Big Data Contracts

Big Data
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Big Data skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Big Data over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 238 258 222
Rank change year-on-year +20 -36 -76
Contract jobs citing Big Data 331 407 725
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.13% 0.93% 1.21%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 5.97% 5.57% 6.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 231 302 498
10th Percentile £408 £388 £463
25th Percentile £463 £468 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £579 £600
Median % change year-on-year -1.55% -3.50% -
75th Percentile £675 £744 £713
90th Percentile £750 £838 £797
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% +4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 12 18
10th Percentile £52.25 £18.20 £35.00
25th Percentile £53.75 £23.30 £40.91
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.25 £73.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.12% -51.71% +11.88%
75th Percentile £79.38 £44.69 £78.00
90th Percentile £91.75 £52.00 £84.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £19.38 £75.50
% change year-on-year - -74.34% +16.15%

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 5,544 7,303 10,767
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.96% 16.75% 18.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,832 5,193 7,664
10th Percentile £356 £350 £375
25th Percentile £420 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -2.78% -1.78%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £660
90th Percentile £763 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £489 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.88% -4.00% +2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 105 144 183
10th Percentile £20.09 £14.00 £21.24
25th Percentile £24.25 £20.98 £35.00
Median hourly rate £33.11 £40.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.23% -33.33% +41.18%
75th Percentile £65.00 £58.55 £70.88
90th Percentile £74.75 £72.50 £79.19
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £40.00 £58.05
% change year-on-year -25.00% -31.09% +65.84%

Big Data
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Big Data as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Big Data.

Daily rate trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Big Data.

Hourly rate trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Top 17 Contract 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 April 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 +24 297 £575 -1.54% 531
London -10 164 £575 -11.54% 352
UK excluding London +49 120 £550 - 192
Work from Home +11 98 £525 -16.00% 264
South East +65 47 £545 +21.65% 44
North of England +17 21 £600 +9.09% 56
Midlands +10 21 £500 -23.08% 33
East of England +42 16 £650 +116.67% 15
North West +8 13 £600 +17.65% 31
East Midlands +10 12 £393 -23.41% 9
West Midlands +2 9 £512 -21.17% 23
South West +48 8 £644 +43.06% 22
Yorkshire +5 5 £600 +6.67% 17
Northern Ireland -8 5 £410 -16.96% 2
Scotland -4 4 £409 -28.87% 18
North East +2 3 £463 +1.87% 8
Wales - 1 £167 - 7

