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

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 366 245 237
Rank change year-on-year -121 -8 -60
Contract jobs citing Big Data 234 327 431
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.62% 1.03% 1.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.72% 5.63% 6.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 198 283
10th Percentile £317 £368 £400
25th Percentile £400 £455 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.50% +2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £620 £676 £700
90th Percentile £781 £746 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £625 £510
% change year-on-year -28.48% +22.55% -11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 24
10th Percentile - £30.25 £25.64
25th Percentile - £43.75 £41.88
Median hourly rate - £52.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year - +13.69% +5.84%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £72.00
90th Percentile - - £76.35
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 6,295 5,810 7,051
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.65% 18.33% 16.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,340 3,827 5,000
10th Percentile £336 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 84 166
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.26 £16.06
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £44.25 £30.40 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.56% -28.47% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.56 £62.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.43 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.86 £27.50 £41.38
% change year-on-year +70.40% -33.53% -24.77%

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 22 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 17 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 22 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 -116 200 £500 -13.04% 123
London -67 137 £550 - 43
Work from Home -17 70 £488 -6.79% 46
UK excluding London -108 67 £447 -28.48% 100
North of England -62 16 £448 -33.70% 16
Midlands -39 14 £420 -31.37% 9
Scotland +2 13 £500 +28.21% 8
North West -20 13 £473 -30.00% 9
South East -49 13 £380 -30.91% 37
East Midlands -13 11 £420 - 7
South West -27 9 £525 -21.35% 13
West Midlands -43 3 £447 -26.96% 2
North East -19 2 £413 +0.86% 3
Wales -7 1 £400 -30.07% 4
Northern Ireland -7 1 £513 -14.58% 1
East of England -25 1 £505 -22.31% 14
Yorkshire -56 1 - - 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
1 108 (46.15%) Apache Spark
2 40 (17.09%) Apache
3 30 (12.82%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (5.98%) Confluence
5 4 (1.71%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.85%) Apache Pig
6 2 (0.85%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.85%) 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 (0.85%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.85%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.43%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 94 (40.17%) AWS
2 69 (29.49%) Azure
3 46 (19.66%) GCP
4 32 (13.68%) Power Platform
5 26 (11.11%) Serverless
6 25 (10.68%) Snowflake
7 17 (7.26%) GitHub
8 13 (5.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 12 (5.13%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (4.70%) Amazon S3
11 10 (4.27%) AWS Lambda
12 7 (2.99%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (2.56%) Amazon SageMaker
13 6 (2.56%) Azure DevOps
14 5 (2.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 5 (2.14%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (2.14%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 5 (2.14%) Microsoft Copilot
15 4 (1.71%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 4 (1.71%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.28%) Kerberos
1 3 (1.28%) VPN
2 1 (0.43%) HTTP
2 1 (0.43%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (36.32%) Hadoop
2 56 (23.93%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (14.10%) NoSQL
4 30 (12.82%) Power BI
5 27 (11.54%) Data Lake
6 24 (10.26%) Relational Database
7 23 (9.83%) Apache Hive
8 21 (8.97%) Elasticsearch
8 21 (8.97%) Metadata
8 21 (8.97%) SQL Server
9 18 (7.69%) PostgreSQL
10 16 (6.84%) Tableau
11 14 (5.98%) RDBMS
12 13 (5.56%) HBase
13 12 (5.13%) Impala
14 9 (3.85%) BigQuery
15 8 (3.42%) Amazon Redshift
15 8 (3.42%) MongoDB
16 7 (2.99%) Azure SQL Database
16 7 (2.99%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (14.10%) Git
2 20 (8.55%) Jenkins
3 18 (7.69%) JIRA
4 17 (7.26%) GitLab
5 6 (2.56%) ERwin
5 6 (2.56%) MLflow
6 4 (1.71%) ER Studio
7 3 (1.28%) Postman
7 3 (1.28%) Robot Framework
7 3 (1.28%) Selenium
8 2 (0.85%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.85%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.85%) Subversion
8 2 (0.85%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.43%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.43%) Gradle
9 1 (0.43%) Pylint
9 1 (0.43%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.43%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.43%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 83 (35.47%) Social Skills
2 70 (29.91%) Finance
3 41 (17.52%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (10.68%) Banking
5 19 (8.12%) Public Sector
