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 18 August 2026.

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

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 126 98
Rank change year-on-year +62 -28 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,955 717 906
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.65% 2.18% 2.34%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.95% 2.39% 2.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,309 508 660
10th Percentile £381 £374 £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 £650 £688 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £475 £469
% change year-on-year -1.05% +1.33% -10.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 12 27
10th Percentile £21.06 £27.63 £31.25
25th Percentile £31.72 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £47.50 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% -30.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.03 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £86.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -14.85% -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 49,538 30,006 36,016
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.49% 91.28% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,704 18,935 23,189
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £621 £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 3,506 1,542 1,988
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.56 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.69 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +3.61%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.83 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £44.02
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.87% +22.28%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +62 1,740 £500 - 275
UK excluding London +97 921 £470 -1.05% 241
London +40 838 £525 - 109
Work from Home +53 575 £500 +5.26% 110
Midlands +72 397 £459 -0.22% 36
West Midlands +66 338 £459 +2.00% 27
North of England +24 230 £500 +5.26% 68
North West +26 132 £525 +10.53% 24
South East +18 131 £465 +3.33% 82
South West +3 86 £525 +5.00% 23
Yorkshire -8 78 £465 -7.00% 20
Scotland +20 61 £430 -2.38% 9
East Midlands +20 59 £470 +1.62% 9
East of England +8 40 £475 +22.58% 6
North East -25 21 £515 +21.89% 24
Wales -4 17 £500 +12.36% 8
Northern Ireland +6 3 £410 -18.00% 11

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

For the 6 months to 18 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.

1 980 (50.13%) SQL
2 831 (42.51%) Data Pipeline
3 806 (41.23%) Python
4 717 (36.68%) Data Engineering
5 702 (35.91%) Analytics
6 678 (34.68%) ETL
7 649 (33.20%) Data Modelling
8 598 (30.59%) Azure
9 566 (28.95%) AWS
10 525 (26.85%) Security Cleared
11 481 (24.60%) Data Quality
12 460 (23.53%) SC Cleared
13 453 (23.17%) CI/CD
14 387 (19.80%) Databricks
15 349 (17.85%) Agile
15 349 (17.85%) Business Intelligence
16 326 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
17 324 (16.57%) DevOps
18 304 (15.55%) Migration
19 268 (13.71%) Power Platform
20 266 (13.61%) Data Governance
21 263 (13.45%) PySpark
22 259 (13.25%) AI
22 259 (13.25%) Power BI
23 244 (12.48%) Data Integration
24 242 (12.38%) Microsoft
25 233 (11.92%) Validation
26 227 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
27 223 (11.41%) Azure Data Factory
28 218 (11.15%) Data Transformation

