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 24 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 160 204
Rank change year-on-year +72 +44 -1
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,331 510 482
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.74% 1.77% 1.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.24% 1.94% 1.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 918 352 360
10th Percentile £400 £375 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £651
90th Percentile £749 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% +0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 12 15
10th Percentile £51.25 £21.33 £30.72
25th Percentile £56.75 £22.38 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £26.47 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +164.50% -24.39% -52.05%
75th Percentile £78.00 £42.66 £60.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £53.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £25.43 £60.00
% change year-on-year +172.20% -57.62% +71.43%

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 41,043 26,226 36,546
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.43% 91.02% 85.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,708 16,839 23,557
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,422 1,067 2,473
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.26 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.87 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.28 £27.94 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.31% -22.39% -
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.09 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.85 £25.15 £37.50
% change year-on-year +74.33% -32.93% +7.14%

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 24 May 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 1,199 £525 -4.55% 423
London +61 744 £550 -4.35% 234
UK excluding London +70 474 £500 +5.26% 273
Work from Home +50 382 £540 -1.82% 197
North of England +2 132 £478 -4.50% 95
Midlands +12 123 £500 +8.11% 25
West Midlands +17 101 £500 -1.09% 20
South West +28 78 £505 -15.83% 25
South East -23 63 £550 +15.79% 83
Scotland +32 58 £445 -6.42% 17
Yorkshire -12 58 £478 -15.11% 23
North West -15 52 £500 - 53
North East -6 24 £450 -5.26% 21
East of England -25 22 £575 +54.08% 10
East Midlands -18 19 £525 +13.51% 5
Wales -11 6 £563 +150.76% 12
Northern Ireland - 3 £430 - 8

