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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 145 190
Rank change year-on-year +52 +45 +38
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,609 658 499
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.95% 1.99% 1.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 2.20% 1.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,112 404 365
10th Percentile £400 £338 £394
25th Percentile £440 £413 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -5.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £644 £638 £663
90th Percentile £738 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £544
% change year-on-year +8.11% -14.94% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 6 6
10th Percentile - £37.11 £23.31
25th Percentile £21.25 £42.03 £25.65
Median hourly rate £62.40 £58.75 £43.25
Median % change year-on-year +6.21% +35.84% -42.72%
75th Percentile £71.50 £81.88 £60.00
90th Percentile £83.62 £98.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.40 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +60.16% -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 46,126 29,916 32,545
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.57% 90.50% 85.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,740 18,573 19,640
10th Percentile £325 £295 £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 £638 £623 £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 3,322 1,863 1,307
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.63% -7.56%
75th Percentile £65.00 £43.21 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.95 £65.23 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.32 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.05% -47.49% -

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 +52 1,424 £525 - 1,922
London +42 874 £550 - 1,225
UK excluding London +75 574 £500 +8.11% 796
Work from Home +44 511 £525 +1.94% 808
North of England +37 193 £475 +7.34% 267
Midlands +19 122 £475 +2.70% 95
West Midlands +23 100 £475 -17.39% 69
South East -9 97 £513 +15.17% 157
Yorkshire +30 91 £500 +5.26% 71
South West +35 89 £525 -14.29% 75
North West -14 65 £500 +17.65% 157
Scotland +9 56 £513 +23.68% 91
North East -7 39 £425 -5.56% 39
East Midlands 0 22 £503 +15.57% 26
East of England -30 19 £550 +15.79% 48
Wales -1 8 £450 -9.09% 19
Northern Ireland +13 5 £467 - 46

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
1 198 (12.31%) Apache Airflow
2 177 (11.00%) Apache Spark
3 157 (9.76%) Apache
4 40 (2.49%) Confluence
5 28 (1.74%) SAS
6 21 (1.31%) Jupyter
7 16 (0.99%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (0.93%) SharePoint
9 5 (0.31%) Apache Solr
9 5 (0.31%) ArcGIS
10 4 (0.25%) nginx
11 3 (0.19%) Apache Superset
11 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 1 (0.062%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.062%) CICS
12 1 (0.062%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.062%) GeoServer
12 1 (0.062%) Hyperledger
12 1 (0.062%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.062%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 13 (0.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.44%) Chatbot
2 7 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
3 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.12%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.062%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.062%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.68%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
4 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
5 3 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
5 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.12%) Cloudability
6 2 (0.12%) Endur
6 2 (0.12%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.12%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.062%) BambooHR
7 1 (0.062%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.062%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.062%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.062%) Oracle EBS
7 1 (0.062%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.062%) SAP ECC
7 1 (0.062%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 673 (41.83%) Azure
2 590 (36.67%) AWS
3 301 (18.71%) Power Platform
4 275 (17.09%) Snowflake
5 249 (15.48%) GCP
