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 27 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 330 212 230
Rank change year-on-year -118 +18 -55
Contract jobs citing Big Data 263 420 486
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.73% 1.14% 1.07%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 4.12% 6.45% 6.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 204 257 310
10th Percentile £360 £350 £400
25th Percentile £410 £450 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £618 £700 £700
90th Percentile £737 £775 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £612 £501
% change year-on-year -26.99% +22.33% -15.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 25
10th Percentile - £25.75 £42.50
25th Percentile - £32.50 £46.18
Median hourly rate - £45.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year - -30.77% +65.33%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £78.00
90th Percentile - - £78.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £61.53

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 6,383 6,516 7,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.67% 17.76% 16.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,367 4,297 5,340
10th Percentile £330 £346 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £534
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.75% -2.91%
75th Percentile £607 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 89 146
10th Percentile £21.02 £18.00 £16.62
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.48 £21.86
Median hourly rate £46.50 £33.93 £46.84
Median % change year-on-year +37.05% -27.56% -2.30%
75th Percentile £69.25 £55.75 £66.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £65.20 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.85 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +82.83% -35.04% +13.38%

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 27 November 2025.

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 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 27 November 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 -113 230 £525 -8.70% 116
London -73 147 £550 - 62
UK excluding London -96 86 £447 -26.99% 92
Work from Home -25 83 £500 -4.76% 78
South East -20 19 £450 -27.27% 54
Midlands -31 17 £420 -31.37% 10
Scotland -2 16 £500 +29.20% 7
North of England -44 16 £473 -5.50% 10
East Midlands -5 13 £420 -1.18% 2
North West -9 13 £473 +15.53% 8
South West -25 13 £525 -21.35% 3
East of England -16 5 £505 -20.78% 6
West Midlands -40 4 £402 -34.31% 8
North East -14 2 - - 2
Northern Ireland -4 1 £513 -6.82% 1
Yorkshire -53 1 - -

