Apache Spark Contract Job Trends

Apache Spark
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Apache Spark skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 313 233 353
Rank change year-on-year -80 +120 -1
Contract jobs citing Apache Spark 352 315 231
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.77% 1.08% 0.53%
As % of the Application Platforms category 8.26% 9.38% 5.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 214 167
10th Percentile £363 £400 £375
25th Percentile £431 £463 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £614 £675 £675
90th Percentile £738 £838 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £550 £450
% change year-on-year -15.23% +22.22% -20.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 2 7
10th Percentile £57.80 £54.00 £25.34
25th Percentile £64.00 £58.11 £33.80
Median hourly rate £70.00 £65.60 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year +6.71% +42.44% -40.96%
75th Percentile £84.50 £72.46 £60.17
90th Percentile £90.00 £76.21 £70.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £78.70 £40.78
% change year-on-year -11.41% +93.00% -47.72%

All Application Platform Skills
UK

Apache Spark falls under the Application Platforms category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring application platform skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for application platform skills 4,260 3,359 4,208
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 9.29% 11.50% 9.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,934 2,239 2,877
10th Percentile £306 £270 £250
25th Percentile £404 £399 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £498
Median % change year-on-year - +0.50% -2.93%
75th Percentile £588 £607 £600
90th Percentile £688 £713 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 84 172
10th Percentile £15.00 £16.83 £13.50
25th Percentile £19.00 £23.48 £15.49
Median hourly rate £35.50 £42.50 £29.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.47% +44.07% +18.00%
75th Percentile £73.94 £64.50 £46.18
90th Percentile £81.50 £75.00 £67.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.09 £52.50 £24.00
% change year-on-year -10.30% +118.75% +9.09%

Apache Spark
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Apache Spark relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Apache Spark job vacancy trend in the UK

Apache Spark
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Apache Spark.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Apache Spark

Apache Spark
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Apache Spark over the 6 months to 10 April 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Apache Spark in the UK

Apache Spark
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Apache Spark.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Apache Spark

Apache Spark
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Apache Spark over the 6 months to 10 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Apache Spark in the UK

Apache Spark
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 Apache Spark within the UK over the 6 months to 10 April 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 -79 304 £550 -8.33% 99
London -50 199 £560 -6.67% 63
UK excluding London -75 118 £466 -15.23% 60
Work from Home -40 106 £575 -4.17% 47
North of England -52 47 £500 -13.04% 16
Scotland +27 22 £375 -20.00% 3
North West -22 20 £494 -6.40% 11
Yorkshire -44 19 £500 -16.67% 1
Midlands -59 17 £430 +10.54% 4
South East -57 14 £550 - 24
South West -22 13 £550 -10.20% 10
East Midlands -33 11 £425 +9.25% 2
North East -11 8 £450 -14.29% 4
West Midlands -58 6 £535 - 2
Northern Ireland -7 2 £463 +12.80%
East of England -45 2 £700 +7.69% 3
Wales - 1 £375 - 2

