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 11 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 156 209
Rank change year-on-year +70 +53 +4
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,544 577 502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.92% 1.78% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 1.97% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,076 383 372
10th Percentile £381 £363 £363
25th Percentile £440 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £678
90th Percentile £749 £800 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 7 15
10th Percentile £46.53 £24.75 £30.72
25th Percentile £56.31 £28.13 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.72 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.95% +11.31% -52.05%
75th Percentile £75.75 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.25 £58.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £28.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +140.77% -52.08% +11.11%

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 45,068 29,357 36,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.21% 90.46% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,042 18,505 23,449
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £415 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.40% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £624 £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 2,667 1,497 2,458
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.01 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -4.70%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.75 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £24.66 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.45% -35.31% -2.91%

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 11 July 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 11 July 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 11 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 +74 1,372 £525 - 455
London +56 806 £550 - 273
UK excluding London +70 584 £500 +5.26% 253
Work from Home +71 499 £525 - 200
North of England +28 176 £475 -5.00% 80
Midlands +32 147 £475 +2.70% 38
West Midlands +27 124 £475 +10.21% 24
South West +29 87 £503 -12.61% 28
South East -21 80 £525 +10.53% 82
Yorkshire +5 78 £490 +5.95% 21
Scotland +27 60 £500 +5.26% 7
North West -18 59 £500 - 42
North East +3 41 £425 -15.00% 18
East of England -12 29 £575 +71.29% 8
East Midlands -11 20 £525 +13.51% 14
Wales -5 11 £450 +82.58% 4
Northern Ireland - 5 £334 - 10

