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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 141 192
Rank change year-on-year +49 +51 +24
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,598 642 502
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.91% 1.94% 1.32%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.45% 2.14% 1.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,111 401 364
10th Percentile £400 £338 £380
25th Percentile £445 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £663
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £463 £500
% change year-on-year +8.11% -7.50% -10.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 6 7
10th Percentile - £37.11 £23.72
25th Percentile £21.25 £42.03 £25.93
Median hourly rate £59.95 £58.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.04% -2.08% -17.81%
75th Percentile £70.81 £81.88 -
90th Percentile £76.71 £98.75 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £38.96 £60.00
% change year-on-year +47.59% -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 46,382 30,011 32,696
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.49% 90.62% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,976 18,637 19,780
10th Percentile £325 £300 £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 £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £734 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,269 1,869 1,352
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.32 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.17 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £38.72 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +53.96% -40.82% -
75th Percentile £65.60 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.02 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.86% -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 2 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 2 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 2 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 +57 1,417 £525 - 2,090
London +49 868 £550 - 1,318
UK excluding London +74 569 £500 +8.11% 980
Work from Home +61 512 £525 +5.00% 927
North of England +23 191 £475 +7.34% 289
Midlands +17 123 £475 +2.70% 123
West Midlands +27 101 £475 -13.64% 96
Yorkshire +32 97 £500 +5.26% 78
South East -16 93 £525 +17.98% 242
South West +38 89 £525 -8.70% 106
North West -27 59 £525 +22.09% 166
Scotland -7 53 £513 +10.81% 103
North East -9 37 £425 -17.07% 48
East Midlands -2 22 £503 +15.57% 27
East of England -17 22 £550 +22.22% 52
Wales -6 8 £450 -9.09% 25
Northern Ireland +10 4 £334 - 44

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
1 197 (12.33%) Apache Airflow
2 174 (10.89%) Apache Spark
3 152 (9.51%) Apache
4 41 (2.57%) Confluence
5 28 (1.75%) SAS
6 22 (1.38%) Jupyter
7 15 (0.94%) Palantir Foundry
7 15 (0.94%) SharePoint
8 5 (0.31%) Apache Solr
8 5 (0.31%) ArcGIS
9 3 (0.19%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.19%) nginx
9 3 (0.19%) PowerExchange
10 1 (0.063%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.063%) CICS
10 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
10 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
10 1 (0.063%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.063%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.063%) SugarCRM
Applications
1 11 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (0.44%) Chatbot
3 6 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
4 3 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.13%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.063%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.063%) Notion
Business Applications
1 11 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 8 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.25%) NetSuite
3 4 (0.25%) Sage X3
4 3 (0.19%) 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 (0.063%) Cloudability
6 1 (0.063%) Distributed Ledger
6 1 (0.063%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.063%) Markit EDM
6 1 (0.063%) MIS ActiveH
6 1 (0.063%) Oracle EBS
6 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
