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 21 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 164 209
Rank change year-on-year +73 +45 +4
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,550 568 462
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.89% 1.73% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.42% 1.91% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,068 354 341
10th Percentile £400 £363 £400
25th Percentile £449 £426 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £575
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -10.87% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £676
90th Percentile £740 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £516
% change year-on-year +5.26% -7.86% -8.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 7 13
10th Percentile £21.25 £32.38 £30.55
25th Percentile £24.69 £45.11 £31.25
Median hourly rate £67.00 £52.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +27.62% +50.00% -55.13%
75th Percentile £75.00 £76.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £87.11 £96.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.50 £31.98 £60.00
% change year-on-year +51.66% -46.70% -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 45,356 29,667 33,233
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.68% 90.51% 85.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,834 18,495 21,131
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.58%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,855 1,741 1,763
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £18.31 £17.33 £18.00
Median hourly rate £42.00 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +67.00% -37.90% -1.22%
75th Percentile £67.94 £49.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £68.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £24.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year +83.17% -42.17% +12.54%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 +64 1,393 £525 - 433
London +52 843 £550 - 219
UK excluding London +86 554 £500 +5.26% 313
Work from Home +72 502 £525 +5.00% 223
North of England +29 177 £463 -2.63% 95
Midlands +45 142 £486 +7.93% 25
West Midlands +32 117 £475 +1.28% 21
South East -12 92 £525 +11.94% 116
Yorkshire +21 86 £475 +11.76% 26
South West +8 72 £523 -3.91% 45
North West -13 56 £525 +5.00% 45
Scotland 0 45 £500 +7.53% 14
North East -4 37 £425 -20.93% 26
East of England +2 28 £575 -4.17% 12
East Midlands -4 22 £525 +16.54% 4
Wales - 7 £450 - 4
Northern Ireland +5 4 £334 - 5

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
1 181 (11.68%) Apache Airflow
2 173 (11.16%) Apache Spark
3 122 (7.87%) Apache
4 43 (2.77%) SAS
5 39 (2.52%) Confluence
6 22 (1.42%) Jupyter
7 19 (1.23%) Palantir Foundry
8 13 (0.84%) SharePoint
9 6 (0.39%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.32%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.065%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.065%) CICS
13 1 (0.065%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.065%) GeoServer
13 1 (0.065%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.065%) nginx
Applications
1 19 (1.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
3 6 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
4 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.065%) Notion
Business Applications
1 12 (0.77%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.39%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.26%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.26%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.13%) Endur
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.065%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.065%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.065%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.065%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.065%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 652 (42.06%) Azure
2 575 (37.10%) AWS
3 309 (19.94%) Power Platform
4 253 (16.32%) Snowflake
5 211 (13.61%) GCP
6 203 (13.10%) dbt
7 168 (10.84%) Amazon S3
8 167 (10.77%) Azure Data Factory
9 139 (8.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 136 (8.77%) Azure DevOps
11 129 (8.32%) Serverless
12 123 (7.94%) GitHub
13 108 (6.97%) AWS Lambda
14 63 (4.06%) GitHub Actions
15 52 (3.35%) Amazon EMR
16 34 (2.19%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 32 (2.06%) Amazon Bedrock
18 30 (1.94%) Azure AI
19 27 (1.74%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (1.74%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 3 (0.19%) DNS
2 3 (0.19%) Network Security
3 2 (0.13%) Broadband
3 2 (0.13%) RTP
4 1 (0.065%) Internet
4 1 (0.065%) MIMO
4 1 (0.065%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (19.94%) Data Warehouse
2 295 (19.03%) Power BI
3 212 (13.68%) Data Lake
4 164 (10.58%) Metadata
5 112 (7.23%) BigQuery
6 110 (7.10%) Amazon Redshift
7 97 (6.26%) Big Data
7 97 (6.26%) Delta Lake
8 83 (5.35%) Tableau
9 76 (4.90%) Amazon Athena
10 68 (4.39%) SQL Server
11 63 (4.06%) Snowflake Schema
12 59 (3.81%) NoSQL
13 56 (3.61%) Relational Database
14 53 (3.42%) PostgreSQL
15 46 (2.97%) Azure SQL Database
16 38 (2.45%) Looker
17 36 (2.32%) Star Schema
18 34 (2.19%) Data Vault
19 30 (1.94%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 165 (10.65%) Git
2 85 (5.48%) GitLab
3 71 (4.58%) JIRA
4 26 (1.68%) Jenkins
5 25 (1.61%) MLflow
6 7 (0.45%) ERwin
7 6 (0.39%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.39%) Terragrunt
8 5 (0.32%) Claude Code
8 5 (0.32%) RStudio
8 5 (0.32%) Selenium
8 5 (0.32%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.13%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 2 (0.13%) Postman
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.065%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 380 (24.52%) Social Skills
2 354 (22.84%) Finance
3 245 (15.81%) Analytical Skills
4 162 (10.45%) Public Sector
