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

6 months to
8 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 87 165 203
Rank change year-on-year +78 +38 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,577 570 463
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.94% 1.73% 1.19%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.46% 1.92% 1.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,087 361 341
10th Percentile £388 £363 £390
25th Percentile £440 £427 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £563
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -8.89% -10.00%
75th Percentile £638 £638 £688
90th Percentile £750 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £473 £500
% change year-on-year +5.82% -5.50% -14.89%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 7 14
10th Percentile £21.25 £32.38 £24.32
25th Percentile £35.00 £45.11 £31.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £52.50 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +33.33% +50.00% -52.05%
75th Percentile £78.00 £76.25 £60.00
90th Percentile £89.00 £96.50 -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £31.98 £60.00
% change year-on-year +89.96% -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 45,557 29,755 33,330
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.99% 90.46% 85.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,078 18,625 21,348
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £726 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,814 1,660 1,859
10th Percentile £14.25 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.22 £17.32 £18.22
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -37.90% -4.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £64.25
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.10 £41.25
% change year-on-year +90.30% -44.00% +7.56%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 1,415 £525 - 916
London +49 840 £550 - 585
UK excluding London +87 582 £500 +5.82% 437
Work from Home +72 516 £525 +5.00% 401
North of England +24 182 £463 -2.63% 145
Midlands +47 154 £486 +5.93% 38
West Midlands +46 129 £475 -0.63% 28
South East -15 92 £525 +11.94% 127
Yorkshire +18 86 £475 +2.70% 42
South West +15 78 £505 -12.17% 61
North West -12 59 £500 +5.26% 81
Scotland +15 49 £500 +6.38% 36
North East -9 39 £425 -20.93% 23
East of England -3 29 £575 +35.29% 11
East Midlands 0 22 £525 +14.38% 10
Wales - 7 £450 - 7
Northern Ireland +8 4 £334 - 15

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 (11.86%) Apache Spark
2 177 (11.22%) Apache Airflow
3 126 (7.99%) Apache
4 47 (2.98%) SAS
5 41 (2.60%) Confluence
6 23 (1.46%) Jupyter
7 20 (1.27%) Palantir Foundry
8 11 (0.70%) SharePoint
9 9 (0.57%) Apache Superset
10 5 (0.32%) ArcGIS
11 4 (0.25%) Apache Solr
12 2 (0.13%) Microsoft Exchange
13 1 (0.063%) Apache Synapse
13 1 (0.063%) Appian
13 1 (0.063%) CICS
13 1 (0.063%) Ethereum
13 1 (0.063%) Hyperledger
13 1 (0.063%) nginx
13 1 (0.063%) PowerExchange
Applications
1 21 (1.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
3 7 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
4 6 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 5 (0.32%) 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%) MIS ActiveH
7 1 (0.063%) R3 Corda
7 1 (0.063%) SAP ECC
Cloud Services
1 664 (42.11%) Azure
2 589 (37.35%) AWS
3 328 (20.80%) Power Platform
4 252 (15.98%) Snowflake
5 213 (13.51%) GCP
6 198 (12.56%) dbt
7 175 (11.10%) Azure Data Factory
8 171 (10.84%) Amazon S3
9 148 (9.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 141 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
11 131 (8.31%) GitHub
12 127 (8.05%) Serverless
13 108 (6.85%) AWS Lambda
14 69 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
