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 August 2026.

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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 131 98
Rank change year-on-year +66 -33 +20
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,911 716 906
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.56% 2.19% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.85% 2.40% 2.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,265 509 656
10th Percentile £375 £375 £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 £588 £580 £625
90th Percentile £657 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £480
% change year-on-year -1.17% -1.04% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 14 24
10th Percentile £20.30 £25.42 £31.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £49.25
Median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.76% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £74.65 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.75 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -15.33% -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 49,591 29,856 36,116
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.45% 91.25% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,677 18,858 22,961
10th Percentile £325 £278 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £622 £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 3,535 1,578 1,930
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.68 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.51 £17.08 £19.50
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% -1.44%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £71.47 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.19% -41.51% +7.50%

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 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 26 August 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 26 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 +67 1,694 £500 - 284
UK excluding London +98 883 £469 -1.17% 204
London +37 831 £525 - 117
Work from Home +54 563 £500 +5.26% 110
Midlands +70 366 £460 -0.27% 34
West Midlands +55 306 £465 -3.13% 22
North of England +25 221 £480 +1.05% 57
South East +26 130 £463 -3.14% 45
North West +31 126 £525 +10.53% 19
South West +4 89 £525 +5.00% 34
Yorkshire -3 75 £465 -2.11% 18
East Midlands +26 60 £450 +1.98% 12
Scotland +12 60 £450 +4.41% 15
East of England +9 40 £475 +5.56% 16
North East -27 21 £515 +21.89% 21
Wales 0 17 £488 +9.55% 5
Northern Ireland +2 3 £410 -18.00% 2
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 26 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.

