Big Data Contract Job Trends

Big Data
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Big Data skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 324 212 235
Rank change year-on-year -112 +23 -65
Contract jobs citing Big Data 268 436 500
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.78% 1.19% 1.06%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 4.29% 6.72% 6.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 200 275 324
10th Percentile £375 £350 £402
25th Percentile £413 £450 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £578
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.76% -3.75%
75th Percentile £630 £700 £700
90th Percentile £741 £825 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £572 £550
% change year-on-year -15.87% +4.00% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 29
10th Percentile - £27.25 £42.92
25th Percentile - £36.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £38.96 £47.50 £77.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.98% -38.71% -
75th Percentile - £53.75 £78.75
90th Percentile - - £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.96 - £78.00

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 requiring database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 6,251 6,490 7,863
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.26% 17.68% 16.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,217 4,347 5,485
10th Percentile £335 £341 £355
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £500
% change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 89 160
10th Percentile £20.72 £17.50 £16.96
25th Percentile £29.00 £21.25 £25.13
Median hourly rate £42.00 £30.59 £48.45
Median % change year-on-year +37.28% -36.86% -3.00%
75th Percentile £65.00 £53.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.78 £66.75 £78.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £30.00 £46.84
% change year-on-year +33.33% -35.95% +15.00%

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 30 October 2025.

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
Top 16 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 30 October 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 -102 238 £525 -7.33% 265
London -66 146 £550 - 128
UK excluding London -85 93 £481 -15.87% 187
Work from Home -43 89 £500 -4.76% 88
South East +5 22 £488 +8.33% 110
North of England -57 18 £500 -1.38% 23
Midlands -26 17 £420 -31.37% 13
Scotland -7 15 £500 +31.75% 5
North West -19 12 £500 +31.75% 18
South West -21 12 £525 -21.35% 6
East Midlands -2 11 £420 -1.18% 6
East of England -7 9 £500 -16.67% 27
West Midlands -34 6 £402 -34.31% 7
Yorkshire -53 4 £500 -1.38% 1
North East -10 2 - - 4
Northern Ireland -9 1 £513 -6.82% 2

