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 18 June 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 59 107 99
Rank change year-on-year +48 -8 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,860 742 985
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.69% 2.49% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.70% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,284 555 753
10th Percentile £375 £363 £206
25th Percentile £415 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £463 £450
% change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 9 42
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £31.88
25th Percentile £36.25 £51.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £67.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -22.22% -10.60%
75th Percentile £71.50 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £75.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -35.39% -0.66%

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 46,545 27,461 40,758
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.26% 92.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,281 17,668 26,127
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,104 1,179 2,967
10th Percentile £15.24 £13.97 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.79 £17.79 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.56% -26.67% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.01
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -1.45%

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 18 June 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 18 June 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 18 June 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 +45 1,629 £500 - 317
London +36 852 £525 - 115
UK excluding London +73 805 £469 +1.41% 301
Work from Home +38 553 £500 +2.56% 156
Midlands +49 319 £469 +4.22% 50
West Midlands +49 298 £465 +1.09% 29
North of England +15 211 £475 - 75
North West +18 129 £480 +1.05% 45
South East +23 119 £475 +11.76% 82
South West +23 86 £506 +3.79% 30
Scotland +19 65 £425 -5.56% 9
Yorkshire -22 62 £470 +1.62% 16
Wales +6 22 £450 +3.45% 12
East Midlands -15 21 £525 +28.05% 21
East of England -19 21 £498 +56.45% 13
North East -24 20 £475 +5.56% 14
Northern Ireland +4 4 £410 -18.00% 35

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

For the 6 months to 18 June 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 1,005 (54.03%) SQL
2 855 (45.97%) Python
3 771 (41.45%) Data Pipeline
4 689 (37.04%) Analytics
5 676 (36.34%) Data Engineering
6 675 (36.29%) ETL
7 628 (33.76%) Data Modelling
8 599 (32.20%) Azure
9 533 (28.66%) AWS
10 528 (28.39%) Security Cleared
11 472 (25.38%) Data Quality
12 464 (24.95%) SC Cleared
13 440 (23.66%) CI/CD
14 411 (22.10%) Databricks
15 389 (20.91%) Business Intelligence
16 334 (17.96%) Agile
17 317 (17.04%) DevOps
18 313 (16.83%) Power Platform
19 308 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
20 299 (16.08%) Power BI
21 276 (14.84%) PySpark
22 249 (13.39%) Migration
23 247 (13.28%) Data Governance
24 240 (12.90%) Microsoft
24 240 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
25 231 (12.42%) AI
26 230 (12.37%) Azure Data Factory
27 202 (10.86%) Data Integration
28 195 (10.48%) Snowflake
29 194 (10.43%) Terraform

