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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 361 234 241
Rank change year-on-year -127 +7 -64
Contract jobs citing Big Data 233 330 429
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.05% 0.99%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.77% 5.73% 6.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 200 280
10th Percentile £317 £375 £400
25th Percentile £400 £456 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £569 £550
Median % change year-on-year -12.13% +3.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £618 £676 £700
90th Percentile £779 £757 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £650 £500
% change year-on-year -31.23% +30.00% -13.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 23
10th Percentile - £30.25 £26.54
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 £72.00
90th Percentile - - £76.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £46.18

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 requiring database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 6,184 5,762 7,116
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 18.30% 16.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,269 3,793 5,028
10th Percentile £334 £350 £350
25th Percentile £412 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £528
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.47% -4.09%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -0.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 79 159
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.78 £15.83
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.00
Median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.29% -22.22% -18.18%
75th Percentile £74.47 £64.61 £64.08
90th Percentile £84.20 £67.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.65 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.52% -32.59% -22.73%

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 19 January 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
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 19 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
England -122 201 £503 -12.61% 168
London -53 139 £550 - 47
Work from Home -19 66 £475 -9.18% 60
UK excluding London -91 65 £447 -31.23% 136
North of England -48 15 £445 -34.07% 22
Midlands -31 14 £420 -31.37% 15
Scotland +9 13 £500 +28.21% 3
North West -17 13 £473 -30.00% 10
South East -36 13 £380 -44.73% 55
East Midlands -16 11 £420 -37.78% 13
South West -24 9 £525 -21.35% 17
West Midlands -34 3 £447 -26.96% 2
Northern Ireland -6 1 £513 -14.58% 2
North East -21 1 £375 -8.31% 4
East of England -21 1 £505 -22.31% 22
Yorkshire -49 1 - - 8

