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Data Engineer: skills in demand in German IT freelance projects 2026

8.1% of the analysed IT freelance engineering projects look for a Data Engineer – 1,281 projects, rank 3 of 16 roles. In October 2026 it was 8.5% (−0.1 percentage points from the month before). Below are the skills these projects ask for, which of them are typical for the role, and how demand develops.

By . Data: 52,306 project listings from German IT freelance project boards, May 2026 – October 2026, of which 15,798 are engineering projects. Published , last updated .

What the role covers

Data engineers build data pipelines, ETL processes, data warehouses and lakehouses (for example with Databricks, Snowflake or dbt) and develop BI solutions with Power BI or Qlik. Every project counts exactly once, under the role that is its main requirement – the title and the required skills decide. How all roles are delimited is explained in the overview of all developer roles.

The most requested skills

The 15 most frequent skills of the 1,281 projects of this role. The bar is the share of projects that mention the skill. Blue skills are typical for the role – asked for here at least three times as often as in engineering projects overall. Grey skills are also in demand in other roles. The black tick shows how often the skill is requested across all engineering projects. Languages and soft skills are left out.

Under each skill: how often the role lists it as required, and its share across all engineering projects.

  1. SQLrequired 49% · all 12%53%
  2. Data Modelingrequired 39% · all 7%47%
  3. Pythonrequired 36% · all 20%42%
  4. ETLrequired 29% · all 3.6%36%
  5. Data Engineeringrequired 26% · all 3.7%33%
  6. Power BIrequired 21% · all 3.1%27%
  7. Databricksrequired 21% · all 3.5%27%
  8. CI/CDrequired 18% · all 27%26%
  9. Azurerequired 17% · all 9.7%24%
  10. Data Warehouserequired 15% · all 1.9%20%
  11. PySparkrequired 15% · all 1.7%17%
  12. Microsoft Fabricrequired 14% · all 1.7%16%
  13. Data Migrationrequired 12% · all 2.6%16%
  14. Apache Sparkrequired 11% · all 1.8%13%
  15. AWSrequired 10% · all 11%13%

Typical for the role – asked for at least three times as often as in engineering projects overall – are Data Warehouse (20%), PySpark (17%), ETL (36%), Microsoft Fabric (16%), Power BI (27%), Data Engineering (33%).

Also asked for in other roles and taken for granted here: Python (42%), CI/CD (26%), Azure (24%), AWS (13%).

How demand develops

Share of Data Engineer projects among the engineering projects per month, by the month of the first listing. Single months fluctuate; a shift of less than one percentage point is not a trend yet.

  1. May 20260.6%
  2. June 20268.7%
  3. July 20266.8%
  4. August 20268.5%
  5. September 20268.6%
  6. October 20268.5%

Remote share

Since July 2026, 79% of this role's projects state a remote share. Of those, 54% are fully remote, 45% hybrid and 0.4% fully on site. All roles and cities compared: How remote are IT freelance projects?.

Contract length and start

Since July 2026, 68% of this role's projects state a contract length: 6 months in the median, 29% of them a year or longer. 35% of the projects name an option to extend, and 44% of those stating a start want to begin immediately. All roles compared: IT contract length in Germany.

For English speakers

Since July 2026, 5.2% of this role's projects (56 projects) say German is not needed or name English as the only language; 59% of those are fully remote. 54% demand German, 41% name no language. All roles and cities compared: English-speaking IT contracts in Germany.

Hourly rate

What listings for this role name as an hourly rate – median, middle half, day rate and the course month by month – is on the page Data Engineer hourly rate.

Related roles

Roles that share many of the shown skills with this one – often within reach with a few additional skills.

How to use the data for your profile

  1. Check your profile against the blue skills: they are what clients look for in this role.
  2. Grey skills with long bars are taken for granted – if you have them, they belong in your profile.
  3. Look at the related roles: a few additional skills often put many more projects within reach.

Projectmatch matches new projects against your profile automatically and shows, per project, which of the required skills your profile covers. Browse current projects or try it now.

All roles compared: Most in-demand developer roles in German IT freelance projects. See also: Monthly IT freelance market report, IT contractor rates in Germany, AI freelance & contract jobs in Germany and Most in-demand IT skills in German freelance projects.

Method

An AI model assigns each project exactly one role from its title and required skills – the main requirement – or marks it as not an engineering project. The skills come from the AI analysis of the project descriptions; spelling variants are merged into one skill. A skill counts as typical for the role when its projects mention it at least three times as often as engineering projects overall. The figures are updated every month.