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 26 October 2025.

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

6 months to
26 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 128 93 129
Rank change year-on-year -35 +36 -2
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 769 911 929
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.29% 2.47% 1.95%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.52% 2.66% 2.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 629 693
10th Percentile £360 £363 £400
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £545
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -2.75% -0.91%
75th Percentile £594 £625 £638
90th Percentile £694 £688 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 8 13
10th Percentile £25.34 £25.90 £35.13
25th Percentile £35.25 £26.44 £39.85
Median hourly rate £52.50 £55.25 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.98% -12.30% +8.62%
75th Percentile £80.00 £97.50 £68.00
90th Percentile £105.50 - £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.75 £26.50 £57.00
% change year-on-year +72.64% -53.51% -5.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 30,564 34,233 44,722
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.85% 92.88% 93.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 19,313 20,627 30,523
10th Percentile £279 £300 £300
25th Percentile £402 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,698 1,333 1,531
10th Percentile £13.80 £15.07 £14.61
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -37.13% -10.11% +60.48%
75th Percentile £50.00 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £69.51 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.00 £40.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -37.50% -10.11% +90.25%

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 26 October 2025.

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 26 October 2025.

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 26 October 2025. 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 -30 647 £513 -6.82% 678
London -22 404 £525 -8.70% 349
UK excluding London -41 264 £475 -5.00% 516
Work from Home -28 239 £500 -4.76% 313
North of England -24 77 £445 -8.25% 108
Midlands -28 64 £500 +4.82% 69
West Midlands -23 49 £515 +5.10% 53
Scotland +24 46 £438 -12.50% 16
South West +23 37 £550 +4.76% 26
Yorkshire -22 34 £513 +5.67% 33
North West -25 34 £405 -14.74% 64
South East -34 33 £475 -11.63% 272
East Midlands -7 13 £460 +22.67% 16
North East 0 10 £416 -28.85% 12
Wales -12 9 £460 -8.00% 6
East of England -23 5 £625 +79.86% 25
Northern Ireland -10 1 - - 3

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

For the 6 months to 26 October 2025, 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.

1 506 (65.80%) Python
2 469 (60.99%) SQL
3 363 (47.20%) Data Pipeline
4 331 (43.04%) Azure
5 314 (40.83%) ETL
6 301 (39.14%) Data Engineering
7 278 (36.15%) AWS
8 269 (34.98%) Data Modelling
9 238 (30.95%) Databricks
10 235 (30.56%) Analytics
11 233 (30.30%) CI/CD
12 197 (25.62%) Data Quality
13 184 (23.93%) Data Warehouse
14 174 (22.63%) Business Intelligence
15 163 (21.20%) DevOps
16 153 (19.90%) Security Cleared
17 151 (19.64%) Agile
18 148 (19.25%) Azure Data Factory
19 135 (17.56%) Power Platform
20 134 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
21 132 (17.17%) Power BI
22 130 (16.91%) Data Science
22 130 (16.91%) PySpark
23 127 (16.51%) Apache Airflow
24 123 (15.99%) SC Cleared
25 114 (14.82%) Snowflake
26 108 (14.04%) GCP
27 106 (13.78%) Machine Learning
28 102 (13.26%) Data Lake
29 99 (12.87%) Data Governance

