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 7 May 2026.

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

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 65 82 99
Rank change year-on-year +17 +17 +16
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,703 850 963
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.57% 2.90% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.87% 3.14% 2.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,191 637 752
10th Percentile £375 £359 £264
25th Percentile £419 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.09%
75th Percentile £581 £600 £600
90th Percentile £650 £700 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £463 £460
% change year-on-year +2.70% +0.54% -10.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 12 45
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.36 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £37.52 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £58.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.64% -9.62% +1.56%
75th Percentile £75.00 £77.80 £80.00
90th Percentile £78.20 £92.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.25 £26.93 £75.00
% change year-on-year +90.34% -64.10% +72.41%

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 43,991 27,101 40,252
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.23% 92.53% 92.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,021 17,685 26,221
10th Percentile £316 £300 £280
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,853 1,051 2,676
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.20 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.50 £16.30
Median hourly rate £43.69 £29.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.66% -20.55% -18.89%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.50 £61.30
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £28.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +60.71% -30.00% -5.11%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 +21 1,494 £500 - 428
London +21 823 £525 - 154
UK excluding London +24 687 £475 +2.70% 348
Work from Home +19 499 £500 - 238
Midlands +30 296 £469 +1.96% 72
West Midlands +32 278 £469 -1.26% 48
North of England -6 186 £465 +0.54% 90
North West +2 121 £490 +5.95% 42
South East +4 88 £500 +5.26% 100
South West -1 67 £500 +1.27% 31
Scotland +12 57 £430 -4.44% 15
Yorkshire -27 50 £465 +3.33% 22
Wales +1 20 £475 +130.23% 17
East Midlands -25 18 £498 +21.34% 24
East of England -32 16 £565 +79.37% 21
North East -18 15 £463 +8.82% 27
Northern Ireland +4 3 £410 -18.00% 3

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

For the 6 months to 7 May 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.

1 927 (54.43%) SQL
2 795 (46.68%) Python
3 712 (41.81%) Data Pipeline
4 658 (38.64%) ETL
5 650 (38.17%) Analytics
6 622 (36.52%) Data Engineering
7 599 (35.17%) Azure
8 580 (34.06%) Data Modelling
9 506 (29.71%) Security Cleared
10 452 (26.54%) SC Cleared
11 447 (26.25%) AWS
12 441 (25.90%) Data Quality
13 421 (24.72%) Databricks
14 420 (24.66%) CI/CD
15 369 (21.67%) Business Intelligence
16 328 (19.26%) Agile
17 315 (18.50%) DevOps
18 296 (17.38%) Data Warehouse
19 292 (17.15%) Power Platform
20 276 (16.21%) Power BI
21 275 (16.15%) PySpark
22 245 (14.39%) Data Governance
23 242 (14.21%) Azure Data Factory
24 235 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
25 228 (13.39%) Microsoft
26 207 (12.16%) Migration
27 201 (11.80%) Git
28 200 (11.74%) AI
29 195 (11.45%) Data Integration
30 188 (11.04%) Data Lake

