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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 409 271 209
Rank change year-on-year -138 -62 +44
Contract jobs citing Big Data 276 324 458
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 0.99% 1.16%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.37% 5.43% 6.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 225 326
10th Percentile £358 £406 £370
25th Percentile £440 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% -
75th Percentile £663 £650 £750
90th Percentile £739 £738 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £535
% change year-on-year +1.00% -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 16 3 4
10th Percentile £61.75 £42.42 £37.75
25th Percentile £64.75 £47.61 £40.00
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +27.78% -42.31%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £50.00
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £52.25
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 8,200 5,969 7,122
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.38% 18.15% 18.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,442 4,036 5,054
10th Percentile £355 £345 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -3.33% -3.67%
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 257 90 102
10th Percentile £16.42 £19.20 £14.33
25th Percentile £25.05 £23.50 £20.19
Median hourly rate £39.50 £36.25 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.97% -0.68% -33.64%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.69 £61.19
90th Percentile £76.20 £78.83 £72.40
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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -161 227 £550 - 174
London -96 141 £600 +2.39% 127
UK excluding London -114 95 £505 +1.00% 64
Work from Home -65 90 £500 -2.70% 69
North of England -54 32 £550 +7.32% 7
South East -84 19 £525 -4.55% 23
Scotland -5 15 £402 -11.60% 1
Midlands -65 15 £414 -3.72% 6
Yorkshire -30 14 £550 -8.33% 2
North East -32 10 £510 +10.27%
East Midlands -22 9 £495 +19.28%
South West -37 9 £515 +14.44% 12
North West -51 8 £600 +20.00% 5
West Midlands -68 6 £410 -20.02% 6
East of England -30 3 £540 +6.93% 9
Wales - 3 £425 - 4

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
1 140 (50.72%) Apache Spark
2 42 (15.22%) Apache
3 41 (14.86%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.54%) Confluence
5 6 (2.17%) SAS
6 5 (1.81%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.81%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (1.81%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.45%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (1.09%) CMS
8 3 (1.09%) JBoss
9 2 (0.72%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.36%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.36%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.72%) Endur
2 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 138 (50.00%) AWS
2 106 (38.41%) Azure
3 85 (30.80%) GCP
4 43 (15.58%) Snowflake
5 34 (12.32%) Power Platform
6 32 (11.59%) Amazon S3
7 23 (8.33%) GitHub
8 21 (7.61%) Amazon EMR
9 20 (7.25%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.88%) Serverless
11 18 (6.52%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (5.07%) Amazon ECS
13 13 (4.71%) dbt
13 13 (4.71%) GitHub Actions
14 11 (3.99%) OpenShift
15 10 (3.62%) Amazon EKS
15 10 (3.62%) Azure Data Factory
16 9 (3.26%) PaaS
17 7 (2.54%) Salesforce Service Cloud
18 6 (2.17%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.81%) IPv4
1 5 (1.81%) IPv6
2 3 (1.09%) Broadband
2 3 (1.09%) DHCP
2 3 (1.09%) DNS
2 3 (1.09%) Firewall
2 3 (1.09%) Kerberos
2 3 (1.09%) SMTP
2 3 (1.09%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (23.19%) Hadoop
2 52 (18.84%) Data Warehouse
3 42 (15.22%) Data Lake
4 39 (14.13%) NoSQL
5 32 (11.59%) PostgreSQL
6 31 (11.23%) Power BI
7 20 (7.25%) Amazon Redshift
8 18 (6.52%) BigQuery
8 18 (6.52%) Relational Database
9 17 (6.16%) Apache Hive
9 17 (6.16%) MongoDB
9 17 (6.16%) SQL Server
10 16 (5.80%) Metadata
11 13 (4.71%) Amazon Athena
11 13 (4.71%) Amazon RDS
11 13 (4.71%) DynamoDB
12 12 (4.35%) Tableau
13 11 (3.99%) MySQL
14 9 (3.26%) Data Vault
14 9 (3.26%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 37 (13.41%) Git
2 28 (10.14%) Jenkins
3 26 (9.42%) GitLab
4 15 (5.43%) JIRA
5 8 (2.90%) Selenium
6 6 (2.17%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (1.45%) Robot Framework
8 3 (1.09%) JUnit
8 3 (1.09%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.72%) ERwin
9 2 (0.72%) MLflow
10 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.36%) Postman
10 1 (0.36%) TeamCity
General
1 96 (34.78%) Social Skills
2 72 (26.09%) Analytical Skills
3 68 (24.64%) Finance
4 36 (13.04%) Banking
5 21 (7.61%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (3.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.62%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.90%) Marketing
8 8 (2.90%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.54%) Legal
10 4 (1.45%) Retail
11 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.72%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.72%) Local Government
13 1 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.36%) Military
13 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 84 (30.43%) Data Engineer
2 51 (18.48%) Architect
3 43 (15.58%) Senior
4 30 (10.87%) Developer
5 20 (7.25%) Data Architect
6 19 (6.88%) Lead
