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 2 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 357 235 243
Rank change year-on-year -122 +8 -59
Contract jobs citing Big Data 242 335 451
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.08% 1.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.83% 5.84% 6.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 216 305
10th Percentile £319 £364 £400
25th Percentile £387 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £622 £676 £700
90th Percentile £778 £741 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £616 £510
% change year-on-year -27.46% +20.83% -11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 27
10th Percentile £52.00 - £22.28
25th Percentile £53.13 £51.25 £33.88
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +13.69% +5.84%
75th Percentile £59.50 £53.75 £62.25
90th Percentile £62.20 - £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 - £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 6,321 5,740 7,337
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.45% 18.47% 16.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,360 3,768 5,223
10th Percentile £335 £356 £350
25th Percentile £411 £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 £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 115 88 184
10th Percentile £18.25 £21.96 £15.68
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.94 £21.00
Median hourly rate £50.00 £35.00 £42.19
Median % change year-on-year +42.86% -17.04% -27.79%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.73 £61.94
90th Percentile £85.00 £68.33 £77.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £29.80 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.56% -25.50% -28.48%

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 2 February 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 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 2 February 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 -137 196 £505 -11.09% 114
London -70 131 £550 - 60
UK excluding London -97 75 £447 -27.46% 73
Work from Home -31 74 £463 -11.57% 48
Scotland +13 20 £460 +17.95% 7
South East -42 16 £438 -19.35% 27
North of England -53 16 £448 -33.70% 17
North West -21 13 £473 -30.00% 13
Midlands -45 12 £425 +3.91% 3
East Midlands -17 9 £423 +12.67% 1
South West -32 9 £525 -21.35% 5
West Midlands -38 3 £447 -24.49% 2
Wales -2 2 £388 -32.26% 2
North East -20 2 £413 +0.86% 3
East of England -30 1 £505 -22.31% 13
Yorkshire -61 1 - - 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
1 114 (47.11%) Apache Spark
2 39 (16.12%) Apache
3 31 (12.81%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (7.02%) Confluence
5 9 (3.72%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (1.65%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.83%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.83%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.83%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.41%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.41%) Camunda
8 1 (0.41%) IIS
8 1 (0.41%) Luigi
8 1 (0.41%) nginx
8 1 (0.41%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (1.24%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.83%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 2 (0.83%) Salesforce CRM
2 1 (0.41%) Distributed Ledger
Cloud Services
1 103 (42.56%) AWS
2 80 (33.06%) Azure
3 51 (21.07%) GCP
4 31 (12.81%) Power Platform
5 28 (11.57%) Serverless
6 27 (11.16%) Snowflake
7 17 (7.02%) GitHub
8 13 (5.37%) Azure Data Factory
9 12 (4.96%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (4.55%) Amazon S3
11 10 (4.13%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.72%) Azure DevOps
13 7 (2.89%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (2.48%) Amazon SageMaker
14 6 (2.48%) OpenShift
15 5 (2.07%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 5 (2.07%) Amazon EKS
15 5 (2.07%) Microsoft Copilot
16 4 (1.65%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 4 (1.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.24%) Kerberos
1 3 (1.24%) VPN
2 1 (0.41%) HTTP
2 1 (0.41%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (35.12%) Hadoop
2 60 (24.79%) Data Warehouse
3 38 (15.70%) NoSQL
4 29 (11.98%) Data Lake
4 29 (11.98%) Power BI
5 25 (10.33%) Metadata
5 25 (10.33%) Relational Database
6 22 (9.09%) Apache Hive
6 22 (9.09%) SQL Server
7 21 (8.68%) Elasticsearch
7 21 (8.68%) PostgreSQL
8 17 (7.02%) Tableau
9 14 (5.79%) RDBMS
10 11 (4.55%) Impala
11 10 (4.13%) HBase
12 8 (3.31%) BigQuery
12 8 (3.31%) MongoDB
13 7 (2.89%) Amazon Redshift
13 7 (2.89%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (2.89%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 33 (13.64%) Git
2 21 (8.68%) JIRA
3 20 (8.26%) GitLab
3 20 (8.26%) Jenkins
4 6 (2.48%) ERwin
5 5 (2.07%) MLflow
6 4 (1.65%) ER Studio
7 3 (1.24%) Postman
7 3 (1.24%) Robot Framework
7 3 (1.24%) Selenium
8 2 (0.83%) Artifactory
8 2 (0.83%) Cypress.io
8 2 (0.83%) Subversion
8 2 (0.83%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (0.41%) Cucumber
9 1 (0.41%) Gradle
9 1 (0.41%) Pylint
9 1 (0.41%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.41%) SpecFlow
9 1 (0.41%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 83 (34.30%) Social Skills
2 65 (26.86%) Finance
3 38 (15.70%) Analytical Skills
4 27 (11.16%) Banking
5 19 (7.85%) Public Sector
6 8 (3.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 4 (1.65%) Investment Banking