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 (10.08%) Apache Airflow
2 158 (8.08%) Apache Spark
3 123 (6.29%) Apache
4 85 (4.35%) SAS
5 44 (2.25%) Confluence
6 15 (0.77%) Palantir Foundry
7 13 (0.66%) SharePoint
8 9 (0.46%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.15%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.051%) Liferay
11 1 (0.051%) Luigi
11 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.20%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.36%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.20%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 3 (0.15%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.10%) Maximo
6 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.051%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 598 (30.59%) Azure
2 566 (28.95%) AWS
3 268 (13.71%) Power Platform
4 223 (11.41%) Azure Data Factory
5 214 (10.95%) Snowflake
6 201 (10.28%) dbt
7 177 (9.05%) GCP
8 160 (8.18%) Amazon S3
9 139 (7.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 135 (6.91%) Azure DevOps
11 116 (5.93%) Serverless
12 111 (5.68%) GitHub
13 102 (5.22%) AWS Lambda
14 50 (2.56%) Amazon EMR
15 44 (2.25%) GitHub Actions
16 34 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 27 (1.38%) Amazon Kinesis
18 25 (1.28%) AWS Step Functions
19 24 (1.23%) Dagster
20 23 (1.18%) Fivetran
Communications & Networking
1 32 (1.64%) VPN
2 31 (1.59%) BGP
2 31 (1.59%) DMZ
2 31 (1.59%) DNS
2 31 (1.59%) Multicast
3 10 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 9 (0.46%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.20%) Wireless
8 1 (0.051%) LTE
8 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 326 (16.68%) Data Warehouse
2 259 (13.25%) Power BI
3 173 (8.85%) Data Lake
4 118 (6.04%) Metadata
5 103 (5.27%) BigQuery
6 102 (5.22%) Amazon Redshift
7 93 (4.76%) Pentaho
8 91 (4.65%) SQL Server
9 85 (4.35%) Delta Lake
10 83 (4.25%) Big Data
11 75 (3.84%) Amazon Athena
12 69 (3.53%) PostgreSQL
13 66 (3.38%) Tableau
14 64 (3.27%) Relational Database
15 62 (3.17%) Snowflake Schema
16 55 (2.81%) Azure SQL Database
16 55 (2.81%) NoSQL
17 51 (2.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 38 (1.94%) Data Vault
18 38 (1.94%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 177 (9.05%) Git
2 105 (5.37%) GitLab
3 78 (3.99%) JIRA
4 52 (2.66%) Jenkins
5 14 (0.72%) MLflow
6 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
7 8 (0.41%) Bitbucket
8 7 (0.36%) Postman
9 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.20%) ERwin
11 3 (0.15%) Claude Code
11 3 (0.15%) Newman
11 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.10%) Selenium
12 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
13 1 (0.051%) Toad
General
1 308 (15.75%) Finance
2 306 (15.65%) Social Skills
3 220 (11.25%) Analytical Skills
4 174 (8.90%) Public Sector
5 114 (5.83%) Banking
6 33 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 33 (1.69%) Marketing
7 25 (1.28%) Telecoms
8 24 (1.23%) Retail
9 22 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
9 22 (1.13%) Investment Banking
10 20 (1.02%) Front Office
11 19 (0.97%) Automotive
11 19 (0.97%) Manufacturing
12 18 (0.92%) Aerospace
13 16 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (0.66%) Law
15 10 (0.51%) Financial Institution
15 10 (0.51%) Legal
16 9 (0.46%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (13.45%) PySpark
2 142 (7.26%) Kafka
3 32 (1.64%) Pandas
4 29 (1.48%) JSON
5 28 (1.43%) REST
6 23 (1.18%) Spring
6 23 (1.18%) Spring Boot
7 20 (1.02%) Great Expectations
8 18 (0.92%) XML
9 17 (0.87%) Apache Beam
10 15 (0.77%) React
10 15 (0.77%) RESTful
10 15 (0.77%) YAML
11 12 (0.61%) pytest
12 11 (0.56%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.51%) LangChain
13 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
14 9 (0.46%) Apache Avro
14 9 (0.46%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.46%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 142 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 80 (4.09%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.38%) Data Structures
4 36 (1.84%) Onboarding
5 28 (1.43%) Distributed Systems
6 23 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
6 23 (1.18%) Product Ownership
7 22 (1.13%) NHS
8 21 (1.07%) Reference Data
9 17 (0.87%) Reinsurance
10 16 (0.82%) Management Information System
11 15 (0.77%) AI Agents
12 14 (0.72%) Data Protection Act
13 13 (0.66%) Clustering
14 12 (0.61%) Algorithms
15 10 (0.51%) Enterprise Software
15 10 (0.51%) Life Science
15 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (0.51%) Replication
15 10 (0.51%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 70 (3.58%) Unix
2 48 (2.46%) Linux
3 4 (0.20%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 831 (42.51%) Data Pipeline
2 717 (36.68%) Data Engineering
3 702 (35.91%) Analytics
4 678 (34.68%) ETL
5 649 (33.20%) Data Modelling
6 453 (23.17%) CI/CD
7 349 (17.85%) Agile
7 349 (17.85%) Business Intelligence
8 324 (16.57%) DevOps
9 304 (15.55%) Migration
10 266 (13.61%) Data Governance
11 259 (13.25%) AI
12 244 (12.48%) Data Integration
13 233 (11.92%) Validation
14 227 (11.61%) Problem-Solving
15 218 (11.15%) Data Transformation
16 179 (9.16%) Decision-Making
17 174 (8.90%) Data Science
18 166 (8.49%) Machine Learning
19 159 (8.13%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 980 (50.13%) SQL
2 806 (41.23%) Python
3 116 (5.93%) Java
4 65 (3.32%) Scala
5 58 (2.97%) PL/SQL
6 37 (1.89%) Shell Script
7 34 (1.74%) T-SQL
8 26 (1.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 24 (1.23%) Bash
10 21 (1.07%) PowerShell
11 20 (1.02%) JavaScript
12 16 (0.82%) C#
13 13 (0.66%) R
14 9 (0.46%) Bicep
15 6 (0.31%) Go
15 6 (0.31%) TypeScript
16 4 (0.20%) Korn
17 3 (0.15%) COBOL
18 2 (0.10%) Perl
18 2 (0.10%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 525 (26.85%) Security Cleared
2 460 (23.53%) SC Cleared
3 42 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.05%) Degree
5 22 (1.13%) Azure Certification
5 22 (1.13%) DV Cleared
6 20 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (0.61%) AWS Certification
8 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
9 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 8 (0.41%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.36%) CISM
10 7 (0.36%) CISSP
11 6 (0.31%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.26%) CEH
13 4 (0.20%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMI Certification
14 1 (0.051%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (24.60%) Data Quality
2 64 (3.27%) QA
3 47 (2.40%) GDPR
4 17 (0.87%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) 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 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.15%) 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 (0.051%) Government Security Classifications
10 1 (0.051%) IFRS
10 1 (0.051%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.051%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.051%) PMO
System Software
1 123 (6.29%) Docker
2 4 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.10%) HDFS
4 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 175 (8.95%) Terraform
2 97 (4.96%) Kubernetes
3 48 (2.46%) Grafana
4 15 (0.77%) Ansible
5 11 (0.56%) Control-M
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 4 (0.20%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.10%) Puppet
8 2 (0.10%) Rancher
8 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.051%) logstash
Vendors
1 387 (19.80%) Databricks
2 242 (12.38%) Microsoft
3 172 (8.80%) Oracle
4 134 (6.85%) Informatica
5 123 (6.29%) Talend
6 73 (3.73%) Google
7 71 (3.63%) Denodo
8 33 (1.69%) Salesforce
9 32 (1.64%) Cisco
9 32 (1.64%) F5
9 32 (1.64%) SAP
10 26 (1.33%) Palantir
11 20 (1.02%) Foundry
12 19 (0.97%) Splunk
13 15 (0.77%) Cloudera
14 13 (0.66%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.61%) IBM
16 10 (0.51%) Sage
17 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
18 8 (0.41%) InterSystems