Data Engineer Contracts

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 1 April 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
1 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 82 101 110
Rank change year-on-year +19 +9 -3
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 887 968 1,448
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.05% 2.19% 2.30%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.29% 2.36% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 650 753 1,059
10th Percentile £356 £285 £413
25th Percentile £419 £413 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £650
90th Percentile £700 £688 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £450 £514
% change year-on-year +2.78% -12.45% +2.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 43 10
10th Percentile £25.14 £31.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £26.27 £48.00 £37.88
Median hourly rate £47.50 £65.00 £64.00
Median % change year-on-year -26.92% +1.56% +31.96%
75th Percentile £74.38 £80.00 £80.81
90th Percentile £89.24 - £91.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £26.50 £75.00 £43.50
% change year-on-year -64.67% +72.41% +12.26%

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 26,959 41,093 59,667
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.80% 92.84% 94.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,723 26,925 41,699
10th Percentile £300 £275 £310
25th Percentile £406 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £525 £544
Median % change year-on-year -0.95% -3.49% +3.62%
75th Percentile £629 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 945 2,533 1,683
10th Percentile £15.03 £12.86 £14.30
25th Percentile £20.94 £16.25 £19.06
Median hourly rate £32.50 £32.90 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -1.20% -25.00% +93.69%
75th Percentile £64.50 £60.00 £65.75
90th Percentile £76.81 £71.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.76 £32.90 £42.00
% change year-on-year -3.45% -21.68% +117.03%

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
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Data Engineer.

Daily rate trend for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineer over the 6 months to 1 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Data Engineer.

Hourly rate trend for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineer over the 6 months to 1 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 Contract 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 1 April 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 +21 757 £500 -1.96% 636
London +14 462 £528 +0.48% 444
Work from Home +29 323 £500 -4.76% 312
UK excluding London +39 318 £463 +2.78% 244
North of England +32 98 £450 +3.45% 68
Midlands +53 71 £475 -5.00% 28
North West +33 59 £463 +6.32% 50
West Midlands +44 57 £484 -3.30% 19
Scotland +38 49 £438 -4.89% 16
South East +44 43 £500 - 68
South West +14 33 £500 - 35
Yorkshire +12 25 £450 +28.57% 11
East of England +10 18 £315 +56.52% 22
East Midlands +22 14 £381 -23.75% 9
North East +6 14 £475 -0.42% 7
Wales +12 13 £528 +164.41% 1
Northern Ireland -8 1 £500 +185.71% 8
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 1 April 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.

1 538 (60.65%) Python
2 488 (55.02%) SQL
3 332 (37.43%) AWS
4 331 (37.32%) Azure
5 319 (35.96%) ETL
6 295 (33.26%) Data Pipeline
7 275 (31.00%) Data Engineering
8 231 (26.04%) Analytics
9 209 (23.56%) Security Cleared
10 203 (22.89%) Data Modelling
11 199 (22.44%) CI/CD
12 182 (20.52%) Databricks
13 180 (20.29%) PySpark
14 179 (20.18%) Data Warehouse
15 177 (19.95%) Finance
16 176 (19.84%) SC Cleared
17 160 (18.04%) Agile
18 146 (16.46%) Data Quality
19 144 (16.23%) DevOps
20 141 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
21 131 (14.77%) Social Skills
22 121 (13.64%) Apache Airflow
23 120 (13.53%) Azure Data Factory
23 120 (13.53%) dbt
23 120 (13.53%) Power Platform
24 119 (13.42%) Business Intelligence
25 118 (13.30%) Power BI
26 115 (12.97%) Java
27 110 (12.40%) Apache Spark
28 109 (12.29%) Data Lake

