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 1 May 2026.

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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 83 101
Rank change year-on-year +19 +18 +13
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,670 860 957
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.53% 2.94% 2.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.83% 3.18% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,168 642 743
10th Percentile £374 £358 £263
25th Percentile £415 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £580 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £460
% change year-on-year +2.70% +0.54% -10.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 12 45
10th Percentile £23.49 £25.36 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £37.52 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.64% -9.62% +1.56%
75th Percentile £75.00 £77.80 £80.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £92.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £26.93 £75.00
% change year-on-year +94.99% -64.10% +72.41%

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 43,629 27,082 40,416
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.33% 92.55% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,928 17,690 26,310
10th Percentile £315 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £492
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.46% -1.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,807 1,034 2,664
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.15 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.50 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £29.00 £36.42
Median % change year-on-year +51.72% -20.37% -19.07%
75th Percentile £66.00 £62.50 £60.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.46 £28.00 £39.55
% change year-on-year +62.36% -29.20% -6.94%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +19 1,468 £500 - 374
London +23 802 £525 - 147
UK excluding London +28 678 £475 +2.70% 292
Work from Home +18 490 £500 - 211
Midlands +30 294 £469 +0.32% 58
West Midlands +33 275 £469 -3.79% 42
North of England -13 184 £473 +2.16% 78
North West -2 117 £500 +8.11% 48
South East -7 87 £500 +5.26% 82
South West -4 62 £505 +1.00% 35
Scotland +9 55 £428 -5.00% 12
Yorkshire -26 52 £465 +3.33% 13
Wales +3 20 £475 +2.70% 14
East Midlands -23 19 £525 +31.66% 16
East of England -25 17 £565 +79.37% 15
North East -19 15 £463 +2.78% 18
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00%

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

For the 6 months to 1 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.

1 906 (54.25%) SQL
2 785 (47.01%) Python
3 700 (41.92%) Data Pipeline
4 648 (38.80%) ETL
5 635 (38.02%) Analytics
6 609 (36.47%) Data Engineering
7 596 (35.69%) Azure
8 569 (34.07%) Data Modelling
9 497 (29.76%) Security Cleared
10 444 (26.59%) SC Cleared
11 437 (26.17%) Data Quality
12 431 (25.81%) AWS
13 419 (25.09%) Databricks
14 417 (24.97%) CI/CD
15 366 (21.92%) Business Intelligence
16 324 (19.40%) Agile
17 308 (18.44%) DevOps
18 294 (17.60%) Data Warehouse
19 290 (17.37%) Power Platform
20 274 (16.41%) Power BI
21 268 (16.05%) PySpark
22 246 (14.73%) Data Governance
23 242 (14.49%) Azure Data Factory
24 232 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
25 221 (13.23%) Microsoft
26 205 (12.28%) Migration
27 201 (12.04%) Git
28 193 (11.56%) AI
29 189 (11.32%) Data Integration
30 185 (11.08%) Data Lake

