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 12 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 156 202
Rank change year-on-year +67 +46 +3
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,583 600 475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 1.82% 1.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 2.01% 1.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,097 370 350
10th Percentile £400 £350 £389
25th Percentile £446 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £510 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.99% -11.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £531
% change year-on-year +8.11% -12.94% -3.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 7 8
10th Percentile - £37.48 £24.13
25th Percentile £21.25 £45.11 £26.22
Median hourly rate £66.25 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +26.19% -12.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £75.75 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £85.48 £96.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +34.75% -35.07% -23.08%

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 46,152 29,871 33,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.59% 90.49% 85.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,085 18,553 20,430
10th Percentile £325 £300 £311
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £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 3,056 1,793 1,507
10th Percentile £13.85 £14.23 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.44 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +1.92%
75th Percentile £67.50 £44.78 £65.00
90th Percentile £79.50 £67.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.03 £22.58 £43.00
% change year-on-year +77.32% -47.50% +7.50%

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 12 September 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 12 September 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 12 September 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 +57 1,410 £525 +0.96% 1,338
London +51 877 £550 - 896
UK excluding London +69 550 £500 +8.11% 641
Work from Home +67 516 £525 +5.00% 795
North of England +14 178 £475 - 144
Midlands +29 129 £486 +7.88% 71
West Midlands +25 105 £475 -6.31% 47
South East -10 92 £500 +13.64% 179
Yorkshire +20 89 £500 +5.26% 31
South West +21 75 £525 -3.45% 72
North West -25 56 £513 +8.47% 88
Scotland -5 50 £500 +7.82% 75
North East -14 35 £425 -20.93% 25
East of England -8 27 £550 +22.22% 54
East Midlands -6 21 £525 +20.62% 24
Wales - 7 £450 - 16
Northern Ireland +6 4 £334 - 31

