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 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 131 98 126
Rank change year-on-year -33 +28 +2
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 719 895 1,006
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 2.18% 2.34% 2.03%
As % of the Job Titles category 2.40% 2.52% 2.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 634 767
10th Percentile £363 £363 £413
25th Percentile £413 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £575 £625 £650
90th Percentile £695 £688 £730
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 9 12
10th Percentile £25.42 £49.25 £35.06
25th Percentile £37.00 £60.00 £38.79
Median hourly rate £52.50 £80.00 £61.75
Median % change year-on-year -34.38% +29.55% +23.50%
75th Percentile £75.63 - £68.44
90th Percentile £103.25 £97.50 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.00 £80.00 £57.00
% change year-on-year -66.25% +40.35% +14.00%

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 29,996 35,551 46,729
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.07% 92.96% 94.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,952 21,923 31,999
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £621 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,570 1,683 1,490
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.88
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -2.01% +68.77%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -44.11% +5.88% +93.18%

Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured Data Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Data Engineer 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 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 -25 620 £500 -9.09% 363
London -5 404 £525 -8.70% 154
UK excluding London -42 230 £475 -5.00% 279
Work from Home -31 229 £481 -6.10% 166
North of England -10 72 £475 -5.00% 62
Midlands -21 43 £450 +0.56% 41
Scotland +8 40 £463 -1.07% 10
North West -14 38 £475 - 35
South West +12 36 £500 -4.76% 33
West Midlands -20 30 £440 -12.00% 20
Yorkshire -12 29 £506 +1.25% 16
South East -25 29 £481 -8.33% 119
East Midlands -8 11 £441 +10.31% 21
North East 0 6 £423 -27.78% 11
Wales -8 6 £473 -5.50% 3
East of England -8 5 £750 +252.94% 16
Northern Ireland -4 2 £500 +0.50%

Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 September 2025, Data Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Data Engineer in the job title.

1 463 (64.39%) Python
2 427 (59.39%) SQL
3 325 (45.20%) Data Pipeline
4 306 (42.56%) Azure
5 280 (38.94%) ETL
6 273 (37.97%) Data Engineering
7 258 (35.88%) AWS
8 253 (35.19%) Data Modelling
9 211 (29.35%) Databricks
10 207 (28.79%) Analytics
11 196 (27.26%) CI/CD
12 167 (23.23%) Data Quality
13 159 (22.11%) Data Warehouse
14 153 (21.28%) Social Skills
15 152 (21.14%) Security Cleared
16 143 (19.89%) Business Intelligence
17 142 (19.75%) Azure Data Factory
18 141 (19.61%) Agile
19 137 (19.05%) DevOps
20 134 (18.64%) Power Platform
21 132 (18.36%) Power BI
22 131 (18.22%) Apache Airflow
23 126 (17.52%) Finance
24 120 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
25 119 (16.55%) PySpark
25 119 (16.55%) SC Cleared
26 109 (15.16%) Data Science
27 104 (14.46%) Snowflake
28 102 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
29 96 (13.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics

