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 April 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 82 99
Rank change year-on-year +17 +17 +10
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,603 885 978
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 3.02% 2.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.78% 3.26% 2.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,138 650 769
10th Percentile £367 £356 £278
25th Percentile £413 £423 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £581 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £471 £453
% change year-on-year -0.27% +3.97% -11.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 13 46
10th Percentile £24.92 £25.45 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £26.32 £49.25
Median hourly rate £53.50 £52.50 £66.25
Median % change year-on-year +1.90% -20.75% +3.52%
75th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £80.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £90.74 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £26.50 £75.00
% change year-on-year +98.11% -64.67% +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 42,439 27,180 40,683
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 92.60% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,345 17,830 26,590
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,678 986 2,604
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.71 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £19.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £41.94 £30.79 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.20% -12.02% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.59 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £78.08 £75.38 £72.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.00 £29.53 £35.00
% change year-on-year +45.64% -15.64% -17.38%

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 April 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 April 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 17 April 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 +17 1,414 £500 - 404
London +17 793 £525 - 167
UK excluding London +19 621 £470 -0.27% 301
Work from Home +15 471 £500 - 181
Midlands +17 269 £469 -1.26% 49
West Midlands +22 249 £469 -1.68% 45
North of England -16 179 £465 +0.54% 93
North West +1 111 £450 -2.70% 60
South East -18 78 £500 - 87
South West -12 53 £510 +3.29% 37
Yorkshire -27 53 £465 +3.33% 24
Scotland -1 41 £402 -10.67% 11
Wales +1 20 £425 -15.42% 8
East Midlands -24 20 £455 +14.11% 4
East of England -28 16 £565 +79.37% 19
North East -18 15 £488 +8.33% 13
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 1

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

For the 6 months to 17 April 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.

1 894 (55.77%) SQL
2 778 (48.53%) Python
3 678 (42.30%) Data Pipeline
4 634 (39.55%) ETL
5 607 (37.87%) Analytics
6 595 (37.12%) Data Engineering
7 583 (36.37%) Azure
8 554 (34.56%) Data Modelling
9 470 (29.32%) Security Cleared
10 436 (27.20%) Data Quality
11 434 (27.07%) AWS
12 425 (26.51%) Databricks
13 419 (26.14%) SC Cleared
14 410 (25.58%) CI/CD
15 354 (22.08%) Business Intelligence
16 313 (19.53%) Agile
17 293 (18.28%) DevOps
18 289 (18.03%) Data Warehouse
19 276 (17.22%) Power Platform
20 262 (16.34%) PySpark
21 260 (16.22%) Power BI
22 248 (15.47%) Data Governance
23 235 (14.66%) Azure Data Factory
24 232 (14.47%) Problem-Solving
25 209 (13.04%) Microsoft
26 202 (12.60%) Git
27 190 (11.85%) Data Science
28 182 (11.35%) Migration
29 178 (11.10%) AI
29 178 (11.10%) Data Integration

