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 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 159 206
Rank change year-on-year +70 +47 +2
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,313 508 486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.72% 1.76% 1.14%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.22% 1.94% 1.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 907 349 365
10th Percentile £400 £375 £375
25th Percentile £450 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £650
90th Percentile £749 £838 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £550
% change year-on-year +5.26% -13.64% +2.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 14 14
10th Percentile £51.25 £21.48 £30.63
25th Percentile £56.75 £22.55 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £28.75 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +143.48% -17.86% -35.48%
75th Percentile £78.00 £53.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £65.00 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £25.43 £60.00
% change year-on-year +172.20% -57.62% +71.43%

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 40,767 26,234 36,547
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.37% 91.05% 86.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,562 16,839 23,562
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £497 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.66% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,395 1,067 2,440
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.36 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.96 £18.30 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.18 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +50.82% -21.82% +0.13%
75th Percentile £67.50 £59.95 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -33.82% +8.57%

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 22 May 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 22 May 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 22 May 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 1,184 £525 -4.55% 452
London +61 737 £550 -4.35% 231
UK excluding London +65 463 £500 +5.26% 327
Work from Home +50 377 £539 -2.05% 244
North of England +6 127 £480 -4.00% 91
Midlands +15 120 £500 +6.67% 33
West Midlands +22 101 £500 -1.09% 26
South West +29 77 £506 -15.75% 31
South East -18 63 £550 +14.11% 111
Scotland +27 56 £450 -5.37% 18
Yorkshire -8 56 £478 -15.11% 22
North West -20 50 £500 - 49
North East -8 23 £450 -5.26% 22
East of England -19 22 £575 +54.08% 24
East Midlands -16 16 £500 +6.67% 7
Wales -15 6 £563 +150.76% 16
Northern Ireland - 3 £430 - 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
1 188 (14.32%) Apache Spark
2 134 (10.21%) Apache Airflow
3 88 (6.70%) Apache
4 36 (2.74%) SAS
5 23 (1.75%) Confluence
6 13 (0.99%) Palantir Foundry
7 9 (0.69%) Jupyter
8 8 (0.61%) Appian
9 7 (0.53%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.15%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.15%) SharePoint
12 1 (0.076%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.076%) ArcGIS
12 1 (0.076%) Camunda
12 1 (0.076%) CICS
12 1 (0.076%) CMS
12 1 (0.076%) IBM HTTP Server
12 1 (0.076%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 30 (2.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
2 8 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.23%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.23%) Trello
6 2 (0.15%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (0.46%) Aladdin
2 5 (0.38%) BambooHR
3 4 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.23%) SAP BPC
5 2 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.15%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.076%) Adobe Campaign
6 1 (0.076%) Endur
6 1 (0.076%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.076%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 578 (44.02%) Azure
2 476 (36.25%) AWS
3 299 (22.77%) Power Platform
4 186 (14.17%) GCP
5 182 (13.86%) Azure Data Factory
6 174 (13.25%) Snowflake
