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 8 November 2025.

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

6 months to
8 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 125 94 124
Rank change year-on-year -31 +30 +1
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 800 917 934
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.29% 2.51% 1.99%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.51% 2.70% 2.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 633 692
10th Percentile £358 £366 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £530
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +1.42% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £695 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 8 13
10th Percentile £25.42 £25.90 £35.13
25th Percentile £34.13 £26.44 £39.85
Median hourly rate £48.00 £55.25 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.12% -12.30% +8.62%
75th Percentile £77.31 £97.50 £68.00
90th Percentile £103.25 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £57.00
% change year-on-year +41.51% -53.51% -5.00%

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 31,811 33,985 44,100
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.91% 92.88% 93.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,179 20,513 30,002
10th Percentile £278 £300 £295
25th Percentile £402 £412 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £743
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,817 1,273 1,546
10th Percentile £14.03 £15.10 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.69 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.50 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.10% -17.98% +53.98%
75th Percentile £51.25 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.65 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.25 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.65% -20.79% +85.42%

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 8 November 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 8 November 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 8 November 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 -30 678 £513 -6.82% 1,202
London -14 418 £525 -8.70% 657
UK excluding London -44 277 £475 -5.00% 888
Work from Home -31 250 £500 -4.76% 523
North of England -19 79 £450 -8.63% 127
Midlands -21 72 £510 +4.62% 70
West Midlands -28 58 £517 +5.46% 57
Scotland +29 45 £425 -15.00% 32
South West +7 38 £550 -4.35% 45
Yorkshire -26 36 £500 +3.09% 43
South East -41 36 £463 -14.94% 564
North West -17 35 £403 -17.44% 77
East Midlands -14 13 £460 +29.21% 11
Wales -18 10 £425 -15.00% 16
North East -4 8 £425 -27.35% 7
East of England -22 6 £625 +79.86% 39
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 5

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

For the 6 months to 8 November 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.

1 524 (65.50%) Python
2 490 (61.25%) SQL
3 374 (46.75%) Data Pipeline
4 346 (43.25%) Azure
5 327 (40.88%) ETL
6 313 (39.13%) Data Engineering
7 287 (35.88%) AWS
8 283 (35.38%) Data Modelling
9 247 (30.88%) Databricks
10 244 (30.50%) CI/CD
11 241 (30.13%) Analytics
12 206 (25.75%) Data Quality
13 193 (24.13%) Data Warehouse
14 181 (22.63%) Business Intelligence
15 178 (22.25%) DevOps
16 163 (20.38%) Agile
17 160 (20.00%) Security Cleared
18 156 (19.50%) Azure Data Factory
19 145 (18.13%) Power Platform
20 141 (17.63%) Power BI
21 136 (17.00%) Data Science
22 135 (16.88%) Apache Airflow
22 135 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
23 133 (16.63%) PySpark
23 133 (16.63%) SC Cleared
24 121 (15.13%) Snowflake
25 111 (13.88%) Data Lake
26 110 (13.75%) GCP
27 109 (13.63%) Machine Learning
28 107 (13.38%) Data Governance

