft Purview
17 15 (2.00%) SaaS
18 12 (1.60%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.67%) Internet
1 5 (0.67%) TCP/IP
2 4 (0.53%) MQTT
2 4 (0.53%) SSH
3 3 (0.40%) Firewall
3 3 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.27%) DNS
4 2 (0.27%) LAN
4 2 (0.27%) SSL
4 2 (0.27%) WAN
5 1 (0.13%) 802.11
5 1 (0.13%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.13%) Structured Cabling
5 1 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 177 (23.60%) Data Warehouse
2 133 (17.73%) Power BI
3 102 (13.60%) Data Lake
4 77 (10.27%) Big Data
5 64 (8.53%) SQL Server
6 58 (7.73%) Hadoop
6 58 (7.73%) PostgreSQL
7 48 (6.40%) NoSQL
8 47 (6.27%) Relational Database
9 46 (6.13%) Delta Lake
10 41 (5.47%) Amazon Redshift
11 37 (4.93%) BigQuery
12 34 (4.53%) Tableau
13 33 (4.40%) Azure SQL Database
14 29 (3.87%) Metadata
15 23 (3.07%) Elasticsearch
15 23 (3.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 23 (3.07%) Star Schema
16 21 (2.80%) Snowflake Schema
17 16 (2.13%) Apache Hive
Development Applications
1 85 (11.33%) Git
2 45 (6.00%) Jenkins
3 36 (4.80%) JIRA
4 27 (3.60%) GitLab
5 16 (2.13%) MLflow
6 7 (0.93%) DBeaver
7 6 (0.80%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.80%) Visual Studio Code
8 5 (0.67%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.67%) Terragrunt
9 4 (0.53%) Poetry
10 3 (0.40%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.40%) PyCharm
10 3 (0.40%) Sonatype Nexus
10 3 (0.40%) Visual Studio
11 2 (0.27%) Cucumber
11 2 (0.27%) JMeter
11 2 (0.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.27%) Zephyr
12 1 (0.13%) Gradle
General
1 161 (21.47%) Social Skills
2 128 (17.07%) Finance
3 103 (13.73%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (7.60%) Public Sector
5 41 (5.47%) Banking
6 16 (2.13%) Retail
7 14 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (1.87%) Telecoms
8 13 (1.73%) Investment Banking
8 13 (1.73%) Marketing
9 9 (1.20%) Front Office
10 8 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
11 7 (0.93%) Financial Institution
11 7 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (0.67%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.67%) Retail Banking
12 5 (0.67%) Tech for Good
13 4 (0.53%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (18.13%) PySpark
2 76 (10.13%) Kafka
3 20 (2.67%) Apache NiFi
4 19 (2.53%) Pandas
5 17 (2.27%) RESTful
6 15 (2.00%) JSON
7 14 (1.87%) NumPy
8 13 (1.73%) Flask
9 12 (1.60%) XML
10 11 (1.47%) HTML
10 11 (1.47%) RabbitMQ
11 10 (1.33%) PyTorch
11 10 (1.33%) REST
12 9 (1.20%) Jinja
12 9 (1.20%) OpenTelemetry
13 8 (1.07%) Elastic Stack
13 8 (1.07%) pytest
13 8 (1.07%) TensorFlow
13 8 (1.07%) YAML
14 7 (0.93%) Oracle GoldenGate
Miscellaneous
1 42 (5.60%) Cloud Native
2 26 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
3 22 (2.93%) Algorithms
4 21 (2.80%) Data Structures
5 17 (2.27%) Product Ownership
5 17 (2.27%) Replication
6 13 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (1.60%) Distributed Computing
8 10 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (1.20%) IoT
9 9 (1.20%) Onboarding
10 8 (1.07%) Distributed Systems
10 8 (1.07%) Reinsurance
11 7 (0.93%) Hybrid Cloud
11 7 (0.93%) Life Science
11 7 (0.93%) Linux Command Line
12 6 (0.80%) NHS
12 6 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (0.67%) AI Agents
13 5 (0.67%) Data Fabric
Operating Systems
1 30 (4.00%) Linux
2 16 (2.13%) Unix
3 3 (0.40%) Windows
4 2 (0.27%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.27%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 352 (46.93%) Data Pipeline