6 6 (2.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.14%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.71%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.71%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.28%) Manufacturing
10 1 (0.43%) Agriculture
10 1 (0.43%) Corporate Banking
10 1 (0.43%) Front Office
10 1 (0.43%) Marketing
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 71 (30.34%) Data Engineer
2 33 (14.10%) Senior
3 28 (11.97%) Lead
4 23 (9.83%) Developer
5 20 (8.55%) Data Scientist
6 17 (7.26%) Analyst
7 16 (6.84%) Architect
8 14 (5.98%) Data Analyst
9 13 (5.56%) Data Architect
10 9 (3.85%) Python Engineer
10 9 (3.85%) Senior Data Engineer
11 8 (3.42%) Scala Developer
12 7 (2.99%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (2.99%) Data Modeller
12 7 (2.99%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 7 (2.99%) QA Engineer
13 6 (2.56%) Big Data Engineer
13 6 (2.56%) Java Engineer
13 6 (2.56%) Platform Engineer
13 6 (2.56%) Senior Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (19.66%) Kafka
2 33 (14.10%) PySpark
3 16 (6.84%) Apache NiFi
4 15 (6.41%) Pandas
4 15 (6.41%) scikit-learn
5 13 (5.56%) REST
6 11 (4.70%) RESTful
6 11 (4.70%) TensorFlow
7 10 (4.27%) HTML
8 9 (3.85%) Flask
9 8 (3.42%) .NET
9 8 (3.42%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (3.42%) JSON
9 8 (3.42%) RabbitMQ
9 8 (3.42%) React
9 8 (3.42%) Spark Streaming
10 7 (2.99%) NumPy
10 7 (2.99%) pytest
11 6 (2.56%) Spring
11 6 (2.56%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 17 (7.26%) Cloud Native
2 16 (6.84%) Distributed Computing
3 11 (4.70%) Algorithms
4 7 (2.99%) Data Structures
5 5 (2.14%) Analytical Mindset
5 5 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
5 5 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (2.14%) Management Information System
6 4 (1.71%) Derivative
6 4 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
6 4 (1.71%) Product Ownership
6 4 (1.71%) Virtual Team
7 3 (1.28%) AI Agents
7 3 (1.28%) Data Centre
7 3 (1.28%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.85%) CMDB
8 2 (0.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 2 (0.85%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (0.85%) Reference Data
8 2 (0.85%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 25 (10.68%) Linux
2 8 (3.42%) Unix
3 1 (0.43%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 84 (35.90%) ETL
2 81 (34.62%) Analytics
3 75 (32.05%) Data Modelling
3 75 (32.05%) Data Pipeline
4 68 (29.06%) Agile
5 64 (27.35%) Problem-Solving
6 63 (26.92%) CI/CD
7 58 (24.79%) Data Governance
8 56 (23.93%) Data Engineering
9 52 (22.22%) Machine Learning
10 49 (20.94%) Data Science
11 47 (20.09%) Visualisation
12 42 (17.95%) AI
13 40 (17.09%) DevOps
14 38 (16.24%) Business Intelligence
15 33 (14.10%) Decision-Making
16 31 (13.25%) Software Engineering
17 30 (12.82%) Data Architecture
18 29 (12.39%) Computer Science
18 29 (12.39%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 156 (66.67%) Python
2 122 (52.14%) SQL
3 40 (17.09%) Java
4 27 (11.54%) Scala
5 24 (10.26%) R
6 13 (5.56%) C#
6 13 (5.56%) C++
6 13 (5.56%) JavaScript
7 10 (4.27%) Bash
8 6 (2.56%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.28%) Perl
9 3 (1.28%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.85%) Ada
10 2 (0.85%) Kusto Query Language
10 2 (0.85%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.85%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.43%) Go
11 1 (0.43%) Korn
11 1 (0.43%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 48 (20.51%) Security Cleared
2 36 (15.38%) SC Cleared
3 31 (13.25%) Degree
4 22 (9.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (7.69%) DV Cleared
6 13 (5.56%) Master's Degree
7 6 (2.56%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.71%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.28%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (1.28%) PhD
10 2 (0.85%) MCP
11 1 (0.43%) HP APS
11 1 (0.43%) ISTQB
11 1 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.43%) OCP
11 1 (0.43%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.43%) Postgraduate
11 1 (0.43%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (23.50%) Data Quality
2 14 (5.98%) QA
3 12 (5.13%) GDPR
4 4 (1.71%) Accessibility
5 3 (1.28%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.85%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.85%) 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 41 (17.52%) Docker
2 15 (6.41%) HDFS
3 2 (0.85%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 41 (17.52%) Kubernetes
2 13 (5.56%) Terraform
3 9 (3.85%) Grafana
4 7 (2.99%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.56%) Kibana
6 5 (2.14%) Ansible
6 5 (2.14%) logstash
7 4 (1.71%) Argo
7 4 (1.71%) Hadoop YARN
8 3 (1.28%) Nagios
8 3 (1.28%) Oozie
8 3 (1.28%) Rancher
9 1 (0.43%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.43%) Kustomize
9 1 (0.43%) Puppet
9 1 (0.43%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 47 (20.09%) Databricks
2 17 (7.26%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.41%) Google
4 12 (5.13%) Cloudera
5 9 (3.85%) Foundry
5 9 (3.85%) Palantir
6 6 (2.56%) Oracle
6 6 (2.56%) ServiceNow
7 5 (2.14%) Ab Initio
8 4 (1.71%) Informatica
9 2 (0.85%) IBM
9 2 (0.85%) OpenAI
9 2 (0.85%) Salesforce
9 2 (0.85%) 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