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

6 months to
26 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 399 254 212
Rank change year-on-year -145 -42 +33
Contract jobs citing Big Data 286 337 473
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 1.02% 1.17%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.49% 5.63% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 236 341
10th Percentile £358 £406 £360
25th Percentile £438 £455 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £750
90th Percentile £738 £738 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £500 £530
% change year-on-year +0.50% -5.66% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 5
10th Percentile £54.25 £42.42 £25.42
25th Percentile £63.25 £47.61 £36.25
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +35.29% -45.51%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £48.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £51.75
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 8,196 5,988 7,249
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.44% 18.19% 17.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,437 4,055 5,162
10th Percentile £351 £349 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £507 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.28% -3.52% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
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 260 92 107
10th Percentile £16.70 £19.28 £14.70
25th Percentile £25.25 £23.50 £20.38
Median hourly rate £42.11 £36.25 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.15% -3.33% -31.82%
75th Percentile £63.81 £64.06 £58.73
90th Percentile £77.00 £78.58 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +27.21% +5.47% -42.86%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 -168 225 £550 - 114
London -106 137 £600 +2.39% 84
UK excluding London -121 104 £503 +0.50% 39
Work from Home -65 95 £500 -2.70% 39
North of England -62 32 £550 +7.32% 8
Scotland +2 23 £380 -16.44%
South East -96 20 £525 -4.55% 18
Midlands -63 15 £414 -3.72% 4
Yorkshire -39 14 £550 -8.33% 2
North East -36 10 £510 +10.27% 1
East Midlands -20 9 £495 +19.28%
South West -34 9 £515 +14.44% 7
North West -46 8 £600 +20.00% 5
West Midlands -59 6 £410 -20.02% 4
East of England -40 3 £540 -1.82% 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
1 149 (52.10%) Apache Spark
2 46 (16.08%) Apache Airflow
3 44 (15.38%) Apache
4 10 (3.50%) Confluence
5 6 (2.10%) SAS
6 5 (1.75%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.75%) Palantir Foundry
6 5 (1.75%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (1.05%) CMS
9 2 (0.70%) Apache Pig
9 2 (0.70%) JBoss
10 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.35%) Camunda
10 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
1 145 (50.70%) AWS
2 113 (39.51%) Azure
3 89 (31.12%) GCP
4 44 (15.38%) Snowflake
5 35 (12.24%) Power Platform
6 33 (11.54%) Amazon S3
7 23 (8.04%) GitHub
8 22 (7.69%) Serverless
9 21 (7.34%) Amazon EMR
9 21 (7.34%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.64%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (4.90%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (4.55%) dbt
12 13 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
13 12 (4.20%) OpenShift
14 10 (3.50%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (3.15%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (2.45%) PaaS
16 7 (2.45%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 6 (2.10%) Amazon EventBridge
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
3 2 (0.70%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (24.13%) Hadoop
2 59 (20.63%) Data Warehouse
3 44 (15.38%) Data Lake
4 43 (15.03%) NoSQL
5 35 (12.24%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (11.19%) Power BI
7 22 (7.69%) Metadata
8 20 (6.99%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (6.64%) Relational Database
9 19 (6.64%) SQL Server
10 18 (6.29%) Apache Hive
10 18 (6.29%) BigQuery
11 17 (5.94%) MongoDB
12 14 (4.90%) DynamoDB
13 13 (4.55%) Amazon Athena
13 13 (4.55%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (4.55%) MySQL
13 13 (4.55%) Tableau
14 9 (3.15%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (3.15%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 41 (14.34%) Git
2 27 (9.44%) Jenkins
3 25 (8.74%) GitLab
4 18 (6.29%) JIRA
5 8 (2.80%) 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 97 (33.92%) Social Skills
2 71 (24.83%) Analytical Skills
3 66 (23.08%) Finance
4 40 (13.99%) Banking
5 23 (8.04%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.20%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.50%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.45%) Telecoms
10 6 (2.10%) 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%) Agriculture
14 1 (0.35%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.35%) Presentation Skills
14 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 89 (31.12%) Data Engineer
2 53 (18.53%) Architect
3 45 (15.73%) Senior
4 30 (10.49%) Developer
5 23 (8.04%) Data Architect
6 20 (6.99%) Lead
7 18 (6.29%) Senior Data Engineer
