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 12 June 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 60 105 100
Rank change year-on-year +45 -5 +24
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,831 746 969
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.66% 2.53% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.97% 2.75% 2.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,272 552 742
10th Percentile £375 £363 £205
25th Percentile £415 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £582 £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 64 9 43
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £32.50
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 46,156 27,173 40,538
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.35% 92.32% 92.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,087 17,480 26,089
10th Percentile £325 £289 £280
25th Percentile £413 £402 £407
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.68% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £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 3,077 1,137 2,938
10th Percentile £15.19 £13.94 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.79 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.64 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +55.57% -26.29% -16.67%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £61.71
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% -4.76%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +44 1,607 £500 - 281
London +34 857 £525 - 109
UK excluding London +73 778 £469 +1.41% 238
Work from Home +32 546 £500 +2.56% 124
Midlands +48 312 £469 +4.22% 43
West Midlands +49 293 £468 +1.63% 35
North of England +17 209 £465 -2.11% 64
North West +23 129 £480 +1.05% 34
South East +2 110 £475 +11.76% 68
South West +17 82 £506 +3.69% 28
Scotland +19 63 £425 -6.85% 11
Yorkshire -18 59 £465 +3.33% 16
Wales +4 22 £450 +3.45% 12
North East -21 21 £450 - 14
East of England -16 19 £520 +63.52% 10
East Midlands -17 19 £525 +28.05% 8
Northern Ireland +5 4 £410 -18.00% 6

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

For the 6 months to 12 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.

