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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 155 209
Rank change year-on-year +62 +54 +12
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,193 536 493
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.77% 1.81% 1.11%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.22% 2.01% 1.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 824 377 370
10th Percentile £375 £375 £375
25th Percentile £447 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -8.33%
75th Percentile £625 £663 £675
90th Percentile £749 £838 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £489 £550
% change year-on-year +2.25% -11.09% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 13 12
10th Percentile £50.75 £21.40 £30.46
25th Percentile £56.75 £22.00 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.44 £25.43 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +173.06% -27.34% -
75th Percentile £75.00 £28.75 £45.19
90th Percentile £86.25 £58.00 £59.03
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £25.43 £45.19
% change year-on-year +172.20% -43.72% +123.80%

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 37,084 26,717 38,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.01% 90.37% 86.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,485 17,170 25,048
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £610 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £745 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,212 916 2,333
10th Percentile £14.83 £15.26 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.02
Median hourly rate £30.00 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.79 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £77.50 £70.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.36 £31.76 £31.50
% change year-on-year -13.85% +0.83% -10.00%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 16 March 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 +65 1,061 £525 -4.55% 548
London +61 693 £550 -4.35% 272
UK excluding London +44 378 £500 +2.25% 380
Work from Home +34 353 £550 -4.35% 226
Midlands +24 108 £513 +2.50% 51
North of England +4 108 £458 -8.50% 114
West Midlands +9 87 £523 +4.50% 36
South West +10 62 £550 -15.38% 44
North West -12 51 £450 -2.70% 48
Scotland +28 49 £440 -6.98% 21
South East -31 43 £550 +10.00% 125
Yorkshire -36 36 £475 -20.83% 52
North East +9 21 £450 -10.00% 15
East Midlands -16 20 £447 -12.78% 15
East of England -31 14 £575 +79.69% 23
Wales -13 7 £563 +113.50% 9
Northern Ireland - 2 £430 - 1

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
1 191 (16.01%) Apache Spark
2 123 (10.31%) Apache Airflow
3 90 (7.54%) Apache
4 22 (1.84%) SAS
5 20 (1.68%) Palantir Foundry
6 16 (1.34%) Confluence
7 8 (0.67%) Appian
8 4 (0.34%) Apache Superset
8 4 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.084%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.084%) Apache Synapse
10 1 (0.084%) Camunda
10 1 (0.084%) CMS
10 1 (0.084%) IBM HTTP Server
10 1 (0.084%) Luigi
Applications
1 26 (2.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.59%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.59%) Microsoft Project
4 4 (0.34%) Chatbot
4 4 (0.34%) MS Visio
5 3 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
5 3 (0.25%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (0.59%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.25%) BambooHR
2 3 (0.25%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.084%) Actimize
4 1 (0.084%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.084%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.084%) Maximo
4 1 (0.084%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.084%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.084%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 561 (47.02%) Azure
2 424 (35.54%) AWS
3 257 (21.54%) Power Platform
4 205 (17.18%) Azure Data Factory
