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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 88 156 204
Rank change year-on-year +68 +48 +10
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,492 548 506
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 1.78% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.42% 1.96% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,027 365 376
10th Percentile £378 £364 £369
25th Percentile £438 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £631 £663 £675
90th Percentile £738 £808 £759
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £510
% change year-on-year +5.26% -6.86% -11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 7 15
10th Percentile £45.85 £24.75 £30.72
25th Percentile £55.88 £28.13 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.44 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +78.23% +11.31% -52.05%
75th Percentile £76.50 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.50 £58.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.00 £28.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +140.00% -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 43,674 27,949 36,811
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 90.88% 85.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,163 17,650 23,450
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £414 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.79% -4.57% -4.55%
75th Percentile £621 £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 2,623 1,373 2,554
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.74
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.61 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +3.81%
75th Percentile £68.00 £53.86 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £25.00 £38.12
% change year-on-year +75.84% -34.42% +8.91%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +73 1,324 £525 -1.50% 713
London +50 784 £550 - 415
UK excluding London +67 560 £500 +5.26% 398
Work from Home +72 481 £525 - 333
North of England +20 170 £475 -5.00% 121
Midlands +34 140 £475 +2.70% 54
West Midlands +36 117 £469 -19.14% 37
South West +28 81 £500 -11.11% 47
South East -19 79 £525 +5.00% 130
Yorkshire +2 75 £480 +3.78% 31
Scotland +27 59 £488 +2.63% 13
North West -5 59 £500 - 65
North East 0 38 £425 -15.00% 26
East of England -10 26 £575 +71.29% 12
East Midlands -3 20 £525 +13.51% 17
Wales -5 11 £450 +75.14% 17
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
1 195 (13.07%) Apache Spark
2 173 (11.60%) Apache Airflow
3 114 (7.64%) Apache
4 46 (3.08%) SAS
5 38 (2.55%) Confluence
6 23 (1.54%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.21%) Palantir Foundry
8 12 (0.80%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.47%) Apache Superset
10 6 (0.40%) Appian
11 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
12 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
13 2 (0.13%) Apache Synapse
14 1 (0.067%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 1 (0.067%) Camunda
14 1 (0.067%) CICS
14 1 (0.067%) IBM HTTP Server
14 1 (0.067%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 26 (1.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 8 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
4 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.067%) Notion
7 1 (0.067%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.47%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
3 5 (0.34%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.27%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.27%) 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 (0.067%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.067%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.067%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.067%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.067%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 641 (42.96%) Azure
2 569 (38.14%) AWS
3 334 (22.39%) Power Platform
4 221 (14.81%) Snowflake
5 200 (13.40%) GCP
6 179 (12.00%) Amazon S3
7 170 (11.39%) dbt
8 168 (11.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 133 (8.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 127 (8.51%) GitHub
10 127 (8.51%) Serverless
11 121 (8.11%) Azure DevOps
12 110 (7.37%) AWS Lambda
13 74 (4.96%) GitHub Actions
14 59 (3.95%) Amazon EMR
15 41 (2.75%) AWS CloudFormation
16 35 (2.35%) Azure AI
17 32 (2.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 30 (2.01%) Amazon SageMaker
19 29 (1.94%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.34%) Firewall
1 5 (0.34%) RTP
2 2 (0.13%) Network Security
3 1 (0.067%) 4G
3 1 (0.067%) 5G
3 1 (0.067%) MIMO
3 1 (0.067%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (20.58%) Power BI
2 282 (18.90%) Data Warehouse
3 217 (14.54%) Data Lake
4 143 (9.58%) Metadata
5 115 (7.71%) Big Data
6 109 (7.31%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (6.10%) Delta Lake
8 89 (5.97%) BigQuery
9 87 (5.83%) Tableau
10 86 (5.76%) SQL Server
11 78 (5.23%) Amazon Athena
12 71 (4.76%) NoSQL
12 71 (4.76%) Snowflake Schema
13 59 (3.95%) Relational Database
14 58 (3.89%) PostgreSQL
15 49 (3.28%) Azure SQL Database
15 49 (3.28%) Hadoop
16 35 (2.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 34 (2.28%) Star Schema
18 29 (1.94%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 177 (11.86%) Git
2 79 (5.29%) GitLab
3 69 (4.62%) JIRA
4 35 (2.35%) MLflow
5 20 (1.34%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.40%) SonarQube
7 4 (0.27%) Postman
7 4 (0.27%) Selenium
8 3 (0.20%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.20%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.20%) Snyk
8 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.13%) ERwin
9 2 (0.13%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.067%) Ant
10 1 (0.067%) Deequ
10 1 (0.067%) Maven
10 1 (0.067%) REST Assured
General
1 376 (25.20%) Social Skills
2 351 (23.53%) Finance
3 230 (15.42%) Analytical Skills
