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 17 September 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 70 131 98
Rank change year-on-year +61 -33 +28
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,913 719 895
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.50% 2.18% 2.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.79% 2.40% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,274 511 634
10th Percentile £375 £363 £363
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 £675 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 14 9
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.42 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £37.00 £60.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.85% -34.38% +29.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £75.63 -
90th Percentile £70.90 £103.25 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +53.91% -66.25% +40.35%

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 50,473 30,002 35,564
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 91.08% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,930 18,956 21,934
10th Percentile £328 £278 £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 £626 £621 £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 3,805 1,570 1,684
10th Percentile £14.59 £13.75 £14.73
25th Percentile £20.31 £17.30 £20.30
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -2.01%
75th Percentile £67.84 £52.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +60 1,678 £500 - 1,686
UK excluding London +90 865 £475 - 843
London +26 836 £525 - 910
Work from Home +54 555 £500 +3.90% 658
Midlands +77 343 £469 +4.22% 124
West Midlands +63 272 £469 +6.59% 79
North of England +22 205 £500 +5.26% 262
South East +26 132 £459 -4.62% 181
North West +22 110 £525 +10.53% 148
South West +17 101 £525 +5.00% 88
Yorkshire +1 76 £475 -6.17% 76
East Midlands +39 71 £450 +1.98% 45
Scotland -1 64 £428 -7.57% 81
East of England +6 40 £463 -38.33% 60
North East -27 20 £450 +6.51% 38
Wales -2 17 £513 +8.47% 15
Northern Ireland +3 2 £410 -18.00% 32
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 17 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.

1 967 (50.55%) SQL
2 836 (43.70%) Python
3 833 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
4 745 (38.94%) Data Engineering
5 673 (35.18%) Data Modelling
6 668 (34.92%) ETL
7 657 (34.34%) Analytics
8 591 (30.89%) Azure
9 590 (30.84%) AWS
10 489 (25.56%) Data Quality
11 487 (25.46%) Security Cleared
12 457 (23.89%) CI/CD
13 424 (22.16%) SC Cleared
14 402 (21.01%) Databricks
15 334 (17.46%) Agile
16 325 (16.99%) Data Warehouse
17 314 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
18 312 (16.31%) Migration
19 310 (16.20%) DevOps
20 297 (15.53%) AI
21 268 (14.01%) PySpark
22 267 (13.96%) Data Governance
23 256 (13.38%) Power Platform
24 250 (13.07%) Power BI
25 246 (12.86%) Data Transformation
26 245 (12.81%) Data Integration
27 243 (12.70%) Microsoft
28 241 (12.60%) Validation
29 235 (12.28%) Snowflake
30 227 (11.87%) 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 (11.13%) Apache Airflow
2 152 (7.95%) Apache Spark
3 130 (6.80%) Apache
4 59 (3.08%) SAS
5 47 (2.46%) Confluence
6 19 (0.99%) Palantir Foundry
7 16 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.52%) 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 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
3 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 12 (0.63%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.052%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 591 (30.89%) Azure
2 590 (30.84%) AWS
3 256 (13.38%) Power Platform
4 235 (12.28%) Snowflake
5 227 (11.87%) dbt
6 214 (11.19%) Azure Data Factory
7 192 (10.04%) GCP
8 174 (9.10%) Amazon S3
9 135 (7.06%) Serverless
10 124 (6.48%) Azure DevOps
11 122 (6.38%) AWS Lambda
12 121 (6.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 113 (5.91%) GitHub
14 67 (3.50%) Azure Databricks
15 55 (2.88%) Amazon EMR
16 46 (2.40%) GitHub Actions
17 42 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
19 30 (1.57%) Amazon Kinesis
20 29 (1.52%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 25 (1.31%) BGP
1 25 (1.31%) DMZ
1 25 (1.31%) DNS
1 25 (1.31%) Multicast
1 25 (1.31%) VPN
2 10 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
3 8 (0.42%) 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
1 325 (16.99%) Data Warehouse
2 250 (13.07%) Power BI
3 162 (8.47%) Data Lake
4 136 (7.11%) Metadata
5 114 (5.96%) BigQuery
6 93 (4.86%) Amazon Redshift
7 87 (4.55%) Delta Lake
8 85 (4.44%) Amazon Athena
9 83 (4.34%) SQL Server
10 75 (3.92%) Big Data
11 66 (3.45%) Pentaho
11 66 (3.45%) PostgreSQL
12 62 (3.24%) Snowflake Schema
13 60 (3.14%) Relational Database
13 60 (3.14%) Tableau
14 49 (2.56%) NoSQL
15 43 (2.25%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (2.25%) Oracle Database
16 41 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
17 39 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 173 (9.04%) Git
2 101 (5.28%) GitLab
3 72 (3.76%) JIRA
