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 25 July 2026.

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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 66 125 95
Rank change year-on-year +59 -30 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,943 749 969
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.29% 2.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.96% 2.50% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,315 534 725
10th Percentile £375 £372 £238
25th Percentile £425 £425 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £588 £587 £613
90th Percentile £655 £693 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 11 34
10th Percentile £20.49 £18.22 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.92 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
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 49,051 29,963 37,757
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.59% 91.58% 93.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,625 19,061 24,462
10th Percentile £328 £285 £300
25th Percentile £420 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.05%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,310 1,445 2,320
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.71 £13.69
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.24
Median hourly rate £42.85 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +70.39% -39.40% -5.26%
75th Percentile £67.88 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £73.75 £74.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.04%

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 25 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 25 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 25 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 +63 1,716 £500 - 431
UK excluding London +84 912 £469 -1.26% 309
London +39 835 £525 - 184
Work from Home +39 580 £500 +5.26% 165
Midlands +57 388 £459 -0.22% 49
West Midlands +56 338 £459 -0.22% 36
North of England +25 226 £475 - 92
North West +16 131 £525 +10.53% 41
South East +11 125 £469 +10.35% 100
South West +14 88 £525 +3.70% 33
Scotland +22 73 £428 -0.12% 10
Yorkshire -10 73 £470 -1.05% 20
East Midlands +20 50 £475 +13.10% 13
East of England +6 35 £565 +77.67% 15
North East -25 23 £515 +21.18% 32
Wales -1 18 £475 +6.74% 11
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

