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 30 May 2026.

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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 90 100
Rank change year-on-year +28 +10 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,784 774 946
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.63% 2.68% 2.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.93% 2.90% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,244 585 729
10th Percentile £375 £355 £199
25th Percentile £415 £425 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.00% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £594
90th Percentile £662 £700 £678
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £460 £450
% change year-on-year +2.00% +2.22% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £32.50
25th Percentile £41.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £75.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -35.39% -0.66%

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 45,367 26,659 39,830
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.33% 92.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,689 17,296 25,850
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,009 1,048 2,796
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.81
25th Percentile £20.50 £17.87 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.31 £40.00
% change year-on-year +72.28% -36.73% -6.98%

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 30 May 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 30 May 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 30 May 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 +34 1,565 £500 - 270
London +32 858 £525 - 97
UK excluding London +45 732 £469 +2.00% 233
Work from Home +27 516 £500 +4.28% 130
Midlands +45 299 £469 +4.22% 32
West Midlands +39 282 £469 +1.96% 22
North of England -1 201 £465 -2.11% 74
North West +5 125 £480 +1.05% 23
South East +1 101 £488 +17.90% 68
South West +1 71 £500 +1.27% 29
Scotland +13 59 £460 +2.22% 8
Yorkshire -30 58 £465 +3.33% 25
Wales +5 22 £450 +118.11% 12
East of England -25 19 £520 +63.52% 3
North East -17 18 £450 -5.26% 27
East Midlands -20 17 £525 +28.05% 10
Northern Ireland +7 3 £410 -18.00% 9

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

For the 6 months to 30 May 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.

1 981 (54.99%) SQL
2 821 (46.02%) Python
3 748 (41.93%) Data Pipeline
4 672 (37.67%) ETL
5 671 (37.61%) Analytics
6 652 (36.55%) Data Engineering
7 609 (34.14%) Data Modelling
8 601 (33.69%) Azure
9 525 (29.43%) Security Cleared
10 491 (27.52%) AWS
11 467 (26.18%) SC Cleared
12 448 (25.11%) Data Quality
13 424 (23.77%) CI/CD
14 422 (23.65%) Databricks
15 379 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
16 326 (18.27%) Agile
17 313 (17.54%) DevOps
18 309 (17.32%) Power Platform
19 293 (16.42%) Power BI
20 292 (16.37%) Data Warehouse
21 271 (15.19%) PySpark
22 247 (13.85%) Azure Data Factory
23 245 (13.73%) Data Governance
24 235 (13.17%) Microsoft
24 235 (13.17%) Problem-Solving
25 227 (12.72%) Migration
26 210 (11.77%) AI
27 197 (11.04%) Data Integration
28 190 (10.65%) Data Lake
29 188 (10.54%) Git