7 145 (11.04%) Amazon S3
8 143 (10.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 131 (9.98%) dbt
10 125 (9.52%) GitHub
11 107 (8.15%) Azure DevOps
12 106 (8.07%) Serverless
13 84 (6.40%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (5.64%) GitHub Actions
15 50 (3.81%) AWS CloudFormation
16 33 (2.51%) Amazon EMR
16 33 (2.51%) AWS Step Functions
17 28 (2.13%) Collibra
18 26 (1.98%) Azure AI
18 26 (1.98%) Dagster
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.38%) RTP
2 4 (0.30%) Firewall
3 2 (0.15%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.076%) 4G
4 1 (0.076%) 5G
4 1 (0.076%) MIMO
4 1 (0.076%) Network Security
4 1 (0.076%) SAN
4 1 (0.076%) SMS
4 1 (0.076%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.076%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 276 (21.02%) Power BI
2 251 (19.12%) Data Warehouse
3 199 (15.16%) Data Lake
4 123 (9.37%) Metadata
5 104 (7.92%) Big Data
6 90 (6.85%) SQL Server
7 85 (6.47%) Delta Lake
8 75 (5.71%) NoSQL
9 74 (5.64%) Tableau
10 73 (5.56%) BigQuery
11 71 (5.41%) Amazon Redshift
11 71 (5.41%) Snowflake Schema
12 61 (4.65%) Azure SQL Database
13 60 (4.57%) Amazon Athena
14 57 (4.34%) Relational Database
15 54 (4.11%) PostgreSQL
16 50 (3.81%) Hadoop
17 37 (2.82%) Spark SQL
18 36 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 29 (2.21%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 168 (12.80%) Git
2 57 (4.34%) GitLab
3 51 (3.88%) JIRA
4 41 (3.12%) MLflow
5 26 (1.98%) Jenkins
6 6 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.38%) Selenium
8 4 (0.30%) Postman
9 3 (0.23%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.23%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.23%) Snyk
10 2 (0.15%) Bitbucket
10 2 (0.15%) ERwin
10 2 (0.15%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.15%) Visual Studio
11 1 (0.076%) Ant
11 1 (0.076%) Deequ
11 1 (0.076%) Maven
11 1 (0.076%) Poetry
11 1 (0.076%) REST Assured
General
1 326 (24.83%) Finance
2 301 (22.92%) Social Skills
3 192 (14.62%) Analytical Skills
4 113 (8.61%) Public Sector
5 84 (6.40%) Banking
6 25 (1.90%) Retail
7 24 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 24 (1.83%) Marketing
8 23 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
9 19 (1.45%) Front Office
10 17 (1.29%) Investment Banking
11 15 (1.14%) Telecoms
12 14 (1.07%) Financial Institution
13 13 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.76%) Legal
15 8 (0.61%) Law
16 6 (0.46%) Back Office
16 6 (0.46%) Military
17 4 (0.30%) Pharmaceutical
17 4 (0.30%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 627 (47.75%) Data Engineer
2 172 (13.10%) Senior
3 142 (10.81%) Lead
4 135 (10.28%) Architect
5 113 (8.61%) Senior Data Engineer
6 78 (5.94%) Developer
7 70 (5.33%) Data Architect
8 59 (4.49%) AWS Engineer
9 56 (4.27%) Analyst
9 56 (4.27%) Azure Engineer
9 56 (4.27%) Lead Data Engineer
10 52 (3.96%) Snowflake Engineer
11 49 (3.73%) Azure Data Engineer
12 44 (3.35%) Data Scientist
12 44 (3.35%) Solutions Architect
13 43 (3.27%) AWS Data Engineer
14 42 (3.20%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 39 (2.97%) Consultant
16 36 (2.74%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 34 (2.59%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (15.61%) PySpark
2 148 (11.27%) Kafka
3 58 (4.42%) Pandas
4 41 (3.12%) PyTorch
5 39 (2.97%) scikit-learn
6 35 (2.67%) NumPy
7 31 (2.36%) REST
7 31 (2.36%) TensorFlow
8 25 (1.90%) JSON
9 24 (1.83%) Spring
10 23 (1.75%) React
11 20 (1.52%) LangChain
12 19 (1.45%) RESTful
13 18 (1.37%) Great Expectations
13 18 (1.37%) YAML
14 17 (1.29%) FastAPI
14 17 (1.29%) Spring Boot
15 16 (1.22%) pytest
16 15 (1.14%) Flask
17 13 (0.99%) Django
Miscellaneous
1 174 (13.25%) Cloud Native
2 48 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
3 46 (3.50%) Product Ownership
4 44 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
5 43 (3.27%) Data Structures
6 30 (2.28%) Distributed Computing
7 29 (2.21%) AI Agents
8 28 (2.13%) Onboarding
9 26 (1.98%) Algorithms
10 21 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