6 245 (15.23%) dbt
7 189 (11.75%) Amazon S3
8 184 (11.44%) Azure Data Factory
9 145 (9.01%) Serverless
10 135 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
11 126 (7.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 125 (7.77%) GitHub
13 121 (7.52%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (5.10%) Azure Databricks
15 63 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
16 53 (3.29%) Amazon EMR
17 42 (2.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 41 (2.55%) Amazon Bedrock
19 35 (2.18%) Microsoft Purview
20 34 (2.11%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 8 (0.50%) Network Security
2 7 (0.44%) DNS
3 6 (0.37%) Broadband
4 5 (0.31%) Firewall
5 1 (0.062%) HTTP
5 1 (0.062%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.062%) Internet
5 1 (0.062%) MIMO
5 1 (0.062%) MQTT
5 1 (0.062%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.062%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.062%) SMS
5 1 (0.062%) SSL
5 1 (0.062%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.062%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.062%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 330 (20.51%) Data Warehouse
2 289 (17.96%) Power BI
3 204 (12.68%) Data Lake
4 191 (11.87%) Metadata
5 126 (7.83%) BigQuery
6 113 (7.02%) Amazon Redshift
7 107 (6.65%) Delta Lake
8 83 (5.16%) Big Data
9 77 (4.79%) Amazon Athena
10 69 (4.29%) Tableau
11 62 (3.85%) Snowflake Schema
12 58 (3.60%) SQL Server
13 48 (2.98%) PostgreSQL
13 48 (2.98%) Relational Database
14 47 (2.92%) NoSQL
15 41 (2.55%) Looker
16 37 (2.30%) Azure SQL Database
17 35 (2.18%) Amazon RDS
18 31 (1.93%) Data Vault
19 27 (1.68%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 185 (11.50%) Git
2 101 (6.28%) GitLab
3 68 (4.23%) JIRA
4 28 (1.74%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.62%) 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 (0.12%) JMeter
10 2 (0.12%) Yeoman
General
1 418 (25.98%) Social Skills
2 365 (22.68%) Finance
3 250 (15.54%) Analytical Skills
4 166 (10.32%) Public Sector
5 145 (9.01%) Banking
6 53 (3.29%) Marketing
7 37 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 32 (1.99%) Retail
9 29 (1.80%) Investment Banking
10 27 (1.68%) Front Office
11 20 (1.24%) Pharmaceutical
12 19 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.18%) Law
13 18 (1.12%) Manufacturing
14 14 (0.87%) Billing
14 14 (0.87%) Police
14 14 (0.87%) Publishing
15 13 (0.81%) Aerospace
15 13 (0.81%) Back Office
15 13 (0.81%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 763 (47.42%) Data Engineer
2 259 (16.10%) Senior
3 185 (11.50%) Lead
4 167 (10.38%) Senior Data Engineer
5 163 (10.13%) Architect
6 96 (5.97%) Developer
7 86 (5.34%) Data Architect
8 76 (4.72%) AWS Engineer
8 76 (4.72%) Databricks Engineer
9 75 (4.66%) Snowflake Engineer
10 73 (4.54%) Analyst
11 70 (4.35%) Azure Engineer
12 65 (4.04%) AWS Data Engineer
13 59 (3.67%) Databricks Data Engineer
14 58 (3.60%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 55 (3.42%) Lead Data Engineer
16 53 (3.29%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 51 (3.17%) Python Engineer
18 48 (2.98%) Azure Data Engineer
19 42 (2.61%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (14.98%) PySpark
1 241 (14.98%) Terraform
2 117 (7.27%) Kafka
3 68 (4.23%) REST
4 34 (2.11%) JSON
5 29 (1.80%) .NET
5 29 (1.80%) React
6 23 (1.43%) Pandas
7 22 (1.37%) LangChain
8 18 (1.12%) pytest
9 17 (1.06%) FastAPI
9 17 (1.06%) PyTorch
10 15 (0.93%) LangGraph
11 14 (0.87%) scikit-learn
11 14 (0.87%) TensorFlow
11 14 (0.87%) XML
12 13 (0.81%) NumPy
13 12 (0.75%) Microsoft Graph
13 12 (0.75%) RESTful
13 12 (0.75%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 217 (13.49%) Cloud Native
2 84 (5.22%) Onboarding
3 83 (5.16%) Data Structures
4 70 (4.35%) Product Ownership
5 58 (3.60%) AI Agents
6 53 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
7 51 (3.17%) Distributed Systems
8 29 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
9 24 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 22 (1.37%) Algorithms
11 20 (1.24%) Distributed Computing
11 20 (1.24%) Management Information System
12 19 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 18 (1.12%) Life Science
14 16 (0.99%) Data Fabric
15 15 (0.93%) Clustering
15 15 (0.93%) Marketing Technology
16 14 (0.87%) Analytical Mindset