2 310 (41.33%) ETL
3 291 (38.80%) Data Engineering
4 254 (33.87%) Data Modelling
5 224 (29.87%) Analytics
6 219 (29.20%) CI/CD
7 166 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
8 152 (20.27%) DevOps
9 141 (18.80%) Agile
10 135 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
11 131 (17.47%) Data Science
12 101 (13.47%) Machine Learning
13 100 (13.33%) Data Governance
14 93 (12.40%) AI
15 90 (12.00%) Infrastructure as Code
15 90 (12.00%) Visualisation
16 88 (11.73%) Data Transformation
17 87 (11.60%) Data Integration
18 78 (10.40%) Migration
19 70 (9.33%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 501 (66.80%) Python
2 458 (61.07%) SQL
3 70 (9.33%) Java
4 62 (8.27%) Scala
5 24 (3.20%) Bash
6 15 (2.00%) PL/SQL
7 12 (1.60%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.60%) R
7 12 (1.60%) Shell Script
8 11 (1.47%) T-SQL
9 10 (1.33%) C#
10 9 (1.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 7 (0.93%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.80%) Go
13 5 (0.67%) PowerShell
14 4 (0.53%) C++
14 4 (0.53%) Groovy
15 2 (0.27%) ABAP
15 2 (0.27%) Bicep
16 1 (0.13%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 149 (19.87%) Security Cleared
2 117 (15.60%) SC Cleared
3 44 (5.87%) Degree
4 26 (3.47%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.67%) Azure Certification
6 18 (2.40%) AWS Certification
7 17 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.73%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.20%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.40%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.27%) MCP
12 1 (0.13%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.13%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.13%) HND
12 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.13%) PhD
12 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 185 (24.67%) Data Quality
2 30 (4.00%) GDPR
3 19 (2.53%) QA
4 10 (1.33%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.53%) NIST
6 3 (0.40%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.40%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 3 (0.40%) SLA
7 2 (0.27%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.27%) EMIR
7 2 (0.27%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.27%) MiFID
8 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.13%) HL7
8 1 (0.13%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.13%) PMO
8 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
System Software
1 50 (6.67%) Docker
2 6 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.67%) zsh
4 2 (0.27%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 94 (12.53%) Terraform
2 52 (6.93%) Kubernetes
3 14 (1.87%) Ansible
4 13 (1.73%) Grafana
5 9 (1.20%) NetBackup
6 6 (0.80%) Kibana
6 6 (0.80%) Prometheus
7 5 (0.67%) logstash
7 5 (0.67%) Puppet
8 4 (0.53%) Argo
9 3 (0.40%) Ambari
9 3 (0.40%) Istio
9 3 (0.40%) Kustomize
9 3 (0.40%) ZABBIX
10 2 (0.27%) Control-M
10 2 (0.27%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.13%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 234 (31.20%) Databricks
2 89 (11.87%) Microsoft
3 47 (6.27%) Oracle
4 32 (4.27%) Google
5 31 (4.13%) Palantir
6 28 (3.73%) Foundry
7 20 (2.67%) Informatica
8 19 (2.53%) Cloudera
9 16 (2.13%) Talend
10 13 (1.73%) SAP
11 12 (1.60%) Red Hat
12 10 (1.33%) Commvault
13 9 (1.20%) Salesforce
14 8 (1.07%) IBM
14 8 (1.07%) Splunk
14 8 (1.07%) Veritas
15 7 (0.93%) Confluent
15 7 (0.93%) MicroStrategy
16 6 (0.80%) Denodo
16 6 (0.80%) ServiceNow