6 1 (0.063%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 670 (41.93%) Azure
2 589 (36.86%) AWS
3 300 (18.77%) Power Platform
4 274 (17.15%) Snowflake
5 245 (15.33%) dbt
6 243 (15.21%) GCP
7 189 (11.83%) Amazon S3
8 185 (11.58%) Azure Data Factory
9 145 (9.07%) Serverless
10 134 (8.39%) Azure DevOps
11 127 (7.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 123 (7.70%) GitHub
13 122 (7.63%) AWS Lambda
14 81 (5.07%) Azure Databricks
15 64 (4.01%) GitHub Actions
16 55 (3.44%) Amazon EMR
17 44 (2.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 39 (2.44%) Amazon Bedrock
19 36 (2.25%) Microsoft Purview
20 33 (2.07%) Azure AI
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.44%) Network Security
2 6 (0.38%) Broadband
2 6 (0.38%) DNS
3 4 (0.25%) Firewall
4 1 (0.063%) HTTP
4 1 (0.063%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.063%) Internet
4 1 (0.063%) MIMO
4 1 (0.063%) MQTT
4 1 (0.063%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.063%) SMS
4 1 (0.063%) SSL
4 1 (0.063%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.063%) tcpdump
4 1 (0.063%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 332 (20.78%) Data Warehouse
2 287 (17.96%) Power BI
3 208 (13.02%) Data Lake
4 187 (11.70%) Metadata
5 126 (7.88%) BigQuery
6 111 (6.95%) Amazon Redshift
7 106 (6.63%) Delta Lake
8 87 (5.44%) Big Data
9 78 (4.88%) Amazon Athena
10 71 (4.44%) Tableau
11 62 (3.88%) Snowflake Schema
12 60 (3.75%) SQL Server
13 51 (3.19%) Relational Database
14 49 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
15 44 (2.75%) NoSQL
16 41 (2.57%) Looker
17 36 (2.25%) Azure SQL Database
18 33 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
18 33 (2.07%) Data Vault
19 28 (1.75%) Parquet
Development Applications
1 183 (11.45%) Git
2 101 (6.32%) GitLab
3 70 (4.38%) JIRA
4 27 (1.69%) Jenkins
5 26 (1.63%) 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 (0.13%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.13%) Yeoman
General
1 417 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 364 (22.78%) Finance
3 246 (15.39%) Analytical Skills
4 169 (10.58%) Public Sector
5 145 (9.07%) Banking
6 54 (3.38%) Marketing
7 36 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.19%) Retail
9 27 (1.69%) Investment Banking
10 26 (1.63%) Front Office
11 20 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
11 20 (1.25%) Pharmaceutical
12 18 (1.13%) Manufacturing
13 17 (1.06%) Law
14 14 (0.88%) Publishing
14 14 (0.88%) Telecoms
15 13 (0.81%) Back Office
15 13 (0.81%) Police
16 12 (0.75%) Financial Institution
16 12 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 757 (47.37%) Data Engineer
2 257 (16.08%) Senior
3 180 (11.26%) Lead
4 167 (10.45%) Architect
5 165 (10.33%) Senior Data Engineer
6 96 (6.01%) Developer
7 90 (5.63%) Data Architect
8 78 (4.88%) Databricks Engineer
9 75 (4.69%) AWS Engineer
10 73 (4.57%) Snowflake Engineer
11 69 (4.32%) Analyst
11 69 (4.32%) Azure Engineer
12 65 (4.07%) AWS Data Engineer
13 62 (3.88%) Databricks Data Engineer
14 56 (3.50%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 52 (3.25%) Lead Data Engineer
16 50 (3.13%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 49 (3.07%) Python Engineer
18 47 (2.94%) Azure Data Engineer
19 39 (2.44%) GCP Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 240 (15.02%) Terraform
2 236 (14.77%) PySpark
3 117 (7.32%) Kafka
4 67 (4.19%) REST
5 34 (2.13%) JSON
6 31 (1.94%) React
7 28 (1.75%) .NET
8 23 (1.44%) Pandas
9 20 (1.25%) LangChain
10 18 (1.13%) pytest
11 17 (1.06%) FastAPI
11 17 (1.06%) PyTorch
12 14 (0.88%) LangGraph
12 14 (0.88%) scikit-learn
12 14 (0.88%) TensorFlow
12 14 (0.88%) XML
13 13 (0.81%) NumPy
13 13 (0.81%) RESTful
14 12 (0.75%) Apache NiFi
14 12 (0.75%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 215 (13.45%) Cloud Native
2 84 (5.26%) Data Structures
3 82 (5.13%) Onboarding
4 65 (4.07%) Product Ownership
5 57 (3.57%) AI Agents
6 53 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
7 51 (3.19%) Distributed Systems
8 27 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
9 22 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
10 20 (1.25%) Distributed Computing
