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 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 411 260 212
Rank change year-on-year -151 -48 +24
Contract jobs citing Big Data 270 322 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.51% 0.98% 1.17%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.33% 5.37% 6.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 223 321
10th Percentile £358 £406 £370
25th Percentile £440 £459 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -
75th Percentile £663 £650 £750
90th Percentile £741 £738 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £500 £535
% change year-on-year +0.50% -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 3 5
10th Percentile £61.45 £42.42 £27.25
25th Percentile £65.00 £47.61 £36.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +35.29% -45.51%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £48.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £51.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 -
% change year-on-year +79.67% - -

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 8,101 5,991 7,088
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.33% 18.21% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,383 4,054 5,008
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -2.95%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 89 101
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.15 £15.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £39.00 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.43% -1.41% -35.45%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.25 £78.96 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -41.46%

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 4 August 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 of jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 4 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

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 4 August 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 -155 223 £550 - 213
London -93 140 £600 +2.39% 162
UK excluding London -123 91 £503 +0.50% 68
Work from Home -61 89 £500 -2.50% 71
North of England -43 31 £550 +7.32% 7
South East -86 19 £525 -4.55% 26
Scotland -7 14 £402 -11.60% 7
Yorkshire -34 14 £550 -8.33% 4
Midlands -64 14 £410 -4.77% 10
East Midlands -15 9 £495 +19.28%
North East -34 9 £510 +10.27%
South West -41 9 £515 +14.44% 10
North West -50 8 £600 +20.00% 3
West Midlands -62 5 £405 -20.90% 10
Wales - 3 £425 -
East of England -31 2 £540 +6.93% 9

