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 17 August 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 124 96
Rank change year-on-year +60 -28 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,967 720 904
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.68% 2.18% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.97% 2.38% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,320 509 659
10th Percentile £381 £374 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £585 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £689 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £469
% change year-on-year -0.26% +1.33% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 12 27
10th Percentile £21.06 £27.63 £31.25
25th Percentile £31.72 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £86.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -14.85% -33.94% +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 49,505 30,216 36,013
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.52% 91.29% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,709 19,089 23,205
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,494 1,545 1,999
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.96 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +21.62%

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 17 August 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 17 August 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 17 August 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 +69 1,752 £500 - 531
UK excluding London +97 924 £474 -0.26% 357
London +41 846 £525 - 257
Work from Home +51 581 £500 +5.26% 207
Midlands +74 400 £463 +0.54% 55
West Midlands +61 342 £460 +2.11% 42
North of England +30 229 £500 +5.26% 106
North West +33 132 £525 +10.53% 53
South East +24 130 £467 +3.78% 109
South West +6 88 £525 +5.00% 37
Yorkshire +1 76 £465 -7.00% 24
Scotland +22 61 £430 -2.38% 17
East Midlands +23 58 £473 +2.16% 13
East of England +11 40 £475 +22.58% 19
North East -27 22 £520 +23.08% 29
Wales 0 17 £500 +12.36% 10
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 6

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

For the 6 months to 17 August 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.

1 988 (50.23%) SQL
2 835 (42.45%) Data Pipeline
3 813 (41.33%) Python
4 721 (36.65%) Data Engineering
5 702 (35.69%) Analytics
6 683 (34.72%) ETL
7 654 (33.25%) Data Modelling
8 603 (30.66%) Azure
9 572 (29.08%) AWS
10 531 (27.00%) Security Cleared
11 483 (24.56%) Data Quality
12 464 (23.59%) SC Cleared
13 455 (23.13%) CI/CD
14 393 (19.98%) Databricks
15 353 (17.95%) Agile
15 353 (17.95%) Business Intelligence
16 330 (16.78%) Data Warehouse
17 323 (16.42%) DevOps
18 306 (15.56%) Migration
19 271 (13.78%) Power Platform
20 269 (13.68%) Data Governance
21 263 (13.37%) PySpark
22 262 (13.32%) AI
23 260 (13.22%) Power BI
24 246 (12.51%) Data Integration
24 246 (12.51%) Microsoft
25 233 (11.85%) Validation
26 229 (11.64%) Problem-Solving
27 226 (11.49%) Azure Data Factory
28 218 (11.08%) Data Transformation

