Big Data Contract Job Trends in England

Big Data
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Big Data skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 336 224 248
Rank change year-on-year -112 +24 -78
Contract jobs citing Big Data 205 296 356
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.65% 1.10% 0.99%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.84% 5.98% 6.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 160 179 228
10th Percentile £313 £400 £414
25th Percentile £400 £481 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £558
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +3.14% -7.08%
75th Percentile £618 £688 £700
90th Percentile £801 £763 £800
UK median daily rate £500 £568 £550
% change year-on-year -11.97% +3.27% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 21
10th Percentile - £30.25 £26.24
25th Percentile - £43.75 £42.50
Median hourly rate - £52.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year - +13.69% +5.84%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £52.50
90th Percentile - - £78.00
UK median hourly rate - £52.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year - +13.69% +5.84%

All Database & BI Skills
England

Big Data falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 5,332 4,953 5,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.79% 18.37% 16.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,720 3,290 4,214
10th Percentile £326 £351 £358
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -
75th Percentile £613 £663 £656
90th Percentile £710 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 70 139
10th Percentile £19.38 £21.11 £18.18
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £23.00
Median hourly rate £47.61 £40.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +17.56% -12.30% -16.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.73 £64.45
90th Percentile £84.00 £74.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £46.50 £32.80 £46.18
% change year-on-year +41.79% -28.98% -16.04%

Big Data
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Big Data relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Big Data job vacancy trend in England

Big Data
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Big Data.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Big Data

Big Data
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Big Data in England over the 6 months to 15 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Big Data in England

Big Data
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Big Data.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Big Data

Big Data
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Big Data within the England region over the 6 months to 15 January 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
London -54 138 £550 - 44
Midlands -27 17 £420 -31.37% 11
South East -32 15 £380 -45.23% 53
East Midlands -17 14 £420 -23.64% 9
North of England -44 14 £473 -27.31% 17
North West -13 13 £473 -30.00% 8
South West -38 9 £525 -21.35% 11
West Midlands -34 3 £447 -26.96% 2
East of England -28 2 £453 -30.38% 21
Yorkshire -52 1 - - 5
Big Data
UK

