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

6 months to
17 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 389 251 210
Rank change year-on-year -138 -41 +36
Contract jobs citing Big Data 285 338 488
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 1.04% 1.16%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.53% 5.68% 6.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 237 357
10th Percentile £358 £406 £352
25th Percentile £425 £456 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £639 £650 £738
90th Percentile £738 £738 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £510
% change year-on-year - -1.96% -7.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 7
10th Percentile £54.25 £42.42 -
25th Percentile £63.25 £47.61 £18.20
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +53.33% -51.92%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £43.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £45.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £69.72 £38.96 £19.38
% change year-on-year +78.95% +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 8,083 5,948 7,487
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.35% 18.29% 17.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,349 4,034 5,341
10th Percentile £352 £350 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.39% -2.43% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 100 133
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.56 £14.05
25th Percentile £24.85 £25.94 £20.75
Median hourly rate £41.71 £36.25 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.06% -5.84% -30.00%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.63 £51.91
90th Percentile £77.25 £77.62 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.64 £32.75
% change year-on-year +24.84% -3.39% -37.62%

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 17 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 17 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 17 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 -176 220 £550 - 93
London -118 133 £600 +3.09% 54
UK excluding London -114 105 £500 - 59
Work from Home -66 96 £500 -4.76% 54
North of England -61 32 £550 -0.90% 10
Scotland +8 23 £380 -16.44% 7
South East -87 22 £525 -0.71% 15
Yorkshire -36 14 £550 -8.33% 2
Midlands -73 12 £500 +5.26% 5
North East -29 11 £480 +3.78% 2
East Midlands -20 9 £495 +20.73% 3
South West -40 9 £515 +14.44% 10
North West -50 7 - - 6
Wales - 5 £388 - 1
East of England -36 3 £540 -1.82% 6
West Midlands -69 3 £640 +25.00% 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
1 151 (52.98%) Apache Spark
2 46 (16.14%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (15.09%) Apache
4 7 (2.46%) Confluence
5 6 (2.11%) SAS
6 5 (1.75%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.40%) Jupyter
7 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.70%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.70%) CMS
8 2 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.35%) Camunda
9 1 (0.35%) Luigi
Applications
1 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Endur
2 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 151 (52.98%) AWS
2 121 (42.46%) Azure
3 91 (31.93%) GCP
4 45 (15.79%) Snowflake
5 36 (12.63%) Power Platform
6 31 (10.88%) Amazon S3
7 24 (8.42%) GitHub
8 21 (7.37%) Serverless
9 20 (7.02%) Amazon EMR
9 20 (7.02%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.67%) Azure DevOps
11 13 (4.56%) Amazon ECS
11 13 (4.56%) dbt
11 13 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (4.56%) OpenShift
12 10 (3.51%) Azure Data Factory
13 9 (3.16%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.46%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 7 (2.46%) PaaS
14 7 (2.46%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.75%) IPv4
1 5 (1.75%) IPv6
2 3 (1.05%) Broadband
2 3 (1.05%) DHCP
2 3 (1.05%) DNS
2 3 (1.05%) Firewall
2 3 (1.05%) SMTP
2 3 (1.05%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (25.26%) Hadoop
2 58 (20.35%) Data Warehouse
3 45 (15.79%) NoSQL
4 42 (14.74%) Data Lake
5 36 (12.63%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (11.23%) Power BI
7 21 (7.37%) Metadata
8 19 (6.67%) Amazon Redshift
8 19 (6.67%) Relational Database
8 19 (6.67%) SQL Server
9 17 (5.96%) Apache Hive
9 17 (5.96%) BigQuery
9 17 (5.96%) MongoDB
10 13 (4.56%) MySQL
10 13 (4.56%) Tableau
11 12 (4.21%) Amazon Athena
11 12 (4.21%) Amazon RDS
11 12 (4.21%) DynamoDB
12 10 (3.51%) Elasticsearch
13 9 (3.16%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 41 (14.39%) Git
2 27 (9.47%) Jenkins
3 26 (9.12%) GitLab
4 15 (5.26%) JIRA
5 8 (2.81%) Selenium
6 5 (1.75%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (1.40%) Robot Framework
8 3 (1.05%) JUnit
8 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.70%) ERwin
9 2 (0.70%) MLflow
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.35%) Postman
General
1 96 (33.68%) Social Skills
2 71 (24.91%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (23.16%) Finance
4 40 (14.04%) Banking
5 24 (8.42%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.21%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.51%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.46%) Telecoms
10 6 (2.11%) Legal
11 5 (1.75%) Marketing
12 4 (1.40%) Retail
13 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.70%) Local Government