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
1 197 (12.76%) Apache Spark
2 179 (11.59%) Apache Airflow
3 122 (7.90%) Apache
4 47 (3.04%) SAS
5 44 (2.85%) Confluence
6 23 (1.49%) Jupyter
7 19 (1.23%) Palantir Foundry
8 12 (0.78%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.52%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
11 4 (0.26%) Appian
12 3 (0.19%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.13%) Apache Synapse
14 1 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 1 (0.065%) Camunda
14 1 (0.065%) CICS
14 1 (0.065%) IBM HTTP Server
14 1 (0.065%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 27 (1.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
4 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.19%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 10 (0.65%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (0.39%) Salesforce CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.26%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.13%) Endur
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.065%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.065%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.065%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.065%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.065%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 661 (42.81%) Azure
2 585 (37.89%) AWS
3 334 (21.63%) Power Platform
4 224 (14.51%) Snowflake
5 206 (13.34%) GCP
6 186 (12.05%) Amazon S3
7 179 (11.59%) dbt
8 173 (11.20%) Azure Data Factory
9 143 (9.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 136 (8.81%) Serverless
11 127 (8.23%) GitHub
12 126 (8.16%) Azure DevOps
13 117 (7.58%) AWS Lambda
14 73 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
15 60 (3.89%) Amazon EMR
16 40 (2.59%) AWS CloudFormation
17 35 (2.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (2.14%) Azure AI
19 31 (2.01%) AWS Step Functions
20 30 (1.94%) Amazon SageMaker
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
1 5 (0.32%) RTP
2 2 (0.13%) Network Security
3 1 (0.065%) 4G
3 1 (0.065%) 5G
3 1 (0.065%) MIMO
3 1 (0.065%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (19.88%) Power BI
2 291 (18.85%) Data Warehouse
3 217 (14.05%) Data Lake
4 149 (9.65%) Metadata
5 116 (7.51%) Big Data
6 110 (7.12%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (5.89%) BigQuery
7 91 (5.89%) Delta Lake
8 87 (5.63%) Tableau
9 81 (5.25%) Amazon Athena
10 80 (5.18%) SQL Server
11 71 (4.60%) NoSQL
11 71 (4.60%) Snowflake Schema
12 60 (3.89%) PostgreSQL
12 60 (3.89%) Relational Database
13 50 (3.24%) Hadoop
14 48 (3.11%) Azure SQL Database
15 35 (2.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 35 (2.27%) Star Schema
16 31 (2.01%) Looker
Development Applications
1 176 (11.40%) Git
2 79 (5.12%) GitLab
3 75 (4.86%) JIRA
4 35 (2.27%) MLflow
5 21 (1.36%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.39%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.26%) Postman
8 4 (0.26%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.13%) ERwin
10 2 (0.13%) Robot Framework
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.065%) Deequ
11 1 (0.065%) git-flow
11 1 (0.065%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.065%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 384 (24.87%) Social Skills
2 360 (23.32%) Finance
3 248 (16.06%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (10.82%) Public Sector
5 116 (7.51%) Banking
6 41 (2.66%) Marketing
7 39 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 37 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 33 (2.14%) Retail
10 22 (1.42%) Front Office
10 22 (1.42%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.36%) Telecoms
12 15 (0.97%) Financial Institution
13 14 (0.91%) Manufacturing
14 13 (0.84%) Law
15 11 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
15 11 (0.71%) Legal
16 10 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
17 9 (0.58%) Billing
18 6 (0.39%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 721 (46.70%) Data Engineer
2 222 (14.38%) Senior
3 173 (11.20%) Architect
4 170 (11.01%) Lead
5 131 (8.48%) Senior Data Engineer
6 97 (6.28%) Developer
7 94 (6.09%) Data Architect
8 82 (5.31%) AWS Engineer
9 72 (4.66%) Analyst
10 67 (4.34%) Lead Data Engineer
11 63 (4.08%) AWS Data Engineer
12 59 (3.82%) Azure Engineer
12 59 (3.82%) Snowflake Engineer
13 53 (3.43%) Azure Data Engineer
14 50 (3.24%) Data Scientist
15 47 (3.04%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 47 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
16 46 (2.98%) Python Engineer
17 45 (2.91%) Consultant
18 43 (2.78%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (14.96%) PySpark
2 149 (9.65%) Kafka
3 42 (2.72%) Pandas
4 39 (2.53%) REST
5 33 (2.14%) JSON
6 32 (2.07%) scikit-learn
7 29 (1.88%) PyTorch
8 27 (1.75%) NumPy
9 26 (1.68%) Spring
10 24 (1.55%) React
11 23 (1.49%) TensorFlow
12 19 (1.23%) Spring Boot
13 17 (1.10%) .NET
13 17 (1.10%) RESTful
14 15 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
14 15 (0.97%) YAML
15 14 (0.91%) FastAPI
16 13 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
16 13 (0.84%) XML
17 12 (0.78%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 212 (13.73%) Cloud Native
2 64 (4.15%) Data Structures
3 61 (3.95%) Legacy Systems
4 58 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
5 50 (3.24%) Product Ownership
6 43 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 36 (2.33%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (1.68%) Distributed Computing
10 25 (1.62%) Algorithms
11 23 (1.49%) NHS
12 22 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 17 (1.10%) Clustering
16 15 (0.97%) Fixed Income
16 15 (0.97%) Management Information System
17 13 (0.84%) Life Science
17 13 (0.84%) Reference Data
17 13 (0.84%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.88%) Linux
2 25 (1.62%) Unix
3 5 (0.32%) VMS
4 3 (0.19%) Windows
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 804 (52.07%) Analytics
2 747 (48.38%) Data Pipeline
3 599 (38.80%) Data Modelling
4 556 (36.01%) CI/CD
5 537 (34.78%) ETL
6 445 (28.82%) AI
7 388 (25.13%) Agile
7 388 (25.13%) Business Intelligence
8 376 (24.35%) DevOps
9 340 (22.02%) Data Governance
10 298 (19.30%) Machine Learning
11 278 (18.01%) Problem-Solving
12 275 (17.81%) Data Science
13 222 (14.38%) Migration
14 218 (14.12%) Data Architecture
14 218 (14.12%) Decision-Making
14 218 (14.12%) Validation
15 194 (12.56%) Infrastructure as Code
16 184 (11.92%) Stakeholder Management
17 178 (11.53%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 842 (54.53%) SQL
2 818 (52.98%) Python
3 128 (8.29%) Java
4 46 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 42 (2.72%) Scala
6 37 (2.40%) Bash
6 37 (2.40%) C#
7 24 (1.55%) T-SQL
8 23 (1.49%) PowerShell
9 22 (1.42%) R
10 21 (1.36%) JavaScript
11 18 (1.17%) Bicep
12 15 (0.97%) PL/SQL
13 13 (0.84%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.84%) TypeScript
14 12 (0.78%) SAS Macro
15 7 (0.45%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.39%) Cypher
17 5 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
18 4 (0.26%) Korn
Qualifications
1 303 (19.62%) Security Cleared
2 262 (16.97%) SC Cleared
3 117 (7.58%) Degree
4 49 (3.17%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 38 (2.46%) Master's Degree
6 32 (2.07%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.62%) DV Cleared
8 21 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.84%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.58%) SnowPro
11 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.32%) CSPO
14 3 (0.19%) IBM Certification
14 3 (0.19%) PhD
14 3 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
15 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.065%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 451 (29.21%) Data Quality
2 94 (6.09%) GDPR
3 77 (4.99%) QA
4 19 (1.23%) Accessibility
5 15 (0.97%) SLA
6 6 (0.39%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.26%) MiFID
7 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.19%) GRC
8 3 (0.19%) GxP
8 3 (0.19%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.19%) NIST
8 3 (0.19%) PMO
9 2 (0.13%) COPPA
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 138 (8.94%) Docker
2 3 (0.19%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 211 (13.67%) Terraform
2 116 (7.51%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.81%) Grafana
4 27 (1.75%) Prometheus
5 11 (0.71%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Argo
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 3 (0.19%) Nagios
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.065%) Control-M
9 1 (0.065%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.065%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.065%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.065%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.065%) Oozie
9 1 (0.065%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 402 (26.04%) Databricks
2 264 (17.10%) Microsoft
3 87 (5.63%) Informatica
4 60 (3.89%) Google
4 60 (3.89%) Oracle
5 32 (2.07%) Talend
6 30 (1.94%) Foundry
6 30 (1.94%) SAP
7 27 (1.75%) OpenAI
7 27 (1.75%) Palantir
8 25 (1.62%) Salesforce
9 22 (1.42%) Splunk
10 15 (0.97%) Cloudera
10 15 (0.97%) ServiceNow
11 12 (0.78%) Trend Micro
12 8 (0.52%) Adobe
12 8 (0.52%) Denodo
13 7 (0.45%) InterSystems
14 6 (0.39%) Bloomberg
14 6 (0.39%) Teradata