Data Engineering Contract Job Trends

Data Engineering
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 156 194
Rank change year-on-year +64 +38 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,314 520 490
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.74% 1.78% 1.15%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.25% 1.96% 1.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 902 356 365
10th Percentile £394 £388 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £663
90th Percentile £748 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% +2.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 15 13
10th Percentile £51.25 £21.55 £30.55
25th Percentile £56.75 £22.25 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £27.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +154.55% -21.43% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.00 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £65.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £25.43 £60.00
% change year-on-year +172.20% -57.62% +71.43%

All Process & Methodology Skills
UK

Data Engineering falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 40,493 26,571 36,681
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.28% 90.99% 86.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,428 17,064 23,633
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.65% -1.90% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £494 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.00% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,382 1,097 2,442
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.72 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.40 £28.18 £36.02
Median % change year-on-year +50.46% -21.77% +0.06%
75th Percentile £67.25 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.23 £37.50
% change year-on-year +78.39% -32.73% +7.14%

Data Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Engineering job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering over the 6 months to 19 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Engineering in the UK

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Engineering

Data Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Engineering over the 6 months to 19 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Engineering in the UK

Data Engineering
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 Engineering within the UK over the 6 months to 19 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 +70 1,180 £525 -4.55% 461
London +56 733 £550 -4.35% 237
UK excluding London +66 466 £500 +5.26% 282
Work from Home +41 375 £540 -1.82% 214
North of England +5 124 £480 -4.00% 94
Midlands +20 122 £500 +8.11% 38
West Midlands +23 101 £500 +16.01% 30
South West +29 78 £506 -15.75% 30
South East -24 63 £550 +12.02% 87
Scotland +30 59 £448 -5.68% 12
Yorkshire -11 55 £478 -13.18% 24
North West -19 49 £500 +2.56% 43
North East -2 22 £450 -5.26% 28
East of England -19 22 £575 +54.08% 11
East Midlands -20 18 £475 +1.33% 8
Wales -12 6 £563 +150.76% 14
Northern Ireland - 3 £430 -

