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 20 June 2026.

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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 107 98
Rank change year-on-year +47 -9 +29
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,861 738 994
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.47% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.98% 2.68% 2.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,284 549 759
10th Percentile £375 £363 £206
25th Percentile £418 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £662 £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 46,784 27,533 40,775
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.37% 92.21% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,447 17,712 26,117
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £409
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 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,114 1,185 2,993
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.91 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.50 £16.37
Median hourly rate £44.94 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.40% -26.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -3.61%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 +44 1,633 £500 - 291
London +36 855 £525 - 105
UK excluding London +69 806 £469 +1.41% 279
Work from Home +39 556 £500 +2.56% 134
Midlands +48 321 £468 +3.94% 50
West Midlands +44 300 £460 - 32
North of England +7 209 £475 - 60
North West +11 128 £490 +3.16% 33
South East +18 120 £475 +11.76% 83
South West +17 86 £506 +1.20% 29
Scotland +26 65 £425 -8.11% 10
Yorkshire -20 62 £470 +1.62% 12
Wales +6 22 £450 +3.45% 11
East Midlands -10 21 £525 +28.05% 18
East of England -25 21 £498 +56.45% 18
North East -24 19 £500 +11.11% 15
Northern Ireland +3 4 £410 -18.00% 24

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

For the 6 months to 20 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 1,006 (54.06%) SQL
2 856 (46.00%) Python
3 770 (41.38%) Data Pipeline
4 695 (37.35%) Analytics
5 675 (36.27%) Data Engineering
5 675 (36.27%) ETL
6 628 (33.75%) Data Modelling
7 592 (31.81%) Azure
8 540 (29.02%) AWS
9 529 (28.43%) Security Cleared
10 473 (25.42%) Data Quality
11 464 (24.93%) SC Cleared
12 444 (23.86%) CI/CD
13 401 (21.55%) Databricks
14 388 (20.85%) Business Intelligence
15 333 (17.89%) Agile
16 316 (16.98%) DevOps
17 313 (16.82%) Power Platform
18 307 (16.50%) Data Warehouse
19 299 (16.07%) Power BI
20 278 (14.94%) PySpark
21 252 (13.54%) Migration
22 248 (13.33%) Data Governance
23 241 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
24 238 (12.79%) Microsoft
25 234 (12.57%) AI
26 226 (12.14%) Azure Data Factory
27 202 (10.85%) Data Integration
28 196 (10.53%) Snowflake
29 193 (10.37%) 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
1 170 (9.13%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (8.01%) Apache Spark
3 105 (5.64%) Apache
4 85 (4.57%) SAS
5 54 (2.90%) 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 (0.21%) 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 (0.21%) 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
1 592 (31.81%) Azure
2 540 (29.02%) AWS
3 313 (16.82%) Power Platform
4 226 (12.14%) Azure Data Factory
5 196 (10.53%) Snowflake
6 182 (9.78%) Amazon S3
7 173 (9.30%) dbt
8 162 (8.70%) GCP
9 147 (7.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 139 (7.47%) Azure DevOps
11 130 (6.99%) Serverless
12 118 (6.34%) GitHub
13 111 (5.96%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (2.90%) GitHub Actions
15 52 (2.79%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.88%) Matillion
17 32 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 31 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (1.56%) Amazon Kinesis
20 25 (1.34%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.77%) DNS
1 33 (1.77%) 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 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) 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
1 307 (16.50%) Data Warehouse
2 299 (16.07%) Power BI
3 185 (9.94%) Data Lake
4 124 (6.66%) SQL Server
5 109 (5.86%) Amazon Redshift
6 102 (5.48%) Delta Lake
7 100 (5.37%) Metadata
8 90 (4.84%) BigQuery
8 90 (4.84%) Pentaho
9 85 (4.57%) Big Data
10 77 (4.14%) Amazon Athena
11 73 (3.92%) Snowflake Schema
11 73 (3.92%) Tableau
12 70 (3.76%) Azure SQL Database
13 69 (3.71%) PostgreSQL
14 61 (3.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 58 (3.12%) NoSQL
16 56 (3.01%) Relational Database
17 37 (1.99%) Hadoop
18 36 (1.93%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 189 (10.16%) Git
2 102 (5.48%) GitLab