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
1 121 (13.64%) Apache Airflow
2 110 (12.40%) Apache Spark
3 107 (12.06%) Apache
4 15 (1.69%) Confluence
5 13 (1.47%) SAS
6 9 (1.01%) SharePoint
7 7 (0.79%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.34%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.34%) R Markdown
9 2 (0.23%) Cloud Foundry
9 2 (0.23%) IBM Domino
9 2 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.11%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.11%) Drupal
10 1 (0.11%) Luigi
10 1 (0.11%) Mule
Applications
1 11 (1.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.11%) Adobe Captivate
3 1 (0.11%) AutoCAD
3 1 (0.11%) CATIA
3 1 (0.11%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 7 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (0.45%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.11%) Maximo
3 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
3 1 (0.11%) SAP CAR
3 1 (0.11%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 332 (37.43%) AWS
2 331 (37.32%) Azure
3 120 (13.53%) Azure Data Factory
3 120 (13.53%) dbt
3 120 (13.53%) Power Platform
4 106 (11.95%) Serverless
5 100 (11.27%) AWS Lambda
5 100 (11.27%) Snowflake
6 93 (10.48%) Amazon S3
7 92 (10.37%) GCP
8 64 (7.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 49 (5.52%) GitHub
10 36 (4.06%) OpenShift
11 34 (3.83%) Amazon ECS
12 32 (3.61%) Azure DevOps
13 25 (2.82%) Amazon EC2
13 25 (2.82%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (2.71%) AWS Step Functions
15 19 (2.14%) Amazon EMR
16 17 (1.92%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.35%) Structured Cabling
2 4 (0.45%) SSH
3 3 (0.34%) BGP
3 3 (0.34%) Network Security
3 3 (0.34%) SMS
3 3 (0.34%) Wireless
4 2 (0.23%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (0.23%) Cisco Nexus
4 2 (0.23%) DHCP
4 2 (0.23%) EIGRP
4 2 (0.23%) LAN
4 2 (0.23%) OSPF
4 2 (0.23%) VXLAN
4 2 (0.23%) WAN
4 2 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.11%) DMZ
5 1 (0.11%) Internet
5 1 (0.11%) NGFW
5 1 (0.11%) SAN
5 1 (0.11%) SD-WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 179 (20.18%) Data Warehouse
2 118 (13.30%) Power BI
3 109 (12.29%) Data Lake
4 89 (10.03%) Amazon Athena
5 66 (7.44%) Big Data
6 64 (7.22%) Amazon Redshift
7 53 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
8 49 (5.52%) Relational Database
8 49 (5.52%) SQL Server
9 47 (5.30%) Apache Iceberg
10 45 (5.07%) Amazon RDS
10 45 (5.07%) Dremio
11 42 (4.74%) Tableau
12 41 (4.62%) NoSQL
13 39 (4.40%) Azure SQL Database
14 36 (4.06%) BigQuery
15 33 (3.72%) Hadoop
16 29 (3.27%) Metadata
17 28 (3.16%) Apache Arrow
17 28 (3.16%) Apache Ignite
Development Applications
1 55 (6.20%) Git
2 31 (3.49%) GitLab
2 31 (3.49%) JIRA
3 30 (3.38%) Artifactory
4 18 (2.03%) Jenkins
5 10 (1.13%) Bitbucket
6 6 (0.68%) MLflow
6 6 (0.68%) Visual Studio
7 4 (0.45%) RStudio
8 3 (0.34%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 3 (0.34%) SpecFlow
8 3 (0.34%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.23%) Flyway
9 2 (0.23%) Liquibase
10 1 (0.11%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.11%) Eclipse
10 1 (0.11%) Postman
10 1 (0.11%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.11%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.11%) Vagrant
General
1 177 (19.95%) Finance
2 131 (14.77%) Social Skills
3 100 (11.27%) Public Sector
4 99 (11.16%) Analytical Skills
5 68 (7.67%) Banking
6 52 (5.86%) Front Office
7 21 (2.37%) Investment Banking
7 21 (2.37%) Retail
8 12 (1.35%) Telecoms
9 10 (1.13%) Marketing
10 9 (1.01%) Financial Institution
10 9 (1.01%) Retail Banking
11 8 (0.90%) Local Government
12 7 (0.79%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (0.79%) Manufacturing
12 7 (0.79%) Pharmaceutical
13 6 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 5 (0.56%) Automotive
14 5 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
14 5 (0.56%) Tech for Good
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 180 (20.29%) PySpark
2 108 (12.18%) Kafka
3 35 (3.95%) Pandas
4 28 (3.16%) J2EE
5 25 (2.82%) REST
6 20 (2.25%) NumPy
7 16 (1.80%) SciPy
8 15 (1.69%) JSON
8 15 (1.69%) React
9 14 (1.58%) Apache NiFi
10 11 (1.24%) pytest
