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 25 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 154 199
Rank change year-on-year +67 +45 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,479 531 514
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 1.76% 1.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.42% 1.94% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,021 355 383
10th Percentile £386 £370 £365
25th Percentile £440 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £663
90th Percentile £738 £825 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £511
% change year-on-year +5.26% -7.05% -9.16%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 7 15
10th Percentile £45.85 £24.75 £30.72
25th Percentile £55.88 £28.13 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.44 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.23% +11.31% -52.05%
75th Percentile £76.50 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.50 £58.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £28.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +140.00% -52.08% -17.81%

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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +17.29%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 +73 1,313 £525 -2.55% 403
London +57 789 £550 -2.22% 234
UK excluding London +69 544 £500 +5.26% 278
Work from Home +72 480 £525 - 191
North of England +21 167 £475 -5.00% 69
Midlands +23 133 £500 +8.11% 39
West Midlands +29 113 £486 -16.16% 26
South West +17 81 £500 -11.11% 31
South East -20 76 £525 +5.00% 110
Yorkshire -4 73 £480 +3.78% 13
Scotland +22 58 £475 - 11
North West -6 58 £500 - 43
North East -2 38 £425 -15.00% 13
East of England -16 25 £575 +71.29% 13
East Midlands -11 17 £525 +13.51% 13
Wales -4 10 £450 +75.14% 6
Northern Ireland - 5 £334 - 4

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
1 195 (13.18%) Apache Spark
2 170 (11.49%) Apache Airflow
3 112 (7.57%) Apache
4 44 (2.97%) SAS
5 38 (2.57%) Confluence
6 23 (1.56%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 12 (0.81%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.47%) Apache Superset
9 7 (0.47%) Appian
10 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.068%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.068%) Camunda
13 1 (0.068%) CICS
13 1 (0.068%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.068%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 26 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.068%) Notion
7 1 (0.068%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.47%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
3 5 (0.34%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.20%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.14%) Endur
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.14%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.068%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.068%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.068%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.068%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.068%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 635 (42.93%) Azure
2 562 (38.00%) AWS
3 336 (22.72%) Power Platform
4 217 (14.67%) Snowflake
5 201 (13.59%) GCP
6 178 (12.04%) Amazon S3
7 172 (11.63%) Azure Data Factory
8 164 (11.09%) dbt
9 134 (9.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 130 (8.79%) GitHub
11 126 (8.52%) Serverless
12 122 (8.25%) Azure DevOps
13 110 (7.44%) AWS Lambda
14 75 (5.07%) GitHub Actions
15 59 (3.99%) Amazon EMR
16 42 (2.84%) AWS CloudFormation
17 34 (2.30%) Azure AI
18 32 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 29 (1.96%) Amazon SageMaker
20 28 (1.89%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.34%) Firewall
1 5 (0.34%) RTP
2 2 (0.14%) Network Security
3 1 (0.068%) 4G
3 1 (0.068%) 5G
3 1 (0.068%) MIMO
3 1 (0.068%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (21.03%) Power BI
2 280 (18.93%) Data Warehouse
3 220 (14.87%) Data Lake
4 142 (9.60%) Metadata
5 116 (7.84%) Big Data
6 108 (7.30%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (6.15%) Delta Lake
8 89 (6.02%) SQL Server
9 86 (5.81%) BigQuery
10 82 (5.54%) Tableau
11 79 (5.34%) Amazon Athena
12 72 (4.87%) Snowflake Schema
13 71 (4.80%) NoSQL
14 60 (4.06%) Relational Database
15 57 (3.85%) PostgreSQL
16 50 (3.38%) Azure SQL Database
16 50 (3.38%) Hadoop
17 35 (2.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 34 (2.30%) Star Schema
19 31 (2.10%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 173 (11.70%) Git
2 81 (5.48%) GitLab
3 69 (4.67%) JIRA
4 35 (2.37%) MLflow
5 20 (1.35%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.41%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.27%) Postman
7 4 (0.27%) Selenium
8 3 (0.20%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.20%) Snyk
8 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.14%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.14%) ERwin
9 2 (0.14%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.14%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.068%) Deequ
10 1 (0.068%) git-flow
10 1 (0.068%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.068%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 374 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 352 (23.80%) Finance
3 224 (15.15%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (10.62%) Public Sector
5 109 (7.37%) Banking
6 39 (2.64%) Marketing
7 35 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
7 35 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.23%) Retail
9 19 (1.28%) Telecoms
10 18 (1.22%) Front Office
10 18 (1.22%) Investment Banking
11 14 (0.95%) Financial Institution
12 12 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
