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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 244 237
Rank change year-on-year -130 -7 -5
Contract jobs citing Big Data 281 312 429
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.09% 1.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.80% 5.75% 5.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 219 328
10th Percentile £355 £408 £375
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.22% -2.17% -2.13%
75th Percentile £645 £675 £738
90th Percentile £783 £738 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £525 £510
% change year-on-year -4.76% +2.94% -11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 11
10th Percentile £58.60 £42.42 £18.20
25th Percentile £64.00 £47.61 £21.60
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +43.75% -48.72%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £45.63
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £48.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 £19.38
% change year-on-year +79.67% +101.08% -75.16%

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 7,389 5,425 7,310
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.11% 18.87% 17.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,961 3,716 5,256
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.85%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £754 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 231 100 151
10th Percentile £14.00 £19.56 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.02 £23.38 £20.77
Median hourly rate £43.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.46% -17.60% -31.73%
75th Percentile £72.25 £64.78 £61.55
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +28.00% -9.60% -39.13%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 -169 212 £550 -3.51% 120
London -97 130 £569 -1.09% 63
UK excluding London -115 99 £500 -4.76% 66
Work from Home -38 90 £488 -7.14% 57
North of England -68 27 £550 -7.17% 31
Scotland +18 24 £389 -16.00% 2
South East -67 23 £513 -5.96% 8
Yorkshire -51 11 £588 +6.82% 3
Midlands -71 11 £500 - 3
North East -18 10 £510 +10.27% 12
East Midlands -31 8 £495 +26.11% 1
South West -29 7 £550 -14.56% 15
North West -40 6 - - 17
Wales -8 5 £388 +131.94% 1
East of England -43 3 £540 -16.92% 3
West Midlands -68 3 £640 +24.90% 2

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
1 152 (54.09%) Apache Spark
2 43 (15.30%) Apache Airflow
3 41 (14.59%) Apache
4 12 (4.27%) Confluence
5 5 (1.78%) SAS
6 4 (1.42%) SharePoint
7 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (1.07%) Palantir Foundry
8 2 (0.71%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.36%) Apache Pig
9 1 (0.36%) Camunda
Applications
1 4 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.36%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 142 (50.53%) AWS
2 122 (43.42%) Azure
3 84 (29.89%) GCP
4 40 (14.23%) Snowflake
5 31 (11.03%) Power Platform
6 29 (10.32%) GitHub
7 27 (9.61%) Amazon S3
7 27 (9.61%) Serverless
8 25 (8.90%) AWS Lambda
9 20 (7.12%) Amazon EMR
10 19 (6.76%) Azure DevOps
11 18 (6.41%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (4.63%) dbt
13 11 (3.91%) Azure Data Factory
13 11 (3.91%) OpenShift
14 8 (2.85%) Amazon ECS
15 7 (2.49%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 5 (1.78%) Amazon EKS
16 5 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
16 5 (1.78%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.78%) IPv4
1 5 (1.78%) IPv6
2 1 (0.36%) Kerberos
2 1 (0.36%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (27.40%) Hadoop
2 66 (23.49%) Data Warehouse
3 47 (16.73%) NoSQL
4 38 (13.52%) Data Lake
5 34 (12.10%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (9.25%) Power BI
7 22 (7.83%) Amazon Redshift
7 22 (7.83%) Relational Database
8 20 (7.12%) Metadata
8 20 (7.12%) SQL Server
9 18 (6.41%) MongoDB
10 17 (6.05%) BigQuery
11 13 (4.63%) DynamoDB
11 13 (4.63%) Tableau
12 12 (4.27%) Apache Hive
13 11 (3.91%) MySQL
14 9 (3.20%) Amazon Athena
14 9 (3.20%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (3.20%) RDBMS
15 8 (2.85%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 45 (16.01%) Git
2 29 (10.32%) Jenkins
3 27 (9.61%) GitLab
4 20 (7.12%) JIRA
5 10 (3.56%) Selenium
6 7 (2.49%) Robot Framework
7 4 (1.42%) Postman
7 4 (1.42%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (1.07%) JUnit
8 3 (1.07%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.71%) ERwin
9 2 (0.71%) MLflow
10 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
General
1 97 (34.52%) Social Skills
2 72 (25.62%) Finance
3 68 (24.20%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (11.74%) Banking
5 22 (7.83%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.91%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.56%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.49%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.78%) Legal
10 5 (1.78%) Marketing
11 3 (1.07%) Retail
12 2 (0.71%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.71%) Local Government
12 2 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.71%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.36%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 88 (31.32%) Data Engineer
