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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 165 213
Rank change year-on-year +74 +48 -6
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,542 564 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 1.71% 1.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.41% 1.89% 1.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,059 352 337
10th Percentile £390 £363 £400
25th Percentile £444 £430 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £688
90th Percentile £746 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -14.89%
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% -53.64%
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 45,250 29,801 33,299
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.48% 85.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,843 18,616 21,279
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £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 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,819 1,703 1,838
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.75 £17.31 £18.50
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -39.40% -1.55%
75th Percentile £68.00 £47.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.38 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £22.74 £42.50
% change year-on-year +93.36% -46.51% +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 13 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 13 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 13 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 +72 1,389 £525 - 951
London +47 822 £550 - 613
UK excluding London +72 569 £500 +5.26% 460
Work from Home +83 503 £525 +5.00% 380
North of England +38 181 £469 -6.25% 149
Midlands +46 151 £486 +7.98% 43
West Midlands +47 126 £475 -0.63% 33
South East -16 90 £525 +11.94% 131
Yorkshire +20 86 £475 +11.76% 36
South West +20 77 £505 -16.70% 64
North West -12 58 £500 - 89
Scotland +9 44 £500 +6.38% 38
North East -8 39 £425 -20.93% 25
East of England -4 28 £575 -4.17% 13
East Midlands -4 22 £525 +16.54% 10
Wales - 7 £450 - 7
Northern Ireland +10 4 £334 - 16

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
1 183 (11.87%) Apache Spark
2 177 (11.48%) Apache Airflow
3 127 (8.24%) Apache
4 47 (3.05%) SAS
5 37 (2.40%) Confluence
6 23 (1.49%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.17%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.71%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.45%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.32%) ArcGIS
11 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.065%) Apache Synapse
12 1 (0.065%) CICS
12 1 (0.065%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.065%) GeoServer
12 1 (0.065%) Hyperledger
12 1 (0.065%) nginx
12 1 (0.065%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 19 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 13 (0.84%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.39%) 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 (0.065%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.065%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.065%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.065%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.065%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 640 (41.50%) Azure
2 576 (37.35%) AWS
3 314 (20.36%) Power Platform
4 251 (16.28%) Snowflake
5 205 (13.29%) GCP
6 196 (12.71%) dbt
7 168 (10.89%) Amazon S3
7 168 (10.89%) Azure Data Factory
8 141 (9.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 137 (8.88%) Azure DevOps
10 126 (8.17%) GitHub
11 124 (8.04%) Serverless
12 106 (6.87%) AWS Lambda
13 66 (4.28%) GitHub Actions
14 54 (3.50%) Amazon EMR
15 33 (2.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 31 (2.01%) Amazon Bedrock
17 30 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
18 29 (1.88%) Azure AI
19 28 (1.82%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 2 (0.13%) Broadband
2 2 (0.13%) DNS
2 2 (0.13%) Network Security
2 2 (0.13%) RTP
3 1 (0.065%) 4G
3 1 (0.065%) 5G
3 1 (0.065%) Internet
3 1 (0.065%) MIMO
3 1 (0.065%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 306 (19.84%) Data Warehouse
2 298 (19.33%) Power BI
3 213 (13.81%) Data Lake
4 155 (10.05%) Metadata
5 106 (6.87%) Amazon Redshift
6 105 (6.81%) BigQuery
7 101 (6.55%) Big Data
8 99 (6.42%) Delta Lake
9 83 (5.38%) Tableau
10 75 (4.86%) Amazon Athena
11 68 (4.41%) SQL Server
12 65 (4.22%) Snowflake Schema
13 60 (3.89%) NoSQL
14 56 (3.63%) Relational Database
15 53 (3.44%) PostgreSQL
16 46 (2.98%) Azure SQL Database
17 40 (2.59%) Looker
18 36 (2.33%) Star Schema
19 35 (2.27%) Hadoop
20 34 (2.20%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 160 (10.38%) Git
2 83 (5.38%) GitLab
3 67 (4.35%) JIRA
4 28 (1.82%) Jenkins
5 24 (1.56%) MLflow
6 7 (0.45%) ERwin
6 7 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.39%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.26%) Selenium
8 4 (0.26%) Terragrunt
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) Claude Code
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.065%) git-flow
11 1 (0.065%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.065%) RStudio
General
1 379 (24.58%) Social Skills
2 357 (23.15%) Finance
3 247 (16.02%) Analytical Skills
4 160 (10.38%) Public Sector
5 118 (7.65%) Banking
6 45 (2.92%) Marketing
7 37 (2.40%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 34 (2.20%) Retail
9 27 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.62%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.49%) Investment Banking
12 22 (1.43%) Front Office
13 16 (1.04%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.91%) Law
