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 June 2026.

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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 56 108 100
Rank change year-on-year +52 -8 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,881 743 982
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.69% 2.47% 2.26%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.68% 2.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,287 549 749
10th Percentile £369 £363 £206
25th Percentile £420 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £588 £588 £600
90th Percentile £659 £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 70 9 41
10th Percentile £19.34 £18.13 £31.25
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 £70.63 £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 47,021 27,678 40,406
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.36% 92.16% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,598 17,771 25,926
10th Percentile £325 £288 £281
25th Percentile £414 £402 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,150 1,209 2,937
10th Percentile £15.38 £13.84 £12.84
25th Percentile £21.00 £17.44 £16.37
Median hourly rate £43.00 £27.38 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +57.08% -27.00% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £57.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.00 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +76.94% -37.13% -

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 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 24 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 24 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 +47 1,652 £500 - 299
London +35 855 £525 - 112
UK excluding London +73 822 £469 +1.41% 267
Work from Home +36 565 £500 +2.56% 137
Midlands +51 328 £468 +3.94% 57
West Midlands +48 300 £460 - 36
North of England +6 212 £475 - 63
North West +6 130 £480 +1.05% 31
South East +20 122 £475 +11.76% 80
South West +19 89 £506 +1.20% 28
Scotland +19 66 £425 -8.11% 8
Yorkshire -15 63 £470 -1.05% 15
East Midlands -3 28 £525 +28.05% 21
Wales +7 22 £450 +3.45% 10
East of England -18 22 £498 +56.45% 16
North East -23 19 £500 +14.29% 17
Northern Ireland +1 3 £410 -18.00% 9

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

For the 6 months to 24 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 (53.38%) SQL
2 860 (45.72%) Python
3 783 (41.63%) Data Pipeline
4 699 (37.16%) Analytics
5 684 (36.36%) Data Engineering
6 678 (36.04%) ETL
7 629 (33.44%) Data Modelling
8 596 (31.69%) Azure
9 542 (28.81%) AWS
10 528 (28.07%) Security Cleared
11 473 (25.15%) Data Quality
12 462 (24.56%) SC Cleared
13 457 (24.30%) CI/CD
14 404 (21.48%) Databricks
15 384 (20.41%) Business Intelligence
16 343 (18.23%) Agile
17 319 (16.96%) DevOps
18 310 (16.48%) Data Warehouse
19 307 (16.32%) Power Platform
20 293 (15.58%) Power BI
21 283 (15.05%) PySpark
22 260 (13.82%) Migration
23 253 (13.45%) Data Governance
24 242 (12.87%) Problem-Solving
25 235 (12.49%) Microsoft
26 234 (12.44%) AI
27 230 (12.23%) Azure Data Factory
28 202 (10.74%) Data Integration
29 200 (10.63%) Snowflake
30 198 (10.53%) 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
1 170 (9.04%) Apache Airflow
2 150 (7.97%) Apache Spark
3 104 (5.53%) Apache
4 85 (4.52%) SAS
5 54 (2.87%) Confluence
6 12 (0.64%) Palantir Foundry
7 11 (0.58%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.53%) Jupyter
9 5 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.11%) Luigi
11 1 (0.053%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.053%) Appian
11 1 (0.053%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.053%) Camunda
11 1 (0.053%) Liferay
11 1 (0.053%) R Markdown
Applications
1 18 (0.96%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.053%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (0.37%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.32%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.27%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.21%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.21%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.16%) SAP BPC
