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 3 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 148 193
Rank change year-on-year +56 +45 +34
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,595 644 496
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 1.94% 1.30%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 2.15% 1.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,109 402 359
10th Percentile £400 £338 £375
25th Percentile £445 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £663
90th Percentile £738 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £531
% change year-on-year +8.11% -12.94% -5.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 6 7
10th Percentile - £37.11 £23.72
25th Percentile £21.25 £42.03 £25.93
Median hourly rate £59.95 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.08% -17.81%
75th Percentile £70.38 £81.88 -
90th Percentile £74.74 £98.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.95 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +53.88% -35.07% -23.08%

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 46,356 30,019 32,670
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.50% 90.58% 85.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,940 18,640 19,751
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £632 £625 £638
90th Percentile £736 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,287 1,869 1,348
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.27
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.49% -0.55%
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -48.10% +1.18%

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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 +50 1,413 £525 - 2,132
London +45 866 £550 - 1,262
UK excluding London +64 568 £500 +8.11% 1,230
Work from Home +53 511 £525 +5.00% 1,191
North of England +25 190 £475 +9.20% 336
Midlands +21 124 £475 +2.70% 144
West Midlands +25 101 £475 -13.64% 103
Yorkshire +30 95 £500 +5.26% 92
South East -14 92 £513 +15.17% 252
South West +36 88 £525 -8.70% 121
North West -24 60 £525 +23.53% 187
Scotland -4 53 £513 +10.81% 182
North East -12 37 £425 -17.07% 63
East Midlands -4 23 £525 +20.62% 41
East of England -17 22 £550 +15.79% 61
Wales -6 8 £450 -9.09% 63
Northern Ireland +8 5 £467 - 82

