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

6 months to
21 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 93 159 195
Rank change year-on-year +66 +36 +14
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,574 607 492
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.90% 1.86% 1.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.44% 2.05% 1.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,093 375 360
10th Percentile £400 £350 £400
25th Percentile £447 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £573
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.17% -4.58%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £675
90th Percentile £735 £744 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £513
% change year-on-year +8.11% -9.76% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 6 7
10th Percentile - £37.11 £23.72
25th Percentile £21.25 £42.03 £25.93
Median hourly rate £65.00 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.64% -2.08% -20.53%
75th Percentile £74.38 £81.88 -
90th Percentile £83.94 £98.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +24.49% -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 45,811 29,562 32,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.30% 90.52% 85.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,345 20,161
10th Percentile £325 £300 £309
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 £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 3,152 1,818 1,440
10th Percentile £13.81 £14.23 £14.84
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £40.00 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +59.05% -41.51% +0.58%
75th Percentile £67.47 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £66.15 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.06 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +84.00% -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 21 September 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 September 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 September 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 +59 1,402 £525 - 2,419
London +48 858 £550 - 1,587
UK excluding London +71 561 £500 +8.11% 1,052
Work from Home +67 507 £524 +4.70% 1,032
North of England +32 185 £475 +3.26% 306
Midlands +28 124 £484 +5.91% 128
West Midlands +25 101 £475 -7.95% 101
Yorkshire +31 94 £500 +5.26% 67
South East -13 91 £525 +19.32% 241
South West +32 84 £525 -3.45% 118
North West -26 57 £513 +17.14% 196
Scotland -7 51 £500 +7.82% 116
North East -9 36 £425 -20.93% 44
East of England -14 27 £550 +22.22% 72
East Midlands -2 22 £503 +15.57% 27
Wales -5 8 £450 - 20
Northern Ireland +8 4 £334 - 51

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
1 187 (11.88%) Apache Airflow
2 171 (10.86%) Apache Spark
3 136 (8.64%) Apache
4 40 (2.54%) Confluence
5 35 (2.22%) SAS
6 22 (1.40%) Jupyter
7 16 (1.02%) Palantir Foundry
8 15 (0.95%) SharePoint
9 6 (0.38%) ArcGIS
10 5 (0.32%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.32%) Apache Superset
11 3 (0.19%) nginx
11 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
12 1 (0.064%) CICS
12 1 (0.064%) Ethereum
12 1 (0.064%) GeoServer
12 1 (0.064%) Hyperledger
12 1 (0.064%) Microsoft Exchange
12 1 (0.064%) Oracle Workflow
12 1 (0.064%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 14 (0.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
3 5 (0.32%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.064%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.064%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 7 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
3 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 3 (0.19%) SAP S/4HANA
4 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
5 2 (0.13%) BambooHR
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 (0.064%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.064%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.064%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.064%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.064%) R3 Corda
6 1 (0.064%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 655 (41.61%) Azure
2 589 (37.42%) AWS
