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 18 November 2025.

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

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 125 89 122
Rank change year-on-year -36 +33 +4
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 811 913 947
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.29% 2.53% 2.03%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.52% 2.73% 2.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 628 711
10th Percentile £360 £393 £400
25th Percentile £413 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £539 £530
Median % change year-on-year -7.19% +1.65% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £638
90th Percentile £697 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 10 14
10th Percentile £25.42 £25.23 £35.19
25th Percentile £34.13 £26.27 £41.29
Median hourly rate £48.00 £34.93 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year +37.44% -43.44% +23.50%
75th Percentile £77.31 £86.06 £67.25
90th Percentile £103.25 £97.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £26.50 £57.00
% change year-on-year +41.51% -53.51% +14.00%

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 32,191 33,474 43,775
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.85% 93.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,427 20,165 29,691
10th Percentile £278 £300 £293
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £649
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 1,886 1,246 1,552
10th Percentile £14.16 £15.22 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.87 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £36.08 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.30% -19.82% +60.06%
75th Percentile £54.56 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -22.22% +87.50%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -38 684 £513 -6.82% 652
London -18 417 £536 -6.74% 424
UK excluding London -27 286 £475 -5.00% 320
Work from Home -28 256 £500 -4.76% 459
Midlands -26 79 £515 +5.32% 61
North of England -25 78 £450 -10.00% 68
West Midlands -20 66 £519 +4.75% 52
Scotland +23 47 £425 -15.00% 32
South West +7 37 £550 -2.22% 33
South East -37 36 £475 -13.64% 101
North West -18 35 £403 -17.44% 39
Yorkshire -33 35 £500 +1.52% 20
East Midlands -15 13 £460 +29.21% 8
Wales -12 12 £425 -15.00% 9
North East -1 8 £425 -27.35% 9
East of England -28 6 £625 +79.86% 21
Northern Ireland -10 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 529 (65.23%) Python
2 496 (61.16%) SQL
3 379 (46.73%) Data Pipeline
4 348 (42.91%) Azure
5 337 (41.55%) ETL
6 313 (38.59%) Data Engineering
7 289 (35.64%) AWS
8 280 (34.53%) Data Modelling
9 257 (31.69%) CI/CD
10 249 (30.70%) Analytics
11 248 (30.58%) Databricks
12 200 (24.66%) Data Quality
13 197 (24.29%) Data Warehouse
14 188 (23.18%) DevOps
15 183 (22.56%) Business Intelligence
16 169 (20.84%) Agile
17 158 (19.48%) Security Cleared
18 156 (19.24%) Azure Data Factory
19 146 (18.00%) Power Platform
20 142 (17.51%) Power BI
21 141 (17.39%) Data Science
22 139 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
23 136 (16.77%) Apache Airflow
23 136 (16.77%) PySpark
24 133 (16.40%) SC Cleared
25 129 (15.91%) Snowflake
26 113 (13.93%) Machine Learning
27 109 (13.44%) Data Governance
27 109 (13.44%) Git
28 108 (13.32%) GCP

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
1 136 (16.77%) Apache Airflow
2 96 (11.84%) Apache Spark
3 71 (8.75%) Apache
4 23 (2.84%) Confluence
5 17 (2.10%) SAS
6 8 (0.99%) Oracle Application Server
6 8 (0.99%) SharePoint
7 6 (0.74%) Apache Pig
8 5 (0.62%) IIS
9 4 (0.49%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.37%) ArcGIS
10 3 (0.37%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 2 (0.25%) Documentum
11 2 (0.25%) Luigi
12 1 (0.12%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.12%) nginx
Applications
1 8 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.25%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.25%) Windchill
4 1 (0.12%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.12%) SPSS