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
1 198 (10.07%) Apache Airflow
2 161 (8.19%) Apache Spark
3 126 (6.41%) Apache
4 87 (4.42%) SAS
5 45 (2.29%) Confluence
6 13 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
6 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 9 (0.46%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.15%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.25%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.15%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.051%) SAP Business ByDesign
7 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 603 (30.66%) Azure
2 572 (29.08%) AWS
3 271 (13.78%) Power Platform
4 226 (11.49%) Azure Data Factory
5 215 (10.93%) Snowflake
6 201 (10.22%) dbt
7 178 (9.05%) GCP
8 163 (8.29%) Amazon S3
9 139 (7.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 135 (6.86%) Azure DevOps
11 118 (6.00%) Serverless
12 110 (5.59%) GitHub
13 104 (5.29%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.54%) Amazon EMR
15 44 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 27 (1.37%) Amazon Kinesis
17 27 (1.37%) AWS Step Functions
18 24 (1.22%) Dagster
19 23 (1.17%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.63%) VPN
2 31 (1.58%) BGP
2 31 (1.58%) DMZ
2 31 (1.58%) DNS
2 31 (1.58%) Multicast
3 9 (0.46%) Firewall
3 9 (0.46%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.20%) Wireless
7 1 (0.051%) LTE
7 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 330 (16.78%) Data Warehouse
2 260 (13.22%) Power BI
3 173 (8.80%) Data Lake
4 117 (5.95%) Metadata
5 103 (5.24%) BigQuery
6 102 (5.19%) Amazon Redshift
7 95 (4.83%) Pentaho
8 92 (4.68%) SQL Server
9 88 (4.47%) Delta Lake
10 84 (4.27%) Big Data
11 75 (3.81%) Amazon Athena
12 67 (3.41%) PostgreSQL
13 66 (3.36%) Tableau
14 62 (3.15%) Relational Database
14 62 (3.15%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (2.80%) Azure SQL Database
15 55 (2.80%) NoSQL
16 53 (2.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 38 (1.93%) Data Vault
17 38 (1.93%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 177 (9.00%) Git
2 105 (5.34%) GitLab
3 80 (4.07%) JIRA
4 52 (2.64%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.71%) MLflow
6 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.41%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.36%) Postman
9 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) Claude Code
11 3 (0.15%) Newman
11 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.10%) Selenium
12 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
13 1 (0.051%) Toad
General
1 312 (15.86%) Finance
2 308 (15.66%) Social Skills
3 222 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.85%) Public Sector
5 114 (5.80%) Banking
6 34 (1.73%) Marketing
7 33 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 25 (1.27%) Telecoms
9 24 (1.22%) Retail
10 23 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
11 22 (1.12%) Investment Banking
12 21 (1.07%) Front Office
13 20 (1.02%) Manufacturing
14 19 (0.97%) Automotive
15 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
16 16 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
17 13 (0.66%) Law
18 10 (0.51%) Financial Institution
18 10 (0.51%) Legal
19 9 (0.46%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (13.37%) PySpark
2 144 (7.32%) Kafka
3 32 (1.63%) Pandas
4 29 (1.47%) JSON
5 28 (1.42%) REST
6 23 (1.17%) Spring
6 23 (1.17%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.02%) Great Expectations
8 18 (0.92%) XML
9 17 (0.86%) Apache Beam
10 15 (0.76%) React
10 15 (0.76%) RESTful
10 15 (0.76%) YAML
11 12 (0.61%) pytest
12 11 (0.56%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.51%) LangChain
13 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.46%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.46%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.46%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 142 (7.22%) Cloud Native
2 81 (4.12%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.36%) Data Structures
4 36 (1.83%) Onboarding
5 28 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
6 25 (1.27%) Product Ownership
7 23 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
8 22 (1.12%) NHS
9 21 (1.07%) Reference Data
10 18 (0.92%) Reinsurance
11 16 (0.81%) Management Information System
12 15 (0.76%) AI Agents
13 14 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
14 13 (0.66%) Clustering
15 12 (0.61%) Algorithms
16 10 (0.51%) Enterprise Software
16 10 (0.51%) Life Science
16 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
16 10 (0.51%) Replication
16 10 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (3.56%) Unix
2 48 (2.44%) Linux
3 4 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 835 (42.45%) Data Pipeline
2 721 (36.65%) Data Engineering
3 702 (35.69%) Analytics
4 683 (34.72%) ETL
5 654 (33.25%) Data Modelling
6 455 (23.13%) CI/CD
7 353 (17.95%) Agile
7 353 (17.95%) Business Intelligence
8 323 (16.42%) DevOps
9 306 (15.56%) Migration
10 269 (13.68%) Data Governance
11 262 (13.32%) AI
12 246 (12.51%) Data Integration
13 233 (11.85%) Validation
14 229 (11.64%) Problem-Solving
15 218 (11.08%) Data Transformation
16 180 (9.15%) Decision-Making
17 176 (8.95%) Data Science
18 167 (8.49%) Machine Learning
19 160 (8.13%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 988 (50.23%) SQL
2 813 (41.33%) Python
3 119 (6.05%) Java
4 65 (3.30%) Scala
5 58 (2.95%) PL/SQL
6 37 (1.88%) Shell Script
7 35 (1.78%) T-SQL
8 27 (1.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 26 (1.32%) Bash
10 22 (1.12%) PowerShell
11 20 (1.02%) JavaScript
12 16 (0.81%) C#
13 13 (0.66%) R
14 9 (0.46%) Bicep
15 6 (0.31%) Go
15 6 (0.31%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.20%) Korn
17 3 (0.15%) COBOL
18 2 (0.10%) Perl
18 2 (0.10%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 531 (27.00%) Security Cleared
2 464 (23.59%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.08%) Degree
5 22 (1.12%) Azure Certification
5 22 (1.12%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.07%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
9 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.41%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.36%) CISM
10 7 (0.36%) CISSP
11 6 (0.31%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.25%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.25%) CEH
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 483 (24.56%) Data Quality
2 66 (3.36%) QA
3 47 (2.39%) GDPR
4 17 (0.86%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.15%) MiFID
9 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.10%) EMIR
9 2 (0.10%) GMP
9 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.10%) WCAG
10 1 (0.051%) GxP
10 1 (0.051%) IFRS
10 1 (0.051%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.051%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 123 (6.25%) Docker
2 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) HDFS
4 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 174 (8.85%) Terraform
2 97 (4.93%) Kubernetes
3 48 (2.44%) Grafana
4 15 (0.76%) Ansible
5 11 (0.56%) Control-M
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 4 (0.20%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.10%) Puppet
8 2 (0.10%) Rancher
8 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.051%) logstash
Vendors
1 393 (19.98%) Databricks
2 246 (12.51%) Microsoft
3 175 (8.90%) Oracle
4 137 (6.96%) Informatica
5 126 (6.41%) Talend
6 72 (3.66%) Google
7 71 (3.61%) Denodo
8 34 (1.73%) SAP
9 33 (1.68%) Salesforce
10 32 (1.63%) Cisco
10 32 (1.63%) F5
11 24 (1.22%) Palantir
12 19 (0.97%) Splunk
13 18 (0.92%) Foundry
14 17 (0.86%) Cloudera
15 14 (0.71%) ServiceNow
16 12 (0.61%) IBM
17 11 (0.56%) Sage
18 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
18 9 (0.46%) Dynatrace