15 57 (3.61%) Amazon EMR
16 35 (2.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 31 (1.97%) AWS CloudFormation
17 31 (1.97%) Azure AI
18 30 (1.90%) AWS Step Functions
19 29 (1.84%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 5 (0.32%) Firewall
2 2 (0.13%) Broadband
2 2 (0.13%) Network Security
2 2 (0.13%) RTP
3 1 (0.063%) 4G
3 1 (0.063%) 5G
3 1 (0.063%) MIMO
3 1 (0.063%) MQTT
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (19.59%) Data Warehouse
2 308 (19.53%) Power BI
3 215 (13.63%) Data Lake
4 156 (9.89%) Metadata
5 107 (6.79%) Amazon Redshift
6 104 (6.59%) BigQuery
7 102 (6.47%) Big Data
8 100 (6.34%) Delta Lake
9 87 (5.52%) Tableau
10 77 (4.88%) Amazon Athena
11 72 (4.57%) SQL Server
12 65 (4.12%) Snowflake Schema
13 63 (3.99%) NoSQL
14 59 (3.74%) Relational Database
15 51 (3.23%) PostgreSQL
16 46 (2.92%) Azure SQL Database
17 39 (2.47%) Looker
18 38 (2.41%) Hadoop
19 37 (2.35%) Star Schema
20 33 (2.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 176 (11.16%) Git
2 83 (5.26%) GitLab
3 71 (4.50%) JIRA
4 28 (1.78%) MLflow
5 27 (1.71%) Jenkins
6 7 (0.44%) SonarQube
7 6 (0.38%) Bitbucket
7 6 (0.38%) ERwin
8 4 (0.25%) Selenium
9 3 (0.19%) Artifactory
9 3 (0.19%) ER Studio
9 3 (0.19%) Postman
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%) git-flow
11 1 (0.063%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 393 (24.92%) Social Skills
2 362 (22.95%) Finance
3 256 (16.23%) Analytical Skills
4 167 (10.59%) Public Sector
5 119 (7.55%) Banking
6 45 (2.85%) Marketing
7 37 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 35 (2.22%) Retail
9 31 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
10 25 (1.59%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.52%) Front Office
12 23 (1.46%) Investment Banking
13 16 (1.01%) Manufacturing
14 15 (0.95%) Financial Institution
15 14 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
16 13 (0.82%) Law
17 12 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
18 10 (0.63%) Legal
19 9 (0.57%) Back Office
19 9 (0.57%) Military
Job Titles
1 731 (46.35%) Data Engineer
2 215 (13.63%) Senior
3 187 (11.86%) Lead
4 180 (11.41%) Architect
5 129 (8.18%) Senior Data Engineer
6 97 (6.15%) Developer
7 95 (6.02%) Data Architect
8 83 (5.26%) AWS Engineer
9 74 (4.69%) Analyst
10 68 (4.31%) AWS Data Engineer
11 64 (4.06%) Lead Data Engineer
11 64 (4.06%) Snowflake Engineer
12 62 (3.93%) Azure Engineer
13 53 (3.36%) Azure Data Engineer
14 49 (3.11%) Python Engineer
14 49 (3.11%) Snowflake Data Engineer
15 48 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
16 45 (2.85%) Data Analyst
17 44 (2.79%) Consultant
18 41 (2.60%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 231 (14.65%) PySpark
2 132 (8.37%) Kafka
3 42 (2.66%) REST
4 35 (2.22%) Pandas
5 30 (1.90%) JSON
6 27 (1.71%) React
6 27 (1.71%) scikit-learn
7 24 (1.52%) PyTorch
8 22 (1.40%) Spring
9 21 (1.33%) NumPy
10 20 (1.27%) .NET
10 20 (1.27%) TensorFlow
11 16 (1.01%) RESTful
12 15 (0.95%) Spring Boot
13 12 (0.76%) FastAPI
14 11 (0.70%) Apache Avro
14 11 (0.70%) Microsoft Graph
14 11 (0.70%) OpenTelemetry
14 11 (0.70%) pytest
14 11 (0.70%) Streamlit
Miscellaneous
1 212 (13.44%) Cloud Native
2 74 (4.69%) Data Structures
3 64 (4.06%) Legacy Systems
4 63 (3.99%) Distributed Systems
5 61 (3.87%) Product Ownership
6 45 (2.85%) Onboarding
7 34 (2.16%) AI Agents
8 27 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
9 23 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
10 22 (1.40%) Algorithms
11 20 (1.27%) NHS
12 19 (1.20%) Distributed Computing
13 17 (1.08%) Clustering
13 17 (1.08%) Virtual Team
14 16 (1.01%) Life Science
15 15 (0.95%) Analytical Mindset
16 13 (0.82%) Enterprise Software
16 13 (0.82%) Management Information System
17 12 (0.76%) Fixed Income
