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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 86 155 202
Rank change year-on-year +69 +47 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,535 566 499
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.92% 1.74% 1.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.43% 1.93% 1.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,071 372 370
10th Percentile £380 £375 £363
25th Percentile £439 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £626 £650 £688
90th Percentile £738 £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 26 7 15
10th Percentile £35.13 £24.75 £30.72
25th Percentile £52.19 £28.13 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.22 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +77.67% +11.31% -52.05%
75th Percentile £75.00 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £88.75 £58.25 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 £28.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +131.30% -52.08% -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 44,779 29,366 36,386
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.09% 90.39% 85.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,858 18,449 23,259
10th Percentile £325 £300 £304
25th Percentile £419 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,648 1,547 2,431
10th Percentile £15.00 £14.22 £12.79
25th Percentile £20.21 £17.45 £16.25
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £38.12
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -34.02% -5.29%
75th Percentile £68.50 £52.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.65 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £24.34 £38.12
% change year-on-year +84.88% -36.15% -3.74%

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 16 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 16 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 16 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 +66 1,362 £525 - 462
London +57 794 £550 - 246
UK excluding London +77 584 £500 +5.26% 312
Work from Home +68 499 £525 - 258
North of England +21 178 £475 -5.00% 93
Midlands +41 152 £475 +3.09% 41
West Midlands +38 129 £469 +12.61% 26
South West +35 87 £500 -8.05% 29
Yorkshire +8 82 £490 +5.95% 31
South East -26 78 £525 +11.11% 80
Scotland +24 59 £450 -5.26% 22
North West -20 58 £500 +2.56% 45
North East -5 40 £425 -15.00% 17
East of England -5 29 £575 +39.39% 15
East Midlands -2 20 £500 +8.11% 15
Wales -2 8 £450 +82.58% 14
Northern Ireland - 5 £334 - 20

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
1 191 (12.44%) Apache Spark
2 176 (11.47%) Apache Airflow
3 125 (8.14%) Apache
4 47 (3.06%) SAS
5 44 (2.87%) Confluence
6 23 (1.50%) Jupyter
7 19 (1.24%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.72%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.52%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.26%) Appian
11 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.13%) Apache Synapse
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
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
13 1 (0.065%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 25 (1.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
3 8 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
5 4 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
6 3 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
8 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.72%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.33%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.33%) 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%) Temenos T24
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
6 1 (0.065%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 645 (42.02%) Azure
2 586 (38.18%) AWS
3 324 (21.11%) Power Platform
4 229 (14.92%) Snowflake
5 208 (13.55%) GCP
6 187 (12.18%) Amazon S3
7 179 (11.66%) dbt
8 172 (11.21%) Azure Data Factory
9 142 (9.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 137 (8.93%) Serverless
11 127 (8.27%) Azure DevOps
12 124 (8.08%) GitHub
13 117 (7.62%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
15 63 (4.10%) Amazon EMR
16 37 (2.41%) AWS CloudFormation
17 35 (2.28%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 33 (2.15%) Azure AI
19 31 (2.02%) Amazon SageMaker
20 30 (1.95%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.33%) Firewall
1 5 (0.33%) 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
1 300 (19.54%) Power BI
2 297 (19.35%) Data Warehouse
3 219 (14.27%) Data Lake
4 150 (9.77%) Metadata
5 110 (7.17%) Amazon Redshift
5 110 (7.17%) Big Data
6 95 (6.19%) BigQuery
7 89 (5.80%) Delta Lake
8 85 (5.54%) Tableau
9 80 (5.21%) Amazon Athena
10 79 (5.15%) SQL Server
11 68 (4.43%) Snowflake Schema
12 67 (4.36%) NoSQL
13 60 (3.91%) PostgreSQL
14 58 (3.78%) Relational Database
15 47 (3.06%) Azure SQL Database
15 47 (3.06%) Hadoop
16 37 (2.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 35 (2.28%) Star Schema
18 31 (2.02%) Looker
Development Applications
1 178 (11.60%) Git
2 75 (4.89%) GitLab
2 75 (4.89%) JIRA
3 35 (2.28%) MLflow
4 21 (1.37%) Jenkins
5 6 (0.39%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.33%) Bitbucket
7 3 (0.20%) Artifactory
7 3 (0.20%) ERwin
7 3 (0.20%) Postman
7 3 (0.20%) Selenium
7 3 (0.20%) Snyk
7 3 (0.20%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
8 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
9 1 (0.065%) ER Studio
9 1 (0.065%) git-flow
9 1 (0.065%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.065%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.065%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 373 (24.30%) Social Skills
2 351 (22.87%) Finance
3 252 (16.42%) Analytical Skills
4 171 (11.14%) Public Sector
5 114 (7.43%) Banking
6 40 (2.61%) Marketing
7 36 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
7 36 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (2.08%) Retail
