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 23 April 2026.

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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 80 104
Rank change year-on-year +16 +24 +6
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,622 885 969
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.49% 3.00% 2.22%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.79% 3.23% 2.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,144 659 763
10th Percentile £370 £360 £266
25th Percentile £415 £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 £475 £457
% change year-on-year - +4.05% -11.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 11 45
10th Percentile £26.03 £25.25 £31.25
25th Percentile £41.28 £33.79 £49.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.23% - +1.56%
75th Percentile £75.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £80.90 £93.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £26.93 £75.00
% change year-on-year +94.99% -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 42,836 27,359 40,556
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.28% 92.64% 92.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,486 17,911 26,489
10th Percentile £313 £300 £275
25th Percentile £413 £406 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +2.63% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,746 1,013 2,627
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.44 £12.86
25th Percentile £20.35 £18.51 £16.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £30.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +41.67% -14.29% -22.22%
75th Percentile £65.60 £63.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.00 £28.88 £37.18
% change year-on-year +52.38% -22.34% -12.52%

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 23 April 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 23 April 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 23 April 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 +19 1,432 £500 - 361
London +19 793 £525 -0.47% 145
UK excluding London +22 638 £475 - 296
Work from Home +16 478 £500 - 180
Midlands +26 271 £469 -1.26% 42
West Midlands +22 253 £469 -1.68% 36
North of England -7 185 £470 +1.62% 81
North West +6 117 £480 +3.78% 45
South East -11 82 £500 +2.56% 85
South West -11 58 £506 +1.20% 35
Yorkshire -24 54 £465 +3.33% 19
Scotland +1 42 £420 -6.67% 14
Wales +1 20 £450 -6.25% 10
East Midlands -27 18 £498 +24.76% 6
East of England -25 16 £565 +79.37% 26
North East -20 14 £475 +5.56% 20
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 6

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

For the 6 months to 23 April 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.

1 895 (55.18%) SQL
2 770 (47.47%) Python
3 679 (41.86%) Data Pipeline
4 633 (39.03%) ETL
5 613 (37.79%) Analytics
6 592 (36.50%) Azure
6 592 (36.50%) Data Engineering
7 552 (34.03%) Data Modelling
8 473 (29.16%) Security Cleared
9 438 (27.00%) Data Quality
10 433 (26.70%) AWS
11 423 (26.08%) SC Cleared
12 421 (25.96%) Databricks
13 406 (25.03%) CI/CD
14 353 (21.76%) Business Intelligence
15 312 (19.24%) Agile
16 296 (18.25%) DevOps
17 288 (17.76%) Data Warehouse
18 278 (17.14%) Power Platform
19 266 (16.40%) PySpark
20 262 (16.15%) Power BI
21 245 (15.10%) Data Governance
22 240 (14.80%) Azure Data Factory
23 231 (14.24%) Problem-Solving
24 214 (13.19%) Microsoft
25 195 (12.02%) Git
26 194 (11.96%) Migration
27 186 (11.47%) Data Science
28 182 (11.22%) Terraform
29 177 (10.91%) AI