5 3 (0.16%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.16%) SimCorp Dimension
6 2 (0.11%) BambooHR
6 2 (0.11%) Maximo
6 2 (0.11%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.053%) iTrent
7 1 (0.053%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle 11i
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle Assets
7 1 (0.053%) Oracle ERP
7 1 (0.053%) Raiser’s Edge
7 1 (0.053%) SAP Business ByDesign
7 1 (0.053%) SAP CAR
7 1 (0.053%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 596 (31.69%) Azure
2 542 (28.81%) AWS
3 307 (16.32%) Power Platform
4 230 (12.23%) Azure Data Factory
5 200 (10.63%) Snowflake
6 179 (9.52%) Amazon S3
7 174 (9.25%) dbt
8 163 (8.67%) GCP
9 152 (8.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 141 (7.50%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (6.75%) Serverless
12 121 (6.43%) GitHub
13 108 (5.74%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.98%) GitHub Actions
15 54 (2.87%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (1.86%) Matillion
17 33 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
19 28 (1.49%) Amazon Kinesis
20 24 (1.28%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.75%) DNS
1 33 (1.75%) VPN
2 32 (1.70%) BGP
2 32 (1.70%) DMZ
2 32 (1.70%) Multicast
3 10 (0.53%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.27%) Firewall
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.053%) 4G
7 1 (0.053%) 5G
7 1 (0.053%) Intrusion Detection
7 1 (0.053%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (16.48%) Data Warehouse
2 293 (15.58%) Power BI
3 181 (9.62%) Data Lake
4 115 (6.11%) SQL Server
5 110 (5.85%) Amazon Redshift
6 104 (5.53%) Delta Lake
7 97 (5.16%) Metadata
8 90 (4.78%) BigQuery
8 90 (4.78%) Pentaho
9 86 (4.57%) Big Data
10 76 (4.04%) Amazon Athena
11 74 (3.93%) Tableau
12 73 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
13 69 (3.67%) Azure SQL Database
14 68 (3.62%) PostgreSQL
15 59 (3.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 57 (3.03%) Relational Database
17 56 (2.98%) NoSQL
18 38 (2.02%) Data Vault
18 38 (2.02%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 189 (10.05%) Git
2 102 (5.42%) GitLab
3 97 (5.16%) JIRA
4 49 (2.60%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.48%) Artifactory
6 8 (0.43%) MLflow
7 7 (0.37%) Postman
8 6 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.16%) Newman
9 3 (0.16%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.11%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.11%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 2 (0.11%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.11%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.053%) ERwin
11 1 (0.053%) JUnit
11 1 (0.053%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.053%) Selenium
General
1 313 (16.64%) Finance
2 304 (16.16%) Social Skills
3 202 (10.74%) Analytical Skills
4 161 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 106 (5.64%) Banking
6 37 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 31 (1.65%) Marketing
8 28 (1.49%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (1.49%) Retail
9 25 (1.33%) Investment Banking
10 23 (1.22%) Telecoms
11 18 (0.96%) Manufacturing
11 18 (0.96%) Pharmaceutical
12 13 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 12 (0.64%) Automotive
13 12 (0.64%) Front Office
14 11 (0.58%) Publishing
15 8 (0.43%) Billing
15 8 (0.43%) Legal
16 7 (0.37%) Law
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 283 (15.05%) PySpark
2 152 (8.08%) Kafka
3 46 (2.45%) Pandas
4 36 (1.91%) JSON
5 28 (1.49%) REST
6 24 (1.28%) Spring
6 24 (1.28%) Spring Boot
7 23 (1.22%) Great Expectations
8 22 (1.17%) XML
9 19 (1.01%) YAML
10 17 (0.90%) Apache Beam
11 13 (0.69%) Apache Avro
11 13 (0.69%) scikit-learn
12 11 (0.58%) Matplotlib
12 11 (0.58%) React
12 11 (0.58%) RESTful
12 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
13 10 (0.53%) pytest
13 10 (0.53%) PyTorch
14 9 (0.48%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 140 (7.44%) Cloud Native
2 58 (3.08%) Data Structures
3 57 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
4 32 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
5 29 (1.54%) Onboarding
6 28 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