For the 6 months to 25 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 1,007 (51.83%) SQL
2 854 (43.95%) Python
3 819 (42.15%) Data Pipeline
4 726 (37.36%) Data Engineering
5 703 (36.18%) Analytics
6 683 (35.15%) ETL
7 646 (33.25%) Data Modelling
8 607 (31.24%) Azure
9 556 (28.62%) AWS
10 523 (26.92%) Security Cleared
11 479 (24.65%) Data Quality
12 456 (23.47%) CI/CD
13 452 (23.26%) SC Cleared
14 379 (19.51%) Databricks
15 354 (18.22%) Business Intelligence
16 342 (17.60%) Agile
17 323 (16.62%) Data Warehouse
18 316 (16.26%) DevOps
19 303 (15.59%) Migration
20 285 (14.67%) Power Platform
21 273 (14.05%) Data Governance
22 270 (13.90%) Power BI
23 265 (13.64%) PySpark
24 244 (12.56%) Microsoft
25 233 (11.99%) AI
26 232 (11.94%) Azure Data Factory
27 228 (11.73%) Validation
28 227 (11.68%) Problem-Solving
29 221 (11.37%) Data Integration
30 204 (10.50%) 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
1 180 (9.26%) Apache Airflow
2 154 (7.93%) Apache Spark
3 117 (6.02%) Apache
4 84 (4.32%) SAS
5 50 (2.57%) Confluence
6 15 (0.77%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.62%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.051%) Camunda
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.67%) 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 (0.051%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.051%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.051%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 607 (31.24%) Azure
2 556 (28.62%) AWS
3 285 (14.67%) Power Platform
4 232 (11.94%) Azure Data Factory
5 204 (10.50%) Snowflake
6 197 (10.14%) dbt
7 178 (9.16%) GCP
8 168 (8.65%) Amazon S3
9 150 (7.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 138 (7.10%) Azure DevOps
11 120 (6.18%) Serverless
12 110 (5.66%) GitHub
13 100 (5.15%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.83%) Amazon EMR
15 46 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
16 36 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 27 (1.39%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.34%) Amazon Kinesis
18 26 (1.34%) Matillion
19 25 (1.29%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.65%) DNS
1 32 (1.65%) VPN
2 31 (1.60%) BGP
2 31 (1.60%) DMZ
2 31 (1.60%) Multicast
3 10 (0.51%) 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 (0.051%) 4G
7 1 (0.051%) 5G
7 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 323 (16.62%) Data Warehouse
2 270 (13.90%) Power BI
3 176 (9.06%) Data Lake
4 104 (5.35%) Amazon Redshift
4 104 (5.35%) Metadata
5 99 (5.10%) BigQuery
6 96 (4.94%) SQL Server
7 94 (4.84%) Delta Lake
8 89 (4.58%) Big Data
9 88 (4.53%) Pentaho
10 74 (3.81%) Tableau
11 70 (3.60%) Amazon Athena
12 67 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
13 66 (3.40%) Snowflake Schema
14 58 (2.99%) Azure SQL Database
15 57 (2.93%) Relational Database
16 55 (2.83%) NoSQL
16 55 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 38 (1.96%) Hadoop
18 35 (1.80%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 185 (9.52%) Git
2 98 (5.04%) GitLab
3 85 (4.37%) JIRA
4 47 (2.42%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
5 9 (0.46%) MLflow
6 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.36%) Postman
7 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.15%) Newman
8 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.10%) ERwin
9 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.10%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.051%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.051%) Selenium
General
1 316 (16.26%) Finance
2 304 (15.65%) Social Skills
3 217 (11.17%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 109 (5.61%) Banking
6 35 (1.80%) Marketing
7 33 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 29 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.39%) Telecoms
10 26 (1.34%) Retail
11 22 (1.13%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.03%) Front Office
12 20 (1.03%) Manufacturing
13 18 (0.93%) Automotive
14 17 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
15 15 (0.77%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.57%) Publishing
17 10 (0.51%) Legal
18 9 (0.46%) Billing
19 8 (0.41%) Local Government
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 265 (13.64%) PySpark
2 142 (7.31%) Kafka
3 42 (2.16%) Pandas
4 35 (1.80%) JSON
5 26 (1.34%) REST
6 22 (1.13%) Spring
6 22 (1.13%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.08%) Great Expectations
7 21 (1.08%) XML
8 19 (0.98%) Apache Beam
9 18 (0.93%) YAML
10 14 (0.72%) React
11 13 (0.67%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.62%) RESTful
12 12 (0.62%) Streamlit
13 11 (0.57%) scikit-learn
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 10 (0.51%) pytest
15 9 (0.46%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.46%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.15%) Cloud Native
2 72 (3.71%) Legacy Systems
3 64 (3.29%) Data Structures
4 37 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
5 35 (1.80%) Onboarding
6 25 (1.29%) NHS
7 23 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
7 23 (1.18%) Product Ownership
8 19 (0.98%) Clustering
9 18 (0.93%) Reinsurance
10 17 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (0.82%) Reference Data
12 11 (0.57%) Algorithms
12 11 (0.57%) Life Science
12 11 (0.57%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.51%) Distributed Computing
13 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.51%) Management Information System
13 10 (0.51%) Replication
13 10 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 67 (3.45%) Unix
2 48 (2.47%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 819 (42.15%) Data Pipeline
2 726 (37.36%) Data Engineering
3 703 (36.18%) Analytics
4 683 (35.15%) ETL
5 646 (33.25%) Data Modelling
6 456 (23.47%) CI/CD
7 354 (18.22%) Business Intelligence
8 342 (17.60%) Agile
9 316 (16.26%) DevOps
10 303 (15.59%) Migration
11 273 (14.05%) Data Governance
12 233 (11.99%) AI
13 228 (11.73%) Validation
14 227 (11.68%) Problem-Solving
15 221 (11.37%) Data Integration
16 199 (10.24%) Data Transformation
17 194 (9.98%) Data Science
18 181 (9.32%) Decision-Making
19 153 (7.87%) Infrastructure as Code
19 153 (7.87%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (51.83%) SQL
2 854 (43.95%) Python
3 125 (6.43%) Java
4 61 (3.14%) Scala
5 58 (2.99%) PL/SQL
6 38 (1.96%) Shell Script
6 38 (1.96%) T-SQL
7 31 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 27 (1.39%) Bash
9 26 (1.34%) C#
10 24 (1.24%) PowerShell
11 17 (0.87%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.72%) Bicep
12 14 (0.72%) R
13 8 (0.41%) TypeScript
14 7 (0.36%) Go
15 2 (0.10%) Korn
15 2 (0.10%) Perl
15 2 (0.10%) Ruby
15 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 523 (26.92%) Security Cleared
2 452 (23.26%) SC Cleared
3 51 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
4 45 (2.32%) Degree
5 26 (1.34%) Azure Certification
6 24 (1.24%) DV Cleared
7 18 (0.93%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.46%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.36%) CISSP
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 (0.051%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (24.65%) Data Quality
2 61 (3.14%) QA
3 53 (2.73%) GDPR
4 23 (1.18%) 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 (0.051%) GxP
12 1 (0.051%) NIST
12 1 (0.051%) SOC 2
System Software
1 106 (5.46%) Docker
2 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 191 (9.83%) Terraform
2 87 (4.48%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.62%) 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 (0.051%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.051%) Puppet
10 1 (0.051%) QRadar
Vendors
1 379 (19.51%) Databricks
2 244 (12.56%) Microsoft
3 170 (8.75%) Oracle
4 139 (7.15%) Informatica
5 124 (6.38%) Talend
6 70 (3.60%) Google
7 66 (3.40%) Denodo
8 33 (1.70%) Cisco
8 33 (1.70%) F5
8 33 (1.70%) SAP
9 28 (1.44%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.34%) Palantir
10 26 (1.34%) Splunk
11 19 (0.98%) Foundry
12 18 (0.93%) Cloudera
13 16 (0.82%) ServiceNow
14 15 (0.77%) IBM
15 12 (0.62%) Sage
16 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.46%) MuleSoft