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 3 June 2026.

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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 89 102
Rank change year-on-year +29 +13 +17
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,795 764 954
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.67% 2.66% 2.21%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.98% 2.88% 2.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,255 576 734
10th Percentile £375 £358 £199
25th Percentile £415 £425 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% -1.95% -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £581 £592
90th Percentile £662 £700 £684
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £461 £450
% change year-on-year +1.68% +2.50% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £32.50
25th Percentile £37.50 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year - -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 45,089 26,570 40,007
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.31% 92.35% 92.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,438 17,201 25,885
10th Percentile £325 £288 £280
25th Percentile £413 £405 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £504 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -4.00% -2.78%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,017 1,072 2,851
10th Percentile £15.05 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.85 £16.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.79% -25.33% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £59.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.39% -36.94% -5.88%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 +36 1,570 £500 - 368
London +31 851 £525 - 142
UK excluding London +53 746 £469 +1.68% 291
Work from Home +32 523 £500 +4.38% 183
Midlands +47 305 £469 +4.22% 39
West Midlands +42 288 £469 +1.96% 26
North of England +2 201 £465 -2.11% 86
North West +12 125 £480 +1.05% 39
South East +7 102 £475 +14.87% 96
South West +10 76 £500 +1.27% 32
Scotland +18 61 £460 +1.10% 10
Yorkshire -25 58 £465 +3.33% 24
Wales +5 22 £450 +118.11% 8
East of England -24 19 £520 +63.52% 6
North East -21 18 £450 -5.26% 24
East Midlands -24 17 £525 +28.05% 13
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 15

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

For the 6 months to 3 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.

1 988 (55.04%) SQL
2 822 (45.79%) Python
3 753 (41.95%) Data Pipeline
4 674 (37.55%) ETL
5 671 (37.38%) Analytics
6 648 (36.10%) Data Engineering
7 612 (34.09%) Data Modelling
8 599 (33.37%) Azure
9 528 (29.42%) Security Cleared
10 502 (27.97%) AWS
11 468 (26.07%) SC Cleared
12 453 (25.24%) Data Quality
13 430 (23.96%) CI/CD
14 422 (23.51%) Databricks
15 380 (21.17%) Business Intelligence
16 328 (18.27%) Agile
17 312 (17.38%) DevOps
18 310 (17.27%) Power Platform
19 297 (16.55%) Data Warehouse
20 294 (16.38%) Power BI
21 274 (15.26%) PySpark
22 249 (13.87%) Data Governance
23 244 (13.59%) Azure Data Factory
24 233 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
25 231 (12.87%) Microsoft
25 231 (12.87%) Migration
26 210 (11.70%) AI
27 202 (11.25%) Data Integration
28 193 (10.75%) Git
29 188 (10.47%) 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
1 173 (9.64%) Apache Airflow
2 161 (8.97%) Apache Spark
3 109 (6.07%) Apache
4 83 (4.62%) SAS
5 47 (2.62%) Confluence
6 12 (0.67%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.56%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.22%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.17%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.056%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.056%) Appian
11 1 (0.056%) Camunda
11 1 (0.056%) R Markdown
Applications
1 19 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.39%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.056%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.056%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.39%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.17%) Infor LN
2 3 (0.17%) SAP BPC
2 3 (0.17%) SimCorp Dimension
3 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
