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 21 August 2026.

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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 67 124 99
Rank change year-on-year +57 -25 +23
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,923 725 906
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.59% 2.21% 2.33%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.88% 2.42% 2.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,282 516 661
10th Percentile £380 £375 £263
25th Percentile £425 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £657 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -0.79% - -9.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 13 24
10th Percentile £20.30 £25.34 £31.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £44.75 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.76% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.70 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £86.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.75 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -15.33% -33.94% +63.27%

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 49,522 29,914 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.26% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,686 18,901 23,122
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,509 1,556 1,977
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £19.59
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +14.67%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 +63 1,711 £500 - 352
UK excluding London +93 892 £471 -0.79% 297
London +37 836 £525 - 135
Work from Home +49 570 £500 +5.26% 118
Midlands +69 376 £463 +0.27% 44
West Midlands +59 317 £463 +0.54% 32
North of England +28 221 £490 +3.16% 91
South East +27 131 £467 +3.78% 98
North West +33 126 £525 +10.53% 31
South West -2 88 £525 +5.00% 28
Yorkshire -6 75 £465 -4.62% 32
East Midlands +23 59 £463 - 12
Scotland +11 59 £450 +4.41% 12
East of England +18 40 £475 +5.56% 14
North East -22 21 £515 +21.89% 29
Wales -3 16 £500 +12.36% 12
Northern Ireland +3 3 £410 -18.00% 2

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

For the 6 months to 21 August 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.

1 958 (49.82%) SQL
2 816 (42.43%) Data Pipeline
3 806 (41.91%) Python
4 717 (37.29%) Data Engineering
5 677 (35.21%) Analytics
6 662 (34.43%) ETL
7 638 (33.18%) Data Modelling
8 597 (31.05%) Azure
9 560 (29.12%) AWS
10 506 (26.31%) Security Cleared
11 478 (24.86%) Data Quality
12 448 (23.30%) CI/CD
13 442 (22.98%) SC Cleared
14 390 (20.28%) Databricks
15 337 (17.52%) Agile
16 334 (17.37%) Business Intelligence
17 324 (16.85%) Data Warehouse
18 313 (16.28%) DevOps
19 299 (15.55%) Migration
20 267 (13.88%) PySpark
21 264 (13.73%) Power Platform
22 261 (13.57%) AI
23 259 (13.47%) Data Governance
24 258 (13.42%) Power BI
25 239 (12.43%) Microsoft
26 234 (12.17%) Data Integration
26 234 (12.17%) Validation
27 220 (11.44%) Azure Data Factory
28 218 (11.34%) Data Transformation
29 217 (11.28%) Snowflake

