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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 107 99
Rank change year-on-year +47 -8 +25
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,860 743 979
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.70% 2.50% 2.25%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.71% 2.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,284 555 749
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 £585 £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 46,477 27,381 40,501
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.25% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,258 17,617 25,961
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 £624 £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 1,172 2,957
10th Percentile £15.25 £13.87 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.86 £17.75 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.61 £27.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.85% -26.80% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
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 17 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 17 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 17 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 +46 1,629 £500 - 337
London +37 853 £525 - 112
UK excluding London +77 805 £469 +1.41% 316
Work from Home +38 553 £500 +2.56% 182
Midlands +54 318 £469 +4.22% 51
West Midlands +50 297 £465 +1.09% 27
North of England +16 214 £475 - 86
North West +17 131 £480 +1.05% 50
South East +20 117 £475 +11.76% 86
South West +20 86 £506 +3.79% 32
Scotland +19 65 £425 -5.56% 12
Yorkshire -19 62 £470 +4.44% 20
Wales +8 22 £450 +3.45% 11
East Midlands -13 21 £525 +28.05% 24
North East -19 21 £450 - 16
East of England -19 21 £498 +56.45% 19
Northern Ireland +6 4 £410 -18.00% 24

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

For the 6 months to 17 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 1,004 (53.98%) SQL
2 853 (45.86%) Python
3 769 (41.34%) Data Pipeline
4 689 (37.04%) Analytics
5 678 (36.45%) ETL
6 676 (36.34%) Data Engineering
7 628 (33.76%) Data Modelling
8 598 (32.15%) Azure
9 533 (28.66%) AWS
10 532 (28.60%) Security Cleared
11 471 (25.32%) Data Quality
12 468 (25.16%) SC Cleared
13 441 (23.71%) CI/CD
14 413 (22.20%) Databricks
15 393 (21.13%) Business Intelligence
16 334 (17.96%) Agile
17 318 (17.10%) DevOps
18 316 (16.99%) Power Platform
19 307 (16.51%) Data Warehouse
20 301 (16.18%) Power BI
21 278 (14.95%) PySpark
22 248 (13.33%) Data Governance
23 247 (13.28%) Migration
24 239 (12.85%) Microsoft
24 239 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
25 233 (12.53%) AI
26 230 (12.37%) Azure Data Factory
27 199 (10.70%) Data Integration
28 198 (10.65%) Validation
29 196 (10.54%) 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
2 152 (8.17%) Apache Spark
3 105 (5.65%) Apache
4 85 (4.57%) SAS
5 52 (2.80%) Confluence
6 11 (0.59%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.54%) Jupyter
8 9 (0.48%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.054%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.054%) Appian
11 1 (0.054%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.054%) Camunda
11 1 (0.054%) Liferay
11 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%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.054%) iTrent
6 1 (0.054%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle 11i
6 1 (0.054%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.054%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.054%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.054%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 598 (32.15%) Azure
2 533 (28.66%) AWS
3 316 (16.99%) Power Platform
4 230 (12.37%) Azure Data Factory
5 193 (10.38%) Snowflake
6 178 (9.57%) Amazon S3
7 172 (9.25%) dbt
8 160 (8.60%) GCP
9 152 (8.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 143 (7.69%) Azure DevOps
11 128 (6.88%) Serverless
12 120 (6.45%) GitHub
13 108 (5.81%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (3.01%) GitHub Actions
15 49 (2.63%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.88%) Matillion
17 33 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 32 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
19 29 (1.56%) Amazon Kinesis
20 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
1 307 (16.51%) Data Warehouse
