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 24 September 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 127 96
Rank change year-on-year +58 -31 +29
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,912 723 907
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.48% 2.19% 2.38%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.78% 2.41% 2.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,278 517 640
10th Percentile £375 £363 £375
25th Percentile £425 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £697 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 13 8
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.34 £49.25
25th Percentile £30.96 £35.25 £57.31
Median hourly rate £43.03 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -18.04% -34.38% +29.55%
75th Percentile £69.06 £80.00 £84.38
90th Percentile £71.50 £105.50 £97.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £27.00 £80.00
% change year-on-year +53.91% -66.25% +40.35%

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 50,643 30,010 35,418
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.25% 91.03% 92.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,934 18,949 21,605
10th Percentile £325 £277 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,909 1,607 1,616
10th Percentile £14.50 £13.75 £14.84
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.30 £20.75
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -41.51% -3.37%
75th Percentile £67.70 £51.57 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £69.65 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.08 £43.90
% change year-on-year +69.49% -42.88% +0.83%

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 24 September 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 24 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 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 24 September 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 +67 1,676 £500 -2.44% 1,716
UK excluding London +96 868 £475 - 902
London +32 831 £530 +0.95% 910
Work from Home +42 556 £500 +1.78% 694
Midlands +78 341 £469 +1.41% 131
West Midlands +65 268 £469 -6.20% 85
North of England +32 208 £515 +8.42% 286
South East +27 126 £459 +2.00% 198
North West +18 109 £525 +10.53% 166
South West +25 107 £525 +5.00% 90
Yorkshire +14 80 £500 - 76
East Midlands +31 73 £419 -9.46% 46
Scotland -1 67 £450 -2.70% 74
East of England +4 40 £475 -20.83% 58
North East -31 20 £450 +9.09% 45
Wales -2 17 £513 +3.54% 16
Northern Ireland +3 1 - - 49
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 24 September 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.

1 963 (50.37%) SQL
2 832 (43.51%) Python
3 826 (43.20%) Data Pipeline
4 740 (38.70%) Data Engineering
5 669 (34.99%) Data Modelling
6 668 (34.94%) ETL
7 653 (34.15%) Analytics
8 593 (31.01%) AWS
9 589 (30.81%) Azure
10 490 (25.63%) Security Cleared
11 487 (25.47%) Data Quality
12 449 (23.48%) CI/CD
13 424 (22.18%) SC Cleared
14 405 (21.18%) Databricks
15 337 (17.63%) Agile
16 322 (16.84%) Data Warehouse
17 313 (16.37%) Migration
18 308 (16.11%) Business Intelligence
18 308 (16.11%) DevOps
19 304 (15.90%) AI
20 260 (13.60%) PySpark
21 257 (13.44%) Data Governance
22 254 (13.28%) Validation
23 251 (13.13%) Data Transformation
23 251 (13.13%) Power Platform
24 248 (12.97%) Data Integration
25 247 (12.92%) Microsoft
26 243 (12.71%) Power BI
27 239 (12.50%) Snowflake
28 234 (12.24%) dbt