3 297 (18.87%) Power Platform
4 263 (16.71%) Snowflake
5 231 (14.68%) dbt
6 230 (14.61%) GCP
7 177 (11.25%) Amazon S3
8 174 (11.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 143 (9.09%) Serverless
10 134 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
11 125 (7.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 122 (7.75%) GitHub
13 119 (7.56%) AWS Lambda
14 79 (5.02%) Azure Databricks
15 63 (4.00%) GitHub Actions
16 55 (3.49%) Amazon EMR
17 42 (2.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 38 (2.41%) Amazon Bedrock
19 33 (2.10%) Azure AI
20 32 (2.03%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Broadband
1 5 (0.32%) DNS
2 4 (0.25%) Firewall
2 4 (0.25%) Network Security
3 1 (0.064%) Internet
3 1 (0.064%) MIMO
3 1 (0.064%) MQTT
3 1 (0.064%) Radio Access Network
3 1 (0.064%) SMS
3 1 (0.064%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 320 (20.33%) Data Warehouse
2 284 (18.04%) Power BI
3 211 (13.41%) Data Lake
4 179 (11.37%) Metadata
5 123 (7.81%) BigQuery
6 104 (6.61%) Delta Lake
7 103 (6.54%) Amazon Redshift
8 90 (5.72%) Big Data
9 78 (4.96%) Amazon Athena
10 70 (4.45%) Tableau
11 61 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
12 57 (3.62%) SQL Server
13 51 (3.24%) Relational Database
14 48 (3.05%) PostgreSQL
15 42 (2.67%) NoSQL
16 41 (2.60%) Looker
17 37 (2.35%) Azure SQL Database
18 33 (2.10%) Data Vault
19 31 (1.97%) Amazon RDS
20 27 (1.72%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 175 (11.12%) Git
2 95 (6.04%) GitLab
3 70 (4.45%) JIRA
4 28 (1.78%) Jenkins
5 25 (1.59%) MLflow
6 8 (0.51%) Bitbucket
6 8 (0.51%) Claude Code
6 8 (0.51%) ERwin
6 8 (0.51%) RStudio
6 8 (0.51%) Selenium
6 8 (0.51%) Terragrunt
7 5 (0.32%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.25%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
10 2 (0.13%) Cucumber
10 2 (0.13%) TeamCity
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 398 (25.29%) Social Skills
2 359 (22.81%) Finance
3 254 (16.14%) Analytical Skills
4 164 (10.42%) Public Sector
5 138 (8.77%) Banking
6 51 (3.24%) Marketing
7 38 (2.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 36 (2.29%) Retail
9 25 (1.59%) Investment Banking
10 24 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
11 22 (1.40%) Front Office
12 19 (1.21%) Law
13 18 (1.14%) Manufacturing
13 18 (1.14%) Pharmaceutical
14 17 (1.08%) Telecoms
15 14 (0.89%) Publishing
16 13 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
16 13 (0.83%) Police
17 12 (0.76%) Back Office
17 12 (0.76%) Billing
Job Titles
1 737 (46.82%) Data Engineer
2 247 (15.69%) Senior
3 176 (11.18%) Architect
4 175 (11.12%) Lead
5 156 (9.91%) Senior Data Engineer
6 97 (6.16%) Data Architect
7 94 (5.97%) Developer
8 77 (4.89%) AWS Engineer
9 72 (4.57%) Databricks Engineer
10 68 (4.32%) Snowflake Engineer
11 67 (4.26%) AWS Data Engineer
12 65 (4.13%) Azure Engineer
13 64 (4.07%) Analyst
14 56 (3.56%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 51 (3.24%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
16 50 (3.18%) Lead Data Engineer
16 50 (3.18%) Snowflake Data Engineer
17 48 (3.05%) Python Engineer
18 46 (2.92%) Azure Data Engineer
19 41 (2.60%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 230 (14.61%) PySpark
2 229 (14.55%) Terraform
3 110 (6.99%) Kafka
4 61 (3.88%) REST
5 34 (2.16%) JSON
6 32 (2.03%) React
7 28 (1.78%) .NET
8 24 (1.52%) Pandas
9 18 (1.14%) LangChain
10 16 (1.02%) PyTorch
11 15 (0.95%) FastAPI
11 15 (0.95%) pytest
11 15 (0.95%) XML
12 13 (0.83%) LangGraph
12 13 (0.83%) NumPy
12 13 (0.83%) scikit-learn
12 13 (0.83%) TensorFlow
13 12 (0.76%) RESTful
14 11 (0.70%) Spring
14 11 (0.70%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 206 (13.09%) Cloud Native
2 84 (5.34%) Data Structures
3 72 (4.57%) Onboarding
4 61 (3.88%) Product Ownership
5 55 (3.49%) Legacy Systems
6 53 (3.37%) AI Agents
7 47 (2.99%) Distributed Systems
8 22 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
8 22 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.27%) Distributed Computing
10 18 (1.14%) NHS
10 18 (1.14%) Virtual Team
11 17 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
11 17 (1.08%) Life Science
11 17 (1.08%) Management Information System
