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 10 July 2026.

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

6 months to
10 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 117 98
Rank change year-on-year +56 -19 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,954 771 990
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.71% 2.38% 2.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 2.59% 2.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,336 558 747
10th Percentile £375 £363 £238
25th Percentile £425 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £463 £450
% change year-on-year +1.45% +2.78% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 11 39
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.22 £31.25
25th Percentile £36.25 £46.75 £48.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -5.26%
75th Percentile £68.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.50 £48.46 £75.00
% change year-on-year -1.98% -35.39% +53.06%

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 48,674 29,733 40,149
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.88% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,515 18,978 25,840
10th Percentile £325 £288 £288
25th Percentile £418 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £522 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.40% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,263 1,368 2,770
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £12.88
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £16.79
Median hourly rate £43.50 £26.39 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +64.87% -29.64% -14.05%
75th Percentile £67.50 £56.06 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.40 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +0.50%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 +58 1,716 £500 - 416
UK excluding London +72 889 £469 +1.45% 325
London +36 857 £525 - 172
Work from Home +37 578 £500 +3.52% 166
Midlands +51 369 £463 +2.78% 57
West Midlands +42 327 £459 -0.22% 37
North of England +19 225 £475 - 93
North West +21 135 £500 +5.26% 56
South East +18 127 £475 +11.76% 90
South West +19 91 £525 +5.00% 59
Scotland +19 70 £425 -8.11% 5
Yorkshire -9 68 £465 -2.11% 20
East Midlands +12 42 £525 +28.05% 21
East of England -19 26 £543 +70.60% 9
Wales +5 22 £425 -4.49% 10
North East -22 22 £510 +16.57% 20
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 8