4 34 (1.78%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.10%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.42%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.26%) Selenium
10 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
10 4 (0.21%) ERwin
11 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.16%) Newman
11 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.10%) RStudio
12 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
13 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 317 (16.57%) Social Skills
2 310 (16.20%) Finance
3 214 (11.19%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (8.52%) Public Sector
5 121 (6.33%) Banking
6 34 (1.78%) Marketing
7 31 (1.62%) Retail
8 29 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (1.25%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
10 23 (1.20%) Telecoms
11 21 (1.10%) Automotive
11 21 (1.10%) Front Office
12 20 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
13 19 (0.99%) Law
13 19 (0.99%) Manufacturing
14 17 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
15 13 (0.68%) Police
16 12 (0.63%) Legal
17 11 (0.58%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 268 (14.01%) PySpark
2 194 (10.14%) Terraform
3 129 (6.74%) Kafka
4 33 (1.73%) JSON
4 33 (1.73%) REST
5 29 (1.52%) Pandas
6 23 (1.20%) Spring
6 23 (1.20%) Spring Boot
6 23 (1.20%) XML
7 19 (0.99%) Great Expectations
8 18 (0.94%) Apache Beam
9 16 (0.84%) LangChain
10 15 (0.78%) React
11 14 (0.73%) pytest
11 14 (0.73%) RESTful
12 11 (0.58%) PyTorch
12 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.52%) .NET
13 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.74%) Cloud Native
2 68 (3.55%) Data Structures
3 64 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 46 (2.40%) Onboarding
5 27 (1.41%) AI Agents
6 26 (1.36%) Product Ownership
7 24 (1.25%) Distributed Systems
7 24 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
8 23 (1.20%) NHS
9 19 (0.99%) Reference Data
10 18 (0.94%) Management Information System
11 16 (0.84%) Reinsurance
12 15 (0.78%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
14 11 (0.58%) Clustering
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
15 10 (0.52%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 62 (3.24%) Unix
2 44 (2.30%) 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
1 833 (43.54%) Data Pipeline
2 745 (38.94%) Data Engineering
3 673 (35.18%) Data Modelling
4 668 (34.92%) ETL
5 657 (34.34%) Analytics
6 457 (23.89%) CI/CD
7 334 (17.46%) Agile
8 314 (16.41%) Business Intelligence
9 312 (16.31%) Migration
10 310 (16.20%) DevOps
11 297 (15.53%) AI
12 267 (13.96%) Data Governance
13 246 (12.86%) Data Transformation
14 245 (12.81%) Data Integration
15 241 (12.60%) Validation
16 208 (10.87%) Problem-Solving
17 178 (9.30%) Machine Learning
18 174 (9.10%) Decision-Making
19 173 (9.04%) Data Science
19 173 (9.04%) Lakehouse
Programming Languages
1 967 (50.55%) SQL
2 836 (43.70%) Python
3 113 (5.91%) Java
4 71 (3.71%) Scala
5 51 (2.67%) PL/SQL
6 35 (1.83%) T-SQL
7 34 (1.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 30 (1.57%) Shell Script
9 22 (1.15%) Bash
9 22 (1.15%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.15%) PowerShell
10 14 (0.73%) R
11 11 (0.58%) C#
12 10 (0.52%) Bicep
13 9 (0.47%) TypeScript
14 8 (0.42%) Go
15 5 (0.26%) Korn
16 3 (0.16%) COBOL
16 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 487 (25.46%) Security Cleared
2 424 (22.16%) SC Cleared
3 49 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.14%) Degree
5 27 (1.41%) DV Cleared
6 24 (1.25%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
8 16 (0.84%) 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
11 8 (0.42%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
12 6 (0.31%) CISSP
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
1 489 (25.56%) Data Quality
2 74 (3.87%) QA
3 38 (1.99%) GDPR
4 17 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
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%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.052%) PMO
System Software
1 114 (5.96%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.16%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.052%) HDFS
3 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 86 (4.50%) Kubernetes
2 38 (1.99%) Grafana
3 17 (0.89%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
5 11 (0.58%) Kibana
6 6 (0.31%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.10%) logstash
7 2 (0.10%) Puppet
8 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 402 (21.01%) Databricks
2 243 (12.70%) Microsoft
3 161 (8.42%) Oracle
4 103 (5.38%) Informatica
5 94 (4.91%) Talend
6 81 (4.23%) Google
7 52 (2.72%) Denodo
8 35 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 29 (1.52%) Palantir
10 28 (1.46%) Foundry
11 26 (1.36%) SAP
12 25 (1.31%) Cisco
12 25 (1.31%) F5
13 15 (0.78%) Splunk
14 10 (0.52%) IBM
15 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
15 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
16 8 (0.42%) Alteryx
16 8 (0.42%) Cloudera
16 8 (0.42%) Sage