2 301 (16.18%) Power BI
3 190 (10.22%) Data Lake
4 126 (6.77%) SQL Server
5 107 (5.75%) Amazon Redshift
6 103 (5.54%) Delta Lake
7 99 (5.32%) Metadata
8 91 (4.89%) BigQuery
9 89 (4.78%) Pentaho
10 86 (4.62%) Big Data
11 77 (4.14%) Amazon Athena
12 74 (3.98%) Tableau
13 73 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
13 73 (3.92%) Snowflake Schema
14 70 (3.76%) 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 37 (1.99%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 193 (10.38%) Git
2 101 (5.43%) GitLab
3 96 (5.16%) JIRA
4 50 (2.69%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
5 9 (0.48%) MLflow
6 7 (0.38%) Postman
7 5 (0.27%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.16%) Newman
8 3 (0.16%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.11%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.054%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.054%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.054%) ERwin
10 1 (0.054%) JUnit
10 1 (0.054%) Selenium
General
1 305 (16.40%) Finance
2 296 (15.91%) Social Skills
3 196 (10.54%) Analytical Skills
4 155 (8.33%) Public Sector
5 103 (5.54%) 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 8 (0.43%) Automotive
16 7 (0.38%) Billing
16 7 (0.38%) Law
16 7 (0.38%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (14.95%) PySpark
2 154 (8.28%) Kafka
3 50 (2.69%) Pandas
4 36 (1.94%) JSON
5 31 (1.67%) REST
6 25 (1.34%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.24%) Spring
7 23 (1.24%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.13%) 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
1 139 (7.47%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.12%) Data Structures
3 55 (2.96%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
6 28 (1.51%) Onboarding
6 28 (1.51%) Product Ownership
7 27 (1.45%) Reinsurance
8 22 (1.18%) Clustering
9 21 (1.13%) Data Protection Act
10 18 (0.97%) NHS
11 10 (0.54%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (0.54%) Life Science
11 10 (0.54%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.54%) Reference Data
11 10 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (0.54%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.48%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.48%) Linux Command Line
12 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
1 769 (41.34%) Data Pipeline
2 689 (37.04%) Analytics
3 678 (36.45%) ETL
4 676 (36.34%) Data Engineering
5 628 (33.76%) Data Modelling
6 441 (23.71%) CI/CD
7 393 (21.13%) Business Intelligence
8 334 (17.96%) Agile
9 318 (17.10%) DevOps
10 248 (13.33%) Data Governance
11 247 (13.28%) Migration
12 239 (12.85%) Problem-Solving
13 233 (12.53%) AI
14 199 (10.70%) Data Integration
15 198 (10.65%) Validation
16 181 (9.73%) Data Science
17 162 (8.71%) Decision-Making
18 159 (8.55%) Data Transformation
19 147 (7.90%) Infrastructure as Code
20 142 (7.63%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (53.98%) SQL
2 853 (45.86%) 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%) C#
8 31 (1.67%) Shell Script
9 28 (1.51%) Bash
10 20 (1.08%) Bicep
11 19 (1.02%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.75%) R
13 12 (0.65%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.38%) 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
1 532 (28.60%) Security Cleared
2 468 (25.16%) 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%) CISA
14 1 (0.054%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 471 (25.32%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.17%) QA
3 51 (2.74%) GDPR
4 12 (0.65%) Accessibility
4 12 (0.65%) SLA
5 9 (0.48%) FATCA
6 6 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.22%) MiFID
9 3 (0.16%) GMP
10 2 (0.11%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.11%) EMIR
10 2 (0.11%) GRC
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.054%) Basel III
11 1 (0.054%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.054%) HIPAA
11 1 (0.054%) ISO 13485
11 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
1 196 (10.54%) 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
1 413 (22.20%) Databricks
2 239 (12.85%) Microsoft
3 170 (9.14%) Oracle
4 134 (7.20%) Informatica
5 129 (6.94%) Talend
6 72 (3.87%) Denodo
7 60 (3.23%) Google
8 34 (1.83%) Cisco
8 34 (1.83%) F5
9 29 (1.56%) SAP
10 25 (1.34%) Splunk
11 23 (1.24%) ServiceNow
12 19 (1.02%) 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