Data Engineering
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
1 194 (14.76%) Apache Spark
2 132 (10.05%) Apache Airflow
3 88 (6.70%) Apache
4 36 (2.74%) SAS
5 22 (1.67%) Confluence
6 16 (1.22%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.61%) Appian
9 7 (0.53%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.15%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.076%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.076%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.076%) Camunda
12 1 (0.076%) CICS
12 1 (0.076%) CMS
12 1 (0.076%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 29 (2.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.23%) Trello
6 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.46%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.38%) BambooHR
3 4 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.23%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.076%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.076%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.076%) Misys Midas
6 1 (0.076%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 580 (44.14%) Azure
2 475 (36.15%) AWS
3 299 (22.75%) Power Platform
4 187 (14.23%) GCP
5 186 (14.16%) Azure Data Factory
6 171 (13.01%) Snowflake
7 146 (11.11%) Amazon S3
7 146 (11.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 129 (9.82%) GitHub
9 127 (9.67%) dbt
10 108 (8.22%) Serverless
11 105 (7.99%) Azure DevOps
12 86 (6.54%) AWS Lambda
13 77 (5.86%) GitHub Actions
14 53 (4.03%) AWS CloudFormation
15 35 (2.66%) AWS Step Functions
16 33 (2.51%) Amazon EMR
17 29 (2.21%) Collibra
18 27 (2.05%) Amazon SageMaker
19 26 (1.98%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.38%) RTP
2 4 (0.30%) Firewall
3 2 (0.15%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.076%) 4G
4 1 (0.076%) 5G
4 1 (0.076%) MIMO
4 1 (0.076%) Network Security
4 1 (0.076%) SAN
4 1 (0.076%) SMS
4 1 (0.076%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.076%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (21.00%) Power BI
2 255 (19.41%) Data Warehouse
3 201 (15.30%) Data Lake
4 123 (9.36%) Metadata
5 103 (7.84%) Big Data
6 90 (6.85%) SQL Server
7 87 (6.62%) Delta Lake
8 77 (5.86%) NoSQL
9 74 (5.63%) BigQuery
9 74 (5.63%) Tableau
10 72 (5.48%) Amazon Redshift
11 71 (5.40%) Snowflake Schema
12 65 (4.95%) Azure SQL Database
13 64 (4.87%) Amazon Athena
14 57 (4.34%) Relational Database
15 55 (4.19%) PostgreSQL
16 49 (3.73%) Hadoop
17 37 (2.82%) Spark SQL
18 36 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 29 (2.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 166 (12.63%) Git
2 61 (4.64%) GitLab
3 50 (3.81%) JIRA
4 45 (3.42%) MLflow
5 29 (2.21%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.38%) Selenium
8 3 (0.23%) Postman
8 3 (0.23%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.23%) Snyk
9 2 (0.15%) Artifactory
9 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.15%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.076%) Ant
10 1 (0.076%) ERwin
10 1 (0.076%) JUnit
10 1 (0.076%) Maven
10 1 (0.076%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.076%) SoapUI
General
1 327 (24.89%) Finance
2 302 (22.98%) Social Skills
3 195 (14.84%) Analytical Skills
4 114 (8.68%) Public Sector
5 80 (6.09%) Banking
6 26 (1.98%) Retail
7 24 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
7 24 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 23 (1.75%) Marketing
9 19 (1.45%) Front Office
10 17 (1.29%) Investment Banking
11 15 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 14 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.76%) Legal
15 8 (0.61%) Law
15 8 (0.61%) Military
16 6 (0.46%) Back Office
17 5 (0.38%) Billing
17 5 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 633 (48.17%) Data Engineer
2 175 (13.32%) Senior
3 141 (10.73%) Lead
4 132 (10.05%) Architect
5 115 (8.75%) Senior Data Engineer
6 79 (6.01%) Developer
7 68 (5.18%) Data Architect
8 61 (4.64%) AWS Engineer
9 60 (4.57%) Azure Engineer
10 57 (4.34%) Analyst
11 55 (4.19%) Lead Data Engineer
12 53 (4.03%) Azure Data Engineer
12 53 (4.03%) Snowflake Engineer
13 45 (3.42%) AWS Data Engineer
14 43 (3.27%) Data Scientist
14 43 (3.27%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 42 (3.20%) Solutions Architect
16 38 (2.89%) Consultant
17 36 (2.74%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 34 (2.59%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 213 (16.21%) PySpark
2 150 (11.42%) Kafka
3 60 (4.57%) Pandas
4 42 (3.20%) PyTorch
5 39 (2.97%) scikit-learn
6 37 (2.82%) NumPy
7 32 (2.44%) TensorFlow
8 28 (2.13%) REST
9 24 (1.83%) JSON
9 24 (1.83%) Spring
10 22 (1.67%) React
11 20 (1.52%) LangChain
11 20 (1.52%) RESTful
12 19 (1.45%) YAML
13 18 (1.37%) Great Expectations
13 18 (1.37%) pytest
14 17 (1.29%) FastAPI
14 17 (1.29%) Spring Boot
15 15 (1.14%) Flask
16 13 (0.99%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 173 (13.17%) Cloud Native
2 50 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
3 45 (3.42%) Product Ownership
4 42 (3.20%) Data Structures
4 42 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
5 31 (2.36%) Distributed Computing
6 29 (2.21%) AI Agents
6 29 (2.21%) Algorithms
7 27 (2.05%) Onboarding
8 22 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
9 21 (1.60%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.07%) Fixed Income
11 14 (1.07%) NHS
12 13 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
12 13 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (0.91%) Clustering
14 11 (0.84%) Reference Data
15 10 (0.76%) Equities
15 10 (0.76%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.21%) Linux
2 22 (1.67%) Unix
3 6 (0.46%) VMS
4 3 (0.23%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.076%) CentOS
6 1 (0.076%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 674 (51.29%) Analytics
2 606 (46.12%) Data Pipeline
3 518 (39.42%) Data Modelling
4 494 (37.60%) ETL
5 449 (34.17%) CI/CD
6 379 (28.84%) AI
7 339 (25.80%) Business Intelligence
8 325 (24.73%) Agile
9 320 (24.35%) DevOps
10 303 (23.06%) Data Governance
11 259 (19.71%) Machine Learning
12 232 (17.66%) Problem-Solving
13 229 (17.43%) Data Science
14 187 (14.23%) Data Architecture
15 174 (13.24%) Migration
16 170 (12.94%) Decision-Making
17 156 (11.87%) Validation
18 145 (11.04%) Infrastructure as Code
19 137 (10.43%) Data Integration
20 132 (10.05%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 728 (55.40%) SQL
2 698 (53.12%) Python
3 103 (7.84%) Java
4 60 (4.57%) Scala
5 45 (3.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.82%) C#
7 33 (2.51%) Bash
8 27 (2.05%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.67%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.67%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.60%) R
11 15 (1.14%) Bicep
12 13 (0.99%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.84%) TypeScript
15 8 (0.61%) Go
16 7 (0.53%) SAS Macro
17 4 (0.30%) Korn
18 2 (0.15%) C++
18 2 (0.15%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 256 (19.48%) Security Cleared
2 221 (16.82%) SC Cleared
3 99 (7.53%) Degree
4 40 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.89%) Master's Degree
6 34 (2.59%) Azure Certification
7 20 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.07%) DV Cleared
9 13 (0.99%) AWS Certification
10 9 (0.68%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.53%) SnowPro
12 6 (0.46%) PhD
13 5 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 3 (0.23%) IBM Certification
16 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
16 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
17 1 (0.076%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 1 (0.076%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (28.23%) Data Quality
2 88 (6.70%) GDPR
3 57 (4.34%) QA
4 12 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 10 (0.76%) SLA
6 8 (0.61%) Accessibility
7 6 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
8 4 (0.30%) MiFID
8 4 (0.30%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.23%) GRC
9 3 (0.23%) PMO
10 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.15%) EMIR
10 2 (0.15%) NIST
10 2 (0.15%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.15%) SNOMED CT
11 1 (0.076%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 129 (9.82%) Docker
2 5 (0.38%) HDFS
3 3 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.076%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.076%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 167 (12.71%) Terraform
2 118 (8.98%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 24 (1.83%) Grafana
5 12 (0.91%) Ansible
6 5 (0.38%) Argo
7 4 (0.30%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.23%) Kibana
8 3 (0.23%) Nagios
8 3 (0.23%) Rancher
9 2 (0.15%) Hadoop YARN
9 2 (0.15%) logstash
9 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.076%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.076%) Control-M
10 1 (0.076%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.076%) IBM Guardium
10 1 (0.076%) Oozie
Vendors
1 364 (27.70%) Databricks
2 213 (16.21%) Microsoft
3 63 (4.79%) Google
3 63 (4.79%) Informatica
4 45 (3.42%) Oracle
5 29 (2.21%) Talend
6 23 (1.75%) Foundry
7 22 (1.67%) OpenAI
7 22 (1.67%) SAP
8 19 (1.45%) Splunk
9 17 (1.29%) Palantir
10 15 (1.14%) Cloudera
11 13 (0.99%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.84%) Salesforce
13 9 (0.68%) UiPath
14 8 (0.61%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.61%) IBM
15 7 (0.53%) InterSystems
16 6 (0.46%) Denodo
17 5 (0.38%) Workday