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
1 109 (41.44%) Apache Spark
2 47 (17.87%) Apache
3 30 (11.41%) Apache Airflow
4 14 (5.32%) Confluence
5 3 (1.14%) Jupyter
6 2 (0.76%) Apache Pig
6 2 (0.76%) Luigi
6 2 (0.76%) SAS
7 1 (0.38%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.38%) IIS
7 1 (0.38%) nginx
Applications
1 2 (0.76%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Avolution ABACUS
1 3 (1.14%) Salesforce CRM
2 2 (0.76%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 105 (39.92%) AWS
2 81 (30.80%) Azure
3 57 (21.67%) GCP
4 34 (12.93%) Power Platform
5 33 (12.55%) Serverless
6 25 (9.51%) Snowflake
7 22 (8.37%) GitHub
8 21 (7.98%) Amazon S3
9 13 (4.94%) Azure Data Factory
10 12 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (4.18%) Amazon SageMaker
12 10 (3.80%) AWS Lambda
12 10 (3.80%) Azure DevOps
12 10 (3.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 8 (3.04%) AWS Step Functions
14 7 (2.66%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.66%) OpenShift
15 5 (1.90%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 5 (1.90%) Microsoft Copilot
16 4 (1.52%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.52%) DNS
1 4 (1.52%) TCP/IP
2 3 (1.14%) SSH
3 2 (0.76%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.76%) SSL
3 2 (0.76%) VPN
4 1 (0.38%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 99 (37.64%) Hadoop
2 54 (20.53%) Data Warehouse
3 35 (13.31%) Data Lake
3 35 (13.31%) NoSQL
4 34 (12.93%) Power BI
5 26 (9.89%) Elasticsearch
6 23 (8.75%) Apache Hive
6 23 (8.75%) Metadata
6 23 (8.75%) Relational Database
6 23 (8.75%) SQL Server
7 22 (8.37%) PostgreSQL
7 22 (8.37%) Tableau
8 17 (6.46%) BigQuery
9 13 (4.94%) HBase
10 12 (4.56%) RDBMS
11 11 (4.18%) Impala
12 9 (3.42%) Amazon Athena
13 8 (3.04%) MongoDB
14 7 (2.66%) Data Vault
14 7 (2.66%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 36 (13.69%) Git
2 25 (9.51%) JIRA
3 21 (7.98%) Jenkins
4 18 (6.84%) GitLab
5 10 (3.80%) MLflow
6 7 (2.66%) ERwin
7 5 (1.90%) Artifactory
7 5 (1.90%) ER Studio
8 4 (1.52%) Gradle
8 4 (1.52%) SonarQube
9 3 (1.14%) Maven
9 3 (1.14%) Poetry
9 3 (1.14%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.76%) Cypress.io
10 2 (0.76%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.76%) Subversion
10 2 (0.76%) Team Foundation Server
10 2 (0.76%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.38%) Cucumber
11 1 (0.38%) SpecFlow
General
1 76 (28.90%) Social Skills
2 72 (27.38%) Finance
3 44 (16.73%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (11.03%) Banking
5 17 (6.46%) Public Sector
6 8 (3.04%) Financial Institution
6 8 (3.04%) Telecoms
7 6 (2.28%) Investment Banking
8 5 (1.90%) Retail
9 4 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.52%) Influencing Skills
9 4 (1.52%) Manufacturing
10 3 (1.14%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.76%) Marketing
11 2 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.38%) Advertising
12 1 (0.38%) Agriculture
12 1 (0.38%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.38%) Legal
12 1 (0.38%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 75 (28.52%) Data Engineer
2 40 (15.21%) Senior
3 31 (11.79%) Developer
4 28 (10.65%) Architect
5 24 (9.13%) Data Scientist
6 20 (7.60%) Lead
7 16 (6.08%) Data Architect
8 15 (5.70%) Software Engineer
9 13 (4.94%) Python Engineer
10 12 (4.56%) Analyst
11 9 (3.42%) Python Data Engineer
11 9 (3.42%) Senior Data Engineer
11 9 (3.42%) Senior Software Engineer
12 8 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
12 8 (3.04%) Big Data Engineer
12 8 (3.04%) Data Analyst
12 8 (3.04%) Java Engineer
12 8 (3.04%) Scala Developer
12 8 (3.04%) Solutions Architect
13 7 (2.66%) Data Modeller
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (22.81%) Kafka
2 30 (11.41%) PySpark
3 28 (10.65%) Apache NiFi
4 23 (8.75%) Pandas
5 20 (7.60%) scikit-learn
6 15 (5.70%) Flask
6 15 (5.70%) NumPy
6 15 (5.70%) PyTorch
6 15 (5.70%) TensorFlow
7 14 (5.32%) .NET
7 14 (5.32%) RESTful
8 12 (4.56%) Elastic Stack
8 12 (4.56%) JSON
8 12 (4.56%) REST
9 11 (4.18%) HTML
9 11 (4.18%) OpenTelemetry
9 11 (4.18%) RabbitMQ
9 11 (4.18%) React
9 11 (4.18%) XML
10 9 (3.42%) Hugging Face
Miscellaneous
1 18 (6.84%) Distributed Computing
2 17 (6.46%) Algorithms
3 16 (6.08%) Cloud Native
4 7 (2.66%) Data Structures
4 7 (2.66%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.28%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.28%) Hybrid Cloud
5 6 (2.28%) Management Information System
6 5 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.52%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.52%) Credit Risk
7 4 (1.52%) Derivative
7 4 (1.52%) Private Cloud
8 3 (1.14%) Data Centre
8 3 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
8 3 (1.14%) Onboarding
8 3 (1.14%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.14%) Virtual Team
9 2 (0.76%) Market Risk
9 2 (0.76%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 30 (11.41%) Linux
2 12 (4.56%) Unix
3 6 (2.28%) Windows
4 3 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 88 (33.46%) Agile
2 82 (31.18%) Data Modelling
3 79 (30.04%) ETL
4 77 (29.28%) Analytics
5 76 (28.90%) Data Pipeline
6 66 (25.10%) Machine Learning
7 65 (24.71%) Data Engineering
8 62 (23.57%) CI/CD
9 60 (22.81%) Data Governance
10 59 (22.43%) Problem-Solving
11 58 (22.05%) Data Science
12 46 (17.49%) Visualisation
13 45 (17.11%) AI
14 44 (16.73%) Software Engineering
15 43 (16.35%) Business Intelligence
16 41 (15.59%) Microservices
17 40 (15.21%) Containerisation
17 40 (15.21%) DevOps
18 38 (14.45%) Decision-Making
19 33 (12.55%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 178 (67.68%) Python
2 126 (47.91%) SQL
3 48 (18.25%) Java
4 28 (10.65%) Scala
5 20 (7.60%) R
6 19 (7.22%) C++
7 15 (5.70%) C#
8 14 (5.32%) JavaScript
9 13 (4.94%) Bash
10 6 (2.28%) Shell Script
11 5 (1.90%) C
12 4 (1.52%) PowerShell
13 3 (1.14%) Groovy
13 3 (1.14%) Perl
13 3 (1.14%) PL/SQL
14 2 (0.76%) Kusto Query Language
14 2 (0.76%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.38%) CodeQL
15 1 (0.38%) Go
15 1 (0.38%) Korn
Qualifications
1 49 (18.63%) Security Cleared
2 38 (14.45%) SC Cleared
3 35 (13.31%) Degree
4 26 (9.89%) DV Cleared
5 19 (7.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (7.22%) Master's Degree
6 7 (2.66%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.28%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.90%) PhD
9 4 (1.52%) BPSS Clearance
10 3 (1.14%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.76%) CISSP
12 1 (0.38%) HP APS
12 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.38%) OCP
12 1 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.38%) Postgraduate
12 1 (0.38%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (19.77%) Data Quality
2 16 (6.08%) GDPR
3 11 (4.18%) QA
4 4 (1.52%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.38%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.38%) IFRS
5 1 (0.38%) IFRS 17
5 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.38%) Solvency II
System Software
1 35 (13.31%) Docker
2 12 (4.56%) HDFS
3 2 (0.76%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 44 (16.73%) Kubernetes
2 20 (7.60%) Terraform
3 16 (6.08%) Grafana
4 10 (3.80%) Ansible
4 10 (3.80%) Argo
4 10 (3.80%) Prometheus
5 7 (2.66%) Kibana
6 6 (2.28%) logstash
7 4 (1.52%) Hadoop YARN
7 4 (1.52%) Kustomize
8 3 (1.14%) Istio
8 3 (1.14%) Oozie
9 2 (0.76%) Nagios
9 2 (0.76%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.76%) Rancher
10 1 (0.38%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.38%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.38%) Puppet
10 1 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.38%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 41 (15.59%) Databricks
2 26 (9.89%) Google
3 21 (7.98%) Cloudera
4 20 (7.60%) Microsoft
5 15 (5.70%) Foundry
5 15 (5.70%) Palantir
6 9 (3.42%) Oracle
7 7 (2.66%) ServiceNow
8 5 (1.90%) Informatica
9 4 (1.52%) Ab Initio
9 4 (1.52%) Sage
10 3 (1.14%) Salesforce
11 2 (0.76%) Bloomberg
11 2 (0.76%) IBM
11 2 (0.76%) OpenAI
11 2 (0.76%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.76%) Refinitiv
11 2 (0.76%) Splunk
11 2 (0.76%) Talend
11 2 (0.76%) Vertica