8 17 (5.94%) Solutions Architect
9 15 (5.24%) Analyst
9 15 (5.24%) Data Scientist
10 11 (3.85%) Big Data Engineer
11 10 (3.50%) Java Developer
12 9 (3.15%) Data Analyst
13 8 (2.80%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 8 (2.80%) Kafka Engineer
13 8 (2.80%) Python Engineer
13 8 (2.80%) Scala Engineer
14 7 (2.45%) Data Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.45%) Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.45%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 69 (24.13%) Kafka
2 34 (11.89%) PySpark
3 20 (6.99%) REST
4 18 (6.29%) Spring
5 16 (5.59%) Spring Boot
6 11 (3.85%) Pandas
7 9 (3.15%) CSS
7 9 (3.15%) HTML
8 8 (2.80%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (2.80%) Play Framework
8 8 (2.80%) PyTorch
8 8 (2.80%) React
8 8 (2.80%) TensorFlow
9 7 (2.45%) NumPy
10 6 (2.10%) Elastic Stack
10 6 (2.10%) Middleware
11 5 (1.75%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.75%) Node.js
11 5 (1.75%) RESTful
11 5 (1.75%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 42 (14.69%) Cloud Native
2 30 (10.49%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.64%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.59%) Virtual Team
5 14 (4.90%) Data Structures
6 13 (4.55%) Algorithms
7 11 (3.85%) Clustering
7 11 (3.85%) Onboarding
8 9 (3.15%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (2.45%) Data Centre
10 6 (2.10%) Cyber Threat
10 6 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
11 5 (1.75%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (1.75%) Reference Data
12 4 (1.40%) AI Agents
12 4 (1.40%) FMCG
12 4 (1.40%) Management Information System
13 3 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 3 (1.05%) PKI
13 3 (1.05%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.34%) Linux
2 12 (4.20%) Unix
3 5 (1.75%) Windows
3 5 (1.75%) Windows Server
4 2 (0.70%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (48.60%) Data Pipeline
2 132 (46.15%) Analytics
3 112 (39.16%) CI/CD
4 111 (38.81%) Data Engineering
5 109 (38.11%) Agile
6 101 (35.31%) ETL
7 81 (28.32%) AI
8 78 (27.27%) Machine Learning
9 76 (26.57%) Problem-Solving
10 74 (25.87%) Data Modelling
11 70 (24.48%) DevOps
12 69 (24.13%) Data Governance
13 68 (23.78%) Data Science
14 47 (16.43%) Containerisation
15 46 (16.08%) Scrum
16 43 (15.03%) Business Intelligence
17 42 (14.69%) Decision-Making
17 42 (14.69%) Validation
18 41 (14.34%) Data Architecture
19 40 (13.99%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 161 (56.29%) Python
2 140 (48.95%) SQL
3 63 (22.03%) Java
4 33 (11.54%) Scala
5 22 (7.69%) R
6 12 (4.20%) PowerShell
7 11 (3.85%) JavaScript
8 10 (3.50%) Bash
9 5 (1.75%) SAS Macro
10 4 (1.40%) C#
10 4 (1.40%) TypeScript
11 3 (1.05%) Rust
11 3 (1.05%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.70%) Go
13 1 (0.35%) C
13 1 (0.35%) C++
13 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.35%) Korn
13 1 (0.35%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 67 (23.43%) Security Cleared
2 51 (17.83%) SC Cleared
3 45 (15.73%) Degree
4 23 (8.04%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.45%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.10%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.10%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.05%) IBM Certification
9 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.05%) PhD
9 3 (1.05%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.70%) CISSP
10 2 (0.70%) MCITP
10 2 (0.70%) MCTS
10 2 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (23.78%) Data Quality
2 22 (7.69%) QA
3 18 (6.29%) GDPR
4 7 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.45%) NIST
5 3 (1.05%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.05%) SLA
6 2 (0.70%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.35%) NCSC
7 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 52 (18.18%) Docker
2 8 (2.80%) HDFS
3 7 (2.45%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (1.05%) BitLocker
5 3 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.05%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (1.05%) Terminal Services
5 3 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.05%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.70%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 54 (18.88%) Kubernetes
2 36 (12.59%) Terraform
3 30 (10.49%) Grafana
4 13 (4.55%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.50%) Ansible
6 8 (2.80%) Kibana
7 7 (2.45%) Puppet
8 3 (1.05%) Nagios
8 3 (1.05%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.05%) vMotion
9 2 (0.70%) Red Hat Satellite
10 1 (0.35%) Control-M
10 1 (0.35%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 56 (19.58%) Databricks
2 26 (9.09%) Google
2 26 (9.09%) Microsoft
3 15 (5.24%) Splunk
4 12 (4.20%) Salesforce
5 11 (3.85%) Oracle
6 9 (3.15%) Talend
7 8 (2.80%) Foundry
7 8 (2.80%) IBM
7 8 (2.80%) Informatica
8 6 (2.10%) Cloudera
9 5 (1.75%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.75%) Palantir
9 5 (1.75%) VMware
10 4 (1.40%) Ab Initio
10 4 (1.40%) HP
10 4 (1.40%) Teradata
11 3 (1.05%) Citrix
11 3 (1.05%) OpenAI
11 3 (1.05%) Tenable