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 13 August 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 128 96
Rank change year-on-year +65 -32 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,968 709 916
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.69% 2.15% 2.35%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.98% 2.36% 2.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,319 500 669
10th Percentile £381 £367 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £522
Median % change year-on-year - -4.21% -5.09%
75th Percentile £583 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £688 £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 91 13 31
10th Percentile £21.25 £19.78 £31.25
25th Percentile £32.49 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% +15.38%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £86.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -66.25% +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 49,387 30,089 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.36% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,655 19,063 23,293
10th Percentile £328 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,474 1,522 2,032
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.18
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.26 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.31 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.21% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.96 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.61 £25.11 £45.00
% change year-on-year +73.66% -44.20% +25.00%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 +72 1,756 £500 - 791
UK excluding London +92 926 £470 -1.05% 460
London +41 848 £525 - 420
Work from Home +55 584 £500 +5.26% 281
Midlands +71 402 £465 +3.33% 72
West Midlands +68 346 £463 +0.54% 47
North of England +31 232 £500 +5.26% 135
North West +30 133 £525 +10.53% 66
South East +22 127 £463 +2.78% 141
South West +8 88 £525 +6.33% 46
Yorkshire -1 77 £465 -4.62% 32
Scotland +25 62 £425 -0.70% 26
East Midlands +23 56 £475 +13.10% 25
East of England +9 39 £520 +34.19% 22
North East -25 23 £515 +22.62% 39
Wales +2 17 £500 +12.36% 13
Northern Ireland +8 3 £410 -18.00% 8

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

For the 6 months to 13 August 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.

1 989 (50.25%) SQL
2 836 (42.48%) Data Pipeline
3 818 (41.57%) Python
4 714 (36.28%) Data Engineering
5 701 (35.62%) Analytics
6 686 (34.86%) ETL
7 654 (33.23%) Data Modelling
8 604 (30.69%) Azure
9 566 (28.76%) AWS
10 536 (27.24%) Security Cleared
11 484 (24.59%) Data Quality
12 467 (23.73%) SC Cleared
13 457 (23.22%) CI/CD
14 388 (19.72%) Databricks
15 352 (17.89%) Agile
15 352 (17.89%) Business Intelligence
16 329 (16.72%) Data Warehouse
17 326 (16.57%) DevOps
18 303 (15.40%) Migration
19 268 (13.62%) Data Governance
19 268 (13.62%) Power Platform
20 259 (13.16%) Power BI
21 258 (13.11%) PySpark
22 255 (12.96%) AI
23 249 (12.65%) Data Integration
24 244 (12.40%) Microsoft
25 232 (11.79%) Validation
26 229 (11.64%) Azure Data Factory
27 227 (11.53%) Problem-Solving
28 215 (10.92%) Data Transformation

