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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 162 211
Rank change year-on-year +79 +49 -1
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,575 579 475
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 1.76% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.50% 1.95% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,091 370 349
10th Percentile £388 £363 £398
25th Percentile £438 £433 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £644 £688
90th Percentile £738 £800 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -13.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 7 13
10th Percentile £21.25 £27.00 £30.55
25th Percentile £35.25 £34.48 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.44 £52.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.27% +50.00% -52.05%
75th Percentile £75.00 £59.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £83.00 -
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 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 +70 1,408 £525 - 655
London +56 837 £550 - 402
UK excluding London +84 576 £500 +6.38% 346
Work from Home +70 523 £525 - 295
North of England +27 178 £475 -2.56% 120
Midlands +36 149 £481 +4.79% 36
West Midlands +29 124 £475 +10.21% 26
South East -24 86 £525 +11.94% 106
South West +30 85 £503 -12.61% 46
Yorkshire +10 82 £475 +2.70% 37
North West -20 58 £500 +5.26% 58
Scotland +13 50 £450 -4.26% 18
North East -11 40 £425 -15.00% 26
East of England 0 30 £575 +35.29% 10
East Midlands -2 22 £525 +13.94% 10
Wales -10 7 £450 +82.58% 6
Northern Ireland +2 4 £334 - 7

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 (12.38%) Apache Spark
2 172 (10.92%) Apache Airflow
3 126 (8.00%) Apache
4 47 (2.98%) SAS
5 41 (2.60%) Confluence
6 23 (1.46%) Jupyter
7 22 (1.40%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.51%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.063%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.063%) CICS
13 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.063%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.063%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 22 (1.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.25%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.063%) Notion
Business Applications
1 13 (0.83%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.13%) Endur
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.063%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.063%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.063%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 663 (42.10%) Azure
2 592 (37.59%) AWS
3 329 (20.89%) Power Platform
4 245 (15.56%) Snowflake
5 212 (13.46%) GCP
6 197 (12.51%) dbt
7 180 (11.43%) Azure Data Factory
8 179 (11.37%) Amazon S3
9 149 (9.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 133 (8.44%) Serverless
11 132 (8.38%) Azure DevOps
12 121 (7.68%) GitHub
13 112 (7.11%) AWS Lambda
14 68 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
15 61 (3.87%) Amazon EMR
16 37 (2.35%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 34 (2.16%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (1.97%) AWS Step Functions
18 31 (1.97%) Azure AI
19 30 (1.90%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 3 (0.19%) RTP
3 2 (0.13%) Network Security
4 1 (0.063%) 4G
4 1 (0.063%) 5G
4 1 (0.063%) Broadband
4 1 (0.063%) MIMO
4 1 (0.063%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (19.56%) Power BI
2 303 (19.24%) Data Warehouse
3 217 (13.78%) Data Lake
4 151 (9.59%) Metadata
5 108 (6.86%) Amazon Redshift
6 104 (6.60%) Big Data
7 98 (6.22%) BigQuery
7 98 (6.22%) Delta Lake
8 90 (5.71%) Tableau
9 78 (4.95%) Amazon Athena
10 76 (4.83%) SQL Server
11 66 (4.19%) Snowflake Schema
12 64 (4.06%) NoSQL
13 61 (3.87%) Relational Database
14 58 (3.68%) PostgreSQL
15 49 (3.11%) Azure SQL Database
16 41 (2.60%) Hadoop
17 37 (2.35%) Star Schema
18 35 (2.22%) Looker
19 34 (2.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 174 (11.05%) Git
2 76 (4.83%) GitLab
3 70 (4.44%) JIRA
4 31 (1.97%) MLflow
5 24 (1.52%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.38%) ERwin
6 6 (0.38%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
8 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
8 3 (0.19%) Postman
8 3 (0.19%) Selenium
8 3 (0.19%) Snyk
8 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
9 2 (0.13%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
10 1 (0.063%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.063%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.063%) RStudio
General
1 382 (24.25%) Social Skills
2 364 (23.11%) Finance
3 254 (16.13%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (10.73%) Public Sector
5 122 (7.75%) Banking
6 43 (2.73%) Marketing
7 35 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 35 (2.22%) Retail
8 33 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
9 25 (1.59%) Telecoms
10 24 (1.52%) Front Office
11 22 (1.40%) Investment Banking
12 16 (1.02%) Manufacturing
13 15 (0.95%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.89%) Law
14 14 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
15 12 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.70%) Legal
17 9 (0.57%) Billing
18 8 (0.51%) Military
Job Titles