4 1 (0.12%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.37%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.25%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.25%) Maximo
2 2 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.12%) Endur
3 1 (0.12%) NetSuite
3 1 (0.12%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.12%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.12%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.12%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 348 (42.91%) Azure
2 289 (35.64%) AWS
3 156 (19.24%) Azure Data Factory
4 146 (18.00%) Power Platform
5 129 (15.91%) Snowflake
6 108 (13.32%) GCP
7 97 (11.96%) dbt
8 95 (11.71%) Amazon S3
9 93 (11.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 76 (9.37%) GitHub
11 74 (9.12%) Serverless
12 55 (6.78%) Azure DevOps
13 47 (5.80%) AWS Lambda
14 40 (4.93%) GitHub Actions
15 28 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (2.96%) Amazon EMR
17 21 (2.59%) SaaS
18 20 (2.47%) Amazon Kinesis
19 14 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
20 13 (1.60%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.62%) Firewall
1 5 (0.62%) TCP/IP
2 4 (0.49%) Internet
2 4 (0.49%) MQTT
3 3 (0.37%) SAN
3 3 (0.37%) SSH
3 3 (0.37%) Structured Cabling
4 2 (0.25%) DNS
4 2 (0.25%) SSL
4 2 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.12%) 802.11
5 1 (0.12%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.12%) LAN
5 1 (0.12%) WAN
5 1 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 197 (24.29%) Data Warehouse
2 142 (17.51%) Power BI
3 105 (12.95%) Data Lake
4 74 (9.12%) Big Data
5 64 (7.89%) PostgreSQL
6 56 (6.91%) SQL Server
7 54 (6.66%) Hadoop
8 53 (6.54%) Amazon Redshift
9 51 (6.29%) NoSQL
10 45 (5.55%) Relational Database
11 44 (5.43%) Delta Lake
12 41 (5.06%) Azure SQL Database
13 40 (4.93%) BigQuery
14 39 (4.81%) Tableau
15 31 (3.82%) Metadata
16 28 (3.45%) Star Schema
17 27 (3.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 25 (3.08%) Elasticsearch
19 24 (2.96%) Pentaho
20 22 (2.71%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 109 (13.44%) Git
2 56 (6.91%) Jenkins
3 39 (4.81%) JIRA
4 34 (4.19%) GitLab
5 17 (2.10%) MLflow
6 8 (0.99%) DBeaver
7 6 (0.74%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.62%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.62%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.37%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.37%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.37%) Poetry
9 3 (0.37%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.37%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.25%) JMeter
10 2 (0.25%) Selenium
10 2 (0.25%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.12%) Team Foundation Server
11 1 (0.12%) TeamCity
General
1 173 (21.33%) Social Skills
2 142 (17.51%) Finance
3 104 (12.82%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (7.52%) Public Sector
5 39 (4.81%) Banking
6 21 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (1.60%) Pharmaceutical
8 12 (1.48%) Investment Banking
8 12 (1.48%) Retail
8 12 (1.48%) Telecoms
9 11 (1.36%) Front Office
10 10 (1.23%) Marketing
11 9 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (0.74%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.62%) Health Technology
13 5 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.62%) Manufacturing
13 5 (0.62%) Tech for Good
14 4 (0.49%) Legal
14 4 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (16.77%) PySpark
2 84 (10.36%) Kafka
3 25 (3.08%) Pandas
4 20 (2.47%) RESTful
5 19 (2.34%) NumPy
6 18 (2.22%) XML
7 17 (2.10%) Apache NiFi
8 15 (1.85%) JSON
8 15 (1.85%) REST
9 14 (1.73%) Flask
10 12 (1.48%) HTML
11 11 (1.36%) RabbitMQ
12 10 (1.23%) PyTorch
12 10 (1.23%) YAML
13 9 (1.11%) OAuth
13 9 (1.11%) pytest
14 8 (0.99%) Jinja
14 8 (0.99%) Keycloak
14 8 (0.99%) Oracle GoldenGate
14 8 (0.99%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 48 (5.92%) Cloud Native
2 30 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (2.84%) Data Structures
4 22 (2.71%) Algorithms
4 22 (2.71%) Product Ownership
5 20 (2.47%) Replication
