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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 162 201
Rank change year-on-year +78 +39 +18
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,583 572 474
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.97% 1.74% 1.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.49% 1.92% 1.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,097 365 351
10th Percentile £388 £363 £400
25th Percentile £440 £431 £465
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £520 £575
Median % change year-on-year +0.96% -9.57% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £694
90th Percentile £738 £788 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £470 £500
% change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -15.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 6 13
10th Percentile £21.25 £30.73 £30.55
25th Percentile £35.25 £42.03 £31.25
Median hourly rate £69.44 £52.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.27% +50.00% -52.05%
75th Percentile £75.00 £62.19 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £87.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £31.98 £60.00
% change year-on-year +100.13% -46.70% -17.81%

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 45,324 29,743 33,722
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.01% 90.43% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,013 18,657 21,666
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.60% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,761 1,640 1,941
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £13.86
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.32 £17.80
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.55% -42.44% +2.35%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 +68 1,416 £525 - 773
London +57 844 £550 - 478
UK excluding London +86 578 £500 +6.38% 397
Work from Home +70 522 £525 +2.44% 359
North of England +33 180 £463 -5.13% 124
Midlands +42 150 £481 +4.79% 36
West Midlands +30 125 £475 -0.63% 26
South East -19 87 £525 +11.94% 123
Yorkshire +18 84 £475 +2.70% 41
South West +31 83 £505 -7.13% 57
North West -21 58 £500 +5.26% 61
Scotland +14 50 £450 -4.26% 23
North East -4 40 £425 -15.00% 23
East of England -2 30 £575 +35.29% 16
East Midlands -5 22 £525 +14.38% 10
Wales -5 7 £450 +82.58% 6
Northern Ireland +3 4 £334 - 16

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
1 194 (12.26%) Apache Spark
2 180 (11.37%) Apache Airflow
3 128 (8.09%) Apache
4 47 (2.97%) SAS
5 41 (2.59%) Confluence
6 23 (1.45%) Jupyter
7 22 (1.39%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.69%) SharePoint
9 8 (0.51%) Apache Superset
10 4 (0.25%) ArcGIS
11 3 (0.19%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.13%) Appian
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.063%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.063%) CICS
13 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.063%) IBM HTTP Server
13 1 (0.063%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 22 (1.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 4 (0.25%) Chatbot
6 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
7 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Project
7 1 (0.063%) Notion
Business Applications
1 13 (0.82%) Aladdin
2 6 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
3 5 (0.32%) BambooHR
4 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
4 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 4 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 4 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
5 3 (0.19%) Workday HCM
6 2 (0.13%) Endur
6 2 (0.13%) Oracle Assets
6 2 (0.13%) SAP BPC
6 2 (0.13%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 2 (0.13%) Temenos T24
7 1 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
7 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.063%) Markit EDM
7 1 (0.063%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.063%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 666 (42.07%) Azure
2 599 (37.84%) AWS
3 327 (20.66%) Power Platform