5 166 (13.91%) GCP
6 159 (13.33%) Snowflake
7 140 (11.74%) Amazon S3
8 128 (10.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 128 (10.73%) GitHub
9 122 (10.23%) Serverless
10 102 (8.55%) Azure DevOps
11 99 (8.30%) dbt
12 95 (7.96%) AWS Lambda
13 81 (6.79%) GitHub Actions
14 64 (5.36%) AWS CloudFormation
15 39 (3.27%) AWS Step Functions
16 33 (2.77%) Amazon EMR
17 28 (2.35%) Amazon SageMaker
17 28 (2.35%) Collibra
18 27 (2.26%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 4 (0.34%) Cisco IPT
1 4 (0.34%) Kerberos
1 4 (0.34%) Network Security
1 4 (0.34%) RTP
2 3 (0.25%) Firewall
2 3 (0.25%) VPN
3 1 (0.084%) 4G
3 1 (0.084%) 5G
3 1 (0.084%) MQTT
3 1 (0.084%) SAN
3 1 (0.084%) SMS
3 1 (0.084%) SSL
3 1 (0.084%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 240 (20.12%) Data Warehouse
2 235 (19.70%) Power BI
3 171 (14.33%) Data Lake
4 110 (9.22%) Metadata
5 88 (7.38%) Big Data
6 84 (7.04%) NoSQL
6 84 (7.04%) SQL Server
7 79 (6.62%) Delta Lake
8 62 (5.20%) Amazon Redshift
9 61 (5.11%) Relational Database
10 60 (5.03%) Amazon Athena
10 60 (5.03%) Snowflake Schema
11 57 (4.78%) Azure SQL Database
11 57 (4.78%) PostgreSQL
12 56 (4.69%) BigQuery
13 54 (4.53%) Tableau
14 51 (4.27%) Hadoop
15 34 (2.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 32 (2.68%) Spark SQL
17 22 (1.84%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 173 (14.50%) Git
2 62 (5.20%) GitLab
3 48 (4.02%) MLflow
4 45 (3.77%) Jenkins
5 31 (2.60%) JIRA
6 6 (0.50%) Selenium
7 5 (0.42%) SonarQube
7 5 (0.42%) Visual Studio Code
8 4 (0.34%) Cucumber
9 3 (0.25%) JUnit
9 3 (0.25%) Maven
9 3 (0.25%) Postman
9 3 (0.25%) Robot Framework
9 3 (0.25%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.17%) ERwin
10 2 (0.17%) Gemini Tracker
10 2 (0.17%) JMeter
10 2 (0.17%) Mockito
10 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.17%) Zephyr
General
1 324 (27.16%) Social Skills
2 280 (23.47%) Finance
3 173 (14.50%) Analytical Skills
4 99 (8.30%) Public Sector
5 74 (6.20%) Banking
6 28 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (1.68%) Front Office
7 20 (1.68%) Investment Banking
8 18 (1.51%) Influencing Skills
8 18 (1.51%) Retail
9 17 (1.42%) Marketing
10 11 (0.92%) Legal
10 11 (0.92%) Pharmaceutical
10 11 (0.92%) Telecoms
11 10 (0.84%) Financial Institution
12 8 (0.67%) Publishing
13 7 (0.59%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.50%) Back Office
14 6 (0.50%) Military
Job Titles
1 545 (45.68%) Data Engineer
2 160 (13.41%) Lead
3 152 (12.74%) Senior
4 101 (8.47%) Senior Data Engineer
5 100 (8.38%) Architect
6 79 (6.62%) Azure Engineer
7 77 (6.45%) Developer
8 63 (5.28%) Azure Data Engineer
9 58 (4.86%) Lead Data Engineer
10 57 (4.78%) AWS Engineer
11 53 (4.44%) Analyst
11 53 (4.44%) Data Architect
12 50 (4.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 46 (3.86%) Snowflake Engineer
14 45 (3.77%) Data Scientist
15 39 (3.27%) Snowflake Data Engineer
16 36 (3.02%) AWS Data Engineer
17 35 (2.93%) Consultant
18 31 (2.60%) Data Analyst
18 31 (2.60%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 221 (18.52%) PySpark
2 146 (12.24%) Kafka
3 69 (5.78%) Pandas
4 61 (5.11%) PyTorch
5 50 (4.19%) TensorFlow
6 47 (3.94%) scikit-learn
7 46 (3.86%) NumPy
8 33 (2.77%) FastAPI
9 30 (2.51%) JSON
10 29 (2.43%) RESTful
11 27 (2.26%) Flask
11 27 (2.26%) YAML
12 26 (2.18%) pytest
13 25 (2.10%) REST
14 24 (2.01%) LangChain
14 24 (2.01%) React
15 18 (1.51%) Spring
16 17 (1.42%) ARM Templates
16 17 (1.42%) Great Expectations
17 15 (1.26%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 160 (13.41%) Cloud Native
2 52 (4.36%) Algorithms
3 46 (3.86%) Product Ownership
4 42 (3.52%) Distributed Systems
5 31 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
6 30 (2.51%) Distributed Computing
7 25 (2.10%) Onboarding
8 24 (2.01%) Hybrid Cloud
9 23 (1.93%) Data Structures
10 20 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
11 19 (1.59%) AI Agents
