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 10 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 90 158 213
Rank change year-on-year +68 +55 -4
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,563 575 454
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.93% 1.73% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 1.92% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,077 364 336
10th Percentile £388 £363 £400
25th Percentile £440 £427 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £516 £575
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -10.22% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £639 £679
90th Percentile £750 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +5.82% -5.50% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 7 14
10th Percentile £21.25 £32.38 £24.32
25th Percentile £35.00 £45.11 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +50.00% -52.05%
75th Percentile £78.00 £76.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £96.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £31.98 £60.00
% change year-on-year +89.96% -46.70% -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 45,268 29,990 33,185
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.86% 90.46% 85.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,853 18,764 21,291
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £729 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,826 1,696 1,837
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.89 £17.30 £18.35
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.94
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -38.57% -3.67%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £42.50
% change year-on-year +94.26% -46.75% +13.33%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 1,404 £525 - 982
London +48 832 £550 - 624
UK excluding London +86 578 £500 +5.82% 476
Work from Home +75 506 £525 +5.00% 442
North of England +36 181 £463 -2.63% 163
Midlands +46 154 £486 +5.93% 40
West Midlands +43 129 £475 -0.63% 30
South East -24 91 £525 +11.94% 132
Yorkshire +21 86 £475 +2.70% 44
South West +17 78 £505 -12.17% 67
North West -10 58 £500 +5.26% 94
Scotland +13 47 £475 +1.06% 40
North East -8 39 £425 -20.93% 26
East of England -4 29 £575 +35.29% 11
East Midlands +2 22 £525 +14.38% 10
Wales - 7 £450 - 7
Northern Ireland +9 4 £334 - 19

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
1 185 (11.84%) Apache Spark
2 176 (11.26%) Apache Airflow
3 126 (8.06%) Apache
4 47 (3.01%) SAS
5 41 (2.62%) Confluence
6 23 (1.47%) Jupyter
7 20 (1.28%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
9 9 (0.58%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) ArcGIS
11 4 (0.26%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.064%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.064%) CICS
13 1 (0.064%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.064%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.064%) nginx
13 1 (0.064%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 21 (1.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.064%) Notion
Business Applications
1 13 (0.83%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.13%) Endur
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.064%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.064%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.064%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.064%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.064%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 653 (41.78%) Azure
2 585 (37.43%) AWS
3 325 (20.79%) Power Platform
4 250 (15.99%) Snowflake
5 209 (13.37%) GCP
6 195 (12.48%) dbt
7 169 (10.81%) Amazon S3
7 169 (10.81%) Azure Data Factory
8 146 (9.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 139 (8.89%) Azure DevOps
10 130 (8.32%) GitHub
11 126 (8.06%) Serverless
12 107 (6.85%) AWS Lambda
13 68 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
14 56 (3.58%) Amazon EMR
15 35 (2.24%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 30 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
16 30 (1.92%) Azure AI
17 29 (1.86%) Amazon Bedrock
17 29 (1.86%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 2 (0.13%) Broadband
2 2 (0.13%) Network Security
2 2 (0.13%) RTP
3 1 (0.064%) 4G
3 1 (0.064%) 5G
3 1 (0.064%) MIMO
3 1 (0.064%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (19.71%) Data Warehouse
2 306 (19.58%) Power BI
3 212 (13.56%) Data Lake
4 155 (9.92%) Metadata
5 107 (6.85%) Amazon Redshift
6 104 (6.65%) BigQuery
7 102 (6.53%) Big Data
8 101 (6.46%) Delta Lake
9 87 (5.57%) Tableau
10 76 (4.86%) Amazon Athena
11 71 (4.54%) SQL Server
12 64 (4.09%) Snowflake Schema
13 63 (4.03%) NoSQL
14 59 (3.77%) Relational Database
15 51 (3.26%) PostgreSQL
16 46 (2.94%) Azure SQL Database
17 39 (2.50%) Looker
18 38 (2.43%) Hadoop
19 36 (2.30%) Star Schema
20 32 (2.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 176 (11.26%) Git
2 83 (5.31%) GitLab
3 71 (4.54%) JIRA
4 27 (1.73%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.66%) MLflow
6 7 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.38%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.38%) ERwin
8 4 (0.26%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.19%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.064%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.064%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.064%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 388 (24.82%) Social Skills
2 361 (23.10%) Finance
3 254 (16.25%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (10.62%) Public Sector
5 119 (7.61%) Banking
6 45 (2.88%) Marketing
7 37 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.24%) Retail
9 31 (1.98%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.60%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.54%) Front Office
