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 2 August 2026.

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

6 months to
2 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 62 124 92
Rank change year-on-year +62 -32 +26
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,983 731 941
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.72% 2.21% 2.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.01% 2.42% 2.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,343 518 700
10th Percentile £375 £369 £249
25th Percentile £425 £425 £424
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £514
Median % change year-on-year - -2.68% -6.59%
75th Percentile £583 £588 £625
90th Percentile £660 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 11 31
10th Percentile £20.68 £18.22 £31.25
25th Percentile £33.25 £34.13 £49.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £70.60 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -66.25% +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 49,411 30,266 36,487
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.62% 91.43% 92.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,780 19,222 23,643
10th Percentile £331 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,407 1,492 2,092
10th Percentile £15.36 £13.65 £14.16
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.89 £54.19 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.20 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -41.51% +10.19%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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 1,756 £500 - 518
UK excluding London +91 925 £469 -1.26% 352
London +46 856 £525 - 249
Work from Home +45 597 £500 +5.26% 205
Midlands +66 397 £460 +2.22% 49
West Midlands +61 344 £460 -0.11% 33
North of England +27 232 £475 - 104
North West +22 136 £525 +10.53% 49
South East +16 129 £469 +10.35% 103
South West +15 87 £525 +7.69% 42
Yorkshire -4 74 £475 - 27
Scotland +35 69 £425 -0.70% 11
East Midlands +20 53 £475 +13.10% 16
East of England +10 35 £520 +63.52% 17
North East -22 23 £515 +21.18% 29
Wales 0 17 £488 +9.55% 24
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 5