1 997 (54.45%) SQL
2 845 (46.15%) Python
3 764 (41.73%) Data Pipeline
4 682 (37.25%) Analytics
5 678 (37.03%) ETL
6 667 (36.43%) Data Engineering
7 619 (33.81%) Data Modelling
8 589 (32.17%) Azure
9 532 (29.06%) Security Cleared
10 527 (28.78%) AWS
11 471 (25.72%) SC Cleared
12 468 (25.56%) Data Quality
13 437 (23.87%) CI/CD
14 405 (22.12%) Databricks
15 392 (21.41%) Business Intelligence
16 327 (17.86%) Agile
17 316 (17.26%) Power Platform
18 312 (17.04%) DevOps
19 306 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
20 300 (16.38%) Power BI
21 272 (14.86%) PySpark
22 245 (13.38%) Migration
23 244 (13.33%) Data Governance
24 236 (12.89%) Microsoft
25 235 (12.83%) Problem-Solving
26 234 (12.78%) Azure Data Factory
27 230 (12.56%) AI
28 202 (11.03%) Data Integration
29 195 (10.65%) Validation
30 194 (10.60%) 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 (9.23%) Apache Airflow
2 154 (8.41%) Apache Spark
3 105 (5.73%) Apache
4 85 (4.64%) SAS
5 50 (2.73%) Confluence
6 11 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.55%) Jupyter
8 7 (0.38%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.055%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.055%) Appian
11 1 (0.055%) Camunda
11 1 (0.055%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.38%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.055%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.055%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.38%) Aladdin
2 4 (0.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.16%) Infor LN
3 3 (0.16%) NetSuite
3 3 (0.16%) Sage X3
3 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
3 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
4 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
4 2 (0.11%) Maximo
4 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.11%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.055%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.055%) iTrent
5 1 (0.055%) Oracle 11i
5 1 (0.055%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.055%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.055%) Raiser’s Edge
5 1 (0.055%) SAP Business ByDesign
5 1 (0.055%) SAP CAR
5 1 (0.055%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 589 (32.17%) Azure
2 527 (28.78%) AWS
3 316 (17.26%) Power Platform
4 234 (12.78%) Azure Data Factory
5 189 (10.32%) Snowflake
6 176 (9.61%) Amazon S3
7 165 (9.01%) dbt
8 161 (8.79%) GCP
9 153 (8.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 139 (7.59%) Azure DevOps
11 126 (6.88%) Serverless
12 121 (6.61%) GitHub
13 107 (5.84%) AWS Lambda
14 57 (3.11%) GitHub Actions
15 46 (2.51%) Amazon EMR
16 36 (1.97%) Matillion
17 32 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (1.69%) Amazon Kinesis
19 30 (1.64%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 26 (1.42%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 34 (1.86%) DNS
1 34 (1.86%) VPN
2 33 (1.80%) BGP
2 33 (1.80%) DMZ
2 33 (1.80%) Multicast
3 10 (0.55%) 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 (0.055%) 4G
6 1 (0.055%) 5G
6 1 (0.055%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (16.71%) Data Warehouse
2 300 (16.38%) Power BI
3 187 (10.21%) Data Lake
4 127 (6.94%) SQL Server
5 105 (5.73%) Delta Lake
6 104 (5.68%) Amazon Redshift
7 96 (5.24%) Metadata
8 91 (4.97%) BigQuery
9 88 (4.81%) Big Data
10 87 (4.75%) Pentaho
11 75 (4.10%) Amazon Athena
11 75 (4.10%) Azure SQL Database
12 73 (3.99%) Tableau
13 72 (3.93%) Snowflake Schema
14 70 (3.82%) PostgreSQL
15 62 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 60 (3.28%) NoSQL
17 53 (2.89%) Relational Database
18 38 (2.08%) Hadoop
19 37 (2.02%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 193 (10.54%) Git
2 98 (5.35%) GitLab
3 94 (5.13%) JIRA
4 50 (2.73%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.49%) Artifactory
5 9 (0.49%) 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%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.055%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 1 (0.055%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.055%) ER Studio
10 1 (0.055%) ERwin
10 1 (0.055%) JUnit
10 1 (0.055%) Selenium
General
1 300 (16.38%) Finance
2 288 (15.73%) Social Skills
3 195 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
4 151 (8.25%) Public Sector
5 103 (5.63%) Banking
6 35 (1.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 29 (1.58%) Marketing
8 28 (1.53%) Retail
9 27 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
10 26 (1.42%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.20%) Telecoms
12 18 (0.98%) Pharmaceutical
13 17 (0.93%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.76%) Front Office
15 13 (0.71%) Aerospace
16 11 (0.60%) Publishing
17 7 (0.38%) Billing
17 7 (0.38%) Legal
17 7 (0.38%) Military
18 6 (0.33%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (14.86%) PySpark
2 154 (8.41%) Kafka
3 51 (2.79%) Pandas
4 36 (1.97%) JSON
5 30 (1.64%) REST
6 25 (1.37%) Great Expectations
7 23 (1.26%) Spring
7 23 (1.26%) Spring Boot
8 21 (1.15%) XML
9 20 (1.09%) YAML
10 17 (0.93%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.71%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.71%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.60%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.60%) PyTorch
12 11 (0.60%) React
12 11 (0.60%) RESTful
13 10 (0.55%) pytest
14 9 (0.49%) Node.js
14 9 (0.49%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 143 (7.81%) Cloud Native
2 57 (3.11%) Data Structures
3 55 (3.00%) Legacy Systems
4 30 (1.64%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
6 28 (1.53%) Onboarding
6 28 (1.53%) Product Ownership
7 25 (1.37%) Reinsurance
8 22 (1.20%) Clustering
9 21 (1.15%) Data Protection Act
10 17 (0.93%) NHS
11 10 (0.55%) Distributed Computing
11 10 (0.55%) Life Science
11 10 (0.55%) Public Cloud
11 10 (0.55%) Reference Data
11 10 (0.55%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (0.55%) Virtual Team
12 9 (0.49%) Driving Licence
12 9 (0.49%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (0.49%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.55%) Unix
2 40 (2.18%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.055%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 764 (41.73%) Data Pipeline
2 682 (37.25%) Analytics
3 678 (37.03%) ETL
4 667 (36.43%) Data Engineering
5 619 (33.81%) Data Modelling
6 437 (23.87%) CI/CD
7 392 (21.41%) Business Intelligence
8 327 (17.86%) Agile
9 312 (17.04%) DevOps
10 245 (13.38%) Migration
11 244 (13.33%) Data Governance
12 235 (12.83%) Problem-Solving
13 230 (12.56%) AI
14 202 (11.03%) Data Integration
15 195 (10.65%) Validation
16 178 (9.72%) Data Science
17 159 (8.68%) Decision-Making
18 154 (8.41%) Data Transformation
19 144 (7.86%) Infrastructure as Code
20 139 (7.59%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 997 (54.45%) SQL
2 845 (46.15%) Python
3 118 (6.44%) Java
4 71 (3.88%) Scala
5 57 (3.11%) PL/SQL
6 42 (2.29%) T-SQL
7 37 (2.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.69%) C#
8 31 (1.69%) Shell Script
9 28 (1.53%) Bash
10 20 (1.09%) Bicep
11 19 (1.04%) PowerShell
12 14 (0.76%) R
13 12 (0.66%) JavaScript
14 7 (0.38%) TypeScript
15 6 (0.33%) Go
16 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.11%) LookML
16 2 (0.11%) Ruby
16 2 (0.11%) VB
Qualifications
1 532 (29.06%) Security Cleared
2 471 (25.72%) SC Cleared
3 46 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 42 (2.29%) Degree
5 28 (1.53%) Azure Certification
6 15 (0.82%) AWS Certification
6 15 (0.82%) DV Cleared
7 14 (0.76%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (0.49%) City & Guilds
8 9 (0.49%) DBS Check
9 8 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (0.38%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 7 (0.38%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.33%) Master's Degree
12 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
13 3 (0.16%) CISSP
13 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
14 2 (0.11%) CISM
15 1 (0.055%) Cisco Certification
15 1 (0.055%) CTC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 468 (25.56%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.22%) QA
3 51 (2.79%) GDPR
4 13 (0.71%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.66%) SLA
6 9 (0.49%) FATCA
7 6 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.22%) MiFID
10 3 (0.16%) GMP
11 2 (0.11%) EMIR
11 2 (0.11%) GRC
11 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.11%) WCAG
12 1 (0.055%) Disclosure Scotland
12 1 (0.055%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.055%) IFRS
12 1 (0.055%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.055%) ISO 13485
12 1 (0.055%) PMO
System Software
1 102 (5.57%) Docker
2 6 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.055%) RACF
Systems Management
1 194 (10.60%) Terraform
2 83 (4.53%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.79%) Grafana
4 12 (0.66%) Ansible
4 12 (0.66%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.44%) 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 (0.055%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.055%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.055%) logstash
8 1 (0.055%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.055%) Puppet
8 1 (0.055%) QRadar
Vendors
1 405 (22.12%) Databricks
2 236 (12.89%) Microsoft
3 167 (9.12%) Oracle
4 130 (7.10%) Informatica
5 127 (6.94%) Talend
6 71 (3.88%) Denodo
7 61 (3.33%) Google
8 35 (1.91%) Cisco
8 35 (1.91%) F5
9 29 (1.58%) SAP
10 25 (1.37%) Splunk
11 23 (1.26%) ServiceNow
12 18 (0.98%) Cloudera
13 17 (0.93%) IBM
14 16 (0.87%) Salesforce
15 15 (0.82%) Alteryx
15 15 (0.82%) Palantir
16 14 (0.76%) Foundry
17 9 (0.49%) Dynatrace
17 9 (0.49%) Sage