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 21 July 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 117 98
Rank change year-on-year +53 -19 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,937 751 959
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.30% 2.32%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.97% 2.51% 2.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,313 537 718
10th Percentile £375 £365 £219
25th Percentile £425 £425 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £519
Median % change year-on-year - -3.65% -5.65%
75th Percentile £588 £580 £613
90th Percentile £650 £677 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.22% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 10 35
10th Percentile £20.30 £18.18 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.88 £44.50 £48.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £73.75 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.83 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +63.27%

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 48,798 29,864 38,453
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.64% 93.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,431 18,992 24,873
10th Percentile £325 £285 £293
25th Percentile £420 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £735 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,294 1,429 2,439
10th Percentile £15.81 £13.75 £13.49
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.00
Median hourly rate £44.10 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +75.33% -37.13% -6.98%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £80.17 £73.75 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £41.81
% change year-on-year +78.93% -39.85% +5.65%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +57 1,708 £500 - 417
UK excluding London +88 914 £469 -1.22% 305
London +38 826 £525 - 172
Work from Home +36 575 £500 +5.26% 172
Midlands +63 382 £460 - 42
West Midlands +51 336 £459 -0.22% 28
North of England +31 228 £475 - 87
North West +20 133 £525 +10.53% 44
South East +11 127 £470 +10.59% 100
South West +13 94 £525 +5.00% 36
Yorkshire -10 73 £475 - 21
Scotland +22 72 £425 -1.39% 13
East Midlands +17 46 £500 +19.05% 14
East of England +2 33 £565 +78.52% 15
North East -26 23 £515 +17.71% 22
Wales +1 20 £475 +6.74% 12
Northern Ireland +3 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

For the 6 months to 21 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.