Big Data
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 155 (46.83%) Apache Spark
2 70 (21.15%) Apache
3 20 (6.04%) Apache Airflow
4 15 (4.53%) Confluence
5 9 (2.72%) Microsoft Exchange
6 5 (1.51%) nginx
7 4 (1.21%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.91%) Oracle Coherence
9 2 (0.60%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 2 (0.60%) SAS
10 1 (0.30%) Apache Pulsar
10 1 (0.30%) Luigi
10 1 (0.30%) MS Project Server
10 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
Applications
1 9 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.42%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.60%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.30%) CATIA
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.60%) SAP BPC
3 1 (0.30%) Avolution ABACUS
Cloud Services
1 129 (38.97%) AWS
2 115 (34.74%) Azure
3 52 (15.71%) GCP
4 28 (8.46%) Azure DevOps
5 27 (8.16%) Power Platform
6 26 (7.85%) Serverless
7 24 (7.25%) Amazon S3
7 24 (7.25%) Azure Data Factory
8 23 (6.95%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (4.83%) PaaS
10 14 (4.23%) OpenShift
11 13 (3.93%) GitHub
12 10 (3.02%) Amazon EC2
12 10 (3.02%) Snowflake
13 9 (2.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 9 (2.72%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 9 (2.72%) IaaS
14 8 (2.42%) AWS CloudFormation
14 8 (2.42%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 8 (2.42%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.63%) DNS
2 9 (2.72%) DHCP
2 9 (2.72%) Firewall
2 9 (2.72%) SMTP
2 9 (2.72%) VPN
3 1 (0.30%) HTTP
3 1 (0.30%) Internet
3 1 (0.30%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.30%) NAS
3 1 (0.30%) Network Security
3 1 (0.30%) SAN
3 1 (0.30%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.30%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 120 (36.25%) Hadoop
2 66 (19.94%) Data Warehouse
3 50 (15.11%) Data Lake
4 35 (10.57%) Tableau
5 33 (9.97%) Apache Hive
5 33 (9.97%) Relational Database
6 29 (8.76%) NoSQL
7 28 (8.46%) Elasticsearch
8 27 (8.16%) SQL Server
9 25 (7.55%) Amazon RDS
10 21 (6.34%) Power BI
11 19 (5.74%) Impala
11 19 (5.74%) Metadata
12 17 (5.14%) Amazon Redshift
12 17 (5.14%) PostgreSQL
13 15 (4.53%) MongoDB
14 10 (3.02%) Data Mining
15 9 (2.72%) Azure SQL Database
15 9 (2.72%) HBase
16 8 (2.42%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 33 (9.97%) Git
2 29 (8.76%) Jenkins
3 19 (5.74%) ERwin
4 18 (5.44%) JIRA
5 9 (2.72%) GitLab
6 6 (1.81%) Bitbucket
6 6 (1.81%) PowerDesigner
6 6 (1.81%) TeamCity
7 5 (1.51%) ER Studio
8 4 (1.21%) MLflow
9 3 (0.91%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 3 (0.91%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
9 3 (0.91%) Team Foundation Server
9 3 (0.91%) Visual Studio
10 2 (0.60%) JUnit
11 1 (0.30%) JMeter
11 1 (0.30%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.30%) Selenium
11 1 (0.30%) Subversion
General
1 88 (26.59%) Finance
2 76 (22.96%) Social Skills
3 72 (21.75%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (10.27%) Banking
5 29 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.23%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (3.32%) Investment Banking
8 7 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.11%) Legal
8 7 (2.11%) Marketing
9 6 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (1.81%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.51%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.51%) Law
11 4 (1.21%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.21%) Military
11 4 (1.21%) Retail
11 4 (1.21%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.91%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 65 (19.64%) Data Engineer
2 62 (18.73%) Developer
3 55 (16.62%) Architect
4 43 (12.99%) Senior
5 28 (8.46%) Data Architect
6 24 (7.25%) Lead
7 22 (6.65%) Java Developer
8 18 (5.44%) AWS Engineer
8 18 (5.44%) Data Scientist
8 18 (5.44%) Senior Developer
8 18 (5.44%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (4.53%) Big Data Engineer
9 15 (4.53%) DevOps Engineer
10 14 (4.23%) Azure Engineer
11 13 (3.93%) Apache Spark Developer
11 13 (3.93%) Python Engineer
12 12 (3.63%) Data Modeller
12 12 (3.63%) Data Science Developer
12 12 (3.63%) Senior Data Engineer
13 11 (3.32%) Machine Learning Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (15.71%) Kafka
2 32 (9.67%) PySpark
3 24 (7.25%) scikit-learn
4 23 (6.95%) TensorFlow
5 21 (6.34%) PyTorch
6 19 (5.74%) Pandas
7 18 (5.44%) NumPy
8 15 (4.53%) Matplotlib
9 14 (4.23%) Seaborn
10 11 (3.32%) Apache NiFi
10 11 (3.32%) Spark Streaming
11 10 (3.02%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (2.42%) .NET