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
1 136 (50.37%) Apache Spark
2 39 (14.44%) Apache
3 37 (13.70%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.59%) Confluence
5 6 (2.22%) SAS
6 5 (1.85%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.85%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (1.85%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.48%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (1.11%) CMS
8 3 (1.11%) JBoss
9 2 (0.74%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.37%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.37%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.74%) Endur
2 1 (0.37%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 132 (48.89%) AWS
2 103 (38.15%) Azure
3 81 (30.00%) GCP
4 43 (15.93%) Snowflake
5 34 (12.59%) Power Platform
6 32 (11.85%) Amazon S3
7 21 (7.78%) Amazon EMR
7 21 (7.78%) GitHub
8 19 (7.04%) AWS Lambda
8 19 (7.04%) Azure DevOps
9 17 (6.30%) Serverless
10 14 (5.19%) Amazon ECS
11 13 (4.81%) dbt
12 11 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (4.07%) OpenShift
13 10 (3.70%) Amazon EKS
13 10 (3.70%) Azure Data Factory
13 10 (3.70%) PaaS
14 7 (2.59%) Salesforce Service Cloud
15 6 (2.22%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.85%) IPv4
1 5 (1.85%) IPv6
2 3 (1.11%) Broadband
2 3 (1.11%) DHCP
2 3 (1.11%) DNS
2 3 (1.11%) Firewall
2 3 (1.11%) Kerberos
2 3 (1.11%) SMTP
2 3 (1.11%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (22.22%) Hadoop
2 49 (18.15%) Data Warehouse
3 39 (14.44%) Data Lake
3 39 (14.44%) NoSQL
4 31 (11.48%) Power BI
5 29 (10.74%) PostgreSQL
6 19 (7.04%) Amazon Redshift
7 18 (6.67%) Apache Hive
8 17 (6.30%) BigQuery
9 16 (5.93%) MongoDB
9 16 (5.93%) Relational Database
10 14 (5.19%) Metadata
11 13 (4.81%) Amazon Athena
11 13 (4.81%) Amazon RDS
11 13 (4.81%) DynamoDB
11 13 (4.81%) SQL Server
12 12 (4.44%) Tableau
13 9 (3.33%) Amazon Aurora
13 9 (3.33%) Data Vault
13 9 (3.33%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 37 (13.70%) Git
2 28 (10.37%) Jenkins
3 27 (10.00%) GitLab
4 15 (5.56%) JIRA
5 8 (2.96%) Selenium
6 6 (2.22%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (1.48%) Robot Framework
8 3 (1.11%) JUnit
8 3 (1.11%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.74%) ERwin
9 2 (0.74%) MLflow
10 1 (0.37%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.37%) Postman
10 1 (0.37%) TeamCity
General
1 95 (35.19%) Social Skills
2 71 (26.30%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (24.44%) Finance
4 34 (12.59%) Banking
5 21 (7.78%) Public Sector
6 11 (4.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.70%) Documentation Skills
8 9 (3.33%) Investment Banking
9 8 (2.96%) Marketing
9 8 (2.96%) Telecoms
10 7 (2.59%) Legal
11 4 (1.48%) Retail
12 3 (1.11%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.74%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.74%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.74%) Local Government
14 1 (0.37%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.37%) Front Office
14 1 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.37%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 83 (30.74%) Data Engineer
2 48 (17.78%) Architect
3 43 (15.93%) Senior
4 29 (10.74%) Developer
5 18 (6.67%) Lead
6 17 (6.30%) Data Architect
6 17 (6.30%) Solutions Architect
7 15 (5.56%) Analyst
7 15 (5.56%) Senior Data Engineer
8 13 (4.81%) Data Scientist
9 12 (4.44%) Big Data Engineer
10 10 (3.70%) Java Developer
11 9 (3.33%) Data Analyst
12 8 (2.96%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 8 (2.96%) DevOps Engineer
12 8 (2.96%) Kafka Engineer
12 8 (2.96%) Python Engineer
12 8 (2.96%) Scala Engineer
13 7 (2.59%) Data Integration Engineer
13 7 (2.59%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (22.96%) Kafka
2 32 (11.85%) PySpark
3 19 (7.04%) REST
4 16 (5.93%) Spring
5 15 (5.56%) Spring Boot
6 11 (4.07%) Pandas
7 9 (3.33%) CSS
7 9 (3.33%) HTML
8 8 (2.96%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (2.96%) Play Framework
8 8 (2.96%) PyTorch
8 8 (2.96%) TensorFlow
9 7 (2.59%) NumPy
10 6 (2.22%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (2.22%) Middleware
10 6 (2.22%) React
11 5 (1.85%) Langfuse
11 5 (1.85%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.85%) RESTful
11 5 (1.85%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 38 (14.07%) Cloud Native
2 29 (10.74%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.93%) Product Ownership
4 15 (5.56%) Data Structures
5 13 (4.81%) Virtual Team
6 12 (4.44%) Algorithms
6 12 (4.44%) Clustering
7 9 (3.33%) Onboarding
8 8 (2.96%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (2.59%) Data Centre
10 6 (2.22%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.85%) Distributed Architecture
12 4 (1.48%) AI Agents
12 4 (1.48%) FMCG
13 3 (1.11%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 3 (1.11%) PKI
13 3 (1.11%) Social Media
14 2 (0.74%) Management Information System
14 2 (0.74%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.41%) Linux
2 10 (3.70%) Unix
3 5 (1.85%) Windows
3 5 (1.85%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (47.78%) Data Pipeline
2 120 (44.44%) Analytics
3 102 (37.78%) CI/CD
4 100 (37.04%) Data Engineering
5 99 (36.67%) Agile
6 88 (32.59%) ETL
7 78 (28.89%) AI
8 71 (26.30%) Machine Learning
9 66 (24.44%) DevOps
10 65 (24.07%) Data Modelling
10 65 (24.07%) Problem-Solving
11 58 (21.48%) Data Governance
12 53 (19.63%) Data Science
13 44 (16.30%) Containerisation
14 43 (15.93%) Scrum
15 41 (15.19%) Business Intelligence
16 39 (14.44%) Validation
17 38 (14.07%) Software Engineering
18 36 (13.33%) Decision-Making
19 34 (12.59%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 150 (55.56%) Python
2 127 (47.04%) SQL
3 60 (22.22%) Java
4 32 (11.85%) Scala
5 20 (7.41%) R
6 16 (5.93%) PowerShell
7 12 (4.44%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.33%) Bash
9 5 (1.85%) C#
9 5 (1.85%) SAS Macro
10 3 (1.11%) Rust
10 3 (1.11%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.74%) Go
11 2 (0.74%) Korn
11 2 (0.74%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.37%) C
12 1 (0.37%) C++
12 1 (0.37%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.37%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 56 (20.74%) Security Cleared
2 41 (15.19%) SC Cleared
3 33 (12.22%) Degree
4 16 (5.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (5.19%) Master's Degree
6 9 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.59%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.22%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.22%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.11%) PhD
9 3 (1.11%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.74%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.74%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.74%) CISSP
10 2 (0.74%) MCITP
10 2 (0.74%) MCTS
10 2 (0.74%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.37%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (20.37%) Data Quality
2 21 (7.78%) QA
3 16 (5.93%) GDPR
4 7 (2.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.59%) NIST
5 3 (1.11%) SLA
6 2 (0.74%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.74%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.37%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.37%) NCSC
7 1 (0.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 50 (18.52%) Docker
2 8 (2.96%) HDFS
3 7 (2.59%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.22%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.11%) BitLocker
5 3 (1.11%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.11%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (1.11%) Terminal Services
5 3 (1.11%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.11%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.74%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 54 (20.00%) Kubernetes
2 35 (12.96%) Terraform
3 29 (10.74%) Grafana
4 12 (4.44%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.70%) Ansible
6 8 (2.96%) Kibana
6 8 (2.96%) Puppet
7 3 (1.11%) Nagios
7 3 (1.11%) Red Hat Satellite
7 3 (1.11%) vCenter Server
7 3 (1.11%) vMotion
8 2 (0.74%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.37%) Control-M
9 1 (0.37%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.37%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 58 (21.48%) Databricks
2 24 (8.89%) Microsoft
3 23 (8.52%) Google
4 15 (5.56%) Splunk
5 12 (4.44%) Salesforce
6 9 (3.33%) Cloudera
7 8 (2.96%) Foundry
8 6 (2.22%) IBM
8 6 (2.22%) VMware
9 5 (1.85%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.85%) Oracle
9 5 (1.85%) Palantir
10 4 (1.48%) HP
10 4 (1.48%) Talend
11 3 (1.11%) Cisco
11 3 (1.11%) Citrix
11 3 (1.11%) Informatica
11 3 (1.11%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.11%) Symantec
11 3 (1.11%) Teradata