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
1 197 (10.24%) Apache Airflow
2 153 (7.96%) Apache Spark
3 121 (6.29%) Apache
4 75 (3.90%) SAS
5 46 (2.39%) Confluence
6 15 (0.78%) Palantir Foundry
7 13 (0.68%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.47%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 6 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.052%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.052%) SAP BPC
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 597 (31.05%) Azure
2 560 (29.12%) AWS
3 264 (13.73%) Power Platform
4 220 (11.44%) Azure Data Factory
5 217 (11.28%) Snowflake
6 201 (10.45%) dbt
7 176 (9.15%) GCP
8 161 (8.37%) Amazon S3
9 135 (7.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 134 (6.97%) Azure DevOps
11 118 (6.14%) Serverless
12 109 (5.67%) GitHub
13 105 (5.46%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.60%) Amazon EMR
15 42 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 25 (1.30%) Amazon Kinesis
17 25 (1.30%) AWS Step Functions
18 23 (1.20%) AWS CloudFormation
18 23 (1.20%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.56%) VPN
2 29 (1.51%) BGP
2 29 (1.51%) DMZ
2 29 (1.51%) DNS
2 29 (1.51%) Multicast
3 10 (0.52%) Structured Cabling
4 9 (0.47%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.21%) Wireless
8 1 (0.052%) LTE
8 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 324 (16.85%) Data Warehouse
2 258 (13.42%) Power BI
3 171 (8.89%) Data Lake
4 118 (6.14%) Metadata
5 103 (5.36%) Amazon Redshift
5 103 (5.36%) BigQuery
6 89 (4.63%) SQL Server
7 87 (4.52%) Delta Lake
8 82 (4.26%) Big Data
9 80 (4.16%) Pentaho
10 77 (4.00%) Amazon Athena
11 68 (3.54%) PostgreSQL
12 66 (3.43%) Tableau
13 63 (3.28%) Relational Database
14 60 (3.12%) Snowflake Schema
15 54 (2.81%) Azure SQL Database
16 52 (2.70%) NoSQL
17 46 (2.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 37 (1.92%) Star Schema
19 36 (1.87%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 172 (8.94%) Git
2 99 (5.15%) GitLab
3 75 (3.90%) JIRA
4 43 (2.24%) Jenkins
5 15 (0.78%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.36%) Postman
8 4 (0.21%) ERwin
8 4 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.16%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) Selenium
9 3 (0.16%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 307 (15.96%) Finance
2 302 (15.70%) Social Skills
3 214 (11.13%) Analytical Skills
4 170 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 114 (5.93%) Banking
6 33 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 33 (1.72%) Marketing
7 25 (1.30%) Telecoms
8 23 (1.20%) Retail
9 22 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (1.14%) Investment Banking
10 20 (1.04%) Aerospace
10 20 (1.04%) Front Office
11 19 (0.99%) Automotive
11 19 (0.99%) Manufacturing
12 15 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
13 14 (0.73%) Law
14 10 (0.52%) Financial Institution
14 10 (0.52%) Legal
14 10 (0.52%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (13.88%) PySpark
2 180 (9.36%) Terraform
3 140 (7.28%) Kafka
4 33 (1.72%) Pandas
5 30 (1.56%) JSON
6 28 (1.46%) REST
7 23 (1.20%) Spring
7 23 (1.20%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.09%) Great Expectations
9 19 (0.99%) XML
10 17 (0.88%) Apache Beam
11 15 (0.78%) React
11 15 (0.78%) RESTful
11 15 (0.78%) YAML
12 11 (0.57%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.52%) LangChain
13 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
13 10 (0.52%) pytest
14 9 (0.47%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.47%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.28%) Cloud Native
2 76 (3.95%) Legacy Systems
3 61 (3.17%) Data Structures
4 39 (2.03%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.30%) Distributed Systems
5 25 (1.30%) Product Ownership
6 23 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
7 22 (1.14%) Reference Data
8 21 (1.09%) NHS
9 17 (0.88%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.83%) Management Information System
11 15 (0.78%) AI Agents
12 14 (0.73%) Data Protection Act
13 12 (0.62%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.62%) Clustering
14 11 (0.57%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.52%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (0.52%) Life Science
15 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (0.52%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 68 (3.54%) Unix
2 49 (2.55%) Linux
3 4 (0.21%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 816 (42.43%) Data Pipeline
2 717 (37.29%) Data Engineering
3 677 (35.21%) Analytics
4 662 (34.43%) ETL
5 638 (33.18%) Data Modelling
6 448 (23.30%) CI/CD
7 337 (17.52%) Agile
8 334 (17.37%) Business Intelligence
9 313 (16.28%) DevOps
10 299 (15.55%) Migration
11 261 (13.57%) AI
12 259 (13.47%) Data Governance
13 234 (12.17%) Data Integration
13 234 (12.17%) Validation
14 218 (11.34%) Data Transformation
15 210 (10.92%) Problem-Solving
16 177 (9.20%) Decision-Making
17 171 (8.89%) Data Science
18 167 (8.68%) Machine Learning
19 150 (7.80%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 958 (49.82%) SQL
2 806 (41.91%) Python
3 115 (5.98%) Java
4 66 (3.43%) Scala
5 57 (2.96%) PL/SQL
6 37 (1.92%) Shell Script
7 33 (1.72%) T-SQL
8 28 (1.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 23 (1.20%) Bash
10 22 (1.14%) PowerShell
11 20 (1.04%) JavaScript
12 14 (0.73%) C#
13 13 (0.68%) R
14 9 (0.47%) Bicep
15 6 (0.31%) Go
16 5 (0.26%) TypeScript
17 4 (0.21%) Korn
18 3 (0.16%) COBOL
19 2 (0.10%) Perl
19 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 506 (26.31%) Security Cleared
2 442 (22.98%) SC Cleared
3 44 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
4 41 (2.13%) Degree
5 22 (1.14%) Azure Certification
5 22 (1.14%) DV Cleared
6 21 (1.09%) Computer Science Degree
7 13 (0.68%) AWS Certification
8 10 (0.52%) SnowPro
9 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
10 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
11 7 (0.36%) CISM
11 7 (0.36%) CISSP
12 6 (0.31%) Master's Degree
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
1 478 (24.86%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.33%) QA
3 47 (2.44%) GDPR
4 16 (0.83%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.57%) SLA
6 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.16%) MiFID
9 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.10%) EMIR
9 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
9 2 (0.10%) WCAG
10 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.052%) PMO
System Software
1 116 (6.03%) Docker
2 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) HDFS
4 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 91 (4.73%) Kubernetes
2 47 (2.44%) Grafana
3 16 (0.83%) Ansible
4 12 (0.62%) Control-M
5 9 (0.47%) Kibana
6 4 (0.21%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.10%) Puppet
7 2 (0.10%) Rancher
7 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
8 1 (0.052%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.052%) logstash
Vendors
1 390 (20.28%) Databricks
2 239 (12.43%) Microsoft
3 161 (8.37%) Oracle
4 123 (6.40%) Informatica
5 107 (5.56%) Talend
6 70 (3.64%) Google
7 65 (3.38%) Denodo
8 33 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 30 (1.56%) Cisco
9 30 (1.56%) F5
10 27 (1.40%) SAP
11 25 (1.30%) Palantir
12 20 (1.04%) Foundry
13 16 (0.83%) Splunk
14 14 (0.73%) Cloudera
15 13 (0.68%) ServiceNow
16 12 (0.62%) IBM
17 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
17 9 (0.47%) Sage
18 8 (0.42%) InterSystems