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

For the 6 months to 2 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 1,015 (51.19%) SQL
2 856 (43.17%) Python
3 837 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
4 734 (37.01%) Data Engineering
5 710 (35.80%) Analytics
6 690 (34.80%) ETL
7 657 (33.13%) Data Modelling
8 623 (31.42%) Azure
9 567 (28.59%) AWS
10 534 (26.93%) Security Cleared
11 490 (24.71%) Data Quality
12 466 (23.50%) SC Cleared
13 465 (23.45%) CI/CD
14 388 (19.57%) Databricks
15 359 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
16 355 (17.90%) Agile
17 325 (16.39%) Data Warehouse
18 324 (16.34%) DevOps
19 309 (15.58%) Migration
20 283 (14.27%) Power Platform
21 272 (13.72%) PySpark
22 271 (13.67%) Data Governance
23 269 (13.57%) Power BI
24 247 (12.46%) Microsoft
25 242 (12.20%) AI
26 241 (12.15%) Azure Data Factory
27 235 (11.85%) Data Integration
28 234 (11.80%) Validation
29 230 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
30 212 (10.69%) 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
1 189 (9.53%) Apache Airflow
2 153 (7.72%) Apache Spark
3 123 (6.20%) Apache
4 87 (4.39%) SAS
5 50 (2.52%) Confluence
6 14 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.50%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.050%) Liferay
10 1 (0.050%) Luigi
10 1 (0.050%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.35%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.050%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.25%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.15%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.050%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.050%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.050%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.050%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.050%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.050%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 623 (31.42%) Azure
2 567 (28.59%) AWS
3 283 (14.27%) Power Platform
4 241 (12.15%) Azure Data Factory
5 212 (10.69%) Snowflake
6 204 (10.29%) dbt
7 183 (9.23%) GCP
8 166 (8.37%) Amazon S3
9 150 (7.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 139 (7.01%) Azure DevOps
11 118 (5.95%) Serverless
12 112 (5.65%) GitHub
13 99 (4.99%) AWS Lambda
14 55 (2.77%) Amazon EMR
15 47 (2.37%) GitHub Actions
16 36 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 28 (1.41%) Amazon Kinesis
18 26 (1.31%) AWS CloudFormation
18 26 (1.31%) Matillion
19 25 (1.26%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.61%) DNS
1 32 (1.61%) VPN
2 31 (1.56%) BGP
2 31 (1.56%) DMZ
2 31 (1.56%) Multicast
3 9 (0.45%) Firewall
3 9 (0.45%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.35%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.35%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.25%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.20%) Wireless
7 1 (0.050%) 4G
7 1 (0.050%) 5G
7 1 (0.050%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 325 (16.39%) Data Warehouse
2 269 (13.57%) Power BI
3 176 (8.88%) Data Lake
4 109 (5.50%) Metadata
5 105 (5.30%) Amazon Redshift
6 103 (5.19%) BigQuery
7 95 (4.79%) Delta Lake
8 94 (4.74%) SQL Server
9 93 (4.69%) Pentaho
10 84 (4.24%) Big Data
11 72 (3.63%) Amazon Athena
12 70 (3.53%) Tableau
13 67 (3.38%) Snowflake Schema
14 66 (3.33%) PostgreSQL
15 60 (3.03%) Relational Database
16 55 (2.77%) Azure SQL Database
17 54 (2.72%) NoSQL
17 54 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 38 (1.92%) Hadoop
19 34 (1.71%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 186 (9.38%) Git
2 100 (5.04%) GitLab
3 84 (4.24%) JIRA
4 51 (2.57%) Jenkins
5 10 (0.50%) MLflow
6 9 (0.45%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.35%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.35%) Postman
8 6 (0.30%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.15%) Newman
9 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
10 2 (0.10%) ERwin
10 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.050%) JUnit
11 1 (0.050%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.050%) Selenium
General
1 324 (16.34%) Finance
2 310 (15.63%) Social Skills
3 220 (11.09%) Analytical Skills
4 173 (8.72%) Public Sector
5 112 (5.65%) Banking
6 35 (1.77%) Marketing
7 33 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 28 (1.41%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.36%) Telecoms
10 25 (1.26%) Retail
11 22 (1.11%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.11%) Manufacturing
12 21 (1.06%) Front Office
13 19 (0.96%) Automotive
14 18 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
15 17 (0.86%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.55%) Publishing
17 10 (0.50%) Legal
18 9 (0.45%) Billing
18 9 (0.45%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (13.72%) PySpark
2 148 (7.46%) Kafka
3 39 (1.97%) Pandas
4 33 (1.66%) JSON
5 27 (1.36%) REST
6 22 (1.11%) Spring
6 22 (1.11%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.06%) Apache Beam
7 21 (1.06%) Great Expectations
8 20 (1.01%) XML
9 18 (0.91%) YAML
10 15 (0.76%) React
11 13 (0.66%) RESTful
12 12 (0.61%) Apache Avro
12 12 (0.61%) scikit-learn
12 12 (0.61%) Streamlit
13 11 (0.55%) pytest
14 10 (0.50%) Microsoft Graph
15 9 (0.45%) Polars
15 9 (0.45%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 142 (7.16%) Cloud Native
2 74 (3.73%) Legacy Systems
3 67 (3.38%) Data Structures
4 35 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
5 34 (1.71%) Onboarding
6 25 (1.26%) NHS
7 24 (1.21%) Product Ownership
8 23 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
9 20 (1.01%) Clustering
10 19 (0.96%) Reinsurance
11 16 (0.81%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (0.81%) Reference Data
12 13 (0.66%) Management Information System
13 12 (0.61%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.61%) Life Science
14 11 (0.55%) AI Agents
15 10 (0.50%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (0.50%) Replication
15 10 (0.50%) Virtual Team
16 9 (0.45%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 69 (3.48%) Unix
2 48 (2.42%) Linux
3 5 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.050%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 837 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
2 734 (37.01%) Data Engineering
3 710 (35.80%) Analytics
4 690 (34.80%) ETL
5 657 (33.13%) Data Modelling
6 465 (23.45%) CI/CD
7 359 (18.10%) Business Intelligence
8 355 (17.90%) Agile
9 324 (16.34%) DevOps
10 309 (15.58%) Migration
11 271 (13.67%) Data Governance
12 242 (12.20%) AI
13 235 (11.85%) Data Integration
14 234 (11.80%) Validation
15 230 (11.60%) Problem-Solving
16 206 (10.39%) Data Transformation
17 194 (9.78%) Data Science
18 186 (9.38%) Decision-Making
19 162 (8.17%) Machine Learning
20 158 (7.97%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,015 (51.19%) SQL
2 856 (43.17%) Python
3 122 (6.15%) Java
4 64 (3.23%) Scala
5 58 (2.92%) PL/SQL
6 39 (1.97%) Shell Script
6 39 (1.97%) T-SQL
7 31 (1.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 29 (1.46%) Bash
9 25 (1.26%) C#
9 25 (1.26%) PowerShell
10 18 (0.91%) JavaScript
11 15 (0.76%) R
12 14 (0.71%) Bicep
13 7 (0.35%) Go
13 7 (0.35%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.15%) Korn
15 2 (0.10%) Perl
15 2 (0.10%) Ruby
15 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 534 (26.93%) Security Cleared
2 466 (23.50%) SC Cleared
3 52 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
4 43 (2.17%) Degree
5 27 (1.36%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.16%) DV Cleared
7 19 (0.96%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.76%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.45%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.45%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.45%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.40%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 8 (0.40%) CISSP
11 7 (0.35%) CISM
12 5 (0.25%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.25%) CEH
12 5 (0.25%) Master's Degree
13 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.050%) CISA
14 1 (0.050%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (24.71%) Data Quality
2 63 (3.18%) QA
3 52 (2.62%) GDPR
4 23 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 8 (0.40%) FATCA
7 7 (0.35%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.30%) HIPAA
8 6 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.15%) GMP
9 3 (0.15%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.050%) GRC
11 1 (0.050%) NIST
11 1 (0.050%) SOC 2
System Software
1 117 (5.90%) Docker
2 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.050%) RACF
Systems Management
1 188 (9.48%) Terraform
2 98 (4.94%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.57%) Grafana
4 14 (0.71%) Ansible
5 12 (0.61%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.45%) Kibana
7 8 (0.40%) Control-M
8 3 (0.15%) Rancher
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.10%) logstash
9 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.050%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.050%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.050%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.050%) Puppet
10 1 (0.050%) QRadar
Vendors
1 388 (19.57%) Databricks
2 247 (12.46%) Microsoft
3 171 (8.62%) Oracle
4 140 (7.06%) Informatica
5 126 (6.35%) Talend
6 70 (3.53%) Google
7 69 (3.48%) Denodo
8 34 (1.71%) SAP
9 33 (1.66%) Cisco
9 33 (1.66%) F5
10 29 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 26 (1.31%) Splunk
12 25 (1.26%) Palantir
13 18 (0.91%) Cloudera
13 18 (0.91%) Foundry
14 15 (0.76%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.61%) IBM
15 12 (0.61%) Sage
16 9 (0.45%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.45%) MuleSoft