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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 158 200
Rank change year-on-year +72 +42 +11
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,546 567 491
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.93% 1.74% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 1.93% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,068 373 362
10th Percentile £379 £363 £375
25th Percentile £438 £450 £464
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -8.00%
75th Percentile £627 £650 £688
90th Percentile £729 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -13.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 6 15
10th Percentile £21.25 £26.25 £30.72
25th Percentile £49.56 £32.24 £31.25
Median hourly rate £67.00 £45.73 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.51% +30.66% -52.05%
75th Percentile £75.00 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.25 £59.38 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £30.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +113.33% -50.00% -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 44,806 29,445 35,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.36% 85.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,768 18,486 22,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £306
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,649 1,571 2,189
10th Percentile £14.85 £14.20 £13.06
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.44 £16.86
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -10.31%
75th Percentile £68.55 £50.88 £62.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £68.75 £73.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +87.50% -40.00% -1.45%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 +72 1,371 £525 - 578
London +50 792 £550 - 364
UK excluding London +88 595 £500 +5.26% 275
Work from Home +65 503 £525 - 243
North of England +36 177 £475 -5.00% 96
Midlands +53 159 £475 +2.70% 34
West Midlands +41 133 £469 +8.82% 21
South West +27 87 £500 -8.05% 31
South East -33 83 £525 +11.11% 88
Yorkshire +8 82 £478 +3.24% 25
Scotland +19 59 £450 -5.26% 11
North West -15 57 £500 +2.56% 47
North East -9 40 £425 -15.00% 24
East of England -5 30 £575 +39.39% 8
East Midlands 0 23 £525 +13.51% 13
Wales -9 8 £450 +82.58% 6
Northern Ireland - 5 £334 - 5

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
1 194 (12.55%) Apache Spark
2 176 (11.38%) Apache Airflow
3 127 (8.21%) Apache
4 46 (2.98%) SAS
5 44 (2.85%) Confluence
6 23 (1.49%) Jupyter
7 19 (1.23%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.71%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.52%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.26%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Synapse
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.065%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.065%) Apache Solr
13 1 (0.065%) Camunda
13 1 (0.065%) CICS
13 1 (0.065%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.065%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.065%) IBM HTTP Server
Applications
1 25 (1.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.58%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (0.78%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.13%) Endur
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
5 2 (0.13%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.065%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.065%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.065%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.065%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.065%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.065%) R3 Corda
6 1 (0.065%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 651 (42.11%) Azure
2 585 (37.84%) AWS
3 322 (20.83%) Power Platform
4 235 (15.20%) Snowflake
5 207 (13.39%) GCP
6 185 (11.97%) dbt
7 183 (11.84%) Amazon S3
8 175 (11.32%) Azure Data Factory
9 143 (9.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 135 (8.73%) Serverless
11 129 (8.34%) Azure DevOps
12 121 (7.83%) GitHub
13 115 (7.44%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (4.40%) GitHub Actions
15 62 (4.01%) Amazon EMR
16 37 (2.39%) AWS CloudFormation
17 35 (2.26%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 31 (2.01%) Amazon SageMaker
19 30 (1.94%) AWS Step Functions
20 29 (1.88%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
1 5 (0.32%) RTP
2 1 (0.065%) 4G
2 1 (0.065%) 5G
2 1 (0.065%) MIMO
2 1 (0.065%) MQTT
2 1 (0.065%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 304 (19.66%) Data Warehouse
2 299 (19.34%) Power BI
3 219 (14.17%) Data Lake
4 155 (10.03%) Metadata
5 110 (7.12%) Amazon Redshift
6 109 (7.05%) Big Data
7 95 (6.14%) BigQuery
8 93 (6.02%) Delta Lake
9 88 (5.69%) Tableau
10 80 (5.17%) SQL Server
11 78 (5.05%) Amazon Athena
12 68 (4.40%) NoSQL
13 66 (4.27%) Snowflake Schema
14 60 (3.88%) PostgreSQL
15 59 (3.82%) Relational Database
16 48 (3.10%) Azure SQL Database
17 46 (2.98%) Hadoop
18 36 (2.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 34 (2.20%) Looker
19 34 (2.20%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 176 (11.38%) Git
2 75 (4.85%) JIRA
3 73 (4.72%) GitLab
4 33 (2.13%) MLflow
5 20 (1.29%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.39%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 4 (0.26%) ERwin
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.065%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 1 (0.065%) git-flow
11 1 (0.065%) Octopus Deploy
11 1 (0.065%) Robot Framework
General
1 371 (24.00%) Social Skills
2 350 (22.64%) Finance
3 256 (16.56%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (10.93%) Public Sector
5 116 (7.50%) Banking
6 41 (2.65%) Marketing
7 36 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.13%) Retail
9 22 (1.42%) Front Office
9 22 (1.42%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.29%) Investment Banking
