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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 161 207
Rank change year-on-year +70 +46 +1
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,575 573 468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.94% 1.77% 1.23%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.47% 1.96% 1.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,091 357 343
10th Percentile £400 £363 £363
25th Percentile £449 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £560
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -8.04% -6.67%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £738 £754 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 7 9
10th Percentile £21.25 £37.48 £28.55
25th Percentile £28.25 £45.11 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.00 £52.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.43% -12.50% -23.08%
75th Percentile £76.50 £76.25 -
90th Percentile £87.05 £96.50 £61.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £67.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +73.25% -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 45,398 29,222 32,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,158 20,413
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £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 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,911 1,744 1,558
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.18 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 +74 1,409 £525 - 1,575
London +50 873 £550 - 1,060
UK excluding London +77 543 £500 +6.38% 773
Work from Home +68 514 £525 +5.00% 667
North of England +22 175 £475 - 211
Midlands +37 135 £484 +7.33% 67
West Midlands +34 111 £475 -6.31% 48
South East -16 91 £500 +11.11% 179
Yorkshire +16 84 £475 - 36
South West +15 72 £525 -8.70% 98
North West -18 57 £513 +5.13% 147
Scotland -7 45 £513 +10.51% 98
North East -5 36 £425 -20.93% 28
East of England -2 27 £575 +27.78% 55
East Midlands -11 21 £525 +20.62% 19
Wales - 6 £450 - 21
Northern Ireland +7 4 £334 - 44

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
1 189 (12.00%) Apache Airflow
2 168 (10.67%) Apache Spark
3 132 (8.38%) Apache
4 41 (2.60%) Confluence
5 39 (2.48%) SAS
6 21 (1.33%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.14%) Palantir Foundry
8 14 (0.89%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.44%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.32%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.13%) nginx
13 1 (0.063%) Apache Synapse
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%) 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 6 (0.38%) 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
Cloud Services
1 666 (42.29%) Azure
2 585 (37.14%) AWS
3 311 (19.75%) Power Platform
4 260 (16.51%) Snowflake
5 216 (13.71%) GCP
6 214 (13.59%) dbt
7 176 (11.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 169 (10.73%) Amazon S3
9 143 (9.08%) Azure DevOps
10 137 (8.70%) Serverless
11 135 (8.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 130 (8.25%) GitHub
13 112 (7.11%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (5.21%) Azure Databricks
15 66 (4.19%) GitHub Actions
16 51 (3.24%) Amazon EMR
17 34 (2.16%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (2.10%) Amazon Bedrock
19 32 (2.03%) Microsoft Purview
20 29 (1.84%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 4 (0.25%) Broadband
2 4 (0.25%) Network Security
3 3 (0.19%) DNS
4 2 (0.13%) RTP
5 1 (0.063%) Internet
5 1 (0.063%) MIMO
5 1 (0.063%) MQTT
5 1 (0.063%) SMS
5 1 (0.063%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 324 (20.57%) Data Warehouse
2 298 (18.92%) Power BI
3 218 (13.84%) Data Lake
4 178 (11.30%) Metadata
5 114 (7.24%) BigQuery
6 107 (6.79%) Delta Lake
7 105 (6.67%) Amazon Redshift
8 93 (5.90%) Big Data
9 77 (4.89%) Tableau
10 74 (4.70%) Amazon Athena
11 67 (4.25%) SQL Server
12 62 (3.94%) Snowflake Schema
13 58 (3.68%) Relational Database
14 49 (3.11%) NoSQL
15 48 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
16 46 (2.92%) Azure SQL Database
17 40 (2.54%) Looker
18 35 (2.22%) Data Vault
19 34 (2.16%) Star Schema
20 29 (1.84%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 169 (10.73%) Git
2 86 (5.46%) GitLab
3 75 (4.76%) JIRA
4 28 (1.78%) MLflow
5 26 (1.65%) Jenkins
6 8 (0.51%) ERwin
6 8 (0.51%) RStudio
6 8 (0.51%) Terragrunt
7 6 (0.38%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.38%) Selenium
8 5 (0.32%) Claude Code
8 5 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
10 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.19%) Snyk
10 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.13%) Postman
11 2 (0.13%) TeamCity
11 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 394 (25.02%) Social Skills
2 359 (22.79%) Finance
3 259 (16.44%) Analytical Skills
4 161 (10.22%) Public Sector
5 122 (7.75%) Banking
6 54 (3.43%) Marketing
7 37 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.22%) Retail
9 26 (1.65%) Documentation Skills
10 23 (1.46%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.33%) Front Office
12 19 (1.21%) Law
12 19 (1.21%) Telecoms
13 17 (1.08%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
15 13 (0.83%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.76%) Billing
16 12 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
16 12 (0.76%) Police
