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 5 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 162 209
Rank change year-on-year +73 +47 +7
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,362 502 486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.77% 1.73% 1.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.27% 1.91% 1.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 943 345 365
10th Percentile £388 £370 £363
25th Percentile £450 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £653
90th Percentile £750 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £525
% change year-on-year +5.26% -9.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 8 15
10th Percentile £51.25 £22.65 £30.72
25th Percentile £62.19 £25.37 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £34.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +103.02% -1.49% -52.05%
75th Percentile £79.44 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £57.13 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.44 £27.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +152.51% -54.17% -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 41,594 26,332 36,644
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.70% 91.01% 85.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,970 16,762 23,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £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 2,502 1,133 2,525
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £43.96 £27.53 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +59.68% -24.58% +1.39%
75th Percentile £68.00 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.29 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +80.09% -34.02% +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 5 June 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 5 June 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 5 June 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 +69 1,223 £525 -4.55% 613
London +62 747 £550 -4.35% 345
UK excluding London +66 492 £500 +5.26% 360
Work from Home +57 409 £525 - 314
North of England +13 146 £475 -5.00% 124
Midlands +29 126 £500 +8.11% 42
West Midlands +23 105 £498 -1.58% 29
South West +28 76 £500 -11.11% 32
Yorkshire -3 68 £480 +3.78% 32
South East -27 65 £525 +10.53% 112
Scotland +26 55 £450 -5.26% 16
North West -10 52 £506 +1.25% 73
North East -4 28 £438 -12.50% 20
East of England -19 22 £575 +54.08% 13
East Midlands -16 18 £525 +13.51% 13
Wales -12 9 £450 +75.14% 10
Northern Ireland - 3 £430 - 15

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
1 189 (13.88%) Apache Spark
2 153 (11.23%) Apache Airflow
3 100 (7.34%) Apache
4 39 (2.86%) SAS
5 27 (1.98%) Confluence
6 18 (1.32%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.17%) Palantir Foundry
8 8 (0.59%) Appian
9 7 (0.51%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.37%) SharePoint
11 4 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
12 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.073%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.073%) ArcGIS
13 1 (0.073%) Camunda
13 1 (0.073%) CICS
13 1 (0.073%) CMS
13 1 (0.073%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.073%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 27 (1.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
2 7 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 7 (0.51%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.44%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.15%) Trello
5 1 (0.073%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (0.44%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.37%) BambooHR
3 4 (0.29%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.15%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.073%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.073%) Endur
6 1 (0.073%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.073%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 591 (43.39%) Azure
2 504 (37.00%) AWS
3 311 (22.83%) Power Platform
4 190 (13.95%) Snowflake
5 187 (13.73%) GCP
6 180 (13.22%) Azure Data Factory
7 150 (11.01%) Amazon S3
8 147 (10.79%) dbt
9 136 (9.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 127 (9.32%) GitHub
11 115 (8.44%) Azure DevOps
12 105 (7.71%) Serverless
13 89 (6.53%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (5.43%) GitHub Actions
15 45 (3.30%) Amazon EMR
16 43 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
17 29 (2.13%) AWS Step Functions
18 28 (2.06%) Azure AI
19 27 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 26 (1.91%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.37%) RTP
2 4 (0.29%) Firewall
3 2 (0.15%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.073%) 4G
4 1 (0.073%) 5G
4 1 (0.073%) MIMO
4 1 (0.073%) MQTT
4 1 (0.073%) Network Security
4 1 (0.073%) SMS
4 1 (0.073%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 287 (21.07%) Power BI
2 248 (18.21%) Data Warehouse
3 202 (14.83%) Data Lake
4 121 (8.88%) Metadata
5 110 (8.08%) Big Data
6 94 (6.90%) SQL Server
7 84 (6.17%) Delta Lake
8 78 (5.73%) Tableau
9 77 (5.65%) Amazon Redshift
10 75 (5.51%) BigQuery
11 73 (5.36%) NoSQL
12 72 (5.29%) Snowflake Schema
13 65 (4.77%) Amazon Athena
14 58 (4.26%) Azure SQL Database
15 54 (3.96%) Relational Database
16 51 (3.74%) PostgreSQL
17 50 (3.67%) Hadoop
18 37 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 35 (2.57%) Spark SQL
20 31 (2.28%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 166 (12.19%) Git
2 74 (5.43%) GitLab
3 57 (4.19%) JIRA
4 35 (2.57%) MLflow
5 25 (1.84%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.44%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.37%) Postman
7 5 (0.37%) Selenium
8 3 (0.22%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.22%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.22%) Snyk
8 3 (0.22%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
9 2 (0.15%) ERwin
9 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.073%) Ant
10 1 (0.073%) JUnit
10 1 (0.073%) Maven
10 1 (0.073%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.073%) SoapUI
General
1 330 (24.23%) Finance
2 325 (23.86%) Social Skills
3 202 (14.83%) Analytical Skills
4 128 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 92 (6.75%) Banking