5 119 (7.68%) Banking
6 48 (3.10%) Marketing
7 41 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 33 (2.13%) Retail
9 27 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
10 24 (1.55%) Investment Banking
11 22 (1.42%) Front Office
11 22 (1.42%) Telecoms
12 16 (1.03%) Manufacturing
13 14 (0.90%) Law
13 14 (0.90%) Pharmaceutical
14 13 (0.84%) Financial Institution
15 12 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
16 11 (0.71%) Billing
17 10 (0.65%) Legal
18 9 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 717 (46.26%) Data Engineer
2 230 (14.84%) Senior
3 179 (11.55%) Architect
4 173 (11.16%) Lead
5 138 (8.90%) Senior Data Engineer
6 99 (6.39%) Data Architect
7 92 (5.94%) Developer
8 78 (5.03%) AWS Engineer
9 69 (4.45%) Analyst
10 65 (4.19%) AWS Data Engineer
10 65 (4.19%) Snowflake Engineer
11 59 (3.81%) Azure Engineer
12 57 (3.68%) Lead Data Engineer
13 49 (3.16%) Python Engineer
13 49 (3.16%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 47 (3.03%) Consultant
15 46 (2.97%) Azure Data Engineer
16 44 (2.84%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 43 (2.77%) Solutions Architect
18 39 (2.52%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (15.23%) PySpark
2 205 (13.23%) Terraform
3 124 (8.00%) Kafka
4 51 (3.29%) REST
5 31 (2.00%) JSON
5 31 (2.00%) React
6 28 (1.81%) Pandas
7 22 (1.42%) .NET
8 21 (1.35%) PyTorch
9 19 (1.23%) scikit-learn
9 19 (1.23%) TensorFlow
10 17 (1.10%) Spring
11 16 (1.03%) NumPy
12 13 (0.84%) FastAPI
13 12 (0.77%) pytest
13 12 (0.77%) RESTful
14 11 (0.71%) LangChain
14 11 (0.71%) Microsoft Graph
14 11 (0.71%) Spring Boot
14 11 (0.71%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 203 (13.10%) Cloud Native
2 71 (4.58%) Data Structures
3 64 (4.13%) Legacy Systems
4 58 (3.74%) Product Ownership
5 57 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
6 53 (3.42%) Onboarding
7 40 (2.58%) AI Agents
8 25 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
10 19 (1.23%) Distributed Computing
11 18 (1.16%) Algorithms
11 18 (1.16%) NHS
12 17 (1.10%) Virtual Team
13 16 (1.03%) Clustering
13 16 (1.03%) Life Science
14 15 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
15 14 (0.90%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (0.90%) Management Information System
16 12 (0.77%) Reference Data
17 10 (0.65%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 37 (2.39%) Linux
2 32 (2.06%) Unix
3 8 (0.52%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.065%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.065%) Robot Operating System
5 1 (0.065%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 760 (49.03%) Analytics
2 741 (47.81%) Data Pipeline
3 585 (37.74%) Data Modelling
4 538 (34.71%) CI/CD
5 530 (34.19%) ETL
6 458 (29.55%) AI
7 387 (24.97%) Agile
8 386 (24.90%) Business Intelligence
9 360 (23.23%) DevOps
10 353 (22.77%) Data Governance
11 275 (17.74%) Machine Learning
12 250 (16.13%) Problem-Solving
13 237 (15.29%) Migration
14 234 (15.10%) Data Science
15 231 (14.90%) Data Transformation
16 227 (14.65%) Decision-Making
17 225 (14.52%) Data Architecture
17 225 (14.52%) Stakeholder Management
18 224 (14.45%) Validation
19 202 (13.03%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 837 (54.00%) SQL
2 789 (50.90%) Python
3 114 (7.35%) Java
4 43 (2.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 42 (2.71%) Scala
6 39 (2.52%) Bash
7 37 (2.39%) PowerShell
8 31 (2.00%) C#
9 25 (1.61%) JavaScript
10 23 (1.48%) R
11 21 (1.35%) T-SQL
12 20 (1.29%) PL/SQL
13 16 (1.03%) Shell Script
14 15 (0.97%) Bicep
15 11 (0.71%) TypeScript
16 10 (0.65%) SAS Macro
17 8 (0.52%) Kusto Query Language
17 8 (0.52%) SPARQL
18 6 (0.39%) Cypher
18 6 (0.39%) Go
Qualifications
1 296 (19.10%) Security Cleared
2 251 (16.19%) SC Cleared
3 91 (5.87%) Degree
4 48 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 31 (2.00%) Azure Certification
6 29 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 26 (1.68%) DV Cleared
8 22 (1.42%) Master's Degree
9 21 (1.35%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.90%) DBS Check
11 12 (0.77%) SnowPro
12 11 (0.71%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.52%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
16 3 (0.19%) PhD
16 3 (0.19%) PMI Certification
17 2 (0.13%) PMP
18 1 (0.065%) CCSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 476 (30.71%) Data Quality
2 77 (4.97%) GDPR
3 75 (4.84%) QA
4 26 (1.68%) Accessibility
5 14 (0.90%) SLA
6 4 (0.26%) Disclosure Scotland
6 4 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
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%) NIST
7 3 (0.19%) PMO
7 3 (0.19%) Solvency II
8 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.13%) COPPA
8 2 (0.13%) GRC
8 2 (0.13%) IFRS
System Software
1 132 (8.52%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.13%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.065%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 107 (6.90%) Kubernetes
2 27 (1.74%) Grafana
3 20 (1.29%) Ansible
4 9 (0.58%) Prometheus
5 7 (0.45%) Control-M
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Puppet
8 2 (0.13%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.065%) Cilium
9 1 (0.065%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.065%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.065%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.065%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.065%) Nagios
9 1 (0.065%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.065%) QRadar
Vendors
1 413 (26.65%) Databricks
2 272 (17.55%) Microsoft
3 80 (5.16%) Informatica
4 72 (4.65%) Google
5 70 (4.52%) Oracle
6 33 (2.13%) SAP
7 30 (1.94%) Foundry
8 29 (1.87%) Talend
9 27 (1.74%) Palantir
9 27 (1.74%) Salesforce
10 17 (1.10%) OpenAI
11 16 (1.03%) Cloudera
12 14 (0.90%) ServiceNow
13 13 (0.84%) Teradata
14 12 (0.77%) Splunk
14 12 (0.77%) Trend Micro
15 9 (0.58%) Denodo
15 9 (0.58%) Workday
16 8 (0.52%) Adobe
17 7 (0.45%) Hitachi