1 730 (46.35%) Data Engineer
2 218 (13.84%) Senior
3 184 (11.68%) Lead
4 180 (11.43%) Architect
5 129 (8.19%) Senior Data Engineer
6 96 (6.10%) Data Architect
7 94 (5.97%) Developer
8 81 (5.14%) AWS Engineer
9 71 (4.51%) Analyst
10 65 (4.13%) Azure Engineer
10 65 (4.13%) Lead Data Engineer
11 64 (4.06%) AWS Data Engineer
12 63 (4.00%) Snowflake Engineer
13 56 (3.56%) Azure Data Engineer
14 49 (3.11%) Python Engineer
14 49 (3.11%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 47 (2.98%) Consultant
16 46 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
17 44 (2.79%) Data Scientist
18 42 (2.67%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (14.79%) PySpark
2 140 (8.89%) Kafka
3 44 (2.79%) REST
4 37 (2.35%) Pandas
5 35 (2.22%) JSON
6 28 (1.78%) PyTorch
6 28 (1.78%) scikit-learn
7 27 (1.71%) React
8 22 (1.40%) NumPy
8 22 (1.40%) Spring
8 22 (1.40%) TensorFlow
9 20 (1.27%) .NET
10 16 (1.02%) RESTful
11 15 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
11 15 (0.95%) Spring Boot
12 14 (0.89%) FastAPI
13 13 (0.83%) Apache Avro
13 13 (0.83%) LangChain
14 12 (0.76%) Microsoft Graph
15 11 (0.70%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 211 (13.40%) Cloud Native
2 72 (4.57%) Data Structures
3 65 (4.13%) Distributed Systems
4 63 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
5 56 (3.56%) Product Ownership
6 42 (2.67%) Onboarding
7 37 (2.35%) AI Agents
8 28 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
9 25 (1.59%) Distributed Computing
10 23 (1.46%) Algorithms
11 22 (1.40%) Greenfield Project
12 21 (1.33%) NHS
13 17 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
13 17 (1.08%) Clustering
13 17 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 15 (0.95%) Life Science
15 13 (0.83%) Enterprise Software
15 13 (0.83%) Management Information System
16 12 (0.76%) Fixed Income
16 12 (0.76%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 33 (2.10%) Linux
2 25 (1.59%) Unix
3 7 (0.44%) Windows
4 4 (0.25%) VMS
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 804 (51.05%) Analytics
2 761 (48.32%) Data Pipeline
3 612 (38.86%) Data Modelling
4 549 (34.86%) CI/CD
5 537 (34.10%) ETL
6 438 (27.81%) AI
7 399 (25.33%) Agile
8 396 (25.14%) Business Intelligence
9 368 (23.37%) DevOps
10 351 (22.29%) Data Governance
11 289 (18.35%) Machine Learning
12 269 (17.08%) Problem-Solving
13 264 (16.76%) Data Science
14 232 (14.73%) Migration
15 226 (14.35%) Validation
16 225 (14.29%) Decision-Making
17 218 (13.84%) Data Architecture
18 204 (12.95%) Data Transformation
19 203 (12.89%) Stakeholder Management
20 194 (12.32%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 857 (54.41%) SQL
2 816 (51.81%) Python
3 124 (7.87%) Java
4 47 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 42 (2.67%) Scala
6 37 (2.35%) Bash
6 37 (2.35%) C#
7 28 (1.78%) PowerShell
8 26 (1.65%) T-SQL
9 22 (1.40%) JavaScript
9 22 (1.40%) R
10 19 (1.21%) Bicep
11 17 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 15 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 12 (0.76%) SAS Macro
14 11 (0.70%) TypeScript
15 8 (0.51%) SPARQL
16 7 (0.44%) Cypher
17 5 (0.32%) Go
17 5 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 301 (19.11%) Security Cleared
2 259 (16.44%) SC Cleared
3 105 (6.67%) Degree
4 49 (3.11%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 32 (2.03%) Azure Certification
7 31 (1.97%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.71%) DV Cleared
9 20 (1.27%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.83%) DBS Check
11 11 (0.70%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
16 3 (0.19%) PhD
17 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
18 1 (0.063%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 462 (29.33%) Data Quality
2 82 (5.21%) GDPR
3 80 (5.08%) QA
4 24 (1.52%) Accessibility
5 15 (0.95%) SLA
6 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
6 4 (0.25%) NIST
6 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.19%) GxP
7 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 3 (0.19%) MiFID
7 3 (0.19%) PMO
8 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.13%) COPPA
8 2 (0.13%) EMIR
8 2 (0.13%) GRC
8 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 135 (8.57%) Docker
2 4 (0.25%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.13%) HDFS
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 200 (12.70%) Terraform
2 118 (7.49%) Kubernetes
3 27 (1.71%) Grafana
4 23 (1.46%) Prometheus
5 14 (0.89%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Argo
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Nagios
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.063%) Cilium
9 1 (0.063%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.063%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.063%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.063%) Oozie
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 416 (26.41%) Databricks
2 270 (17.14%) Microsoft
3 82 (5.21%) Informatica
4 69 (4.38%) Oracle
5 66 (4.19%) Google
6 35 (2.22%) SAP
7 33 (2.10%) Talend
8 32 (2.03%) Foundry
9 31 (1.97%) Palantir
10 24 (1.52%) OpenAI
11 23 (1.46%) Salesforce
12 22 (1.40%) Splunk
13 17 (1.08%) Cloudera
14 15 (0.95%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
16 9 (0.57%) Workday
17 8 (0.51%) Denodo
18 7 (0.44%) Adobe
18 7 (0.44%) InterSystems
19 6 (0.38%) Teradata