10 21 (1.60%) Greenfield Project
11 18 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
12 14 (1.07%) Fixed Income
12 14 (1.07%) NHS
13 13 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
14 12 (0.91%) Clustering
14 12 (0.91%) Hybrid Cloud
15 11 (0.84%) Reference Data
16 10 (0.76%) Data Fabric
16 10 (0.76%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 30 (2.28%) Linux
2 23 (1.75%) Unix
3 6 (0.46%) VMS
4 3 (0.23%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.23%) Windows
5 2 (0.15%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.076%) CentOS
6 1 (0.076%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 671 (51.10%) Analytics
2 602 (45.85%) Data Pipeline
3 516 (39.30%) Data Modelling
4 491 (37.40%) ETL
5 455 (34.65%) CI/CD
6 385 (29.32%) AI
7 338 (25.74%) Business Intelligence
8 326 (24.83%) Agile
9 325 (24.75%) DevOps
10 300 (22.85%) Data Governance
11 257 (19.57%) Machine Learning
12 228 (17.36%) Problem-Solving
13 223 (16.98%) Data Science
14 188 (14.32%) Data Architecture
15 181 (13.79%) Migration
16 172 (13.10%) Decision-Making
17 156 (11.88%) Validation
18 143 (10.89%) Infrastructure as Code
19 136 (10.36%) Data Integration
20 134 (10.21%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 724 (55.14%) SQL
2 691 (52.63%) Python
3 103 (7.84%) Java
4 57 (4.34%) Scala
5 45 (3.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 37 (2.82%) C#
7 34 (2.59%) Bash
8 26 (1.98%) T-SQL
9 21 (1.60%) PowerShell
10 20 (1.52%) JavaScript
10 20 (1.52%) R
11 15 (1.14%) Bicep
12 14 (1.07%) PL/SQL
13 12 (0.91%) Shell Script
14 10 (0.76%) TypeScript
15 7 (0.53%) Go
15 7 (0.53%) SAS Macro
16 4 (0.30%) Korn
17 2 (0.15%) C++
17 2 (0.15%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 249 (18.96%) Security Cleared
2 219 (16.68%) SC Cleared
3 99 (7.54%) Degree
4 40 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.89%) Master's Degree
6 34 (2.59%) Azure Certification
7 21 (1.60%) BPSS Clearance
8 12 (0.91%) AWS Certification
8 12 (0.91%) DV Cleared
9 11 (0.84%) DBS Check
10 8 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (0.53%) SnowPro
12 6 (0.46%) PhD
13 5 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 4 (0.30%) Microsoft Certified Professional
15 3 (0.23%) IBM Certification
16 2 (0.15%) PMI Certification
16 2 (0.15%) Tableau Certification
17 1 (0.076%) ACCA
17 1 (0.076%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (27.65%) Data Quality
2 87 (6.63%) GDPR
3 60 (4.57%) QA
4 12 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 12 (0.91%) SLA
5 7 (0.53%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 4 (0.30%) HIPAA
7 4 (0.30%) MiFID
7 4 (0.30%) Solvency II
8 3 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.23%) GRC
8 3 (0.23%) PMO
9 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.15%) Disclosure Scotland
9 2 (0.15%) EMIR
9 2 (0.15%) NIST
9 2 (0.15%) SNOMED CT
10 1 (0.076%) HL7
10 1 (0.076%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 126 (9.60%) Docker
2 5 (0.38%) HDFS
3 4 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.076%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.076%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 167 (12.72%) Terraform
2 115 (8.76%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.98%) Prometheus
4 24 (1.83%) Grafana
5 13 (0.99%) Ansible
6 5 (0.38%) Argo
7 4 (0.30%) Kubeflow
8 3 (0.23%) Kibana
8 3 (0.23%) Nagios
8 3 (0.23%) Rancher
9 2 (0.15%) Hadoop YARN
9 2 (0.15%) logstash
9 2 (0.15%) Thomson Reuters DACS
10 1 (0.076%) Apache Ranger
10 1 (0.076%) Control-M
10 1 (0.076%) HP Fortify
10 1 (0.076%) IBM Guardium
10 1 (0.076%) Oozie
Vendors
1 358 (27.27%) Databricks
2 212 (16.15%) Microsoft
3 63 (4.80%) Informatica
4 62 (4.72%) Google
5 50 (3.81%) Oracle
6 30 (2.28%) Talend
7 23 (1.75%) OpenAI
7 23 (1.75%) SAP
8 20 (1.52%) Foundry
9 19 (1.45%) Splunk
10 15 (1.14%) Cloudera
10 15 (1.14%) Palantir
11 13 (0.99%) ServiceNow
12 11 (0.84%) Salesforce
13 9 (0.69%) UiPath
14 8 (0.61%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.61%) IBM
15 7 (0.53%) Denodo
15 7 (0.53%) InterSystems
16 6 (0.46%) Teradata