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
1 162 (10.11%) Apache Spark
2 160 (9.98%) Apache Airflow
3 95 (5.93%) Apache
4 73 (4.55%) SAS
5 20 (1.25%) Confluence
6 13 (0.81%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.56%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.25%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.062%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.062%) Appian
11 1 (0.062%) Camunda
11 1 (0.062%) Oracle Application Server
11 1 (0.062%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.44%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.25%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.12%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.12%) Maximo
1 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.062%) Actimize
2 1 (0.062%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.062%) iTrent
2 1 (0.062%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.062%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.062%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 583 (36.37%) Azure
2 434 (27.07%) AWS
3 276 (17.22%) Power Platform
4 235 (14.66%) Azure Data Factory
5 172 (10.73%) Snowflake
6 161 (10.04%) Amazon S3
6 161 (10.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 153 (9.54%) GCP
8 144 (8.98%) dbt
9 118 (7.36%) GitHub
10 115 (7.17%) Azure DevOps
11 114 (7.11%) Serverless
12 91 (5.68%) AWS Lambda
13 53 (3.31%) GitHub Actions
14 44 (2.74%) AWS CloudFormation
15 33 (2.06%) Amazon EMR
16 30 (1.87%) AWS Step Functions
17 27 (1.68%) Matillion
18 25 (1.56%) Dagster
19 24 (1.50%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.68%) DNS
1 27 (1.68%) VPN
2 26 (1.62%) BGP
2 26 (1.62%) DMZ
2 26 (1.62%) Multicast
3 12 (0.75%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.44%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.44%) WinSCP
5 3 (0.19%) Firewall
5 3 (0.19%) SAN
6 1 (0.062%) 4G
6 1 (0.062%) 5G
6 1 (0.062%) Network Security
6 1 (0.062%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 289 (18.03%) Data Warehouse
2 260 (16.22%) Power BI
3 172 (10.73%) Data Lake
4 118 (7.36%) SQL Server
5 102 (6.36%) Delta Lake
6 95 (5.93%) BigQuery
7 89 (5.55%) Amazon Redshift
7 89 (5.55%) Metadata
8 84 (5.24%) Azure SQL Database
9 81 (5.05%) Big Data
10 79 (4.93%) Pentaho
11 70 (4.37%) PostgreSQL
12 69 (4.30%) Tableau
13 66 (4.12%) NoSQL
14 63 (3.93%) Snowflake Schema
15 60 (3.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 59 (3.68%) Amazon Athena
17 50 (3.12%) Relational Database
18 40 (2.50%) Hadoop
19 37 (2.31%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 202 (12.60%) Git
2 72 (4.49%) JIRA
3 70 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 69 (4.30%) GitLab
5 20 (1.25%) MLflow
6 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.12%) JUnit
7 2 (0.12%) Selenium
7 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.062%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.062%) DBeaver
8 1 (0.062%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.062%) ERwin
8 1 (0.062%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.062%) Maven
8 1 (0.062%) Mockito
8 1 (0.062%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.062%) Terragrunt
General
1 257 (16.03%) Finance
2 248 (15.47%) Social Skills
3 175 (10.92%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 78 (4.87%) Banking
6 36 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.31%) Investment Banking
7 21 (1.31%) Telecoms
8 20 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
9 16 (1.00%) Manufacturing
9 16 (1.00%) Retail
10 14 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 13 (0.81%) Marketing
12 12 (0.75%) Front Office
12 12 (0.75%) Publishing
13 10 (0.62%) Aerospace
14 8 (0.50%) Law
15 6 (0.37%) Legal
15 6 (0.37%) Local Government
15 6 (0.37%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (16.34%) PySpark
2 154 (9.61%) Kafka
3 55 (3.43%) Pandas
4 36 (2.25%) JSON
5 31 (1.93%) REST
6 30 (1.87%) YAML
7 26 (1.62%) Great Expectations
8 18 (1.12%) XML
9 16 (1.00%) NumPy
9 16 (1.00%) scikit-learn
10 14 (0.87%) Apache Beam
10 14 (0.87%) Matplotlib
10 14 (0.87%) Node.js
10 14 (0.87%) PyTorch
10 14 (0.87%) React
11 11 (0.69%) Apache Avro
11 11 (0.69%) pytest
11 11 (0.69%) Spring
11 11 (0.69%) Spring Boot
12 10 (0.62%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 104 (6.49%) Cloud Native
2 45 (2.81%) Legacy Systems
