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 16 July 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 117 100
Rank change year-on-year +54 -17 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,934 756 979
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.33% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.97% 2.54% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,322 543 734
10th Percentile £375 £368 £229
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -0.05% -9.05%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £605
90th Percentile £650 £679 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.05% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 11 37
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.92 £46.75 £46.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £68.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £48.46 £77.50
% change year-on-year -7.14% -37.47% +58.16%

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 48,701 29,792 39,645
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.70% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,482 18,952 25,549
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,274 1,409 2,702
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.27 £17.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.21 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.69% -34.48% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.49 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.04 £74.00 £73.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 +56 1,703 £500 - 324
UK excluding London +83 902 £470 -1.05% 263
London +37 833 £525 - 115
Work from Home +33 571 £500 +4.49% 125
Midlands +54 370 £465 +3.33% 43
West Midlands +50 328 £460 - 31
North of England +26 230 £475 - 77
North West +22 136 £525 +10.53% 40
South East +18 128 £470 +10.59% 76
South West +25 96 £525 +5.00% 32
Scotland +29 72 £425 -3.52% 8
Yorkshire -8 72 £470 -1.05% 20
East Midlands +13 42 £500 +19.05% 12
East of England -3 28 £565 +77.67% 14
North East -22 23 £515 +17.71% 17
Wales +8 20 £475 +6.74% 11
Northern Ireland +2 3 £410 -18.00% 5

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

For the 6 months to 16 July 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 1,001 (51.76%) SQL
2 854 (44.16%) Python
3 819 (42.35%) Data Pipeline
4 716 (37.02%) Data Engineering
5 711 (36.76%) Analytics
6 693 (35.83%) ETL
7 655 (33.87%) Data Modelling
8 601 (31.08%) Azure
9 554 (28.65%) AWS
10 526 (27.20%) Security Cleared
11 473 (24.46%) Data Quality
12 457 (23.63%) CI/CD
13 456 (23.58%) SC Cleared
14 383 (19.80%) Databricks
15 369 (19.08%) Business Intelligence
16 345 (17.84%) Agile
17 322 (16.65%) Data Warehouse
18 320 (16.55%) DevOps
19 296 (15.31%) Migration
19 296 (15.31%) Power Platform
20 281 (14.53%) Power BI
21 273 (14.12%) Data Governance
22 267 (13.81%) PySpark
23 239 (12.36%) Microsoft
24 230 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
25 229 (11.84%) Azure Data Factory
26 228 (11.79%) AI
27 222 (11.48%) Validation
28 221 (11.43%) Data Integration
29 208 (10.75%) Snowflake

