Data Engineering Contract Job Trends

Data Engineering
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs citing Data Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 14 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	88	134	187
Rank change year-on-year	+46	+53	+55
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering	1,772	760	495
As % of all contract jobs in the UK	3.17%	2.14%	1.35%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category	3.71%	2.38%	1.56%
Number of daily rates quoted	1,216	489	355
10^th Percentile	£395	£350	£400
25^th Percentile	£445	£413	£468
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£535	£520	£550
Median % change year-on-year	+2.88%	-5.45%	-4.35%
75^th Percentile	£650	£638	£663
90^th Percentile	£750	£750	£775
UK excluding London median daily rate	£500	£463	£513
% change year-on-year	+8.11%	-9.76%	-6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted	29	4	7
10^th Percentile	£21.25	£46.95	£23.72
25^th Percentile	£44.50	£64.51	£25.81
Median hourly rate	£62.50	£79.63	£26.50
Median % change year-on-year	-21.51%	+200.49%	-62.94%
75^th Percentile	£72.66	£93.13	£43.38
90^th Percentile	£78.72	£103.25	£60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate	£65.00	£74.26	£26.50
% change year-on-year	-12.47%	+180.23%	-66.03%

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 citing process or methodology skills.

	6 months to 14 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing process or methodology skills	47,822	31,965	31,639
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK	85.62%	89.95%	86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted	28,595	20,031	19,058
10^th Percentile	£325	£295	£310
25^th Percentile	£425	£404	£413
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£525	£500	£525
Median % change year-on-year	+5.00%	-4.76%	-1.41%
75^th Percentile	£638	£620	£638
90^th Percentile	£738	£725	£738
UK excluding London median daily rate	£500	£475	£500
% change year-on-year	+5.26%	-5.00%	-
Number of hourly rates quoted	3,822	2,098	1,126
10^th Percentile	£13.50	£14.50	£15.10
25^th Percentile	£16.50	£17.50	£20.12
Median hourly rate	£35.00	£25.15	£35.00
Median % change year-on-year	+39.17%	-28.14%	-19.54%
75^th Percentile	£66.66	£44.40	£63.75
90^th Percentile	£80.00	£67.00	£73.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate	£35.00	£22.63	£33.00
% change year-on-year	+54.66%	-31.42%	-24.83%

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 Daily Rate Trend

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 14 November 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.

Data Engineering Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution for jobs citing Data Engineering over the 6 months to 14 November 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 14 November 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate % Change on Same Period Last Year	Live Jobs
England	+45	1,561	£535	+1.90%	1,688
London	+39	952	£563	+2.27%	1,046
UK excluding London	+71	627	£500	+8.11%	722
Work from Home	+47	567	£525	-	755
North of England	+43	227	£463	+8.82%	224
Midlands	+23	132	£475	-9.52%	92
West Midlands	+34	112	£475	-13.64%	66
Yorkshire	+46	108	£475	-2.56%	59
South East	0	106	£538	+13.16%	189
South West	+35	87	£539	-6.35%	64
North West	-6	86	£450	+11.11%	131
Scotland	-14	52	£544	+35.26%	72
North East	-7	33	£425	+6.25%	34
East of England	-16	24	£550	+15.79%	49
East Midlands	-2	20	£463	+3.47%	26
Wales	-4	8	£450	-9.09%	11
Northern Ireland	+9	4	£467	-	42

Data Engineering Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 14 November 2026, contractor job vacancies citing Data Engineering also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads citing Data Engineering.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	55.4%	981
2	SQL	55.1%	977
3	Data Pipeline	49.5%	878
4	Analytics	45.8%	811
5	Azure	42.8%	759
6	Data Modelling	39.8%	706
7	CI/CD	39.6%	702
8	Data Quality	37.5%	664
9	AWS	36.9%	653
10	ETL	36.1%	640
11	AI	32.1%	569
12	Databricks	31.2%	553
13	Agile	26.0%	461
14	DevOps	24.8%	440
15	Data Governance	24.5%	434
16	Business Intelligence	23.8%	422
17	Security Cleared	20.7%	366
18	Data Warehouse	20.0%	355
19	Stakeholder Management	19.6%	348
20	Microsoft	18.4%	326
21	Machine Learning	18.3%	324
22	Power Platform	18.2%	323
23	Data Transformation	17.6%	311
23	Power BI	17.6%	311
23	Validation	17.6%	311
26	SC Cleared	16.9%	300
27	Data Integration	16.4%	291
28	Problem-Solving	16.3%	289
28	Snowflake	16.3%	289
30	PySpark	15.7%	278

Data Engineering Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Processes & Methodologies

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Data Pipeline	49.5%	878
2	Analytics	45.8%	811
3	Data Modelling	39.8%	706
4	CI/CD	39.6%	702
5	ETL	36.1%	640
6	AI	32.1%	569
7	Agile	26.0%	461
8	DevOps	24.8%	440
9	Data Governance	24.5%	434
10	Business Intelligence	23.8%	422
11	Stakeholder Management	19.6%	348
12	Machine Learning	18.3%	324
13	Data Transformation	17.6%	311
13	Validation	17.6%	311
15	Data Integration	16.4%	291
16	Problem-Solving	16.3%	289
17	Migration	15.6%	277
18	Infrastructure as Code	15.5%	275
19	Data Architecture	14.7%	260
20	Lakehouse	13.8%	245