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
1 161 (9.93%) Apache Airflow
1 161 (9.93%) Apache Spark
2 96 (5.92%) Apache
3 70 (4.32%) SAS
4 19 (1.17%) Confluence
5 11 (0.68%) Palantir Foundry
6 9 (0.55%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
8 4 (0.25%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.12%) Luigi
10 1 (0.062%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.062%) Appian
10 1 (0.062%) Camunda
10 1 (0.062%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.43%) Notepad++
3 4 (0.25%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.062%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 2 (0.12%) Aladdin
1 2 (0.12%) BambooHR
1 2 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
1 2 (0.12%) Maximo
1 2 (0.12%) SAP BPC
2 1 (0.062%) Actimize
2 1 (0.062%) Elite 3E
2 1 (0.062%) iTrent
2 1 (0.062%) NEC Housing
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle 11i
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle EBS
2 1 (0.062%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.062%) SAP Business ByDesign
2 1 (0.062%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.062%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 592 (36.50%) Azure
2 433 (26.70%) AWS
3 278 (17.14%) Power Platform
4 240 (14.80%) Azure Data Factory
5 169 (10.42%) Snowflake
6 163 (10.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 155 (9.56%) Amazon S3
8 153 (9.43%) GCP
9 144 (8.88%) dbt
10 122 (7.52%) Azure DevOps
11 117 (7.21%) GitHub
12 110 (6.78%) Serverless
13 87 (5.36%) AWS Lambda
14 52 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
15 44 (2.71%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (1.85%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (1.73%) AWS Step Functions
18 27 (1.66%) Matillion
19 25 (1.54%) Microsoft Purview
20 24 (1.48%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 29 (1.79%) DNS
1 29 (1.79%) VPN
2 28 (1.73%) BGP
2 28 (1.73%) DMZ
2 28 (1.73%) Multicast
3 10 (0.62%) Structured Cabling
4 7 (0.43%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.43%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.31%) Firewall
6 3 (0.18%) SAN
7 1 (0.062%) 4G
7 1 (0.062%) 5G
7 1 (0.062%) Network Security
7 1 (0.062%) Software-Defined Networking
Database & Business Intelligence
1 288 (17.76%) Data Warehouse
2 262 (16.15%) Power BI
3 173 (10.67%) Data Lake
4 120 (7.40%) SQL Server
5 103 (6.35%) Delta Lake
6 94 (5.80%) BigQuery
7 89 (5.49%) Metadata
8 86 (5.30%) Amazon Redshift
9 83 (5.12%) Azure SQL Database
10 82 (5.06%) Big Data
11 78 (4.81%) Pentaho
12 72 (4.44%) Tableau
13 69 (4.25%) PostgreSQL
14 66 (4.07%) NoSQL
15 63 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
16 61 (3.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 56 (3.45%) Amazon Athena
18 49 (3.02%) Relational Database
19 42 (2.59%) Hadoop
20 37 (2.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 195 (12.02%) Git
2 71 (4.38%) GitLab
2 71 (4.38%) JIRA
3 64 (3.95%) Jenkins
4 19 (1.17%) MLflow
5 4 (0.25%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.12%) JUnit
6 2 (0.12%) Selenium
6 2 (0.12%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.12%) Sonatype Nexus
6 2 (0.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 2 (0.12%) Visual Studio
7 1 (0.062%) Cucumber
7 1 (0.062%) ER Studio
7 1 (0.062%) ERwin
7 1 (0.062%) Jaeger
7 1 (0.062%) Maven
7 1 (0.062%) Mockito
7 1 (0.062%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (0.062%) Terragrunt
General
1 260 (16.03%) Finance
2 248 (15.29%) Social Skills
3 182 (11.22%) Analytical Skills
4 134 (8.26%) Public Sector
5 81 (4.99%) Banking
6 35 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 21 (1.29%) Documentation Skills
7 21 (1.29%) Investment Banking
7 21 (1.29%) Telecoms
8 16 (0.99%) Manufacturing
9 15 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
9 15 (0.92%) Retail
10 14 (0.86%) Marketing
11 13 (0.80%) Front Office
12 12 (0.74%) Aerospace
13 11 (0.68%) Publishing
14 8 (0.49%) Law
15 6 (0.37%) Legal
15 6 (0.37%) Local Government
15 6 (0.37%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 266 (16.40%) PySpark
2 150 (9.25%) Kafka
3 55 (3.39%) Pandas
4 35 (2.16%) JSON
5 31 (1.91%) REST
6 30 (1.85%) YAML
7 25 (1.54%) Great Expectations
8 18 (1.11%) XML
9 16 (0.99%) scikit-learn
10 15 (0.92%) NumPy
11 14 (0.86%) Apache Beam
11 14 (0.86%) Matplotlib
11 14 (0.86%) Node.js
11 14 (0.86%) PyTorch
12 13 (0.80%) React
12 13 (0.80%) Spring
12 13 (0.80%) Spring Boot
13 11 (0.68%) Apache Avro
13 11 (0.68%) pytest
14 10 (0.62%) TensorFlow
