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 September 2026.

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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 129 101
Rank change year-on-year +62 -28 +22
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,893 718 890
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 2.18% 2.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.77% 2.40% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,259 511 636
10th Percentile £375 £363 £358
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £625
90th Percentile £663 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 14 10
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £65.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £75.63 -
90th Percentile £72.40 £103.25 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +53.91% -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 50,200 29,979 35,866
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.34% 91.08% 93.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,804 18,923 22,265
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,754 1,564 1,727
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.27 £17.00 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% -0.76%
75th Percentile £67.50 £51.93 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +10.86%

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 September 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 September 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 13 September 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 +61 1,665 £500 - 1,025
UK excluding London +97 855 £475 - 570
London +27 832 £525 - 588
Work from Home +48 551 £500 +2.56% 359
Midlands +76 344 £469 +2.79% 88
West Midlands +69 277 £469 -0.21% 52
North of England +28 205 £500 +5.26% 131
South East +28 130 £459 -4.62% 155
North West +13 113 £525 +10.53% 70
South West +9 95 £525 +5.00% 61
Yorkshire +6 75 £475 -6.17% 40
East Midlands +31 67 £450 +1.98% 36
Scotland -4 61 £428 -7.57% 64
East of England +12 38 £450 -40.00% 41
North East -29 18 £510 +20.71% 21
Wales -4 16 £513 +8.47% 10
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 22
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 13 September 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.

1 945 (49.92%) SQL
2 817 (43.16%) Python
3 813 (42.95%) Data Pipeline
4 731 (38.62%) Data Engineering
5 650 (34.34%) ETL
6 649 (34.28%) Data Modelling
7 647 (34.18%) Analytics
8 592 (31.27%) Azure
9 576 (30.43%) AWS
10 491 (25.94%) Security Cleared
11 479 (25.30%) Data Quality
12 450 (23.77%) CI/CD
13 429 (22.66%) SC Cleared
14 398 (21.02%) Databricks
15 334 (17.64%) Agile
16 320 (16.90%) Data Warehouse
17 313 (16.53%) Business Intelligence
18 311 (16.43%) DevOps
19 304 (16.06%) Migration
20 291 (15.37%) AI
21 265 (14.00%) Data Governance
22 264 (13.95%) PySpark
23 255 (13.47%) Power Platform
24 248 (13.10%) Power BI
25 247 (13.05%) Microsoft
26 241 (12.73%) Data Integration
27 238 (12.57%) Data Transformation
28 235 (12.41%) Validation
29 230 (12.15%) Snowflake
30 219 (11.57%) dbt

