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 May 2026.

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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 84 102
Rank change year-on-year +22 +18 +9
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,709 839 938
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.62% 2.90% 2.19%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.92% 3.13% 2.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,195 627 728
10th Percentile £375 £358 £199
25th Percentile £417 £421 £412
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £581 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £460 £450
% change year-on-year +2.45% +2.22% -12.32%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 9 46
10th Percentile £19.34 £44.64 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £63.75
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% +1.96% -0.39%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £78.20 £93.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.25 £48.46 £75.00
% change year-on-year +5.76% -35.39% +72.41%

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 43,568 26,796 39,671
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.30% 92.46% 92.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,699 17,460 25,789
10th Percentile £320 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +4.21% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,848 1,033 2,665
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.20 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.85 £28.18 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.59% -24.85% -16.67%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.25 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £73.26
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.24 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.21% -31.91% -4.94%

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 May 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 May 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 13 May 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 +25 1,498 £500 - 356
London +25 827 £523 -0.48% 135
UK excluding London +31 689 £471 +2.45% 277
Work from Home +19 501 £500 - 173
Midlands +40 295 £469 +1.96% 51
West Midlands +33 277 £469 -1.37% 32
North of England -11 188 £465 +0.54% 76
North West +8 123 £480 +3.78% 36
South East -2 89 £500 +8.11% 90
South West 0 67 £500 +1.27% 32
Scotland +18 55 £450 - 8
Yorkshire -28 50 £465 +3.33% 20
Wales +5 21 £475 +130.23% 10
East Midlands -22 18 £498 +21.34% 19
East of England -28 16 £565 +79.37% 9
North East -21 15 £463 +8.82% 22
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

For the 6 months to 13 May 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.

1 928 (54.30%) SQL
2 789 (46.17%) Python
3 710 (41.54%) Data Pipeline
4 655 (38.33%) ETL
5 648 (37.92%) Analytics
6 621 (36.34%) Data Engineering
7 595 (34.82%) Azure
8 582 (34.06%) Data Modelling
9 513 (30.02%) Security Cleared
10 459 (26.86%) SC Cleared
11 443 (25.92%) AWS
12 438 (25.63%) Data Quality
13 419 (24.52%) Databricks
14 411 (24.05%) CI/CD
15 373 (21.83%) Business Intelligence
16 318 (18.61%) Agile
17 308 (18.02%) DevOps
18 297 (17.38%) Data Warehouse
19 295 (17.26%) Power Platform
20 280 (16.38%) Power BI
21 271 (15.86%) PySpark
22 241 (14.10%) Azure Data Factory
23 238 (13.93%) Data Governance
24 235 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
25 223 (13.05%) Microsoft
26 208 (12.17%) Migration
27 199 (11.64%) Git
28 197 (11.53%) AI
29 195 (11.41%) Data Integration
30 183 (10.71%) Data Lake