11 10 (1.13%) Plotly
12 9 (1.01%) AWS CDK
12 9 (1.01%) Jinja
13 7 (0.79%) .NET
13 7 (0.79%) Elastic Stack
13 7 (0.79%) FHIR
13 7 (0.79%) YAML
14 6 (0.68%) FastAPI
14 6 (0.68%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 33 (3.72%) Data Structures
2 28 (3.16%) Legacy Systems
3 23 (2.59%) Onboarding
4 22 (2.48%) Cloud Native
5 15 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
6 12 (1.35%) Algorithms
6 12 (1.35%) Fibre Optics
7 10 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
7 10 (1.13%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (0.79%) Data Centre
8 7 (0.79%) Hybrid Cloud
8 7 (0.79%) Management Information System
8 7 (0.79%) NHS
8 7 (0.79%) Product Ownership
8 7 (0.79%) Renewable Energy
9 6 (0.68%) Distributed Computing
9 6 (0.68%) Reference Data
10 5 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (0.45%) Hedge funds
11 4 (0.45%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 22 (2.48%) Linux
2 20 (2.25%) Unix
3 1 (0.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.11%) Windows
3 1 (0.11%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 319 (35.96%) ETL
2 295 (33.26%) Data Pipeline
3 275 (31.00%) Data Engineering
4 231 (26.04%) Analytics
5 203 (22.89%) Data Modelling
6 199 (22.44%) CI/CD
7 160 (18.04%) Agile
8 144 (16.23%) DevOps
9 141 (15.90%) Problem-Solving
10 119 (13.42%) Business Intelligence
11 104 (11.72%) Data Integration
12 96 (10.82%) Migration
13 88 (9.92%) Visualisation
14 86 (9.70%) Data Science
15 82 (9.24%) Data Transformation
16 80 (9.02%) Machine Learning
17 79 (8.91%) Data Governance
18 72 (8.12%) Data Migration
19 70 (7.89%) Software Engineering
20 67 (7.55%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 538 (60.65%) Python
2 488 (55.02%) SQL
3 115 (12.97%) Java
4 42 (4.74%) Scala
5 31 (3.49%) PL/SQL
6 28 (3.16%) Go
7 27 (3.04%) T-SQL
8 16 (1.80%) JavaScript
9 15 (1.69%) R
10 14 (1.58%) Bash
11 11 (1.24%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.01%) C#
12 9 (1.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 9 (1.01%) PowerShell
13 6 (0.68%) HiveQL
13 6 (0.68%) SPARQL
14 4 (0.45%) ANSI SQL
14 4 (0.45%) Ruby
14 4 (0.45%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.34%) RPG
Qualifications
1 209 (23.56%) Security Cleared
2 176 (19.84%) SC Cleared
3 41 (4.62%) Degree
4 30 (3.38%) DV Cleared
5 24 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (1.80%) AWS Certification
7 10 (1.13%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.01%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 8 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.79%) BPSS Clearance
11 5 (0.56%) Master's Degree
12 2 (0.23%) CTC Cleared
12 2 (0.23%) MCPD
12 2 (0.23%) MCSD
13 1 (0.11%) Cisco Certification
13 1 (0.11%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.11%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.11%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.11%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 146 (16.46%) Data Quality
2 23 (2.59%) QA
3 22 (2.48%) Accessibility
3 22 (2.48%) GDPR
4 5 (0.56%) HIPAA
4 5 (0.56%) SLA
5 4 (0.45%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.34%) WCAG
7 1 (0.11%) HL7
7 1 (0.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 85 (9.58%) Docker
2 10 (1.13%) HDFS
3 2 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.11%) Veritas Cluster Server
4 1 (0.11%) VirtualBox
Systems Management
1 94 (10.60%) Terraform
2 90 (10.15%) Kubernetes
3 18 (2.03%) Grafana
4 15 (1.69%) Ansible
5 7 (0.79%) Kibana
5 7 (0.79%) logstash
6 5 (0.56%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.23%) Kubeflow
7 2 (0.23%) NetBackup
7 2 (0.23%) Puppet
8 1 (0.11%) Argo
8 1 (0.11%) Oozie
8 1 (0.11%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 182 (20.52%) Databricks
2 74 (8.34%) Microsoft
3 56 (6.31%) Oracle
4 38 (4.28%) Google
5 30 (3.38%) Informatica
6 17 (1.92%) SAP
7 16 (1.80%) Talend
8 15 (1.69%) Palantir
9 11 (1.24%) Denodo
10 10 (1.13%) Virgin Media
11 9 (1.01%) Commvault
11 9 (1.01%) IBM
12 7 (0.79%) Atlassian
12 7 (0.79%) Cloudera
12 7 (0.79%) ServiceNow
13 6 (0.68%) Alteryx
13 6 (0.68%) Foundry
14 4 (0.45%) Splunk
15 3 (0.34%) New Relic
15 3 (0.34%) Teradata