17 12 (0.76%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 36 (2.28%) Linux
2 30 (1.90%) Unix
3 8 (0.51%) Windows
4 2 (0.13%) VMS
4 2 (0.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.063%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.063%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 792 (50.22%) Analytics
2 759 (48.13%) Data Pipeline
3 611 (38.74%) Data Modelling
4 553 (35.07%) CI/CD
5 541 (34.31%) ETL
6 441 (27.96%) AI
7 403 (25.55%) Agile
8 395 (25.05%) Business Intelligence
9 385 (24.41%) DevOps
10 360 (22.83%) Data Governance
11 281 (17.82%) Machine Learning
12 267 (16.93%) Problem-Solving
13 251 (15.92%) Data Science
14 237 (15.03%) Migration
15 232 (14.71%) Decision-Making
16 226 (14.33%) Validation
17 221 (14.01%) Data Architecture
18 218 (13.82%) Stakeholder Management
19 215 (13.63%) Data Transformation
20 197 (12.49%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 857 (54.34%) SQL
2 806 (51.11%) Python
3 118 (7.48%) Java
4 45 (2.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 44 (2.79%) Bash
6 42 (2.66%) Scala
7 36 (2.28%) C#
7 36 (2.28%) PowerShell
8 26 (1.65%) T-SQL
9 23 (1.46%) JavaScript
10 21 (1.33%) R
11 18 (1.14%) Bicep
12 17 (1.08%) PL/SQL
13 14 (0.89%) Shell Script
14 12 (0.76%) SAS Macro
15 9 (0.57%) TypeScript
16 8 (0.51%) Kusto Query Language
16 8 (0.51%) SPARQL
17 7 (0.44%) Cypher
18 5 (0.32%) Korn
Qualifications
1 309 (19.59%) Security Cleared
2 263 (16.68%) SC Cleared
3 100 (6.34%) Degree
4 51 (3.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 37 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 33 (2.09%) Azure Certification
7 27 (1.71%) DV Cleared
8 26 (1.65%) Master's Degree
9 20 (1.27%) AWS Certification
10 13 (0.82%) DBS Check
11 11 (0.70%) SnowPro
12 9 (0.57%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 8 (0.51%) 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%) CCSP
17 2 (0.13%) Cisco Certification
17 2 (0.13%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 467 (29.61%) Data Quality
2 80 (5.07%) GDPR
2 80 (5.07%) QA
3 22 (1.40%) Accessibility
4 13 (0.82%) SLA
5 5 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.25%) NIST
6 4 (0.25%) Solvency II
7 3 (0.19%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.19%) Disclosure Scotland
7 3 (0.19%) GxP
7 3 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 42001
7 3 (0.19%) MiFID
7 3 (0.19%) PMO
8 2 (0.13%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 2 (0.13%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.13%) COPPA
8 2 (0.13%) EMIR
8 2 (0.13%) GRC
System Software
1 137 (8.69%) Docker
2 5 (0.32%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.063%) HDFS
4 1 (0.063%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 206 (13.06%) Terraform
2 117 (7.42%) Kubernetes
3 28 (1.78%) Grafana
4 21 (1.33%) Prometheus
5 19 (1.20%) Ansible
6 5 (0.32%) Kibana
7 3 (0.19%) Control-M
7 3 (0.19%) logstash
8 2 (0.13%) Argo
8 2 (0.13%) Kubeflow
8 2 (0.13%) Rancher
8 2 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 1 (0.063%) Cilium
9 1 (0.063%) Data Guard
9 1 (0.063%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.063%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.063%) Nagios
9 1 (0.063%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.063%) QRadar
9 1 (0.063%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 413 (26.19%) Databricks
2 278 (17.63%) Microsoft
3 81 (5.14%) Informatica
4 71 (4.50%) Google
5 65 (4.12%) Oracle
6 36 (2.28%) SAP
7 32 (2.03%) Talend
8 31 (1.97%) Foundry
9 29 (1.84%) Palantir
10 25 (1.59%) Salesforce
11 21 (1.33%) OpenAI
12 20 (1.27%) Splunk
13 18 (1.14%) Cloudera
14 15 (0.95%) ServiceNow
15 12 (0.76%) Trend Micro
16 9 (0.57%) Workday
17 8 (0.51%) Denodo
17 8 (0.51%) Teradata
18 7 (0.44%) Adobe
18 7 (0.44%) InterSystems