Big Data
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 99 (36.94%) Apache Spark
2 49 (18.28%) Apache
3 28 (10.45%) Apache Airflow
4 15 (5.60%) Confluence
5 5 (1.87%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.75%) Apache Pig
6 2 (0.75%) Luigi
6 2 (0.75%) SAS
7 1 (0.37%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.37%) IIS
7 1 (0.37%) MS Project Server
7 1 (0.37%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.75%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (0.75%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.49%) Avolution ABACUS
2 3 (1.12%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.75%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 105 (39.18%) AWS
2 81 (30.22%) Azure
3 61 (22.76%) GCP
4 33 (12.31%) Serverless
5 30 (11.19%) Power Platform
6 24 (8.96%) Snowflake
7 22 (8.21%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.34%) GitHub
9 11 (4.10%) Amazon SageMaker
9 11 (4.10%) Azure Data Factory
10 10 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
10 10 (3.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 9 (3.36%) Azure DevOps
11 9 (3.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 8 (2.99%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (2.61%) AWS Step Functions
13 7 (2.61%) OpenShift
14 6 (2.24%) Amazon ECS
15 5 (1.87%) Microsoft Copilot
16 4 (1.49%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.49%) DNS
1 4 (1.49%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.12%) SSH
3 2 (0.75%) Internet
3 2 (0.75%) SSL
4 1 (0.37%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (33.21%) Hadoop
2 48 (17.91%) Data Warehouse
3 38 (14.18%) Data Lake
4 35 (13.06%) NoSQL
5 30 (11.19%) Power BI
6 28 (10.45%) Elasticsearch
7 24 (8.96%) Tableau
8 23 (8.58%) PostgreSQL
8 23 (8.58%) Relational Database
8 23 (8.58%) SQL Server
9 21 (7.84%) Metadata
10 20 (7.46%) BigQuery
11 17 (6.34%) Apache Hive
12 12 (4.48%) RDBMS
13 10 (3.73%) HBase
13 10 (3.73%) MongoDB
14 9 (3.36%) Amazon Athena
15 8 (2.99%) MySQL
16 7 (2.61%) Amazon Redshift
16 7 (2.61%) Impala
Development Applications
1 40 (14.93%) Git
2 23 (8.58%) JIRA
3 17 (6.34%) Jenkins
4 16 (5.97%) GitLab
5 10 (3.73%) MLflow
6 7 (2.61%) ERwin
7 5 (1.87%) Artifactory
7 5 (1.87%) ER Studio
8 4 (1.49%) Gradle
8 4 (1.49%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.12%) Maven
9 3 (1.12%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.75%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.75%) Poetry
10 2 (0.75%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.75%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.37%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.37%) Gatling
11 1 (0.37%) JMeter
11 1 (0.37%) Pylint
General
1 76 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 72 (26.87%) Finance
3 46 (17.16%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (10.45%) Banking
5 14 (5.22%) Public Sector
6 12 (4.48%) Telecoms
7 9 (3.36%) Financial Institution
8 5 (1.87%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.87%) Retail
9 4 (1.49%) General Ledger
9 4 (1.49%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.49%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.12%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.75%) Health Technology
11 2 (0.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.75%) Marketing
11 2 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.75%) Publishing
12 1 (0.37%) Advertising
12 1 (0.37%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 74 (27.61%) Data Engineer
2 39 (14.55%) Architect
3 38 (14.18%) Senior
4 28 (10.45%) Developer
5 21 (7.84%) Data Architect
5 21 (7.84%) Data Scientist
6 20 (7.46%) Lead
7 15 (5.60%) Analyst
8 14 (5.22%) Software Engineer
9 13 (4.85%) Python Engineer
9 13 (4.85%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (3.73%) Data Analyst
10 10 (3.73%) Senior Data Engineer
11 9 (3.36%) Big Data Engineer
11 9 (3.36%) Java Engineer
11 9 (3.36%) Python Data Engineer
12 8 (2.99%) Azure Engineer
12 8 (2.99%) Data Modeller
12 8 (2.99%) Senior Software Engineer
13 7 (2.61%) Scala Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (22.01%) Kafka
2 32 (11.94%) PySpark
3 28 (10.45%) Apache NiFi
4 21 (7.84%) Pandas
5 19 (7.09%) scikit-learn
6 17 (6.34%) PyTorch
7 16 (5.97%) TensorFlow
8 14 (5.22%) Flask
8 14 (5.22%) NumPy
8 14 (5.22%) RESTful
9 13 (4.85%) .NET
10 12 (4.48%) Elastic Stack
10 12 (4.48%) OpenTelemetry
10 12 (4.48%) RabbitMQ
10 12 (4.48%) React
11 11 (4.10%) HTML
11 11 (4.10%) Hugging Face
12 8 (2.99%) JSON
12 8 (2.99%) REST
13 7 (2.61%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 20 (7.46%) Cloud Native
2 17 (6.34%) Algorithms
2 17 (6.34%) Distributed Computing
3 9 (3.36%) Data Structures
4 7 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
5 6 (2.24%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
6 5 (1.87%) Hybrid Cloud
7 4 (1.49%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.49%) Credit Risk
7 4 (1.49%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (1.49%) Private Cloud
7 4 (1.49%) Virtual Team
8 3 (1.12%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.12%) Derivative
8 3 (1.12%) IoT
8 3 (1.12%) Management Information System
8 3 (1.12%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 25 (9.33%) Linux
2 9 (3.36%) Unix
3 6 (2.24%) Windows
4 4 (1.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.37%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (31.72%) Agile
2 81 (30.22%) Data Modelling
3 77 (28.73%) ETL
4 76 (28.36%) Analytics
5 72 (26.87%) Machine Learning
6 68 (25.37%) Data Pipeline
7 64 (23.88%) Data Engineering
8 61 (22.76%) CI/CD
9 59 (22.01%) Data Science
10 57 (21.27%) AI
10 57 (21.27%) Data Governance
11 56 (20.90%) Problem-Solving
12 45 (16.79%) Visualisation
13 44 (16.42%) Microservices
14 42 (15.67%) Software Engineering
15 41 (15.30%) Containerisation
16 38 (14.18%) Business Intelligence
17 37 (13.81%) Data Integration
17 37 (13.81%) DevOps
18 32 (11.94%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 179 (66.79%) Python
2 124 (46.27%) SQL
3 46 (17.16%) Java
4 26 (9.70%) Scala
5 19 (7.09%) C++
6 18 (6.72%) R
7 14 (5.22%) C#
8 13 (4.85%) JavaScript
9 10 (3.73%) Bash
10 6 (2.24%) C
11 4 (1.49%) Shell Script
12 3 (1.12%) Groovy
12 3 (1.12%) Perl
12 3 (1.12%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.75%) Go
13 2 (0.75%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.75%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.75%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.37%) CodeQL
14 1 (0.37%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 42 (15.67%) Security Cleared
2 36 (13.43%) Degree
3 35 (13.06%) SC Cleared
4 24 (8.96%) DV Cleared
5 22 (8.21%) Master's Degree
6 17 (6.34%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (2.24%) AWS Certification
7 6 (2.24%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.24%) PhD
8 4 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.12%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.75%) CISSP
11 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.37%) OCP
11 1 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.37%) Postgraduate
11 1 (0.37%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (19.40%) Data Quality
2 18 (6.72%) GDPR
3 10 (3.73%) QA
4 4 (1.49%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.37%) IFRS
5 1 (0.37%) IFRS 17
5 1 (0.37%) Solvency II
System Software
1 32 (11.94%) Docker
2 9 (3.36%) HDFS
3 2 (0.75%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.37%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 45 (16.79%) Kubernetes
2 22 (8.21%) Terraform
3 16 (5.97%) Grafana
4 10 (3.73%) Ansible
5 9 (3.36%) Argo
5 9 (3.36%) Prometheus
6 8 (2.99%) Kibana
7 6 (2.24%) logstash
8 4 (1.49%) Hadoop YARN
8 4 (1.49%) Kustomize
9 3 (1.12%) Istio
9 3 (1.12%) Oozie
10 2 (0.75%) Progress Chef
11 1 (0.37%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.37%) Puppet
11 1 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 39 (14.55%) Databricks
2 31 (11.57%) Google
3 24 (8.96%) Microsoft
4 20 (7.46%) Cloudera
5 16 (5.97%) Foundry
5 16 (5.97%) Palantir
6 9 (3.36%) Oracle
7 7 (2.61%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.87%) Informatica
9 4 (1.49%) OpenAI
9 4 (1.49%) Sage
9 4 (1.49%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.75%) Bloomberg
10 2 (0.75%) Brio
10 2 (0.75%) Red Hat
10 2 (0.75%) Refinitiv
10 2 (0.75%) Splunk
10 2 (0.75%) Talend
10 2 (0.75%) Vertica
11 1 (0.37%) Sybase