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 9 June 2026.

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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 102 101
Rank change year-on-year +41 -1 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,823 757 954
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.59% 2.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.98% 2.80% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,270 563 732
10th Percentile £375 £363 £201
25th Percentile £419 £425 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £582 £584 £594
90th Percentile £658 £700 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £463 £450
% change year-on-year +1.50% +2.78% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £32.50
25th Percentile £36.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £51.25 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -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 45,859 27,036 40,213
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.35% 92.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,926 17,399 25,887
10th Percentile £325 £287 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £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 3,063 1,119 2,897
10th Percentile £15.15 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.84 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.61 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.73% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.47 £61.75
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -5.88%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 +35 1,594 £500 - 364
London +36 858 £525 - 137
UK excluding London +63 764 £469 +1.50% 292
Work from Home +30 536 £500 +2.56% 830
Midlands +51 309 £469 +4.22% 42
West Midlands +44 290 £469 +1.96% 35
North of England +8 204 £465 -2.11% 82
North West +14 127 £480 +1.05% 43
South East +16 107 £475 +11.76% 98
South West +18 82 £506 +5.14% 33
Scotland +17 61 £430 -5.75% 11
Yorkshire -25 58 £465 +3.33% 16
Wales +8 22 £450 +3.45% 14
North East -15 19 £450 -5.26% 24
East Midlands -23 19 £525 +28.05% 7
East of England -25 19 £520 +63.52% 9
Northern Ireland +6 4 £410 -18.00% 6

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

For the 6 months to 9 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.

1 993 (54.47%) SQL
2 838 (45.97%) Python
3 763 (41.85%) Data Pipeline
4 678 (37.19%) Analytics
4 678 (37.19%) ETL
5 658 (36.09%) Data Engineering
6 614 (33.68%) Data Modelling
7 596 (32.69%) Azure
8 534 (29.29%) Security Cleared
9 518 (28.41%) AWS
10 473 (25.95%) SC Cleared
11 459 (25.18%) Data Quality
12 432 (23.70%) CI/CD
13 420 (23.04%) Databricks
14 385 (21.12%) Business Intelligence
15 328 (17.99%) Agile
16 313 (17.17%) DevOps
17 311 (17.06%) Power Platform
18 300 (16.46%) Data Warehouse
19 295 (16.18%) Power BI
20 277 (15.19%) PySpark
21 245 (13.44%) Data Governance
22 239 (13.11%) Azure Data Factory
23 237 (13.00%) Migration
24 233 (12.78%) Problem-Solving
25 232 (12.73%) Microsoft
26 218 (11.96%) AI
27 201 (11.03%) Data Integration
28 190 (10.42%) Data Lake
28 190 (10.42%) Git

