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 30 July 2026.

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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 126 94
Rank change year-on-year +63 -32 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,966 734 953
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.71% 2.24% 2.39%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 2.44% 2.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,331 521 709
10th Percentile £375 £363 £235
25th Percentile £425 £425 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year - -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £586 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 10 32
10th Percentile £20.49 £18.18 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.43 £44.50 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £83.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £48.46 £80.00
% change year-on-year -7.14% -39.43% +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 49,068 30,025 37,043
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.63% 91.50% 92.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,609 19,114 23,981
10th Percentile £331 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,359 1,460 2,193
10th Percentile £15.50 £13.69 £14.05
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £19.09
Median hourly rate £43.61 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.38% -40.82% -1.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +7.50%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +66 1,739 £500 - 448
UK excluding London +97 919 £469 -1.26% 305
London +44 846 £525 - 212
Work from Home +43 590 £500 +5.26% 167
Midlands +59 393 £460 +2.11% 51
West Midlands +55 341 £459 -0.22% 35
North of England +24 231 £475 - 94
North West +21 135 £525 +10.53% 46
South East +18 127 £469 +10.35% 85
South West +12 87 £525 +2.44% 40
Yorkshire -8 74 £475 - 21
Scotland +26 70 £425 - 10
East Midlands +23 52 £475 +13.10% 16
East of England +9 35 £520 +63.52% 13
North East -28 23 £515 +21.18% 27
Wales -2 17 £488 +9.55% 11
Northern Ireland 0 3 £410 -18.00% 3

