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 28 July 2026.

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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 124 90
Rank change year-on-year +60 -34 +30
Contract jobs requiring a Data Engineer 1,957 746 965
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.70% 2.28% 2.40%
As % of the Job Titles category 4.00% 2.49% 2.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,322 530 721
10th Percentile £375 £370 £238
25th Percentile £425 £425 £416
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
75th Percentile £582 £587 £613
90th Percentile £650 £695 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £450
% change year-on-year -1.26% +5.56% -14.29%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 11 34
10th Percentile £20.68 £18.22 £31.25
25th Percentile £34.84 £46.75 £49.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £75.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -30.00% -3.23%
75th Percentile £70.00 £78.10 £80.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £48.46 £80.00
% change year-on-year +3.18% -39.43% +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 48,972 29,978 37,340
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.64% 91.54% 93.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,547 19,070 24,184
10th Percentile £331 £285 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
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 3,337 1,464 2,247
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.71 £13.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.30 £18.32
Median hourly rate £43.50 £25.15 £42.03
Median % change year-on-year +72.96% -40.16% -2.97%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.02 £73.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -41.51% +8.59%

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 28 July 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 28 July 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 28 July 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 +64 1,728 £500 - 457
UK excluding London +85 920 £469 -1.26% 317
London +40 840 £525 - 207
Work from Home +46 583 £500 +5.26% 170
Midlands +66 392 £460 -0.11% 54
West Midlands +57 341 £459 -0.22% 39
North of England +26 231 £475 - 101
North West +22 135 £525 +10.53% 51
South East +16 127 £469 +10.35% 93
South West +14 87 £525 +3.70% 37
Yorkshire 0 74 £475 - 22
Scotland +25 73 £428 -0.12% 7
East Midlands +21 51 £475 +13.10% 15
East of England +3 34 £543 +70.60% 13
North East -24 23 £515 +21.18% 29
Wales 0 18 £475 +6.74% 12
Northern Ireland +1 3 £410 -18.00% 3

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

For the 6 months to 28 July 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 1,007 (51.46%) SQL
2 849 (43.38%) Python
3 826 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
4 731 (37.35%) Data Engineering
5 702 (35.87%) Analytics
6 685 (35.00%) ETL
7 650 (33.21%) Data Modelling
8 614 (31.37%) Azure
9 557 (28.46%) AWS
10 524 (26.78%) Security Cleared
11 484 (24.73%) Data Quality
12 457 (23.35%) CI/CD
13 454 (23.20%) SC Cleared
14 382 (19.52%) Databricks
15 357 (18.24%) Business Intelligence
16 345 (17.63%) Agile
17 324 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
18 317 (16.20%) DevOps
19 305 (15.59%) Migration
20 284 (14.51%) Power Platform
21 273 (13.95%) Data Governance
22 269 (13.75%) Power BI
23 267 (13.64%) PySpark
24 245 (12.52%) Microsoft
25 234 (11.96%) Azure Data Factory
26 232 (11.85%) AI
26 232 (11.85%) Validation
27 229 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
28 225 (11.50%) Data Integration
29 209 (10.68%) Snowflake