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
1 127 (16.51%) Apache Airflow
2 86 (11.18%) Apache Spark
3 68 (8.84%) Apache
4 24 (3.12%) Confluence
5 15 (1.95%) SAS
6 10 (1.30%) SharePoint
7 8 (1.04%) Oracle Application Server
8 6 (0.78%) Apache Pig
9 5 (0.65%) IIS
10 4 (0.52%) Jupyter
11 3 (0.39%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.39%) Luigi
11 3 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 2 (0.26%) Documentum
13 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
13 1 (0.13%) nginx
Applications
1 5 (0.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.26%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.26%) Windchill
4 1 (0.13%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.13%) SPSS
4 1 (0.13%) Stata
Business Applications
1 3 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
2 2 (0.26%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.26%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.26%) NetSuite
2 2 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.13%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.13%) Endur
3 1 (0.13%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.13%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.13%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.13%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 331 (43.04%) Azure
2 278 (36.15%) AWS
3 148 (19.25%) Azure Data Factory
4 135 (17.56%) Power Platform
5 114 (14.82%) Snowflake
6 108 (14.04%) GCP
7 93 (12.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 89 (11.57%) dbt
9 77 (10.01%) Amazon S3
10 68 (8.84%) GitHub
11 66 (8.58%) Serverless
12 47 (6.11%) Azure DevOps
13 39 (5.07%) AWS Lambda
14 37 (4.81%) GitHub Actions
15 20 (2.60%) AWS CloudFormation
16 19 (2.47%) Amazon EMR
17 18 (2.34%) SaaS
18 16 (2.08%) Amazon Kinesis
18 16 (2.08%) Microsoft Purview
19 11 (1.43%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.65%) Internet
1 5 (0.65%) TCP/IP
2 4 (0.52%) Firewall
2 4 (0.52%) MQTT
3 3 (0.39%) SSH
3 3 (0.39%) Structured Cabling
3 3 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
4 2 (0.26%) DNS
4 2 (0.26%) LAN
4 2 (0.26%) SSL
4 2 (0.26%) WAN
5 1 (0.13%) 802.11
5 1 (0.13%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.13%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 184 (23.93%) Data Warehouse
2 132 (17.17%) Power BI
3 102 (13.26%) Data Lake
4 75 (9.75%) Big Data
5 62 (8.06%) SQL Server
6 60 (7.80%) PostgreSQL
7 55 (7.15%) Hadoop
8 47 (6.11%) NoSQL
9 46 (5.98%) Delta Lake
9 46 (5.98%) Relational Database
10 44 (5.72%) Amazon Redshift
11 40 (5.20%) BigQuery
12 36 (4.68%) Azure SQL Database
13 34 (4.42%) Tableau
14 31 (4.03%) Metadata
15 25 (3.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 24 (3.12%) Star Schema
17 23 (2.99%) Elasticsearch
18 20 (2.60%) Snowflake Schema
19 18 (2.34%) Amazon QuickSight
Development Applications
1 97 (12.61%) Git
2 52 (6.76%) Jenkins
3 37 (4.81%) JIRA
4 29 (3.77%) GitLab
5 18 (2.34%) MLflow
6 8 (1.04%) DBeaver
7 6 (0.78%) Bitbucket
8 5 (0.65%) SonarQube
8 5 (0.65%) Visual Studio Code
9 3 (0.39%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.39%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.39%) Poetry
9 3 (0.39%) PyCharm
9 3 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.39%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.26%) JMeter
10 2 (0.26%) Selenium
10 2 (0.26%) Zephyr
11 1 (0.13%) Maven
11 1 (0.13%) TeamCity
General
1 163 (21.20%) Social Skills
2 134 (17.43%) Finance
3 99 (12.87%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (7.67%) Public Sector
5 42 (5.46%) Banking
6 16 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (1.82%) Telecoms
8 13 (1.69%) Investment Banking
8 13 (1.69%) Retail
9 12 (1.56%) Marketing
10 11 (1.43%) Front Office
11 9 (1.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 8 (1.04%) Documentation Skills
13 6 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
14 5 (0.65%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
14 5 (0.65%) Retail Banking
14 5 (0.65%) Tech for Good
15 4 (0.52%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (16.91%) PySpark
2 80 (10.40%) Kafka
3 20 (2.60%) Pandas
4 19 (2.47%) Apache NiFi
5 18 (2.34%) RESTful
6 15 (1.95%) NumPy
6 15 (1.95%) XML
7 13 (1.69%) Flask
8 12 (1.56%) HTML
8 12 (1.56%) JSON
8 12 (1.56%) RabbitMQ
9 10 (1.30%) PyTorch
9 10 (1.30%) REST
10 8 (1.04%) GraphQL