3 2 (0.11%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.056%) Elite 3E
4 1 (0.056%) iTrent
4 1 (0.056%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle 11i
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle Assets
4 1 (0.056%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.056%) Raiser’s Edge
4 1 (0.056%) SAP Business ByDesign
4 1 (0.056%) SAP CAR
4 1 (0.056%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 599 (33.37%) Azure
2 502 (27.97%) AWS
3 310 (17.27%) Power Platform
4 244 (13.59%) Azure Data Factory
5 183 (10.19%) Snowflake
6 163 (9.08%) Amazon S3
7 161 (8.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 157 (8.75%) dbt
9 156 (8.69%) GCP
10 142 (7.91%) Azure DevOps
11 119 (6.63%) GitHub
12 117 (6.52%) Serverless
13 96 (5.35%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (3.06%) GitHub Actions
15 42 (2.34%) Amazon EMR
16 33 (1.84%) Matillion
17 32 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
18 30 (1.67%) Amazon Kinesis
19 26 (1.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 25 (1.39%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.84%) DNS
1 33 (1.84%) VPN
2 32 (1.78%) BGP
2 32 (1.78%) DMZ
2 32 (1.78%) Multicast
3 10 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.39%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.39%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.22%) Firewall
5 4 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.22%) Wireless
6 1 (0.056%) 4G
6 1 (0.056%) 5G
6 1 (0.056%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 297 (16.55%) Data Warehouse
2 294 (16.38%) Power BI
3 188 (10.47%) Data Lake
4 130 (7.24%) SQL Server
5 112 (6.24%) Delta Lake
6 93 (5.18%) Metadata
7 91 (5.07%) Amazon Redshift
8 89 (4.96%) Big Data
9 87 (4.85%) BigQuery
10 86 (4.79%) Pentaho
11 80 (4.46%) Azure SQL Database
12 74 (4.12%) Snowflake Schema
13 73 (4.07%) Tableau
14 70 (3.90%) PostgreSQL
15 65 (3.62%) Amazon Athena
16 64 (3.57%) NoSQL
16 64 (3.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 52 (2.90%) Relational Database
18 40 (2.23%) Hadoop
19 38 (2.12%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 193 (10.75%) Git
2 95 (5.29%) GitLab
3 92 (5.13%) JIRA
4 51 (2.84%) Jenkins
5 12 (0.67%) MLflow
6 9 (0.50%) Artifactory
7 6 (0.33%) Postman
8 5 (0.28%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.17%) Newman
9 3 (0.17%) SonarQube
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 (0.056%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.056%) Claude Code
11 1 (0.056%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.056%) ERwin
11 1 (0.056%) JUnit
11 1 (0.056%) Selenium
General
1 293 (16.32%) Finance
2 274 (15.26%) Social Skills
3 196 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
4 143 (7.97%) Public Sector
5 93 (5.18%) Banking
6 33 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 27 (1.50%) Retail
8 26 (1.45%) Investment Banking
9 25 (1.39%) Documentation Skills
10 24 (1.34%) Marketing
11 19 (1.06%) Telecoms
12 17 (0.95%) Manufacturing
12 17 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
13 15 (0.84%) Front Office
14 14 (0.78%) Aerospace
15 11 (0.61%) Publishing
16 7 (0.39%) Law
16 7 (0.39%) Military
17 6 (0.33%) Local Government
18 5 (0.28%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (15.26%) PySpark
2 156 (8.69%) Kafka
3 53 (2.95%) Pandas
4 33 (1.84%) JSON
5 30 (1.67%) REST
6 25 (1.39%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.28%) Spring
7 23 (1.28%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.23%) YAML
9 18 (1.00%) XML
10 17 (0.95%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.72%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.72%) Matplotlib
11 13 (0.72%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.61%) PyTorch
12 11 (0.61%) React
13 10 (0.56%) pytest
13 10 (0.56%) RESTful
14 9 (0.50%) GeoJSON
14 9 (0.50%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 136 (7.58%) Cloud Native
2 53 (2.95%) Data Structures
3 48 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (1.67%) Product Ownership
5 28 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 26 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
7 24 (1.34%) Onboarding
8 23 (1.28%) Reinsurance