3 98 (5.27%) JIRA
4 49 (2.63%) 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
1 314 (16.87%) Finance
2 301 (16.17%) Social Skills
3 201 (10.80%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 105 (5.64%) Banking
6 34 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 30 (1.61%) Marketing
8 28 (1.50%) Retail
9 27 (1.45%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.34%) Investment Banking
11 23 (1.24%) Telecoms
12 18 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 13 (0.70%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.64%) Front Office
16 11 (0.59%) Automotive
16 11 (0.59%) Publishing
17 7 (0.38%) Billing
17 7 (0.38%) Law
17 7 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (14.94%) PySpark
2 153 (8.22%) Kafka
3 48 (2.58%) Pandas
4 36 (1.93%) JSON
5 30 (1.61%) REST
6 24 (1.29%) Great Expectations
6 24 (1.29%) Spring
6 24 (1.29%) Spring Boot
7 22 (1.18%) XML
8 19 (1.02%) YAML
9 17 (0.91%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.70%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.70%) scikit-learn
11 11 (0.59%) Matplotlib
11 11 (0.59%) PyTorch
11 11 (0.59%) React
11 11 (0.59%) RESTful
11 11 (0.59%) Streamlit
12 10 (0.54%) pytest
13 9 (0.48%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.47%) Cloud Native
2 60 (3.22%) Data Structures
3 56 (3.01%) Legacy Systems
4 31 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 28 (1.50%) Onboarding
7 26 (1.40%) Reinsurance
8 24 (1.29%) Product Ownership
9 22 (1.18%) Clustering
10 21 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (0.97%) NHS
12 11 (0.59%) Life Science
12 11 (0.59%) Virtual Team
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 (3.49%) Unix
2 40 (2.15%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.054%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 770 (41.38%) Data Pipeline
2 695 (37.35%) Analytics
3 675 (36.27%) Data Engineering
3 675 (36.27%) ETL
4 628 (33.75%) Data Modelling
5 444 (23.86%) CI/CD
6 388 (20.85%) Business Intelligence
7 333 (17.89%) Agile
8 316 (16.98%) DevOps
9 252 (13.54%) Migration
10 248 (13.33%) Data Governance
11 241 (12.95%) Problem-Solving
12 234 (12.57%) AI
13 202 (10.85%) Data Integration
14 191 (10.26%) Validation
15 184 (9.89%) Data Science
16 166 (8.92%) Decision-Making
17 160 (8.60%) Data Transformation
18 143 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
18 143 (7.68%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,006 (54.06%) SQL
2 856 (46.00%) Python
3 120 (6.45%) Java
4 66 (3.55%) Scala
5 58 (3.12%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 35 (1.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.67%) Shell Script
9 30 (1.61%) C#
10 28 (1.50%) Bash
11 21 (1.13%) PowerShell
12 16 (0.86%) 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%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.11%) LookML
17 2 (0.11%) Perl
17 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 529 (28.43%) Security Cleared
2 464 (24.93%) SC Cleared
3 46 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
4 43 (2.31%) Degree
5 26 (1.40%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (0.86%) DV Cleared
7 14 (0.75%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (0.43%) SnowPro
10 7 (0.38%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
12 4 (0.21%) CISSP
13 3 (0.16%) CISM
13 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
14 1 (0.054%) CEH
14 1 (0.054%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (25.42%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.17%) QA
3 51 (2.74%) GDPR
4 13 (0.70%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.64%) SLA
6 9 (0.48%) FATCA
7 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.21%) 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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.054%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.054%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.054%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 104 (5.59%) 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 (10.37%) Terraform
2 85 (4.57%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.74%) Grafana
4 12 (0.64%) Ansible
4 12 (0.64%) 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
1 401 (21.55%) Databricks
2 238 (12.79%) Microsoft
3 174 (9.35%) Oracle
4 137 (7.36%) Informatica
5 130 (6.99%) Talend
6 72 (3.87%) Denodo
7 59 (3.17%) Google
8 34 (1.83%) Cisco
8 34 (1.83%) F5
9 30 (1.61%) SAP
10 25 (1.34%) Splunk
11 23 (1.24%) ServiceNow
12 22 (1.18%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.97%) Cloudera
14 16 (0.86%) IBM
14 16 (0.86%) Palantir
15 14 (0.75%) Alteryx
15 14 (0.75%) Foundry
16 9 (0.48%) Dynatrace
16 9 (0.48%) Sage