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 8 May 2026.

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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 83 101
Rank change year-on-year +19 +18 +10
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,703 847 949
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.59% 2.91% 2.20%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.89% 3.15% 2.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,192 630 743
10th Percentile £375 £360 £263
25th Percentile £420 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £581 £596 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £460
% change year-on-year +2.70% +0.54% -10.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 12 45
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.36 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £37.52 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.64% -9.62% +1.56%
75th Percentile £75.00 £77.80 £80.00
90th Percentile £78.20 £92.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.25 £26.93 £75.00
% change year-on-year +90.34% -64.10% +72.41%

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 43,778 26,928 40,006
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 92.53% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,907 17,551 26,037
10th Percentile £319 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,831 1,044 2,664
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.00 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £44.00 £28.75 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.04% -21.23% -18.89%
75th Percentile £67.25 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.59 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +65.76% -31.25% -5.35%

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 8 May 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 8 May 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 8 May 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 +24 1,491 £500 - 402
London +22 822 £525 - 153
UK excluding London +33 687 £475 +2.70% 315
Work from Home +18 499 £500 - 211
Midlands +34 294 £469 +1.41% 68
West Midlands +34 276 £469 -1.26% 45
North of England -12 186 £465 +0.54% 82
North West -1 121 £490 +5.95% 38
South East -14 89 £500 +5.26% 93
South West -6 66 £500 +2.56% 30
Scotland +7 57 £430 -4.44% 13
Yorkshire -24 50 £465 +3.33% 20
Wales +6 21 £475 +130.23% 14
East Midlands -22 18 £498 +21.34% 23
East of England -29 16 £565 +79.37% 14
North East -18 15 £463 +8.82% 25
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

For the 6 months to 8 May 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.

1 926 (54.37%) SQL
2 793 (46.56%) Python
3 709 (41.63%) Data Pipeline
4 658 (38.64%) ETL
5 645 (37.87%) Analytics
6 623 (36.58%) Data Engineering
7 598 (35.11%) Azure
8 579 (34.00%) Data Modelling
9 506 (29.71%) Security Cleared
10 452 (26.54%) SC Cleared
11 445 (26.13%) AWS
12 440 (25.84%) Data Quality
13 421 (24.72%) Databricks
14 419 (24.60%) CI/CD
15 370 (21.73%) Business Intelligence
16 325 (19.08%) Agile
17 311 (18.26%) DevOps
18 294 (17.26%) Data Warehouse
19 292 (17.15%) Power Platform
20 277 (16.27%) Power BI
21 276 (16.21%) PySpark
22 242 (14.21%) Data Governance
23 240 (14.09%) Azure Data Factory
24 235 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
25 225 (13.21%) Microsoft
26 208 (12.21%) Migration
27 200 (11.74%) Git
28 199 (11.69%) AI
29 195 (11.45%) Data Integration
30 185 (10.86%) Data Lake