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
1 190 (14.27%) Apache Spark
2 143 (10.74%) Apache Airflow
3 93 (6.99%) Apache
4 36 (2.70%) SAS
5 23 (1.73%) Confluence
6 15 (1.13%) Palantir Foundry
7 10 (0.75%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.60%) Appian
9 7 (0.53%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.23%) SharePoint
12 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.075%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.075%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.075%) Camunda
13 1 (0.075%) CICS
13 1 (0.075%) CMS
13 1 (0.075%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.075%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 30 (2.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.23%) Trello
6 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.45%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.38%) BambooHR
3 4 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.23%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.075%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.075%) Endur
6 1 (0.075%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.075%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 589 (44.25%) Azure
2 488 (36.66%) AWS
3 303 (22.76%) Power Platform
4 187 (14.05%) Azure Data Factory
4 187 (14.05%) GCP
5 179 (13.45%) Snowflake
6 151 (11.34%) Amazon S3
7 144 (10.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 136 (10.22%) dbt
9 129 (9.69%) GitHub
10 113 (8.49%) Azure DevOps
11 109 (8.19%) Serverless
12 87 (6.54%) AWS Lambda
13 78 (5.86%) GitHub Actions
14 50 (3.76%) AWS CloudFormation
15 37 (2.78%) Amazon EMR
16 33 (2.48%) AWS Step Functions
17 28 (2.10%) Collibra
18 26 (1.95%) Azure AI
18 26 (1.95%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.38%) RTP
2 4 (0.30%) Firewall
3 2 (0.15%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.075%) 4G
4 1 (0.075%) 5G
4 1 (0.075%) MIMO
4 1 (0.075%) Network Security
4 1 (0.075%) SAN
4 1 (0.075%) SMS
4 1 (0.075%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.075%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 280 (21.04%) Power BI
2 253 (19.01%) Data Warehouse
3 205 (15.40%) Data Lake
4 124 (9.32%) Metadata
5 105 (7.89%) Big Data
6 94 (7.06%) SQL Server
7 88 (6.61%) Delta Lake
8 75 (5.63%) NoSQL
9 74 (5.56%) BigQuery
9 74 (5.56%) Snowflake Schema
9 74 (5.56%) Tableau
10 72 (5.41%) Amazon Redshift
11 64 (4.81%) Amazon Athena
12 63 (4.73%) Azure SQL Database
13 57 (4.28%) Relational Database
14 54 (4.06%) PostgreSQL
15 50 (3.76%) Hadoop
16 37 (2.78%) Spark SQL
16 37 (2.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 29 (2.18%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 169 (12.70%) Git
2 61 (4.58%) GitLab
3 52 (3.91%) JIRA
4 41 (3.08%) MLflow
5 27 (2.03%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.45%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.38%) Selenium
8 4 (0.30%) Postman
9 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.23%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.23%) Snyk
10 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.15%) ERwin
10 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.15%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.075%) Deequ
11 1 (0.075%) git-flow
11 1 (0.075%) Poetry
11 1 (0.075%) REST Assured
11 1 (0.075%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 328 (24.64%) Finance
2 309 (23.22%) Social Skills
3 195 (14.65%) Analytical Skills
4 114 (8.56%) Public Sector
5 84 (6.31%) Banking
6 27 (2.03%) Retail
7 26 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
8 25 (1.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 24 (1.80%) Marketing
10 19 (1.43%) Front Office
11 17 (1.28%) Investment Banking
12 15 (1.13%) Telecoms
13 14 (1.05%) Financial Institution
14 13 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
15 10 (0.75%) Legal
16 8 (0.60%) Law
17 6 (0.45%) Back Office
17 6 (0.45%) Military
18 4 (0.30%) Billing
18 4 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 640 (48.08%) Data Engineer
2 176 (13.22%) Senior
3 143 (10.74%) Lead
4 135 (10.14%) Architect
5 116 (8.72%) Senior Data Engineer
6 78 (5.86%) Developer
7 70 (5.26%) Data Architect
8 65 (4.88%) AWS Engineer
9 57 (4.28%) Lead Data Engineer
10 56 (4.21%) Analyst
10 56 (4.21%) Azure Engineer
11 53 (3.98%) Snowflake Engineer
12 49 (3.68%) AWS Data Engineer
12 49 (3.68%) Azure Data Engineer
13 44 (3.31%) Data Scientist
13 44 (3.31%) Solutions Architect
14 42 (3.16%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 39 (2.93%) Consultant
16 36 (2.70%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 34 (2.55%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 212 (15.93%) PySpark
2 150 (11.27%) Kafka
3 58 (4.36%) Pandas
4 41 (3.08%) PyTorch
5 39 (2.93%) scikit-learn
6 35 (2.63%) NumPy
7 33 (2.48%) REST
8 31 (2.33%) TensorFlow
9 27 (2.03%) JSON
10 24 (1.80%) Spring
11 23 (1.73%) React
12 20 (1.50%) LangChain
13 19 (1.43%) RESTful
14 18 (1.35%) Great Expectations
14 18 (1.35%) YAML
15 17 (1.28%) FastAPI
15 17 (1.28%) Spring Boot
16 16 (1.20%) pytest
17 15 (1.13%) Flask
18 13 (0.98%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 179 (13.45%) Cloud Native
2 49 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
3 46 (3.46%) Product Ownership
4 45 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
5 44 (3.31%) Data Structures
6 30 (2.25%) AI Agents
6 30 (2.25%) Distributed Computing
7 29 (2.18%) Onboarding
8 26 (1.95%) Algorithms
9 21 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
9 21 (1.58%) Greenfield Project
10 18 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
11 14 (1.05%) Fixed Income
11 14 (1.05%) NHS
12 13 (0.98%) Self-Motivation
13 12 (0.90%) Clustering
13 12 (0.90%) Hybrid Cloud
14 11 (0.83%) Reference Data
15 10 (0.75%) Equities
15 10 (0.75%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.25%) Linux
2 23 (1.73%) Unix
3 6 (0.45%) VMS
4 3 (0.23%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.23%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.075%) CentOS
6 1 (0.075%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 678 (50.94%) Analytics
2 612 (45.98%) Data Pipeline
3 523 (39.29%) Data Modelling
4 500 (37.57%) ETL
5 460 (34.56%) CI/CD
6 391 (29.38%) AI
7 341 (25.62%) Business Intelligence
8 332 (24.94%) DevOps
9 330 (24.79%) Agile
10 308 (23.14%) Data Governance
11 259 (19.46%) Machine Learning
12 231 (17.36%) Problem-Solving
13 224 (16.83%) Data Science
14 188 (14.12%) Data Architecture
15 183 (13.75%) Migration
16 174 (13.07%) Decision-Making
17 163 (12.25%) Validation
18 146 (10.97%) Infrastructure as Code
19 136 (10.22%) Data Integration
19 136 (10.22%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 738 (55.45%) SQL
2 702 (52.74%) Python
3 104 (7.81%) Java
4 57 (4.28%) Scala
5 45 (3.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.78%) C#
7 35 (2.63%) Bash
8 26 (1.95%) T-SQL
9 21 (1.58%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.50%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.50%) R
11 15 (1.13%) Bicep
12 14 (1.05%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.90%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.75%) TypeScript
15 7 (0.53%) Go
15 7 (0.53%) SAS Macro
16 4 (0.30%) Korn
17 2 (0.15%) C++
17 2 (0.15%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 252 (18.93%) Security Cleared
2 220 (16.53%) SC Cleared
3 100 (7.51%) Degree
4 41 (3.08%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.85%) Master's Degree
6 34 (2.55%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.58%) BPSS Clearance
8 13 (0.98%) DBS Check
9 12 (0.90%) AWS Certification
9 12 (0.90%) DV Cleared
10 8 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.53%) SnowPro
12 6 (0.45%) PhD
13 5 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 3 (0.23%) IBM Certification
16 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
16 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
17 1 (0.075%) (ISC)2 CCSP
17 1 (0.075%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (27.95%) Data Quality
2 87 (6.54%) GDPR
3 61 (4.58%) QA
4 12 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (0.90%) SLA
5 7 (0.53%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.30%) MiFID
7 4 (0.30%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.23%) GRC
8 3 (0.23%) PMO
9 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.15%) EMIR
9 2 (0.15%) NIST
9 2 (0.15%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.075%) HL7
10 1 (0.075%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 127 (9.54%) Docker
2 5 (0.38%) HDFS
3 4 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.075%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.075%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 171 (12.85%) Terraform
2 115 (8.64%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.95%) Prometheus
4 24 (1.80%) Grafana
5 13 (0.98%) Ansible
6 5 (0.38%) Argo
7 4 (0.30%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.23%) Kibana
8 3 (0.23%) Nagios
8 3 (0.23%) Rancher
9 2 (0.15%) Hadoop YARN
9 2 (0.15%) logstash
9 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.075%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.075%) Control-M
10 1 (0.075%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.075%) IBM Guardium
10 1 (0.075%) Oozie
Vendors
1 364 (27.35%) Databricks
2 215 (16.15%) Microsoft
3 64 (4.81%) Informatica
4 62 (4.66%) Google
5 50 (3.76%) Oracle
6 30 (2.25%) Talend
7 23 (1.73%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.73%) SAP
8 22 (1.65%) Foundry
9 19 (1.43%) Splunk
10 17 (1.28%) Palantir
11 15 (1.13%) Cloudera
12 13 (0.98%) ServiceNow
13 11 (0.83%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.68%) UiPath
15 8 (0.60%) Automation Anywhere
15 8 (0.60%) IBM
16 7 (0.53%) Denodo
16 7 (0.53%) InterSystems
17 6 (0.45%) Teradata