Apache Spark
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
1 127 (36.08%) Apache
2 58 (16.48%) Apache Airflow
3 5 (1.42%) SAS
4 4 (1.14%) Confluence
4 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.85%) Apache Synapse
5 3 (0.85%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 4 (1.14%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 200 (56.82%) AWS
2 190 (53.98%) Azure
3 95 (26.99%) GCP
4 67 (19.03%) Amazon S3
4 67 (19.03%) Power Platform
5 65 (18.47%) Azure Data Factory
6 52 (14.77%) Serverless
7 43 (12.22%) AWS Lambda
8 42 (11.93%) AWS CloudFormation
9 40 (11.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 36 (10.23%) Azure DevOps
11 33 (9.38%) Snowflake
12 30 (8.52%) GitHub
13 26 (7.39%) Collibra
13 26 (7.39%) GitHub Actions
14 20 (5.68%) Amazon SQS
15 18 (5.11%) AWS Step Functions
15 18 (5.11%) dbt
16 14 (3.98%) Amazon EMR
17 12 (3.41%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.57%) NaaS
1 2 (0.57%) WAN
2 1 (0.28%) 4G
2 1 (0.28%) 5G
2 1 (0.28%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (36.65%) Big Data
2 93 (26.42%) Hadoop
3 85 (24.15%) Data Lake
4 84 (23.86%) Data Warehouse
5 79 (22.44%) NoSQL
6 59 (16.76%) Power BI
7 42 (11.93%) Metadata
8 39 (11.08%) Delta Lake
9 34 (9.66%) Amazon Athena
10 32 (9.09%) Azure SQL Database
11 28 (7.95%) Relational Database
12 27 (7.67%) PostgreSQL
13 26 (7.39%) BigQuery
14 25 (7.10%) Amazon Redshift
15 23 (6.53%) Spark SQL
15 23 (6.53%) Tableau
16 19 (5.40%) SQL Server
17 18 (5.11%) Apache Hive
17 18 (5.11%) MySQL
17 18 (5.11%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 73 (20.74%) Git
2 21 (5.97%) GitLab
3 19 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 15 (4.26%) MLflow
5 7 (1.99%) JIRA
6 5 (1.42%) Gradle
6 5 (1.42%) Maven
7 4 (1.14%) Bitbucket
8 3 (0.85%) Robot Framework
9 2 (0.57%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.57%) Subversion
10 1 (0.28%) ERwin
10 1 (0.28%) git-flow
10 1 (0.28%) Poetry
10 1 (0.28%) PowerDesigner
10 1 (0.28%) Selenium
General
1 82 (23.30%) Finance
2 77 (21.88%) Social Skills
3 49 (13.92%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (8.24%) Banking
5 26 (7.39%) Public Sector
6 12 (3.41%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (2.27%) Marketing
8 7 (1.99%) Financial Institution
8 7 (1.99%) Telecoms
9 6 (1.70%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.42%) Front Office
11 4 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
11 4 (1.14%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.14%) Law
12 3 (0.85%) Billing
12 3 (0.85%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.57%) Back Office
13 2 (0.57%) Electronics
13 2 (0.57%) Manufacturing
13 2 (0.57%) Retail
Job Titles
1 153 (43.47%) Data Engineer
2 50 (14.20%) Lead
3 49 (13.92%) Senior
4 45 (12.78%) Developer
5 37 (10.51%) Azure Engineer
6 28 (7.95%) Azure Data Engineer
7 27 (7.67%) Java Developer
8 26 (7.39%) Senior Data Engineer
9 25 (7.10%) AWS Engineer
9 25 (7.10%) Data Scientist
10 24 (6.82%) Architect
10 24 (6.82%) Lead Data Engineer
10 24 (6.82%) Principal Engineer
11 18 (5.11%) Software Engineer
12 17 (4.83%) Data Architect
12 17 (4.83%) Principal Data Engineer
13 14 (3.98%) Principal Software Engineer
14 12 (3.41%) Machine Learning Engineer
15 11 (3.13%) AWS Data Engineer
15 11 (3.13%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 123 (34.94%) Kafka
2 97 (27.56%) PySpark
3 30 (8.52%) Spring
4 28 (7.95%) Spring Boot
5 22 (6.25%) Pandas
6 20 (5.68%) Great Expectations
7 18 (5.11%) TensorFlow
8 16 (4.55%) PyTorch
8 16 (4.55%) REST
9 15 (4.26%) scikit-learn
10 12 (3.41%) JSON
10 12 (3.41%) NumPy
11 10 (2.84%) Node.js
11 10 (2.84%) RESTful
11 10 (2.84%) Spark Streaming
12 7 (1.99%) Dask
13 6 (1.70%) AWS CDK
13 6 (1.70%) pytest
14 5 (1.42%) Apache Avro
14 5 (1.42%) Apache NiFi
Miscellaneous
1 65 (18.47%) Cloud Native
2 27 (7.67%) Distributed Computing
3 19 (5.40%) Algorithms
3 19 (5.40%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (3.13%) Product Ownership
