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 7 August 2026.

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

6 months to
7 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 129 95
Rank change year-on-year +65 -34 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,979 721 929
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.70% 2.19% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.40% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,330 512 686
10th Percentile £381 £363 £231
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year - -3.85% -5.45%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £650 £687 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -0.79% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 12 31
10th Percentile £21.25 £19.00 £31.25
25th Percentile £32.49 £38.19 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £66.55 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.87 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -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 49,463 30,049 36,264
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.60% 91.45% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,748 19,085 23,408
10th Percentile £329 £283 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.02%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £727 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,453 1,494 2,053
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.62 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.10 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +15.89%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +68 1,764 £500 - 594
UK excluding London +98 924 £471 -0.79% 368
London +48 861 £525 - 296
Work from Home +55 589 £500 +5.26% 211
Midlands +64 399 £465 +2.20% 58
West Midlands +60 346 £460 - 34
North of England +32 236 £490 +3.16% 104
North West +32 139 £525 +10.53% 46
South East +18 129 £467 +3.78% 122
South West +13 85 £525 +10.53% 35
Yorkshire -2 75 £465 -2.11% 28
Scotland +28 65 £440 +2.80% 16
East Midlands +23 53 £500 +19.05% 24
East of England +2 35 £520 +61.74% 17
North East -24 23 £515 +21.89% 31
Wales +4 16 £500 +12.36% 15
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 4