14 14 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
15 13 (0.84%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
17 10 (0.65%) Legal
18 9 (0.58%) Billing
18 9 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 714 (46.30%) Data Engineer
2 214 (13.88%) Senior
3 182 (11.80%) Lead
4 173 (11.22%) Architect
5 129 (8.37%) Senior Data Engineer
6 95 (6.16%) Data Architect
7 94 (6.10%) Developer
8 82 (5.32%) AWS Engineer
9 68 (4.41%) Analyst
9 68 (4.41%) AWS Data Engineer
10 63 (4.09%) Snowflake Engineer
11 60 (3.89%) Azure Engineer
12 59 (3.83%) Lead Data Engineer
13 50 (3.24%) Azure Data Engineer
13 50 (3.24%) Python Engineer
14 47 (3.05%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 45 (2.92%) Consultant
16 44 (2.85%) Solutions Architect
17 43 (2.79%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 40 (2.59%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (14.46%) PySpark
2 126 (8.17%) Kafka
3 46 (2.98%) REST
4 28 (1.82%) JSON
4 28 (1.82%) Pandas
5 27 (1.75%) React
6 22 (1.43%) .NET
7 21 (1.36%) PyTorch
8 19 (1.23%) scikit-learn
8 19 (1.23%) Spring
9 17 (1.10%) TensorFlow
10 16 (1.04%) NumPy
11 13 (0.84%) RESTful
11 13 (0.84%) Spring Boot
12 11 (0.71%) FastAPI
12 11 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
12 11 (0.71%) pytest
13 10 (0.65%) LangChain
14 9 (0.58%) Great Expectations
14 9 (0.58%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 206 (13.36%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.80%) Data Structures
3 63 (4.09%) Legacy Systems
4 59 (3.83%) Distributed Systems
4 59 (3.83%) Product Ownership
5 45 (2.92%) Onboarding
6 36 (2.33%) AI Agents
7 25 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
8 23 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
9 19 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
9 19 (1.23%) NHS
10 18 (1.17%) Algorithms
11 17 (1.10%) Clustering
12 16 (1.04%) Life Science
12 16 (1.04%) Virtual Team
13 15 (0.97%) Analytical Mindset
14 13 (0.84%) Enterprise Software
14 13 (0.84%) Management Information System
14 13 (0.84%) Reference Data
15 10 (0.65%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 39 (2.53%) Linux
2 30 (1.95%) Unix
3 8 (0.52%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.065%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 763 (49.48%) Analytics
2 740 (47.99%) Data Pipeline
3 591 (38.33%) Data Modelling
4 538 (34.89%) CI/CD
5 531 (34.44%) ETL
6 440 (28.53%) AI
7 395 (25.62%) Agile
8 384 (24.90%) Business Intelligence
9 367 (23.80%) DevOps
10 352 (22.83%) Data Governance
11 274 (17.77%) Machine Learning
12 256 (16.60%) Problem-Solving
13 238 (15.43%) Data Science
14 228 (14.79%) Migration
15 224 (14.53%) Decision-Making
16 219 (14.20%) Data Architecture
17 218 (14.14%) Validation
18 215 (13.94%) Stakeholder Management
19 214 (13.88%) Data Transformation
20 194 (12.58%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 833 (54.02%) SQL
2 785 (50.91%) Python
3 118 (7.65%) Java
4 44 (2.85%) Bash
5 43 (2.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 43 (2.79%) Scala
6 35 (2.27%) PowerShell
7 32 (2.08%) C#
8 24 (1.56%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.43%) T-SQL
10 20 (1.30%) R
11 18 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 15 (0.97%) Bicep
13 14 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 12 (0.78%) SAS Macro
15 10 (0.65%) TypeScript
16 8 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
16 8 (0.52%) SPARQL
17 7 (0.45%) Cypher
18 5 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 298 (19.33%) Security Cleared
2 254 (16.47%) SC Cleared
3 95 (6.16%) Degree
4 48 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 30 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
6 29 (1.88%) Azure Certification
7 25 (1.62%) DV Cleared
8 23 (1.49%) Master's Degree
9 19 (1.23%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.84%) DBS Check
11 11 (0.71%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
16 3 (0.19%) PhD
16 3 (0.19%) PMI Certification
17 2 (0.13%) PMP
18 1 (0.065%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (29.77%) Data Quality
2 77 (4.99%) GDPR
2 77 (4.99%) QA
3 23 (1.49%) Accessibility
4 12 (0.78%) SLA
5 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.19%) GxP
7 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 3 (0.19%) MiFID
7 3 (0.19%) NIST
7 3 (0.19%) PMO
8 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.13%) COPPA
8 2 (0.13%) GRC
8 2 (0.13%) IFRS
8 2 (0.13%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 132 (8.56%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 201 (13.04%) Terraform
2 109 (7.07%) Kubernetes
3 27 (1.75%) Grafana
4 20 (1.30%) Ansible
5 12 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.32%) Control-M
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Puppet
8 2 (0.13%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.065%) Cilium
9 1 (0.065%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.065%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.065%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.065%) Nagios
9 1 (0.065%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.065%) QRadar
9 1 (0.065%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 402 (26.07%) Databricks
2 263 (17.06%) Microsoft
3 82 (5.32%) Informatica
4 71 (4.60%) Google
5 67 (4.35%) Oracle
6 35 (2.27%) SAP
7 33 (2.14%) Talend
8 29 (1.88%) Foundry
9 27 (1.75%) Palantir
10 25 (1.62%) Salesforce
11 20 (1.30%) Cloudera
12 17 (1.10%) OpenAI
13 15 (0.97%) Splunk
14 14 (0.91%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.78%) Trend Micro
16 10 (0.65%) Teradata
17 9 (0.58%) Workday
18 8 (0.52%) Denodo
19 7 (0.45%) Hitachi
19 7 (0.45%) InterSystems