Senior Data Engineer Contract Job Trends

Senior Data Engineer
UK

The median Senior Data Engineer daily rate in the UK is £550, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 17 December 2025.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 444 431 506
Rank change year-on-year -13 +75 +152
Contract jobs requiring a Senior Data Engineer 144 121 99
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.39% 0.35% 0.23%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.43% 0.38% 0.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 103 91 65
10th Percentile £425 £425 £415
25th Percentile £500 £500 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -4.17% +4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £688
90th Percentile £700 £675 £711
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £493 £625
% change year-on-year +11.68% -21.20% +28.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 3
10th Percentile £67.45 - £35.20
25th Percentile £74.88 £92.50 £46.38
Median hourly rate £92.00 £95.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% +46.15% +94.03%
75th Percentile £110.00 £97.50 £75.00
90th Percentile - - £81.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £79.00 - £47.75
% change year-on-year - - +42.54%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 33,474 31,919 40,968
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.98% 92.77% 93.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,192 19,646 27,547
10th Percentile £290 £300 £288
25th Percentile £404 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £644
90th Percentile £720 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,966 1,020 1,459
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.48 £15.16
25th Percentile £18.00 £21.00 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £33.52 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -24.97% -25.51% +50.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.59 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.00 £72.53 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -22.62% -27.78% +80.00%

Senior Data Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Senior Data Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Senior Data Engineer job vacancy trend in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Senior Data Engineer over the 6 months to 17 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Senior Data Engineer in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Senior Data Engineer job vacancies in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Senior Data Engineer over the 6 months to 17 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Senior Data Engineer in the UK

Senior Data Engineer
Top 14 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Senior Data Engineer within the UK over the 6 months to 17 December 2025. 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 -30 119 £560 -2.61% 89
London -7 77 £580 -5.31% 32
UK excluding London -34 51 £550 +11.68% 76
Work from Home -12 31 £611 +11.14% 56
South West +16 18 £550 +22.22% 3
Midlands -21 17 £550 -4.35% 15
West Midlands -25 16 £550 -4.35% 7
Scotland - 12 £463 - 3
North of England -52 10 £513 +2.50% 22
South East -12 6 £560 -13.85% 22
North West -28 5 £513 -6.82% 14
Yorkshire -48 3 - - 6
North East -7 2 £513 -14.23% 2
East Midlands - 1 £600 - 8

Senior Data Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 17 December 2025, Senior Data Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring Senior Data Engineer in the job title.

1 113 (78.47%) Python
2 80 (55.56%) Data Pipeline
3 77 (53.47%) SQL
4 72 (50.00%) Data Engineering
5 66 (45.83%) AWS
6 65 (45.14%) Azure
7 59 (40.97%) ETL
8 50 (34.72%) CI/CD
8 50 (34.72%) Databricks
9 42 (29.17%) Data Quality
9 42 (29.17%) Security Cleared
10 40 (27.78%) SC Cleared
11 39 (27.08%) DevOps
12 38 (26.39%) Data Modelling
13 37 (25.69%) Analytics
14 34 (23.61%) Apache Airflow
15 32 (22.22%) GitHub
16 30 (20.83%) PySpark
17 29 (20.14%) Infrastructure as Code
18 28 (19.44%) Data Architecture
19 27 (18.75%) dbt
19 27 (18.75%) Kafka
20 25 (17.36%) Amazon S3
21 22 (15.28%) Agile
21 22 (15.28%) Data Science
21 22 (15.28%) PostgreSQL
21 22 (15.28%) Terraform
22 21 (14.58%) Azure Data Factory
22 21 (14.58%) GCP
22 21 (14.58%) Git