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
1 194 (9.86%) Apache Airflow
2 157 (7.98%) Apache Spark
3 125 (6.35%) Apache
4 90 (4.57%) SAS
5 47 (2.39%) Confluence
6 13 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
6 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.51%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.15%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.25%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.15%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.051%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.051%) iTrent
7 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 604 (30.69%) Azure
2 566 (28.76%) AWS
3 268 (13.62%) Power Platform
4 229 (11.64%) Azure Data Factory
5 214 (10.87%) Snowflake
6 198 (10.06%) dbt
7 178 (9.04%) GCP
8 161 (8.18%) Amazon S3
9 140 (7.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 136 (6.91%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (5.89%) Serverless
12 109 (5.54%) GitHub
13 101 (5.13%) AWS Lambda
14 49 (2.49%) Amazon EMR
15 44 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.42%) Amazon Kinesis
18 26 (1.32%) AWS Step Functions
19 24 (1.22%) Fivetran
19 24 (1.22%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.63%) VPN
2 31 (1.58%) BGP
2 31 (1.58%) DMZ
2 31 (1.58%) DNS
2 31 (1.58%) Multicast
3 9 (0.46%) Firewall
3 9 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.20%) Wireless
7 1 (0.051%) 4G
7 1 (0.051%) 5G
7 1 (0.051%) LTE
7 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (16.72%) Data Warehouse
2 259 (13.16%) Power BI
3 175 (8.89%) Data Lake
4 117 (5.95%) Metadata
5 102 (5.18%) BigQuery
6 101 (5.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 97 (4.93%) Pentaho
8 91 (4.62%) SQL Server
9 90 (4.57%) Delta Lake
10 84 (4.27%) Big Data
11 72 (3.66%) Amazon Athena
12 67 (3.40%) PostgreSQL
13 65 (3.30%) Tableau
14 62 (3.15%) Snowflake Schema
15 61 (3.10%) Relational Database
16 56 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
17 54 (2.74%) NoSQL
18 53 (2.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 38 (1.93%) Hadoop
20 37 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 180 (9.15%) Git
2 104 (5.28%) GitLab
3 82 (4.17%) JIRA
4 53 (2.69%) Jenkins
5 13 (0.66%) MLflow
6 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.41%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.36%) Postman
9 6 (0.30%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) Newman
11 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
12 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
13 1 (0.051%) Octopus Deploy
13 1 (0.051%) Selenium
13 1 (0.051%) Toad
General
1 316 (16.06%) Finance
2 308 (15.65%) Social Skills
3 225 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
4 179 (9.10%) Public Sector
5 113 (5.74%) Banking
6 34 (1.73%) Marketing
7 32 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 26 (1.32%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.22%) Retail
10 23 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
11 22 (1.12%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.02%) Front Office
12 20 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 19 (0.97%) Automotive
14 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
15 16 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
16 13 (0.66%) Law
17 10 (0.51%) Financial Institution
17 10 (0.51%) Legal
18 9 (0.46%) Billing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 258 (13.11%) PySpark
2 141 (7.16%) Kafka
3 35 (1.78%) Pandas
4 29 (1.47%) JSON
5 27 (1.37%) REST
6 23 (1.17%) Spring
6 23 (1.17%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.02%) Great Expectations
8 18 (0.91%) XML
9 17 (0.86%) Apache Beam
10 15 (0.76%) RESTful
10 15 (0.76%) YAML
11 14 (0.71%) React
12 11 (0.56%) pytest
13 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.46%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.46%) HTML
14 9 (0.46%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.46%) scikit-learn
15 8 (0.41%) .NET
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.11%) Cloud Native
2 81 (4.12%) Legacy Systems
3 67 (3.40%) Data Structures
4 35 (1.78%) Onboarding
5 29 (1.47%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (1.22%) Product Ownership
7 23 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
7 23 (1.17%) NHS
8 21 (1.07%) Reference Data
9 18 (0.91%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.81%) Management Information System
11 14 (0.71%) AI Agents
11 14 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (0.66%) Clustering
13 11 (0.56%) Algorithms
14 10 (0.51%) Enterprise Software
14 10 (0.51%) Life Science
14 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (0.51%) Replication
14 10 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (3.56%) Unix
2 49 (2.49%) Linux
3 4 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 836 (42.48%) Data Pipeline
2 714 (36.28%) Data Engineering
3 701 (35.62%) Analytics
4 686 (34.86%) ETL
5 654 (33.23%) Data Modelling
6 457 (23.22%) CI/CD
7 352 (17.89%) Agile
7 352 (17.89%) Business Intelligence
8 326 (16.57%) DevOps
9 303 (15.40%) Migration
10 268 (13.62%) Data Governance
11 255 (12.96%) AI
12 249 (12.65%) Data Integration
13 232 (11.79%) Validation
14 227 (11.53%) Problem-Solving
15 215 (10.92%) Data Transformation
16 183 (9.30%) Decision-Making
17 177 (8.99%) Data Science
18 168 (8.54%) Machine Learning
19 159 (8.08%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 989 (50.25%) SQL
2 818 (41.57%) Python
3 120 (6.10%) Java
4 66 (3.35%) Scala
5 56 (2.85%) PL/SQL
6 37 (1.88%) Shell Script
7 35 (1.78%) T-SQL
8 30 (1.52%) Bash
9 26 (1.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 22 (1.12%) PowerShell
11 19 (0.97%) JavaScript
12 16 (0.81%) C#
13 13 (0.66%) R
14 9 (0.46%) Bicep
15 6 (0.30%) Go
15 6 (0.30%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.20%) Korn
17 2 (0.10%) Perl
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 536 (27.24%) Security Cleared
2 467 (23.73%) SC Cleared
3 46 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.13%) Degree
5 22 (1.12%) Azure Certification
5 22 (1.12%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
9 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.41%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.36%) CISM
10 7 (0.36%) CISSP
11 6 (0.30%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.25%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.25%) CEH
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (24.59%) Data Quality
2 62 (3.15%) QA
3 47 (2.39%) GDPR
4 17 (0.86%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 6 (0.30%) FATCA
6 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
6 6 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.15%) MiFID
8 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.10%) EMIR
8 2 (0.10%) GMP
8 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.10%) WCAG
9 1 (0.051%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.051%) IFRS
9 1 (0.051%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.051%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 124 (6.30%) Docker
2 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) HDFS
4 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 175 (8.89%) Terraform
2 97 (4.93%) Kubernetes
3 48 (2.44%) Grafana
4 15 (0.76%) Ansible
5 9 (0.46%) Control-M
5 9 (0.46%) Kibana
6 4 (0.20%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.15%) Puppet
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.10%) Rancher
8 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.051%) logstash
9 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 388 (19.72%) Databricks
2 244 (12.40%) Microsoft
3 173 (8.79%) Oracle
4 137 (6.96%) Informatica
5 128 (6.50%) Talend
6 71 (3.61%) Denodo
6 71 (3.61%) Google
7 34 (1.73%) SAP
8 32 (1.63%) Cisco
8 32 (1.63%) F5
8 32 (1.63%) Salesforce
9 24 (1.22%) Palantir
10 19 (0.97%) Cloudera
10 19 (0.97%) Splunk
11 18 (0.91%) Foundry
12 14 (0.71%) ServiceNow
13 12 (0.61%) IBM
14 11 (0.56%) Sage
15 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
15 9 (0.46%) Dynatrace