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
1 169 (9.09%) Apache Airflow
2 148 (7.96%) Apache Spark
3 103 (5.54%) Apache
4 85 (4.57%) SAS
5 53 (2.85%) Confluence
6 11 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
6 11 (0.59%) SharePoint
7 10 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.11%) Luigi
10 1 (0.054%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.054%) Appian
10 1 (0.054%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.054%) Camunda
10 1 (0.054%) Liferay
10 1 (0.054%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.38%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.054%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.054%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.22%) Infor LN
4 3 (0.16%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.16%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.11%) Maximo
5 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.054%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.054%) iTrent
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.054%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.054%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.054%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 599 (32.20%) Azure
2 533 (28.66%) AWS
3 313 (16.83%) Power Platform
4 230 (12.37%) Azure Data Factory
5 195 (10.48%) Snowflake
6 179 (9.62%) Amazon S3
7 172 (9.25%) dbt
8 160 (8.60%) GCP
9 149 (8.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 143 (7.69%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (6.83%) Serverless
12 119 (6.40%) GitHub
13 108 (5.81%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.96%) GitHub Actions
15 49 (2.63%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.88%) Matillion
17 32 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 32 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.56%) Amazon Kinesis
19 25 (1.34%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.77%) DNS
1 33 (1.77%) VPN
2 32 (1.72%) BGP
2 32 (1.72%) DMZ
2 32 (1.72%) Multicast
3 10 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.38%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.38%) WinSCP
5 4 (0.22%) Firewall
5 4 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.22%) Wireless
6 1 (0.054%) 4G
6 1 (0.054%) 5G
6 1 (0.054%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
2 299 (16.08%) Power BI
3 188 (10.11%) Data Lake
4 126 (6.77%) SQL Server
5 107 (5.75%) Amazon Redshift
6 102 (5.48%) Delta Lake
7 99 (5.32%) Metadata
8 91 (4.89%) BigQuery
9 89 (4.78%) Pentaho
10 86 (4.62%) Big Data
11 76 (4.09%) Amazon Athena
12 74 (3.98%) Tableau
13 72 (3.87%) Azure SQL Database
13 72 (3.87%) Snowflake Schema
14 71 (3.82%) PostgreSQL
15 61 (3.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 58 (3.12%) NoSQL
17 54 (2.90%) Relational Database
18 38 (2.04%) Hadoop
19 36 (1.94%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 192 (10.32%) Git
2 101 (5.43%) GitLab
3 97 (5.22%) JIRA
4 49 (2.63%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.43%) MLflow
7 7 (0.38%) Postman
8 6 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.054%) ER Studio
11 1 (0.054%) ERwin
11 1 (0.054%) JUnit
11 1 (0.054%) Selenium
General
1 310 (16.67%) Finance
2 297 (15.97%) Social Skills
3 197 (10.59%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 104 (5.59%) Banking
6 33 (1.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (1.56%) Marketing
8 28 (1.51%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.51%) Retail
9 25 (1.34%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.24%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
12 17 (0.91%) Manufacturing
13 13 (0.70%) Aerospace
13 13 (0.70%) Front Office
14 11 (0.59%) Publishing
15 10 (0.54%) Automotive
16 7 (0.38%) Law
16 7 (0.38%) Legal
16 7 (0.38%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 276 (14.84%) PySpark
2 151 (8.12%) Kafka
3 50 (2.69%) Pandas
4 36 (1.94%) JSON
5 32 (1.72%) REST
6 24 (1.29%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.24%) Spring
7 23 (1.24%) Spring Boot
8 22 (1.18%) XML
9 19 (1.02%) YAML
10 17 (0.91%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.70%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.70%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.59%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.59%) PyTorch
12 11 (0.59%) React
12 11 (0.59%) RESTful
12 11 (0.59%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.54%) pytest
14 9 (0.48%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 138 (7.42%) Cloud Native
2 59 (3.17%) Data Structures
3 55 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
4 31 (1.67%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 28 (1.51%) Onboarding
7 27 (1.45%) Reinsurance
8 25 (1.34%) Product Ownership
9 22 (1.18%) Clustering
10 21 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (0.97%) NHS
12 11 (0.59%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.54%) Life Science
13 10 (0.54%) Public Cloud
13 10 (0.54%) Reference Data
13 10 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (0.48%) Driving Licence
14 9 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
14 9 (0.48%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.49%) Unix
2 40 (2.15%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.054%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 771 (41.45%) Data Pipeline
2 689 (37.04%) Analytics
3 676 (36.34%) Data Engineering
4 675 (36.29%) ETL
5 628 (33.76%) Data Modelling
6 440 (23.66%) CI/CD
7 389 (20.91%) Business Intelligence
8 334 (17.96%) Agile
9 317 (17.04%) DevOps
10 249 (13.39%) Migration
11 247 (13.28%) Data Governance
12 240 (12.90%) Problem-Solving
13 231 (12.42%) AI
14 202 (10.86%) Data Integration
15 194 (10.43%) Validation
16 179 (9.62%) Data Science
17 163 (8.76%) Decision-Making
18 159 (8.55%) Data Transformation
19 146 (7.85%) Infrastructure as Code
20 140 (7.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,005 (54.03%) SQL
2 855 (45.97%) Python
3 120 (6.45%) Java
4 67 (3.60%) Scala
5 58 (3.12%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.26%) T-SQL
7 35 (1.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.67%) Shell Script
9 30 (1.61%) C#
10 28 (1.51%) Bash
11 20 (1.08%) Bicep
11 20 (1.08%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.75%) R
13 13 (0.70%) JavaScript
14 8 (0.43%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.32%) Go
16 2 (0.11%) Korn
16 2 (0.11%) Perl
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
16 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 528 (28.39%) Security Cleared
2 464 (24.95%) SC Cleared
3 47 (2.53%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.26%) Degree
5 27 (1.45%) Azure Certification
6 15 (0.81%) AWS Certification
6 15 (0.81%) DV Cleared
7 14 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
9 8 (0.43%) SnowPro
10 6 (0.32%) Master's Degree
11 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
12 3 (0.16%) CISSP
12 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.11%) CISM
14 1 (0.054%) Cisco Certification
14 1 (0.054%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 472 (25.38%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.17%) QA
3 50 (2.69%) GDPR
4 13 (0.70%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.65%) SLA
6 9 (0.48%) FATCA
7 6 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.22%) MiFID
10 3 (0.16%) GMP
11 2 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) GRC
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.11%) WCAG
12 1 (0.054%) Basel III
12 1 (0.054%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.054%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.054%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.054%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 102 (5.48%) Docker
2 6 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.054%) RACF
Systems Management
1 194 (10.43%) Terraform
2 83 (4.46%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.74%) Grafana
4 12 (0.65%) Ansible
4 12 (0.65%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.43%) Kibana
6 3 (0.16%) Rancher
7 2 (0.11%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.11%) Control-M
7 2 (0.11%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.054%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.054%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.054%) logstash
8 1 (0.054%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.054%) Puppet
8 1 (0.054%) QRadar
Vendors
1 411 (22.10%) Databricks
2 240 (12.90%) Microsoft
3 171 (9.19%) Oracle
4 134 (7.20%) Informatica
5 129 (6.94%) Talend
6 72 (3.87%) Denodo
7 59 (3.17%) Google
8 34 (1.83%) Cisco
8 34 (1.83%) F5
9 30 (1.61%) SAP
10 25 (1.34%) Splunk
11 23 (1.24%) ServiceNow
12 22 (1.18%) Salesforce
13 18 (0.97%) Cloudera
14 17 (0.91%) IBM
15 16 (0.86%) Palantir
16 15 (0.81%) Alteryx
17 14 (0.75%) Foundry
18 9 (0.48%) Dynatrace
18 9 (0.48%) Sage