2 40 (14.23%) Architect
3 36 (12.81%) Senior
4 29 (10.32%) Lead
5 27 (9.61%) Developer
6 24 (8.54%) Analyst
7 22 (7.83%) Data Scientist
8 18 (6.41%) Data Architect
9 16 (5.69%) Data Analyst
10 14 (4.98%) Senior Data Engineer
11 12 (4.27%) Solutions Architect
12 11 (3.91%) Java Engineer
13 10 (3.56%) Java Developer
14 9 (3.20%) QA Engineer
15 8 (2.85%) Business Analyst
15 8 (2.85%) Kafka Engineer
15 8 (2.85%) Scala Engineer
16 7 (2.49%) Data Integration Engineer
16 7 (2.49%) Integration Engineer
16 7 (2.49%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (22.06%) Kafka
2 33 (11.74%) PySpark
3 22 (7.83%) Spring
4 20 (7.12%) Spring Boot
5 15 (5.34%) REST
6 13 (4.63%) HTML
6 13 (4.63%) Pandas
6 13 (4.63%) TensorFlow
7 11 (3.91%) CSS
7 11 (3.91%) PyTorch
8 10 (3.56%) scikit-learn
9 8 (2.85%) NumPy
9 8 (2.85%) Play Framework
10 7 (2.49%) Node.js
10 7 (2.49%) React
11 6 (2.14%) RESTful
12 5 (1.78%) Keras
12 5 (1.78%) Middleware
13 4 (1.42%) Elastic Stack
13 4 (1.42%) Seaborn
Miscellaneous
1 31 (11.03%) Cloud Native
2 19 (6.76%) Distributed Systems
2 19 (6.76%) Product Ownership
3 16 (5.69%) Algorithms
4 12 (4.27%) Data Structures
5 8 (2.85%) Onboarding
5 8 (2.85%) Virtual Team
6 7 (2.49%) Distributed Computing
7 6 (2.14%) Clustering
7 6 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.78%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.78%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (1.78%) FMCG
8 5 (1.78%) Reference Data
9 4 (1.42%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.42%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.07%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.07%) Educational Technology
10 3 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (1.07%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 18 (6.41%) Linux
2 16 (5.69%) Unix
3 2 (0.71%) Windows
3 2 (0.71%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (45.55%) Analytics
2 124 (44.13%) Data Pipeline
3 122 (43.42%) CI/CD
4 108 (38.43%) ETL
5 107 (38.08%) Data Engineering
6 105 (37.37%) Agile
7 76 (27.05%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (26.69%) Machine Learning
9 73 (25.98%) DevOps
10 72 (25.62%) Data Governance
10 72 (25.62%) Data Science
11 70 (24.91%) AI
11 70 (24.91%) Data Modelling
12 46 (16.37%) Scrum
13 43 (15.30%) Visualisation
14 39 (13.88%) Business Intelligence
14 39 (13.88%) Containerisation
15 38 (13.52%) Data Analysis
15 38 (13.52%) Decision-Making
15 38 (13.52%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 161 (57.30%) Python
2 152 (54.09%) SQL
3 66 (23.49%) Java
4 31 (11.03%) R
4 31 (11.03%) Scala
5 12 (4.27%) JavaScript
6 9 (3.20%) Bash
7 5 (1.78%) SAS Macro
7 5 (1.78%) TypeScript
8 4 (1.42%) C#
9 3 (1.07%) C++
9 3 (1.07%) PowerShell
9 3 (1.07%) Rust
9 3 (1.07%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.71%) Ada
11 1 (0.36%) C
11 1 (0.36%) Korn
11 1 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 67 (23.84%) Security Cleared
2 55 (19.57%) SC Cleared
3 46 (16.37%) Degree
4 23 (8.19%) Master's Degree
5 19 (6.76%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.85%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.78%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.78%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.42%) AWS Certification
9 3 (1.07%) IBM Certification
9 3 (1.07%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.07%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.71%) CISSP
10 2 (0.71%) MCITP
10 2 (0.71%) MCTS
10 2 (0.71%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.71%) PhD
10 2 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (24.20%) Data Quality
2 24 (8.54%) QA
3 18 (6.41%) GDPR
4 7 (2.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.49%) NIST
5 6 (2.14%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.07%) PCI DSS
6 3 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.71%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.36%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 52 (18.51%) Docker
2 8 (2.85%) HDFS
3 3 (1.07%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.07%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.36%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 57 (20.28%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.88%) Terraform
3 34 (12.10%) Grafana
4 16 (5.69%) Prometheus
5 8 (2.85%) Kibana
6 5 (1.78%) Ansible
7 1 (0.36%) Argo
7 1 (0.36%) Control-M
7 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
7 1 (0.36%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.36%) Nagios
7 1 (0.36%) Rancher
Vendors
1 59 (21.00%) Databricks
2 23 (8.19%) Microsoft
3 17 (6.05%) Google
4 12 (4.27%) Splunk
5 10 (3.56%) Oracle
6 9 (3.20%) Informatica
6 9 (3.20%) Talend
7 7 (2.49%) IBM
8 6 (2.14%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.78%) Ab Initio
9 5 (1.78%) Foundry
9 5 (1.78%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.78%) Teradata
10 4 (1.42%) Cloudera
11 3 (1.07%) Guidewire
11 3 (1.07%) Palantir
11 3 (1.07%) Tenable
12 2 (0.71%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 1 (0.36%) Confluent
13 1 (0.36%) ServiceNow