4 251 (15.86%) Snowflake
5 216 (13.64%) GCP
6 201 (12.70%) dbt
7 179 (11.31%) Azure Data Factory
8 178 (11.24%) Amazon S3
9 149 (9.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 134 (8.46%) Azure DevOps
11 131 (8.28%) Serverless
12 125 (7.90%) GitHub
13 111 (7.01%) AWS Lambda
14 70 (4.42%) GitHub Actions
15 60 (3.79%) Amazon EMR
16 37 (2.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 35 (2.21%) AWS CloudFormation
18 31 (1.96%) Azure AI
19 30 (1.90%) Amazon SageMaker
19 30 (1.90%) AWS Step Functions
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 3 (0.19%) RTP
3 2 (0.13%) Network Security
4 1 (0.063%) 4G
4 1 (0.063%) 5G
4 1 (0.063%) Broadband
4 1 (0.063%) MIMO
4 1 (0.063%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (19.46%) Data Warehouse
2 306 (19.33%) Power BI
3 217 (13.71%) Data Lake
4 154 (9.73%) Metadata
5 109 (6.89%) Amazon Redshift
6 103 (6.51%) Big Data
7 102 (6.44%) BigQuery
8 99 (6.25%) Delta Lake
9 89 (5.62%) Tableau
10 78 (4.93%) Amazon Athena
11 76 (4.80%) SQL Server
12 67 (4.23%) Snowflake Schema
13 64 (4.04%) NoSQL
14 60 (3.79%) Relational Database
15 57 (3.60%) PostgreSQL
16 46 (2.91%) Azure SQL Database
17 41 (2.59%) Hadoop
18 37 (2.34%) Looker
19 35 (2.21%) Star Schema
20 34 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 172 (10.87%) Git
2 78 (4.93%) GitLab
3 71 (4.49%) JIRA
4 30 (1.90%) MLflow
5 26 (1.64%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.44%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.38%) ERwin
8 5 (0.32%) Bitbucket
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
9 3 (0.19%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) Snyk
9 3 (0.19%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.19%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.13%) Claude Code
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
11 1 (0.063%) Cypress.io
11 1 (0.063%) Maven
11 1 (0.063%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 383 (24.19%) Social Skills
2 365 (23.06%) Finance
3 253 (15.98%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (10.55%) Public Sector
5 121 (7.64%) Banking
6 44 (2.78%) Marketing
7 36 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.21%) Retail
9 33 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.58%) Front Office
10 25 (1.58%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.45%) Investment Banking
12 17 (1.07%) Manufacturing
13 16 (1.01%) Financial Institution
14 14 (0.88%) Law
14 14 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
15 11 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
16 10 (0.63%) Legal
17 9 (0.57%) Billing
18 8 (0.51%) Military
Job Titles
1 732 (46.24%) Data Engineer
2 218 (13.77%) Senior
3 188 (11.88%) Lead
4 181 (11.43%) Architect
5 130 (8.21%) Senior Data Engineer
6 95 (6.00%) Data Architect
7 94 (5.94%) Developer
8 81 (5.12%) AWS Engineer
9 71 (4.49%) Analyst
10 65 (4.11%) Azure Engineer
10 65 (4.11%) Lead Data Engineer
11 64 (4.04%) AWS Data Engineer
11 64 (4.04%) Snowflake Engineer
12 56 (3.54%) Azure Data Engineer
13 50 (3.16%) Python Engineer
14 49 (3.10%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 47 (2.97%) Solutions Architect
16 46 (2.91%) Consultant
17 44 (2.78%) Data Scientist
18 42 (2.65%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 235 (14.85%) PySpark
2 139 (8.78%) Kafka
3 44 (2.78%) REST
4 37 (2.34%) Pandas
5 35 (2.21%) JSON
6 28 (1.77%) scikit-learn
7 27 (1.71%) PyTorch
8 26 (1.64%) React
9 22 (1.39%) NumPy
9 22 (1.39%) Spring
9 22 (1.39%) TensorFlow
10 20 (1.26%) .NET
11 16 (1.01%) RESTful
12 15 (0.95%) OpenTelemetry
12 15 (0.95%) Spring Boot
13 14 (0.88%) FastAPI
14 13 (0.82%) Apache Avro
15 12 (0.76%) LangChain
16 11 (0.69%) Microsoft Graph
16 11 (0.69%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 213 (13.46%) Cloud Native
2 72 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 65 (4.11%) Legacy Systems
4 64 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
5 59 (3.73%) Product Ownership
6 43 (2.72%) Onboarding
7 36 (2.27%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.45%) Algorithms