Data Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 131 (18.22%) Apache Airflow
2 86 (11.96%) Apache Spark
3 65 (9.04%) Apache
4 18 (2.50%) Confluence
5 12 (1.67%) SAS
6 11 (1.53%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.97%) Jupyter
8 6 (0.83%) Apache Pig
9 5 (0.70%) Oracle Application Server
10 4 (0.56%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.56%) IIS
10 4 (0.56%) Luigi
11 2 (0.28%) Documentum
11 2 (0.28%) nginx
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.14%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 12 (1.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.28%) Windchill
5 1 (0.14%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.14%) SPSS
5 1 (0.14%) Stata
Business Applications
1 2 (0.28%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.28%) NetSuite
1 2 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
1 2 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
1 2 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.14%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.14%) Dynamics AX
2 1 (0.14%) Endur
2 1 (0.14%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.14%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.14%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
2 1 (0.14%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 306 (42.56%) Azure
2 258 (35.88%) AWS
3 142 (19.75%) Azure Data Factory
4 134 (18.64%) Power Platform
5 104 (14.46%) Snowflake
6 96 (13.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 95 (13.21%) dbt
8 89 (12.38%) GCP
9 68 (9.46%) Amazon S3
10 56 (7.79%) GitHub
11 46 (6.40%) Azure DevOps
11 46 (6.40%) Serverless
12 35 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
13 27 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
14 18 (2.50%) Microsoft Purview
15 14 (1.95%) Amazon Kinesis
15 14 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
16 13 (1.81%) Amazon EC2
16 13 (1.81%) Amazon EMR
17 12 (1.67%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.97%) SSH
2 5 (0.70%) Internet
2 5 (0.70%) Wi-Fi
3 4 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 3 (0.42%) MQTT
4 3 (0.42%) Structured Cabling
5 2 (0.28%) DNS
5 2 (0.28%) Firewall
5 2 (0.28%) LAN
5 2 (0.28%) SSL
5 2 (0.28%) WAN
6 1 (0.14%) 802.11
6 1 (0.14%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.14%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (22.11%) Data Warehouse
2 132 (18.36%) Power BI
3 91 (12.66%) Data Lake
4 69 (9.60%) Big Data
5 63 (8.76%) SQL Server
6 51 (7.09%) Hadoop
7 50 (6.95%) NoSQL
7 50 (6.95%) Relational Database
8 48 (6.68%) Delta Lake
9 47 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
10 42 (5.84%) Amazon Redshift
11 36 (5.01%) Azure SQL Database
12 33 (4.59%) Metadata
12 33 (4.59%) Tableau
13 29 (4.03%) BigQuery
14 24 (3.34%) Snowflake Schema
15 22 (3.06%) Apache Hive
16 20 (2.78%) Elasticsearch
16 20 (2.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 19 (2.64%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 75 (10.43%) Git
2 36 (5.01%) Jenkins
2 36 (5.01%) JIRA
3 23 (3.20%) GitLab
4 13 (1.81%) MLflow
5 6 (0.83%) Visual Studio Code
6 5 (0.70%) Bitbucket
6 5 (0.70%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.70%) Terragrunt
7 4 (0.56%) DBeaver
7 4 (0.56%) Poetry
7 4 (0.56%) RStudio
7 4 (0.56%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 4 (0.56%) Visual Studio
8 3 (0.42%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.42%) PyCharm
8 3 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.14%) Selenium
9 1 (0.14%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.14%) TeamCity
General
1 153 (21.28%) Social Skills
2 126 (17.52%) Finance
3 102 (14.19%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (8.34%) Public Sector
5 39 (5.42%) Banking
6 15 (2.09%) Retail
7 14 (1.95%) Marketing
7 14 (1.95%) Telecoms
8 11 (1.53%) Investment Banking
9 10 (1.39%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (0.97%) Financial Institution
10 7 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
11 6 (0.83%) Retail Banking
12 5 (0.70%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.70%) Legal
12 5 (0.70%) Local Government
12 5 (0.70%) Police
13 4 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.56%) Presentation Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 119 (16.55%) PySpark
2 73 (10.15%) Kafka
3 18 (2.50%) Apache NiFi
3 18 (2.50%) JSON
4 15 (2.09%) Pandas
5 13 (1.81%) REST
5 13 (1.81%) RESTful