Miscellaneous
1 105 (6.47%) Cloud Native
2 46 (2.84%) Legacy Systems
3 38 (2.34%) Data Structures
4 33 (2.03%) Product Ownership
5 25 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
6 24 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
7 23 (1.42%) Clustering
8 22 (1.36%) Onboarding
9 18 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
10 15 (0.92%) NHS
10 15 (0.92%) Reinsurance
11 14 (0.86%) Replication
12 13 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
13 12 (0.74%) Public Cloud
14 8 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
14 8 (0.49%) Life Science
14 8 (0.49%) Linux Command Line
14 8 (0.49%) Reference Data
14 8 (0.49%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 45 (2.77%) Unix
2 35 (2.16%) Linux
3 4 (0.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.062%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 679 (41.86%) Data Pipeline
2 633 (39.03%) ETL
3 613 (37.79%) Analytics
4 592 (36.50%) Data Engineering
5 552 (34.03%) Data Modelling
6 406 (25.03%) CI/CD
7 353 (21.76%) Business Intelligence
8 312 (19.24%) Agile
9 296 (18.25%) DevOps
10 245 (15.10%) Data Governance
11 231 (14.24%) Problem-Solving
12 194 (11.96%) Migration
13 186 (11.47%) Data Science
14 177 (10.91%) AI
15 175 (10.79%) Data Integration
16 157 (9.68%) Validation
17 149 (9.19%) Data Architecture
18 144 (8.88%) Infrastructure as Code
19 138 (8.51%) Data Transformation
20 134 (8.26%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 895 (55.18%) SQL
2 770 (47.47%) Python
3 107 (6.60%) Java
4 85 (5.24%) Scala
5 38 (2.34%) C#
6 37 (2.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 34 (2.10%) PL/SQL
7 34 (2.10%) T-SQL
8 29 (1.79%) Shell Script
9 25 (1.54%) Bash
10 21 (1.29%) Bicep
11 19 (1.17%) PowerShell
11 19 (1.17%) R
12 18 (1.11%) JavaScript
13 11 (0.68%) Go
14 8 (0.49%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.18%) C
16 2 (0.12%) HiveQL
16 2 (0.12%) LookML
16 2 (0.12%) VB
Qualifications
1 473 (29.16%) Security Cleared
2 423 (26.08%) SC Cleared
3 44 (2.71%) Degree
4 35 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
5 33 (2.03%) Azure Certification
6 17 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
7 16 (0.99%) AWS Certification
8 15 (0.92%) DV Cleared
9 8 (0.49%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.43%) DBS Check
10 7 (0.43%) SnowPro
11 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.31%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.31%) City & Guilds
13 3 (0.18%) CISSP
13 3 (0.18%) CTC Cleared
13 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
14 2 (0.12%) CISM
15 1 (0.062%) CISA
15 1 (0.062%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (27.00%) Data Quality
2 53 (3.27%) GDPR
3 44 (2.71%) QA
4 18 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.55%) SLA
6 8 (0.49%) FATCA
7 5 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.25%) WCAG
9 3 (0.18%) GMP
9 3 (0.18%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.12%) GRC
10 2 (0.12%) MiFID
10 2 (0.12%) SNOMED CT
11 1 (0.062%) Basel III
11 1 (0.062%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.062%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.062%) GxP
11 1 (0.062%) ISO 13485
11 1 (0.062%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.062%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 113 (6.97%) Docker
2 6 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.12%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.12%) HDFS
4 1 (0.062%) RACF
Systems Management
1 182 (11.22%) Terraform
2 99 (6.10%) Kubernetes
3 43 (2.65%) Grafana
4 15 (0.92%) Prometheus
5 13 (0.80%) Ansible
6 11 (0.68%) Kibana
7 4 (0.25%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.18%) logstash
8 3 (0.18%) Rancher
9 2 (0.12%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.12%) EMC NetWorker
9 2 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 2 (0.12%) Tivoli Storage Manager
10 1 (0.062%) Control-M
10 1 (0.062%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.062%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.062%) Puppet
10 1 (0.062%) QRadar
Vendors
1 421 (25.96%) Databricks
2 214 (13.19%) Microsoft
3 131 (8.08%) Oracle
4 111 (6.84%) Talend
5 103 (6.35%) Informatica
6 62 (3.82%) Google
7 55 (3.39%) Denodo
8 33 (2.03%) Cisco
9 30 (1.85%) F5
10 26 (1.60%) Splunk
11 23 (1.42%) SAP
12 22 (1.36%) ServiceNow
13 19 (1.17%) IBM
14 16 (0.99%) Cloudera
15 14 (0.86%) Foundry
15 14 (0.86%) Palantir
16 11 (0.68%) Alteryx
17 8 (0.49%) MuleSoft
18 7 (0.43%) Sage
19 6 (0.37%) InterSystems