11 15 (0.97%) Manufacturing
12 14 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 14 (0.91%) Law
13 11 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (0.71%) Legal
13 11 (0.71%) Pharmaceutical
14 9 (0.58%) Billing
15 7 (0.45%) Military
Job Titles
1 714 (46.18%) Data Engineer
2 217 (14.04%) Senior
3 178 (11.51%) Architect
4 171 (11.06%) Lead
5 125 (8.09%) Senior Data Engineer
6 98 (6.34%) Data Architect
7 94 (6.08%) Developer
8 81 (5.24%) AWS Engineer
9 70 (4.53%) Analyst
10 66 (4.27%) Lead Data Engineer
11 63 (4.08%) AWS Data Engineer
11 63 (4.08%) Snowflake Engineer
12 61 (3.95%) Azure Engineer
13 54 (3.49%) Azure Data Engineer
14 50 (3.23%) Data Scientist
15 49 (3.17%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 48 (3.10%) Solutions Architect
17 46 (2.98%) Consultant
17 46 (2.98%) Python Engineer
18 41 (2.65%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (14.49%) PySpark
2 142 (9.18%) Kafka
3 41 (2.65%) REST
4 37 (2.39%) Pandas
5 35 (2.26%) JSON
6 30 (1.94%) scikit-learn
7 27 (1.75%) PyTorch
8 26 (1.68%) React
9 23 (1.49%) NumPy
9 23 (1.49%) Spring
10 22 (1.42%) TensorFlow
11 18 (1.16%) .NET
12 17 (1.10%) RESTful
13 16 (1.03%) Spring Boot
14 15 (0.97%) OpenTelemetry
15 13 (0.84%) Apache Avro
15 13 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
15 13 (0.84%) YAML
16 12 (0.78%) Great Expectations
16 12 (0.78%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 205 (13.26%) Cloud Native
2 69 (4.46%) Data Structures
3 62 (4.01%) Legacy Systems
4 59 (3.82%) Distributed Systems
5 53 (3.43%) Product Ownership
6 42 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 35 (2.26%) AI Agents
8 28 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (1.68%) Algorithms
9 26 (1.68%) Distributed Computing
10 21 (1.36%) Greenfield Project
10 21 (1.36%) NHS
11 18 (1.16%) Analytical Mindset
11 18 (1.16%) Virtual Team
12 17 (1.10%) Clustering
13 15 (0.97%) Management Information System
14 13 (0.84%) Life Science
14 13 (0.84%) Reference Data
15 12 (0.78%) Fixed Income
15 12 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 32 (2.07%) Linux
2 26 (1.68%) Unix
3 5 (0.32%) Windows
4 4 (0.26%) VMS
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 797 (51.55%) Analytics
2 751 (48.58%) Data Pipeline
3 606 (39.20%) Data Modelling
4 547 (35.38%) CI/CD
5 535 (34.61%) ETL
6 434 (28.07%) AI
7 399 (25.81%) Agile
8 384 (24.84%) Business Intelligence
9 364 (23.54%) DevOps
10 346 (22.38%) Data Governance
11 289 (18.69%) Machine Learning
12 277 (17.92%) Data Science
13 274 (17.72%) Problem-Solving
14 234 (15.14%) Migration
15 226 (14.62%) Validation
16 221 (14.29%) Data Architecture
17 213 (13.78%) Decision-Making
18 192 (12.42%) Stakeholder Management
19 187 (12.10%) Infrastructure as Code
20 183 (11.84%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 842 (54.46%) SQL
2 810 (52.39%) Python
3 128 (8.28%) Java
4 45 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 40 (2.59%) Scala
6 37 (2.39%) Bash
7 35 (2.26%) C#
8 25 (1.62%) T-SQL
9 24 (1.55%) PowerShell
10 22 (1.42%) R
11 19 (1.23%) JavaScript
12 18 (1.16%) Bicep
13 17 (1.10%) PL/SQL
14 14 (0.91%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.78%) SAS Macro
16 11 (0.71%) TypeScript
17 8 (0.52%) SPARQL
18 7 (0.45%) Cypher
19 5 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
20 4 (0.26%) Gremlin
Qualifications
1 304 (19.66%) Security Cleared
2 260 (16.82%) SC Cleared
3 113 (7.31%) Degree
4 48 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
5 37 (2.39%) Master's Degree
6 30 (1.94%) Azure Certification
7 27 (1.75%) DV Cleared
8 21 (1.36%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.84%) DBS Check
10 9 (0.58%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 9 (0.58%) SnowPro
11 7 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
12 6 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 5 (0.32%) CSPO
14 3 (0.19%) IBM Certification
14 3 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
15 2 (0.13%) PhD
15 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
16 1 (0.065%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 455 (29.43%) Data Quality
2 87 (5.63%) GDPR
3 79 (5.11%) QA
4 24 (1.55%) Accessibility
5 15 (0.97%) SLA
6 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.26%) NIST
7 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.19%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.19%) GRC
8 3 (0.19%) GxP
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.19%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) PMO
9 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.13%) COPPA
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 133 (8.60%) Docker
2 4 (0.26%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.13%) HDFS
5 1 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 196 (12.68%) Terraform
2 112 (7.24%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.81%) Grafana
4 27 (1.75%) Prometheus
5 12 (0.78%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Argo
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 3 (0.19%) Nagios
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.065%) Control-M
9 1 (0.065%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.065%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.065%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.065%) Oozie
9 1 (0.065%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.065%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.065%) QRadar
Vendors
1 394 (25.49%) Databricks
2 266 (17.21%) Microsoft
3 86 (5.56%) Informatica
4 67 (4.33%) Oracle
5 62 (4.01%) Google
6 35 (2.26%) Talend
7 34 (2.20%) SAP
8 29 (1.88%) Foundry
9 28 (1.81%) Palantir
10 24 (1.55%) OpenAI
11 23 (1.49%) Splunk
12 22 (1.42%) Salesforce
13 15 (0.97%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.97%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.78%) Trend Micro
15 8 (0.52%) Adobe
15 8 (0.52%) Workday
16 7 (0.45%) Denodo
16 7 (0.45%) InterSystems
17 6 (0.39%) Teradata