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 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 69 132 100
Rank change year-on-year +63 -32 +21
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,911 699 873
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.56% 2.16% 2.29%
As % of the Job Titles category 3.85% 2.37% 2.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,272 497 619
10th Percentile £375 £375 £324
25th Percentile £425 £425 £436
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £625
90th Percentile £663 £690 £689
UK excluding London median daily rate £474 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -0.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 15 17
10th Percentile £19.34 £25.50 £42.05
25th Percentile £30.96 £38.75 £60.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.05% -34.38% +12.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £79.35 -
90th Percentile £75.00 £101.00 £87.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £52.85 £80.00
% change year-on-year -21.37% -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 49,584 29,450 35,463
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.15% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,603 18,569 22,312
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £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 3,590 1,537 1,792
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.60 £14.42
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.00 £20.21
Median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 4 September 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 4 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineer in the UK

Data Engineer
Top 18 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 4 September 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 +67 1,688 £500 - 798
UK excluding London +101 855 £474 -0.26% 486
London +34 851 £525 - 457
Work from Home +48 563 £500 +5.26% 321
Midlands +75 348 £469 +2.79% 59
West Midlands +66 286 £469 -0.21% 35
North of England +24 209 £500 +5.26% 124
South East +26 129 £459 +2.00% 138
North West +31 117 £525 +10.53% 66
South West +10 92 £525 +5.00% 66
Yorkshire -4 73 £475 - 28
East Midlands +24 62 £450 +1.98% 24
Scotland +2 59 £440 -4.86% 45
East of England +15 38 £450 -40.00% 25
North East -23 20 £515 +21.89% 30
Wales -2 15 £488 +9.55% 16
Northern Ireland +5 3 £410 -18.00% 16
Channel Islands - 1 - -

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

For the 6 months to 4 September 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.

1 957 (50.08%) SQL
2 829 (43.38%) Python
3 822 (43.01%) Data Pipeline
4 736 (38.51%) Data Engineering
5 660 (34.54%) Analytics
6 656 (34.33%) Data Modelling
7 655 (34.28%) ETL
8 607 (31.76%) Azure
9 585 (30.61%) AWS
10 500 (26.16%) Security Cleared
11 481 (25.17%) Data Quality
12 455 (23.81%) CI/CD
13 441 (23.08%) SC Cleared
14 403 (21.09%) Databricks
15 339 (17.74%) Agile
16 325 (17.01%) Data Warehouse
17 321 (16.80%) Business Intelligence
18 313 (16.38%) DevOps
19 308 (16.12%) Migration
20 276 (14.44%) AI
21 269 (14.08%) PySpark
22 268 (14.02%) Data Governance
23 260 (13.61%) Power Platform
24 253 (13.24%) Power BI
25 246 (12.87%) Microsoft
26 245 (12.82%) Data Integration
27 238 (12.45%) Data Transformation
28 237 (12.40%) Validation
29 231 (12.09%) Snowflake
30 220 (11.51%) Azure Data Factory

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
1 210 (10.99%) Apache Airflow
2 155 (8.11%) Apache Spark
3 130 (6.80%) Apache
4 63 (3.30%) SAS
5 45 (2.35%) Confluence
6 17 (0.89%) Palantir Foundry
7 14 (0.73%) SharePoint
8 10 (0.52%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.16%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.10%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.052%) Liferay
11 1 (0.052%) Luigi
11 1 (0.052%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.052%) nginx
11 1 (0.052%) R Markdown
Applications
1 24 (1.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.37%) Notepad++
2 7 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
3 4 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.052%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 11 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.21%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.10%) SimCorp Dimension
6 1 (0.052%) BambooHR
6 1 (0.052%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.052%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.052%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.052%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.052%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.052%) SAP EWM
6 1 (0.052%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 607 (31.76%) Azure
2 585 (30.61%) AWS
3 260 (13.61%) Power Platform
4 231 (12.09%) Snowflake
5 220 (11.51%) Azure Data Factory
6 215 (11.25%) dbt
7 181 (9.47%) GCP
8 169 (8.84%) Amazon S3
9 136 (7.12%) Azure DevOps
10 132 (6.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 130 (6.80%) Serverless
12 119 (6.23%) GitHub
13 116 (6.07%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (3.77%) Azure Databricks
15 52 (2.72%) Amazon EMR
16 47 (2.46%) GitHub Actions
17 38 (1.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 29 (1.52%) AWS Step Functions
19 27 (1.41%) Amazon Kinesis
20 26 (1.36%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 27 (1.41%) BGP
1 27 (1.41%) DMZ
1 27 (1.41%) DNS
1 27 (1.41%) Multicast
1 27 (1.41%) VPN
2 11 (0.58%) Structured Cabling
3 9 (0.47%) Firewall
4 7 (0.37%) PuTTY
4 7 (0.37%) WinSCP
5 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
6 4 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.21%) Wireless
7 1 (0.052%) HTTP
7 1 (0.052%) LTE
7 1 (0.052%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 325 (17.01%) Data Warehouse
2 253 (13.24%) Power BI
3 172 (9.00%) Data Lake
4 132 (6.91%) Metadata
5 106 (5.55%) BigQuery
6 98 (5.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 88 (4.60%) SQL Server
8 87 (4.55%) Delta Lake
9 81 (4.24%) Amazon Athena
10 80 (4.19%) Big Data
11 72 (3.77%) Pentaho
12 63 (3.30%) Relational Database
13 62 (3.24%) Tableau
14 61 (3.19%) PostgreSQL
14 61 (3.19%) Snowflake Schema
15 53 (2.77%) Azure SQL Database
16 50 (2.62%) NoSQL
17 42 (2.20%) Oracle Database
18 39 (2.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 38 (1.99%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 168 (8.79%) Git
2 98 (5.13%) GitLab
3 72 (3.77%) JIRA
4 35 (1.83%) Jenkins
5 18 (0.94%) MLflow
6 9 (0.47%) Artifactory
7 7 (0.37%) Postman
8 6 (0.31%) SonarQube
9 5 (0.26%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.21%) ERwin
10 4 (0.21%) Selenium
11 3 (0.16%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.16%) Claude Code
11 3 (0.16%) Newman
12 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
12 2 (0.10%) RStudio
12 2 (0.10%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 2 (0.10%) Terragrunt
12 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
General
1 307 (16.06%) Social Skills
2 305 (15.96%) Finance
3 217 (11.36%) Analytical Skills
4 163 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 111 (5.81%) Banking
6 36 (1.88%) Marketing
7 31 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 29 (1.52%) Retail
9 24 (1.26%) Telecoms
10 23 (1.20%) Aerospace
11 21 (1.10%) Documentation Skills
11 21 (1.10%) Investment Banking
12 20 (1.05%) Automotive
13 19 (0.99%) Front Office
13 19 (0.99%) Law
14 18 (0.94%) Manufacturing
15 16 (0.84%) Pharmaceutical
16 13 (0.68%) Police
17 12 (0.63%) Legal
18 10 (0.52%) Financial Institution
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (14.08%) PySpark
2 187 (9.79%) Terraform
3 135 (7.06%) Kafka
4 35 (1.83%) JSON
5 34 (1.78%) REST
6 29 (1.52%) Pandas
7 24 (1.26%) XML
8 23 (1.20%) Great Expectations
8 23 (1.20%) Spring
8 23 (1.20%) Spring Boot
9 18 (0.94%) Apache Beam