5 8 (2.27%) Onboarding
6 7 (1.99%) Derivative
7 5 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.42%) Equities
7 5 (1.42%) Fixed Income
7 5 (1.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 5 (1.42%) Hedge funds
7 5 (1.42%) Management Information System
7 5 (1.42%) Reference Data
8 4 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
8 4 (1.14%) Data Structures
8 4 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (1.14%) Multi-touch
8 4 (1.14%) Virtual Team
9 3 (0.85%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 18 (5.11%) Linux
2 14 (3.98%) Unix
3 1 (0.28%) CentOS
3 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (59.38%) Data Pipeline
2 194 (55.11%) Data Engineering
3 180 (51.14%) CI/CD
4 171 (48.58%) Analytics
5 158 (44.89%) Data Modelling
6 146 (41.48%) Data Governance
7 144 (40.91%) ETL
8 119 (33.81%) Machine Learning
9 118 (33.52%) DevOps
10 113 (32.10%) Agile
11 105 (29.83%) AI
12 96 (27.27%) Data Architecture
13 88 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
14 82 (23.30%) Data Science
15 76 (21.59%) Business Intelligence
16 69 (19.60%) Infrastructure as Code
17 54 (15.34%) Data Integration
18 50 (14.20%) Visualisation
19 49 (13.92%) Software Engineering
20 48 (13.64%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 268 (76.14%) Python
2 244 (69.32%) SQL
3 77 (21.88%) Java
4 67 (19.03%) Scala
5 36 (10.23%) R
6 23 (6.53%) C#
7 9 (2.56%) Shell Script
8 6 (1.70%) Bash
9 5 (1.42%) Bicep
9 5 (1.42%) C++
9 5 (1.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 5 (1.42%) JavaScript
10 4 (1.14%) SAS Macro
10 4 (1.14%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.57%) Ada
11 2 (0.57%) AWK
11 2 (0.57%) T-SQL
12 1 (0.28%) ANSI SQL
12 1 (0.28%) Perl
12 1 (0.28%) PowerShell
Qualifications
1 102 (28.98%) Security Cleared
2 90 (25.57%) SC Cleared
3 53 (15.06%) Degree
4 28 (7.95%) Master's Degree
5 19 (5.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 15 (4.26%) Azure Certification
7 12 (3.41%) PhD
8 9 (2.56%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.27%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.70%) BPSS Clearance
11 3 (0.85%) IBM Certification
12 2 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Developer
13 1 (0.28%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Certification
13 1 (0.28%) Numerate Degree
13 1 (0.28%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 137 (38.92%) Data Quality
2 38 (10.80%) GDPR
3 6 (1.70%) Actionable Recommendations
3 6 (1.70%) QA
4 4 (1.14%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.85%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.57%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.28%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.28%) IFRS
7 1 (0.28%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.28%) SLA
7 1 (0.28%) Solvency II
System Software
1 59 (16.76%) Docker
2 12 (3.41%) HDFS
3 1 (0.28%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.28%) Apache ZooKeeper
3 1 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 80 (22.73%) Terraform
2 70 (19.89%) Kubernetes
3 18 (5.11%) Prometheus
4 12 (3.41%) Grafana
5 10 (2.84%) Ansible
6 3 (0.85%) Apache Ranger
6 3 (0.85%) Argo
6 3 (0.85%) Nagios
6 3 (0.85%) Rancher
7 2 (0.57%) Amdocs OSS
7 2 (0.57%) Hadoop YARN
8 1 (0.28%) Kibana
8 1 (0.28%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.28%) logstash
8 1 (0.28%) Oozie
8 1 (0.28%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 149 (42.33%) Databricks
2 33 (9.38%) Google
3 29 (8.24%) Microsoft
4 13 (3.69%) Splunk
5 12 (3.41%) Informatica
6 9 (2.56%) Ab Initio
6 9 (2.56%) Oracle
7 7 (1.99%) Teradata
8 6 (1.70%) Cloudera
8 6 (1.70%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.42%) Talend
10 4 (1.14%) Foundry
10 4 (1.14%) Salesforce
11 3 (0.85%) Hortonworks
11 3 (0.85%) IBM
11 3 (0.85%) OpenAI
11 3 (0.85%) SAP
12 2 (0.57%) Ciena
12 2 (0.57%) Dynatrace
12 2 (0.57%) NVIDIA