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
1 182 (9.30%) Apache Airflow
2 153 (7.82%) Apache Spark
3 116 (5.93%) Apache
4 85 (4.34%) SAS
5 50 (2.55%) Confluence
6 14 (0.72%) Palantir Foundry
7 12 (0.61%) SharePoint
8 8 (0.41%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Superset
9 2 (0.10%) ArcGIS
9 2 (0.10%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.051%) Camunda
10 1 (0.051%) Liferay
10 1 (0.051%) Luigi
10 1 (0.051%) R Markdown
Applications
1 21 (1.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.36%) Notepad++
3 5 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.15%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.051%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (0.66%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.26%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.26%) NetSuite
3 5 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.15%) SAP BPC
4 3 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.15%) SimCorp Dimension
5 2 (0.10%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.10%) Maximo
5 2 (0.10%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.051%) iTrent
6 1 (0.051%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.051%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.051%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.051%) Raiser’s Edge
6 1 (0.051%) SAP Business ByDesign
6 1 (0.051%) SAP CAR
6 1 (0.051%) SAP EWM
Cloud Services
1 614 (31.37%) Azure
2 557 (28.46%) AWS
3 284 (14.51%) Power Platform
4 234 (11.96%) Azure Data Factory
5 209 (10.68%) Snowflake
6 199 (10.17%) dbt
7 176 (8.99%) GCP
8 168 (8.58%) Amazon S3
9 148 (7.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 139 (7.10%) Azure DevOps
11 121 (6.18%) Serverless
12 109 (5.57%) GitHub
13 102 (5.21%) AWS Lambda
14 56 (2.86%) Amazon EMR
15 46 (2.35%) GitHub Actions
16 36 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 26 (1.33%) Amazon Kinesis
17 26 (1.33%) AWS Step Functions
17 26 (1.33%) Matillion
18 25 (1.28%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 33 (1.69%) DNS
1 33 (1.69%) VPN
2 32 (1.64%) BGP
2 32 (1.64%) DMZ
2 32 (1.64%) Multicast
3 10 (0.51%) Structured Cabling
4 9 (0.46%) Firewall
5 7 (0.36%) PuTTY
5 7 (0.36%) WinSCP
6 5 (0.26%) Intrusion Detection
7 4 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.20%) Wireless
8 1 (0.051%) 4G
8 1 (0.051%) 5G
8 1 (0.051%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 324 (16.56%) Data Warehouse
2 269 (13.75%) Power BI
3 176 (8.99%) Data Lake
4 105 (5.37%) Metadata
5 103 (5.26%) Amazon Redshift
6 96 (4.91%) BigQuery
6 96 (4.91%) SQL Server
7 93 (4.75%) Delta Lake
8 90 (4.60%) Pentaho
9 88 (4.50%) Big Data
10 72 (3.68%) Tableau
11 70 (3.58%) Amazon Athena
12 67 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
13 66 (3.37%) Snowflake Schema
14 58 (2.96%) Relational Database
15 57 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
16 56 (2.86%) NoSQL
16 56 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 38 (1.94%) Hadoop
18 35 (1.79%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 187 (9.56%) Git
2 97 (4.96%) GitLab
3 85 (4.34%) JIRA
4 49 (2.50%) Jenkins
5 9 (0.46%) Artifactory
5 9 (0.46%) MLflow
6 7 (0.36%) Bitbucket
6 7 (0.36%) Postman
7 4 (0.20%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.15%) Newman
8 3 (0.15%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.10%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.10%) ER Studio
9 2 (0.10%) ERwin
9 2 (0.10%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 2 (0.10%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.10%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.051%) JUnit
10 1 (0.051%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 317 (16.20%) Finance
2 306 (15.64%) Social Skills
3 218 (11.14%) Analytical Skills
4 165 (8.43%) Public Sector
5 111 (5.67%) Banking
6 35 (1.79%) Marketing
7 33 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 29 (1.48%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.38%) Telecoms
10 26 (1.33%) Retail
11 22 (1.12%) Investment Banking
12 21 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 20 (1.02%) Front Office
14 19 (0.97%) Automotive
15 18 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
16 16 (0.82%) Aerospace
17 11 (0.56%) Publishing
18 10 (0.51%) Legal
19 9 (0.46%) Billing
20 8 (0.41%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (13.64%) PySpark
2 142 (7.26%) Kafka
3 40 (2.04%) Pandas
4 35 (1.79%) JSON
5 27 (1.38%) REST
6 22 (1.12%) Spring
6 22 (1.12%) Spring Boot
7 21 (1.07%) XML
8 20 (1.02%) Great Expectations
9 19 (0.97%) Apache Beam