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

For the 6 months to 10 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 1,018 (52.10%) SQL
2 877 (44.88%) Python
3 827 (42.32%) Data Pipeline
4 726 (37.15%) Analytics
5 716 (36.64%) Data Engineering
6 699 (35.77%) ETL
7 650 (33.27%) Data Modelling
8 626 (32.04%) Azure
9 563 (28.81%) AWS
10 532 (27.23%) Security Cleared
11 481 (24.62%) Data Quality
12 469 (24.00%) CI/CD
13 463 (23.69%) SC Cleared
14 410 (20.98%) Databricks
15 379 (19.40%) Business Intelligence
16 349 (17.86%) Agile
17 327 (16.73%) DevOps
18 317 (16.22%) Data Warehouse
19 304 (15.56%) Power Platform
20 289 (14.79%) Power BI
21 284 (14.53%) Migration
22 280 (14.33%) PySpark
23 271 (13.87%) Data Governance
24 241 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
25 239 (12.23%) Microsoft
26 234 (11.98%) AI
27 232 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
28 220 (11.26%) Validation
29 214 (10.95%) Data Integration
30 204 (10.44%) 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
1 175 (8.96%) Apache Airflow
2 154 (7.88%) Apache Spark
3 112 (5.73%) Apache
4 86 (4.40%) SAS
5 54 (2.76%) Confluence
6 13 (0.67%) Palantir Foundry
6 13 (0.67%) SharePoint
7 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.26%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.051%) Appian
10 1 (0.051%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.051%) Camunda
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.10%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.56%) 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
6 1 (0.051%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.051%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.051%) iTrent
6 1 (0.051%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.051%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 626 (32.04%) Azure
2 563 (28.81%) AWS
3 304 (15.56%) Power Platform
4 232 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 204 (10.44%) Snowflake
6 189 (9.67%) dbt
7 178 (9.11%) Amazon S3
8 168 (8.60%) GCP
9 155 (7.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 142 (7.27%) Azure DevOps
11 128 (6.55%) Serverless
12 116 (5.94%) GitHub
13 108 (5.53%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.87%) Amazon EMR
15 52 (2.66%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (1.59%) Matillion
18 29 (1.48%) Amazon Kinesis
18 29 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
19 24 (1.23%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 35 (1.79%) DNS
1 35 (1.79%) VPN
2 34 (1.74%) BGP
2 34 (1.74%) DMZ
2 34 (1.74%) Multicast
3 10 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
5 6 (0.31%) Firewall
6 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.20%) Wireless
7 2 (0.10%) Intrusion Detection
8 1 (0.051%) 4G
8 1 (0.051%) 5G
8 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (16.22%) Data Warehouse
2 289 (14.79%) Power BI
3 180 (9.21%) Data Lake
4 109 (5.58%) Amazon Redshift
5 103 (5.27%) SQL Server
6 102 (5.22%) Delta Lake
7 101 (5.17%) Metadata
8 96 (4.91%) BigQuery
9 90 (4.61%) Big Data
9 90 (4.61%) Pentaho
10 79 (4.04%) Tableau
11 74 (3.79%) Amazon Athena
12 72 (3.68%) Snowflake Schema
13 71 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
14 60 (3.07%) Azure SQL Database
15 58 (2.97%) Relational Database
16 56 (2.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 55 (2.81%) NoSQL
18 40 (2.05%) Hadoop
19 38 (1.94%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 183 (9.37%) Git
2 104 (5.32%) GitLab
3 95 (4.86%) JIRA
4 50 (2.56%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.41%) MLflow
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 3 (0.15%) Newman
8 3 (0.15%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.10%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.051%) ERwin
10 1 (0.051%) JUnit
10 1 (0.051%) Selenium
General
1 324 (16.58%) Finance
2 311 (15.92%) Social Skills
3 215 (11.00%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 107 (5.48%) Banking
6 39 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 33 (1.69%) Marketing
8 30 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
8 30 (1.54%) Retail
9 25 (1.28%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 19 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 18 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
12 16 (0.82%) Front Office
13 15 (0.77%) Automotive
14 13 (0.67%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.56%) Publishing
16 10 (0.51%) Legal
17 9 (0.46%) Billing
18 8 (0.41%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 280 (14.33%) PySpark
2 151 (7.73%) Kafka
3 40 (2.05%) Pandas
4 37 (1.89%) JSON
5 27 (1.38%) REST
6 25 (1.28%) Spring
6 25 (1.28%) Spring Boot
7 23 (1.18%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.13%) XML
9 20 (1.02%) YAML
10 17 (0.87%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.67%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.61%) Streamlit
13 11 (0.56%) React
13 11 (0.56%) RESTful
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 10 (0.51%) pytest
14 10 (0.51%) scikit-learn
15 9 (0.46%) GeoJSON
15 9 (0.46%) Polars
Miscellaneous
1 153 (7.83%) Cloud Native
2 64 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
3 61 (3.12%) Data Structures
4 34 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.48%) Onboarding
6 27 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
7 26 (1.33%) Reinsurance
8 25 (1.28%) NHS
9 22 (1.13%) Product Ownership
10 20 (1.02%) Clustering
10 20 (1.02%) Data Protection Act
11 12 (0.61%) Virtual Team
12 11 (0.56%) Life Science
12 11 (0.56%) Replication
13 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.51%) Public Cloud
13 10 (0.51%) Reference Data
13 10 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.46%) Algorithms
14 9 (0.46%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.33%) Unix
2 40 (2.05%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 827 (42.32%) Data Pipeline
2 726 (37.15%) Analytics
3 716 (36.64%) Data Engineering
4 699 (35.77%) ETL
5 650 (33.27%) Data Modelling
6 469 (24.00%) CI/CD
7 379 (19.40%) Business Intelligence
8 349 (17.86%) Agile
9 327 (16.73%) DevOps
10 284 (14.53%) Migration
11 271 (13.87%) Data Governance
12 241 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
13 234 (11.98%) AI
14 220 (11.26%) Validation
15 214 (10.95%) Data Integration
16 192 (9.83%) Data Science
17 184 (9.42%) Data Transformation
18 180 (9.21%) Decision-Making
19 157 (8.03%) Infrastructure as Code
20 155 (7.93%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,018 (52.10%) SQL
2 877 (44.88%) Python
3 126 (6.45%) Java
4 66 (3.38%) Scala
5 53 (2.71%) PL/SQL
6 40 (2.05%) T-SQL
7 33 (1.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.59%) Shell Script
9 29 (1.48%) C#
10 28 (1.43%) Bash
11 23 (1.18%) PowerShell
12 15 (0.77%) R
13 14 (0.72%) Bicep
14 13 (0.67%) JavaScript
15 8 (0.41%) TypeScript
16 7 (0.36%) Go
17 2 (0.10%) Korn
17 2 (0.10%) Perl
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 532 (27.23%) Security Cleared
2 463 (23.69%) SC Cleared
3 53 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 46 (2.35%) Degree
5 28 (1.43%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.18%) DV Cleared
7 19 (0.97%) 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%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.26%) CISSP
13 4 (0.20%) CISM
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 3 (0.15%) IBM Certification
15 2 (0.10%) CEH
16 1 (0.051%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (24.62%) Data Quality
2 62 (3.17%) QA
3 54 (2.76%) GDPR
4 19 (0.97%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 9 (0.46%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.20%) MiFID
9 3 (0.15%) GMP
9 3 (0.15%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) GRC
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.051%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.051%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 109 (5.58%) Docker
2 6 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 201 (10.29%) Terraform
2 88 (4.50%) Kubernetes
3 52 (2.66%) Grafana
4 14 (0.72%) Ansible
5 13 (0.67%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 3 (0.15%) Rancher
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.10%) Control-M
8 2 (0.10%) logstash
8 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.051%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.051%) Puppet
9 1 (0.051%) QRadar
Vendors
1 410 (20.98%) Databricks
2 239 (12.23%) Microsoft
3 173 (8.85%) Oracle
4 143 (7.32%) Informatica
5 130 (6.65%) Talend
6 71 (3.63%) Denodo
7 60 (3.07%) Google
8 36 (1.84%) Cisco
8 36 (1.84%) F5
9 32 (1.64%) SAP
10 28 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 24 (1.23%) Splunk
12 21 (1.07%) Palantir
13 18 (0.92%) Cloudera
14 17 (0.87%) ServiceNow
15 16 (0.82%) Foundry
16 14 (0.72%) Alteryx
16 14 (0.72%) IBM
17 12 (0.61%) Sage
18 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg