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

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 92 153 222
Rank change year-on-year +61 +69 -9
Contract jobs citing Data Engineering 1,175 536 489
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 2.75% 1.82% 1.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.20% 2.02% 1.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 814 378 364
10th Percentile £375 £375 £375
25th Percentile £446 £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 £742
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £490 £550
% change year-on-year +2.15% -11.00% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 13 13
10th Percentile £50.75 £21.40 £30.55
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 £43.51
90th Percentile £86.25 £58.00 £62.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.22 £25.43 £47.69
% change year-on-year +172.20% -46.67% +139.50%

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 36,752 26,590 38,671
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.07% 90.35% 86.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,283 16,983 25,150
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 £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -2.04% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,192 900 2,342
10th Percentile £14.82 £15.49 £13.00
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.00 £16.06
Median hourly rate £29.61 £32.50 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.89% - -7.14%
75th Percentile £65.00 £64.79 £57.50
90th Percentile £75.00 £76.34 £70.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.21 £32.00 £31.50
% change year-on-year -14.97% +1.59% -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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +58 1,045 £525 -4.55% 568
London +57 685 £550 -4.35% 296
UK excluding London +37 371 £500 +2.15% 380
Work from Home +35 347 £550 -4.35% 281
North of England +2 107 £460 -8.00% 109
Midlands +17 105 £514 +2.75% 45
West Midlands +3 85 £525 +5.00% 38
South West +14 61 £550 -15.38% 39
North West -8 51 £450 -2.70% 52
Scotland +25 49 £440 -6.98% 18
South East -31 41 £550 +10.00% 138
Yorkshire -41 35 £478 -20.42% 48
North East +7 21 £450 -10.00% 9
East Midlands -19 20 £447 -12.78% 7
East of England -27 14 £575 +79.69% 29
Wales -13 7 £563 +113.50% 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £430 -

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
1 188 (16.00%) Apache Spark
2 115 (9.79%) Apache Airflow
3 86 (7.32%) Apache
4 22 (1.87%) SAS
5 20 (1.70%) Palantir Foundry
6 16 (1.36%) Confluence
7 8 (0.68%) Appian
8 4 (0.34%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.26%) Apache Superset
10 2 (0.17%) SharePoint
11 1 (0.085%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.085%) Apache Synapse
11 1 (0.085%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.085%) Camunda
11 1 (0.085%) CMS
11 1 (0.085%) IBM HTTP Server
11 1 (0.085%) Luigi
Applications
1 24 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 11 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 7 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
4 6 (0.51%) Microsoft Office
5 4 (0.34%) Chatbot
5 4 (0.34%) MS Visio
6 3 (0.26%) Trello
7 2 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 7 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 3 (0.26%) BambooHR
2 3 (0.26%) SAP BPC
3 2 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.085%) Actimize
4 1 (0.085%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.085%) Markit EDM
4 1 (0.085%) Maximo
4 1 (0.085%) Misys Midas
4 1 (0.085%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.085%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 549 (46.72%) Azure
2 419 (35.66%) AWS
3 253 (21.53%) Power Platform
4 199 (16.94%) Azure Data Factory
5 166 (14.13%) GCP