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
1 166 (9.75%) Apache Spark
2 154 (9.04%) Apache Airflow
3 99 (5.81%) Apache
4 77 (4.52%) SAS
5 34 (2.00%) Confluence
6 12 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
7 8 (0.47%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.059%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.059%) Appian
11 1 (0.059%) Camunda
11 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (0.29%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.059%) Actimize
3 1 (0.059%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.059%) iTrent
3 1 (0.059%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle Assets
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.059%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.059%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 598 (35.11%) Azure
2 445 (26.13%) AWS
3 292 (17.15%) Power Platform
4 240 (14.09%) Azure Data Factory
5 171 (10.04%) Snowflake
6 169 (9.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 152 (8.93%) Amazon S3
7 152 (8.93%) GCP
8 140 (8.22%) dbt
9 135 (7.93%) Azure DevOps
10 121 (7.11%) GitHub
11 108 (6.34%) Serverless
12 86 (5.05%) AWS Lambda
13 52 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
14 39 (2.29%) AWS CloudFormation
15 34 (2.00%) Amazon EMR
16 29 (1.70%) Matillion
17 26 (1.53%) Amazon Kinesis
18 25 (1.47%) OpenShift
19 24 (1.41%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.94%) DNS
1 33 (1.94%) VPN
2 32 (1.88%) BGP
2 32 (1.88%) DMZ
2 32 (1.88%) Multicast
3 10 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.41%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.23%) Firewall
6 2 (0.12%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.12%) Wireless
7 1 (0.059%) 4G
7 1 (0.059%) 5G
7 1 (0.059%) MQTT
7 1 (0.059%) Network Security
7 1 (0.059%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 294 (17.26%) Data Warehouse
2 277 (16.27%) Power BI
3 185 (10.86%) Data Lake
4 123 (7.22%) SQL Server
5 105 (6.17%) Delta Lake
6 98 (5.75%) Metadata
7 93 (5.46%) Big Data
8 92 (5.40%) BigQuery
9 88 (5.17%) Amazon Redshift
10 84 (4.93%) Azure SQL Database
10 84 (4.93%) Pentaho
11 70 (4.11%) PostgreSQL
11 70 (4.11%) Tableau
12 66 (3.88%) NoSQL
12 66 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
13 61 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 58 (3.41%) Amazon Athena
15 51 (2.99%) Relational Database
16 44 (2.58%) Hadoop
17 37 (2.17%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 200 (11.74%) Git
2 86 (5.05%) JIRA
3 77 (4.52%) GitLab
4 63 (3.70%) Jenkins
5 19 (1.12%) MLflow
6 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.12%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ERwin
8 1 (0.059%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.059%) JUnit
8 1 (0.059%) Poetry
8 1 (0.059%) Selenium
8 1 (0.059%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.059%) Terragrunt
General
1 281 (16.50%) Finance
2 255 (14.97%) Social Skills
3 186 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.04%) Public Sector
5 88 (5.17%) Banking
6 33 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.53%) Investment Banking
8 22 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.17%) Marketing
11 18 (1.06%) Retail
12 16 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.88%) Front Office
14 13 (0.76%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
16 11 (0.65%) Publishing
17 8 (0.47%) Law
17 8 (0.47%) Military
18 6 (0.35%) Legal
19 5 (0.29%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (16.21%) PySpark
2 157 (9.22%) Kafka
3 54 (3.17%) Pandas
4 30 (1.76%) JSON
4 30 (1.76%) REST
5 29 (1.70%) YAML
6 25 (1.47%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.29%) Spring
7 22 (1.29%) Spring Boot
8 15 (0.88%) Apache Beam
9 14 (0.82%) Node.js
9 14 (0.82%) scikit-learn
10 13 (0.76%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.76%) Matplotlib
10 13 (0.76%) NumPy
10 13 (0.76%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.70%) React
11 12 (0.70%) XML
12 10 (0.59%) pytest
13 9 (0.53%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 120 (7.05%) Cloud Native
2 45 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
3 40 (2.35%) Data Structures
4 31 (1.82%) Product Ownership
5 29 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
6 26 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.23%) Clustering
8 19 (1.12%) Onboarding
9 17 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (1.00%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.82%) NHS
10 14 (0.82%) Replication
11 13 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (0.65%) Public Cloud
14 9 (0.53%) AI Agents
14 9 (0.53%) Hybrid Cloud
15 8 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
15 8 (0.47%) Data Centre
15 8 (0.47%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (2.99%) Unix
2 36 (2.11%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) VMS
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 709 (41.63%) Data Pipeline
2 658 (38.64%) ETL
3 645 (37.87%) Analytics
4 623 (36.58%) Data Engineering
5 579 (34.00%) Data Modelling
6 419 (24.60%) CI/CD
7 370 (21.73%) Business Intelligence
8 325 (19.08%) Agile
9 311 (18.26%) DevOps
10 242 (14.21%) Data Governance
11 235 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
12 208 (12.21%) Migration
13 199 (11.69%) AI
14 195 (11.45%) Data Integration
15 181 (10.63%) Data Science
16 176 (10.33%) Validation
17 140 (8.22%) Data Architecture
18 138 (8.10%) Data Transformation
19 136 (7.99%) Decision-Making
19 136 (7.99%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 926 (54.37%) SQL
2 793 (46.56%) Python
3 119 (6.99%) Java
4 87 (5.11%) Scala
5 40 (2.35%) PL/SQL
5 40 (2.35%) T-SQL
6 38 (2.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 36 (2.11%) C#
8 29 (1.70%) Shell Script
9 27 (1.59%) Bash
10 21 (1.23%) Bicep
11 19 (1.12%) R
12 18 (1.06%) JavaScript
13 16 (0.94%) PowerShell
14 8 (0.47%) Go
15 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
16 3 (0.18%) C
17 2 (0.12%) C++
17 2 (0.12%) Perl
17 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 506 (29.71%) Security Cleared
2 452 (26.54%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.52%) Degree
4 36 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 33 (1.94%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (0.94%) DV Cleared
7 11 (0.65%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.41%) City & Guilds
10 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
12 3 (0.18%) CISSP
12 3 (0.18%) CTC Cleared
12 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.12%) CISM
14 1 (0.059%) CISA
14 1 (0.059%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 440 (25.84%) Data Quality
2 52 (3.05%) GDPR
3 51 (2.99%) QA
4 16 (0.94%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.53%) FATCA
5 9 (0.53%) SLA
6 5 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.29%) MiFID
7 4 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.18%) GMP
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) WCAG
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) GRC
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.059%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.059%) Disclosure Scotland
10 1 (0.059%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.059%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 113 (6.64%) Docker
2 5 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 179 (10.51%) Terraform
2 99 (5.81%) Kubernetes
3 52 (3.05%) Grafana
4 14 (0.82%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.76%) Ansible
6 10 (0.59%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) logstash
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.059%) Control-M
9 1 (0.059%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.059%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.059%) Puppet
9 1 (0.059%) QRadar
Vendors
1 421 (24.72%) Databricks
2 225 (13.21%) Microsoft
3 144 (8.46%) Oracle
4 115 (6.75%) Informatica
5 113 (6.64%) Talend
6 66 (3.88%) Denodo
7 61 (3.58%) Google
8 35 (2.06%) Cisco
9 34 (2.00%) F5
10 26 (1.53%) SAP
10 26 (1.53%) Splunk
11 22 (1.29%) ServiceNow
12 16 (0.94%) Cloudera
12 16 (0.94%) IBM
13 15 (0.88%) Foundry
14 13 (0.76%) Alteryx
14 13 (0.76%) Palantir
15 9 (0.53%) Dynatrace
16 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
16 8 (0.47%) MuleSoft