1 992 (51.21%) SQL
2 844 (43.57%) Python
3 812 (41.92%) Data Pipeline
4 714 (36.86%) Data Engineering
5 705 (36.40%) Analytics
6 682 (35.21%) ETL
7 649 (33.51%) Data Modelling
8 601 (31.03%) Azure
9 551 (28.45%) AWS
10 525 (27.10%) Security Cleared
11 470 (24.26%) Data Quality
12 456 (23.54%) SC Cleared
13 455 (23.49%) CI/CD
14 376 (19.41%) Databricks
15 361 (18.64%) Business Intelligence
16 341 (17.60%) Agile
17 319 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
18 313 (16.16%) DevOps
19 297 (15.33%) Migration
20 290 (14.97%) Power Platform
21 275 (14.20%) Power BI
22 269 (13.89%) Data Governance
23 264 (13.63%) PySpark
24 240 (12.39%) Microsoft
25 229 (11.82%) Azure Data Factory
26 227 (11.72%) AI
26 227 (11.72%) Problem-Solving
27 224 (11.56%) Validation
28 215 (11.10%) Data Integration
29 206 (10.64%) 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
1 178 (9.19%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (7.69%) Apache Spark
3 112 (5.78%) Apache
4 85 (4.39%) SAS
5 51 (2.63%) 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%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.052%) Camunda
9 1 (0.052%) Liferay
9 1 (0.052%) Luigi
9 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.62%) 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 (0.15%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.052%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.052%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 601 (31.03%) Azure
2 551 (28.45%) AWS
3 290 (14.97%) Power Platform
4 229 (11.82%) Azure Data Factory
5 206 (10.64%) Snowflake
6 190 (9.81%) dbt
7 172 (8.88%) Amazon S3
8 169 (8.72%) GCP
9 148 (7.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 136 (7.02%) Azure DevOps
11 122 (6.30%) Serverless
12 112 (5.78%) GitHub
13 103 (5.32%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.89%) Amazon EMR
15 47 (2.43%) GitHub Actions
16 35 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (1.60%) Matillion
18 27 (1.39%) Amazon Kinesis
18 27 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
19 24 (1.24%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.70%) DNS
1 33 (1.70%) VPN
2 32 (1.65%) BGP
2 32 (1.65%) DMZ
2 32 (1.65%) Multicast
3 10 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 8 (0.41%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 4 (0.21%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.052%) 4G
7 1 (0.052%) 5G
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
2 275 (14.20%) Power BI
3 173 (8.93%) Data Lake
4 105 (5.42%) Amazon Redshift
5 104 (5.37%) Metadata
6 96 (4.96%) BigQuery
6 96 (4.96%) SQL Server
7 92 (4.75%) Delta Lake
8 88 (4.54%) Big Data
9 87 (4.49%) Pentaho
10 75 (3.87%) Tableau
11 69 (3.56%) Amazon Athena
11 69 (3.56%) Snowflake Schema
12 66 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
13 57 (2.94%) Azure SQL Database
14 55 (2.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 54 (2.79%) Relational Database
16 52 (2.68%) NoSQL
17 38 (1.96%) Hadoop
18 37 (1.91%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 185 (9.55%) Git
2 97 (5.01%) GitLab
3 86 (4.44%) JIRA
4 47 (2.43%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.41%) MLflow
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.15%) 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
1 310 (16.00%) Finance
2 301 (15.54%) Social Skills
3 218 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (8.36%) Public Sector
5 104 (5.37%) Banking
6 35 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 35 (1.81%) Marketing
7 29 (1.50%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (1.39%) Retail
9 26 (1.34%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.19%) Investment Banking
11 19 (0.98%) Manufacturing
12 17 (0.88%) Automotive
12 17 (0.88%) Front Office
12 17 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.72%) Aerospace
14 11 (0.57%) Publishing
15 10 (0.52%) Legal
16 9 (0.46%) Billing
17 8 (0.41%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (13.63%) PySpark
2 143 (7.38%) Kafka
3 37 (1.91%) Pandas
4 35 (1.81%) JSON
5 26 (1.34%) REST
6 22 (1.14%) Spring
6 22 (1.14%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.08%) Great Expectations
7 21 (1.08%) XML
8 18 (0.93%) Apache Beam
8 18 (0.93%) YAML
9 13 (0.67%) Apache Avro
9 13 (0.67%) React
10 12 (0.62%) RESTful
10 12 (0.62%) Streamlit
11 11 (0.57%) scikit-learn
12 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
12 10 (0.52%) pytest
13 9 (0.46%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.46%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.23%) Cloud Native
2 70 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
3 62 (3.20%) Data Structures
4 34 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
4 34 (1.76%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.29%) NHS
6 24 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.08%) Product Ownership
8 20 (1.03%) Clustering
9 19 (0.98%) Data Protection Act
9 19 (0.98%) Reinsurance
10 13 (0.67%) Reference Data
11 12 (0.62%) Virtual Team
12 11 (0.57%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.57%) Life Science
13 10 (0.52%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.52%) Replication
13 10 (0.52%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.46%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 66 (3.41%) Unix
2 45 (2.32%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 812 (41.92%) Data Pipeline
2 714 (36.86%) Data Engineering
3 705 (36.40%) Analytics
4 682 (35.21%) ETL
5 649 (33.51%) Data Modelling
6 455 (23.49%) CI/CD
7 361 (18.64%) Business Intelligence
8 341 (17.60%) Agile
9 313 (16.16%) DevOps
10 297 (15.33%) Migration
11 269 (13.89%) Data Governance
12 227 (11.72%) AI
12 227 (11.72%) Problem-Solving
13 224 (11.56%) Validation
14 215 (11.10%) Data Integration
15 194 (10.02%) Data Science
16 186 (9.60%) Data Transformation
17 177 (9.14%) Decision-Making
18 152 (7.85%) Test Automation
19 150 (7.74%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 992 (51.21%) SQL
2 844 (43.57%) Python
3 125 (6.45%) Java
4 62 (3.20%) Scala
5 58 (2.99%) PL/SQL
6 38 (1.96%) T-SQL
7 35 (1.81%) Shell Script
8 30 (1.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.39%) Bash
10 26 (1.34%) C#
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
1 525 (27.10%) Security Cleared
2 456 (23.54%) SC Cleared
3 50 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
4 45 (2.32%) Degree
5 25 (1.29%) Azure Certification
6 24 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 18 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.77%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.36%) CISSP
11 7 (0.36%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
13 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
14 4 (0.21%) CEH
15 3 (0.15%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
16 1 (0.052%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (24.26%) Data Quality
2 60 (3.10%) QA
3 52 (2.68%) GDPR
4 23 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.62%) SLA
6 9 (0.46%) FATCA
7 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
10 3 (0.15%) GMP
10 3 (0.15%) MiFID
11 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.10%) EMIR
11 2 (0.10%) PMO
11 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.10%) WCAG
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.052%) NIST
12 1 (0.052%) SOC 2
System Software
1 102 (5.27%) Docker
2 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 191 (9.86%) Terraform
2 83 (4.28%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.63%) Grafana
4 14 (0.72%) Ansible
5 13 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 6 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.15%) 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
1 376 (19.41%) Databricks
2 240 (12.39%) Microsoft
3 167 (8.62%) Oracle
4 139 (7.18%) Informatica
5 122 (6.30%) Talend
6 66 (3.41%) Denodo
7 63 (3.25%) Google
8 34 (1.76%) Cisco
8 34 (1.76%) F5
9 33 (1.70%) SAP
10 27 (1.39%) Salesforce
11 25 (1.29%) 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%) IBM
16 12 (0.62%) Sage
17 11 (0.57%) Alteryx
18 9 (0.46%) Dynatrace