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 15 October 2026.

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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 125 100
Rank change year-on-year +55 -25 +34
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,912 750 891
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.46% 2.26% 2.37%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.76% 2.48% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,272 534 621
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £694 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +1.68% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 13 5
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.34 £53.55
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £60.00
Median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £95.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.76% -44.74% +53.85%
75th Percentile £68.00 £80.00 £97.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £105.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -55.00% +5.26%

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 50,841 30,184 35,017
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.94% 90.90% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,834 19,073 21,148
10th Percentile £325 £275 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4,158 1,652 1,437
10th Percentile £14.31 £13.80 £15.09
25th Percentile £19.33 £17.30 £20.50
Median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £41.27
Median % change year-on-year +65.23% -39.05% -8.30%
75th Percentile £67.50 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.30 £68.52 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £25.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +64.24% -41.18% -4.49%

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 15 October 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 15 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 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 15 October 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 +67 1,661 £500 -2.44% 265
UK excluding London +88 869 £483 +1.68% 213
London +29 828 £525 - 80
Work from Home +39 554 £500 +5.26% 119
Midlands +73 327 £469 -6.20% 34
West Midlands +57 241 £469 -6.90% 26
North of England +27 206 £525 +10.53% 71
South East +17 124 £459 -3.37% 54
South West +28 121 £525 +2.44% 37
North West +23 108 £525 +20.69% 31
East Midlands +43 86 £388 -16.22% 8
Yorkshire +5 80 £519 +1.29% 24
Scotland +4 73 £525 +16.67% 5
East of England +4 36 £525 -16.00% 6
North East -25 19 £510 +22.52% 16
Wales -3 18 £550 +17.02% 2
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 5
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 15 October 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.

1 947 (49.53%) SQL
2 854 (44.67%) Python
3 830 (43.41%) Data Pipeline
4 794 (41.53%) Data Engineering
5 672 (35.15%) Data Modelling
6 669 (34.99%) ETL
7 643 (33.63%) Analytics
8 596 (31.17%) Azure
9 595 (31.12%) AWS
10 505 (26.41%) Data Quality
11 483 (25.26%) Security Cleared
12 466 (24.37%) CI/CD
13 425 (22.23%) Databricks
14 415 (21.71%) SC Cleared
15 336 (17.57%) Agile
16 334 (17.47%) AI
17 326 (17.05%) DevOps
18 318 (16.63%) Migration
19 315 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
20 284 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
21 277 (14.49%) Data Transformation
22 274 (14.33%) Validation
23 270 (14.12%) PySpark
24 266 (13.91%) Data Governance
25 260 (13.60%) Data Integration
26 249 (13.02%) Microsoft
27 235 (12.29%) Power Platform
27 235 (12.29%) Snowflake
28 234 (12.24%) dbt
29 227 (11.87%) Power BI