6 14 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
6 14 (1.73%) Onboarding
7 12 (1.48%) Hybrid Cloud
8 10 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
8 10 (1.23%) IoT
9 9 (1.11%) Distributed Computing
9 9 (1.11%) Life Science
9 9 (1.11%) NHS
10 8 (0.99%) Distributed Systems
10 8 (0.99%) Reinsurance
10 8 (0.99%) Virtual Team
11 6 (0.74%) Clustering
12 5 (0.62%) Genomics
12 5 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 30 (3.70%) Linux
2 16 (1.97%) Unix
3 3 (0.37%) Windows
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.25%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 379 (46.73%) Data Pipeline
2 337 (41.55%) ETL
3 313 (38.59%) Data Engineering
4 280 (34.53%) Data Modelling
5 257 (31.69%) CI/CD
6 249 (30.70%) Analytics
7 188 (23.18%) DevOps
8 183 (22.56%) Business Intelligence
9 169 (20.84%) Agile
10 141 (17.39%) Data Science
11 139 (17.14%) Problem-Solving
12 113 (13.93%) Machine Learning
13 109 (13.44%) Data Governance
14 99 (12.21%) AI
15 97 (11.96%) Infrastructure as Code
16 96 (11.84%) Data Integration
17 92 (11.34%) Visualisation
18 87 (10.73%) Migration
19 86 (10.60%) Data Transformation
20 77 (9.49%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 529 (65.23%) Python
2 496 (61.16%) SQL
3 82 (10.11%) Java
4 66 (8.14%) Scala
5 25 (3.08%) Bash
6 19 (2.34%) PL/SQL
7 14 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 14 (1.73%) JavaScript
7 14 (1.73%) R
8 12 (1.48%) T-SQL
9 11 (1.36%) C#
9 11 (1.36%) Go
10 10 (1.23%) Shell Script
11 9 (1.11%) PowerShell
12 8 (0.99%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.49%) C++
13 4 (0.49%) Groovy
13 4 (0.49%) Korn
14 2 (0.25%) ABAP
15 1 (0.12%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 158 (19.48%) Security Cleared
2 133 (16.40%) SC Cleared
3 43 (5.30%) Degree
4 26 (3.21%) AWS Certification
5 24 (2.96%) Azure Certification
6 21 (2.59%) DV Cleared
7 17 (2.10%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (1.60%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.37%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.25%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.25%) MCP
12 1 (0.12%) CTC Cleared
12 1 (0.12%) HND
12 1 (0.12%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.12%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.12%) PhD
12 1 (0.12%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 200 (24.66%) Data Quality
2 33 (4.07%) GDPR
3 19 (2.34%) QA
4 11 (1.36%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.49%) NIST
5 4 (0.49%) SLA
6 3 (0.37%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.37%) 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 (0.12%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.12%) HL7
8 1 (0.12%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.12%) NCSC
8 1 (0.12%) PMO
8 1 (0.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.12%) SOC 2
System Software
1 65 (8.01%) Docker
2 9 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.62%) zsh
4 2 (0.25%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.12%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 99 (12.21%) Terraform
2 68 (8.38%) Kubernetes
3 16 (1.97%) Grafana
4 13 (1.60%) Ansible
5 9 (1.11%) NetBackup
6 8 (0.99%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.74%) Kibana
8 5 (0.62%) Puppet
9 4 (0.49%) Argo
9 4 (0.49%) logstash
10 3 (0.37%) Ambari
10 3 (0.37%) Istio
10 3 (0.37%) Kubeflow
10 3 (0.37%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.37%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.25%) Control-M
11 2 (0.25%) EMC NetWorker
11 2 (0.25%) Tivoli Storage Manager
12 1 (0.12%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 248 (30.58%) Databricks
2 90 (11.10%) Microsoft
3 60 (7.40%) Oracle
4 30 (3.70%) Talend
5 29 (3.58%) Google
6 27 (3.33%) Foundry
6 27 (3.33%) Palantir
7 24 (2.96%) Informatica
8 18 (2.22%) Cloudera
8 18 (2.22%) Denodo
9 14 (1.73%) IBM
10 13 (1.60%) SAP
11 12 (1.48%) Red Hat
12 9 (1.11%) Commvault
13 8 (0.99%) Confluent
13 8 (0.99%) Salesforce
13 8 (0.99%) ServiceNow
13 8 (0.99%) Splunk
13 8 (0.99%) Veritas
14 7 (0.86%) Virgin Media