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
1 216 (11.30%) Apache Airflow
2 157 (8.21%) Apache Spark
3 135 (7.06%) Apache
4 58 (3.03%) SAS
5 47 (2.46%) Confluence
6 18 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.78%) SharePoint
8 13 (0.68%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.16%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) nginx
11 1 (0.052%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 23 (1.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
3 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
4 3 (0.16%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.37%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.31%) NetSuite
4 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
4 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 5 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
6 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.10%) SAP Oil and Gas
6 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
7 1 (0.052%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.052%) Dynamics NAV
7 1 (0.052%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.052%) Oracle Retail
7 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 593 (31.01%) AWS
2 589 (30.81%) Azure
3 251 (13.13%) Power Platform
4 239 (12.50%) Snowflake
5 234 (12.24%) dbt
6 217 (11.35%) Azure Data Factory
7 193 (10.09%) GCP
8 171 (8.94%) Amazon S3
9 134 (7.01%) Serverless
10 124 (6.49%) Azure DevOps
11 120 (6.28%) AWS Lambda
11 120 (6.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 105 (5.49%) GitHub
13 67 (3.50%) Azure Databricks
14 56 (2.93%) Amazon EMR
15 45 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
16 42 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 33 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
18 29 (1.52%) Amazon Kinesis
19 28 (1.46%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.20%) BGP
1 23 (1.20%) DMZ
1 23 (1.20%) DNS
1 23 (1.20%) Multicast
1 23 (1.20%) VPN
2 8 (0.42%) Firewall
3 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
3 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
4 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
5 4 (0.21%) Structured Cabling
5 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
5 4 (0.21%) Wireless
6 1 (0.052%) HTTP
6 1 (0.052%) LTE
6 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 322 (16.84%) Data Warehouse
2 243 (12.71%) Power BI
3 163 (8.53%) Data Lake
4 131 (6.85%) Metadata
5 109 (5.70%) BigQuery
6 93 (4.86%) Amazon Redshift
7 87 (4.55%) Delta Lake
8 85 (4.45%) Amazon Athena
9 78 (4.08%) SQL Server
10 77 (4.03%) Big Data
11 69 (3.61%) PostgreSQL
12 66 (3.45%) Pentaho
13 60 (3.14%) Relational Database
13 60 (3.14%) Snowflake Schema
14 56 (2.93%) Tableau
15 52 (2.72%) NoSQL
16 43 (2.25%) Oracle Database
17 40 (2.09%) Azure SQL Database
18 39 (2.04%) Amazon RDS
18 39 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 179 (9.36%) Git
2 96 (5.02%) GitLab
3 70 (3.66%) JIRA
4 35 (1.83%) Jenkins
5 21 (1.10%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.42%) Bitbucket
7 8 (0.42%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) Selenium
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.21%) Claude Code
9 4 (0.21%) ERwin
10 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 3 (0.16%) Newman
10 3 (0.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
11 2 (0.10%) RStudio
11 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
12 1 (0.052%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 318 (16.63%) Social Skills
2 303 (15.85%) Finance
3 215 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (8.84%) Public Sector
5 126 (6.59%) Banking
6 32 (1.67%) Marketing
6 32 (1.67%) Retail
7 29 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.20%) Investment Banking
9 22 (1.15%) Aerospace
9 22 (1.15%) Automotive
9 22 (1.15%) Front Office
10 20 (1.05%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (1.05%) Law
10 20 (1.05%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.94%) Manufacturing
12 17 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
13 13 (0.68%) Police
14 12 (0.63%) Legal
14 12 (0.63%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 260 (13.60%) PySpark
2 193 (10.09%) Terraform
3 130 (6.80%) Kafka
4 34 (1.78%) REST
5 31 (1.62%) JSON
6 29 (1.52%) Pandas
7 23 (1.20%) XML
8 22 (1.15%) Spring
8 22 (1.15%) Spring Boot
9 19 (0.99%) Great Expectations
10 18 (0.94%) Apache Beam
11 16 (0.84%) LangChain
12 14 (0.73%) RESTful
13 13 (0.68%) pytest
13 13 (0.68%) React
14 11 (0.58%) PyTorch
14 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
15 10 (0.52%) .NET
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
16 9 (0.47%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 147 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 67 (3.50%) Data Structures
3 62 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
4 52 (2.72%) Onboarding
5 26 (1.36%) AI Agents
6 25 (1.31%) Product Ownership
7 24 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
8 22 (1.15%) NHS
9 21 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (0.99%) Management Information System
10 19 (0.99%) Reference Data
11 15 (0.78%) Algorithms
11 15 (0.78%) Reinsurance
12 12 (0.63%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.52%) Data Fabric
14 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
15 9 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
15 9 (0.47%) Distributed Computing
15 9 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 62 (3.24%) Unix
2 43 (2.25%) Linux
3 3 (0.16%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
5 1 (0.052%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 826 (43.20%) Data Pipeline
2 740 (38.70%) Data Engineering
3 669 (34.99%) Data Modelling
4 668 (34.94%) ETL
5 653 (34.15%) Analytics
6 449 (23.48%) CI/CD
7 337 (17.63%) Agile
8 313 (16.37%) Migration
9 308 (16.11%) Business Intelligence
9 308 (16.11%) DevOps
10 304 (15.90%) AI
11 257 (13.44%) Data Governance
12 254 (13.28%) Validation
13 251 (13.13%) Data Transformation
14 248 (12.97%) Data Integration
15 204 (10.67%) Problem-Solving
16 182 (9.52%) Machine Learning
17 173 (9.05%) Data Science
17 173 (9.05%) Lakehouse
18 171 (8.94%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 963 (50.37%) SQL
2 832 (43.51%) Python
3 106 (5.54%) Java
4 74 (3.87%) Scala
5 51 (2.67%) PL/SQL
6 35 (1.83%) T-SQL
7 32 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 30 (1.57%) Shell Script
9 28 (1.46%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.15%) Bash
10 22 (1.15%) JavaScript
11 16 (0.84%) R
12 11 (0.58%) Bicep
13 10 (0.52%) C#
13 10 (0.52%) TypeScript
14 9 (0.47%) Go
15 5 (0.26%) Korn
16 3 (0.16%) COBOL
16 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
17 2 (0.10%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 490 (25.63%) Security Cleared
2 424 (22.18%) SC Cleared
3 54 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 38 (1.99%) Degree
5 30 (1.57%) DV Cleared
6 25 (1.31%) Azure Certification
7 19 (0.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 15 (0.78%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 9 (0.47%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
11 7 (0.37%) Master's Degree
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
12 6 (0.31%) CISSP
13 5 (0.26%) CEH
14 4 (0.21%) City & Guilds
14 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) Numerate Degree
15 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 487 (25.47%) Data Quality
2 75 (3.92%) QA
3 37 (1.94%) GDPR
4 17 (0.89%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
8 5 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.16%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.052%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.052%) PMO
System Software
1 113 (5.91%) Docker
2 3 (0.16%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.052%) HDFS
4 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 85 (4.45%) Kubernetes
2 38 (1.99%) Grafana
3 17 (0.89%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
4 13 (0.68%) Kibana
5 5 (0.26%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.10%) logstash
6 2 (0.10%) Puppet
7 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 405 (21.18%) Databricks
2 247 (12.92%) Microsoft
3 165 (8.63%) Oracle
4 99 (5.18%) Informatica
5 93 (4.86%) Talend
6 83 (4.34%) Google
7 51 (2.67%) Denodo
8 35 (1.83%) Salesforce
9 29 (1.52%) Palantir
10 27 (1.41%) Foundry
11 26 (1.36%) SAP
12 23 (1.20%) Cisco
12 23 (1.20%) F5
13 15 (0.78%) Splunk
14 9 (0.47%) Bloomberg
14 9 (0.47%) IBM
14 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
15 8 (0.42%) Cloudera
15 8 (0.42%) Sage
16 7 (0.37%) InterSystems