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
1 104 (44.64%) Apache Spark
2 41 (17.60%) Apache
3 29 (12.45%) Apache Airflow
4 16 (6.87%) Confluence
5 4 (1.72%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.86%) Apache Pig
6 2 (0.86%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.86%) SAS
7 1 (0.43%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.43%) IIS
7 1 (0.43%) Luigi
7 1 (0.43%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.86%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.86%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.43%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 89 (38.20%) AWS
2 66 (28.33%) Azure
3 44 (18.88%) GCP
4 31 (13.30%) Power Platform
5 28 (12.02%) Serverless
6 25 (10.73%) Snowflake
7 17 (7.30%) GitHub
8 12 (5.15%) Azure Data Factory
8 12 (5.15%) GitHub Actions
9 11 (4.72%) Amazon S3
10 10 (4.29%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (3.00%) Amazon ECS
12 6 (2.58%) Amazon SageMaker
12 6 (2.58%) Azure DevOps
13 5 (2.15%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 5 (2.15%) Amazon EKS
13 5 (2.15%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 5 (2.15%) Microsoft Copilot
14 4 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
14 4 (1.72%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.29%) Kerberos
1 3 (1.29%) VPN
2 1 (0.43%) HTTP
2 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (36.05%) Hadoop
2 54 (23.18%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (14.16%) NoSQL
4 30 (12.88%) Power BI
5 28 (12.02%) Data Lake
6 24 (10.30%) Relational Database
7 23 (9.87%) Apache Hive
8 22 (9.44%) Elasticsearch
9 21 (9.01%) Metadata
9 21 (9.01%) SQL Server
10 18 (7.73%) PostgreSQL
11 17 (7.30%) Tableau
12 14 (6.01%) RDBMS
13 13 (5.58%) HBase
14 12 (5.15%) Impala
15 9 (3.86%) BigQuery
16 8 (3.43%) Amazon Redshift
16 8 (3.43%) MongoDB
17 7 (3.00%) Azure SQL Database
18 6 (2.58%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 34 (14.59%) Git
2 20 (8.58%) Jenkins
2 20 (8.58%) JIRA
3 18 (7.73%) GitLab
4 6 (2.58%) ERwin
4 6 (2.58%) MLflow
5 4 (1.72%) ER Studio
6 3 (1.29%) Postman
6 3 (1.29%) Robot Framework
6 3 (1.29%) Selenium
7 2 (0.86%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.86%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.86%) Gradle
7 2 (0.86%) Subversion
7 2 (0.86%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.43%) JMeter
8 1 (0.43%) Maven
8 1 (0.43%) NUnit
8 1 (0.43%) Poetry
8 1 (0.43%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 81 (34.76%) Social Skills
2 69 (29.61%) Finance
3 41 (17.60%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (10.73%) Banking
5 16 (6.87%) Public Sector
6 5 (2.15%) Investment Banking
7 4 (1.72%) Financial Institution
7 4 (1.72%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 3 (1.29%) Manufacturing
9 2 (0.86%) Marketing
10 1 (0.43%) Agriculture
10 1 (0.43%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.43%) Front Office
10 1 (0.43%) Pharmaceutical
10 1 (0.43%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.43%) Retail
10 1 (0.43%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 70 (30.04%) Data Engineer
2 34 (14.59%) Senior
3 25 (10.73%) Lead
4 23 (9.87%) Developer
5 18 (7.73%) Data Scientist
6 17 (7.30%) Analyst
7 16 (6.87%) Architect
8 14 (6.01%) Data Analyst
9 13 (5.58%) Data Architect
10 10 (4.29%) Python Engineer
11 9 (3.86%) Senior Data Engineer
12 8 (3.43%) Scala Developer
12 8 (3.43%) Software Engineer
13 7 (3.00%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (3.00%) Data Modeller
13 7 (3.00%) Machine Learning Engineer
13 7 (3.00%) QA Engineer
14 6 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
14 6 (2.58%) Big Data Engineer
14 6 (2.58%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (20.60%) Kafka
2 33 (14.16%) PySpark
3 19 (8.15%) Apache NiFi
4 15 (6.44%) Pandas
4 15 (6.44%) scikit-learn
5 13 (5.58%) REST
6 11 (4.72%) HTML
6 11 (4.72%) RESTful
6 11 (4.72%) TensorFlow
7 9 (3.86%) .NET
7 9 (3.86%) Flask
7 9 (3.86%) JSON
7 9 (3.86%) RabbitMQ
7 9 (3.86%) React
8 8 (3.43%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (3.43%) Spark Streaming
9 7 (3.00%) NumPy
9 7 (3.00%) pytest
9 7 (3.00%) Spring
9 7 (3.00%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (7.30%) Cloud Native
2 16 (6.87%) Distributed Computing
3 10 (4.29%) Algorithms
4 6 (2.58%) Data Structures
5 5 (2.15%) Analytical Mindset
5 5 (2.15%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (2.15%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.72%) Derivative
6 4 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (1.72%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.72%) Virtual Team
7 3 (1.29%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.29%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.29%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.86%) FMCG
8 2 (0.86%) Hedge funds
8 2 (0.86%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.86%) Reference Data
8 2 (0.86%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 25 (10.73%) Linux
2 9 (3.86%) Unix
3 2 (0.86%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (34.76%) ETL
2 77 (33.05%) Analytics
3 72 (30.90%) Data Modelling
4 71 (30.47%) Agile
5 70 (30.04%) Data Pipeline
6 61 (26.18%) CI/CD
7 60 (25.75%) Problem-Solving
8 55 (23.61%) Data Engineering
9 53 (22.75%) Data Governance
10 49 (21.03%) Machine Learning
11 46 (19.74%) Data Science
12 45 (19.31%) Visualisation
13 40 (17.17%) AI
14 39 (16.74%) DevOps
15 38 (16.31%) Business Intelligence
16 35 (15.02%) Software Engineering
17 30 (12.88%) Decision-Making
18 29 (12.45%) Data Integration
19 28 (12.02%) Computer Science
19 28 (12.02%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 156 (66.95%) Python
2 120 (51.50%) SQL
3 41 (17.60%) Java
4 26 (11.16%) Scala
5 21 (9.01%) R
6 14 (6.01%) C#
6 14 (6.01%) C++
6 14 (6.01%) JavaScript
7 10 (4.29%) Bash
8 6 (2.58%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.29%) Perl
9 3 (1.29%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.86%) Ada
10 2 (0.86%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.86%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.86%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.43%) C
11 1 (0.43%) Go
11 1 (0.43%) Korn
11 1 (0.43%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 47 (20.17%) Security Cleared
2 35 (15.02%) SC Cleared
3 30 (12.88%) Degree
4 21 (9.01%) Computer Science Degree
4 21 (9.01%) DV Cleared
5 14 (6.01%) Master's Degree
6 6 (2.58%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.72%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.72%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.29%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.29%) PhD
9 2 (0.86%) MCP
10 1 (0.43%) HP APS
10 1 (0.43%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.43%) OCP
10 1 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.43%) Postgraduate
10 1 (0.43%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (23.18%) Data Quality
2 14 (6.01%) QA
3 12 (5.15%) GDPR
4 4 (1.72%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.86%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.86%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.43%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.43%) IFRS
7 1 (0.43%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.43%) ISO 13485
7 1 (0.43%) Solvency II
System Software
1 39 (16.74%) Docker
2 15 (6.44%) HDFS
3 2 (0.86%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 41 (17.60%) Kubernetes
2 14 (6.01%) Terraform
3 10 (4.29%) Grafana
4 7 (3.00%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.58%) Ansible
5 6 (2.58%) Kibana
6 5 (2.15%) Argo
6 5 (2.15%) logstash
7 4 (1.72%) Hadoop YARN
8 3 (1.29%) Nagios
8 3 (1.29%) Oozie
8 3 (1.29%) Rancher
9 1 (0.43%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.43%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.43%) Puppet
9 1 (0.43%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 44 (18.88%) Databricks
2 18 (7.73%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.44%) Google
4 14 (6.01%) Cloudera
5 11 (4.72%) Foundry
5 11 (4.72%) Palantir
6 6 (2.58%) Oracle
6 6 (2.58%) ServiceNow
7 5 (2.15%) Ab Initio
8 4 (1.72%) Informatica
9 2 (0.86%) IBM
9 2 (0.86%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.86%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.86%) Splunk
10 1 (0.43%) Atlassian
10 1 (0.43%) Guidewire
10 1 (0.43%) Refinitiv
10 1 (0.43%) SnapLogic
10 1 (0.43%) Vertica
10 1 (0.43%) Zoomdata