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 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 404 261 215
Rank change year-on-year -143 -46 +29
Contract jobs citing Big Data 274 327 467
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.52% 1.00% 1.17%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.40% 5.48% 6.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 180 228 334
10th Percentile £358 £406 £365
25th Percentile £440 £456 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £584
Median % change year-on-year - -5.82% -2.67%
75th Percentile £663 £650 £750
90th Percentile £738 £738 £846
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £500 £550
% change year-on-year +1.00% -9.09% -
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 8,068 5,969 7,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.35% 18.19% 17.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,353 4,040 5,090
10th Percentile £356 £342 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
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 254 90 104
10th Percentile £16.70 £19.20 £14.48
25th Percentile £24.45 £23.50 £20.56
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.36
90th Percentile £76.35 £78.83 £72.20
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 29 July 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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -154 224 £550 - 118
London -93 137 £600 +2.39% 89
UK excluding London -122 95 £505 +1.00% 40
Work from Home -77 89 £500 -2.47% 46
North of England -57 32 £550 +7.32% 6
South East -86 19 £525 -4.55% 15
Scotland -10 15 £402 -11.60% 1
Midlands -72 15 £414 -3.72% 5
Yorkshire -36 14 £550 -8.33% 1
North East -39 10 £510 +10.27%
East Midlands -19 9 £495 +19.28%
South West -36 9 £515 +14.44% 9
North West -48 8 £600 +20.00% 5
West Midlands -65 6 £410 -20.02% 5
East of England -32 3 £540 +2.37% 5
Wales - 3 £425 -

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
1 138 (50.36%) Apache Spark
2 42 (15.33%) Apache
3 41 (14.96%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (2.55%) Confluence
5 6 (2.19%) SAS
6 5 (1.82%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.82%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (1.82%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.46%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (1.09%) CMS
8 3 (1.09%) JBoss
9 2 (0.73%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.36%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.36%) Luigi
Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.73%) Endur
2 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 138 (50.36%) AWS
2 105 (38.32%) Azure
3 85 (31.02%) GCP
4 43 (15.69%) Snowflake
5 35 (12.77%) Power Platform
6 32 (11.68%) Amazon S3
7 23 (8.39%) GitHub
8 21 (7.66%) Amazon EMR
9 20 (7.30%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (7.30%) Serverless
10 16 (5.84%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (5.11%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (4.74%) dbt
12 13 (4.74%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (4.01%) OpenShift
14 10 (3.65%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (3.28%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (2.55%) PaaS
16 7 (2.55%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 6 (2.19%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.82%) IPv4
1 5 (1.82%) 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 63 (22.99%) Hadoop
2 53 (19.34%) Data Warehouse
3 42 (15.33%) Data Lake
4 39 (14.23%) NoSQL
5 32 (11.68%) PostgreSQL
5 32 (11.68%) Power BI
6 20 (7.30%) Amazon Redshift
7 18 (6.57%) BigQuery
7 18 (6.57%) Relational Database
8 17 (6.20%) Metadata
8 17 (6.20%) MongoDB
8 17 (6.20%) SQL Server
9 15 (5.47%) Apache Hive
10 13 (4.74%) Amazon Athena
10 13 (4.74%) Amazon RDS
10 13 (4.74%) DynamoDB
10 13 (4.74%) Tableau
11 11 (4.01%) MySQL
12 9 (3.28%) Data Vault
12 9 (3.28%) Elasticsearch
Development Applications
1 37 (13.50%) Git
2 27 (9.85%) Jenkins
3 24 (8.76%) GitLab
4 15 (5.47%) JIRA
5 8 (2.92%) Selenium
6 5 (1.82%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (1.46%) Robot Framework
8 3 (1.09%) JUnit
8 3 (1.09%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.73%) ERwin
9 2 (0.73%) MLflow
10 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.36%) Postman
General
1 95 (34.67%) Social Skills
2 72 (26.28%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (24.09%) Finance
4 36 (13.14%) Banking
5 21 (7.66%) Public Sector
6 11 (4.01%) Documentation Skills
6 11 (4.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 10 (3.65%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.92%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.55%) Legal
10 6 (2.19%) Marketing
11 4 (1.46%) Retail
12 3 (1.09%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.73%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.73%) Local Government
14 1 (0.36%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.36%) Front Office
14 1 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
14 1 (0.36%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 84 (30.66%) Data Engineer
2 51 (18.61%) Architect
3 44 (16.06%) Senior
4 30 (10.95%) Developer
5 21 (7.66%) Data Architect
6 19 (6.93%) Lead