12 12 (0.81%) Law
12 12 (0.81%) Manufacturing
13 11 (0.74%) Legal
14 8 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
15 7 (0.47%) Billing
16 5 (0.34%) Military
Job Titles
1 683 (46.18%) Data Engineer
2 215 (14.54%) Senior
3 170 (11.49%) Architect
4 163 (11.02%) Lead
5 127 (8.59%) Senior Data Engineer
6 90 (6.09%) Data Architect
7 81 (5.48%) Developer
8 75 (5.07%) AWS Engineer
9 68 (4.60%) Analyst
10 64 (4.33%) Lead Data Engineer
11 58 (3.92%) AWS Data Engineer
12 55 (3.72%) Snowflake Engineer
13 50 (3.38%) Azure Engineer
14 49 (3.31%) Data Scientist
15 48 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
16 45 (3.04%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 44 (2.97%) Azure Data Engineer
17 44 (2.97%) Snowflake Data Engineer
18 43 (2.91%) Python Engineer
19 42 (2.84%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 226 (15.28%) PySpark
2 140 (9.47%) Kafka
3 47 (3.18%) Pandas
4 43 (2.91%) REST
5 36 (2.43%) scikit-learn
6 35 (2.37%) PyTorch
7 30 (2.03%) JSON
7 30 (2.03%) NumPy
8 27 (1.83%) TensorFlow
9 25 (1.69%) Spring
10 24 (1.62%) React
11 18 (1.22%) RESTful
11 18 (1.22%) Spring Boot
12 17 (1.15%) FastAPI
13 16 (1.08%) .NET
14 15 (1.01%) YAML
15 14 (0.95%) LangChain
15 14 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
15 14 (0.95%) pytest
15 14 (0.95%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 200 (13.52%) Cloud Native
2 61 (4.12%) Data Structures
3 60 (4.06%) Distributed Systems
4 55 (3.72%) Legacy Systems
5 51 (3.45%) Product Ownership
6 36 (2.43%) Onboarding
7 34 (2.30%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.83%) Distributed Computing
9 24 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
10 23 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
11 22 (1.49%) Algorithms
12 21 (1.42%) NHS
13 20 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
14 17 (1.15%) Virtual Team
15 16 (1.08%) Clustering
16 14 (0.95%) Fixed Income
16 14 (0.95%) Management Information System
17 13 (0.88%) Reference Data
17 13 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
18 11 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.96%) Linux
2 25 (1.69%) Unix
3 5 (0.34%) VMS
4 3 (0.20%) Windows
5 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.068%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 771 (52.13%) Analytics
2 704 (47.60%) Data Pipeline
3 567 (38.34%) Data Modelling
4 537 (36.31%) CI/CD
5 520 (35.16%) ETL
6 444 (30.02%) AI
7 387 (26.17%) Business Intelligence
8 379 (25.63%) Agile
9 368 (24.88%) DevOps
10 324 (21.91%) Data Governance
11 289 (19.54%) Machine Learning
12 267 (18.05%) Problem-Solving
13 263 (17.78%) Data Science
14 207 (14.00%) Decision-Making
15 206 (13.93%) Data Architecture
15 206 (13.93%) Migration
16 202 (13.66%) Validation
17 175 (11.83%) Infrastructure as Code
17 175 (11.83%) Stakeholder Management
18 170 (11.49%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 808 (54.63%) SQL
2 791 (53.48%) Python
3 118 (7.98%) Java
4 47 (3.18%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 42 (2.84%) Scala
6 36 (2.43%) Bash
6 36 (2.43%) C#
7 26 (1.76%) T-SQL
8 25 (1.69%) PowerShell
9 21 (1.42%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.35%) R
11 18 (1.22%) Bicep
12 16 (1.08%) PL/SQL
13 13 (0.88%) TypeScript
14 12 (0.81%) Shell Script
15 11 (0.74%) SAS Macro
16 6 (0.41%) SPARQL
17 5 (0.34%) Cypher
17 5 (0.34%) Korn
17 5 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 281 (19.00%) Security Cleared
2 249 (16.84%) SC Cleared
3 109 (7.37%) Degree
4 46 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.57%) Master's Degree
6 35 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 32 (2.16%) Azure Certification
8 20 (1.35%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.95%) DV Cleared
10 13 (0.88%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 9 (0.61%) SnowPro
13 6 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.34%) CSPO
15 3 (0.20%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.20%) PhD
16 2 (0.14%) PMI Certification
16 2 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
17 1 (0.068%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 431 (29.14%) Data Quality
2 91 (6.15%) GDPR
3 68 (4.60%) QA
4 15 (1.01%) SLA
5 9 (0.61%) Accessibility
6 8 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.27%) MiFID
8 4 (0.27%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.20%) GRC
9 3 (0.20%) GxP
9 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.20%) NIST
10 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.14%) COPPA
10 2 (0.14%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 135 (9.13%) Docker
2 3 (0.20%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 201 (13.59%) Terraform
2 113 (7.64%) Kubernetes
3 27 (1.83%) Grafana
4 26 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.61%) Ansible
6 4 (0.27%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Argo
7 3 (0.20%) Nagios
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.14%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.14%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.068%) Control-M
9 1 (0.068%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.068%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.068%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.068%) Oozie
Vendors
1 391 (26.44%) Databricks
2 256 (17.31%) Microsoft
3 84 (5.68%) Informatica
4 60 (4.06%) Oracle
5 57 (3.85%) Google
6 32 (2.16%) Talend
7 29 (1.96%) OpenAI
8 27 (1.83%) Foundry
9 26 (1.76%) Palantir
9 26 (1.76%) SAP
10 24 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.49%) Splunk
12 16 (1.08%) ServiceNow
13 15 (1.01%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.81%) Trend Micro
15 8 (0.54%) Denodo
15 8 (0.54%) UiPath
16 7 (0.47%) Automation Anywhere
16 7 (0.47%) InterSystems
17 6 (0.41%) Teradata