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 19 June 2026.

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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 107 98
Rank change year-on-year +48 -9 +27
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,856 742 988
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.49% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.98% 2.70% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,279 555 755
10th Percentile £375 £363 £206
25th Percentile £417 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £463 £450
% change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 9 42
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £31.88
25th Percentile £36.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £75.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -35.39% -0.66%

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 46,676 27,509 40,765
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.24% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,368 17,700 26,113
10th Percentile £325 £290 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,110 1,183 2,977
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.88 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.92 £17.47 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.69 £27.21 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.57% -27.44% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 +46 1,628 £500 - 264
London +34 850 £525 - 97
UK excluding London +72 805 £469 +1.41% 241
Work from Home +36 554 £500 +2.56% 115
Midlands +51 319 £469 +4.11% 45
West Midlands +43 298 £463 +0.54% 26
North of England +19 210 £475 - 57
North West +17 129 £480 +1.05% 31
South East +18 119 £475 +11.76% 77
South West +25 87 £506 +1.20% 26
Scotland +21 65 £425 -5.56% 8
Yorkshire -20 62 £470 +1.62% 12
Wales +4 22 £450 +3.45% 10
East Midlands -10 21 £525 +28.05% 19
East of England -20 21 £498 +56.45% 14
North East -24 19 £500 +11.11% 14
Northern Ireland +4 4 £410 -18.00% 9

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

For the 6 months to 19 June 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 1,004 (54.09%) SQL
2 853 (45.96%) Python
3 768 (41.38%) Data Pipeline
4 690 (37.18%) Analytics
5 674 (36.31%) Data Engineering
6 672 (36.21%) ETL
7 626 (33.73%) Data Modelling
8 594 (32.00%) Azure
9 535 (28.83%) AWS
10 528 (28.45%) Security Cleared
11 470 (25.32%) Data Quality
12 463 (24.95%) SC Cleared
13 440 (23.71%) CI/CD
14 404 (21.77%) Databricks
15 386 (20.80%) Business Intelligence
16 332 (17.89%) Agile
17 315 (16.97%) DevOps
18 311 (16.76%) Power Platform
19 306 (16.49%) Data Warehouse
20 297 (16.00%) Power BI
21 276 (14.87%) PySpark
22 250 (13.47%) Migration
23 247 (13.31%) Data Governance
24 240 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
25 239 (12.88%) Microsoft
26 231 (12.45%) AI
27 229 (12.34%) Azure Data Factory
28 201 (10.83%) Data Integration
29 194 (10.45%) Snowflake
30 193 (10.40%) Terraform