10 8 (1.04%) Jinja
10 8 (1.04%) OAuth
10 8 (1.04%) OpenTelemetry
10 8 (1.04%) Oracle GoldenGate
10 8 (1.04%) TensorFlow
11 7 (0.91%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 43 (5.59%) Cloud Native
2 25 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
3 22 (2.86%) Algorithms
4 21 (2.73%) Data Structures
5 18 (2.34%) Product Ownership
5 18 (2.34%) Replication
6 13 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (1.43%) Distributed Computing
8 10 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
8 10 (1.30%) Onboarding
9 9 (1.17%) Hybrid Cloud
9 9 (1.17%) IoT
9 9 (1.17%) Reinsurance
10 8 (1.04%) Distributed Systems
11 7 (0.91%) Life Science
11 7 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
12 6 (0.78%) NHS
12 6 (0.78%) Virtual Team
13 5 (0.65%) Clustering
13 5 (0.65%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 30 (3.90%) Linux
2 18 (2.34%) Unix
3 3 (0.39%) Windows
4 2 (0.26%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.26%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 363 (47.20%) Data Pipeline
2 314 (40.83%) ETL
3 301 (39.14%) Data Engineering
4 269 (34.98%) Data Modelling
5 235 (30.56%) Analytics
6 233 (30.30%) CI/CD
7 174 (22.63%) Business Intelligence
8 163 (21.20%) DevOps
9 151 (19.64%) Agile
10 134 (17.43%) Problem-Solving
11 130 (16.91%) Data Science
12 106 (13.78%) Machine Learning
13 99 (12.87%) Data Governance
14 96 (12.48%) AI
15 93 (12.09%) Data Integration
16 89 (11.57%) Infrastructure as Code
17 87 (11.31%) Visualisation
18 85 (11.05%) Migration
19 81 (10.53%) Data Transformation
20 66 (8.58%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 506 (65.80%) Python
2 469 (60.99%) SQL
3 78 (10.14%) Java
4 63 (8.19%) Scala
5 23 (2.99%) Bash
6 17 (2.21%) PL/SQL
7 12 (1.56%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.56%) R
7 12 (1.56%) T-SQL
8 11 (1.43%) Shell Script
9 10 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 9 (1.17%) C#
11 8 (1.04%) Go
11 8 (1.04%) TypeScript
12 6 (0.78%) PowerShell
13 4 (0.52%) C++
13 4 (0.52%) Groovy
14 2 (0.26%) ABAP
14 2 (0.26%) Bicep
14 2 (0.26%) Korn
Qualifications
1 153 (19.90%) Security Cleared
2 123 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 42 (5.46%) Degree
4 25 (3.25%) DV Cleared
5 20 (2.60%) AWS Certification
5 20 (2.60%) Azure Certification
6 17 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (1.69%) Master's Degree
8 9 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.39%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.26%) CTC Cleared
10 2 (0.26%) MCP
11 1 (0.13%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.13%) HND
11 1 (0.13%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.13%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.13%) PhD
11 1 (0.13%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 197 (25.62%) Data Quality
2 28 (3.64%) GDPR
3 19 (2.47%) QA
4 10 (1.30%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.52%) NIST
6 3 (0.39%) HIPAA
6 3 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 20000
6 3 (0.39%) SLA
7 2 (0.26%) Dodd-Frank
7 2 (0.26%) EMIR
7 2 (0.26%) EU AI Act
7 2 (0.26%) MiFID
8 1 (0.13%) Disclosure Scotland
8 1 (0.13%) ISO 19650
8 1 (0.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.13%) NCSC
8 1 (0.13%) PMO
8 1 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.13%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (7.02%) Docker
2 8 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.65%) zsh
4 2 (0.26%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 91 (11.83%) Terraform
2 59 (7.67%) Kubernetes
3 15 (1.95%) Grafana
4 13 (1.69%) Ansible
5 9 (1.17%) NetBackup
6 7 (0.91%) Prometheus
7 6 (0.78%) Kibana
8 5 (0.65%) Puppet
9 4 (0.52%) Argo
9 4 (0.52%) logstash
10 3 (0.39%) Ambari
10 3 (0.39%) Istio
10 3 (0.39%) Kustomize
10 3 (0.39%) ZABBIX
11 2 (0.26%) Control-M
11 2 (0.26%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.13%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 238 (30.95%) Databricks
2 87 (11.31%) Microsoft
3 52 (6.76%) Oracle
4 32 (4.16%) Google
5 30 (3.90%) Palantir
6 28 (3.64%) Foundry
7 22 (2.86%) Talend
8 20 (2.60%) Informatica
9 19 (2.47%) Cloudera
10 13 (1.69%) Denodo
10 13 (1.69%) SAP
11 12 (1.56%) Red Hat
12 9 (1.17%) Commvault
12 9 (1.17%) IBM
13 8 (1.04%) Salesforce
13 8 (1.04%) ServiceNow
13 8 (1.04%) Splunk
13 8 (1.04%) Veritas
14 7 (0.91%) Confluent
15 5 (0.65%) Virgin Media