9 21 (1.17%) Clustering
10 19 (1.06%) Data Protection Act
11 15 (0.84%) NHS
12 13 (0.72%) Replication
13 11 (0.61%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (0.61%) Reference Data
13 11 (0.61%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (0.56%) Life Science
14 10 (0.56%) Public Cloud
15 9 (0.50%) Derivative
15 9 (0.50%) Driving Licence
15 9 (0.50%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 64 (3.57%) Unix
2 42 (2.34%) Linux
3 5 (0.28%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.056%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 753 (41.95%) Data Pipeline
2 674 (37.55%) ETL
3 671 (37.38%) Analytics
4 648 (36.10%) Data Engineering
5 612 (34.09%) Data Modelling
6 430 (23.96%) CI/CD
7 380 (21.17%) Business Intelligence
8 328 (18.27%) Agile
9 312 (17.38%) DevOps
10 249 (13.87%) Data Governance
11 233 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
12 231 (12.87%) Migration
13 210 (11.70%) AI
14 202 (11.25%) Data Integration
15 188 (10.47%) Validation
16 173 (9.64%) Data Science
17 150 (8.36%) Decision-Making
18 143 (7.97%) Data Transformation
19 137 (7.63%) Infrastructure as Code
20 136 (7.58%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 988 (55.04%) SQL
2 822 (45.79%) Python
3 119 (6.63%) Java
4 78 (4.35%) Scala
5 55 (3.06%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.34%) T-SQL
7 39 (2.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 32 (1.78%) C#
9 31 (1.73%) Shell Script
10 28 (1.56%) Bash
11 20 (1.11%) Bicep
12 19 (1.06%) PowerShell
13 14 (0.78%) R
14 12 (0.67%) JavaScript
15 7 (0.39%) Go
15 7 (0.39%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.11%) Korn
16 2 (0.11%) LookML
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 528 (29.42%) Security Cleared
2 468 (26.07%) SC Cleared
3 45 (2.51%) Degree
4 41 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
5 26 (1.45%) Azure Certification
6 17 (0.95%) DV Cleared
7 16 (0.89%) Computer Science Degree
8 12 (0.67%) DBS Check
9 11 (0.61%) AWS Certification
10 9 (0.50%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.45%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.33%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.33%) SnowPro
13 5 (0.28%) BICSI Certification
14 3 (0.17%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 3 (0.17%) CISSP
14 3 (0.17%) IBM Certification
15 2 (0.11%) CISM
16 1 (0.056%) Cisco Certification
16 1 (0.056%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 453 (25.24%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.29%) QA
3 50 (2.79%) GDPR
4 17 (0.95%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.61%) SLA
6 9 (0.50%) FATCA
7 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.22%) MiFID
10 3 (0.17%) GMP
10 3 (0.17%) WCAG
11 2 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) GRC
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
12 1 (0.056%) IFRS
12 1 (0.056%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.056%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.056%) NIST
12 1 (0.056%) PMO
System Software
1 105 (5.85%) Docker
2 6 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.056%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.056%) RACF
Systems Management
1 180 (10.03%) Terraform
2 81 (4.51%) Kubernetes
3 53 (2.95%) Grafana
4 13 (0.72%) Ansible
4 13 (0.72%) Prometheus
5 10 (0.56%) Kibana
6 3 (0.17%) logstash
6 3 (0.17%) Rancher
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) Control-M
7 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.056%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.056%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.056%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.056%) Puppet
8 1 (0.056%) QRadar
Vendors
1 422 (23.51%) Databricks
2 231 (12.87%) Microsoft
3 161 (8.97%) Oracle
4 126 (7.02%) Talend
5 125 (6.96%) Informatica
6 71 (3.96%) Denodo
7 60 (3.34%) Google
8 34 (1.89%) Cisco
8 34 (1.89%) F5
9 29 (1.62%) SAP
10 25 (1.39%) Splunk
11 24 (1.34%) ServiceNow
12 17 (0.95%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.84%) Alteryx
13 15 (0.84%) Foundry
13 15 (0.84%) IBM
14 13 (0.72%) Palantir
15 9 (0.50%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.45%) MuleSoft
16 8 (0.45%) Salesforce