17 11 (0.70%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 736 (46.73%) Data Engineer
2 242 (15.37%) Senior
3 175 (11.11%) Architect
4 172 (10.92%) Lead
5 148 (9.40%) Senior Data Engineer
6 97 (6.16%) Data Architect
7 96 (6.10%) Developer
8 73 (4.63%) AWS Engineer
9 70 (4.44%) Databricks Engineer
10 68 (4.32%) Analyst
11 65 (4.13%) Snowflake Engineer
12 63 (4.00%) AWS Data Engineer
13 62 (3.94%) Azure Engineer
14 54 (3.43%) Databricks Data Engineer
14 54 (3.43%) Lead Data Engineer
15 49 (3.11%) Python Engineer
16 47 (2.98%) Snowflake Data Engineer
17 46 (2.92%) Azure Data Engineer
17 46 (2.92%) Consultant
18 43 (2.73%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 234 (14.86%) PySpark
2 213 (13.52%) Terraform
3 120 (7.62%) Kafka
4 62 (3.94%) REST
5 36 (2.29%) JSON
6 33 (2.10%) React
7 26 (1.65%) .NET
7 26 (1.65%) Pandas
8 19 (1.21%) PyTorch
9 18 (1.14%) scikit-learn
10 17 (1.08%) TensorFlow
11 16 (1.02%) NumPy
11 16 (1.02%) Spring
11 16 (1.02%) XML
12 14 (0.89%) LangChain
12 14 (0.89%) pytest
13 13 (0.83%) FastAPI
14 11 (0.70%) Great Expectations
14 11 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
14 11 (0.70%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 203 (12.89%) Cloud Native
2 77 (4.89%) Data Structures
3 63 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
3 63 (4.00%) Onboarding
4 60 (3.81%) Product Ownership
5 54 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
6 45 (2.86%) AI Agents
7 23 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
8 21 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
9 18 (1.14%) Distributed Computing
9 18 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
10 17 (1.08%) NHS
11 16 (1.02%) Algorithms
11 16 (1.02%) Virtual Team
12 15 (0.95%) Clustering
12 15 (0.95%) Life Science
12 15 (0.95%) Management Information System
13 14 (0.89%) Analytical Mindset
13 14 (0.89%) Marketing Technology
14 12 (0.76%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 35 (2.22%) Linux
2 31 (1.97%) Unix
3 8 (0.51%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.063%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 765 (48.57%) Data Pipeline
2 759 (48.19%) Analytics
3 604 (38.35%) Data Modelling
4 553 (35.11%) CI/CD
5 543 (34.48%) ETL
6 467 (29.65%) AI
7 391 (24.83%) Agile
8 388 (24.63%) Business Intelligence
9 371 (23.56%) DevOps
10 364 (23.11%) Data Governance
11 274 (17.40%) Machine Learning
12 258 (16.38%) Problem-Solving
13 256 (16.25%) Migration
14 249 (15.81%) Data Transformation
15 245 (15.56%) Stakeholder Management
16 238 (15.11%) Data Architecture
17 235 (14.92%) Validation
18 233 (14.79%) Data Science
19 222 (14.10%) Decision-Making
20 219 (13.90%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 849 (53.90%) SQL
2 809 (51.37%) Python
3 111 (7.05%) Java
4 48 (3.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 44 (2.79%) Scala
6 41 (2.60%) PowerShell
7 37 (2.35%) Bash
8 33 (2.10%) C#
9 27 (1.71%) JavaScript
10 24 (1.52%) R
11 22 (1.40%) T-SQL
12 20 (1.27%) PL/SQL
13 15 (0.95%) Bicep
13 15 (0.95%) Shell Script
14 12 (0.76%) TypeScript
15 11 (0.70%) Kusto Query Language
16 9 (0.57%) SAS Macro
16 9 (0.57%) SPARQL
17 7 (0.44%) Cypher
17 7 (0.44%) LookML
Qualifications
1 308 (19.56%) Security Cleared
2 263 (16.70%) SC Cleared
3 85 (5.40%) Degree
4 43 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (1.90%) Azure Certification
5 30 (1.90%) DV Cleared
6 29 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
7 24 (1.52%) AWS Certification
8 22 (1.40%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.89%) DBS Check
9 14 (0.89%) SnowPro
10 11 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
12 5 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (0.32%) CSPO
12 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
13 4 (0.25%) PMI Certification
14 3 (0.19%) PhD
14 3 (0.19%) PMP
15 2 (0.13%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 505 (32.06%) Data Quality
2 76 (4.83%) QA
3 72 (4.57%) GDPR
4 26 (1.65%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.76%) SLA
6 5 (0.32%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
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
8 3 (0.19%) PMO
9 2 (0.13%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.13%) COPPA
9 2 (0.13%) IFRS
9 2 (0.13%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.13%) NCSC
9 2 (0.13%) Solvency II
System Software
1 133 (8.44%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.063%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 108 (6.86%) Kubernetes
2 28 (1.78%) Grafana
3 24 (1.52%) Ansible
4 9 (0.57%) 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%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.063%) Nagios
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.063%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.063%) QRadar
9 1 (0.063%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 434 (27.56%) Databricks
2 279 (17.71%) Microsoft
3 78 (4.95%) Informatica
4 76 (4.83%) Google
5 68 (4.32%) Oracle
6 32 (2.03%) SAP
7 29 (1.84%) Foundry
7 29 (1.84%) Salesforce
7 29 (1.84%) Talend
8 26 (1.65%) Palantir
9 17 (1.08%) OpenAI
10 16 (1.02%) Cloudera
11 14 (0.89%) ServiceNow
11 14 (0.89%) Teradata
12 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
13 9 (0.57%) Adobe
14 8 (0.51%) Splunk
15 7 (0.44%) Bloomberg
15 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
15 7 (0.44%) InterSystems