6 158 (13.45%) Snowflake
7 139 (11.83%) Amazon S3
8 123 (10.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 120 (10.21%) GitHub
9 120 (10.21%) Serverless
10 98 (8.34%) Azure DevOps
10 98 (8.34%) dbt
11 94 (8.00%) AWS Lambda
12 75 (6.38%) GitHub Actions
13 64 (5.45%) AWS CloudFormation
14 39 (3.32%) AWS Step Functions
15 33 (2.81%) Amazon EMR
16 28 (2.38%) Collibra
17 27 (2.30%) Cloud Computing
18 26 (2.21%) Amazon SageMaker
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 (0.26%) VPN
3 2 (0.17%) Firewall
4 1 (0.085%) 4G
4 1 (0.085%) 5G
4 1 (0.085%) MQTT
4 1 (0.085%) SAN
4 1 (0.085%) SMS
4 1 (0.085%) SSL
4 1 (0.085%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 235 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
2 231 (19.66%) Power BI
3 166 (14.13%) Data Lake
4 108 (9.19%) Metadata
5 86 (7.32%) Big Data
6 83 (7.06%) NoSQL
7 82 (6.98%) SQL Server
8 74 (6.30%) Delta Lake
9 61 (5.19%) Snowflake Schema
10 60 (5.11%) Amazon Athena
10 60 (5.11%) Amazon Redshift
10 60 (5.11%) Relational Database
11 56 (4.77%) BigQuery
12 55 (4.68%) Azure SQL Database
12 55 (4.68%) PostgreSQL
13 52 (4.43%) Tableau
14 51 (4.34%) Hadoop
15 34 (2.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 32 (2.72%) Spark SQL
17 22 (1.87%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 170 (14.47%) Git
2 62 (5.28%) GitLab
3 45 (3.83%) Jenkins
3 45 (3.83%) MLflow
4 30 (2.55%) JIRA
5 6 (0.51%) Selenium
6 5 (0.43%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.43%) Visual Studio Code
7 4 (0.34%) Cucumber
8 3 (0.26%) JUnit
8 3 (0.26%) Maven
8 3 (0.26%) Postman
8 3 (0.26%) Robot Framework
8 3 (0.26%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.17%) ERwin
9 2 (0.17%) Gemini Tracker
9 2 (0.17%) JMeter
9 2 (0.17%) Mockito
9 2 (0.17%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.17%) Zephyr
General
1 318 (27.06%) Social Skills
2 272 (23.15%) Finance
3 166 (14.13%) Analytical Skills
4 100 (8.51%) Public Sector
5 75 (6.38%) Banking
6 28 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 20 (1.70%) Documentation Skills
7 20 (1.70%) Investment Banking
7 20 (1.70%) Retail
8 19 (1.62%) Front Office
9 18 (1.53%) Influencing Skills
10 16 (1.36%) Marketing
11 11 (0.94%) Legal
11 11 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
11 11 (0.94%) Telecoms
12 10 (0.85%) Financial Institution
13 9 (0.77%) Publishing
14 6 (0.51%) Back Office
14 6 (0.51%) Manufacturing
14 6 (0.51%) Military
Job Titles
1 534 (45.45%) Data Engineer
2 160 (13.62%) Lead
3 151 (12.85%) Senior
4 100 (8.51%) Architect
4 100 (8.51%) Senior Data Engineer
5 80 (6.81%) Azure Engineer
6 75 (6.38%) Developer
7 63 (5.36%) Azure Data Engineer
8 57 (4.85%) AWS Engineer
8 57 (4.85%) Lead Data Engineer
9 52 (4.43%) Analyst
9 52 (4.43%) Data Architect
10 51 (4.34%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 46 (3.91%) Snowflake Engineer
12 43 (3.66%) Data Scientist
13 39 (3.32%) Snowflake Data Engineer
14 36 (3.06%) AWS Data Engineer
15 32 (2.72%) Python Engineer
16 30 (2.55%) Consultant
16 30 (2.55%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 214 (18.21%) PySpark
2 142 (12.09%) Kafka
3 67 (5.70%) Pandas
4 62 (5.28%) PyTorch
5 51 (4.34%) TensorFlow
6 45 (3.83%) NumPy
6 45 (3.83%) scikit-learn
7 33 (2.81%) FastAPI
8 30 (2.55%) JSON
9 29 (2.47%) RESTful
10 27 (2.30%) Flask
10 27 (2.30%) YAML
11 26 (2.21%) pytest
12 24 (2.04%) LangChain
12 24 (2.04%) REST
13 23 (1.96%) React
14 18 (1.53%) Spring
15 17 (1.45%) Great Expectations
16 16 (1.36%) ARM Templates
17 15 (1.28%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 154 (13.11%) Cloud Native
2 51 (4.34%) Algorithms
3 46 (3.91%) Product Ownership
4 41 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
5 30 (2.55%) Distributed Computing
6 27 (2.30%) Legacy Systems
7 26 (2.21%) Onboarding
8 24 (2.04%) Data Structures
9 23 (1.96%) Hybrid Cloud
10 20 (1.70%) AI Agents