10 17 (0.89%) React
11 15 (0.78%) LangChain
12 14 (0.73%) RESTful
13 13 (0.68%) pytest
13 13 (0.68%) YAML
14 11 (0.58%) .NET
14 11 (0.58%) Streamlit
15 10 (0.52%) Microsoft Graph
16 9 (0.47%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 148 (7.74%) Cloud Native
2 75 (3.92%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.45%) Data Structures
4 43 (2.25%) Onboarding
5 25 (1.31%) Product Ownership
6 24 (1.26%) Distributed Systems
7 22 (1.15%) AI Agents
7 22 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
7 22 (1.15%) NHS
8 19 (0.99%) Reference Data
9 18 (0.94%) Management Information System
10 17 (0.89%) Reinsurance
11 14 (0.73%) Algorithms
12 12 (0.63%) Clustering
13 11 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
13 11 (0.58%) Enterprise Software
13 11 (0.58%) Virtual Team
14 10 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
14 10 (0.52%) Replication
15 9 (0.47%) Life Science
Operating Systems
1 65 (3.40%) Unix
2 47 (2.46%) Linux
3 4 (0.21%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.052%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.052%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 822 (43.01%) Data Pipeline
2 736 (38.51%) Data Engineering
3 660 (34.54%) Analytics
4 656 (34.33%) Data Modelling
5 655 (34.28%) ETL
6 455 (23.81%) CI/CD
7 339 (17.74%) Agile
8 321 (16.80%) Business Intelligence
9 313 (16.38%) DevOps
10 308 (16.12%) Migration
11 276 (14.44%) AI
12 268 (14.02%) Data Governance
13 245 (12.82%) Data Integration
14 238 (12.45%) Data Transformation
15 237 (12.40%) Validation
16 211 (11.04%) Problem-Solving
17 174 (9.11%) Lakehouse
18 171 (8.95%) Data Science
19 169 (8.84%) Machine Learning
20 167 (8.74%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 957 (50.08%) SQL
2 829 (43.38%) Python
3 115 (6.02%) Java
4 70 (3.66%) Scala
5 53 (2.77%) PL/SQL
6 34 (1.78%) Shell Script
7 33 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 33 (1.73%) T-SQL
8 22 (1.15%) Bash
8 22 (1.15%) PowerShell
9 20 (1.05%) JavaScript
10 13 (0.68%) C#
11 12 (0.63%) R
12 10 (0.52%) Bicep
13 8 (0.42%) TypeScript
14 5 (0.26%) Go
15 4 (0.21%) Korn
16 3 (0.16%) COBOL
16 3 (0.16%) Kusto Query Language
16 3 (0.16%) LookML
Qualifications
1 500 (26.16%) Security Cleared
2 441 (23.08%) SC Cleared
3 48 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 40 (2.09%) Degree
5 23 (1.20%) DV Cleared
6 22 (1.15%) Computer Science Degree
7 21 (1.10%) Azure Certification
8 14 (0.73%) AWS Certification
9 11 (0.58%) SnowPro
10 9 (0.47%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.47%) City & Guilds
11 8 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 6 (0.31%) CISM
12 6 (0.31%) CISSP
12 6 (0.31%) Master's Degree
13 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
13 5 (0.26%) CEH
14 4 (0.21%) Microsoft Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMI Certification
15 1 (0.052%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 481 (25.17%) Data Quality
2 71 (3.72%) QA
3 43 (2.25%) GDPR
4 15 (0.78%) Accessibility
5 9 (0.47%) SLA
6 7 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.31%) FATCA
7 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (0.26%) HIPAA
9 4 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
10 3 (0.16%) MiFID
11 2 (0.10%) EMIR
11 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
11 2 (0.10%) WCAG
12 1 (0.052%) Government Security Classifications
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 17
12 1 (0.052%) IFRS 9
12 1 (0.052%) PMO
12 1 (0.052%) SOC 2
System Software
1 111 (5.81%) Docker
2 4 (0.21%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.10%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.052%) RACF
Systems Management
1 82 (4.29%) Kubernetes
2 42 (2.20%) Grafana
3 17 (0.89%) Ansible
4 13 (0.68%) Control-M
5 10 (0.52%) Kibana
6 5 (0.26%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
7 2 (0.10%) logstash
7 2 (0.10%) Puppet
8 1 (0.052%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.052%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 403 (21.09%) Databricks
2 246 (12.87%) Microsoft
3 161 (8.42%) Oracle
4 112 (5.86%) Informatica
5 100 (5.23%) Talend
6 74 (3.87%) Google
7 54 (2.83%) Denodo
8 34 (1.78%) Salesforce
9 27 (1.41%) Cisco
9 27 (1.41%) F5
9 27 (1.41%) Palantir
10 25 (1.31%) SAP
11 24 (1.26%) Foundry
12 15 (0.78%) Splunk
13 13 (0.68%) Cloudera
14 11 (0.58%) IBM
15 10 (0.52%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.47%) OpenAI
16 9 (0.47%) Sage
17 8 (0.42%) InterSystems