Big Data Contract Job Trends

Big Data
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs citing Big Data skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 517 326 200
Rank change year-on-year -191 -126 +36
Contract jobs citing Big Data 191 265 432
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.34% 0.75% 1.18%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 2.25% 4.17% 6.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 134 204 271
10th Percentile £313 £375 £354
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.29% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £634 £619 £700
90th Percentile £725 £760 £813
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £594
% change year-on-year - -24.24% +18.68%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 5
10th Percentile £49.65 - £27.25
25th Percentile £56.25 - £36.25
Median hourly rate £62.40 £38.96 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.16% -17.98% -34.03%
75th Percentile £67.50 - £53.75
90th Percentile £70.60 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.95 £38.96 -
% change year-on-year +53.88% - -

All Database & BI Skills
UK

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 citing database or business intelligence skills.

6 months to
13 Nov 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing database or business intelligence skills 8,475 6,352 6,430
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 15.16% 17.89% 17.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,618 4,327 4,272
10th Percentile £360 £333 £341
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £527
Median % change year-on-year +2.50% -5.17% -1.26%
75th Percentile £625 £615 £650
90th Percentile £725 £720 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +1.26% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 328 92 88
10th Percentile £17.17 £20.78 £17.85
25th Percentile £23.66 £29.00 £21.81
Median hourly rate £41.71 £43.50 £30.11
Median % change year-on-year -4.11% +44.49% -34.81%
75th Percentile £59.06 £65.00 £49.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £83.08 £64.81
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £41.75 £28.75
% change year-on-year -0.10% +45.22% -37.74%

Big Data Job Vacancy Trend

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

Big Data job vacancy trend in the UK

Big Data Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Big Data

Big Data Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 13 November 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Big Data

Big Data Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution for jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 13 November 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data Top 15 Contract Job Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 13 November 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
Job Ads
Past 6 Months
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -166 172 £500 -4.76% 328
London -117 114 £533 -3.18% 230
UK excluding London -110 68 £450 - 112
Work from Home -112 50 £500 - 121
North of England -54 26 £480 -4.00% 22
Yorkshire -13 18 £496 - 8
South West -34 12 £450 -14.29% 12
South East -69 10 £400 -15.79% 36
Midlands -42 8 £404 -3.93% 14
Scotland -47 7 £300 -40.00% 13
Northern Ireland +13 6 £463 -9.76% 11
West Midlands -39 5 £405 +0.75% 11
North West -46 5 £513 +2.50% 12
East Midlands -20 3 £304 -27.62% 3
North East -35 3 £325 - 2

Big Data Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Database & Business Intelligence

RankSkillShareJob Ads
1Hadoop20.4%39
2Data Warehouse18.8%36
3Data Lake16.2%31
4Apache Hive13.1%25
5Power BI11.0%21
5Tableau11.0%21
7Metadata8.4%16
8Elasticsearch7.3%14
8PostgreSQL7.3%14
10NoSQL6.8%13
11Amazon Redshift6.3%12
11BigQuery6.3%12
13Amazon Athena4.7%9
13Amazon RDS4.7%9
15Impala3.7%7
15Parquet3.7%7
17Apache Cassandra3.1%6
17HBase3.1%6
19Spark SQL2.6%5
19SQL Server2.6%5