Senior Data Engineer Skill Set
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 34 (23.61%) Apache Airflow
2 16 (11.11%) Apache Spark
3 14 (9.72%) Apache
4 1 (0.69%) Apache Synapse
4 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (0.69%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.69%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (1.39%) Maximo
2 1 (0.69%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 66 (45.83%) AWS
2 65 (45.14%) Azure
3 32 (22.22%) GitHub
4 27 (18.75%) dbt
5 25 (17.36%) Amazon S3
6 21 (14.58%) Azure Data Factory
6 21 (14.58%) GCP
6 21 (14.58%) GitHub Actions
7 15 (10.42%) Serverless
8 13 (9.03%) Snowflake
9 11 (7.64%) Power Platform
10 8 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (4.86%) AWS CloudFormation
11 7 (4.86%) Azure DevOps
12 6 (4.17%) ChatGPT
12 6 (4.17%) GitHub Copilot
13 5 (3.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 4 (2.78%) Amazon Kinesis
15 3 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
15 3 (2.08%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.39%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (15.28%) PostgreSQL
2 17 (11.81%) Data Warehouse
2 17 (11.81%) Delta Lake
3 15 (10.42%) Data Lake
4 13 (9.03%) Elasticsearch
4 13 (9.03%) SQL Server
5 11 (7.64%) Power BI
6 10 (6.94%) Big Data
6 10 (6.94%) Star Schema
7 8 (5.56%) Amazon QuickSight
7 8 (5.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 6 (4.17%) Amazon Redshift
8 6 (4.17%) BigQuery
8 6 (4.17%) Metadata
9 5 (3.47%) DataStage
9 5 (3.47%) Relational Database
10 4 (2.78%) Azure SQL Database
10 4 (2.78%) Hadoop
10 4 (2.78%) NoSQL
10 4 (2.78%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 21 (14.58%) Git
2 4 (2.78%) GitLab
2 4 (2.78%) Jenkins
3 1 (0.69%) Cucumber
3 1 (0.69%) JIRA
3 1 (0.69%) JUnit
3 1 (0.69%) Maven
3 1 (0.69%) Mockito
3 1 (0.69%) Selenium
General
1 30 (20.83%) Finance
2 28 (19.44%) Analytical Skills
3 25 (17.36%) Social Skills
4 9 (6.25%) Public Sector
5 5 (3.47%) Banking
5 5 (3.47%) Front Office
6 2 (1.39%) Health Technology
6 2 (1.39%) Legal
6 2 (1.39%) Military
6 2 (1.39%) Tech for Good
7 1 (0.69%) Aerospace
7 1 (0.69%) Aviation
7 1 (0.69%) Games
7 1 (0.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (0.69%) Marketing
7 1 (0.69%) Retail
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (20.83%) PySpark
2 27 (18.75%) Kafka
3 12 (8.33%) Keycloak
4 7 (4.86%) Jinja
4 7 (4.86%) Pandas
5 6 (4.17%) JSON
6 5 (3.47%) NumPy
7 4 (2.78%) XML
8 3 (2.08%) AWS CDK
8 3 (2.08%) JDBC
8 3 (2.08%) YAML
9 2 (1.39%) Apache NiFi
9 2 (1.39%) EDI
9 2 (1.39%) HTML
9 2 (1.39%) LangChain
9 2 (1.39%) XSLT
10 1 (0.69%) GraalVM
10 1 (0.69%) Playwright
10 1 (0.69%) PyArrow
10 1 (0.69%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 10 (6.94%) Hybrid Cloud
2 6 (4.17%) Cloud Native
3 5 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
3 5 (3.47%) Linux Command Line
4 4 (2.78%) Data Structures
4 4 (2.78%) Product Ownership
4 4 (2.78%) Reinsurance
5 3 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
5 3 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.39%) Algorithms
6 2 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
6 2 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
6 2 (1.39%) Management Information System
7 1 (0.69%) AI Agents
7 1 (0.69%) Derivative
7 1 (0.69%) Equities
7 1 (0.69%) Fixed Income
7 1 (0.69%) Hedge funds
7 1 (0.69%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.69%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 8 (5.56%) Linux
2 3 (2.08%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (55.56%) Data Pipeline
2 72 (50.00%) Data Engineering
3 59 (40.97%) ETL
4 50 (34.72%) CI/CD
5 39 (27.08%) DevOps
6 38 (26.39%) Data Modelling
7 37 (25.69%) Analytics
8 29 (20.14%) Infrastructure as Code
9 28 (19.44%) Data Architecture
10 22 (15.28%) Agile
10 22 (15.28%) Data Science
11 20 (13.89%) AI
11 20 (13.89%) Decision-Making
12 18 (12.50%) Batch Processing
13 16 (11.11%) Containerisation
13 16 (11.11%) Problem-Solving
14 15 (10.42%) Data Governance
15 14 (9.72%) Business Intelligence
15 14 (9.72%) DataOps
15 14 (9.72%) Dimensional Modelling
Programming Languages
1 113 (78.47%) Python
2 77 (53.47%) SQL
3 15 (10.42%) Scala
4 12 (8.33%) Go
5 11 (7.64%) Java
6 5 (3.47%) Bash
7 3 (2.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 2 (1.39%) JavaScript
8 2 (1.39%) PowerShell
8 2 (1.39%) R
8 2 (1.39%) Shell Script
9 1 (0.69%) Bicep
9 1 (0.69%) C
9 1 (0.69%) C#
9 1 (0.69%) C++
9 1 (0.69%) Cypher
9 1 (0.69%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 42 (29.17%) Security Cleared
2 40 (27.78%) SC Cleared
3 14 (9.72%) Azure Certification
4 3 (2.08%) Degree
5 2 (1.39%) AWS Certification
6 1 (0.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 1 (0.69%) Master's Degree
6 1 (0.69%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (29.17%) Data Quality
2 3 (2.08%) QA
3 2 (1.39%) GDPR
4 1 (0.69%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.69%) MiFID
4 1 (0.69%) WCAG
System Software
1 15 (10.42%) Docker
2 5 (3.47%) zsh
3 2 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 22 (15.28%) Terraform
2 20 (13.89%) Kubernetes
3 2 (1.39%) Grafana
3 2 (1.39%) Kibana
4 1 (0.69%) Ansible
4 1 (0.69%) logstash
4 1 (0.69%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 50 (34.72%) Databricks
2 7 (4.86%) Google
3 6 (4.17%) Informatica
4 4 (2.78%) IBM
4 4 (2.78%) Microsoft
4 4 (2.78%) Oracle
5 2 (1.39%) Denodo
5 2 (1.39%) Palantir
5 2 (1.39%) Talend
6 1 (0.69%) Ab Initio
6 1 (0.69%) Atlassian
6 1 (0.69%) Bloomberg
6 1 (0.69%) Cisco
6 1 (0.69%) Cloudera
6 1 (0.69%) Confluent
6 1 (0.69%) PayPal
6 1 (0.69%) Proofpoint
6 1 (0.69%) Refinitiv
6 1 (0.69%) Veritas