16 14 (0.87%) Greenfield Project
16 14 (0.87%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (1.99%) Linux
2 23 (1.43%) Unix
3 9 (0.56%) Windows
4 1 (0.062%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.062%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.062%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.062%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 796 (49.47%) Data Pipeline
2 736 (45.74%) Analytics
3 631 (39.22%) Data Modelling
4 596 (37.04%) CI/CD
5 555 (34.49%) ETL
6 518 (32.19%) AI
7 426 (26.48%) Agile
8 394 (24.49%) DevOps
9 375 (23.31%) Business Intelligence
10 355 (22.06%) Data Governance
11 295 (18.33%) Stakeholder Management
12 289 (17.96%) Machine Learning
13 258 (16.03%) Data Transformation
13 258 (16.03%) Validation
14 256 (15.91%) Infrastructure as Code
15 248 (15.41%) Data Integration
15 248 (15.41%) Migration
15 248 (15.41%) Problem-Solving
16 233 (14.48%) Data Architecture
17 228 (14.17%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 886 (55.07%) SQL
2 862 (53.57%) Python
3 102 (6.34%) Java
4 46 (2.86%) Scala
5 44 (2.73%) PowerShell
6 43 (2.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 39 (2.42%) C#
8 35 (2.18%) Bash
9 31 (1.93%) JavaScript
10 24 (1.49%) R
11 20 (1.24%) PL/SQL
11 20 (1.24%) T-SQL
12 16 (0.99%) Bicep
12 16 (0.99%) TypeScript
13 14 (0.87%) Kusto Query Language
14 11 (0.68%) Shell Script
15 10 (0.62%) Go
15 10 (0.62%) SPARQL
16 9 (0.56%) Korn
17 8 (0.50%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 304 (18.89%) Security Cleared
2 250 (15.54%) SC Cleared
3 88 (5.47%) Degree
4 43 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 41 (2.55%) DV Cleared
6 40 (2.49%) AWS Certification
7 38 (2.36%) Azure Certification
8 33 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
9 19 (1.18%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.87%) DBS Check
11 12 (0.75%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 11 (0.68%) SnowPro
13 9 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
15 7 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
16 6 (0.37%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 5 (0.31%) CSPO
17 5 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 5 (0.31%) PMP
18 4 (0.25%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 542 (33.69%) Data Quality
2 82 (5.10%) QA
3 61 (3.79%) GDPR
4 32 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.68%) SLA
6 7 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.37%) GRC
8 5 (0.31%) NCSC
9 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.25%) EU AI Act
9 4 (0.25%) NIST
9 4 (0.25%) PMO
10 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.19%) IFRS
10 3 (0.19%) IFRS 9
10 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.19%) MiFID
10 3 (0.19%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.12%) 21 CFR Part 11
11 2 (0.12%) GxP
System Software
1 128 (7.96%) Docker
2 5 (0.31%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.062%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.062%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 117 (7.27%) Kubernetes
2 31 (1.93%) Grafana
3 29 (1.80%) Ansible
4 14 (0.87%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.50%) Control-M
5 8 (0.50%) Kibana
6 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 2 (0.12%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.12%) Puppet
7 2 (0.12%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.062%) Argo
8 1 (0.062%) Cilium
8 1 (0.062%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.062%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.062%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.062%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.062%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.062%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.062%) QRadar
Vendors
1 459 (28.53%) Databricks
2 277 (17.22%) Microsoft
3 101 (6.28%) Google
4 77 (4.79%) Oracle
5 56 (3.48%) Informatica
6 31 (1.93%) SAP
7 30 (1.86%) Salesforce
8 27 (1.68%) Foundry
9 25 (1.55%) Palantir
9 25 (1.55%) Talend
10 22 (1.37%) OpenAI
11 15 (0.93%) Teradata
12 12 (0.75%) Cloudera
12 12 (0.75%) Trend Micro
13 11 (0.68%) Adobe
13 11 (0.68%) ServiceNow
14 9 (0.56%) Denodo
14 9 (0.56%) Splunk
15 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
16 6 (0.37%) Bloomberg