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 14 October 2026.

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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 126 95
Rank change year-on-year +56 -31 +36
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,921 746 889
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 2.25% 2.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.78% 2.47% 2.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,279 533 619
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £694 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.05% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 13 5
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.34 £53.55
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.29% -44.74% +53.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £80.00 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £105.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -55.00% +5.26%

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 50,840 30,143 34,861
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.99% 90.86% 93.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,838 19,043 21,029
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,127 1,648 1,435
10th Percentile £14.36 £13.75 £15.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £41.71 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.84% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.08 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +66.84% -41.18% -4.49%

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 14 October 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 14 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 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 14 October 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 +66 1,669 £500 -2.44% 1,330
UK excluding London +92 872 £480 +1.05% 638
London +28 832 £525 - 717
Work from Home +41 560 £500 +2.04% 569
Midlands +74 327 £469 -6.20% 94
West Midlands +59 242 £469 -6.20% 68
North of England +33 206 £525 +10.53% 236
South East +24 127 £459 -3.37% 121
South West +29 121 £525 +3.70% 65
North West +20 108 £525 +20.69% 122
East Midlands +41 85 £388 -16.22% 26
Yorkshire +12 80 £512 -0.17% 60
Scotland +1 74 £525 +16.67% 53
East of England +3 36 £525 -16.00% 34
North East -29 19 £510 +23.64% 54
Wales -4 18 £550 +17.02% 14
Northern Ireland +6 1 - - 22
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 14 October 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.

1 956 (49.77%) SQL
2 856 (44.56%) Python
3 829 (43.15%) Data Pipeline
4 790 (41.12%) Data Engineering
5 672 (34.98%) Data Modelling
6 670 (34.88%) ETL
7 637 (33.16%) Analytics
8 602 (31.34%) AWS
9 594 (30.92%) Azure
10 502 (26.13%) Data Quality
11 488 (25.40%) Security Cleared
12 468 (24.36%) CI/CD
13 420 (21.86%) Databricks
14 418 (21.76%) SC Cleared
15 342 (17.80%) Agile
16 332 (17.28%) AI
17 324 (16.87%) DevOps
18 318 (16.55%) Migration
19 315 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
20 285 (14.84%) Business Intelligence
21 276 (14.37%) Data Transformation
22 270 (14.06%) Validation
23 267 (13.90%) PySpark
24 262 (13.64%) Data Governance
24 262 (13.64%) Data Integration
25 247 (12.86%) Microsoft
26 237 (12.34%) dbt
27 236 (12.29%) Power Platform
27 236 (12.29%) Snowflake
28 228 (11.87%) Power BI