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

For the 6 months to 30 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 1,004 (51.07%) SQL
2 843 (42.88%) Python
3 827 (42.07%) Data Pipeline
4 730 (37.13%) Data Engineering
5 703 (35.76%) Analytics
6 683 (34.74%) ETL
7 649 (33.01%) Data Modelling
8 618 (31.43%) Azure
9 556 (28.28%) AWS
10 530 (26.96%) Security Cleared
11 483 (24.57%) Data Quality
12 462 (23.50%) SC Cleared
13 456 (23.19%) CI/CD
14 384 (19.53%) Databricks
15 358 (18.21%) Business Intelligence
16 349 (17.75%) Agile
17 320 (16.28%) Data Warehouse
18 318 (16.17%) DevOps
19 303 (15.41%) Migration
20 284 (14.45%) Power Platform
21 270 (13.73%) Data Governance
22 269 (13.68%) Power BI
23 266 (13.53%) PySpark
24 247 (12.56%) Microsoft
25 238 (12.11%) Azure Data Factory
26 235 (11.95%) AI
27 231 (11.75%) Validation
28 230 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
29 228 (11.60%) Data Integration
30 207 (10.53%) 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
1 179 (9.10%) Apache Airflow
2 151 (7.68%) Apache Spark
3 118 (6.00%) Apache
4 86 (4.37%) SAS
5 50 (2.54%) Confluence
6 14 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.25%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.25%) 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
5 2 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.051%) iTrent
6 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.051%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.051%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 618 (31.43%) Azure
2 556 (28.28%) AWS
3 284 (14.45%) Power Platform
4 238 (12.11%) Azure Data Factory
5 207 (10.53%) Snowflake
6 199 (10.12%) dbt
7 177 (9.00%) GCP
8 167 (8.49%) Amazon S3
9 148 (7.53%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 138 (7.02%) Azure DevOps
11 119 (6.05%) Serverless
12 108 (5.49%) GitHub
13 100 (5.09%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.85%) Amazon EMR
15 46 (2.34%) GitHub Actions
16 36 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.32%) Amazon Kinesis
17 26 (1.32%) AWS Step Functions
17 26 (1.32%) Matillion
18 25 (1.27%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.63%) DNS
1 32 (1.63%) VPN
2 31 (1.58%) BGP
2 31 (1.58%) DMZ
2 31 (1.58%) Multicast
3 10 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 9 (0.46%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 5 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.20%) Wireless
8 1 (0.051%) 4G
8 1 (0.051%) 5G
8 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (16.28%) Data Warehouse
2 269 (13.68%) Power BI
3 175 (8.90%) Data Lake
4 107 (5.44%) Metadata
5 102 (5.19%) Amazon Redshift
6 98 (4.98%) BigQuery
7 93 (4.73%) Delta Lake
7 93 (4.73%) SQL Server
8 92 (4.68%) Pentaho
9 84 (4.27%) Big Data
10 71 (3.61%) Amazon Athena
11 69 (3.51%) Tableau
12 68 (3.46%) PostgreSQL
13 67 (3.41%) Snowflake Schema
14 60 (3.05%) Relational Database
15 56 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
16 55 (2.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 53 (2.70%) NoSQL
18 37 (1.88%) Hadoop
19 35 (1.78%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 187 (9.51%) Git
2 98 (4.98%) GitLab
3 83 (4.22%) JIRA
4 50 (2.54%) Jenkins
5 10 (0.51%) MLflow
6 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.15%) Newman
9 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.10%) ERwin
10 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.051%) JUnit
11 1 (0.051%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.051%) Selenium
General
1 319 (16.23%) Finance
2 306 (15.56%) Social Skills
3 220 (11.19%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (8.60%) Public Sector
5 109 (5.54%) Banking
6 35 (1.78%) Marketing
7 33 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 28 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.37%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.27%) Retail
11 22 (1.12%) Investment Banking
12 21 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 20 (1.02%) Front Office
14 19 (0.97%) Automotive
15 18 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (0.81%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.56%) Publishing
18 10 (0.51%) Legal
19 9 (0.46%) Billing
19 9 (0.46%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (13.53%) PySpark
2 145 (7.38%) Kafka
3 39 (1.98%) Pandas
4 34 (1.73%) JSON
5 27 (1.37%) REST
6 22 (1.12%) Spring
6 22 (1.12%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.07%) XML
8 20 (1.02%) Apache Beam
8 20 (1.02%) Great Expectations
9 17 (0.86%) YAML
10 15 (0.76%) React
11 13 (0.66%) RESTful
12 12 (0.61%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.61%) scikit-learn
12 12 (0.61%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.46%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.46%) Polars
14 9 (0.46%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.07%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.36%) Data Structures
4 36 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
5 35 (1.78%) Onboarding
6 25 (1.27%) NHS
7 23 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
8 22 (1.12%) Product Ownership
9 20 (1.02%) Clustering
10 19 (0.97%) Reinsurance
11 16 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (0.81%) Reference Data
12 12 (0.61%) Algorithms
12 12 (0.61%) Life Science
12 12 (0.61%) Management Information System
13 11 (0.56%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (0.51%) Replication
14 10 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
15 9 (0.46%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 66 (3.36%) Unix
2 48 (2.44%) Linux
3 5 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 827 (42.07%) Data Pipeline
2 730 (37.13%) Data Engineering
3 703 (35.76%) Analytics
4 683 (34.74%) ETL
5 649 (33.01%) Data Modelling
6 456 (23.19%) CI/CD
7 358 (18.21%) Business Intelligence
8 349 (17.75%) Agile
9 318 (16.17%) DevOps
10 303 (15.41%) Migration
11 270 (13.73%) Data Governance
12 235 (11.95%) AI
13 231 (11.75%) Validation
14 230 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
15 228 (11.60%) Data Integration
16 202 (10.27%) Data Transformation
17 192 (9.77%) Data Science
18 183 (9.31%) Decision-Making
19 156 (7.93%) Machine Learning
20 155 (7.88%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (51.07%) SQL
2 843 (42.88%) Python
3 122 (6.21%) Java
4 62 (3.15%) Scala
5 58 (2.95%) PL/SQL
6 39 (1.98%) T-SQL
7 38 (1.93%) Shell Script
8 31 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.37%) Bash
10 25 (1.27%) C#
11 24 (1.22%) PowerShell
12 18 (0.92%) JavaScript
13 15 (0.76%) R
14 14 (0.71%) Bicep
15 7 (0.36%) Go
15 7 (0.36%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.15%) Korn
17 2 (0.10%) Perl
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 530 (26.96%) Security Cleared
2 462 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 52 (2.64%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.14%) Degree
5 26 (1.32%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.17%) DV Cleared
7 17 (0.86%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.71%) 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
10 8 (0.41%) CISSP
11 7 (0.36%) CISM
12 5 (0.25%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.25%) CEH
12 5 (0.25%) Master's Degree
13 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) CISA
14 1 (0.051%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 483 (24.57%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.20%) QA
3 52 (2.64%) GDPR
4 23 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 9 (0.46%) FATCA
7 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
8 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.15%) GMP
9 3 (0.15%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.051%) GRC
11 1 (0.051%) NIST
11 1 (0.051%) SOC 2
System Software
1 112 (5.70%) Docker
2 5 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 188 (9.56%) Terraform
2 94 (4.78%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.59%) Grafana
4 14 (0.71%) Ansible
5 12 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 6 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.15%) Rancher
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.10%) logstash
9 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.051%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.051%) Puppet
10 1 (0.051%) QRadar
Vendors
1 384 (19.53%) Databricks
2 247 (12.56%) Microsoft
3 170 (8.65%) Oracle
4 139 (7.07%) Informatica
5 126 (6.41%) Talend
6 69 (3.51%) Denodo
7 68 (3.46%) Google
8 34 (1.73%) SAP
9 33 (1.68%) Cisco
9 33 (1.68%) F5
10 29 (1.48%) Salesforce
11 25 (1.27%) Palantir
11 25 (1.27%) Splunk
12 18 (0.92%) Cloudera
12 18 (0.92%) Foundry
13 16 (0.81%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.61%) IBM
14 12 (0.61%) Sage
15 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
15 9 (0.46%) MuleSoft