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
1 135 (16.88%) Apache Airflow
2 96 (12.00%) Apache Spark
3 72 (9.00%) Apache
4 24 (3.00%) Confluence
5 15 (1.88%) SAS
6 8 (1.00%) Oracle Application Server
6 8 (1.00%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.75%) Apache Pig
8 5 (0.63%) IIS
9 4 (0.50%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.38%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.25%) Documentum
11 2 (0.25%) Luigi
12 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.13%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 7 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.25%) Windchill
4 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.13%) SPSS
4 1 (0.13%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.38%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.25%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.25%) Maximo
2 2 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.13%) Endur
3 1 (0.13%) NetSuite
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
1 346 (43.25%) Azure
2 287 (35.88%) AWS
3 156 (19.50%) Azure Data Factory
4 145 (18.13%) Power Platform
5 121 (15.13%) Snowflake
6 110 (13.75%) GCP
7 96 (12.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 95 (11.88%) dbt
9 91 (11.38%) Amazon S3
10 73 (9.13%) Serverless
11 72 (9.00%) GitHub
12 50 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
13 45 (5.63%) AWS Lambda
14 38 (4.75%) GitHub Actions
15 25 (3.13%) AWS CloudFormation
16 23 (2.88%) Amazon EMR
17 20 (2.50%) Amazon Kinesis
17 20 (2.50%) SaaS
18 15 (1.88%) Microsoft Purview
19 12 (1.50%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.63%) Firewall
1 5 (0.63%) Internet
1 5 (0.63%) TCP/IP
2 4 (0.50%) MQTT
3 3 (0.38%) SAN
3 3 (0.38%) SSH
3 3 (0.38%) Structured Cabling
3 3 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.25%) DNS
4 2 (0.25%) LAN
4 2 (0.25%) SSL
4 2 (0.25%) WAN
5 1 (0.13%) 802.11
5 1 (0.13%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (24.13%) Data Warehouse
2 141 (17.63%) Power BI
3 111 (13.88%) Data Lake
4 75 (9.38%) Big Data
5 62 (7.75%) PostgreSQL
6 60 (7.50%) SQL Server
7 53 (6.63%) Hadoop
8 51 (6.38%) Amazon Redshift
9 50 (6.25%) NoSQL
10 48 (6.00%) Relational Database
11 46 (5.75%) Delta Lake
12 43 (5.38%) BigQuery
13 39 (4.88%) Azure SQL Database
14 38 (4.75%) Tableau
15 32 (4.00%) Metadata
16 28 (3.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 26 (3.25%) Star Schema
18 25 (3.13%) Elasticsearch
19 22 (2.75%) Amazon QuickSight
20 19 (2.38%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 102 (12.75%) Git
2 53 (6.63%) Jenkins
3 37 (4.63%) JIRA
4 31 (3.88%) GitLab
5 17 (2.13%) MLflow
6 8 (1.00%) DBeaver
7 6 (0.75%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.63%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.63%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.38%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.38%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.38%) Poetry
9 3 (0.38%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.38%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.25%) JMeter
10 2 (0.25%) Selenium
10 2 (0.25%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.13%) Maven
11 1 (0.13%) TeamCity
General
1 171 (21.38%) Social Skills
2 136 (17.00%) Finance
3 101 (12.63%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (7.50%) Public Sector
5 43 (5.38%) Banking
6 16 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.63%) Telecoms
8 12 (1.50%) Investment Banking
8 12 (1.50%) Pharmaceutical
8 12 (1.50%) Retail
9 11 (1.38%) Front Office
9 11 (1.38%) Marketing
10 9 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.63%) Health Technology
12 5 (0.63%) Manufacturing
12 5 (0.63%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.63%) Retail Banking
12 5 (0.63%) Tech for Good
13 4 (0.50%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (16.63%) PySpark
2 86 (10.75%) Kafka
3 23 (2.88%) Pandas
4 18 (2.25%) Apache NiFi
4 18 (2.25%) RESTful
4 18 (2.25%) XML
5 17 (2.13%) NumPy
6 16 (2.00%) JSON
7 14 (1.75%) Flask
8 13 (1.63%) REST
9 12 (1.50%) HTML
9 12 (1.50%) RabbitMQ
10 10 (1.25%) PyTorch
11 9 (1.13%) OAuth
12 8 (1.00%) GraphQL
12 8 (1.00%) Jinja
12 8 (1.00%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (1.00%) Oracle GoldenGate
12 8 (1.00%) pytest