7 17 (6.16%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (5.80%) Senior Data Engineer
9 15 (5.43%) Analyst
10 13 (4.71%) Data Scientist
11 12 (4.35%) Big Data Engineer
12 10 (3.62%) Java Developer
13 9 (3.26%) Data Analyst
14 8 (2.90%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 8 (2.90%) Kafka Engineer
14 8 (2.90%) Python Engineer
14 8 (2.90%) Scala Engineer
15 7 (2.54%) Data Integration Engineer
15 7 (2.54%) DevOps Engineer
15 7 (2.54%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (23.91%) Kafka
2 33 (11.96%) PySpark
3 20 (7.25%) REST
4 17 (6.16%) Spring
5 15 (5.43%) Spring Boot
6 11 (3.99%) Pandas
7 9 (3.26%) CSS
7 9 (3.26%) HTML
8 8 (2.90%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (2.90%) Play Framework
8 8 (2.90%) PyTorch
8 8 (2.90%) TensorFlow
9 7 (2.54%) NumPy
9 7 (2.54%) React
10 6 (2.17%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (2.17%) Middleware
11 5 (1.81%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.81%) Node.js
11 5 (1.81%) RESTful
11 5 (1.81%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 39 (14.13%) Cloud Native
2 29 (10.51%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.80%) Product Ownership
4 14 (5.07%) Data Structures
5 13 (4.71%) Virtual Team
6 12 (4.35%) Algorithms
6 12 (4.35%) Clustering
7 8 (2.90%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (2.90%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.54%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.17%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.81%) Distributed Architecture
11 4 (1.45%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.45%) FMCG
12 3 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.09%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.09%) PKI
12 3 (1.09%) Social Media
13 2 (0.72%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.61%) Linux
2 11 (3.99%) Unix
3 5 (1.81%) Windows
3 5 (1.81%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 132 (47.83%) Data Pipeline
2 123 (44.57%) Analytics
3 104 (37.68%) CI/CD
4 103 (37.32%) Agile
4 103 (37.32%) Data Engineering
5 92 (33.33%) ETL
6 82 (29.71%) AI
7 75 (27.17%) Machine Learning
8 69 (25.00%) Data Modelling
9 68 (24.64%) Problem-Solving
10 67 (24.28%) DevOps
11 61 (22.10%) Data Governance
12 57 (20.65%) Data Science
13 44 (15.94%) Containerisation
14 43 (15.58%) Scrum
15 42 (15.22%) Business Intelligence
16 39 (14.13%) Validation
17 38 (13.77%) Software Engineering
18 37 (13.41%) Data Integration
18 37 (13.41%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 153 (55.43%) Python
2 132 (47.83%) SQL
3 61 (22.10%) Java
4 34 (12.32%) Scala
5 20 (7.25%) R
6 14 (5.07%) PowerShell
7 13 (4.71%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.26%) Bash
9 5 (1.81%) C#
9 5 (1.81%) SAS Macro
10 4 (1.45%) TypeScript
11 3 (1.09%) Rust
11 3 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.72%) Go
12 2 (0.72%) Korn
13 1 (0.36%) C
13 1 (0.36%) C++
13 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.36%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 60 (21.74%) Security Cleared
2 45 (16.30%) SC Cleared
3 36 (13.04%) Degree
4 17 (6.16%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.80%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.26%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.54%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.17%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.17%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.09%) PhD
9 3 (1.09%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.72%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.72%) CISSP
10 2 (0.72%) MCITP
10 2 (0.72%) MCTS
10 2 (0.72%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (21.38%) Data Quality
2 22 (7.97%) QA
3 16 (5.80%) GDPR
4 7 (2.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.54%) NIST
5 3 (1.09%) SLA
6 2 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.72%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.36%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.36%) NCSC
7 1 (0.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 51 (18.48%) Docker
2 8 (2.90%) HDFS
3 7 (2.54%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.17%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.09%) BitLocker
5 3 (1.09%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.09%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (1.09%) Terminal Services
5 3 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.09%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.72%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 54 (19.57%) Kubernetes
2 36 (13.04%) Terraform
3 29 (10.51%) Grafana
4 12 (4.35%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.62%) Ansible
6 8 (2.90%) Kibana
6 8 (2.90%) Puppet
7 3 (1.09%) Nagios
7 3 (1.09%) Red Hat Satellite
7 3 (1.09%) vCenter Server
7 3 (1.09%) vMotion
8 2 (0.72%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.36%) Control-M
9 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.36%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 58 (21.01%) Databricks
2 25 (9.06%) Google
3 24 (8.70%) Microsoft
4 15 (5.43%) Splunk
5 12 (4.35%) Salesforce
6 9 (3.26%) Oracle
7 8 (2.90%) Cloudera
7 8 (2.90%) Foundry
8 7 (2.54%) Talend
9 6 (2.17%) IBM
9 6 (2.17%) Informatica
9 6 (2.17%) VMware
10 5 (1.81%) Amplitude
10 5 (1.81%) Palantir
11 4 (1.45%) HP
12 3 (1.09%) Cisco
12 3 (1.09%) Citrix
12 3 (1.09%) Red Hat
12 3 (1.09%) Symantec
12 3 (1.09%) Teradata