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
1 171 (9.38%) Apache Airflow
2 159 (8.72%) Apache Spark
3 109 (5.98%) Apache
4 83 (4.55%) SAS
5 48 (2.63%) Confluence
6 12 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.55%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.27%) SharePoint
9 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.055%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.055%) Appian
11 1 (0.055%) Camunda
11 1 (0.055%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.38%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.055%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.055%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.16%) Infor LN
2 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.11%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.11%) Sage X3
3 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.055%) FIS Private Capital Suite
4 1 (0.055%) iTrent
4 1 (0.055%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.055%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.055%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.055%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.055%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.055%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 596 (32.69%) Azure
2 518 (28.41%) AWS
3 311 (17.06%) Power Platform
4 239 (13.11%) Azure Data Factory
5 187 (10.26%) Snowflake
6 168 (9.22%) Amazon S3
7 164 (9.00%) dbt
8 160 (8.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 160 (8.78%) GCP
9 142 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
10 120 (6.58%) GitHub
10 120 (6.58%) Serverless
11 101 (5.54%) AWS Lambda
12 56 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
13 43 (2.36%) Amazon EMR
14 33 (1.81%) Matillion
15 32 (1.76%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (1.65%) Amazon Kinesis
17 27 (1.48%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 26 (1.43%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 34 (1.87%) DNS
1 34 (1.87%) VPN
2 33 (1.81%) BGP
2 33 (1.81%) DMZ
2 33 (1.81%) Multicast
3 10 (0.55%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.38%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.38%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.22%) Firewall
5 4 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.22%) Wireless
6 1 (0.055%) 4G
6 1 (0.055%) 5G
6 1 (0.055%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 300 (16.46%) Data Warehouse
2 295 (16.18%) Power BI
3 190 (10.42%) Data Lake
4 128 (7.02%) SQL Server
5 110 (6.03%) Delta Lake
6 97 (5.32%) Amazon Redshift
7 94 (5.16%) Metadata
8 91 (4.99%) Big Data
9 89 (4.88%) BigQuery
10 86 (4.72%) Pentaho
11 77 (4.22%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (4.00%) Snowflake Schema
12 73 (4.00%) Tableau
13 71 (3.89%) Amazon Athena
14 70 (3.84%) PostgreSQL
15 62 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 61 (3.35%) NoSQL
17 53 (2.91%) Relational Database
18 39 (2.14%) Hadoop
19 38 (2.08%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 190 (10.42%) Git
2 95 (5.21%) GitLab
3 93 (5.10%) JIRA
4 51 (2.80%) Jenkins
5 12 (0.66%) MLflow
6 9 (0.49%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.38%) Postman
8 5 (0.27%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) SonarQube
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 (0.055%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.055%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.055%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.055%) ERwin
11 1 (0.055%) JUnit
11 1 (0.055%) Selenium
General
1 294 (16.13%) Finance
2 284 (15.58%) Social Skills
3 194 (10.64%) Analytical Skills
4 149 (8.17%) Public Sector
5 99 (5.43%) Banking
6 35 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 28 (1.54%) Retail
8 27 (1.48%) Investment Banking
8 27 (1.48%) Marketing
9 26 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
10 21 (1.15%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (0.93%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.82%) Front Office
14 14 (0.77%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.60%) Publishing
16 7 (0.38%) Law
16 7 (0.38%) Military
17 6 (0.33%) Billing
17 6 (0.33%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 277 (15.19%) PySpark
2 158 (8.67%) Kafka
3 53 (2.91%) Pandas
4 35 (1.92%) JSON
5 29 (1.59%) REST
6 25 (1.37%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.26%) Spring
7 23 (1.26%) Spring Boot
8 20 (1.10%) XML
8 20 (1.10%) YAML
9 17 (0.93%) Apache Beam
10 13 (0.71%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.71%) Matplotlib
10 13 (0.71%) scikit-learn
11 11 (0.60%) PyTorch
11 11 (0.60%) React
11 11 (0.60%) RESTful
12 10 (0.55%) pytest
13 9 (0.49%) GeoJSON
13 9 (0.49%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.62%) Cloud Native
2 55 (3.02%) Data Structures
3 53 (2.91%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (1.65%) Greenfield Project
4 30 (1.65%) Product Ownership
5 29 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
6 26 (1.43%) Onboarding
7 25 (1.37%) Reinsurance
8 21 (1.15%) Clustering
9 20 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
10 16 (0.88%) NHS
11 12 (0.66%) Replication
12 11 (0.60%) Distributed Computing
12 11 (0.60%) Self-Motivation
13 10 (0.55%) Life Science
13 10 (0.55%) Public Cloud
13 10 (0.55%) Reference Data
13 10 (0.55%) Virtual Team
14 9 (0.49%) Driving Licence
14 9 (0.49%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 64 (3.51%) Unix
2 40 (2.19%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.055%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 763 (41.85%) Data Pipeline
2 678 (37.19%) Analytics
2 678 (37.19%) ETL
3 658 (36.09%) Data Engineering
4 614 (33.68%) Data Modelling
5 432 (23.70%) CI/CD
6 385 (21.12%) Business Intelligence
7 328 (17.99%) Agile
8 313 (17.17%) DevOps
9 245 (13.44%) Data Governance
10 237 (13.00%) Migration
11 233 (12.78%) Problem-Solving
12 218 (11.96%) AI
13 201 (11.03%) Data Integration
14 189 (10.37%) Validation
15 179 (9.82%) Data Science
16 155 (8.50%) Decision-Making
17 151 (8.28%) Data Transformation
18 141 (7.73%) Infrastructure as Code
19 139 (7.62%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 993 (54.47%) SQL
2 838 (45.97%) Python
3 119 (6.53%) Java
4 75 (4.11%) Scala
5 57 (3.13%) PL/SQL
6 41 (2.25%) T-SQL
7 37 (2.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 32 (1.76%) C#
9 31 (1.70%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.48%) Bash
11 20 (1.10%) Bicep
12 18 (0.99%) PowerShell
13 15 (0.82%) R
14 12 (0.66%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.38%) Go
15 7 (0.38%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.11%) C++
16 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.11%) LookML
16 2 (0.11%) Perl
Qualifications
1 534 (29.29%) Security Cleared
2 473 (25.95%) SC Cleared
3 45 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
4 44 (2.41%) Degree
5 27 (1.48%) Azure Certification
6 18 (0.99%) DV Cleared
7 16 (0.88%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (0.66%) AWS Certification
9 11 (0.60%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.49%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.44%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.33%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.33%) SnowPro
13 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
14 4 (0.22%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 3 (0.16%) CISSP
15 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
16 2 (0.11%) CISM
17 1 (0.055%) CISA
17 1 (0.055%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (25.18%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.24%) QA
3 51 (2.80%) GDPR
4 15 (0.82%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.60%) SLA
6 9 (0.49%) FATCA
7 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.22%) MiFID
10 3 (0.16%) GMP
10 3 (0.16%) WCAG
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) GRC
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
12 1 (0.055%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 1 (0.055%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.055%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.055%) IFRS
12 1 (0.055%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.055%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 104 (5.70%) Docker
2 6 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.055%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.055%) RACF
Systems Management
1 190 (10.42%) Terraform
2 84 (4.61%) Kubernetes
3 52 (2.85%) Grafana
4 13 (0.71%) Ansible
4 13 (0.71%) Prometheus
5 10 (0.55%) Kibana
6 3 (0.16%) logstash
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 (0.055%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.055%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.055%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.055%) Puppet
8 1 (0.055%) QRadar
Vendors
1 420 (23.04%) Databricks
2 232 (12.73%) Microsoft
3 163 (8.94%) Oracle
4 126 (6.91%) Talend
5 125 (6.86%) Informatica
6 71 (3.89%) Denodo
7 60 (3.29%) Google
8 35 (1.92%) Cisco
8 35 (1.92%) F5
9 29 (1.59%) SAP
10 25 (1.37%) Splunk
11 23 (1.26%) ServiceNow
12 17 (0.93%) Cloudera
13 16 (0.88%) IBM
14 15 (0.82%) Alteryx
14 15 (0.82%) Foundry
14 15 (0.82%) Salesforce
15 14 (0.77%) Palantir
16 9 (0.49%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.44%) MuleSoft