12 8 (1.00%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 47 (5.88%) Cloud Native
2 28 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
3 24 (3.00%) Data Structures
4 22 (2.75%) Algorithms
5 21 (2.63%) Product Ownership
6 19 (2.38%) Replication
7 14 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
8 13 (1.63%) Onboarding
9 11 (1.38%) Hybrid Cloud
10 10 (1.25%) Distributed Computing
10 10 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.25%) IoT
11 8 (1.00%) Distributed Systems
11 8 (1.00%) Life Science
11 8 (1.00%) NHS
11 8 (1.00%) Reinsurance
12 7 (0.88%) Virtual Team
13 6 (0.75%) Clustering
14 5 (0.63%) Linux Command Line
14 5 (0.63%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 29 (3.63%) Linux
2 16 (2.00%) Unix
3 3 (0.38%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 374 (46.75%) Data Pipeline
2 327 (40.88%) ETL
3 313 (39.13%) Data Engineering
4 283 (35.38%) Data Modelling
5 244 (30.50%) CI/CD
6 241 (30.13%) Analytics
7 181 (22.63%) Business Intelligence
8 178 (22.25%) DevOps
9 163 (20.38%) Agile
10 136 (17.00%) Data Science
11 135 (16.88%) Problem-Solving
12 109 (13.63%) Machine Learning
13 107 (13.38%) Data Governance
14 100 (12.50%) Infrastructure as Code
15 98 (12.25%) AI
16 95 (11.88%) Data Integration
17 89 (11.13%) Migration
17 89 (11.13%) Visualisation
18 88 (11.00%) Data Transformation
19 81 (10.13%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 524 (65.50%) Python
2 490 (61.25%) SQL
3 78 (9.75%) Java
4 67 (8.38%) Scala
5 24 (3.00%) Bash
6 18 (2.25%) PL/SQL
7 13 (1.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 12 (1.50%) JavaScript
8 12 (1.50%) R
8 12 (1.50%) T-SQL
9 11 (1.38%) C#
10 10 (1.25%) Go
10 10 (1.25%) Shell Script
11 9 (1.13%) PowerShell
12 8 (1.00%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.50%) C++
13 4 (0.50%) Groovy
14 3 (0.38%) Korn
15 2 (0.25%) ABAP
15 2 (0.25%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 160 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 133 (16.63%) SC Cleared
3 42 (5.25%) Degree
4 23 (2.88%) AWS Certification
5 22 (2.75%) Azure Certification
5 22 (2.75%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.13%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.63%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.38%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.25%) CTC Cleared
10 2 (0.25%) MCP
11 1 (0.13%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.13%) HND
11 1 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.13%) PhD
11 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 206 (25.75%) Data Quality
2 33 (4.13%) GDPR
3 19 (2.38%) QA
4 11 (1.38%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.50%) NIST
5 4 (0.50%) SLA
6 3 (0.38%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 20000
7 2 (0.25%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.25%) EMIR
7 2 (0.25%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.25%) MiFID
8 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.13%) HL7
8 1 (0.13%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.13%) PMO
8 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (7.50%) Docker
2 9 (1.13%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.63%) zsh
4 2 (0.25%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 103 (12.88%) Terraform
2 66 (8.25%) Kubernetes
3 16 (2.00%) Grafana
4 13 (1.63%) Ansible
5 9 (1.13%) NetBackup
6 8 (1.00%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.75%) Kibana
8 5 (0.63%) Puppet
9 4 (0.50%) Argo
9 4 (0.50%) logstash
10 3 (0.38%) Ambari
10 3 (0.38%) Istio
10 3 (0.38%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.38%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.38%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.25%) Control-M
11 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
11 2 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 1 (0.13%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 247 (30.88%) Databricks
2 88 (11.00%) Microsoft
3 52 (6.50%) Oracle
4 33 (4.13%) Google
5 29 (3.63%) Palantir
6 28 (3.50%) Foundry
7 24 (3.00%) Talend
8 22 (2.75%) Informatica
9 19 (2.38%) Cloudera
10 15 (1.88%) Denodo
11 13 (1.63%) IBM
11 13 (1.63%) SAP
12 12 (1.50%) Red Hat
13 9 (1.13%) Commvault
14 8 (1.00%) Confluent
14 8 (1.00%) Salesforce
14 8 (1.00%) ServiceNow
14 8 (1.00%) Splunk
14 8 (1.00%) Veritas
15 7 (0.88%) Virgin Media