12 15 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (0.95%) Data Fabric
13 13 (0.83%) Algorithms
13 13 (0.83%) Marketing Technology
14 12 (0.76%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 28 (1.78%) Linux
2 25 (1.59%) Unix
3 7 (0.44%) Windows
4 1 (0.064%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.064%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.064%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.064%) VMS
4 1 (0.064%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 772 (49.05%) Data Pipeline
2 745 (47.33%) Analytics
3 613 (38.95%) Data Modelling
4 563 (35.77%) CI/CD
5 546 (34.69%) ETL
6 492 (31.26%) AI
7 397 (25.22%) Agile
8 376 (23.89%) DevOps
9 369 (23.44%) Business Intelligence
10 353 (22.43%) Data Governance
11 278 (17.66%) Machine Learning
12 274 (17.41%) Stakeholder Management
13 250 (15.88%) Migration
14 248 (15.76%) Problem-Solving
15 247 (15.69%) Data Transformation
16 244 (15.50%) Infrastructure as Code
17 238 (15.12%) Data Architecture
17 238 (15.12%) Validation
18 230 (14.61%) Decision-Making
19 226 (14.36%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 850 (54.00%) SQL
2 827 (52.54%) Python
3 109 (6.93%) Java
4 45 (2.86%) Scala
5 41 (2.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 40 (2.54%) PowerShell
7 38 (2.41%) C#
8 32 (2.03%) Bash
9 31 (1.97%) JavaScript
10 24 (1.52%) R
11 20 (1.27%) T-SQL
12 19 (1.21%) PL/SQL
13 15 (0.95%) Bicep
13 15 (0.95%) TypeScript
14 12 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
15 11 (0.70%) Shell Script
16 10 (0.64%) SPARQL
17 9 (0.57%) SAS Macro
18 8 (0.51%) Cypher
18 8 (0.51%) Go
Qualifications
1 303 (19.25%) Security Cleared
2 254 (16.14%) SC Cleared
3 78 (4.96%) Degree
4 37 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 34 (2.16%) Azure Certification
6 33 (2.10%) DV Cleared
7 31 (1.97%) AWS Certification
8 30 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
9 20 (1.27%) Master's Degree
10 14 (0.89%) DBS Check
11 13 (0.83%) SnowPro
12 11 (0.70%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.38%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) PMP
15 5 (0.32%) TOGAF Certification
16 4 (0.25%) Microsoft Certified Professional
16 4 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 518 (32.91%) Data Quality
2 79 (5.02%) QA
3 62 (3.94%) GDPR
4 29 (1.84%) Accessibility
5 12 (0.76%) SLA
6 7 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
7 4 (0.25%) GRC
7 4 (0.25%) PMO
8 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.19%) EU AI Act
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
8 3 (0.19%) MiFID
8 3 (0.19%) NCSC
8 3 (0.19%) NIST
9 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
9 2 (0.13%) GxP
9 2 (0.13%) IFRS
9 2 (0.13%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 134 (8.51%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.064%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.064%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 108 (6.86%) Kubernetes
2 31 (1.97%) Grafana
3 24 (1.52%) Ansible
4 11 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.51%) Control-M
5 8 (0.51%) Kibana
6 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 2 (0.13%) Argo
7 2 (0.13%) Puppet
7 2 (0.13%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.064%) Cilium
8 1 (0.064%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.064%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.064%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.064%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.064%) Nagios
8 1 (0.064%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.064%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.064%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.064%) QRadar
Vendors
1 445 (28.27%) Databricks
2 273 (17.34%) Microsoft
3 87 (5.53%) Google
4 71 (4.51%) Oracle
5 65 (4.13%) Informatica
6 31 (1.97%) SAP
7 30 (1.91%) Salesforce
8 29 (1.84%) Foundry
9 28 (1.78%) Talend
10 24 (1.52%) Palantir
11 21 (1.33%) OpenAI
12 16 (1.02%) Teradata
13 13 (0.83%) Cloudera
14 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
15 11 (0.70%) ServiceNow
16 10 (0.64%) Adobe
17 8 (0.51%) Splunk
18 7 (0.44%) Denodo
18 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
19 6 (0.38%) MicroStrategy