13 2 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.35%) Front Office
14 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.35%) Military
14 1 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 87 (30.53%) Data Engineer
2 51 (17.89%) Architect
3 41 (14.39%) Senior
4 31 (10.88%) Developer
5 22 (7.72%) Data Architect
5 22 (7.72%) Lead
6 20 (7.02%) Data Scientist
7 17 (5.96%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (5.61%) Senior Data Engineer
9 15 (5.26%) Analyst
10 11 (3.86%) Big Data Engineer
10 11 (3.86%) Java Developer
11 9 (3.16%) Data Analyst
12 8 (2.81%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
12 8 (2.81%) Java Engineer
12 8 (2.81%) Kafka Engineer
12 8 (2.81%) Python Engineer
12 8 (2.81%) Scala Engineer
13 7 (2.46%) Data Integration Engineer
13 7 (2.46%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.86%) Kafka
2 32 (11.23%) PySpark
3 20 (7.02%) REST
4 19 (6.67%) Spring
5 17 (5.96%) Spring Boot
6 10 (3.51%) Pandas
6 10 (3.51%) PyTorch
6 10 (3.51%) TensorFlow
7 9 (3.16%) CSS
7 9 (3.16%) HTML
8 8 (2.81%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (2.81%) Play Framework
8 8 (2.81%) React
9 6 (2.11%) Middleware
9 6 (2.11%) NumPy
10 5 (1.75%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (1.75%) Node.js
10 5 (1.75%) RESTful
10 5 (1.75%) scikit-learn
10 5 (1.75%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 41 (14.39%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.47%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.67%) Product Ownership
4 17 (5.96%) Algorithms
5 13 (4.56%) Data Structures
5 13 (4.56%) Virtual Team
6 9 (3.16%) Clustering
6 9 (3.16%) Distributed Computing
7 8 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
7 8 (2.81%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.46%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.11%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.75%) Distributed Architecture
10 5 (1.75%) Reference Data
11 4 (1.40%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.40%) FMCG
11 4 (1.40%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.05%) PKI
12 3 (1.05%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.72%) Linux
2 15 (5.26%) Unix
3 5 (1.75%) Windows
3 5 (1.75%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (49.47%) Data Pipeline
2 129 (45.26%) Analytics
3 118 (41.40%) CI/CD
4 109 (38.25%) Data Engineering
5 106 (37.19%) Agile
6 100 (35.09%) ETL
7 84 (29.47%) Machine Learning
8 82 (28.77%) AI
9 77 (27.02%) Problem-Solving
10 74 (25.96%) Data Governance
10 74 (25.96%) Data Science
11 72 (25.26%) Data Modelling
12 71 (24.91%) DevOps
13 49 (17.19%) Containerisation
14 47 (16.49%) Scrum
15 45 (15.79%) Decision-Making
16 43 (15.09%) Data Architecture
17 42 (14.74%) Business Intelligence
18 41 (14.39%) Validation
19 40 (14.04%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 165 (57.89%) Python
2 143 (50.18%) SQL
3 66 (23.16%) Java
4 33 (11.58%) Scala
5 26 (9.12%) R
6 13 (4.56%) Bash
7 11 (3.86%) JavaScript
7 11 (3.86%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.75%) SAS Macro
9 4 (1.40%) C#
9 4 (1.40%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.05%) Rust
10 3 (1.05%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.70%) Go
12 1 (0.35%) C
12 1 (0.35%) C++
12 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.35%) Korn
12 1 (0.35%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 67 (23.51%) Security Cleared
2 53 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 47 (16.49%) Degree
4 22 (7.72%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.61%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.11%) AWS Certification
7 6 (2.11%) Azure Certification
7 6 (2.11%) DV Cleared
8 3 (1.05%) IBM Certification
8 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
8 3 (1.05%) PhD
8 3 (1.05%) SnowPro
9 2 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
9 2 (0.70%) CISSP
9 2 (0.70%) MCITP
9 2 (0.70%) MCTS
9 2 (0.70%) Numerate Degree
9 2 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (23.51%) Data Quality
2 23 (8.07%) QA
3 19 (6.67%) GDPR
4 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.46%) NIST
5 4 (1.40%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.05%) SLA
7 2 (0.70%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (19.30%) Docker
2 8 (2.81%) HDFS
3 6 (2.11%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.05%) BitLocker
4 3 (1.05%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.05%) Microsoft App-V
4 3 (1.05%) Terminal Services
4 3 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.70%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 58 (20.35%) Kubernetes
2 38 (13.33%) Terraform
3 33 (11.58%) Grafana
4 15 (5.26%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.51%) Ansible
6 8 (2.81%) Kibana
7 5 (1.75%) Puppet
8 3 (1.05%) Nagios
8 3 (1.05%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.05%) vMotion
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 59 (20.70%) Databricks
2 26 (9.12%) Microsoft
3 22 (7.72%) Google
4 12 (4.21%) Salesforce
4 12 (4.21%) Splunk
5 11 (3.86%) Oracle
6 8 (2.81%) IBM
6 8 (2.81%) Talend
7 7 (2.46%) Informatica
8 6 (2.11%) Cloudera
9 5 (1.75%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.75%) Foundry
10 4 (1.40%) Ab Initio
10 4 (1.40%) HP
10 4 (1.40%) OpenAI
10 4 (1.40%) Teradata
11 3 (1.05%) Citrix
11 3 (1.05%) Symantec
11 3 (1.05%) Tenable
11 3 (1.05%) VMware