10 18 (0.92%) YAML
11 15 (0.77%) React
12 13 (0.66%) Apache Avro
13 12 (0.61%) RESTful
13 12 (0.61%) Streamlit
14 11 (0.56%) scikit-learn
15 10 (0.51%) Microsoft Graph
16 9 (0.46%) GeoJSON
16 9 (0.46%) Polars
16 9 (0.46%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 141 (7.20%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
3 66 (3.37%) Data Structures
4 37 (1.89%) Distributed Systems
5 35 (1.79%) Onboarding
6 25 (1.28%) NHS
7 23 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
8 22 (1.12%) Product Ownership
9 19 (0.97%) Clustering
10 18 (0.92%) Reinsurance
11 17 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
12 16 (0.82%) Reference Data
13 12 (0.61%) Algorithms
13 12 (0.61%) Life Science
14 11 (0.56%) Management Information System
14 11 (0.56%) Virtual Team
15 10 (0.51%) Linux Command Line
15 10 (0.51%) Replication
15 10 (0.51%) Self-Motivation
16 9 (0.46%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 66 (3.37%) Unix
2 48 (2.45%) Linux
3 5 (0.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.10%) Ubuntu
4 2 (0.10%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.051%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 826 (42.21%) Data Pipeline
2 731 (37.35%) Data Engineering
3 702 (35.87%) Analytics
4 685 (35.00%) ETL
5 650 (33.21%) Data Modelling
6 457 (23.35%) CI/CD
7 357 (18.24%) Business Intelligence
8 345 (17.63%) Agile
9 317 (16.20%) DevOps
10 305 (15.59%) Migration
11 273 (13.95%) Data Governance
12 232 (11.85%) AI
12 232 (11.85%) Validation
13 229 (11.70%) Problem-Solving
14 225 (11.50%) Data Integration
15 201 (10.27%) Data Transformation
16 193 (9.86%) Data Science
17 183 (9.35%) Decision-Making
18 153 (7.82%) Machine Learning
18 153 (7.82%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (51.46%) SQL
2 849 (43.38%) Python
3 126 (6.44%) Java
4 60 (3.07%) Scala
5 58 (2.96%) PL/SQL
6 39 (1.99%) T-SQL
7 38 (1.94%) Shell Script
8 31 (1.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 27 (1.38%) Bash
10 25 (1.28%) C#
11 24 (1.23%) PowerShell
12 18 (0.92%) JavaScript
13 14 (0.72%) Bicep
13 14 (0.72%) R
14 7 (0.36%) Go
14 7 (0.36%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.10%) C++
15 2 (0.10%) Perl
15 2 (0.10%) Ruby
15 2 (0.10%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 524 (26.78%) Security Cleared
2 454 (23.20%) SC Cleared
3 52 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
4 45 (2.30%) Degree
5 26 (1.33%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.18%) DV Cleared
7 18 (0.92%) Computer Science Degree
8 14 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 9 (0.46%) City & Guilds
9 9 (0.46%) DBS Check
9 9 (0.46%) Master's Degree
9 9 (0.46%) SnowPro
10 8 (0.41%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 8 (0.41%) CISSP
11 7 (0.36%) CISM
12 5 (0.26%) BICSI Certification
12 5 (0.26%) CEH
13 3 (0.15%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.15%) Microsoft Certification
14 1 (0.051%) CISA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 484 (24.73%) Data Quality
2 62 (3.17%) QA
3 52 (2.66%) GDPR
4 23 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.61%) SLA
6 9 (0.46%) FATCA
7 7 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 6 (0.31%) HIPAA
8 6 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.15%) GMP
9 3 (0.15%) MiFID
10 2 (0.10%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.10%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.10%) EMIR
10 2 (0.10%) PMO
10 2 (0.10%) SNOMED CT
10 2 (0.10%) WCAG
11 1 (0.051%) IFRS
11 1 (0.051%) IFRS 17
11 1 (0.051%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 108 (5.52%) Docker
2 5 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.15%) Active Directory
4 2 (0.10%) HDFS
5 1 (0.051%) RACF
Systems Management
1 188 (9.61%) Terraform
2 89 (4.55%) Kubernetes
3 51 (2.61%) Grafana
4 14 (0.72%) Ansible
5 13 (0.66%) Prometheus
6 9 (0.46%) Kibana
7 6 (0.31%) Control-M
8 3 (0.15%) Rancher
9 2 (0.10%) Apache Ranger
9 2 (0.10%) logstash
9 2 (0.10%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.051%) Fluentd
10 1 (0.051%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.051%) NetBackup
10 1 (0.051%) Puppet
10 1 (0.051%) QRadar
Vendors
1 382 (19.52%) Databricks
2 245 (12.52%) Microsoft
3 169 (8.64%) Oracle
4 139 (7.10%) Informatica
5 125 (6.39%) Talend
6 68 (3.47%) Denodo
7 67 (3.42%) Google
8 34 (1.74%) Cisco
8 34 (1.74%) F5
8 34 (1.74%) SAP
9 29 (1.48%) Salesforce
10 26 (1.33%) Splunk
11 25 (1.28%) Palantir
12 18 (0.92%) Cloudera
12 18 (0.92%) Foundry
13 16 (0.82%) ServiceNow
14 15 (0.77%) IBM
15 12 (0.61%) Sage
16 9 (0.46%) Bloomberg
16 9 (0.46%) MuleSoft