7 26 (1.38%) Reinsurance
8 24 (1.28%) Product Ownership
9 23 (1.22%) NHS
10 22 (1.17%) Clustering
11 21 (1.12%) Data Protection Act
12 11 (0.58%) Life Science
12 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
13 10 (0.53%) Linux Command Line
13 10 (0.53%) Public Cloud
13 10 (0.53%) Reference Data
13 10 (0.53%) Replication
13 10 (0.53%) Self-Motivation
14 9 (0.48%) Distributed Computing
14 9 (0.48%) Driving Licence
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.46%) Unix
2 40 (2.13%) Linux
3 5 (0.27%) Windows
4 2 (0.11%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.11%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.053%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 783 (41.63%) Data Pipeline
2 699 (37.16%) Analytics
3 684 (36.36%) Data Engineering
4 678 (36.04%) ETL
5 629 (33.44%) Data Modelling
6 457 (24.30%) CI/CD
7 384 (20.41%) Business Intelligence
8 343 (18.23%) Agile
9 319 (16.96%) DevOps
10 260 (13.82%) Migration
11 253 (13.45%) Data Governance
12 242 (12.87%) Problem-Solving
13 234 (12.44%) AI
14 202 (10.74%) Data Integration
15 197 (10.47%) Validation
16 190 (10.10%) Data Science
17 168 (8.93%) Decision-Making
18 162 (8.61%) Data Transformation
19 146 (7.76%) Infrastructure as Code
20 143 (7.60%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,004 (53.38%) SQL
2 860 (45.72%) Python
3 121 (6.43%) Java
4 65 (3.46%) Scala
5 58 (3.08%) PL/SQL
6 43 (2.29%) T-SQL
7 36 (1.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 31 (1.65%) Shell Script
9 29 (1.54%) C#
10 28 (1.49%) Bash
11 22 (1.17%) PowerShell
12 18 (0.96%) Bicep
13 14 (0.74%) R
14 13 (0.69%) JavaScript
15 8 (0.43%) TypeScript
16 6 (0.32%) Go
17 2 (0.11%) HiveQL
17 2 (0.11%) Korn
17 2 (0.11%) Ruby
17 2 (0.11%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 528 (28.07%) Security Cleared
2 462 (24.56%) SC Cleared
3 51 (2.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 43 (2.29%) Degree
5 27 (1.44%) Azure Certification
6 18 (0.96%) DV Cleared
7 16 (0.85%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.74%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.48%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.48%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.48%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.43%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 7 (0.37%) Master's Degree
11 7 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.27%) BICSI Certification
13 4 (0.21%) CISSP
14 3 (0.16%) CISM
14 3 (0.16%) IBM Certification
15 1 (0.053%) CEH
15 1 (0.053%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 473 (25.15%) Data Quality
2 59 (3.14%) QA
3 51 (2.71%) GDPR
4 13 (0.69%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.64%) SLA
6 9 (0.48%) FATCA
7 6 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.21%) 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%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.11%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.11%) WCAG
11 1 (0.053%) Government Security Classifications
11 1 (0.053%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.053%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.053%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 105 (5.58%) Docker
2 6 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.11%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.11%) HDFS
4 1 (0.053%) RACF
Systems Management
1 198 (10.53%) Terraform
2 86 (4.57%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.71%) Grafana
4 12 (0.64%) Ansible
4 12 (0.64%) 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 (0.053%) Fluentd
8 1 (0.053%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.053%) logstash
8 1 (0.053%) NetBackup
8 1 (0.053%) Puppet
8 1 (0.053%) QRadar
Vendors
1 404 (21.48%) Databricks
2 235 (12.49%) Microsoft
3 174 (9.25%) Oracle
4 138 (7.34%) Informatica
5 130 (6.91%) Talend
6 72 (3.83%) Denodo
7 57 (3.03%) Google
8 34 (1.81%) Cisco
8 34 (1.81%) F5
9 28 (1.49%) SAP
10 25 (1.33%) Splunk
11 24 (1.28%) Salesforce
12 21 (1.12%) ServiceNow
13 20 (1.06%) Palantir
14 18 (0.96%) Cloudera
15 16 (0.85%) IBM
16 15 (0.80%) Alteryx
16 15 (0.80%) Foundry
17 10 (0.53%) Sage
18 9 (0.48%) Dynatrace