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 12 September 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 129 100
Rank change year-on-year +61 -29 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,907 727 890
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.50% 2.20% 2.31%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.79% 2.42% 2.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,270 518 635
10th Percentile £375 £363 £358
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £625
90th Percentile £663 £694 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -0.53% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 15 10
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.50 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.75 £65.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +25.00%
75th Percentile £68.75 £79.35 -
90th Percentile £72.40 £101.00 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -21.37% -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 50,382 30,069 35,903
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.09% 93.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,936 18,968 22,276
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
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 3,746 1,571 1,738
10th Percentile £14.58 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.25 £17.04 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -
75th Percentile £67.50 £52.33 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.88 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.59
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.83% +12.32%

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 12 September 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 12 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 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 12 September 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 +56 1,679 £500 - 980
UK excluding London +90 857 £473 -0.53% 562
London +32 843 £525 - 561
Work from Home +49 559 £500 +1.78% 339
Midlands +76 346 £469 +2.79% 87
West Midlands +64 280 £469 -0.21% 52
North of England +22 208 £500 +5.26% 130
South East +33 131 £459 -4.62% 153
North West +23 115 £525 +10.53% 69
South West +9 94 £525 +5.00% 58
Yorkshire +2 76 £475 -6.17% 39
East Midlands +29 66 £450 +1.98% 35
Scotland -3 61 £428 -7.57% 65
East of England +12 38 £450 -40.00% 41
North East -33 18 £510 +20.71% 22
Wales -6 15 £494 -1.25% 10
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 20
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 12 September 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.

1 957 (50.18%) SQL
2 826 (43.31%) Python
3 821 (43.05%) Data Pipeline
4 739 (38.75%) Data Engineering
5 658 (34.50%) ETL
6 657 (34.45%) Data Modelling
7 654 (34.29%) Analytics
8 600 (31.46%) Azure
9 581 (30.47%) AWS
10 497 (26.06%) Security Cleared
11 488 (25.59%) Data Quality
12 458 (24.02%) CI/CD
13 435 (22.81%) SC Cleared
14 404 (21.19%) Databricks
15 337 (17.67%) Agile
16 324 (16.99%) Data Warehouse
17 317 (16.62%) DevOps
18 316 (16.57%) Business Intelligence
19 310 (16.26%) Migration
20 291 (15.26%) AI
21 269 (14.11%) PySpark
22 267 (14.00%) Data Governance
23 255 (13.37%) Power Platform
24 248 (13.00%) Microsoft
24 248 (13.00%) Power BI
25 245 (12.85%) Data Integration
26 238 (12.48%) Data Transformation
27 237 (12.43%) Validation
28 231 (12.11%) Snowflake
29 218 (11.43%) dbt