7 17 (6.20%) Senior Data Engineer
7 17 (6.20%) Solutions Architect
8 15 (5.47%) Analyst
9 13 (4.74%) Data Scientist
10 11 (4.01%) Big Data Engineer
11 10 (3.65%) Java Developer
12 9 (3.28%) Data Analyst
13 8 (2.92%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 8 (2.92%) Kafka Engineer
13 8 (2.92%) Python Engineer
13 8 (2.92%) Scala Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Data Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.55%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (24.09%) Kafka
2 33 (12.04%) PySpark
3 20 (7.30%) REST
4 17 (6.20%) Spring
5 15 (5.47%) Spring Boot
6 11 (4.01%) Pandas
7 9 (3.28%) CSS
7 9 (3.28%) HTML
8 8 (2.92%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (2.92%) Play Framework
8 8 (2.92%) PyTorch
8 8 (2.92%) TensorFlow
9 7 (2.55%) NumPy
9 7 (2.55%) React
10 6 (2.19%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (2.19%) Middleware
11 5 (1.82%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.82%) Node.js
11 5 (1.82%) RESTful
11 5 (1.82%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 38 (13.87%) Cloud Native
2 29 (10.58%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (5.84%) Product Ownership
4 14 (5.11%) Data Structures
5 13 (4.74%) Virtual Team
6 12 (4.38%) Algorithms
6 12 (4.38%) Clustering
7 8 (2.92%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (2.92%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.55%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.19%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.82%) Distributed Architecture
11 4 (1.46%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.46%) FMCG
12 3 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.09%) IoT
12 3 (1.09%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.09%) PKI
12 3 (1.09%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.66%) Linux
2 11 (4.01%) Unix
3 5 (1.82%) Windows
3 5 (1.82%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.09%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (47.81%) Data Pipeline
2 124 (45.26%) Analytics
3 104 (37.96%) Agile
4 103 (37.59%) CI/CD
5 102 (37.23%) Data Engineering
6 91 (33.21%) ETL
7 80 (29.20%) AI
8 74 (27.01%) Machine Learning
9 69 (25.18%) Data Modelling
10 66 (24.09%) Problem-Solving
11 65 (23.72%) DevOps
12 60 (21.90%) Data Governance
13 57 (20.80%) Data Science
14 43 (15.69%) Business Intelligence
14 43 (15.69%) Scrum
15 42 (15.33%) Containerisation
16 39 (14.23%) Validation
17 38 (13.87%) Data Integration
17 38 (13.87%) Software Engineering
18 37 (13.50%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 153 (55.84%) Python
2 132 (48.18%) SQL
3 58 (21.17%) Java
4 33 (12.04%) Scala
5 20 (7.30%) R
6 12 (4.38%) PowerShell
7 11 (4.01%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.28%) Bash
9 5 (1.82%) SAS Macro
10 4 (1.46%) C#
10 4 (1.46%) TypeScript
11 3 (1.09%) Rust
11 3 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.73%) Go
13 1 (0.36%) C
13 1 (0.36%) C++
13 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.36%) Korn
13 1 (0.36%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 60 (21.90%) Security Cleared
2 45 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 35 (12.77%) Degree
4 17 (6.20%) Master's Degree
5 15 (5.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.28%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.55%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.19%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.19%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.09%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.09%) PhD
9 3 (1.09%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.73%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.73%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.73%) CISSP
10 2 (0.73%) MCITP
10 2 (0.73%) MCTS
10 2 (0.73%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.36%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (21.90%) Data Quality
2 22 (8.03%) QA
3 16 (5.84%) GDPR
4 7 (2.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.55%) NIST
5 3 (1.09%) SLA
6 2 (0.73%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.73%) 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 (18.61%) Docker
2 8 (2.92%) HDFS
3 7 (2.55%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.19%) 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 (0.73%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 52 (18.98%) Kubernetes
2 35 (12.77%) Terraform
3 29 (10.58%) Grafana
4 12 (4.38%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.65%) Ansible
6 8 (2.92%) Kibana
6 8 (2.92%) 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 (0.73%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.36%) Control-M
9 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.36%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 56 (20.44%) Databricks
2 25 (9.12%) Google
2 25 (9.12%) Microsoft
3 15 (5.47%) Splunk
4 12 (4.38%) Salesforce
5 9 (3.28%) Oracle
6 8 (2.92%) Foundry
7 7 (2.55%) Talend
8 6 (2.19%) Cloudera
8 6 (2.19%) Informatica
8 6 (2.19%) VMware
9 5 (1.82%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.82%) IBM
9 5 (1.82%) Palantir
10 4 (1.46%) HP
11 3 (1.09%) Cisco
11 3 (1.09%) Citrix
11 3 (1.09%) Red Hat
11 3 (1.09%) Symantec
11 3 (1.09%) Teradata