11 24 (1.54%) Investment Banking
12 16 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.96%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
15 12 (0.77%) Law
16 10 (0.64%) Legal
17 9 (0.58%) Back Office
17 9 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 724 (46.32%) Data Engineer
2 216 (13.82%) Senior
3 183 (11.71%) Lead
4 177 (11.32%) Architect
5 130 (8.32%) Senior Data Engineer
6 96 (6.14%) Developer
7 94 (6.01%) Data Architect
8 83 (5.31%) AWS Engineer
9 73 (4.67%) Analyst
10 68 (4.35%) AWS Data Engineer
11 62 (3.97%) Azure Engineer
11 62 (3.97%) Snowflake Engineer
12 61 (3.90%) Lead Data Engineer
13 53 (3.39%) Azure Data Engineer
14 49 (3.13%) Python Engineer
15 47 (3.01%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 46 (2.94%) Solutions Architect
17 44 (2.82%) Consultant
17 44 (2.82%) Data Analyst
18 41 (2.62%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (14.52%) PySpark
2 131 (8.38%) Kafka
3 41 (2.62%) REST
4 33 (2.11%) Pandas
5 30 (1.92%) JSON
6 27 (1.73%) React
7 25 (1.60%) scikit-learn
8 23 (1.47%) PyTorch
9 22 (1.41%) Spring
10 20 (1.28%) .NET
10 20 (1.28%) NumPy
11 19 (1.22%) TensorFlow
12 15 (0.96%) RESTful
12 15 (0.96%) Spring Boot
13 11 (0.70%) Apache Avro
13 11 (0.70%) FastAPI
13 11 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
13 11 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
14 10 (0.64%) pytest
14 10 (0.64%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 209 (13.37%) Cloud Native
2 73 (4.67%) Data Structures
3 63 (4.03%) Distributed Systems
4 62 (3.97%) Legacy Systems
5 61 (3.90%) Product Ownership
6 44 (2.82%) Onboarding
7 33 (2.11%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
10 22 (1.41%) Algorithms
11 20 (1.28%) NHS
12 19 (1.22%) Distributed Computing
13 17 (1.09%) Clustering
13 17 (1.09%) Virtual Team
14 16 (1.02%) Life Science
15 15 (0.96%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (0.83%) Management Information System
17 12 (0.77%) Fixed Income
17 12 (0.77%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 36 (2.30%) Linux
2 30 (1.92%) Unix
3 8 (0.51%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.064%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.064%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 784 (50.16%) Analytics
2 755 (48.30%) Data Pipeline
3 603 (38.58%) Data Modelling
4 549 (35.12%) CI/CD
5 538 (34.42%) ETL
6 436 (27.90%) AI
7 400 (25.59%) Agile
8 393 (25.14%) Business Intelligence
9 379 (24.25%) DevOps
10 351 (22.46%) Data Governance
11 278 (17.79%) Machine Learning
12 262 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
13 248 (15.87%) Data Science
14 234 (14.97%) Migration
15 232 (14.84%) Decision-Making
16 224 (14.33%) Validation
17 220 (14.08%) Data Architecture
18 215 (13.76%) Stakeholder Management
19 213 (13.63%) Data Transformation
20 194 (12.41%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 845 (54.06%) SQL
2 795 (50.86%) Python
3 118 (7.55%) Java
4 45 (2.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 44 (2.82%) Bash
6 42 (2.69%) Scala
7 36 (2.30%) PowerShell
8 34 (2.18%) C#
9 26 (1.66%) T-SQL
10 23 (1.47%) JavaScript
11 21 (1.34%) R
12 18 (1.15%) Bicep
13 17 (1.09%) PL/SQL
14 14 (0.90%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.77%) SAS Macro
16 9 (0.58%) TypeScript
17 8 (0.51%) Kusto Query Language
17 8 (0.51%) SPARQL
18 7 (0.45%) Cypher
19 5 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 307 (19.64%) Security Cleared
2 262 (16.76%) SC Cleared
3 100 (6.40%) Degree
4 51 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
5 36 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 32 (2.05%) Azure Certification
7 26 (1.66%) DV Cleared
7 26 (1.66%) Master's Degree
8 19 (1.22%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.83%) DBS Check
10 11 (0.70%) SnowPro
11 9 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.32%) CSPO
14 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
15 3 (0.19%) PhD
16 2 (0.13%) CCSP
16 2 (0.13%) Cisco Certification
16 2 (0.13%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 463 (29.62%) Data Quality
2 80 (5.12%) QA
3 79 (5.05%) GDPR
4 22 (1.41%) Accessibility
5 13 (0.83%) SLA
6 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.26%) NIST
7 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.19%) GxP
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.19%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) PMO
9 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.13%) COPPA
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 136 (8.70%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.064%) HDFS
4 1 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 202 (12.92%) Terraform
2 115 (7.36%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.79%) Grafana
4 21 (1.34%) Prometheus
5 19 (1.22%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Control-M
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.064%) Cilium
9 1 (0.064%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.064%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.064%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.064%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.064%) Nagios
9 1 (0.064%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.064%) QRadar
9 1 (0.064%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 405 (25.91%) Databricks
2 273 (17.47%) Microsoft
3 81 (5.18%) Informatica
4 70 (4.48%) Google
5 65 (4.16%) Oracle
6 36 (2.30%) SAP
7 32 (2.05%) Talend
8 31 (1.98%) Foundry
9 29 (1.86%) Palantir
10 25 (1.60%) Salesforce
11 20 (1.28%) Splunk
12 19 (1.22%) OpenAI
13 18 (1.15%) Cloudera
14 15 (0.96%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.77%) Trend Micro
16 9 (0.58%) Workday
17 8 (0.51%) Denodo
17 8 (0.51%) Teradata
18 7 (0.45%) Adobe
18 7 (0.45%) InterSystems