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
1 191 (12.07%) Apache Airflow
2 168 (10.61%) Apache Spark
3 134 (8.46%) Apache
4 42 (2.65%) Confluence
5 37 (2.34%) SAS
6 21 (1.33%) Jupyter
7 17 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (0.95%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.44%) Apache Superset
10 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
11 5 (0.32%) Apache Solr
12 3 (0.19%) nginx
12 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
13 1 (0.063%) CICS
13 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.063%) GeoServer
13 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
13 1 (0.063%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 18 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.063%) Notion
Business Applications
1 9 (0.57%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
3 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
3 4 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.13%) Endur
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.063%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
6 1 (0.063%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.063%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 669 (42.26%) Azure
2 585 (36.96%) AWS
3 307 (19.39%) Power Platform
4 259 (16.36%) Snowflake
5 221 (13.96%) GCP
6 218 (13.77%) dbt
7 176 (11.12%) Azure Data Factory
8 171 (10.80%) Amazon S3
9 140 (8.84%) Serverless
10 139 (8.78%) Azure DevOps
11 134 (8.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 129 (8.15%) GitHub
13 115 (7.26%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (5.31%) Azure Databricks
15 67 (4.23%) GitHub Actions
16 50 (3.16%) Amazon EMR
17 36 (2.27%) Amazon Bedrock
18 35 (2.21%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 32 (2.02%) Azure AI
19 32 (2.02%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 4 (0.25%) Broadband
2 4 (0.25%) DNS
2 4 (0.25%) Network Security
3 1 (0.063%) Internet
3 1 (0.063%) MIMO
3 1 (0.063%) MQTT
3 1 (0.063%) RTP
3 1 (0.063%) SMS
3 1 (0.063%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 323 (20.40%) Data Warehouse
2 293 (18.51%) Power BI
3 218 (13.77%) Data Lake
4 183 (11.56%) Metadata
5 119 (7.52%) BigQuery
6 110 (6.95%) Delta Lake
7 103 (6.51%) Amazon Redshift
8 91 (5.75%) Big Data
9 75 (4.74%) Amazon Athena
9 75 (4.74%) Tableau
10 65 (4.11%) SQL Server
11 62 (3.92%) Snowflake Schema
12 56 (3.54%) Relational Database
13 49 (3.10%) PostgreSQL
14 46 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
15 43 (2.72%) NoSQL
16 40 (2.53%) Looker
17 33 (2.08%) Star Schema
18 32 (2.02%) Data Vault
19 29 (1.83%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 170 (10.74%) Git
2 89 (5.62%) GitLab
3 75 (4.74%) JIRA
4 29 (1.83%) MLflow
5 27 (1.71%) Jenkins
6 8 (0.51%) ERwin
6 8 (0.51%) RStudio
6 8 (0.51%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.44%) Bitbucket
7 7 (0.44%) Claude Code
8 6 (0.38%) Selenium
9 5 (0.32%) SonarQube
10 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
11 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
11 3 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 3 (0.19%) Snyk
12 2 (0.13%) Postman
12 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.13%) TeamCity
12 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 397 (25.08%) Social Skills
2 364 (22.99%) Finance
3 258 (16.30%) Analytical Skills
4 161 (10.17%) Public Sector
5 129 (8.15%) Banking
6 53 (3.35%) Marketing
7 36 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.21%) Retail
9 24 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (1.45%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.33%) Front Office
12 19 (1.20%) Law
12 19 (1.20%) Manufacturing
13 17 (1.07%) Pharmaceutical
14 16 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 14 (0.88%) Publishing
16 13 (0.82%) Police
17 12 (0.76%) Billing
17 12 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
18 11 (0.69%) Legal
Job Titles
1 739 (46.68%) Data Engineer
2 242 (15.29%) Senior
3 174 (10.99%) Lead
4 172 (10.87%) Architect
5 151 (9.54%) Senior Data Engineer
6 97 (6.13%) Data Architect
7 96 (6.06%) Developer
8 73 (4.61%) AWS Engineer
8 73 (4.61%) Databricks Engineer
9 68 (4.30%) Analyst
10 65 (4.11%) Snowflake Engineer
11 64 (4.04%) AWS Data Engineer
11 64 (4.04%) Azure Engineer
12 56 (3.54%) Databricks Data Engineer
13 53 (3.35%) Lead Data Engineer
14 48 (3.03%) Python Engineer
15 47 (2.97%) Consultant
15 47 (2.97%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 46 (2.91%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 45 (2.84%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (15.10%) PySpark
2 219 (13.83%) Terraform
3 115 (7.26%) Kafka
4 63 (3.98%) REST
5 36 (2.27%) JSON
6 33 (2.08%) React
7 27 (1.71%) .NET
8 25 (1.58%) Pandas
9 16 (1.01%) scikit-learn
9 16 (1.01%) XML
10 15 (0.95%) FastAPI
10 15 (0.95%) LangChain
10 15 (0.95%) NumPy
10 15 (0.95%) PyTorch
11 14 (0.88%) pytest
12 13 (0.82%) TensorFlow
13 12 (0.76%) RESTful
14 11 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
14 11 (0.69%) Spring
14 11 (0.69%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 201 (12.70%) Cloud Native
2 81 (5.12%) Data Structures
3 67 (4.23%) Onboarding
4 62 (3.92%) Product Ownership
5 58 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
6 49 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
7 48 (3.03%) AI Agents
8 21 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
9 20 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.26%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
11 18 (1.14%) NHS
12 17 (1.07%) Life Science
12 17 (1.07%) Virtual Team
13 16 (1.01%) Management Information System
14 15 (0.95%) Data Fabric
15 14 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (0.88%) Clustering
16 13 (0.82%) Algorithms
16 13 (0.82%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 33 (2.08%) Linux
2 28 (1.77%) Unix
3 7 (0.44%) Windows
4 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.063%) VMS
4 1 (0.063%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 775 (48.96%) Data Pipeline
2 751 (47.44%) Analytics
3 610 (38.53%) Data Modelling
4 560 (35.38%) CI/CD
5 551 (34.81%) ETL
6 481 (30.39%) AI
7 389 (24.57%) Agile
8 382 (24.13%) Business Intelligence
9 378 (23.88%) DevOps
10 365 (23.06%) Data Governance
11 278 (17.56%) Machine Learning
12 262 (16.55%) Stakeholder Management
13 257 (16.23%) Problem-Solving
14 256 (16.17%) Data Transformation
14 256 (16.17%) Migration
15 244 (15.41%) Data Architecture
16 242 (15.29%) Validation
17 231 (14.59%) Infrastructure as Code
18 229 (14.47%) Data Science
19 227 (14.34%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 852 (53.82%) SQL
2 822 (51.93%) Python
3 108 (6.82%) Java
4 46 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 44 (2.78%) Scala
6 42 (2.65%) PowerShell
7 34 (2.15%) C#
8 33 (2.08%) Bash
9 30 (1.90%) JavaScript
10 25 (1.58%) R
11 22 (1.39%) T-SQL
12 20 (1.26%) PL/SQL
13 15 (0.95%) Bicep
14 14 (0.88%) TypeScript
15 13 (0.82%) Shell Script
16 11 (0.69%) Kusto Query Language
17 10 (0.63%) SPARQL
18 9 (0.57%) SAS Macro
19 8 (0.51%) Cypher
20 7 (0.44%) LookML
Qualifications
1 313 (19.77%) Security Cleared
2 264 (16.68%) SC Cleared
3 83 (5.24%) Degree
4 39 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (2.15%) Azure Certification
6 33 (2.08%) DV Cleared
7 29 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
8 25 (1.58%) AWS Certification
9 21 (1.33%) Master's Degree
10 15 (0.95%) SnowPro
11 14 (0.88%) DBS Check
12 11 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.38%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) PMP
16 4 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 4 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
17 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 3 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (32.79%) Data Quality
2 79 (4.99%) QA
3 67 (4.23%) GDPR
4 29 (1.83%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.76%) SLA
6 5 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
6 5 (0.32%) PMO
7 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.19%) GRC
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.19%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) NIST
9 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.13%) COPPA
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) EU AI Act
9 2 (0.13%) NCSC
9 2 (0.13%) Solvency II
System Software
1 136 (8.59%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.063%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 109 (6.89%) Kubernetes
2 30 (1.90%) Grafana
3 25 (1.58%) Ansible
4 11 (0.69%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.51%) Control-M
6 6 (0.38%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Puppet
8 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
9 1 (0.063%) Cilium
9 1 (0.063%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.063%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.063%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.063%) Nagios
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.063%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 443 (27.98%) Databricks
2 282 (17.81%) Microsoft
3 79 (4.99%) Google
4 76 (4.80%) Informatica
5 72 (4.55%) Oracle
6 34 (2.15%) SAP
7 30 (1.90%) Salesforce
8 29 (1.83%) Foundry
9 27 (1.71%) Talend
10 25 (1.58%) Palantir
11 19 (1.20%) OpenAI
12 15 (0.95%) Cloudera
13 14 (0.88%) ServiceNow
13 14 (0.88%) Teradata
14 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
15 9 (0.57%) Adobe
16 8 (0.51%) Splunk
17 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
17 7 (0.44%) InterSystems
18 6 (0.38%) MicroStrategy