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

For the 6 months to 7 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 1,000 (50.53%) SQL
2 835 (42.19%) Data Pipeline
3 830 (41.94%) Python
4 729 (36.84%) Data Engineering
5 701 (35.42%) Analytics
6 683 (34.51%) ETL
7 660 (33.35%) Data Modelling
8 614 (31.03%) Azure
9 564 (28.50%) AWS
10 538 (27.19%) Security Cleared
11 487 (24.61%) Data Quality
12 469 (23.70%) SC Cleared
13 456 (23.04%) CI/CD
14 385 (19.45%) Databricks
15 358 (18.09%) Business Intelligence
16 352 (17.79%) Agile
17 328 (16.57%) DevOps
18 326 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
19 309 (15.61%) Migration
20 278 (14.05%) Power Platform
21 268 (13.54%) Data Governance
22 266 (13.44%) Power BI
23 261 (13.19%) PySpark
24 250 (12.63%) Microsoft
25 247 (12.48%) AI
26 245 (12.38%) Data Integration
27 235 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
28 232 (11.72%) Validation
29 231 (11.67%) Problem-Solving
30 215 (10.86%) 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
1 190 (9.60%) Apache Airflow
2 151 (7.63%) Apache Spark
3 116 (5.86%) Apache
4 89 (4.50%) SAS
5 50 (2.53%) Confluence
6 13 (0.66%) Palantir Foundry
6 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.51%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.15%) 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 22 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.35%) 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 (0.35%) 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%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.051%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.051%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 614 (31.03%) Azure
2 564 (28.50%) AWS
3 278 (14.05%) Power Platform
4 235 (11.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 215 (10.86%) Snowflake
6 203 (10.26%) dbt
7 178 (8.99%) GCP
8 162 (8.19%) Amazon S3
9 146 (7.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 137 (6.92%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (5.86%) Serverless
12 107 (5.41%) GitHub
13 100 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (2.63%) Amazon EMR
15 43 (2.17%) GitHub Actions
16 35 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.41%) Amazon Kinesis
18 27 (1.36%) AWS Step Functions
19 25 (1.26%) Dagster
19 25 (1.26%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.62%) DNS
1 32 (1.62%) VPN
2 31 (1.57%) BGP
2 31 (1.57%) DMZ
2 31 (1.57%) Multicast
3 9 (0.45%) Firewall
3 9 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.35%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.35%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.20%) Wireless
7 1 (0.051%) 4G
7 1 (0.051%) 5G
7 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (16.47%) Data Warehouse
2 266 (13.44%) Power BI
3 175 (8.84%) Data Lake
4 112 (5.66%) Metadata
5 103 (5.20%) Amazon Redshift
6 100 (5.05%) BigQuery
7 96 (4.85%) Pentaho
7 96 (4.85%) SQL Server
8 95 (4.80%) Delta Lake
9 83 (4.19%) Big Data
10 74 (3.74%) Amazon Athena
11 67 (3.39%) Tableau
12 63 (3.18%) PostgreSQL
12 63 (3.18%) Snowflake Schema
13 61 (3.08%) Relational Database
14 54 (2.73%) Azure SQL Database
14 54 (2.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 52 (2.63%) NoSQL
16 38 (1.92%) Hadoop
17 35 (1.77%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 188 (9.50%) Git
2 104 (5.26%) GitLab
3 85 (4.30%) JIRA
4 51 (2.58%) Jenkins
5 12 (0.61%) MLflow
6 9 (0.45%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.40%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.35%) Postman
9 6 (0.30%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.15%) Newman
10 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
11 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.10%) ERwin
11 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.051%) Octopus Deploy
12 1 (0.051%) Selenium
12 1 (0.051%) Toad
General
1 321 (16.22%) Finance
2 317 (16.02%) Social Skills
3 227 (11.47%) Analytical Skills
4 177 (8.94%) Public Sector
5 113 (5.71%) Banking
6 34 (1.72%) Marketing
7 32 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 27 (1.36%) Documentation Skills
9 26 (1.31%) Retail
9 26 (1.31%) Telecoms
10 22 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.06%) Front Office
11 21 (1.06%) Manufacturing
12 19 (0.96%) Automotive
13 18 (0.91%) Aerospace
14 16 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.56%) Publishing
16 10 (0.51%) Legal
17 9 (0.45%) Billing
17 9 (0.45%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 261 (13.19%) PySpark
2 138 (6.97%) Kafka
3 37 (1.87%) Pandas
4 28 (1.41%) JSON
5 25 (1.26%) REST
6 22 (1.11%) Spring
6 22 (1.11%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.06%) Great Expectations
8 17 (0.86%) Apache Beam
9 16 (0.81%) XML
9 16 (0.81%) YAML
10 14 (0.71%) React
10 14 (0.71%) RESTful
11 13 (0.66%) scikit-learn
12 12 (0.61%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.61%) Streamlit
13 11 (0.56%) pytest
14 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 10 (0.51%) PyTorch
15 9 (0.45%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.12%) Cloud Native
2 74 (3.74%) Legacy Systems
3 68 (3.44%) Data Structures
4 35 (1.77%) Onboarding
5 31 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (1.21%) NHS
6 24 (1.21%) Product Ownership
7 23 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
8 19 (0.96%) Reinsurance
9 17 (0.86%) Reference Data
10 14 (0.71%) Clustering
10 14 (0.71%) Data Protection Act
11 13 (0.66%) AI Agents
11 13 (0.66%) Management Information System
12 11 (0.56%) Algorithms
13 10 (0.51%) Enterprise Software
13 10 (0.51%) Life Science
13 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.51%) Replication
13 10 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (3.54%) Unix
2 46 (2.32%) Linux
3 4 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 835 (42.19%) Data Pipeline
2 729 (36.84%) Data Engineering
3 701 (35.42%) Analytics
4 683 (34.51%) ETL
5 660 (33.35%) Data Modelling
6 456 (23.04%) CI/CD
7 358 (18.09%) Business Intelligence
8 352 (17.79%) Agile
9 328 (16.57%) DevOps
10 309 (15.61%) Migration
11 268 (13.54%) Data Governance
12 247 (12.48%) AI
13 245 (12.38%) Data Integration
14 232 (11.72%) Validation
15 231 (11.67%) Problem-Solving
16 213 (10.76%) Data Transformation
17 185 (9.35%) Decision-Making
18 184 (9.30%) Data Science
19 161 (8.14%) Machine Learning
20 158 (7.98%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,000 (50.53%) SQL
2 830 (41.94%) Python
3 115 (5.81%) Java
4 64 (3.23%) Scala
5 56 (2.83%) PL/SQL
6 39 (1.97%) T-SQL
7 37 (1.87%) Shell Script
8 30 (1.52%) Bash
9 28 (1.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 24 (1.21%) PowerShell
11 21 (1.06%) C#
12 19 (0.96%) JavaScript
13 15 (0.76%) R
14 12 (0.61%) Bicep
15 6 (0.30%) Go
15 6 (0.30%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.15%) Korn
17 2 (0.10%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.10%) Ruby
17 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 538 (27.19%) Security Cleared
2 469 (23.70%) SC Cleared
3 54 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.02%) Degree
5 25 (1.26%) Azure Certification
6 22 (1.11%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.01%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.66%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.45%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.45%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.35%) CISM
11 7 (0.35%) CISSP
12 5 (0.25%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.25%) CEH
12 5 (0.25%) Master's Degree
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) CISA
14 1 (0.051%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 487 (24.61%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.18%) QA
3 49 (2.48%) GDPR
4 18 (0.91%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 6 (0.30%) FATCA
6 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
6 6 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.15%) MiFID
8 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
8 2 (0.10%) EMIR
8 2 (0.10%) GMP
8 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
8 2 (0.10%) WCAG
9 1 (0.051%) Government Security Classifications
9 1 (0.051%) GxP
9 1 (0.051%) IFRS
9 1 (0.051%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 119 (6.01%) 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
1 179 (9.04%) Terraform
2 99 (5.00%) Kubernetes
3 49 (2.48%) Grafana
4 15 (0.76%) Ansible
5 11 (0.56%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.45%) Kibana
7 7 (0.35%) Control-M
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.10%) Rancher
8 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.051%) logstash
9 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.051%) Puppet
Vendors
1 385 (19.45%) Databricks
2 250 (12.63%) Microsoft
3 168 (8.49%) Oracle
4 134 (6.77%) Informatica
5 125 (6.32%) Talend
6 70 (3.54%) Denodo
6 70 (3.54%) Google
7 34 (1.72%) SAP
8 33 (1.67%) Cisco
8 33 (1.67%) F5
9 31 (1.57%) Salesforce
10 24 (1.21%) Palantir
10 24 (1.21%) Splunk
11 19 (0.96%) Cloudera
12 18 (0.91%) Foundry
13 15 (0.76%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.61%) IBM
15 11 (0.56%) Sage
16 9 (0.45%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.45%) Dynatrace