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
1 168 (9.86%) Apache Spark
2 157 (9.22%) Apache Airflow
3 100 (5.87%) Apache
4 77 (4.52%) SAS
5 34 (2.00%) Confluence
6 11 (0.65%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.53%) Jupyter
8 5 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
9 4 (0.23%) SharePoint
10 2 (0.12%) Luigi
11 1 (0.059%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.059%) Appian
11 1 (0.059%) Camunda
11 1 (0.059%) R Markdown
Applications
1 20 (1.17%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.41%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 4 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.059%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 4 (0.23%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
2 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
2 2 (0.12%) SAP S/4HANA
3 1 (0.059%) Actimize
3 1 (0.059%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.059%) iTrent
3 1 (0.059%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle 11i
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.059%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.059%) SAP Business ByDesign
3 1 (0.059%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 599 (35.17%) Azure
2 447 (26.25%) AWS
3 292 (17.15%) Power Platform
4 242 (14.21%) Azure Data Factory
5 174 (10.22%) Snowflake
6 169 (9.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 155 (9.10%) Amazon S3
8 154 (9.04%) GCP
9 143 (8.40%) dbt
10 134 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
11 122 (7.16%) GitHub
12 110 (6.46%) Serverless
13 87 (5.11%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.05%) GitHub Actions
15 40 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
16 35 (2.06%) Amazon EMR
17 29 (1.70%) Matillion
18 28 (1.64%) Amazon Kinesis
19 25 (1.47%) AWS Step Functions
19 25 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.94%) DNS
1 33 (1.94%) VPN
2 32 (1.88%) BGP
2 32 (1.88%) DMZ
2 32 (1.88%) Multicast
3 10 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.41%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.41%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.29%) Firewall
6 2 (0.12%) Wi-Fi
6 2 (0.12%) Wireless
7 1 (0.059%) 4G
7 1 (0.059%) 5G
7 1 (0.059%) MQTT
7 1 (0.059%) Network Security
7 1 (0.059%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 296 (17.38%) Data Warehouse
2 276 (16.21%) Power BI
3 188 (11.04%) Data Lake
4 123 (7.22%) SQL Server
5 105 (6.17%) Delta Lake
6 97 (5.70%) Metadata
7 93 (5.46%) Big Data
7 93 (5.46%) BigQuery
8 91 (5.34%) Amazon Redshift
9 84 (4.93%) Azure SQL Database
10 83 (4.87%) Pentaho
11 72 (4.23%) PostgreSQL
12 71 (4.17%) Tableau
13 66 (3.88%) NoSQL
13 66 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
14 61 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 59 (3.46%) Amazon Athena
16 51 (2.99%) Relational Database
17 44 (2.58%) Hadoop
18 37 (2.17%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 201 (11.80%) Git
2 86 (5.05%) JIRA
3 76 (4.46%) GitLab
4 63 (3.70%) Jenkins
5 19 (1.12%) MLflow
6 4 (0.23%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.12%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.059%) ERwin
8 1 (0.059%) Jaeger
8 1 (0.059%) JUnit
8 1 (0.059%) Poetry
8 1 (0.059%) Selenium
8 1 (0.059%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.059%) Terragrunt
General
1 282 (16.56%) Finance
2 259 (15.21%) Social Skills
3 188 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (8.04%) Public Sector
5 88 (5.17%) Banking
6 33 (1.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 26 (1.53%) Investment Banking
8 22 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
9 21 (1.23%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.17%) Marketing
11 18 (1.06%) Retail
12 16 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.88%) Front Office
14 13 (0.76%) Aerospace
15 12 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
16 11 (0.65%) Publishing
17 8 (0.47%) Law
17 8 (0.47%) Military
18 6 (0.35%) Legal
19 5 (0.29%) Games
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (16.15%) PySpark
2 159 (9.34%) Kafka
3 56 (3.29%) Pandas
4 30 (1.76%) JSON
4 30 (1.76%) REST
5 29 (1.70%) YAML
6 25 (1.47%) Great Expectations
7 22 (1.29%) Spring
7 22 (1.29%) Spring Boot
8 15 (0.88%) Apache Beam
8 15 (0.88%) scikit-learn
9 14 (0.82%) Matplotlib
9 14 (0.82%) Node.js
9 14 (0.82%) NumPy
10 13 (0.76%) Apache Avro