4 161 (10.79%) Public Sector
5 111 (7.44%) Banking
6 40 (2.68%) Marketing
7 37 (2.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 36 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
9 33 (2.21%) Retail
10 20 (1.34%) Telecoms
11 19 (1.27%) Front Office
11 19 (1.27%) Investment Banking
12 14 (0.94%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.87%) Manufacturing
14 12 (0.80%) Influencing Skills
14 12 (0.80%) Law
15 11 (0.74%) Legal
16 8 (0.54%) Billing
16 8 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
17 4 (0.27%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 689 (46.18%) Data Engineer
2 215 (14.41%) Senior
3 173 (11.60%) Architect
4 164 (10.99%) Lead
5 125 (8.38%) Senior Data Engineer
6 95 (6.37%) Data Architect
7 87 (5.83%) Developer
8 77 (5.16%) AWS Engineer
9 67 (4.49%) Analyst
10 66 (4.42%) Lead Data Engineer
11 60 (4.02%) AWS Data Engineer
12 57 (3.82%) Snowflake Engineer
13 51 (3.42%) Azure Engineer
14 48 (3.22%) Data Scientist
14 48 (3.22%) Solutions Architect
15 46 (3.08%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 45 (3.02%) Azure Data Engineer
17 43 (2.88%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 43 (2.88%) Consultant
17 43 (2.88%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (15.08%) PySpark
2 145 (9.72%) Kafka
3 44 (2.95%) Pandas
4 43 (2.88%) REST
5 34 (2.28%) scikit-learn
6 32 (2.14%) JSON
6 32 (2.14%) PyTorch
7 28 (1.88%) NumPy
8 26 (1.74%) Spring
9 25 (1.68%) TensorFlow
10 24 (1.61%) React
11 19 (1.27%) Spring Boot
12 17 (1.14%) .NET
12 17 (1.14%) RESTful
13 16 (1.07%) FastAPI
14 15 (1.01%) OpenTelemetry
14 15 (1.01%) YAML
15 14 (0.94%) XML
16 13 (0.87%) LangChain
16 13 (0.87%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 204 (13.67%) Cloud Native
2 62 (4.16%) Data Structures
3 60 (4.02%) Distributed Systems
4 57 (3.82%) Legacy Systems
5 50 (3.35%) Product Ownership
6 37 (2.48%) AI Agents
6 37 (2.48%) Onboarding
7 27 (1.81%) Distributed Computing
8 25 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
9 22 (1.47%) Algorithms
9 22 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
9 22 (1.47%) NHS
10 20 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
11 18 (1.21%) Virtual Team
12 16 (1.07%) Clustering
13 15 (1.01%) Management Information System
14 14 (0.94%) Fixed Income
15 13 (0.87%) Reference Data
15 13 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
16 11 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.94%) Linux
2 25 (1.68%) Unix
3 5 (0.34%) VMS
4 3 (0.20%) Windows
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.067%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 781 (52.35%) Analytics
2 710 (47.59%) Data Pipeline
3 573 (38.40%) Data Modelling
4 542 (36.33%) CI/CD
5 523 (35.05%) ETL
6 448 (30.03%) AI
7 383 (25.67%) Business Intelligence
8 380 (25.47%) Agile
9 367 (24.60%) DevOps
10 324 (21.72%) Data Governance
11 290 (19.44%) Machine Learning
12 269 (18.03%) Problem-Solving
13 261 (17.49%) Data Science
14 214 (14.34%) Migration
15 212 (14.21%) Decision-Making
16 209 (14.01%) Validation
17 207 (13.87%) Data Architecture
18 182 (12.20%) Infrastructure as Code
19 181 (12.13%) Stakeholder Management
20 170 (11.39%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 814 (54.56%) SQL
2 793 (53.15%) Python
3 121 (8.11%) Java
4 46 (3.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 41 (2.75%) Scala
6 37 (2.48%) Bash
6 37 (2.48%) C#
7 26 (1.74%) T-SQL
8 24 (1.61%) PowerShell
9 22 (1.47%) R
10 21 (1.41%) JavaScript
11 18 (1.21%) Bicep
12 16 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 13 (0.87%) Shell Script
13 13 (0.87%) TypeScript
14 12 (0.80%) SAS Macro
15 7 (0.47%) SPARQL
16 6 (0.40%) Cypher
17 5 (0.34%) Korn
17 5 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 282 (18.90%) Security Cleared
2 248 (16.62%) SC Cleared
3 113 (7.57%) Degree
4 50 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.55%) Master's Degree
6 35 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (2.08%) Azure Certification
8 20 (1.34%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.94%) DV Cleared
10 13 (0.87%) DBS Check
11 9 (0.60%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 9 (0.60%) SnowPro
12 8 (0.54%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.34%) CSPO
15 3 (0.20%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.20%) PhD
15 3 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
16 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
17 1 (0.067%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 435 (29.16%) Data Quality
2 92 (6.17%) GDPR
3 69 (4.62%) QA
4 15 (1.01%) SLA
5 14 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 7 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.27%) MiFID
8 4 (0.27%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.20%) GRC
9 3 (0.20%) GxP
9 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
9 3 (0.20%) NIST
10 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.13%) COPPA
10 2 (0.13%) PMO
System Software
1 136 (9.12%) Docker
2 3 (0.20%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 202 (13.54%) Terraform
2 113 (7.57%) Kubernetes
3 27 (1.81%) Grafana
4 26 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.60%) Ansible
6 4 (0.27%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Argo
7 3 (0.20%) Nagios
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.067%) Control-M
9 1 (0.067%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.067%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.067%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.067%) Oozie
Vendors
1 393 (26.34%) Databricks
2 254 (17.02%) Microsoft
3 86 (5.76%) Informatica
4 60 (4.02%) Oracle
5 57 (3.82%) Google
6 32 (2.14%) Talend
7 29 (1.94%) Foundry
7 29 (1.94%) SAP
8 28 (1.88%) OpenAI
9 26 (1.74%) Palantir
9 26 (1.74%) Salesforce
10 22 (1.47%) Splunk
11 15 (1.01%) Cloudera
11 15 (1.01%) ServiceNow
12 12 (0.80%) Trend Micro
13 8 (0.54%) Denodo
14 7 (0.47%) InterSystems
14 7 (0.47%) UiPath
15 6 (0.40%) Adobe
15 6 (0.40%) Teradata