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 23 June 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 61 111 100
Rank change year-on-year +50 -11 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,874 742 985
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.69% 2.48% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.69% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,285 550 751
10th Percentile £370 £363 £206
25th Percentile £420 £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 67 9 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £31.25
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 46,904 27,610 40,551
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.14% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,521 17,729 25,983
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -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% -3.60% -1.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,134 1,203 2,979
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.85 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.44 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.25 £27.38 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.99% -27.00% -14.77%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.23%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 +50 1,647 £500 - 291
London +34 856 £525 - 110
UK excluding London +74 817 £469 +1.41% 255
Work from Home +41 559 £500 +2.56% 135
Midlands +53 326 £468 +3.94% 53
West Midlands +45 300 £460 - 32
North of England +14 212 £475 - 61
North West +16 130 £480 +1.05% 30
South East +24 121 £475 +11.76% 76
South West +16 87 £506 +1.20% 29
Scotland +19 66 £425 -9.33% 6
Yorkshire -12 63 £470 +1.62% 14
East Midlands -5 26 £525 +28.05% 21
Wales +5 22 £450 +3.45% 10
East of England -18 22 £498 +56.45% 15
North East -23 19 £500 +14.29% 17
Northern Ireland +1 3 £410 -18.00% 9

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

For the 6 months to 23 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 1,004 (53.58%) SQL
2 856 (45.68%) Python
3 775 (41.36%) Data Pipeline
4 698 (37.25%) Analytics
5 681 (36.34%) Data Engineering
6 678 (36.18%) ETL
7 628 (33.51%) Data Modelling
8 596 (31.80%) Azure
9 539 (28.76%) AWS
10 528 (28.18%) Security Cleared
11 472 (25.19%) Data Quality
12 463 (24.71%) SC Cleared
13 453 (24.17%) CI/CD
14 402 (21.45%) Databricks
15 388 (20.70%) Business Intelligence
16 339 (18.09%) Agile
17 317 (16.92%) DevOps
18 312 (16.65%) Data Warehouse
18 312 (16.65%) Power Platform
19 298 (15.90%) Power BI
20 279 (14.89%) PySpark
21 259 (13.82%) Migration
22 249 (13.29%) Data Governance
23 240 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
24 239 (12.75%) Microsoft
25 234 (12.49%) AI
26 231 (12.33%) Azure Data Factory
27 200 (10.67%) Snowflake
28 199 (10.62%) Data Integration
29 196 (10.46%) 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 (9.07%) Apache Airflow
2 151 (8.06%) Apache Spark
3 105 (5.60%) Apache
4 85 (4.54%) SAS
5 54 (2.88%) Confluence
6 11 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
6 11 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.11%) Luigi
10 1 (0.053%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.053%) Appian
10 1 (0.053%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.053%) Camunda
10 1 (0.053%) Liferay
10 1 (0.053%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.27%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.21%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.21%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.053%) Elite 3E
7 1 (0.053%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.053%) iTrent
7 1 (0.053%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.053%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.053%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.053%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 596 (31.80%) Azure
2 539 (28.76%) AWS
3 312 (16.65%) Power Platform
4 231 (12.33%) Azure Data Factory
5 200 (10.67%) Snowflake
6 177 (9.45%) Amazon S3
7 173 (9.23%) dbt
8 163 (8.70%) GCP
9 151 (8.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 141 (7.52%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (6.78%) Serverless
12 121 (6.46%) GitHub
13 108 (5.76%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.93%) GitHub Actions
15 52 (2.77%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.87%) Matillion
17 32 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.60%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (1.55%) Amazon Kinesis
20 24 (1.28%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.76%) DNS
1 33 (1.76%) VPN
2 32 (1.71%) BGP
2 32 (1.71%) DMZ
2 32 (1.71%) Multicast
3 10 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.27%) Firewall
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.053%) 4G
7 1 (0.053%) 5G
7 1 (0.053%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.053%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (16.65%) Data Warehouse
2 298 (15.90%) Power BI
3 183 (9.77%) Data Lake
4 120 (6.40%) SQL Server
5 108 (5.76%) Amazon Redshift
6 103 (5.50%) Delta Lake
7 99 (5.28%) Metadata
8 90 (4.80%) BigQuery
8 90 (4.80%) Pentaho
9 85 (4.54%) Big Data
10 75 (4.00%) Amazon Athena
11 74 (3.95%) Tableau
12 73 (3.90%) Snowflake Schema
13 71 (3.79%) Azure SQL Database
14 68 (3.63%) PostgreSQL
15 61 (3.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 57 (3.04%) NoSQL
17 56 (2.99%) Relational Database
18 38 (2.03%) Hadoop
19 36 (1.92%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 189 (10.09%) Git
2 102 (5.44%) GitLab