10 13 (0.76%) PyTorch
11 12 (0.70%) React
11 12 (0.70%) XML
12 10 (0.59%) pytest
13 9 (0.53%) GeoJSON
Miscellaneous
1 121 (7.11%) Cloud Native
2 45 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
3 40 (2.35%) Data Structures
4 33 (1.94%) Product Ownership
5 29 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
6 26 (1.53%) Greenfield Project
7 21 (1.23%) Clustering
8 19 (1.12%) Onboarding
9 17 (1.00%) Data Protection Act
9 17 (1.00%) Reinsurance
10 14 (0.82%) NHS
10 14 (0.82%) Replication
11 13 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
12 12 (0.70%) Distributed Computing
13 11 (0.65%) Public Cloud
14 10 (0.59%) Hybrid Cloud
15 9 (0.53%) AI Agents
16 8 (0.47%) Data Centre
16 8 (0.47%) Linux Command Line
16 8 (0.47%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 51 (2.99%) Unix
2 36 (2.11%) Linux
3 4 (0.23%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) VMS
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.059%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 712 (41.81%) Data Pipeline
2 658 (38.64%) ETL
3 650 (38.17%) Analytics
4 622 (36.52%) Data Engineering
5 580 (34.06%) Data Modelling
6 420 (24.66%) CI/CD
7 369 (21.67%) Business Intelligence
8 328 (19.26%) Agile
9 315 (18.50%) DevOps
10 245 (14.39%) Data Governance
11 235 (13.80%) Problem-Solving
12 207 (12.16%) Migration
13 200 (11.74%) AI
14 195 (11.45%) Data Integration
15 183 (10.75%) Data Science
16 176 (10.33%) Validation
17 142 (8.34%) Data Architecture
18 140 (8.22%) Data Transformation
19 138 (8.10%) Decision-Making
20 137 (8.04%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 927 (54.43%) SQL
2 795 (46.68%) Python
3 119 (6.99%) Java
4 87 (5.11%) Scala
5 39 (2.29%) PL/SQL
6 38 (2.23%) T-SQL
7 37 (2.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 36 (2.11%) C#
9 29 (1.70%) Shell Script
10 27 (1.59%) Bash
11 21 (1.23%) Bicep
12 19 (1.12%) R
13 18 (1.06%) JavaScript
14 17 (1.00%) PowerShell
15 9 (0.53%) Go
16 7 (0.41%) TypeScript
17 3 (0.18%) C
18 2 (0.12%) C++
18 2 (0.12%) Perl
18 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 506 (29.71%) Security Cleared
2 452 (26.54%) SC Cleared
3 43 (2.52%) Degree
4 36 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 34 (2.00%) Azure Certification
6 16 (0.94%) Computer Science Degree
6 16 (0.94%) DV Cleared
7 12 (0.70%) AWS Certification
8 8 (0.47%) DBS Check
8 8 (0.47%) Master's Degree
9 7 (0.41%) City & Guilds
10 6 (0.35%) Microsoft Certification
10 6 (0.35%) SnowPro
11 5 (0.29%) BICSI Certification
12 3 (0.18%) CISSP
12 3 (0.18%) CTC Cleared
12 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
13 2 (0.12%) CISM
14 1 (0.059%) Numerate Degree
14 1 (0.059%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 441 (25.90%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.11%) GDPR
3 50 (2.94%) QA
4 17 (1.00%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.53%) FATCA
5 9 (0.53%) SLA
6 5 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 5 (0.29%) MiFID
7 4 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.18%) GMP
8 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.18%) WCAG
9 2 (0.12%) EMIR
9 2 (0.12%) GRC
9 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.059%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.059%) IFRS
10 1 (0.059%) IFRS 17
10 1 (0.059%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.059%) PMO
System Software
1 114 (6.69%) Docker
2 6 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
Systems Management
1 181 (10.63%) Terraform
2 100 (5.87%) Kubernetes
3 52 (3.05%) Grafana
4 14 (0.82%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.76%) Ansible
6 10 (0.59%) Kibana
7 3 (0.18%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.18%) logstash
7 3 (0.18%) Rancher
8 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
8 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.059%) Control-M
9 1 (0.059%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.059%) NetBackup
9 1 (0.059%) Puppet
9 1 (0.059%) QRadar
Vendors
1 421 (24.72%) Databricks
2 228 (13.39%) Microsoft
3 142 (8.34%) Oracle
4 114 (6.69%) Informatica
5 112 (6.58%) Talend
6 66 (3.88%) Denodo
7 61 (3.58%) Google
8 35 (2.06%) Cisco
9 34 (2.00%) F5
10 26 (1.53%) SAP
10 26 (1.53%) Splunk
11 22 (1.29%) ServiceNow
12 16 (0.94%) Cloudera
12 16 (0.94%) IBM
13 14 (0.82%) Foundry
14 13 (0.76%) Alteryx
15 12 (0.70%) Palantir
16 9 (0.53%) Dynatrace
17 8 (0.47%) InterSystems
17 8 (0.47%) MuleSoft