1 944 (49.40%) SQL
2 810 (42.39%) Data Pipeline
3 796 (41.65%) Python
4 707 (37.00%) Data Engineering
5 665 (34.80%) Analytics
6 652 (34.12%) ETL
7 630 (32.97%) Data Modelling
8 594 (31.08%) Azure
9 560 (29.30%) AWS
10 496 (25.95%) Security Cleared
11 467 (24.44%) Data Quality
12 438 (22.92%) CI/CD
13 433 (22.66%) SC Cleared
14 386 (20.20%) Databricks
15 331 (17.32%) Agile
16 327 (17.11%) Business Intelligence
17 319 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
18 305 (15.96%) DevOps
19 300 (15.70%) Migration
20 262 (13.71%) Power Platform
20 262 (13.71%) PySpark
21 256 (13.40%) AI
22 255 (13.34%) Data Governance
22 255 (13.34%) Power BI
23 239 (12.51%) Microsoft
24 235 (12.30%) Validation
25 233 (12.19%) Data Integration
26 222 (11.62%) Data Transformation
27 221 (11.56%) Snowflake
28 213 (11.15%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 197 (10.31%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (7.85%) Apache Spark
3 120 (6.28%) Apache
4 68 (3.56%) SAS
5 42 (2.20%) Confluence
6 16 (0.84%) Palantir Foundry
7 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.47%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.052%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.052%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 594 (31.08%) Azure
2 560 (29.30%) AWS
3 262 (13.71%) Power Platform
4 221 (11.56%) Snowflake
5 213 (11.15%) Azure Data Factory
6 205 (10.73%) dbt
7 175 (9.16%) GCP
8 162 (8.48%) Amazon S3
9 133 (6.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 128 (6.70%) Azure DevOps
11 117 (6.12%) Serverless
12 109 (5.70%) GitHub
13 106 (5.55%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.62%) Amazon EMR
15 42 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
16 35 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.36%) AWS Step Functions
18 25 (1.31%) Amazon Kinesis
19 24 (1.26%) AWS CloudFormation
20 23 (1.20%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.67%) VPN
2 31 (1.62%) BGP
2 31 (1.62%) DMZ
2 31 (1.62%) DNS
2 31 (1.62%) Multicast
3 11 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
4 9 (0.47%) Firewall
5 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
6 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.21%) Wireless
8 1 (0.052%) HTTP
8 1 (0.052%) LTE
8 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 319 (16.69%) Data Warehouse
2 255 (13.34%) Power BI
3 169 (8.84%) Data Lake
4 118 (6.17%) Metadata
5 103 (5.39%) Amazon Redshift
5 103 (5.39%) BigQuery
6 88 (4.60%) SQL Server
7 86 (4.50%) Delta Lake
8 80 (4.19%) Big Data
9 78 (4.08%) Amazon Athena
10 74 (3.87%) Pentaho
11 66 (3.45%) Tableau
12 64 (3.35%) Relational Database
13 62 (3.24%) PostgreSQL
14 59 (3.09%) Snowflake Schema
15 55 (2.88%) Azure SQL Database
16 50 (2.62%) NoSQL
17 46 (2.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 37 (1.94%) Oracle Database
19 36 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 163 (8.53%) Git
2 96 (5.02%) GitLab
3 71 (3.72%) JIRA
4 38 (1.99%) Jenkins
5 16 (0.84%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.37%) Postman
8 5 (0.26%) Bitbucket
9 4 (0.21%) ERwin
9 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
10 3 (0.16%) Selenium
10 3 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 304 (15.91%) Social Skills
2 303 (15.86%) Finance
3 215 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 112 (5.86%) Banking
6 33 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 33 (1.73%) Marketing
7 25 (1.31%) Telecoms
8 23 (1.20%) Investment Banking
8 23 (1.20%) Retail
9 22 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 22 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.05%) Front Office
11 19 (0.99%) Automotive
11 19 (0.99%) Manufacturing
12 15 (0.78%) Law
12 15 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
13 10 (0.52%) Financial Institution
13 10 (0.52%) Legal
13 10 (0.52%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (13.71%) PySpark
2 180 (9.42%) Terraform
3 140 (7.33%) Kafka
4 33 (1.73%) Pandas
5 30 (1.57%) JSON
6 28 (1.47%) REST
7 23 (1.20%) Spring
7 23 (1.20%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.10%) Great Expectations
9 19 (0.99%) XML
10 17 (0.89%) Apache Beam
11 15 (0.78%) React
12 14 (0.73%) RESTful
12 14 (0.73%) YAML
13 12 (0.63%) Streamlit
14 11 (0.58%) LangChain
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
15 10 (0.52%) pytest
16 9 (0.47%) Apache Avro
16 9 (0.47%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 139 (7.27%) Cloud Native
2 76 (3.98%) Legacy Systems
3 60 (3.14%) Data Structures
4 40 (2.09%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.31%) Product Ownership
6 24 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
8 22 (1.15%) NHS
8 22 (1.15%) Reference Data
9 17 (0.89%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.84%) AI Agents
10 16 (0.84%) Management Information System
11 14 (0.73%) Data Protection Act
12 13 (0.68%) Clustering
13 12 (0.63%) Algorithms
14 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.52%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (0.52%) Replication
16 9 (0.47%) Life Science
16 9 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 66 (3.45%) Unix
2 48 (2.51%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 3 (0.16%) Windows Server
5 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
6 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 810 (42.39%) Data Pipeline
2 707 (37.00%) Data Engineering
3 665 (34.80%) Analytics
4 652 (34.12%) ETL
5 630 (32.97%) Data Modelling
6 438 (22.92%) CI/CD
7 331 (17.32%) Agile
8 327 (17.11%) Business Intelligence
9 305 (15.96%) DevOps
10 300 (15.70%) Migration
11 256 (13.40%) AI
12 255 (13.34%) Data Governance
13 235 (12.30%) Validation
14 233 (12.19%) Data Integration
15 222 (11.62%) Data Transformation
16 209 (10.94%) Problem-Solving
17 174 (9.11%) Decision-Making
18 165 (8.63%) Data Science
18 165 (8.63%) Machine Learning
19 151 (7.90%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 944 (49.40%) SQL
2 796 (41.65%) Python
3 112 (5.86%) Java
4 67 (3.51%) Scala
5 54 (2.83%) PL/SQL
6 36 (1.88%) Shell Script
7 33 (1.73%) T-SQL
8 28 (1.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 22 (1.15%) Bash
10 21 (1.10%) PowerShell
11 20 (1.05%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.73%) C#
13 12 (0.63%) R
14 9 (0.47%) Bicep
15 6 (0.31%) Go
16 5 (0.26%) TypeScript
17 4 (0.21%) Korn
18 3 (0.16%) COBOL
19 2 (0.10%) Perl
19 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 496 (25.95%) Security Cleared
2 433 (22.66%) SC Cleared
3 44 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 39 (2.04%) Degree
5 22 (1.15%) Azure Certification
6 21 (1.10%) DV Cleared
7 20 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
8 13 (0.68%) AWS Certification
9 10 (0.52%) SnowPro
10 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
12 6 (0.31%) CISSP
12 6 (0.31%) Master's Degree
13 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
13 5 (0.26%) CEH
14 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 467 (24.44%) Data Quality
2 65 (3.40%) QA
3 45 (2.35%) GDPR
4 16 (0.84%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.58%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.16%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.052%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.052%) PMO
11 1 (0.052%) SOC 2
System Software
1 111 (5.81%) Docker
2 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 84 (4.40%) Kubernetes
2 45 (2.35%) Grafana
3 15 (0.78%) Ansible
4 12 (0.63%) Control-M
5 9 (0.47%) Kibana
6 4 (0.21%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.10%) logstash
7 2 (0.10%) Puppet
7 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.052%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.052%) Rancher
Vendors
1 386 (20.20%) Databricks
2 239 (12.51%) Microsoft
3 157 (8.22%) Oracle
4 120 (6.28%) Informatica
5 103 (5.39%) Talend
6 68 (3.56%) Google
7 60 (3.14%) Denodo
8 32 (1.67%) Cisco
8 32 (1.67%) F5
8 32 (1.67%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.41%) SAP
10 26 (1.36%) Palantir
11 20 (1.05%) Foundry
12 16 (0.84%) Splunk
13 14 (0.73%) Cloudera
14 13 (0.68%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.63%) IBM
16 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.47%) Sage
17 8 (0.42%) InterSystems