9 21 (1.37%) Front Office
9 21 (1.37%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.30%) Investment Banking
11 15 (0.98%) Financial Institution
12 14 (0.91%) Law
12 14 (0.91%) Manufacturing
13 11 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
13 11 (0.72%) Legal
14 10 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
15 9 (0.59%) Billing
16 6 (0.39%) Police
Job Titles
1 716 (46.64%) Data Engineer
2 216 (14.07%) Senior
3 173 (11.27%) Architect
4 169 (11.01%) Lead
5 125 (8.14%) Senior Data Engineer
6 96 (6.25%) Developer
7 94 (6.12%) Data Architect
8 83 (5.41%) AWS Engineer
9 72 (4.69%) Analyst
10 68 (4.43%) Lead Data Engineer
11 64 (4.17%) AWS Data Engineer
12 62 (4.04%) Snowflake Engineer
13 58 (3.78%) Azure Engineer
14 52 (3.39%) Azure Data Engineer
15 48 (3.13%) Data Scientist
15 48 (3.13%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 47 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
17 44 (2.87%) Python Engineer
18 43 (2.80%) Consultant
19 42 (2.74%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (14.53%) PySpark
2 143 (9.32%) Kafka
3 41 (2.67%) REST
4 40 (2.61%) Pandas
5 33 (2.15%) JSON
6 32 (2.08%) scikit-learn
7 29 (1.89%) PyTorch
8 27 (1.76%) React
9 25 (1.63%) NumPy
10 23 (1.50%) Spring
10 23 (1.50%) TensorFlow
11 18 (1.17%) .NET
12 17 (1.11%) RESTful
13 16 (1.04%) Spring Boot
14 15 (0.98%) OpenTelemetry
15 14 (0.91%) FastAPI
15 14 (0.91%) YAML
16 13 (0.85%) Microsoft Graph
16 13 (0.85%) XML
17 12 (0.78%) LangChain
Miscellaneous
1 207 (13.49%) Cloud Native
2 68 (4.43%) Data Structures
3 60 (3.91%) Legacy Systems
4 59 (3.84%) Distributed Systems
5 50 (3.26%) Product Ownership
6 41 (2.67%) Onboarding
7 37 (2.41%) AI Agents
8 28 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
9 26 (1.69%) Distributed Computing
10 25 (1.63%) Algorithms
11 23 (1.50%) NHS
12 21 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
13 19 (1.24%) Analytical Mindset
14 18 (1.17%) Virtual Team
15 17 (1.11%) Clustering
16 14 (0.91%) Management Information System
17 13 (0.85%) Life Science
17 13 (0.85%) Reference Data
18 12 (0.78%) Fixed Income
18 12 (0.78%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 31 (2.02%) Linux
2 25 (1.63%) Unix
3 5 (0.33%) VMS
4 4 (0.26%) Windows
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 791 (51.53%) Analytics
2 744 (48.47%) Data Pipeline
3 605 (39.41%) Data Modelling
4 548 (35.70%) CI/CD
5 535 (34.85%) ETL
6 434 (28.27%) AI
7 393 (25.60%) Agile
8 382 (24.89%) Business Intelligence
9 369 (24.04%) DevOps
10 339 (22.08%) Data Governance
11 291 (18.96%) Machine Learning
12 271 (17.65%) Problem-Solving
13 270 (17.59%) Data Science
14 231 (15.05%) Migration
15 220 (14.33%) Validation
16 219 (14.27%) Data Architecture
17 212 (13.81%) Decision-Making
18 187 (12.18%) Infrastructure as Code
19 186 (12.12%) Stakeholder Management
20 179 (11.66%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 837 (54.53%) SQL
2 806 (52.51%) Python
3 128 (8.34%) Java
4 45 (2.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 39 (2.54%) Scala
6 37 (2.41%) C#
7 36 (2.35%) Bash
8 26 (1.69%) T-SQL
9 24 (1.56%) PowerShell
10 21 (1.37%) JavaScript
10 21 (1.37%) R
11 17 (1.11%) Bicep
11 17 (1.11%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.85%) TypeScript
13 12 (0.78%) SAS Macro
13 12 (0.78%) Shell Script
14 7 (0.46%) SPARQL
15 6 (0.39%) Cypher
16 5 (0.33%) Kusto Query Language
17 4 (0.26%) Go
Qualifications
1 306 (19.93%) Security Cleared
2 264 (17.20%) SC Cleared
3 112 (7.30%) Degree
4 47 (3.06%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
6 37 (2.41%) Master's Degree
7 30 (1.95%) Azure Certification
8 27 (1.76%) DV Cleared
9 21 (1.37%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.85%) DBS Check
11 9 (0.59%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
11 9 (0.59%) SnowPro
12 7 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.33%) CSPO
15 3 (0.20%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
16 2 (0.13%) PhD
16 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
17 1 (0.065%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (29.25%) Data Quality
2 89 (5.80%) GDPR
3 76 (4.95%) QA
4 22 (1.43%) Accessibility
5 15 (0.98%) SLA
6 5 (0.33%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
7 4 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 4 (0.26%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.20%) Disclosure Scotland
8 3 (0.20%) GxP
8 3 (0.20%) HIPAA
8 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.20%) MiFID
8 3 (0.20%) NIST
8 3 (0.20%) PMO
9 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.13%) EMIR
9 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 135 (8.79%) Docker
2 3 (0.20%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.13%) HDFS
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 199 (12.96%) Terraform
2 115 (7.49%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.82%) Grafana
4 27 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 12 (0.78%) Ansible
6 5 (0.33%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Argo
7 3 (0.20%) logstash
7 3 (0.20%) Nagios
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.065%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.065%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.065%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.065%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.065%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.065%) Oozie
9 1 (0.065%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.065%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 385 (25.08%) Databricks
2 264 (17.20%) Microsoft
3 87 (5.67%) Informatica
4 65 (4.23%) Oracle
5 64 (4.17%) Google
6 36 (2.35%) Talend
7 31 (2.02%) Foundry
7 31 (2.02%) SAP
8 28 (1.82%) Palantir
9 26 (1.69%) OpenAI
10 22 (1.43%) Salesforce
10 22 (1.43%) Splunk
11 15 (0.98%) Cloudera
11 15 (0.98%) ServiceNow
12 12 (0.78%) Trend Micro
13 8 (0.52%) Adobe
13 8 (0.52%) Denodo
14 7 (0.46%) InterSystems
15 6 (0.39%) Charles River
15 6 (0.39%) Teradata