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
1 209 (11.04%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (7.92%) Apache Spark
3 129 (6.81%) Apache
4 59 (3.12%) SAS
5 47 (2.48%) Confluence
6 16 (0.85%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 11 (0.58%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.11%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.11%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.11%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.11%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.053%) Liferay
10 1 (0.053%) Luigi
10 1 (0.053%) nginx
10 1 (0.053%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.053%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
3 6 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
3 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.11%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.11%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.11%) SimCorp Dimension
6 1 (0.053%) BambooHR
6 1 (0.053%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.053%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.053%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.053%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.053%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 592 (31.27%) Azure
2 576 (30.43%) AWS
3 255 (13.47%) Power Platform
4 230 (12.15%) Snowflake
5 219 (11.57%) dbt
6 212 (11.20%) Azure Data Factory
7 185 (9.77%) GCP
8 167 (8.82%) Amazon S3
9 130 (6.87%) Serverless
10 128 (6.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 127 (6.71%) Azure DevOps
12 117 (6.18%) AWS Lambda
13 111 (5.86%) GitHub
14 66 (3.49%) Azure Databricks
15 53 (2.80%) Amazon EMR
16 43 (2.27%) GitHub Actions
17 38 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.58%) AWS Step Functions
19 29 (1.53%) Amazon Kinesis
20 28 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.32%) BGP
1 25 (1.32%) DMZ
1 25 (1.32%) DNS
1 25 (1.32%) Multicast
1 25 (1.32%) VPN
2 11 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
3 9 (0.48%) Firewall
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.053%) HTTP
7 1 (0.053%) LTE
7 1 (0.053%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (16.90%) Data Warehouse
2 248 (13.10%) Power BI
3 165 (8.72%) Data Lake
4 132 (6.97%) Metadata
5 111 (5.86%) BigQuery
6 91 (4.81%) Amazon Redshift
7 85 (4.49%) Delta Lake
8 81 (4.28%) Amazon Athena
9 80 (4.23%) SQL Server
10 75 (3.96%) Big Data
11 69 (3.65%) Pentaho
12 62 (3.28%) PostgreSQL
13 60 (3.17%) Snowflake Schema
13 60 (3.17%) Tableau
14 59 (3.12%) Relational Database
15 49 (2.59%) NoSQL
16 48 (2.54%) Azure SQL Database
17 43 (2.27%) Oracle Database
18 39 (2.06%) Amazon RDS
19 38 (2.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 168 (8.87%) Git
2 95 (5.02%) GitLab
3 74 (3.91%) JIRA
4 32 (1.69%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.06%) MLflow
6 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.37%) Postman
8 6 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 6 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.21%) ERwin
9 4 (0.21%) Selenium
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
11 2 (0.11%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.11%) RStudio
11 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.11%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.053%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 310 (16.38%) Social Skills
2 303 (16.01%) Finance
3 213 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (8.35%) Public Sector
5 115 (6.08%) Banking
6 34 (1.80%) Marketing
7 30 (1.58%) Retail
8 29 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (1.27%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.22%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.11%) Automotive
12 20 (1.06%) Documentation Skills
12 20 (1.06%) Investment Banking
13 19 (1.00%) Front Office
13 19 (1.00%) Law
14 18 (0.95%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
16 13 (0.69%) Police
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
18 10 (0.53%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 264 (13.95%) PySpark
2 188 (9.93%) Terraform
3 128 (6.76%) Kafka
4 34 (1.80%) REST
5 33 (1.74%) JSON
6 27 (1.43%) Pandas
7 23 (1.22%) Spring
7 23 (1.22%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.16%) XML
9 20 (1.06%) Great Expectations
10 18 (0.95%) Apache Beam
11 16 (0.85%) React
12 15 (0.79%) LangChain
13 14 (0.74%) RESTful
14 12 (0.63%) pytest
15 11 (0.58%) .NET
15 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
16 10 (0.53%) Microsoft Graph
16 10 (0.53%) PyTorch
16 10 (0.53%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 144 (7.61%) Cloud Native
2 66 (3.49%) Data Structures
3 65 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
4 44 (2.32%) Onboarding
5 27 (1.43%) Product Ownership
6 25 (1.32%) AI Agents
7 24 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.22%) NHS
9 22 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.00%) Reference Data
11 18 (0.95%) Management Information System
12 17 (0.90%) Reinsurance
13 14 (0.74%) Algorithms
14 12 (0.63%) Clustering
15 11 (0.58%) Enterprise Software
15 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
16 10 (0.53%) Data Fabric
16 10 (0.53%) Data Protection Act
16 10 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
16 10 (0.53%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 60 (3.17%) Unix
2 42 (2.22%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.053%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.053%) VMS
5 1 (0.053%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 813 (42.95%) Data Pipeline
2 731 (38.62%) Data Engineering
3 650 (34.34%) ETL
4 649 (34.28%) Data Modelling
5 647 (34.18%) Analytics
6 450 (23.77%) CI/CD
7 334 (17.64%) Agile
8 313 (16.53%) Business Intelligence
9 311 (16.43%) DevOps
10 304 (16.06%) Migration
11 291 (15.37%) AI
12 265 (14.00%) Data Governance
13 241 (12.73%) Data Integration
14 238 (12.57%) Data Transformation
15 235 (12.41%) Validation
16 209 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
17 175 (9.24%) Machine Learning
18 172 (9.09%) Lakehouse
19 170 (8.98%) Data Science
20 169 (8.93%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 945 (49.92%) SQL
2 817 (43.16%) Python
3 114 (6.02%) Java
4 67 (3.54%) Scala
5 53 (2.80%) PL/SQL
6 34 (1.80%) T-SQL
7 33 (1.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 29 (1.53%) Shell Script
9 22 (1.16%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.16%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.06%) Bash
11 13 (0.69%) R
12 12 (0.63%) C#
13 10 (0.53%) Bicep
14 9 (0.48%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.32%) Go
16 5 (0.26%) Korn
17 3 (0.16%) COBOL
17 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
17 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 491 (25.94%) Security Cleared
2 429 (22.66%) SC Cleared
3 48 (2.54%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.11%) Degree
5 25 (1.32%) DV Cleared
6 23 (1.22%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.11%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.74%) AWS Certification
9 11 (0.58%) SnowPro
10 9 (0.48%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.37%) Master's Degree
13 6 (0.32%) CISM
13 6 (0.32%) CISSP
14 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
14 5 (0.26%) CEH
15 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
16 1 (0.053%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.053%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 479 (25.30%) Data Quality
2 70 (3.70%) QA
3 39 (2.06%) GDPR
4 17 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.48%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.32%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.16%) MiFID
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.11%) WCAG
12 1 (0.053%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.053%) IFRS
12 1 (0.053%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.053%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.053%) PMO
12 1 (0.053%) SOC 2
System Software
1 110 (5.81%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.053%) RACF
Systems Management
1 83 (4.38%) Kubernetes
2 40 (2.11%) Grafana
3 17 (0.90%) Ansible
4 13 (0.69%) Control-M
5 10 (0.53%) Kibana
6 6 (0.32%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) logstash
7 2 (0.11%) Puppet
8 1 (0.053%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 398 (21.02%) Databricks
2 247 (13.05%) Microsoft
3 161 (8.51%) Oracle
4 107 (5.65%) Informatica
5 96 (5.07%) Talend
6 78 (4.12%) Google
7 53 (2.80%) Denodo
8 35 (1.85%) Salesforce
9 26 (1.37%) Palantir
9 26 (1.37%) SAP
10 25 (1.32%) Cisco
10 25 (1.32%) F5
11 24 (1.27%) Foundry
12 15 (0.79%) Splunk
13 9 (0.48%) Bloomberg
13 9 (0.48%) Cloudera
13 9 (0.48%) IBM
14 8 (0.42%) Alteryx
14 8 (0.42%) InterSystems
14 8 (0.42%) OpenAI