3 38 (2.37%) Data Structures
4 33 (2.06%) Product Ownership
5 24 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
5 24 (1.50%) Greenfield Project
6 22 (1.37%) Clustering
6 22 (1.37%) Onboarding
7 18 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
8 16 (1.00%) Reinsurance
9 15 (0.94%) NHS
9 15 (0.94%) Replication
10 13 (0.81%) Hybrid Cloud
11 12 (0.75%) Public Cloud
12 11 (0.69%) Self-Motivation
13 9 (0.56%) Data Centre
14 8 (0.50%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.50%) Life Science
14 8 (0.50%) Reference Data
14 8 (0.50%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (2.81%) Unix
2 34 (2.12%) Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.062%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (42.30%) Data Pipeline
2 634 (39.55%) ETL
3 607 (37.87%) Analytics
4 595 (37.12%) Data Engineering
5 554 (34.56%) Data Modelling
6 410 (25.58%) CI/CD
7 354 (22.08%) Business Intelligence
8 313 (19.53%) Agile
9 293 (18.28%) DevOps
10 248 (15.47%) Data Governance
11 232 (14.47%) Problem-Solving
12 190 (11.85%) Data Science
13 182 (11.35%) Migration
14 178 (11.10%) AI
14 178 (11.10%) Data Integration
15 154 (9.61%) Data Architecture
16 153 (9.54%) Validation
17 143 (8.92%) Infrastructure as Code
18 138 (8.61%) Data Transformation
19 137 (8.55%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 894 (55.77%) SQL
2 778 (48.53%) Python
3 109 (6.80%) Java
4 88 (5.49%) Scala
5 39 (2.43%) C#
6 36 (2.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 35 (2.18%) PL/SQL
8 34 (2.12%) T-SQL
9 28 (1.75%) Shell Script
10 26 (1.62%) Bash
11 21 (1.31%) Bicep
12 20 (1.25%) PowerShell
13 19 (1.19%) R
14 18 (1.12%) JavaScript
15 12 (0.75%) Go
16 8 (0.50%) TypeScript
17 3 (0.19%) C
18 2 (0.12%) C++
18 2 (0.12%) Perl
18 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 470 (29.32%) Security Cleared
2 419 (26.14%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.68%) Degree
4 35 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
5 33 (2.06%) Azure Certification
6 17 (1.06%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (1.00%) AWS Certification
7 16 (1.00%) DV Cleared
8 8 (0.50%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.44%) SnowPro
10 6 (0.37%) DBS Check
10 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.31%) BICSI Certification
11 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
12 4 (0.25%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.19%) CISSP
13 3 (0.19%) IBM Certification
14 2 (0.12%) CISM
15 1 (0.062%) CISA
15 1 (0.062%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 436 (27.20%) Data Quality
2 55 (3.43%) GDPR
3 42 (2.62%) QA
4 19 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 8 (0.50%) SLA
6 6 (0.37%) FATCA
7 5 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.25%) WCAG
9 3 (0.19%) GMP
9 3 (0.19%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.12%) GRC
10 2 (0.12%) MiFID
11 1 (0.062%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.062%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.062%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.062%) NCSC
11 1 (0.062%) NIST
11 1 (0.062%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.062%) PMO
11 1 (0.062%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 115 (7.17%) Docker
2 7 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.062%) RACF
Systems Management
1 178 (11.10%) Terraform
2 103 (6.43%) Kubernetes
3 44 (2.74%) Grafana
4 16 (1.00%) Prometheus
5 11 (0.69%) Kibana
6 8 (0.50%) Ansible
7 4 (0.25%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 3 (0.19%) Rancher
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.12%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 2 (0.12%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.062%) Control-M
10 1 (0.062%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.062%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.062%) Puppet
10 1 (0.062%) QRadar
Vendors
1 425 (26.51%) Databricks
2 209 (13.04%) Microsoft
3 132 (8.23%) Oracle
4 112 (6.99%) Talend
5 100 (6.24%) Informatica
6 62 (3.87%) Denodo
6 62 (3.87%) Google
7 31 (1.93%) Cisco
8 28 (1.75%) F5
9 26 (1.62%) Splunk
10 24 (1.50%) ServiceNow
11 22 (1.37%) SAP
12 17 (1.06%) IBM
13 16 (1.00%) Cloudera
13 16 (1.00%) Foundry
13 16 (1.00%) Palantir
14 11 (0.69%) Alteryx
15 8 (0.50%) MuleSoft
16 7 (0.44%) OpenAI
17 5 (0.31%) Sage