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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 161 193
Rank change year-on-year +78 +32 +19
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,478 523 512
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 1.74% 1.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.42% 1.91% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,018 353 383
10th Percentile £384 £375 £365
25th Percentile £440 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -12.00%
75th Percentile £629 £663 £663
90th Percentile £738 £823 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £511
% change year-on-year +5.26% -7.05% -9.16%
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% -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 43,234 27,342 36,961
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.93% 91.04% 85.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,976 17,315 23,545
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £502 £525
Median % change year-on-year +2.09% -4.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £620 £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 2,595 1,301 2,587
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.79 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.00 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £72.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +77.47% -34.22% +17.29%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 +75 1,313 £525 -2.78% 321
London +62 791 £550 -2.22% 170
UK excluding London +77 542 £500 +5.26% 270
Work from Home +67 477 £525 - 161
North of England +16 167 £475 -5.00% 64
Midlands +30 133 £500 +8.11% 36
West Midlands +27 113 £486 -16.16% 25
South West +30 81 £500 -11.11% 25
South East -19 74 £525 +5.00% 110
Yorkshire -1 72 £480 +3.78% 13
North West -14 59 £496 -0.80% 40
Scotland +17 58 £475 - 7
North East -2 38 £425 -15.00% 11
East of England -14 25 £575 +78.92% 12
East Midlands -11 17 £525 +13.51% 11
Wales -5 10 £450 +75.14% 7
Northern Ireland - 5 £334 - 12

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 (13.19%) Apache Spark
2 171 (11.57%) Apache Airflow
3 112 (7.58%) Apache
4 44 (2.98%) SAS
5 38 (2.57%) Confluence
6 23 (1.56%) Jupyter
7 18 (1.22%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.74%) SharePoint
9 7 (0.47%) Apache Superset
9 7 (0.47%) Appian
10 5 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.20%) ArcGIS
12 2 (0.14%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.068%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 1 (0.068%) Camunda
13 1 (0.068%) CICS
13 1 (0.068%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.068%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 26 (1.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.61%) 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 (0.14%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.068%) Notion
7 1 (0.068%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.47%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
3 5 (0.34%) BambooHR
3 5 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.34%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.20%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.20%) Sage X3
5 2 (0.14%) Endur
5 2 (0.14%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.14%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.14%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.068%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.068%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.068%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.068%) SAP ECC
6 1 (0.068%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 631 (42.69%) Azure
2 560 (37.89%) AWS
3 334 (22.60%) Power Platform
4 216 (14.61%) Snowflake
5 198 (13.40%) GCP
6 178 (12.04%) Amazon S3
7 173 (11.71%) Azure Data Factory
8 164 (11.10%) dbt
9 135 (9.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 129 (8.73%) GitHub
11 126 (8.53%) Serverless
12 122 (8.25%) Azure DevOps
13 110 (7.44%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (5.01%) GitHub Actions
15 58 (3.92%) Amazon EMR
16 42 (2.84%) AWS CloudFormation
17 33 (2.23%) Azure AI
18 32 (2.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 29 (1.96%) Amazon SageMaker
20 28 (1.89%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.34%) Firewall
1 5 (0.34%) RTP
2 2 (0.14%) Network Security
3 1 (0.068%) 4G
3 1 (0.068%) 5G
3 1 (0.068%) MIMO
3 1 (0.068%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 310 (20.97%) Power BI
2 281 (19.01%) Data Warehouse
3 221 (14.95%) Data Lake
4 142 (9.61%) Metadata
5 113 (7.65%) Big Data
6 109 (7.37%) Amazon Redshift
7 91 (6.16%) Delta Lake
8 90 (6.09%) SQL Server
9 85 (5.75%) BigQuery
10 82 (5.55%) Tableau
11 80 (5.41%) Amazon Athena
12 74 (5.01%) Snowflake Schema
13 71 (4.80%) NoSQL
14 60 (4.06%) Relational Database
15 56 (3.79%) PostgreSQL
16 51 (3.45%) Azure SQL Database
17 50 (3.38%) Hadoop
18 36 (2.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 34 (2.30%) Star Schema
20 31 (2.10%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 174 (11.77%) Git
2 80 (5.41%) GitLab
3 69 (4.67%) JIRA
4 35 (2.37%) MLflow
5 20 (1.35%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.41%) 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 (0.14%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.14%) ERwin
9 2 (0.14%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.14%) Terragrunt
10 1 (0.068%) Deequ
10 1 (0.068%) git-flow
10 1 (0.068%) REST Assured
10 1 (0.068%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 370 (25.03%) Social Skills
2 349 (23.61%) Finance
3 224 (15.16%) Analytical Skills
4 157 (10.62%) Public Sector
5 107 (7.24%) Banking
6 39 (2.64%) Marketing
7 35 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 34 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
9 33 (2.23%) Retail
10 19 (1.29%) Telecoms
11 18 (1.22%) Front Office