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
1 197 (12.35%) Apache Airflow
2 174 (10.91%) Apache Spark
3 153 (9.59%) Apache
4 41 (2.57%) Confluence
5 29 (1.82%) SAS
6 22 (1.38%) Jupyter
7 15 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.94%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.31%) Apache Solr
8 5 (0.31%) ArcGIS
9 4 (0.25%) nginx
10 3 (0.19%) Apache Superset
10 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
11 1 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
11 1 (0.063%) CICS
11 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
11 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
11 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.063%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 12 (0.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.44%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.063%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
5 2 (0.13%) Cloudability
5 2 (0.13%) Endur
5 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
6 1 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.063%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.063%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
6 1 (0.063%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 671 (42.07%) Azure
2 587 (36.80%) AWS
3 300 (18.81%) Power Platform
4 276 (17.30%) Snowflake
5 244 (15.30%) GCP
6 243 (15.24%) dbt
7 189 (11.85%) Amazon S3
8 186 (11.66%) Azure Data Factory
9 146 (9.15%) Serverless
10 134 (8.40%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (7.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 124 (7.77%) GitHub
13 121 (7.59%) AWS Lambda
14 81 (5.08%) Azure Databricks
15 63 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
16 54 (3.39%) Amazon EMR
17 42 (2.63%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 41 (2.57%) Amazon Bedrock
19 36 (2.26%) Microsoft Purview
20 33 (2.07%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.50%) Network Security
2 7 (0.44%) DNS
3 6 (0.38%) Broadband
4 5 (0.31%) Firewall
5 1 (0.063%) HTTP
5 1 (0.063%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.063%) Internet
5 1 (0.063%) MIMO
5 1 (0.063%) MQTT
5 1 (0.063%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.063%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.063%) SMS
5 1 (0.063%) SSL
5 1 (0.063%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.063%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.063%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 332 (20.82%) Data Warehouse
2 288 (18.06%) Power BI
3 207 (12.98%) Data Lake
4 188 (11.79%) Metadata
5 127 (7.96%) BigQuery
6 114 (7.15%) Amazon Redshift
7 105 (6.58%) Delta Lake
8 86 (5.39%) Big Data
9 78 (4.89%) Amazon Athena
10 70 (4.39%) Tableau
11 61 (3.82%) Snowflake Schema
12 59 (3.70%) SQL Server
13 51 (3.20%) Relational Database
14 50 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
15 44 (2.76%) NoSQL
16 41 (2.57%) Looker
17 36 (2.26%) Azure SQL Database
18 34 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
19 32 (2.01%) Data Vault
20 28 (1.76%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 185 (11.60%) Git
2 101 (6.33%) GitLab
3 70 (4.39%) JIRA
4 28 (1.76%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.63%) MLflow
6 8 (0.50%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.50%) Claude Code
6 8 (0.50%) ERwin
6 8 (0.50%) RStudio
6 8 (0.50%) Terragrunt
7 7 (0.44%) Selenium
8 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
8 4 (0.25%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.19%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.19%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.19%) TeamCity
10 2 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 418 (26.21%) Social Skills
2 367 (23.01%) Finance
3 249 (15.61%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (10.47%) Public Sector
5 145 (9.09%) Banking
6 53 (3.32%) Marketing
7 36 (2.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.07%) Retail
9 27 (1.69%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.63%) Front Office
11 20 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
11 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
12 18 (1.13%) Law
12 18 (1.13%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.88%) Billing
13 14 (0.88%) Publishing
13 14 (0.88%) Telecoms
14 13 (0.82%) Back Office
14 13 (0.82%) Police
15 12 (0.75%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 754 (47.27%) Data Engineer
2 258 (16.18%) Senior
3 181 (11.35%) Lead
4 165 (10.34%) Senior Data Engineer
5 164 (10.28%) Architect
6 97 (6.08%) Developer
7 88 (5.52%) Data Architect
8 76 (4.76%) Databricks Engineer
9 74 (4.64%) AWS Engineer
10 73 (4.58%) Snowflake Engineer
11 69 (4.33%) Analyst
11 69 (4.33%) Azure Engineer
12 63 (3.95%) AWS Data Engineer
13 60 (3.76%) Databricks Data Engineer
14 56 (3.51%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 53 (3.32%) Lead Data Engineer
16 50 (3.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 49 (3.07%) Python Engineer
18 47 (2.95%) Azure Data Engineer
19 40 (2.51%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (15.05%) Terraform
2 236 (14.80%) PySpark
3 117 (7.34%) Kafka
4 68 (4.26%) REST
5 34 (2.13%) JSON
6 29 (1.82%) React
7 28 (1.76%) .NET
8 25 (1.57%) Pandas
9 20 (1.25%) LangChain
10 18 (1.13%) pytest
11 17 (1.07%) FastAPI
11 17 (1.07%) PyTorch
12 14 (0.88%) LangGraph
12 14 (0.88%) scikit-learn
12 14 (0.88%) TensorFlow
12 14 (0.88%) XML
13 13 (0.82%) NumPy
13 13 (0.82%) RESTful
14 12 (0.75%) Apache NiFi
14 12 (0.75%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 214 (13.42%) Cloud Native
2 85 (5.33%) Data Structures
3 82 (5.14%) Onboarding
4 65 (4.08%) Product Ownership
5 57 (3.57%) AI Agents
6 53 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
7 51 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
8 28 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (1.25%) Distributed Computing
11 18 (1.13%) Algorithms
11 18 (1.13%) Life Science
11 18 (1.13%) Virtual Team
12 17 (1.07%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.00%) Data Fabric
14 15 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
14 15 (0.94%) Marketing Technology
14 15 (0.94%) NHS
15 14 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.82%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 31 (1.94%) Linux
2 23 (1.44%) Unix
3 8 (0.50%) Windows
4 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.063%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 787 (49.34%) Data Pipeline
2 738 (46.27%) Analytics
3 628 (39.37%) Data Modelling
4 587 (36.80%) CI/CD
5 554 (34.73%) ETL
6 515 (32.29%) AI
7 418 (26.21%) Agile
8 391 (24.51%) DevOps
9 374 (23.45%) Business Intelligence
10 352 (22.07%) Data Governance
11 294 (18.43%) Stakeholder Management
12 288 (18.06%) Machine Learning
13 255 (15.99%) Data Transformation
14 254 (15.92%) Validation
15 253 (15.86%) Infrastructure as Code
16 246 (15.42%) Migration
17 243 (15.24%) Data Integration
17 243 (15.24%) Problem-Solving
18 241 (15.11%) Data Architecture
19 233 (14.61%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 879 (55.11%) SQL
2 855 (53.61%) Python
3 104 (6.52%) Java
4 47 (2.95%) Scala
5 43 (2.70%) PowerShell
6 42 (2.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 39 (2.45%) C#
8 35 (2.19%) Bash
9 32 (2.01%) JavaScript
10 26 (1.63%) R
11 20 (1.25%) T-SQL
12 19 (1.19%) PL/SQL
13 17 (1.07%) Bicep
14 16 (1.00%) TypeScript
15 14 (0.88%) Kusto Query Language
16 10 (0.63%) Go
16 10 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 10 (0.63%) SPARQL
17 8 (0.50%) Korn
17 8 (0.50%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 295 (18.50%) Security Cleared
2 242 (15.17%) SC Cleared
3 83 (5.20%) Degree
4 38 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
4 38 (2.38%) DV Cleared
5 37 (2.32%) AWS Certification
6 33 (2.07%) Azure Certification
7 31 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 19 (1.19%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.88%) DBS Check
10 12 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 12 (0.75%) SnowPro
11 9 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 5 (0.31%) CSPO
14 5 (0.31%) PMI Certification
14 5 (0.31%) PMP
14 5 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.25%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 536 (33.61%) Data Quality
2 80 (5.02%) QA
3 63 (3.95%) GDPR
4 32 (2.01%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.69%) SLA
6 7 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.38%) GRC
8 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.25%) EU AI Act
8 4 (0.25%) NCSC
8 4 (0.25%) NIST
8 4 (0.25%) PMO
9 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.19%) IFRS
9 3 (0.19%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.19%) MiFID
10 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.13%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 131 (8.21%) Docker
2 5 (0.31%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.063%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 115 (7.21%) Kubernetes
2 32 (2.01%) Grafana
3 29 (1.82%) Ansible
4 14 (0.88%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.50%) Control-M
5 8 (0.50%) Kibana
6 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 2 (0.13%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.13%) Puppet
7 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.063%) Argo
8 1 (0.063%) Cilium
8 1 (0.063%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.063%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.063%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.063%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 462 (28.97%) Databricks
2 269 (16.87%) Microsoft
3 96 (6.02%) Google
4 76 (4.76%) Oracle
5 58 (3.64%) Informatica
6 30 (1.88%) Salesforce
6 30 (1.88%) SAP
7 26 (1.63%) Foundry
8 25 (1.57%) Talend
9 23 (1.44%) Palantir
10 22 (1.38%) OpenAI
11 15 (0.94%) Teradata
12 12 (0.75%) Cloudera
12 12 (0.75%) Trend Micro
13 11 (0.69%) Adobe
13 11 (0.69%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.50%) Denodo
14 8 (0.50%) Splunk
15 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
16 6 (0.38%) Bloomberg