6 12 (1.67%) Flask
6 12 (1.67%) YAML
7 11 (1.53%) XML
8 10 (1.39%) NumPy
9 9 (1.25%) Elastic Stack
9 9 (1.25%) Jinja
9 9 (1.25%) OpenTelemetry
9 9 (1.25%) RabbitMQ
10 8 (1.11%) HTML
10 8 (1.11%) PyTorch
11 7 (0.97%) Apache Avro
11 7 (0.97%) pytest
11 7 (0.97%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.03%) Cloud Native
2 23 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
3 20 (2.78%) Data Structures
4 16 (2.23%) Algorithms
5 14 (1.95%) Replication
6 13 (1.81%) Product Ownership
7 12 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (1.53%) Distributed Computing
9 9 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (1.25%) Linux Command Line
9 9 (1.25%) Onboarding
10 8 (1.11%) IoT
10 8 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (0.97%) Distributed Systems
11 7 (0.97%) Reference Data
12 6 (0.83%) AI Agents
13 5 (0.70%) Life Science
13 5 (0.70%) Management Information System
13 5 (0.70%) Reinsurance
14 4 (0.56%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 34 (4.73%) Linux
2 17 (2.36%) Unix
3 3 (0.42%) Windows
4 2 (0.28%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 325 (45.20%) Data Pipeline
2 280 (38.94%) ETL
3 273 (37.97%) Data Engineering
4 253 (35.19%) Data Modelling
5 207 (28.79%) Analytics
6 196 (27.26%) CI/CD
7 143 (19.89%) Business Intelligence
8 141 (19.61%) Agile
9 137 (19.05%) DevOps
10 120 (16.69%) Problem-Solving
11 109 (15.16%) Data Science
12 93 (12.93%) Visualisation
13 92 (12.80%) Data Governance
14 83 (11.54%) Data Integration
15 80 (11.13%) Machine Learning
16 78 (10.85%) Data Transformation
17 77 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
18 76 (10.57%) Artificial Intelligence
18 76 (10.57%) Migration
19 72 (10.01%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 463 (64.39%) Python
2 427 (59.39%) SQL
3 64 (8.90%) Scala
4 62 (8.62%) Java
5 23 (3.20%) Bash
6 14 (1.95%) T-SQL
7 13 (1.81%) C#
8 12 (1.67%) PL/SQL
9 11 (1.53%) R
9 11 (1.53%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.11%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.83%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.56%) Groovy
12 4 (0.56%) PowerShell
13 3 (0.42%) C++
13 3 (0.42%) Go
14 2 (0.28%) ABAP
14 2 (0.28%) SAS Macro
15 1 (0.14%) PROC SQL
Qualifications
1 152 (21.14%) Security Cleared
2 119 (16.55%) SC Cleared
3 47 (6.54%) Degree
4 24 (3.34%) DV Cleared
5 18 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (2.09%) Azure Certification
7 14 (1.95%) AWS Certification
8 13 (1.81%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
10 4 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.56%) SnowPro
11 3 (0.42%) MCPD
11 3 (0.42%) MCSD
12 2 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.14%) CTC Cleared
13 1 (0.14%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.14%) HND
13 1 (0.14%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.14%) PhD
13 1 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 167 (23.23%) Data Quality
2 29 (4.03%) GDPR
3 16 (2.23%) QA
4 15 (2.09%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 20000
5 3 (0.42%) SLA
6 2 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
6 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.28%) NIST
7 1 (0.14%) HL7
7 1 (0.14%) ISO 19650
7 1 (0.14%) MiFID
7 1 (0.14%) PMO
7 1 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (7.65%) Docker
2 5 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.42%) zsh
4 2 (0.28%) Active Directory
5 1 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 90 (12.52%) Terraform
2 51 (7.09%) Kubernetes
3 13 (1.81%) Grafana
4 10 (1.39%) Ansible
5 6 (0.83%) Kibana
5 6 (0.83%) logstash
5 6 (0.83%) NetBackup
5 6 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 4 (0.56%) Argo
7 3 (0.42%) Istio
7 3 (0.42%) Kustomize
7 3 (0.42%) Puppet
8 2 (0.28%) Ambari
8 2 (0.28%) Control-M
8 2 (0.28%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.28%) ZABBIX
9 1 (0.14%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 211 (29.35%) Databricks
2 87 (12.10%) Microsoft
3 42 (5.84%) Oracle
4 28 (3.89%) Google
4 28 (3.89%) Palantir
5 22 (3.06%) Foundry
6 20 (2.78%) Informatica
7 17 (2.36%) Cloudera
8 13 (1.81%) SAP
9 11 (1.53%) Talend
10 9 (1.25%) Red Hat
10 9 (1.25%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.11%) IBM
11 8 (1.11%) Splunk
12 7 (0.97%) Commvault
12 7 (0.97%) MicroStrategy
13 6 (0.83%) Confluent
13 6 (0.83%) Denodo
13 6 (0.83%) Veritas
14 5 (0.70%) ServiceNow