10 22 (1.39%) Distributed Computing
10 22 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
11 21 (1.33%) NHS
12 18 (1.14%) Clustering
13 17 (1.07%) Virtual Team
14 16 (1.01%) Analytical Mindset
15 15 (0.95%) Life Science
16 14 (0.88%) Management Information System
17 12 (0.76%) Enterprise Software
17 12 (0.76%) Fixed Income
17 12 (0.76%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 32 (2.02%) Linux
2 29 (1.83%) Unix
3 7 (0.44%) Windows
4 3 (0.19%) VMS
5 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 806 (50.92%) Analytics
2 766 (48.39%) Data Pipeline
3 616 (38.91%) Data Modelling
4 555 (35.06%) CI/CD
5 539 (34.05%) ETL
6 444 (28.05%) AI
7 403 (25.46%) Agile
8 393 (24.83%) Business Intelligence
9 374 (23.63%) DevOps
10 356 (22.49%) Data Governance
11 289 (18.26%) Machine Learning
12 268 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
13 263 (16.61%) Data Science
14 235 (14.85%) Migration
15 229 (14.47%) Validation
16 228 (14.40%) Decision-Making
17 220 (13.90%) Data Architecture
18 208 (13.14%) Stakeholder Management
19 206 (13.01%) Data Transformation
20 196 (12.38%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 863 (54.52%) SQL
2 819 (51.74%) Python
3 122 (7.71%) Java
4 46 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 41 (2.59%) Scala
6 40 (2.53%) Bash
7 37 (2.34%) C#
8 30 (1.90%) PowerShell
9 26 (1.64%) T-SQL
10 22 (1.39%) R
11 21 (1.33%) JavaScript
12 19 (1.20%) Bicep
13 17 (1.07%) PL/SQL
14 15 (0.95%) Shell Script
15 12 (0.76%) SAS Macro
16 11 (0.69%) TypeScript
17 8 (0.51%) SPARQL
18 7 (0.44%) Cypher
19 5 (0.32%) Go
19 5 (0.32%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 307 (19.39%) Security Cleared
2 263 (16.61%) SC Cleared
3 104 (6.57%) Degree
4 49 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 38 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 32 (2.02%) Azure Certification
7 30 (1.90%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.71%) DV Cleared
9 21 (1.33%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.82%) DBS Check
11 11 (0.69%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
14 6 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 5 (0.32%) CSPO
15 5 (0.32%) Tableau Certification
16 3 (0.19%) PhD
17 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Certified Professional
17 2 (0.13%) PMI Certification
18 1 (0.063%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 466 (29.44%) Data Quality
2 80 (5.05%) GDPR
2 80 (5.05%) QA
3 24 (1.52%) Accessibility
4 15 (0.95%) SLA
5 4 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (0.25%) NIST
5 4 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
6 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
6 3 (0.19%) GxP
6 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
6 3 (0.19%) MiFID
6 3 (0.19%) PMO
7 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.13%) COPPA
7 2 (0.13%) GRC
7 2 (0.13%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 136 (8.59%) Docker
2 4 (0.25%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 2 (0.13%) HDFS
5 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 202 (12.76%) Terraform
2 119 (7.52%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.64%) Grafana
4 22 (1.39%) Prometheus
5 15 (0.95%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Control-M
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
7 3 (0.19%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.063%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.063%) Hadoop YARN
9 1 (0.063%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.063%) Nagios
9 1 (0.063%) Oozie
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 417 (26.34%) Databricks
2 269 (16.99%) Microsoft
3 84 (5.31%) Informatica
4 69 (4.36%) Google
4 69 (4.36%) Oracle
5 35 (2.21%) SAP
6 33 (2.08%) Talend
7 32 (2.02%) Foundry
8 31 (1.96%) Palantir
9 24 (1.52%) OpenAI
10 23 (1.45%) Salesforce
11 22 (1.39%) Splunk
12 17 (1.07%) Cloudera
13 15 (0.95%) ServiceNow
14 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
15 9 (0.57%) Workday
16 8 (0.51%) Denodo
16 8 (0.51%) Teradata
17 7 (0.44%) Adobe
17 7 (0.44%) InterSystems