6 33 (2.42%) Marketing
7 31 (2.28%) Retail
8 30 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
9 27 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 20 (1.47%) Front Office
11 17 (1.25%) Investment Banking
12 15 (1.10%) Telecoms
13 14 (1.03%) Financial Institution
14 11 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
15 10 (0.73%) Law
15 10 (0.73%) Legal
16 7 (0.51%) Manufacturing
17 6 (0.44%) Back Office
17 6 (0.44%) Military
17 6 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 641 (47.06%) Data Engineer
2 187 (13.73%) Senior
3 146 (10.72%) Lead
4 143 (10.50%) Architect
5 114 (8.37%) Senior Data Engineer
6 79 (5.80%) Developer
7 75 (5.51%) Data Architect
8 65 (4.77%) AWS Engineer
9 59 (4.33%) Lead Data Engineer
10 57 (4.19%) Analyst
11 55 (4.04%) Snowflake Engineer
12 52 (3.82%) AWS Data Engineer
13 45 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
13 45 (3.30%) Data Scientist
14 44 (3.23%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 44 (3.23%) Solutions Architect
15 43 (3.16%) Consultant
16 39 (2.86%) Azure Data Engineer
17 36 (2.64%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
18 34 (2.50%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 199 (14.61%) PySpark
2 141 (10.35%) Kafka
3 54 (3.96%) Pandas
4 37 (2.72%) PyTorch
4 37 (2.72%) REST
4 37 (2.72%) scikit-learn
5 33 (2.42%) NumPy
6 28 (2.06%) JSON
6 28 (2.06%) TensorFlow
7 24 (1.76%) Spring
8 22 (1.62%) React
9 18 (1.32%) RESTful
10 17 (1.25%) FastAPI
10 17 (1.25%) Spring Boot
11 16 (1.17%) pytest
11 16 (1.17%) YAML
12 15 (1.10%) Great Expectations
12 15 (1.10%) LangChain
13 13 (0.95%) Django
13 13 (0.95%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 188 (13.80%) Cloud Native
2 51 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
3 48 (3.52%) Data Structures
4 46 (3.38%) Product Ownership
5 45 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
6 30 (2.20%) AI Agents
7 29 (2.13%) Onboarding
8 27 (1.98%) Distributed Computing
9 23 (1.69%) Algorithms
9 23 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 21 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
11 20 (1.47%) Greenfield Project
12 14 (1.03%) Fixed Income
12 14 (1.03%) NHS
13 12 (0.88%) Clustering
13 12 (0.88%) Reference Data
13 12 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
14 10 (0.73%) Equities
14 10 (0.73%) Hybrid Cloud
14 10 (0.73%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 28 (2.06%) Linux
2 25 (1.84%) Unix
3 5 (0.37%) VMS
4 3 (0.22%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.073%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 702 (51.54%) Analytics
2 639 (46.92%) Data Pipeline
3 528 (38.77%) Data Modelling
4 494 (36.27%) ETL
5 481 (35.32%) CI/CD
6 403 (29.59%) AI
7 348 (25.55%) Business Intelligence
8 341 (25.04%) DevOps
9 340 (24.96%) Agile
10 297 (21.81%) Data Governance
11 265 (19.46%) Machine Learning
12 234 (17.18%) Problem-Solving
13 229 (16.81%) Data Science
14 186 (13.66%) Data Architecture
15 183 (13.44%) Migration
16 181 (13.29%) Decision-Making
17 177 (13.00%) Validation
18 150 (11.01%) Infrastructure as Code
19 147 (10.79%) Use Case
20 140 (10.28%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 755 (55.43%) SQL
2 713 (52.35%) Python
3 108 (7.93%) Java
4 46 (3.38%) Scala
5 44 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 36 (2.64%) C#
7 34 (2.50%) Bash
8 24 (1.76%) T-SQL
9 20 (1.47%) PowerShell
10 18 (1.32%) JavaScript
10 18 (1.32%) R
11 16 (1.17%) PL/SQL
12 15 (1.10%) Bicep
13 12 (0.88%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.73%) TypeScript
15 8 (0.59%) SAS Macro
16 5 (0.37%) Korn
17 4 (0.29%) Go
17 4 (0.29%) Kusto Query Language
18 2 (0.15%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 261 (19.16%) Security Cleared
2 231 (16.96%) SC Cleared
3 99 (7.27%) Degree
4 41 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (2.50%) Master's Degree
6 32 (2.35%) Azure Certification
7 26 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
8 17 (1.25%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.03%) DBS Check
10 10 (0.73%) DV Cleared
11 7 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.51%) SnowPro
12 5 (0.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 5 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.22%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.22%) PhD
14 2 (0.15%) CSPO
14 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 374 (27.46%) Data Quality
2 84 (6.17%) GDPR
3 67 (4.92%) QA
4 14 (1.03%) SLA
5 11 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 6 (0.44%) Accessibility
7 5 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.29%) MiFID
8 4 (0.29%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.22%) GRC
9 3 (0.22%) HIPAA
9 3 (0.22%) PMO
10 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
10 2 (0.15%) EMIR
10 2 (0.15%) GxP
10 2 (0.15%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.15%) NIST
10 2 (0.15%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 124 (9.10%) Docker
2 4 (0.29%) HDFS
2 4 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.073%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.073%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 168 (12.33%) Terraform
2 105 (7.71%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.91%) Prometheus
4 23 (1.69%) Grafana
5 9 (0.66%) Ansible
6 4 (0.29%) Argo
7 3 (0.22%) Kibana
7 3 (0.22%) Nagios
7 3 (0.22%) Rancher
8 2 (0.15%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.15%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.15%) logstash
8 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.073%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.073%) Control-M
9 1 (0.073%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.073%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.073%) Oozie
Vendors
1 356 (26.14%) Databricks
2 224 (16.45%) Microsoft
3 74 (5.43%) Informatica
4 56 (4.11%) Google
4 56 (4.11%) Oracle
5 31 (2.28%) Talend
6 26 (1.91%) OpenAI
7 25 (1.84%) SAP
8 24 (1.76%) Foundry
9 19 (1.40%) Splunk
10 18 (1.32%) Palantir
11 16 (1.17%) Cloudera
12 13 (0.95%) ServiceNow
13 12 (0.88%) Salesforce
14 9 (0.66%) UiPath
15 8 (0.59%) Automation Anywhere
15 8 (0.59%) Denodo
16 7 (0.51%) IBM
16 7 (0.51%) InterSystems
16 7 (0.51%) Trend Micro