11 18 (1.22%) Investment Banking
12 14 (0.95%) Financial Institution
13 12 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
13 12 (0.81%) Manufacturing
14 11 (0.74%) Law
14 11 (0.74%) Legal
15 8 (0.54%) Pharmaceutical
16 7 (0.47%) Billing
17 5 (0.34%) Military
Job Titles
1 684 (46.28%) Data Engineer
2 215 (14.55%) Senior
3 167 (11.30%) Architect
4 161 (10.89%) Lead
5 127 (8.59%) Senior Data Engineer
6 87 (5.89%) Data Architect
7 80 (5.41%) Developer
8 74 (5.01%) AWS Engineer
9 68 (4.60%) Analyst
10 64 (4.33%) Lead Data Engineer
11 57 (3.86%) AWS Data Engineer
11 57 (3.86%) Snowflake Engineer
12 50 (3.38%) Azure Engineer
13 49 (3.32%) Data Scientist
14 48 (3.25%) Solutions Architect
15 46 (3.11%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 44 (2.98%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 44 (2.98%) Azure Data Engineer
17 43 (2.91%) Python Engineer
18 42 (2.84%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 224 (15.16%) PySpark
2 140 (9.47%) Kafka
3 47 (3.18%) Pandas
4 42 (2.84%) REST
5 36 (2.44%) scikit-learn
6 35 (2.37%) PyTorch
7 30 (2.03%) JSON
7 30 (2.03%) NumPy
8 27 (1.83%) TensorFlow
9 25 (1.69%) Spring
10 24 (1.62%) React
11 18 (1.22%) RESTful
11 18 (1.22%) Spring Boot
12 17 (1.15%) FastAPI
13 16 (1.08%) .NET
14 15 (1.01%) LangChain
14 15 (1.01%) YAML
15 14 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
15 14 (0.95%) pytest
15 14 (0.95%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 196 (13.26%) Cloud Native
2 61 (4.13%) Data Structures
3 59 (3.99%) Distributed Systems
4 54 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
5 51 (3.45%) Product Ownership
6 36 (2.44%) Onboarding
7 34 (2.30%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.83%) Distributed Computing
9 24 (1.62%) Data Protection Act
10 22 (1.49%) Algorithms
10 22 (1.49%) Greenfield Project
11 21 (1.42%) NHS
12 20 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.15%) Clustering
14 16 (1.08%) Virtual Team
15 14 (0.95%) Fixed Income
15 14 (0.95%) Management Information System
16 13 (0.88%) Reference Data
16 13 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
17 11 (0.74%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.96%) Linux
2 25 (1.69%) Unix
3 5 (0.34%) VMS
4 3 (0.20%) Windows
5 2 (0.14%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.068%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 766 (51.83%) Analytics
2 701 (47.43%) Data Pipeline
3 566 (38.29%) Data Modelling
4 534 (36.13%) CI/CD
5 520 (35.18%) ETL
6 444 (30.04%) AI
7 386 (26.12%) Business Intelligence
8 379 (25.64%) Agile
9 365 (24.70%) DevOps
10 320 (21.65%) Data Governance
11 289 (19.55%) Machine Learning
12 266 (18.00%) Problem-Solving
13 265 (17.93%) Data Science
14 207 (14.01%) Migration
15 205 (13.87%) Decision-Making
16 203 (13.73%) Data Architecture
17 202 (13.67%) Validation
18 173 (11.71%) Stakeholder Management
19 171 (11.57%) Infrastructure as Code
20 170 (11.50%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 808 (54.67%) SQL
2 789 (53.38%) Python
3 117 (7.92%) Java
4 46 (3.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 41 (2.77%) Scala
6 36 (2.44%) Bash
6 36 (2.44%) C#
7 25 (1.69%) PowerShell
7 25 (1.69%) T-SQL
8 21 (1.42%) JavaScript
9 20 (1.35%) R
10 18 (1.22%) Bicep
11 17 (1.15%) PL/SQL
12 13 (0.88%) TypeScript
13 12 (0.81%) Shell Script
14 11 (0.74%) SAS Macro
15 6 (0.41%) SPARQL
16 5 (0.34%) Cypher
16 5 (0.34%) Korn
16 5 (0.34%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 280 (18.94%) Security Cleared
2 247 (16.71%) SC Cleared
3 109 (7.37%) Degree
4 46 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.57%) Master's Degree
6 35 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 32 (2.17%) Azure Certification
8 20 (1.35%) AWS Certification
9 14 (0.95%) DV Cleared
10 13 (0.88%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.68%) Microsoft Certification
12 9 (0.61%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 9 (0.61%) SnowPro
13 6 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 5 (0.34%) CSPO
15 3 (0.20%) IBM Certification
15 3 (0.20%) PhD
16 2 (0.14%) PMI Certification
16 2 (0.14%) Tableau Certification
17 1 (0.068%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 434 (29.36%) Data Quality
2 91 (6.16%) GDPR
3 68 (4.60%) QA
4 15 (1.01%) SLA
5 9 (0.61%) Accessibility
6 8 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
8 4 (0.27%) MiFID
8 4 (0.27%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
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%) NIST
10 2 (0.14%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.14%) COPPA
10 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 42001
10 2 (0.14%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 135 (9.13%) Docker
2 3 (0.20%) Active Directory
2 3 (0.20%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.14%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 198 (13.40%) Terraform
2 113 (7.65%) Kubernetes
3 27 (1.83%) Grafana
4 26 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 9 (0.61%) Ansible
6 4 (0.27%) Kibana
7 3 (0.20%) Argo
7 3 (0.20%) Nagios
7 3 (0.20%) Rancher
8 2 (0.14%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.14%) logstash
8 2 (0.14%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.068%) Control-M
9 1 (0.068%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.068%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.068%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.068%) Oozie
Vendors
1 385 (26.05%) Databricks
2 252 (17.05%) Microsoft
3 83 (5.62%) Informatica
4 59 (3.99%) Oracle
5 57 (3.86%) Google
6 32 (2.17%) Talend
7 29 (1.96%) OpenAI
8 26 (1.76%) Foundry
8 26 (1.76%) Palantir
8 26 (1.76%) SAP
9 23 (1.56%) Salesforce
10 22 (1.49%) Splunk
11 16 (1.08%) ServiceNow
12 15 (1.01%) Cloudera
13 12 (0.81%) Trend Micro
14 8 (0.54%) Denodo
14 8 (0.54%) UiPath
15 7 (0.47%) Automation Anywhere
15 7 (0.47%) InterSystems
16 6 (0.41%) Teradata