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
1 176 (9.10%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (7.76%) Apache Spark
3 113 (5.84%) Apache
4 86 (4.45%) SAS
5 51 (2.64%) Confluence
6 12 (0.62%) Palantir Foundry
6 12 (0.62%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.052%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.052%) Camunda
9 1 (0.052%) Liferay
9 1 (0.052%) Luigi
9 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 16 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.57%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.052%) iTrent
6 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.052%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.052%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 601 (31.08%) Azure
2 554 (28.65%) AWS
3 296 (15.31%) Power Platform
4 229 (11.84%) Azure Data Factory
5 208 (10.75%) Snowflake
6 187 (9.67%) dbt
7 176 (9.10%) Amazon S3
8 167 (8.63%) GCP
9 151 (7.81%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 140 (7.24%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (6.57%) Serverless
12 113 (5.84%) GitHub
13 106 (5.48%) AWS Lambda
14 57 (2.95%) Amazon EMR
15 49 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.71%) Matillion
18 28 (1.45%) Amazon Kinesis
19 27 (1.40%) AWS CloudFormation
20 24 (1.24%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.71%) DNS
1 33 (1.71%) VPN
2 32 (1.65%) BGP
2 32 (1.65%) DMZ
2 32 (1.65%) Multicast
3 10 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.36%) Firewall
4 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.21%) Wireless
6 3 (0.16%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.052%) 4G
7 1 (0.052%) 5G
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 322 (16.65%) Data Warehouse
2 281 (14.53%) Power BI
3 177 (9.15%) Data Lake
4 106 (5.48%) Amazon Redshift
5 100 (5.17%) Metadata
6 99 (5.12%) SQL Server
7 96 (4.96%) BigQuery
7 96 (4.96%) Delta Lake
8 88 (4.55%) Big Data
8 88 (4.55%) Pentaho
9 75 (3.88%) Tableau
10 72 (3.72%) Amazon Athena
11 70 (3.62%) Snowflake Schema
12 67 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
13 57 (2.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 56 (2.90%) Azure SQL Database
15 55 (2.84%) Relational Database
16 51 (2.64%) NoSQL
17 39 (2.02%) Star Schema
18 38 (1.96%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 184 (9.51%) Git
2 100 (5.17%) GitLab
3 88 (4.55%) JIRA
4 48 (2.48%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.41%) MLflow
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
10 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.10%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.052%) ERwin
11 1 (0.052%) JUnit
11 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.052%) Selenium
General
1 312 (16.13%) Finance
2 301 (15.56%) Social Skills
3 216 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (8.38%) Public Sector
5 104 (5.38%) Banking
6 35 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 33 (1.71%) Marketing
8 29 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
9 28 (1.45%) Retail
10 24 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.19%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.03%) Manufacturing
13 17 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
14 16 (0.83%) Automotive
14 16 (0.83%) Front Office
15 15 (0.78%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.57%) Legal
16 11 (0.57%) Publishing
17 9 (0.47%) Billing
18 8 (0.41%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (13.81%) PySpark
2 146 (7.55%) Kafka
3 38 (1.96%) Pandas
4 35 (1.81%) JSON
5 28 (1.45%) REST
6 22 (1.14%) Great Expectations
6 22 (1.14%) Spring
6 22 (1.14%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.09%) XML
8 18 (0.93%) YAML
9 17 (0.88%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.67%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.67%) React
11 12 (0.62%) RESTful
11 12 (0.62%) Streamlit
12 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.52%) pytest
12 10 (0.52%) scikit-learn
13 9 (0.47%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.47%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 144 (7.45%) Cloud Native
2 66 (3.41%) Legacy Systems
3 61 (3.15%) Data Structures
4 34 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
4 34 (1.76%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
5 25 (1.29%) NHS
6 22 (1.14%) Reinsurance
7 21 (1.09%) Product Ownership
8 20 (1.03%) Clustering
9 19 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
10 12 (0.62%) Algorithms
10 12 (0.62%) Virtual Team
11 11 (0.57%) Life Science
11 11 (0.57%) Replication
12 10 (0.52%) Distributed Computing
12 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
12 10 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (0.47%) Driving Licence
13 9 (0.47%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 66 (3.41%) Unix
2 45 (2.33%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 819 (42.35%) Data Pipeline
2 716 (37.02%) Data Engineering
3 711 (36.76%) Analytics
4 693 (35.83%) ETL
5 655 (33.87%) Data Modelling
6 457 (23.63%) CI/CD
7 369 (19.08%) Business Intelligence
8 345 (17.84%) Agile
9 320 (16.55%) DevOps
10 296 (15.31%) Migration
11 273 (14.12%) Data Governance
12 230 (11.89%) Problem-Solving
13 228 (11.79%) AI
14 222 (11.48%) Validation
15 221 (11.43%) Data Integration
16 191 (9.88%) Data Science
17 183 (9.46%) Data Transformation
18 176 (9.10%) Decision-Making
19 153 (7.91%) Infrastructure as Code
20 152 (7.86%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,001 (51.76%) SQL
2 854 (44.16%) Python
3 124 (6.41%) Java
4 62 (3.21%) Scala
5 58 (3.00%) PL/SQL
6 41 (2.12%) T-SQL
7 34 (1.76%) Shell Script
8 30 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 29 (1.50%) C#
10 27 (1.40%) Bash
11 24 (1.24%) PowerShell
12 16 (0.83%) JavaScript
13 14 (0.72%) R
14 13 (0.67%) Bicep
15 8 (0.41%) TypeScript
16 7 (0.36%) Go
17 2 (0.10%) C++
17 2 (0.10%) Perl
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 526 (27.20%) Security Cleared
2 456 (23.58%) SC Cleared
3 51 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
4 44 (2.28%) Degree
5 27 (1.40%) Azure Certification
6 24 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 18 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.47%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.36%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.31%) CISSP
13 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
13 5 (0.26%) CISM
14 3 (0.16%) CEH
14 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
14 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (24.46%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.15%) QA
3 52 (2.69%) GDPR
4 22 (1.14%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.62%) SLA
6 9 (0.47%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.21%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.16%) GMP
9 3 (0.16%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 103 (5.33%) Docker
2 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 192 (9.93%) Terraform
2 83 (4.29%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.64%) Grafana
4 14 (0.72%) Ansible
5 13 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.47%) Kibana
7 6 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.16%) Rancher
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.10%) logstash
9 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.052%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.052%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.052%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.052%) Puppet
10 1 (0.052%) QRadar
Vendors
1 383 (19.80%) Databricks
2 239 (12.36%) Microsoft
3 170 (8.79%) Oracle
4 140 (7.24%) Informatica
5 123 (6.36%) Talend
6 67 (3.46%) Denodo
7 62 (3.21%) Google
8 34 (1.76%) Cisco
8 34 (1.76%) F5
9 32 (1.65%) SAP
10 27 (1.40%) Salesforce
11 24 (1.24%) Splunk
12 23 (1.19%) Palantir
13 18 (0.93%) Cloudera
14 16 (0.83%) Foundry
14 16 (0.83%) ServiceNow
15 14 (0.72%) Alteryx
15 14 (0.72%) IBM
16 12 (0.62%) Sage
17 9 (0.47%) Dynatrace