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
1 210 (10.93%) Apache Airflow
2 170 (8.85%) Apache Spark
3 152 (7.91%) Apache
4 51 (2.65%) SAS
5 47 (2.45%) Confluence
6 16 (0.83%) Palantir Foundry
6 16 (0.83%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) CMS
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) nginx
11 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 17 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.052%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 602 (31.34%) AWS
2 594 (30.92%) Azure
3 237 (12.34%) dbt
4 236 (12.29%) Power Platform
4 236 (12.29%) Snowflake
5 214 (11.14%) Azure Data Factory
6 208 (10.83%) GCP
7 168 (8.75%) Amazon S3
8 134 (6.98%) Serverless
9 120 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
10 117 (6.09%) AWS Lambda
11 114 (5.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 110 (5.73%) GitHub
13 72 (3.75%) Azure Databricks
14 61 (3.18%) Amazon EMR
15 45 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 35 (1.82%) AWS Step Functions
18 29 (1.51%) Amazon EventBridge
18 29 (1.51%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.09%) DNS
2 20 (1.04%) BGP
2 20 (1.04%) DMZ
2 20 (1.04%) Multicast
2 20 (1.04%) VPN
3 8 (0.42%) Firewall
4 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.21%) Wireless
6 2 (0.10%) HTTP
6 2 (0.10%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.052%) Broadband
7 1 (0.052%) Cisco IPT
7 1 (0.052%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.052%) LTE
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
7 1 (0.052%) Network Security
7 1 (0.052%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.052%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.052%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (16.40%) Data Warehouse
2 228 (11.87%) Power BI
3 167 (8.69%) Data Lake
4 138 (7.18%) Metadata
5 104 (5.41%) BigQuery
6 95 (4.95%) Amazon Redshift
7 89 (4.63%) Delta Lake
8 84 (4.37%) Amazon Athena
9 74 (3.85%) Big Data
9 74 (3.85%) Pentaho
10 69 (3.59%) SQL Server
11 64 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
12 56 (2.92%) Snowflake Schema
13 54 (2.81%) Relational Database
14 50 (2.60%) NoSQL
15 46 (2.39%) Oracle Database
16 42 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
16 42 (2.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 41 (2.13%) Tableau
18 40 (2.08%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 184 (9.58%) Git
2 105 (5.47%) GitLab
3 62 (3.23%) JIRA
4 41 (2.13%) Jenkins
5 22 (1.15%) MLflow
6 10 (0.52%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.47%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.47%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) Selenium
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.26%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) ERwin
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
10 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.10%) RStudio
11 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.052%) ER Studio
General
1 314 (16.35%) Social Skills
2 294 (15.30%) Finance
3 217 (11.30%) Analytical Skills
4 173 (9.01%) Public Sector
5 127 (6.61%) Banking
6 34 (1.77%) Marketing
7 32 (1.67%) Retail
8 26 (1.35%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 24 (1.25%) Front Office
11 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
11 23 (1.20%) Automotive
12 17 (0.88%) Law
12 17 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
13 16 (0.83%) Telecoms
14 15 (0.78%) Documentation Skills
14 15 (0.78%) Police
15 14 (0.73%) Manufacturing
15 14 (0.73%) Military
16 12 (0.62%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (13.90%) PySpark
2 192 (9.99%) Terraform
3 132 (6.87%) Kafka
4 41 (2.13%) REST
5 30 (1.56%) JSON
6 25 (1.30%) Pandas
7 23 (1.20%) XML
8 17 (0.88%) LangChain
9 16 (0.83%) Spring
9 16 (0.83%) Spring Boot
10 15 (0.78%) Great Expectations
10 15 (0.78%) RESTful
11 14 (0.73%) pytest
12 13 (0.68%) Apache Beam
12 13 (0.68%) Apache NiFi
12 13 (0.68%) PyTorch
13 12 (0.62%) Streamlit
14 11 (0.57%) React
15 10 (0.52%) LangGraph
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 164 (8.54%) Cloud Native
2 66 (3.44%) Data Structures
3 61 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
4 55 (2.86%) Onboarding
5 32 (1.67%) AI Agents
6 25 (1.30%) Product Ownership
7 24 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
8 20 (1.04%) Algorithms
9 19 (0.99%) Management Information System
10 18 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
10 18 (0.94%) Reference Data
11 15 (0.78%) NHS
11 15 (0.78%) Reinsurance
12 13 (0.68%) Virtual Team
13 12 (0.62%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (0.62%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (0.57%) Distributed Computing
15 10 (0.52%) Derivative
16 9 (0.47%) Clustering
16 9 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 42 (2.19%) Unix
2 37 (1.93%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
5 1 (0.052%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 829 (43.15%) Data Pipeline
2 790 (41.12%) Data Engineering
3 672 (34.98%) Data Modelling
4 670 (34.88%) ETL
5 637 (33.16%) Analytics
6 468 (24.36%) CI/CD
7 342 (17.80%) Agile
8 332 (17.28%) AI
9 324 (16.87%) DevOps
10 318 (16.55%) Migration
11 285 (14.84%) Business Intelligence
12 276 (14.37%) Data Transformation
13 270 (14.06%) Validation
14 262 (13.64%) Data Governance
14 262 (13.64%) Data Integration
15 200 (10.41%) Problem-Solving
16 198 (10.31%) Machine Learning
17 174 (9.06%) Lakehouse
18 173 (9.01%) Infrastructure as Code
19 171 (8.90%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 956 (49.77%) SQL
2 856 (44.56%) Python
3 97 (5.05%) Java
4 70 (3.64%) Scala
5 44 (2.29%) PL/SQL
6 35 (1.82%) T-SQL
7 34 (1.77%) PowerShell
8 33 (1.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 22 (1.15%) Shell Script
10 21 (1.09%) Bash
11 19 (0.99%) JavaScript
12 18 (0.94%) R
13 14 (0.73%) Bicep
14 10 (0.52%) Go
15 8 (0.42%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.31%) C#
17 5 (0.26%) Korn
18 4 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
19 3 (0.16%) COBOL
20 2 (0.10%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 488 (25.40%) Security Cleared
2 418 (21.76%) SC Cleared
3 59 (3.07%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.19%) DV Cleared
5 41 (2.13%) Degree
6 26 (1.35%) AWS Certification
7 24 (1.25%) Azure Certification
8 18 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 8 (0.42%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.42%) SnowPro
11 7 (0.36%) CISM
11 7 (0.36%) CISSP
11 7 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 5 (0.26%) CEH
13 4 (0.21%) City & Guilds
14 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) CISA
15 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 502 (26.13%) Data Quality
2 79 (4.11%) QA
3 42 (2.19%) GDPR
4 16 (0.83%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
6 6 (0.31%) FATCA
7 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.26%) SLA
8 3 (0.16%) MiFID
9 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.10%) EMIR
9 2 (0.10%) GRC
9 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.10%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.052%) PMO
System Software
1 107 (5.57%) Docker
2 4 (0.21%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.052%) HDFS
3 1 (0.052%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 103 (5.36%) Kubernetes
2 29 (1.51%) Grafana
3 21 (1.09%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
5 11 (0.57%) Kibana
6 5 (0.26%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.16%) logstash
8 2 (0.10%) Puppet
9 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 420 (21.86%) Databricks
2 247 (12.86%) Microsoft
3 154 (8.02%) Oracle
4 95 (4.95%) Informatica
4 95 (4.95%) Talend
5 93 (4.84%) Google
6 46 (2.39%) Denodo
7 37 (1.93%) Salesforce
8 28 (1.46%) Palantir
9 25 (1.30%) SAP
10 24 (1.25%) Foundry
11 20 (1.04%) Cisco
11 20 (1.04%) F5
12 13 (0.68%) Splunk
13 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
13 9 (0.47%) Dynatrace
13 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
14 8 (0.42%) Sage
15 7 (0.36%) IBM
15 7 (0.36%) InterSystems