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
1 204 (10.67%) Apache Airflow
2 168 (8.79%) Apache Spark
3 156 (8.16%) Apache
4 51 (2.67%) SAS
5 47 (2.46%) Confluence
6 16 (0.84%) Palantir Foundry
6 16 (0.84%) SharePoint
7 13 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) CMS
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) nginx
11 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 18 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.42%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
5 4 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.052%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 596 (31.17%) Azure
2 595 (31.12%) AWS
3 235 (12.29%) Power Platform
3 235 (12.29%) Snowflake
4 234 (12.24%) dbt
5 216 (11.30%) Azure Data Factory
6 203 (10.62%) GCP
7 164 (8.58%) Amazon S3
8 132 (6.90%) Serverless
9 122 (6.38%) Azure DevOps
10 116 (6.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 112 (5.86%) AWS Lambda
11 112 (5.86%) GitHub
12 73 (3.82%) Azure Databricks
13 57 (2.98%) Amazon EMR
14 46 (2.41%) GitHub Actions
15 42 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 35 (1.83%) AWS Step Functions
17 29 (1.52%) Amazon EventBridge
17 29 (1.52%) Amazon Kinesis
Communications & Networking
1 21 (1.10%) DNS
2 20 (1.05%) BGP
2 20 (1.05%) DMZ
2 20 (1.05%) Multicast
2 20 (1.05%) VPN
3 9 (0.47%) Firewall
4 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.21%) Wireless
6 2 (0.10%) HTTP
6 2 (0.10%) Structured Cabling
7 1 (0.052%) Broadband
7 1 (0.052%) Cisco IPT
7 1 (0.052%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.052%) LTE
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
7 1 (0.052%) Network Security
7 1 (0.052%) TCP/IP
7 1 (0.052%) tcpdump
7 1 (0.052%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 315 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
2 227 (11.87%) Power BI
3 169 (8.84%) Data Lake
4 136 (7.11%) Metadata
5 102 (5.33%) BigQuery
6 94 (4.92%) Amazon Redshift
7 90 (4.71%) Delta Lake
8 84 (4.39%) Amazon Athena
9 72 (3.77%) Pentaho
10 69 (3.61%) Big Data
11 68 (3.56%) SQL Server
12 59 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
13 55 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
14 53 (2.77%) Relational Database
15 44 (2.30%) NoSQL
15 44 (2.30%) Oracle Database
16 41 (2.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 40 (2.09%) Azure SQL Database
18 38 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (1.99%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 187 (9.78%) Git
2 103 (5.39%) GitLab
3 62 (3.24%) JIRA
4 36 (1.88%) Jenkins
5 23 (1.20%) MLflow
6 10 (0.52%) Artifactory
7 9 (0.47%) Bitbucket
7 9 (0.47%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) Selenium
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.26%) Claude Code
10 4 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.16%) ERwin
11 3 (0.16%) Newman
12 2 (0.10%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.10%) RStudio
12 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
13 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 314 (16.42%) Social Skills
2 292 (15.27%) Finance
3 210 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
4 173 (9.05%) Public Sector
5 126 (6.59%) Banking
6 34 (1.78%) Marketing
7 33 (1.73%) Retail
8 26 (1.36%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 23 (1.20%) Automotive
10 23 (1.20%) Front Office
11 20 (1.05%) Aerospace
12 17 (0.89%) Law
13 16 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
13 16 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
13 16 (0.84%) Telecoms
14 15 (0.78%) Police
15 14 (0.73%) Military
16 13 (0.68%) Manufacturing
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (14.12%) PySpark
2 188 (9.83%) Terraform
3 134 (7.01%) Kafka
4 42 (2.20%) REST
5 32 (1.67%) JSON
6 25 (1.31%) Pandas
7 23 (1.20%) XML
8 17 (0.89%) LangChain
9 16 (0.84%) Spring
9 16 (0.84%) Spring Boot
10 15 (0.78%) Great Expectations
11 14 (0.73%) pytest
12 13 (0.68%) Apache Beam
12 13 (0.68%) PyTorch
12 13 (0.68%) Streamlit
13 12 (0.63%) Apache NiFi
14 11 (0.58%) React
14 11 (0.58%) RESTful
15 10 (0.52%) LangGraph
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
Miscellaneous
1 167 (8.73%) Cloud Native
2 67 (3.50%) Data Structures
3 60 (3.14%) Legacy Systems
4 56 (2.93%) Onboarding
5 32 (1.67%) AI Agents
6 25 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (1.05%) Algorithms
7 20 (1.05%) Product Ownership
8 19 (0.99%) Management Information System
9 18 (0.94%) Reference Data
10 16 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
11 15 (0.78%) NHS
11 15 (0.78%) Reinsurance
12 14 (0.73%) Virtual Team
13 12 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (0.58%) Distributed Computing
15 10 (0.52%) Clustering
16 9 (0.47%) Derivative
16 9 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 38 (1.99%) Unix
2 33 (1.73%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
5 1 (0.052%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 830 (43.41%) Data Pipeline
2 794 (41.53%) Data Engineering
3 672 (35.15%) Data Modelling
4 669 (34.99%) ETL
5 643 (33.63%) Analytics
6 466 (24.37%) CI/CD
7 336 (17.57%) Agile
8 334 (17.47%) AI
9 326 (17.05%) DevOps
10 318 (16.63%) Migration
11 284 (14.85%) Business Intelligence
12 277 (14.49%) Data Transformation
13 274 (14.33%) Validation
14 266 (13.91%) Data Governance
15 260 (13.60%) Data Integration
16 199 (10.41%) Machine Learning
17 198 (10.36%) Problem-Solving
18 174 (9.10%) Lakehouse
19 170 (8.89%) Infrastructure as Code
20 168 (8.79%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 947 (49.53%) SQL
2 854 (44.67%) Python
3 92 (4.81%) Java
4 66 (3.45%) Scala
5 43 (2.25%) PL/SQL
6 35 (1.83%) PowerShell
7 34 (1.78%) T-SQL
8 33 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 22 (1.15%) Bash
9 22 (1.15%) Shell Script
10 17 (0.89%) R
11 15 (0.78%) Bicep
12 14 (0.73%) JavaScript
13 10 (0.52%) Go
14 8 (0.42%) TypeScript
15 5 (0.26%) C#
15 5 (0.26%) Korn
15 5 (0.26%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.16%) COBOL
17 2 (0.10%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 483 (25.26%) Security Cleared
2 415 (21.71%) SC Cleared
3 56 (2.93%) BPSS Clearance
4 43 (2.25%) DV Cleared
5 42 (2.20%) Degree
6 26 (1.36%) AWS Certification
7 25 (1.31%) Azure Certification
8 18 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 9 (0.47%) Master's Degree
10 8 (0.42%) SnowPro
11 7 (0.37%) CISM
11 7 (0.37%) CISSP
11 7 (0.37%) DBS Check
12 5 (0.26%) CEH
13 4 (0.21%) City & Guilds
14 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) CISA
15 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 505 (26.41%) Data Quality
2 78 (4.08%) QA
3 42 (2.20%) GDPR
4 17 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
7 5 (0.26%) FATCA
7 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
7 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.26%) SLA
8 3 (0.16%) MiFID
9 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.10%) EMIR
9 2 (0.10%) GRC
9 2 (0.10%) NIST
9 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.10%) SOC 2
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 102 (5.33%) Docker
2 4 (0.21%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.052%) HDFS
3 1 (0.052%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 103 (5.39%) Kubernetes
2 24 (1.26%) Grafana
3 20 (1.05%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
5 6 (0.31%) Kibana
6 5 (0.26%) Prometheus
7 3 (0.16%) logstash
8 2 (0.10%) Puppet
9 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 425 (22.23%) Databricks
2 249 (13.02%) Microsoft
3 149 (7.79%) Oracle
4 95 (4.97%) Informatica
5 93 (4.86%) Google
6 91 (4.76%) Talend
7 46 (2.41%) Denodo
8 37 (1.94%) Salesforce
9 29 (1.52%) Palantir
10 26 (1.36%) SAP
11 24 (1.26%) Foundry
12 20 (1.05%) Cisco
12 20 (1.05%) F5
13 10 (0.52%) Dynatrace
14 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
14 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
14 9 (0.47%) Splunk
15 8 (0.42%) Sage
16 7 (0.37%) IBM
16 7 (0.37%) InterSystems