3 98 (5.23%) JIRA
4 49 (2.61%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.43%) MLflow
7 7 (0.37%) 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 (0.053%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.053%) ERwin
11 1 (0.053%) JUnit
11 1 (0.053%) Selenium
General
1 313 (16.70%) Finance
2 305 (16.28%) Social Skills
3 202 (10.78%) Analytical Skills
4 160 (8.54%) Public Sector
5 106 (5.66%) Banking
6 36 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 31 (1.65%) Marketing
8 28 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.49%) Retail
9 25 (1.33%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.23%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.96%) Manufacturing
11 18 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
12 13 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 12 (0.64%) Automotive
13 12 (0.64%) Front Office
14 11 (0.59%) Publishing
15 8 (0.43%) Billing
16 7 (0.37%) Law
16 7 (0.37%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 279 (14.89%) PySpark
2 153 (8.16%) Kafka
3 46 (2.45%) Pandas
4 36 (1.92%) JSON
5 28 (1.49%) REST
6 24 (1.28%) Spring
6 24 (1.28%) Spring Boot
7 23 (1.23%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.17%) XML
9 19 (1.01%) YAML
10 17 (0.91%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.69%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.69%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.59%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.59%) React
12 11 (0.59%) RESTful
12 11 (0.59%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.53%) pytest
13 10 (0.53%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.48%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.47%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.09%) Data Structures
3 57 (3.04%) Legacy Systems
4 32 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
5 28 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
5 28 (1.49%) Onboarding
6 26 (1.39%) Reinsurance
7 24 (1.28%) Product Ownership
8 22 (1.17%) Clustering
8 22 (1.17%) NHS
9 21 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (0.59%) Life Science
10 11 (0.59%) Virtual Team
11 10 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
11 10 (0.53%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.53%) Reference Data
11 10 (0.53%) Replication
11 10 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
12 9 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
12 9 (0.48%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.47%) Unix
2 40 (2.13%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.053%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 775 (41.36%) Data Pipeline
2 698 (37.25%) Analytics
3 681 (36.34%) Data Engineering
4 678 (36.18%) ETL
5 628 (33.51%) Data Modelling
6 453 (24.17%) CI/CD
7 388 (20.70%) Business Intelligence
8 339 (18.09%) Agile
9 317 (16.92%) DevOps
10 259 (13.82%) Migration
11 249 (13.29%) Data Governance
12 240 (12.81%) Problem-Solving
13 234 (12.49%) AI
14 199 (10.62%) Data Integration
15 194 (10.35%) Validation
16 188 (10.03%) Data Science
17 168 (8.96%) Decision-Making
18 161 (8.59%) Data Transformation
19 144 (7.68%) Infrastructure as Code
20 142 (7.58%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (53.58%) SQL
2 856 (45.68%) Python
3 121 (6.46%) Java
4 65 (3.47%) Scala
5 58 (3.09%) PL/SQL
6 43 (2.29%) T-SQL
7 36 (1.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.65%) Shell Script
9 29 (1.55%) C#
10 28 (1.49%) Bash
11 21 (1.12%) PowerShell
12 18 (0.96%) Bicep
13 14 (0.75%) R
14 13 (0.69%) JavaScript
15 8 (0.43%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.32%) Go
17 2 (0.11%) Perl
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
17 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 528 (28.18%) Security Cleared
2 463 (24.71%) SC Cleared
3 51 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
4 43 (2.29%) Degree
5 27 (1.44%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (0.85%) DV Cleared
7 14 (0.75%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.48%) DBS Check
8 9 (0.48%) SnowPro
9 8 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.37%) 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 (0.053%) CEH
14 1 (0.053%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (25.19%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.15%) QA
3 51 (2.72%) GDPR
4 13 (0.69%) 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 (0.053%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.053%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.053%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.053%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 105 (5.60%) Docker
2 6 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.053%) RACF
Systems Management
1 196 (10.46%) Terraform
2 86 (4.59%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.72%) 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 (0.053%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.053%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.053%) logstash
8 1 (0.053%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.053%) Puppet
8 1 (0.053%) QRadar
Vendors
1 402 (21.45%) Databricks
2 239 (12.75%) Microsoft
3 174 (9.28%) Oracle
4 137 (7.31%) Informatica
5 130 (6.94%) Talend
6 72 (3.84%) Denodo
7 57 (3.04%) Google
8 34 (1.81%) Cisco
8 34 (1.81%) F5
9 28 (1.49%) SAP
10 25 (1.33%) Splunk
11 24 (1.28%) Salesforce
12 23 (1.23%) ServiceNow
13 18 (0.96%) Cloudera
13 18 (0.96%) Palantir
14 16 (0.85%) IBM
15 15 (0.80%) Alteryx
16 14 (0.75%) Foundry
17 10 (0.53%) Sage
18 9 (0.48%) Dynatrace