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
1 168 (9.05%) Apache Airflow
2 147 (7.92%) Apache Spark
3 102 (5.50%) Apache
4 85 (4.58%) SAS
5 54 (2.91%) Confluence
6 11 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
6 11 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.11%) Luigi
10 1 (0.054%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.054%) Appian
10 1 (0.054%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.054%) Camunda
10 1 (0.054%) Liferay
10 1 (0.054%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.38%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.054%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.054%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.22%) Infor LN
4 3 (0.16%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.16%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.054%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.054%) iTrent
6 1 (0.054%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.054%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.054%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 594 (32.00%) Azure
2 535 (28.83%) AWS
3 311 (16.76%) Power Platform
4 229 (12.34%) Azure Data Factory
5 194 (10.45%) Snowflake
6 180 (9.70%) Amazon S3
7 171 (9.21%) dbt
8 160 (8.62%) GCP
9 147 (7.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 141 (7.60%) Azure DevOps
11 128 (6.90%) Serverless
12 118 (6.36%) GitHub
13 109 (5.87%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (2.91%) GitHub Actions
15 50 (2.69%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.89%) Matillion
17 32 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 32 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.56%) Amazon Kinesis
19 25 (1.35%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.78%) DNS
1 33 (1.78%) VPN
2 32 (1.72%) BGP
2 32 (1.72%) DMZ
2 32 (1.72%) Multicast
3 10 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.38%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.38%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.27%) Firewall
6 4 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.22%) Wireless
7 1 (0.054%) 4G
7 1 (0.054%) 5G
7 1 (0.054%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.054%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (16.49%) Data Warehouse
2 297 (16.00%) Power BI
3 186 (10.02%) Data Lake
4 125 (6.73%) SQL Server
5 107 (5.77%) Amazon Redshift
6 101 (5.44%) Delta Lake
7 99 (5.33%) Metadata
8 90 (4.85%) BigQuery
9 89 (4.80%) Pentaho
10 85 (4.58%) Big Data
11 76 (4.09%) Amazon Athena
12 74 (3.99%) Tableau
13 72 (3.88%) Azure SQL Database
13 72 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
14 69 (3.72%) PostgreSQL
15 61 (3.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 58 (3.13%) NoSQL
17 54 (2.91%) Relational Database
18 37 (1.99%) Hadoop
19 36 (1.94%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 191 (10.29%) Git
2 101 (5.44%) GitLab
3 98 (5.28%) JIRA
4 49 (2.64%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.43%) MLflow
7 7 (0.38%) Postman
8 6 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.054%) ERwin
11 1 (0.054%) JUnit
11 1 (0.054%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.054%) Selenium
General
1 310 (16.70%) Finance
2 300 (16.16%) Social Skills
3 198 (10.67%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 104 (5.60%) Banking
6 34 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (1.62%) Marketing
8 28 (1.51%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.51%) Retail
9 25 (1.35%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (0.92%) Manufacturing
13 13 (0.70%) Aerospace
14 12 (0.65%) Front Office
15 11 (0.59%) Publishing
16 10 (0.54%) Automotive
17 7 (0.38%) Law
17 7 (0.38%) Legal
17 7 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (14.87%) PySpark
2 151 (8.14%) Kafka
3 48 (2.59%) Pandas
4 36 (1.94%) JSON
5 30 (1.62%) REST
6 24 (1.29%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.24%) Spring
7 23 (1.24%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.19%) XML
9 19 (1.02%) YAML
10 17 (0.92%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.70%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.70%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.59%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.59%) PyTorch
12 11 (0.59%) React
12 11 (0.59%) RESTful
12 11 (0.59%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.48%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 138 (7.44%) Cloud Native
2 59 (3.18%) Data Structures
3 56 (3.02%) Legacy Systems
4 31 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 28 (1.51%) Onboarding
7 26 (1.40%) Reinsurance
8 24 (1.29%) Product Ownership
9 22 (1.19%) Clustering
10 21 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (0.97%) NHS
12 11 (0.59%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.54%) Life Science
13 10 (0.54%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.54%) Public Cloud
13 10 (0.54%) Reference Data
13 10 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (0.48%) Driving Licence
14 9 (0.48%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.50%) Unix
2 40 (2.16%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.054%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 768 (41.38%) Data Pipeline
2 690 (37.18%) Analytics
3 674 (36.31%) Data Engineering
4 672 (36.21%) ETL
5 626 (33.73%) Data Modelling
6 440 (23.71%) CI/CD
7 386 (20.80%) Business Intelligence
8 332 (17.89%) Agile
9 315 (16.97%) DevOps
10 250 (13.47%) Migration
11 247 (13.31%) Data Governance
12 240 (12.93%) Problem-Solving
13 231 (12.45%) AI
14 201 (10.83%) Data Integration
15 191 (10.29%) Validation
16 180 (9.70%) Data Science
17 162 (8.73%) Decision-Making
18 159 (8.57%) Data Transformation
19 144 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
20 140 (7.54%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (54.09%) SQL
2 853 (45.96%) Python
3 120 (6.47%) Java
4 67 (3.61%) Scala
5 58 (3.13%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 35 (1.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.67%) Shell Script
9 30 (1.62%) C#
10 28 (1.51%) Bash
11 21 (1.13%) PowerShell
12 17 (0.92%) Bicep
13 14 (0.75%) R
14 13 (0.70%) JavaScript
15 8 (0.43%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.32%) Go
17 2 (0.11%) C++
17 2 (0.11%) Perl
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 528 (28.45%) Security Cleared
2 463 (24.95%) SC Cleared
3 46 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.26%) Degree
5 27 (1.45%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.86%) DV Cleared
7 15 (0.81%) AWS Certification
8 14 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.48%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (0.43%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.32%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.22%) CISSP
14 3 (0.16%) CISM
14 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
15 1 (0.054%) CEH
15 1 (0.054%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 470 (25.32%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.18%) QA
3 51 (2.75%) GDPR
4 13 (0.70%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.65%) SLA
6 9 (0.48%) FATCA
7 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.22%) MiFID
9 3 (0.16%) GMP
10 2 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) GRC
10 2 (0.11%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.054%) Basel III
11 1 (0.054%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.054%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.054%) IFRS 17
System Software
1 102 (5.50%) Docker
2 6 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.054%) RACF
Systems Management
1 193 (10.40%) Terraform
2 83 (4.47%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.75%) Grafana
4 12 (0.65%) Ansible
4 12 (0.65%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.43%) Kibana
6 3 (0.16%) Rancher
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) Control-M
7 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.054%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.054%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.054%) logstash
8 1 (0.054%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.054%) Puppet
8 1 (0.054%) QRadar
Vendors
1 404 (21.77%) Databricks
2 239 (12.88%) Microsoft
3 171 (9.21%) Oracle
4 135 (7.27%) Informatica
5 129 (6.95%) Talend
6 72 (3.88%) Denodo
7 59 (3.18%) Google
8 34 (1.83%) Cisco
8 34 (1.83%) F5
9 30 (1.62%) SAP
10 25 (1.35%) Splunk
11 23 (1.24%) ServiceNow
12 21 (1.13%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.97%) Cloudera
14 17 (0.92%) IBM
15 16 (0.86%) Palantir
16 14 (0.75%) Alteryx
16 14 (0.75%) Foundry
17 9 (0.48%) Dynatrace
17 9 (0.48%) Sage