7 4 (1.65%) Telecoms
8 3 (1.24%) Financial Institution
8 3 (1.24%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.41%) Agriculture
9 1 (0.41%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.41%) Front Office
9 1 (0.41%) Marketing
9 1 (0.41%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 73 (30.17%) Data Engineer
2 32 (13.22%) Senior
3 27 (11.16%) Lead
4 23 (9.50%) Data Scientist
5 21 (8.68%) Developer
6 19 (7.85%) Architect
7 16 (6.61%) Data Architect
8 15 (6.20%) Analyst
9 12 (4.96%) Data Analyst
10 10 (4.13%) Senior Data Engineer
11 8 (3.31%) Java Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) Data Modeller
12 7 (2.89%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) Python Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) QA Engineer
12 7 (2.89%) Senior Data Scientist
13 6 (2.48%) Big Data Engineer
13 6 (2.48%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (18.18%) Kafka
2 30 (12.40%) PySpark
3 16 (6.61%) Apache NiFi
3 16 (6.61%) scikit-learn
4 15 (6.20%) Pandas
5 12 (4.96%) TensorFlow
6 11 (4.55%) REST
7 10 (4.13%) HTML
7 10 (4.13%) RESTful
8 9 (3.72%) Flask
8 9 (3.72%) NumPy
8 9 (3.72%) React
9 8 (3.31%) .NET
9 8 (3.31%) Elastic Stack
9 8 (3.31%) JSON
9 8 (3.31%) PyTorch
9 8 (3.31%) RabbitMQ
9 8 (3.31%) Spring
9 8 (3.31%) Spring Boot
10 7 (2.89%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.68%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.79%) Distributed Computing
3 13 (5.37%) Algorithms
4 7 (2.89%) Data Structures
4 7 (2.89%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.89%) Virtual Team
5 6 (2.48%) Data Protection Act
5 6 (2.48%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.48%) Management Information System
5 6 (2.48%) Onboarding
6 5 (2.07%) Reference Data
7 4 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.65%) Derivative
7 4 (1.65%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.24%) AI Agents
8 3 (1.24%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 2 (0.83%) Hedge funds
9 2 (0.83%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 27 (11.16%) Linux
2 12 (4.96%) Unix
3 1 (0.41%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (37.19%) Analytics
2 89 (36.78%) ETL
3 78 (32.23%) Data Pipeline
4 77 (31.82%) Data Modelling
5 73 (30.17%) CI/CD
6 72 (29.75%) Problem-Solving
7 71 (29.34%) Agile
8 68 (28.10%) Data Governance
9 62 (25.62%) Data Engineering
10 58 (23.97%) Data Science
11 57 (23.55%) Machine Learning
12 50 (20.66%) Visualisation
13 48 (19.83%) DevOps
14 46 (19.01%) AI
15 36 (14.88%) Business Intelligence
16 35 (14.46%) Data Architecture
16 35 (14.46%) Decision-Making
17 33 (13.64%) Computer Science
18 31 (12.81%) Containerisation
18 31 (12.81%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 160 (66.12%) Python
2 128 (52.89%) SQL
3 47 (19.42%) Java
4 27 (11.16%) R
5 24 (9.92%) Scala
6 14 (5.79%) Bash
6 14 (5.79%) C#
7 13 (5.37%) C++
7 13 (5.37%) JavaScript
8 6 (2.48%) Shell Script
9 3 (1.24%) Perl
10 2 (0.83%) Ada
10 2 (0.83%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.83%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.83%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.41%) Go
11 1 (0.41%) Korn
11 1 (0.41%) Kusto Query Language
11 1 (0.41%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 58 (23.97%) Security Cleared
2 45 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 42 (17.36%) Degree
4 23 (9.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (7.85%) Master's Degree
6 18 (7.44%) DV Cleared
7 6 (2.48%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.65%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.65%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (1.24%) IBM Certification
9 3 (1.24%) ITIL Certification
9 3 (1.24%) PhD
10 1 (0.41%) HP APS
10 1 (0.41%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.41%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.41%) OCP
10 1 (0.41%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.41%) Postgraduate
10 1 (0.41%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (23.97%) Data Quality
2 15 (6.20%) GDPR
2 15 (6.20%) QA
3 4 (1.65%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.65%) Actionable Recommendations
4 3 (1.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (0.83%) PCI DSS
5 2 (0.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.41%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.41%) IFRS
6 1 (0.41%) IFRS 17
6 1 (0.41%) ISO 13485
6 1 (0.41%) Solvency II
System Software
1 42 (17.36%) Docker
2 12 (4.96%) HDFS
3 2 (0.83%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (17.77%) Kubernetes
2 17 (7.02%) Terraform
3 12 (4.96%) Grafana
4 11 (4.55%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.48%) Kibana
6 5 (2.07%) logstash
7 4 (1.65%) Ansible
8 3 (1.24%) Argo
8 3 (1.24%) Nagios
8 3 (1.24%) Rancher
9 2 (0.83%) Hadoop YARN
10 1 (0.41%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.41%) Kustomize
10 1 (0.41%) Oozie
10 1 (0.41%) Puppet
10 1 (0.41%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 45 (18.60%) Databricks
2 18 (7.44%) Microsoft
3 15 (6.20%) Google
4 12 (4.96%) Cloudera
5 9 (3.72%) Foundry
5 9 (3.72%) Palantir
6 7 (2.89%) Oracle
7 6 (2.48%) Ab Initio
7 6 (2.48%) Informatica
8 5 (2.07%) IBM
8 5 (2.07%) ServiceNow
9 3 (1.24%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.24%) Talend
10 2 (0.83%) Salesforce
10 2 (0.83%) Splunk
10 2 (0.83%) Teradata
11 1 (0.41%) Atlassian
11 1 (0.41%) Bloomberg
11 1 (0.41%) Sybase
11 1 (0.41%) Vertica