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
1 172 (9.64%) Apache Airflow
2 162 (9.08%) Apache Spark
3 111 (6.22%) Apache
4 84 (4.71%) SAS
5 42 (2.35%) Confluence
6 12 (0.67%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.56%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.17%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.056%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.056%) Appian
11 1 (0.056%) Camunda
11 1 (0.056%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.39%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.056%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.056%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.17%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.11%) Infor LN
3 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.056%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.056%) iTrent
4 1 (0.056%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.056%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.056%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.056%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.056%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 601 (33.69%) Azure
2 491 (27.52%) AWS
3 309 (17.32%) Power Platform
4 247 (13.85%) Azure Data Factory
5 181 (10.15%) Snowflake
6 164 (9.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 158 (8.86%) Amazon S3
8 156 (8.74%) GCP
9 154 (8.63%) dbt
10 143 (8.02%) Azure DevOps
11 120 (6.73%) GitHub
12 113 (6.33%) Serverless
13 92 (5.16%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
15 39 (2.19%) Amazon EMR
16 33 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.85%) Matillion
17 29 (1.63%) Amazon Kinesis
18 25 (1.40%) OpenShift
19 24 (1.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.85%) DNS
1 33 (1.85%) VPN
2 32 (1.79%) BGP
2 32 (1.79%) DMZ
2 32 (1.79%) Multicast
3 10 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.39%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.39%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.22%) Firewall
5 4 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.22%) Wireless
6 1 (0.056%) 4G
6 1 (0.056%) 5G
6 1 (0.056%) MQTT
6 1 (0.056%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 293 (16.42%) Power BI
2 292 (16.37%) Data Warehouse
3 190 (10.65%) Data Lake
4 130 (7.29%) SQL Server
5 111 (6.22%) Delta Lake
6 94 (5.27%) Metadata
7 91 (5.10%) BigQuery
8 89 (4.99%) Big Data
9 85 (4.76%) Amazon Redshift
10 82 (4.60%) Pentaho
11 81 (4.54%) Azure SQL Database
12 74 (4.15%) Snowflake Schema
13 73 (4.09%) Tableau
14 71 (3.98%) PostgreSQL
15 65 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 64 (3.59%) NoSQL
17 63 (3.53%) Amazon Athena
18 52 (2.91%) Relational Database
19 40 (2.24%) Hadoop
20 38 (2.13%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 188 (10.54%) Git
2 90 (5.04%) GitLab
2 90 (5.04%) JIRA
3 49 (2.75%) Jenkins
4 12 (0.67%) MLflow
5 9 (0.50%) Artifactory
6 6 (0.34%) Postman
7 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.17%) Newman
8 3 (0.17%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.056%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.056%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.056%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.056%) ERwin
10 1 (0.056%) JUnit
10 1 (0.056%) Selenium
General
1 293 (16.42%) Finance
2 270 (15.13%) Social Skills
3 197 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (7.90%) Public Sector
5 93 (5.21%) Banking
6 33 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.51%) Retail
8 26 (1.46%) Investment Banking
9 24 (1.35%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (1.29%) Marketing
11 19 (1.07%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.95%) Manufacturing
12 17 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
13 15 (0.84%) Front Office
14 14 (0.78%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.62%) Publishing
16 7 (0.39%) Law
16 7 (0.39%) Military
17 6 (0.34%) Local Government
18 5 (0.28%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (15.19%) PySpark
2 158 (8.86%) Kafka
3 54 (3.03%) Pandas
4 33 (1.85%) JSON
5 30 (1.68%) REST
6 26 (1.46%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.29%) Spring
7 23 (1.29%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.23%) YAML
9 18 (1.01%) Apache Beam
9 18 (1.01%) XML
10 13 (0.73%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.73%) Matplotlib
10 13 (0.73%) scikit-learn
11 12 (0.67%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.67%) React
12 10 (0.56%) Node.js
12 10 (0.56%) pytest
12 10 (0.56%) RESTful
13 9 (0.50%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 134 (7.51%) Cloud Native
2 52 (2.91%) Data Structures
3 48 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (1.68%) Product Ownership
5 29 (1.63%) Greenfield Project
6 26 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
7 24 (1.35%) Onboarding
8 23 (1.29%) Reinsurance
9 21 (1.18%) Clustering
10 19 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (0.84%) NHS
12 13 (0.73%) Replication
13 11 (0.62%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (0.62%) Reference Data
13 11 (0.62%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (0.56%) Life Science
14 10 (0.56%) Public Cloud
15 9 (0.50%) Derivative
15 9 (0.50%) Driving Licence
15 9 (0.50%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 64 (3.59%) Unix
2 39 (2.19%) Linux
3 5 (0.28%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.056%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 748 (41.93%) Data Pipeline
2 672 (37.67%) ETL
3 671 (37.61%) Analytics
4 652 (36.55%) Data Engineering
5 609 (34.14%) Data Modelling
6 424 (23.77%) CI/CD
7 379 (21.24%) Business Intelligence
8 326 (18.27%) Agile
9 313 (17.54%) DevOps
10 245 (13.73%) Data Governance
11 235 (13.17%) Problem-Solving
12 227 (12.72%) Migration
13 210 (11.77%) AI
14 197 (11.04%) Data Integration
15 184 (10.31%) Validation
16 172 (9.64%) Data Science
17 147 (8.24%) Decision-Making
18 141 (7.90%) Data Transformation
19 136 (7.62%) Data Architecture
20 135 (7.57%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 981 (54.99%) SQL
2 821 (46.02%) Python
3 122 (6.84%) Java
4 79 (4.43%) Scala
5 55 (3.08%) PL/SQL
6 43 (2.41%) T-SQL
7 39 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 35 (1.96%) C#
9 31 (1.74%) Shell Script
10 28 (1.57%) Bash
11 21 (1.18%) Bicep
12 19 (1.07%) PowerShell
13 14 (0.78%) R
14 13 (0.73%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.39%) Go
15 7 (0.39%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.11%) LookML
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
16 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 525 (29.43%) Security Cleared
2 467 (26.18%) SC Cleared
3 45 (2.52%) Degree
4 40 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (1.51%) Azure Certification
6 17 (0.95%) DV Cleared
7 16 (0.90%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (0.67%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.50%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.45%) AWS Certification
10 8 (0.45%) Master's Degree
11 6 (0.34%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.34%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
13 3 (0.17%) CISSP
13 3 (0.17%) IBM Certification
14 2 (0.11%) CISM
15 1 (0.056%) CISA
15 1 (0.056%) CTC Cleared
15 1 (0.056%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (25.11%) Data Quality
2 58 (3.25%) QA
3 52 (2.91%) GDPR
4 17 (0.95%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.62%) SLA
6 9 (0.50%) FATCA
7 6 (0.34%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.22%) MiFID
10 3 (0.17%) GMP
10 3 (0.17%) WCAG
11 2 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) GRC
11 2 (0.11%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
12 1 (0.056%) Basel III
12 1 (0.056%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.056%) IFRS
12 1 (0.056%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 106 (5.94%) Docker
2 6 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.056%) RACF
Systems Management
1 180 (10.09%) Terraform
2 84 (4.71%) Kubernetes
3 53 (2.97%) Grafana
4 13 (0.73%) Ansible
4 13 (0.73%) Prometheus
5 10 (0.56%) Kibana
6 3 (0.17%) logstash
6 3 (0.17%) Rancher
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) Control-M
7 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.056%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.056%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.056%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.056%) Puppet
8 1 (0.056%) QRadar
Vendors
1 422 (23.65%) Databricks
2 235 (13.17%) Microsoft
3 157 (8.80%) Oracle
4 122 (6.84%) Informatica
4 122 (6.84%) Talend
5 71 (3.98%) Denodo
6 61 (3.42%) Google
7 34 (1.91%) Cisco
7 34 (1.91%) F5
8 29 (1.63%) SAP
9 25 (1.40%) Splunk
10 21 (1.18%) ServiceNow
11 17 (0.95%) Cloudera
12 15 (0.84%) Alteryx
12 15 (0.84%) Foundry
12 15 (0.84%) IBM
13 13 (0.73%) Palantir
14 9 (0.50%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.45%) MuleSoft
15 8 (0.45%) Salesforce