Big Data
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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 94 (45.85%) Apache Spark
2 31 (15.12%) Apache
3 19 (9.27%) Apache Airflow
4 16 (7.80%) Confluence
5 4 (1.95%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.98%) Apache Pig
6 2 (0.98%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.98%) SAS
7 1 (0.49%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.49%) IIS
7 1 (0.49%) Luigi
7 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.49%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.98%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.46%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.49%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 83 (40.49%) AWS
2 59 (28.78%) Azure
3 41 (20.00%) GCP
4 26 (12.68%) Serverless
5 22 (10.73%) Power Platform
6 18 (8.78%) Snowflake
7 15 (7.32%) GitHub
8 11 (5.37%) Amazon S3
9 10 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
9 10 (4.88%) GitHub Actions
10 7 (3.41%) Amazon ECS
11 6 (2.93%) Amazon SageMaker
11 6 (2.93%) Azure Data Factory
12 5 (2.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 5 (2.44%) Amazon EC2
12 5 (2.44%) Amazon EKS
12 5 (2.44%) Azure DevOps
12 5 (2.44%) Microsoft Copilot
13 4 (1.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 3 (1.46%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.46%) Kerberos
1 3 (1.46%) VPN
2 1 (0.49%) HTTP
2 1 (0.49%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (37.07%) Hadoop
2 39 (19.02%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (14.63%) NoSQL
4 24 (11.71%) Data Lake
5 23 (11.22%) Apache Hive
6 22 (10.73%) Power BI
6 22 (10.73%) Relational Database
7 20 (9.76%) SQL Server
8 18 (8.78%) Elasticsearch
8 18 (8.78%) Metadata
9 17 (8.29%) Tableau
10 13 (6.34%) HBase
10 13 (6.34%) RDBMS
11 12 (5.85%) Impala
12 10 (4.88%) PostgreSQL
13 8 (3.90%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (3.90%) BigQuery
14 7 (3.41%) Azure SQL Database
14 7 (3.41%) Data Mining
15 6 (2.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 24 (11.71%) Git
2 20 (9.76%) JIRA
3 18 (8.78%) Jenkins
4 16 (7.80%) GitLab
5 6 (2.93%) ERwin
6 5 (2.44%) MLflow
7 4 (1.95%) ER Studio
8 3 (1.46%) Selenium
9 2 (0.98%) Cypress.io
9 2 (0.98%) Gradle
9 2 (0.98%) Postman
9 2 (0.98%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.98%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.49%) Artifactory
10 1 (0.49%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.49%) Gatling
10 1 (0.49%) Poetry
10 1 (0.49%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.49%) SpecFlow
10 1 (0.49%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 78 (38.05%) Social Skills
2 63 (30.73%) Finance
3 35 (17.07%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (11.22%) Banking
5 13 (6.34%) Public Sector
6 4 (1.95%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.46%) Financial Institution
7 3 (1.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 3 (1.46%) Investment Banking
7 3 (1.46%) Manufacturing
8 2 (0.98%) Marketing
9 1 (0.49%) Agriculture
9 1 (0.49%) Corporate Banking
9 1 (0.49%) Front Office
9 1 (0.49%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.49%) Retail
9 1 (0.49%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 55 (26.83%) Data Engineer
2 30 (14.63%) Senior
3 26 (12.68%) Developer
4 21 (10.24%) Lead
5 19 (9.27%) Data Scientist
6 16 (7.80%) Analyst
7 15 (7.32%) Architect
8 13 (6.34%) Data Analyst
9 12 (5.85%) Data Architect
10 8 (3.90%) Scala Developer
10 8 (3.90%) Software Engineer
11 7 (3.41%) AWS Engineer
11 7 (3.41%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 6 (2.93%) Data Modeller
12 6 (2.93%) Hadoop Developer
12 6 (2.93%) Java Engineer
12 6 (2.93%) QA Engineer
12 6 (2.93%) Senior Data Engineer
12 6 (2.93%) Senior Software Engineer
13 5 (2.44%) Business Intelligence Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (20.98%) Kafka
2 27 (13.17%) PySpark
3 19 (9.27%) Apache NiFi
4 17 (8.29%) scikit-learn
5 14 (6.83%) Pandas
6 11 (5.37%) .NET
6 11 (5.37%) HTML
6 11 (5.37%) TensorFlow
7 9 (4.39%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (4.39%) React
8 8 (3.90%) NumPy
8 8 (3.90%) Spark Streaming
9 7 (3.41%) Flask
9 7 (3.41%) JSON
9 7 (3.41%) RESTful
10 6 (2.93%) pytest
10 6 (2.93%) PyTorch
10 6 (2.93%) Spring
11 5 (2.44%) XML
11 5 (2.44%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (8.78%) Cloud Native
2 17 (8.29%) Distributed Computing
3 13 (6.34%) Algorithms
4 6 (2.93%) Data Structures
5 5 (2.44%) Analytical Mindset
5 5 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (2.44%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.95%) Derivative
6 4 (1.95%) Product Ownership
7 3 (1.46%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.46%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.98%) AI Agents
8 2 (0.98%) FMCG
8 2 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.98%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.98%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.98%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.98%) Reference Data
9 1 (0.49%) Virtual Reality
Operating Systems
1 17 (8.29%) Linux
2 7 (3.41%) Unix
3 2 (0.98%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (31.71%) ETL
2 64 (31.22%) Analytics
3 61 (29.76%) Agile
4 59 (28.78%) Data Modelling
4 59 (28.78%) Data Pipeline
5 53 (25.85%) Data Engineering
6 48 (23.41%) Machine Learning
6 48 (23.41%) Problem-Solving
7 47 (22.93%) CI/CD
7 47 (22.93%) Data Governance
8 45 (21.95%) Data Science
9 39 (19.02%) AI
10 35 (17.07%) Visualisation
11 33 (16.10%) Software Engineering
12 32 (15.61%) Business Intelligence
13 31 (15.12%) Decision-Making
13 31 (15.12%) DevOps
14 27 (13.17%) Computer Science
15 26 (12.68%) Microservices
16 23 (11.22%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 138 (67.32%) Python
2 111 (54.15%) SQL
3 43 (20.98%) Java
4 30 (14.63%) Scala
5 22 (10.73%) R
6 14 (6.83%) C#
6 14 (6.83%) C++
6 14 (6.83%) JavaScript
7 8 (3.90%) Bash
8 4 (1.95%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.46%) Perl
9 3 (1.46%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.98%) Ada
10 2 (0.98%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.49%) C
11 1 (0.49%) Go
11 1 (0.49%) Korn
11 1 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.49%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 43 (20.98%) Security Cleared
2 32 (15.61%) SC Cleared
3 30 (14.63%) Degree
4 21 (10.24%) DV Cleared
5 18 (8.78%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (7.32%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.95%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.95%) BPSS Clearance
7 4 (1.95%) PhD
8 3 (1.46%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.98%) MCP
10 1 (0.49%) HP APS
10 1 (0.49%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.49%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.49%) OCP
10 1 (0.49%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.49%) Postgraduate
10 1 (0.49%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (22.93%) Data Quality
2 12 (5.85%) GDPR
3 11 (5.37%) QA
4 3 (1.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (0.98%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.98%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.98%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.49%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.49%) IFRS
6 1 (0.49%) IFRS 17
6 1 (0.49%) Solvency II
System Software
1 33 (16.10%) Docker
2 15 (7.32%) HDFS
3 1 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 34 (16.59%) Kubernetes
2 8 (3.90%) Terraform
3 5 (2.44%) Grafana
4 4 (1.95%) Hadoop YARN
4 4 (1.95%) Prometheus
5 3 (1.46%) Ansible
5 3 (1.46%) Argo
5 3 (1.46%) Nagios
5 3 (1.46%) Oozie
5 3 (1.46%) Rancher
6 2 (0.98%) Kibana
7 1 (0.49%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.49%) logstash
7 1 (0.49%) Puppet
7 1 (0.49%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 36 (17.56%) Databricks
2 16 (7.80%) Google
2 16 (7.80%) Microsoft
3 15 (7.32%) Cloudera
4 10 (4.88%) Foundry
4 10 (4.88%) Palantir
5 5 (2.44%) Ab Initio
6 4 (1.95%) Oracle
7 3 (1.46%) Informatica
7 3 (1.46%) Salesforce
8 2 (0.98%) IBM
8 2 (0.98%) OpenAI
8 2 (0.98%) Splunk
8 2 (0.98%) Vertica
9 1 (0.49%) Guidewire
9 1 (0.49%) HP
9 1 (0.49%) Refinitiv
9 1 (0.49%) SnapLogic
9 1 (0.49%) Sybase
9 1 (0.49%) Zoomdata