10 20 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
11 18 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
12 15 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
13 14 (1.19%) Fixed Income
14 12 (1.02%) Clustering
14 12 (1.02%) Derivative
14 12 (1.02%) Management Information System
14 12 (1.02%) NHS
14 12 (1.02%) Virtual Team
15 11 (0.94%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 26 (2.21%) Linux
2 9 (0.77%) Unix
3 7 (0.60%) VMS
4 3 (0.26%) Windows
5 2 (0.17%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.17%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.085%) CentOS
6 1 (0.085%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 557 (47.40%) Analytics
2 534 (45.45%) Data Pipeline
3 468 (39.83%) ETL
4 450 (38.30%) Data Modelling
5 434 (36.94%) CI/CD
6 319 (27.15%) AI
7 314 (26.72%) Data Governance
8 301 (25.62%) Agile
9 298 (25.36%) DevOps
10 286 (24.34%) Business Intelligence
11 262 (22.30%) Machine Learning
12 239 (20.34%) Problem-Solving
13 234 (19.91%) Data Science
14 181 (15.40%) Data Architecture
15 150 (12.77%) Infrastructure as Code
16 133 (11.32%) Decision-Making
17 125 (10.64%) Validation
18 122 (10.38%) LLM
19 114 (9.70%) Migration
20 111 (9.45%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 696 (59.23%) Python
2 633 (53.87%) SQL
3 91 (7.74%) Java
4 65 (5.53%) Scala
5 45 (3.83%) C#
6 38 (3.23%) Bash
7 36 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 35 (2.98%) PowerShell
9 31 (2.64%) JavaScript
10 22 (1.87%) Bicep
11 21 (1.79%) T-SQL
12 17 (1.45%) TypeScript
13 16 (1.36%) Go
14 15 (1.28%) R
15 11 (0.94%) C++
16 9 (0.77%) PL/SQL
17 7 (0.60%) Shell Script
18 6 (0.51%) Korn
18 6 (0.51%) Rust
19 3 (0.26%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 231 (19.66%) Security Cleared
2 189 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 113 (9.62%) Degree
4 49 (4.17%) Azure Certification
5 47 (4.00%) Master's Degree
6 46 (3.91%) Computer Science Degree
7 22 (1.87%) DV Cleared
8 19 (1.62%) AWS Certification
8 19 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
10 12 (1.02%) PhD
11 4 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 4 (0.34%) DBS Check
11 4 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.26%) IBM Certification
13 1 (0.085%) ACCA
13 1 (0.085%) CIMA
13 1 (0.085%) CISM
13 1 (0.085%) ISTQB
13 1 (0.085%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (28.43%) Data Quality
2 94 (8.00%) GDPR
3 39 (3.32%) QA
4 14 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 11 (0.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 8 (0.68%) HIPAA
6 8 (0.68%) SLA
7 6 (0.51%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 5 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 5 (0.43%) PERC
8 5 (0.43%) SOC 2
9 3 (0.26%) GRC
9 3 (0.26%) Solvency II
9 3 (0.26%) 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
11 1 (0.085%) SNOMED CT
System Software
1 151 (12.85%) Docker
2 6 (0.51%) HDFS
3 3 (0.26%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.085%) Apache ZooKeeper
4 1 (0.085%) ISA Server
Systems Management
1 179 (15.23%) Terraform
2 139 (11.83%) Kubernetes
3 28 (2.38%) Prometheus
4 17 (1.45%) Grafana
5 7 (0.60%) Ansible
6 4 (0.34%) Argo
7 3 (0.26%) Kubeflow
7 3 (0.26%) 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 (0.085%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.085%) Control-M
9 1 (0.085%) HP Fortify
9 1 (0.085%) Oozie
Vendors
1 357 (30.38%) Databricks
2 166 (14.13%) Microsoft
3 61 (5.19%) Google
4 40 (3.40%) Informatica
5 38 (3.23%) Oracle
6 29 (2.47%) Talend
7 26 (2.21%) Foundry
8 24 (2.04%) Palantir
9 22 (1.87%) OpenAI
10 17 (1.45%) Splunk
11 14 (1.19%) SAP
12 13 (1.11%) Cloudera
13 11 (0.94%) Salesforce
14 10 (0.85%) Denodo
15 9 (0.77%) UiPath
16 8 (0.68%) Automation Anywhere
16 8 (0.68%) IBM
17 7 (0.60%) ServiceNow
18 6 (0.51%) Guidewire
18 6 (0.51%) Virgin Media