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
1 163 (9.54%) Apache Spark
2 153 (8.95%) Apache Airflow
3 99 (5.79%) Apache
4 81 (4.74%) SAS
5 35 (2.05%) Confluence
6 12 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.059%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.059%) Appian
11 1 (0.059%) Camunda
11 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.12%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (0.35%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.12%) SimCorp Dimension
3 1 (0.059%) Actimize
3 1 (0.059%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.059%) iTrent
3 1 (0.059%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.059%) Raiser’s Edge
3 1 (0.059%) SAP Business ByDesign
Cloud Services
1 595 (34.82%) Azure
2 443 (25.92%) AWS
3 295 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 241 (14.10%) Azure Data Factory
5 170 (9.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 167 (9.77%) Snowflake
7 154 (9.01%) GCP
8 148 (8.66%) Amazon S3
9 142 (8.31%) dbt
10 135 (7.90%) Azure DevOps
11 119 (6.96%) GitHub
12 105 (6.14%) Serverless
13 83 (4.86%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
15 36 (2.11%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (1.93%) Amazon EMR
17 29 (1.70%) Matillion
18 27 (1.58%) Amazon Kinesis
19 25 (1.46%) OpenShift
20 23 (1.35%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.93%) DNS
1 33 (1.93%) VPN
2 32 (1.87%) BGP
2 32 (1.87%) DMZ
2 32 (1.87%) Multicast
3 10 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.41%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.23%) Firewall
6 2 (0.12%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.12%) Wireless
7 1 (0.059%) 4G
7 1 (0.059%) 5G
7 1 (0.059%) MQTT
7 1 (0.059%) Network Security
7 1 (0.059%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (17.38%) Data Warehouse
2 280 (16.38%) Power BI
3 183 (10.71%) Data Lake
4 122 (7.14%) SQL Server
5 104 (6.09%) Delta Lake
6 97 (5.68%) Metadata
7 94 (5.50%) BigQuery
8 92 (5.38%) Big Data
9 86 (5.03%) Amazon Redshift
10 84 (4.92%) Azure SQL Database
10 84 (4.92%) Pentaho
11 69 (4.04%) PostgreSQL
12 68 (3.98%) Tableau
13 67 (3.92%) Snowflake Schema
14 64 (3.74%) NoSQL
15 61 (3.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 56 (3.28%) Amazon Athena
17 51 (2.98%) Relational Database
18 43 (2.52%) Hadoop
19 36 (2.11%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 199 (11.64%) Git
2 87 (5.09%) JIRA
3 76 (4.45%) GitLab
4 62 (3.63%) Jenkins
5 19 (1.11%) MLflow
6 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.12%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ERwin
8 1 (0.059%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.059%) JUnit
8 1 (0.059%) Poetry
8 1 (0.059%) Selenium
8 1 (0.059%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.059%) Terragrunt
General
1 275 (16.09%) Finance
2 255 (14.92%) Social Skills
3 189 (11.06%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (8.07%) Public Sector
5 89 (5.21%) Banking
6 34 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.58%) Investment Banking
8 22 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.17%) Marketing
11 18 (1.05%) Retail
12 16 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.88%) Front Office
14 13 (0.76%) Aerospace
14 13 (0.76%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.64%) Publishing
16 8 (0.47%) Military
17 7 (0.41%) Law
18 5 (0.29%) Games
18 5 (0.29%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (15.86%) PySpark
2 157 (9.19%) Kafka
3 52 (3.04%) Pandas
4 30 (1.76%) JSON
5 28 (1.64%) REST
6 27 (1.58%) YAML
7 25 (1.46%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.29%) Spring
8 22 (1.29%) Spring Boot
9 16 (0.94%) Apache Beam
10 14 (0.82%) PyTorch
10 14 (0.82%) scikit-learn
11 13 (0.76%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.76%) Matplotlib
12 12 (0.70%) Node.js
12 12 (0.70%) React
12 12 (0.70%) XML
13 11 (0.64%) NumPy
14 9 (0.53%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.53%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 119 (6.96%) Cloud Native
2 44 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
3 43 (2.52%) Data Structures
4 30 (1.76%) Product Ownership
5 29 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
6 26 (1.52%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.23%) Clustering
8 18 (1.05%) Onboarding
8 18 (1.05%) Reinsurance
9 17 (0.99%) Data Protection Act
10 14 (0.82%) NHS
10 14 (0.82%) Replication
11 13 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (0.64%) Public Cloud
14 9 (0.53%) AI Agents
14 9 (0.53%) Hybrid Cloud
14 9 (0.53%) Reference Data
15 8 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 52 (3.04%) Unix
2 36 (2.11%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) VMS
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 710 (41.54%) Data Pipeline
2 655 (38.33%) ETL
3 648 (37.92%) Analytics
4 621 (36.34%) Data Engineering
5 582 (34.06%) Data Modelling
6 411 (24.05%) CI/CD
7 373 (21.83%) Business Intelligence
8 318 (18.61%) Agile
9 308 (18.02%) DevOps
10 238 (13.93%) Data Governance
11 235 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
12 208 (12.17%) Migration
13 197 (11.53%) AI
14 195 (11.41%) Data Integration
15 175 (10.24%) Data Science
15 175 (10.24%) Validation
16 140 (8.19%) Data Architecture
17 138 (8.07%) Data Transformation
17 138 (8.07%) Decision-Making
18 133 (7.78%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 928 (54.30%) SQL
2 789 (46.17%) Python
3 115 (6.73%) Java
4 85 (4.97%) Scala
5 41 (2.40%) T-SQL
6 40 (2.34%) PL/SQL
7 38 (2.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 36 (2.11%) C#
9 29 (1.70%) Shell Script
10 28 (1.64%) Bash
11 21 (1.23%) Bicep
12 18 (1.05%) R
13 16 (0.94%) JavaScript
13 16 (0.94%) PowerShell
14 9 (0.53%) Go
15 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.18%) C
17 2 (0.12%) C++
17 2 (0.12%) Perl
17 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 513 (30.02%) Security Cleared
2 459 (26.86%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.52%) Degree
4 35 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
5 31 (1.81%) Azure Certification
6 17 (0.99%) DV Cleared
7 16 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (0.47%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.41%) City & Guilds
10 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
12 3 (0.18%) CISSP
12 3 (0.18%) CTC Cleared
12 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.12%) CISM
14 1 (0.059%) CISA
14 1 (0.059%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (25.63%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.10%) QA
3 52 (3.04%) GDPR
4 16 (0.94%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.53%) FATCA
5 9 (0.53%) SLA
6 5 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.29%) MiFID
7 4 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.18%) GMP
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) WCAG
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) GRC
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.059%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.059%) ISO 13485
10 1 (0.059%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 113 (6.61%) Docker
2 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 178 (10.42%) Terraform
2 99 (5.79%) Kubernetes
3 53 (3.10%) Grafana
4 14 (0.82%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.76%) Ansible
6 10 (0.59%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) logstash
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.059%) Control-M
9 1 (0.059%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.059%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.059%) Puppet
9 1 (0.059%) QRadar
Vendors
1 419 (24.52%) Databricks
2 223 (13.05%) Microsoft
3 142 (8.31%) Oracle
4 114 (6.67%) Informatica
4 114 (6.67%) Talend
5 68 (3.98%) Denodo
6 62 (3.63%) Google
7 35 (2.05%) Cisco
8 34 (1.99%) F5
9 26 (1.52%) SAP
9 26 (1.52%) Splunk
10 22 (1.29%) ServiceNow
11 17 (0.99%) Cloudera
12 15 (0.88%) Foundry
12 15 (0.88%) IBM
13 13 (0.76%) Alteryx
13 13 (0.76%) Palantir
14 9 (0.53%) Dynatrace
15 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
15 8 (0.47%) MuleSoft