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
1 169 (10.12%) Apache Spark
2 156 (9.34%) Apache Airflow
3 97 (5.81%) Apache
4 77 (4.61%) SAS
5 32 (1.92%) Confluence
6 11 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.24%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.060%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.060%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.060%) Appian
11 1 (0.060%) Camunda
11 1 (0.060%) R Markdown
Applications
1 22 (1.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.42%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.24%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.060%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.12%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.12%) Maximo
1 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
1 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.060%) Actimize
2 1 (0.060%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.060%) iTrent
2 1 (0.060%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.060%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.060%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.060%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.060%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.060%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 596 (35.69%) Azure
2 431 (25.81%) AWS
3 290 (17.37%) Power Platform
4 242 (14.49%) Azure Data Factory
5 170 (10.18%) Snowflake
6 168 (10.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 154 (9.22%) GCP
8 151 (9.04%) Amazon S3
9 138 (8.26%) dbt
10 129 (7.72%) Azure DevOps
11 117 (7.01%) GitHub
12 110 (6.59%) Serverless
13 87 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
14 51 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
15 42 (2.51%) AWS CloudFormation
16 35 (2.10%) Amazon EMR
17 29 (1.74%) Amazon Kinesis
18 28 (1.68%) Matillion
19 27 (1.62%) AWS Step Functions
20 25 (1.50%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 31 (1.86%) DNS
1 31 (1.86%) VPN
2 30 (1.80%) BGP
2 30 (1.80%) DMZ
2 30 (1.80%) Multicast
3 10 (0.60%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.42%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.42%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.30%) Firewall
6 3 (0.18%) SAN
7 1 (0.060%) 4G
7 1 (0.060%) 5G
7 1 (0.060%) Network Security
7 1 (0.060%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (17.60%) Data Warehouse
2 274 (16.41%) Power BI
3 185 (11.08%) Data Lake
4 122 (7.31%) SQL Server
5 103 (6.17%) Delta Lake
6 95 (5.69%) Metadata
7 92 (5.51%) BigQuery
8 90 (5.39%) Amazon Redshift
8 90 (5.39%) Big Data
9 85 (5.09%) Azure SQL Database
10 84 (5.03%) Pentaho
11 72 (4.31%) Tableau
12 70 (4.19%) PostgreSQL
13 67 (4.01%) NoSQL
14 61 (3.65%) Snowflake Schema
15 60 (3.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 58 (3.47%) Amazon Athena
17 49 (2.93%) Relational Database
18 43 (2.57%) Hadoop
19 37 (2.22%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 201 (12.04%) Git
2 84 (5.03%) JIRA
3 74 (4.43%) GitLab
4 63 (3.77%) Jenkins
5 18 (1.08%) MLflow
6 4 (0.24%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.060%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.060%) ERwin
8 1 (0.060%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.060%) JUnit
8 1 (0.060%) Poetry
8 1 (0.060%) Selenium
8 1 (0.060%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.060%) Terragrunt
General
1 268 (16.05%) Finance
2 258 (15.45%) Social Skills
3 185 (11.08%) Analytical Skills
4 136 (8.14%) Public Sector
5 86 (5.15%) Banking
6 33 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.44%) Investment Banking
8 23 (1.38%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.08%) Marketing
11 16 (0.96%) Manufacturing
12 15 (0.90%) Retail
13 13 (0.78%) Aerospace
13 13 (0.78%) Front Office
13 13 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
14 12 (0.72%) Publishing
15 8 (0.48%) Law
16 7 (0.42%) Military
17 6 (0.36%) Legal
18 5 (0.30%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (16.05%) PySpark
2 155 (9.28%) Kafka
3 56 (3.35%) Pandas
4 33 (1.98%) JSON
5 32 (1.92%) REST
6 30 (1.80%) YAML
7 25 (1.50%) Great Expectations
8 19 (1.14%) Spring
8 19 (1.14%) Spring Boot
9 16 (0.96%) scikit-learn
10 15 (0.90%) NumPy
10 15 (0.90%) XML
11 14 (0.84%) Apache Beam
11 14 (0.84%) Matplotlib
11 14 (0.84%) Node.js
11 14 (0.84%) PyTorch
12 12 (0.72%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.72%) React
13 11 (0.66%) pytest
14 10 (0.60%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 118 (7.07%) Cloud Native
2 45 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
3 42 (2.51%) Data Structures
4 34 (2.04%) Product Ownership
5 28 (1.68%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.26%) Clustering
7 21 (1.26%) Onboarding
8 20 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
9 15 (0.90%) NHS
9 15 (0.90%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.84%) Replication
11 13 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.72%) Public Cloud
13 11 (0.66%) Hybrid Cloud
14 9 (0.54%) AI Agents
15 8 (0.48%) Algorithms
15 8 (0.48%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
15 8 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 48 (2.87%) Unix
2 36 (2.16%) Linux
3 4 (0.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) VMS
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.060%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 700 (41.92%) Data Pipeline
2 648 (38.80%) ETL
3 635 (38.02%) Analytics
4 609 (36.47%) Data Engineering
5 569 (34.07%) Data Modelling
6 417 (24.97%) CI/CD
7 366 (21.92%) Business Intelligence
8 324 (19.40%) Agile
9 308 (18.44%) DevOps
10 246 (14.73%) Data Governance
11 232 (13.89%) Problem-Solving
12 205 (12.28%) Migration
13 193 (11.56%) AI
14 189 (11.32%) Data Integration
15 180 (10.78%) Data Science
16 167 (10.00%) Validation
17 145 (8.68%) Data Architecture
18 139 (8.32%) Data Transformation
18 139 (8.32%) Infrastructure as Code
19 137 (8.20%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 906 (54.25%) SQL
2 785 (47.01%) Python
3 112 (6.71%) Java
4 85 (5.09%) Scala
5 38 (2.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.22%) C#
7 35 (2.10%) PL/SQL
8 34 (2.04%) T-SQL
9 29 (1.74%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.62%) Bash
11 21 (1.26%) Bicep
12 19 (1.14%) PowerShell
13 18 (1.08%) JavaScript
13 18 (1.08%) R
14 10 (0.60%) Go
15 7 (0.42%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.18%) C
17 2 (0.12%) C++
17 2 (0.12%) Perl
17 2 (0.12%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 497 (29.76%) Security Cleared
2 444 (26.59%) SC Cleared
3 44 (2.63%) Degree
4 35 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
5 34 (2.04%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
7 15 (0.90%) DV Cleared
8 14 (0.84%) AWS Certification
9 8 (0.48%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.42%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
11 6 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.30%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.30%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.18%) CISSP
13 3 (0.18%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
14 2 (0.12%) CISM
15 1 (0.060%) CISA
15 1 (0.060%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (26.17%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.29%) GDPR
3 48 (2.87%) QA
4 17 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.54%) FATCA
5 9 (0.54%) SLA
6 5 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.30%) MiFID
7 3 (0.18%) GMP
7 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.18%) WCAG
8 2 (0.12%) EMIR
8 2 (0.12%) GRC
8 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
9 1 (0.060%) Disclosure Scotland
9 1 (0.060%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.060%) ISO 13485
9 1 (0.060%) NIST
9 1 (0.060%) PMO
System Software
1 117 (7.01%) Docker
2 6 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.060%) RACF
Systems Management
1 184 (11.02%) Terraform
2 101 (6.05%) Kubernetes
3 51 (3.05%) Grafana
4 14 (0.84%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.78%) Ansible
6 10 (0.60%) Kibana
7 4 (0.24%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.18%) logstash
8 3 (0.18%) Rancher
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.12%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 2 (0.12%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.060%) Control-M
10 1 (0.060%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.060%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.060%) Puppet
10 1 (0.060%) QRadar
Vendors
1 419 (25.09%) Databricks
2 221 (13.23%) Microsoft
3 138 (8.26%) Oracle
4 114 (6.83%) Informatica
5 111 (6.65%) Talend
6 63 (3.77%) Denodo
7 62 (3.71%) Google
8 35 (2.10%) Cisco
9 32 (1.92%) F5
10 26 (1.56%) Splunk
11 25 (1.50%) SAP
12 22 (1.32%) ServiceNow
13 20 (1.20%) IBM
14 16 (0.96%) Cloudera
15 14 (0.84%) Foundry
15 14 (0.84%) Palantir
16 11 (0.66%) Alteryx
17 9 (0.54%) Dynatrace
18 8 (0.48%) InterSystems
18 8 (0.48%) MuleSoft