12 18 (1.51%) Analytical Mindset
13 16 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
14 14 (1.17%) Fixed Income
15 13 (1.09%) Management Information System
16 12 (1.01%) Clustering
16 12 (1.01%) Derivative
16 12 (1.01%) NHS
16 12 (1.01%) Virtual Team
17 11 (0.92%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 29 (2.43%) Linux
2 12 (1.01%) Unix
3 7 (0.59%) VMS
4 3 (0.25%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.084%) CentOS
6 1 (0.084%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (47.69%) Analytics
2 544 (45.60%) Data Pipeline
3 474 (39.73%) ETL
4 457 (38.31%) Data Modelling
5 446 (37.38%) CI/CD
6 320 (26.82%) Data Governance
7 317 (26.57%) AI
8 307 (25.73%) Agile
9 304 (25.48%) DevOps
10 292 (24.48%) Business Intelligence
11 261 (21.88%) Machine Learning
12 244 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
13 234 (19.61%) Data Science
14 188 (15.76%) Data Architecture
15 151 (12.66%) Infrastructure as Code
16 135 (11.32%) Decision-Making
17 127 (10.65%) Validation
18 122 (10.23%) Migration
19 121 (10.14%) LLM
20 114 (9.56%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 705 (59.09%) Python
2 648 (54.32%) SQL
3 92 (7.71%) Java
4 68 (5.70%) Scala
5 45 (3.77%) C#
6 39 (3.27%) Bash
7 37 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 35 (2.93%) PowerShell
9 31 (2.60%) JavaScript
10 22 (1.84%) Bicep
11 21 (1.76%) T-SQL
12 18 (1.51%) TypeScript
13 16 (1.34%) Go
13 16 (1.34%) R
14 11 (0.92%) C++
15 10 (0.84%) Shell Script
16 9 (0.75%) PL/SQL
17 6 (0.50%) Korn
17 6 (0.50%) Rust
18 3 (0.25%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 236 (19.78%) Security Cleared
2 194 (16.26%) SC Cleared
3 117 (9.81%) Degree
4 51 (4.27%) Azure Certification
5 48 (4.02%) Master's Degree
6 47 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
7 23 (1.93%) DV Cleared
8 19 (1.59%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
10 12 (1.01%) PhD
11 4 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.34%) DBS Check
11 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.25%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.084%) ACCA
13 1 (0.084%) CIMA
13 1 (0.084%) CISM
13 1 (0.084%) ISTQB
13 1 (0.084%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 342 (28.67%) Data Quality
2 94 (7.88%) GDPR
3 40 (3.35%) QA
4 13 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 8 (0.67%) HIPAA
6 8 (0.67%) SLA
7 6 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.42%) PERC
8 5 (0.42%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.25%) GRC
9 3 (0.25%) WCAG
10 2 (0.17%) Actionable Recommendations
10 2 (0.17%) HL7
10 2 (0.17%) MiFID
10 2 (0.17%) NIST
10 2 (0.17%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.17%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.084%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 153 (12.82%) Docker
2 6 (0.50%) HDFS
3 3 (0.25%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.084%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 182 (15.26%) Terraform
2 139 (11.65%) Kubernetes
3 28 (2.35%) Prometheus
4 17 (1.42%) Grafana
5 8 (0.67%) Ansible
6 4 (0.34%) Argo
7 3 (0.25%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.25%) Rancher
8 2 (0.17%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.17%) Kibana
8 2 (0.17%) Nagios
8 2 (0.17%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.084%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.084%) Control-M
9 1 (0.084%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.084%) Oozie
Vendors
1 366 (30.68%) Databricks
2 172 (14.42%) Microsoft
3 61 (5.11%) Google
4 42 (3.52%) Informatica
5 40 (3.35%) Oracle
6 29 (2.43%) Talend
7 26 (2.18%) Foundry
8 24 (2.01%) Palantir
9 22 (1.84%) OpenAI
10 17 (1.42%) Splunk
11 15 (1.26%) Cloudera
11 15 (1.26%) SAP
12 10 (0.84%) Denodo
12 10 (0.84%) Salesforce
13 9 (0.75%) UiPath
14 8 (0.67%) Automation Anywhere
14 8 (0.67%) IBM
14 8 (0.67%) ServiceNow
15 6 (0.50%) MicroStrategy
16 5 (0.42%) Murex