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
1 213 (11.17%) Apache Airflow
2 154 (8.08%) Apache Spark
3 132 (6.92%) Apache
4 59 (3.09%) SAS
5 47 (2.46%) Confluence
6 16 (0.84%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.79%) SharePoint
8 11 (0.58%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.052%) Liferay
10 1 (0.052%) Luigi
10 1 (0.052%) nginx
10 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
3 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
6 1 (0.052%) BambooHR
6 1 (0.052%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 600 (31.46%) Azure
2 581 (30.47%) AWS
3 255 (13.37%) Power Platform
4 231 (12.11%) Snowflake
5 218 (11.43%) dbt
6 216 (11.33%) Azure Data Factory
7 185 (9.70%) GCP
8 169 (8.86%) Amazon S3
9 132 (6.92%) Serverless
10 131 (6.87%) Azure DevOps
11 130 (6.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 118 (6.19%) AWS Lambda
12 118 (6.19%) GitHub
13 69 (3.62%) Azure Databricks
14 53 (2.78%) Amazon EMR
15 47 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
16 39 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 30 (1.57%) AWS Step Functions
18 29 (1.52%) Amazon Kinesis
19 28 (1.47%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.42%) BGP
1 27 (1.42%) DMZ
1 27 (1.42%) DNS
1 27 (1.42%) Multicast
1 27 (1.42%) VPN
2 11 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
3 9 (0.47%) Firewall
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.052%) HTTP
7 1 (0.052%) LTE
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 324 (16.99%) Data Warehouse
2 248 (13.00%) Power BI
3 170 (8.91%) Data Lake
4 135 (7.08%) Metadata
5 111 (5.82%) BigQuery
6 94 (4.93%) Amazon Redshift
7 89 (4.67%) Delta Lake
8 82 (4.30%) SQL Server
9 81 (4.25%) Amazon Athena
10 77 (4.04%) Big Data
11 69 (3.62%) Pentaho
12 64 (3.36%) PostgreSQL
13 61 (3.20%) Relational Database
14 60 (3.15%) Snowflake Schema
14 60 (3.15%) Tableau
15 50 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
15 50 (2.62%) NoSQL
16 44 (2.31%) Oracle Database
17 39 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
18 38 (1.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 169 (8.86%) Git
2 97 (5.09%) GitLab
3 74 (3.88%) JIRA
4 33 (1.73%) Jenkins
5 20 (1.05%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.37%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) Bitbucket
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.21%) ERwin
9 4 (0.21%) Selenium
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
11 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.10%) RStudio
11 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.052%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 312 (16.36%) Social Skills
2 308 (16.15%) Finance
3 217 (11.38%) Analytical Skills
4 158 (8.29%) Public Sector
5 116 (6.08%) Banking
6 36 (1.89%) Marketing
7 30 (1.57%) Retail
8 29 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.21%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.10%) Automotive
11 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
13 19 (1.00%) Front Office
13 19 (1.00%) Law
14 18 (0.94%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
16 13 (0.68%) Police
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
18 10 (0.52%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (14.11%) PySpark
2 190 (9.96%) Terraform
3 131 (6.87%) Kafka
4 35 (1.84%) REST
5 33 (1.73%) JSON
6 27 (1.42%) Pandas
7 23 (1.21%) Spring
7 23 (1.21%) Spring Boot
7 23 (1.21%) XML
8 20 (1.05%) Great Expectations
9 18 (0.94%) Apache Beam
10 16 (0.84%) React
11 15 (0.79%) LangChain
12 14 (0.73%) RESTful
13 12 (0.63%) pytest
14 11 (0.58%) .NET
14 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
15 10 (0.52%) PyTorch
15 10 (0.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 149 (7.81%) Cloud Native
2 68 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.46%) Data Structures
4 44 (2.31%) Onboarding
5 27 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 25 (1.31%) AI Agents
7 24 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
8 23 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
8 23 (1.21%) NHS
9 19 (1.00%) Reference Data
10 18 (0.94%) Management Information System
11 17 (0.89%) Reinsurance
12 14 (0.73%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.63%) Clustering
14 11 (0.58%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (0.58%) Replication
14 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.52%) Data Fabric
15 10 (0.52%) Data Protection Act
15 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 63 (3.30%) Unix
2 45 (2.36%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
5 1 (0.052%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 821 (43.05%) Data Pipeline
2 739 (38.75%) Data Engineering
3 658 (34.50%) ETL
4 657 (34.45%) Data Modelling
5 654 (34.29%) Analytics
6 458 (24.02%) CI/CD
7 337 (17.67%) Agile
8 317 (16.62%) DevOps
9 316 (16.57%) Business Intelligence
10 310 (16.26%) Migration
11 291 (15.26%) AI
12 267 (14.00%) Data Governance
13 245 (12.85%) Data Integration
14 238 (12.48%) Data Transformation
15 237 (12.43%) Validation
16 211 (11.06%) Problem-Solving
17 175 (9.18%) Machine Learning
18 174 (9.12%) Lakehouse
19 172 (9.02%) Data Science
20 171 (8.97%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 957 (50.18%) SQL
2 826 (43.31%) Python
3 116 (6.08%) Java
4 69 (3.62%) Scala
5 53 (2.78%) PL/SQL
6 34 (1.78%) T-SQL
7 33 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 32 (1.68%) Shell Script
9 23 (1.21%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.15%) JavaScript
11 21 (1.10%) Bash
12 13 (0.68%) R
13 12 (0.63%) C#
14 10 (0.52%) Bicep
15 9 (0.47%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.31%) Go
17 5 (0.26%) Korn
18 3 (0.16%) COBOL
18 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
18 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 497 (26.06%) Security Cleared
2 435 (22.81%) SC Cleared
3 48 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.20%) Degree
5 25 (1.31%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.26%) Azure Certification
7 23 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 11 (0.58%) SnowPro
10 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.37%) Master's Degree
13 6 (0.31%) CISM
13 6 (0.31%) CISSP
14 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
14 5 (0.26%) CEH
15 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
16 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 488 (25.59%) Data Quality
2 71 (3.72%) QA
3 39 (2.05%) GDPR
4 17 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.16%) MiFID
11 2 (0.10%) EMIR
11 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.10%) WCAG
12 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.052%) PMO
12 1 (0.052%) SOC 2
System Software
1 110 (5.77%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 83 (4.35%) Kubernetes
2 40 (2.10%) Grafana
3 17 (0.89%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
5 10 (0.52%) Kibana
6 6 (0.31%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.10%) logstash
7 2 (0.10%) Puppet
8 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 404 (21.19%) Databricks
2 248 (13.00%) Microsoft
3 162 (8.50%) Oracle
4 108 (5.66%) Informatica
5 96 (5.03%) Talend
6 77 (4.04%) Google
7 53 (2.78%) Denodo
8 35 (1.84%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.42%) Cisco
9 27 (1.42%) F5
10 26 (1.36%) Palantir
10 26 (1.36%) SAP
11 24 (1.26%) Foundry
12 15 (0.79%) Splunk
13 11 (0.58%) Cloudera
14 10 (0.52%) IBM
15 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
16 8 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.42%) InterSystems
16 8 (0.42%) Sage