11 18 (1.13%) Algorithms
11 18 (1.13%) Life Science
11 18 (1.13%) Virtual Team
12 17 (1.06%) Management Information System
13 16 (1.00%) Data Fabric
13 16 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
13 16 (1.00%) NHS
14 15 (0.94%) Marketing Technology
15 14 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
15 14 (0.88%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 29 (1.81%) Linux
2 23 (1.44%) Unix
3 7 (0.44%) Windows
4 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.063%) Robot Operating System
4 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.063%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 789 (49.37%) Data Pipeline
2 738 (46.18%) Analytics
3 628 (39.30%) Data Modelling
4 584 (36.55%) CI/CD
5 553 (34.61%) ETL
6 513 (32.10%) AI
7 419 (26.22%) Agile
8 390 (24.41%) DevOps
9 373 (23.34%) Business Intelligence
10 350 (21.90%) Data Governance
11 293 (18.34%) Stakeholder Management
12 288 (18.02%) Machine Learning
13 257 (16.08%) Data Transformation
14 253 (15.83%) Infrastructure as Code
15 252 (15.77%) Validation
16 247 (15.46%) Migration
17 244 (15.27%) Problem-Solving
18 243 (15.21%) Data Architecture
18 243 (15.21%) Data Integration
19 232 (14.52%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 879 (55.01%) SQL
2 853 (53.38%) Python
3 106 (6.63%) Java
4 48 (3.00%) Scala
5 43 (2.69%) PowerShell
6 41 (2.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 38 (2.38%) C#
8 34 (2.13%) Bash
9 33 (2.07%) JavaScript
10 25 (1.56%) R
11 20 (1.25%) T-SQL
12 19 (1.19%) PL/SQL
13 17 (1.06%) Bicep
14 16 (1.00%) TypeScript
15 13 (0.81%) Kusto Query Language
16 10 (0.63%) Shell Script
16 10 (0.63%) SPARQL
17 9 (0.56%) Go
18 8 (0.50%) Cypher
18 8 (0.50%) Korn
Qualifications
1 298 (18.65%) Security Cleared
2 245 (15.33%) SC Cleared
3 82 (5.13%) Degree
4 38 (2.38%) DV Cleared
5 37 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 34 (2.13%) AWS Certification
6 34 (2.13%) Azure Certification
7 31 (1.94%) BPSS Clearance
8 19 (1.19%) Master's Degree
9 14 (0.88%) DBS Check
10 12 (0.75%) SnowPro
11 11 (0.69%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 8 (0.50%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 8 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
13 6 (0.38%) Microsoft Certified Professional
14 5 (0.31%) CSPO
14 5 (0.31%) PMI Certification
14 5 (0.31%) PMP
14 5 (0.31%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.25%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 535 (33.48%) Data Quality
2 80 (5.01%) QA
3 63 (3.94%) GDPR
4 32 (2.00%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.69%) SLA
6 7 (0.44%) Disclosure Scotland
7 6 (0.38%) GRC
8 4 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.25%) EU AI Act
8 4 (0.25%) NCSC
8 4 (0.25%) PMO
9 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.19%) IFRS
9 3 (0.19%) IFRS 9
9 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 3 (0.19%) MiFID
9 3 (0.19%) NIST
10 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
10 2 (0.13%) GxP
10 2 (0.13%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 134 (8.39%) Docker
2 5 (0.31%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.063%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 116 (7.26%) Kubernetes
2 30 (1.88%) Grafana
3 27 (1.69%) Ansible
4 12 (0.75%) Prometheus
5 8 (0.50%) Control-M
5 8 (0.50%) 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 (0.063%) Cilium
8 1 (0.063%) HAProxy
8 1 (0.063%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.063%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
8 1 (0.063%) Nagios
8 1 (0.063%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.063%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.063%) QRadar
Vendors
1 463 (28.97%) Databricks
2 270 (16.90%) Microsoft
3 97 (6.07%) Google
4 76 (4.76%) Oracle
5 58 (3.63%) Informatica
6 31 (1.94%) Salesforce
6 31 (1.94%) SAP
7 26 (1.63%) Foundry
8 25 (1.56%) Talend
9 23 (1.44%) Palantir
10 22 (1.38%) OpenAI
11 15 (0.94%) Teradata
12 12 (0.75%) Cloudera
12 12 (0.75%) Trend Micro
13 11 (0.69%) Adobe
13 11 (0.69%) ServiceNow
14 8 (0.50%) Denodo
14 8 (0.50%) Splunk
15 7 (0.44%) Hitachi
16 6 (0.38%) MicroStrategy