12 8 (2.42%) REST
12 8 (2.42%) Web Services
13 7 (2.11%) JSON
13 7 (2.11%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (2.11%) Ray
13 7 (2.11%) Spring
14 6 (1.81%) React
Miscellaneous
1 29 (8.76%) Algorithms
1 29 (8.76%) Distributed Computing
2 16 (4.83%) Distributed Systems
3 13 (3.93%) Market Risk
4 12 (3.63%) Product Ownership
5 11 (3.32%) Data Centre
6 10 (3.02%) Self-Motivation
7 9 (2.72%) Clustering
7 9 (2.72%) PKI
7 9 (2.72%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.42%) Analytical Mindset
8 8 (2.42%) IoT
8 8 (2.42%) Management Information System
9 7 (2.11%) Cloud Native
10 6 (1.81%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.51%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.51%) Onboarding
11 5 (1.51%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 53 (16.01%) Linux
2 23 (6.95%) Windows
3 19 (5.74%) Windows Server
4 14 (4.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 13 (3.93%) Unix
6 7 (2.11%) Ubuntu
7 4 (1.21%) Windows Server 2003
8 3 (0.91%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 115 (34.74%) Analytics
2 89 (26.89%) ETL
2 89 (26.89%) Machine Learning
3 87 (26.28%) DevOps
4 82 (24.77%) Data Pipeline
5 78 (23.56%) Problem-Solving
6 74 (22.36%) Data Science
7 73 (22.05%) Artificial Intelligence
7 73 (22.05%) CI/CD
8 72 (21.75%) Data Modelling
9 71 (21.45%) Data Engineering
10 66 (19.94%) Agile
11 49 (14.80%) Business Intelligence
12 46 (13.90%) Visualisation
13 45 (13.60%) Data Architecture
14 44 (13.29%) Data Governance
15 41 (12.39%) Computer Science
15 41 (12.39%) Data Analysis
16 35 (10.57%) Decision-Making
17 33 (9.97%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 169 (51.06%) Python
2 121 (36.56%) SQL
3 71 (21.45%) Java
4 36 (10.88%) Scala
5 35 (10.57%) R
6 24 (7.25%) PowerShell
7 14 (4.23%) C#
7 14 (4.23%) JavaScript
8 13 (3.93%) Shell Script
9 10 (3.02%) C++
10 7 (2.11%) C
11 6 (1.81%) T-SQL
12 5 (1.51%) Perl
12 5 (1.51%) TypeScript
13 4 (1.21%) Bash
14 2 (0.60%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.30%) Go
15 1 (0.30%) Groovy
15 1 (0.30%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.30%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 58 (17.52%) Degree
2 56 (16.92%) Security Cleared
3 38 (11.48%) SC Cleared
4 25 (7.55%) Master's Degree
5 21 (6.34%) DV Cleared
6 19 (5.74%) PhD
7 17 (5.14%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (2.72%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.81%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 5 (1.51%) Azure Certification
11 2 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
12 1 (0.30%) ACCA
12 1 (0.30%) CIMA
12 1 (0.30%) ISTQB
12 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.30%) PMI Certification
12 1 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (18.13%) Data Quality
2 16 (4.83%) GDPR
3 4 (1.21%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.21%) QA
4 3 (0.91%) HIPAA
4 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.60%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.30%) SEPA
System Software
1 34 (10.27%) Docker
2 12 (3.63%) Active Directory
2 12 (3.63%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (2.72%) BitLocker
3 9 (2.72%) Hyper-V
3 9 (2.72%) Microsoft App-V
3 9 (2.72%) Terminal Services
3 9 (2.72%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (2.11%) HDFS
5 3 (0.91%) vCloud
5 3 (0.91%) VMware Workstation
5 3 (0.91%) vSphere
6 2 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.30%) Apache Flume
7 1 (0.30%) KVM
7 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
Systems Management
1 51 (15.41%) Kubernetes
2 46 (13.90%) Terraform
3 33 (9.97%) Ansible
4 19 (5.74%) Grafana
5 10 (3.02%) Argo
6 9 (2.72%) Nagios
6 9 (2.72%) Puppet
6 9 (2.72%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.72%) vMotion
7 8 (2.42%) Prometheus
8 7 (2.11%) Kibana
9 3 (0.91%) HAProxy
10 2 (0.60%) Hadoop YARN
10 2 (0.60%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.30%) Apache Ranger
11 1 (0.30%) Istio
11 1 (0.30%) linkerd
11 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
11 1 (0.30%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 57 (17.22%) Microsoft
2 52 (15.71%) Databricks
3 34 (10.27%) Google
4 24 (7.25%) Cloudera
5 23 (6.95%) Oracle
6 13 (3.93%) VMware
7 10 (3.02%) Informatica
8 9 (2.72%) Citrix
8 9 (2.72%) HP
8 9 (2.72%) SAP
8 9 (2.72%) Symantec
9 8 (2.42%) Splunk
10 5 (1.51%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.51%) Sparx
11 4 (1.21%) Atlassian
11 4 (1.21%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (1.21%) Sybase
11 4 (1.21%) Talend
12 3 (0.91%) IBM
12 3 (0.91%) Pega