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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 456 297 206
Rank change year-on-year -159 -91 +35
Contract jobs citing Big Data 228 278 460
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.84% 1.21%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 2.81% 4.62% 6.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 163 201 297
10th Percentile £359 £380 £350
25th Percentile £434 £428 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £525 £565
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% -7.08% -5.83%
75th Percentile £638 £644 £700
90th Percentile £719 £738 £825
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -7.50% -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 1 5
10th Percentile £50.75 - £27.25
25th Percentile £57.44 - £36.25
Median hourly rate £63.70 £38.96 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.50% -17.98% -39.10%
75th Percentile £71.37 - £53.75
90th Percentile £72.83 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.95 £38.96 -
% change year-on-year +53.88% - -

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 8,105 6,015 6,801
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.85% 18.16% 17.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,393 4,022 4,585
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.60% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £623 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 293 81 91
10th Percentile £16.76 £20.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.00 £38.96 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.24% +11.31% -33.33%
75th Percentile £58.75 £64.50 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £80.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.53% +18.30% -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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 -162 196 £523 -0.48% 516
London -115 125 £599 +8.91% 377
UK excluding London -98 83 £463 -7.50% 164
Work from Home -90 71 £500 - 175
North of England -57 33 £500 +3.90% 36
Yorkshire -12 21 £500 - 10
Scotland -16 14 £402 -19.60% 20
South West -24 14 £478 -9.05% 17
Midlands -52 11 £405 -3.57% 18
South East -82 10 £433 -21.36% 40
North East -37 7 £425 - 3
East Midlands -18 6 £400 -4.88% 7
West Midlands -50 5 £405 -7.74% 11
North West -55 5 £513 +15.17% 23
Northern Ireland +7 2 £463 -9.76% 17
East of England -44 1 £505 +0.50% 15

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
1 133 (58.33%) Apache Spark
2 45 (19.74%) Apache
3 38 (16.67%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (3.07%) Confluence
5 6 (2.63%) JBoss
6 5 (2.19%) Jupyter
6 5 (2.19%) SharePoint
7 3 (1.32%) Apache Superset
7 3 (1.32%) CMS
7 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (1.32%) Palantir Foundry
7 3 (1.32%) SAS
8 2 (0.88%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.88%) nginx
9 1 (0.44%) Luigi
9 1 (0.44%) MQSeries
Applications
1 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (0.88%) Endur
2 1 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.44%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 101 (44.30%) AWS
2 88 (38.60%) Azure
3 60 (26.32%) GCP
4 40 (17.54%) Snowflake
5 32 (14.04%) Amazon S3
6 27 (11.84%) Power Platform
7 22 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
8 20 (8.77%) Amazon EMR
9 16 (7.02%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (7.02%) Azure Data Factory
9 16 (7.02%) GitHub
10 14 (6.14%) Amazon ECS
10 14 (6.14%) Azure Databricks
10 14 (6.14%) Serverless
11 13 (5.70%) OpenShift
11 13 (5.70%) PaaS
12 9 (3.95%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (3.95%) Azure AKS
12 9 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (3.51%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.63%) DNS
1 6 (2.63%) Kerberos
2 4 (1.75%) Firewall
3 3 (1.32%) Broadband
3 3 (1.32%) DHCP
3 3 (1.32%) Internet
3 3 (1.32%) SMTP
3 3 (1.32%) VPN
4 1 (0.44%) Network Security
4 1 (0.44%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (22.37%) Hadoop
2 39 (17.11%) Data Lake
2 39 (17.11%) Data Warehouse
3 27 (11.84%) Power BI
4 26 (11.40%) NoSQL
4 26 (11.40%) PostgreSQL
5 24 (10.53%) Apache Hive
6 19 (8.33%) Amazon Redshift
7 16 (7.02%) BigQuery
7 16 (7.02%) Metadata
7 16 (7.02%) MongoDB
8 15 (6.58%) Tableau
9 14 (6.14%) Elasticsearch
10 13 (5.70%) Amazon RDS
11 11 (4.82%) Amazon Athena
12 8 (3.51%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (3.07%) HBase
13 7 (3.07%) Presto
13 7 (3.07%) SQL Server
14 6 (2.63%) Apache Cassandra
Development Applications
1 36 (15.79%) GitLab
2 34 (14.91%) Git
3 28 (12.28%) Jenkins
4 12 (5.26%) JIRA
5 5 (2.19%) Selenium
6 3 (1.32%) JMeter
6 3 (1.32%) JUnit
6 3 (1.32%) LoadRunner
6 3 (1.32%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.88%) eggPlant
7 2 (0.88%) Gatling
7 2 (0.88%) PowerDesigner
7 2 (0.88%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.44%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.44%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.44%) MLflow
General
1 68 (29.82%) Social Skills
2 49 (21.49%) Analytical Skills
3 44 (19.30%) Finance
4 25 (10.96%) Banking
5 20 (8.77%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.95%) Marketing
7 8 (3.51%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 8 (3.51%) Investment Banking
8 6 (2.63%) Aerospace
9 3 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.32%) Legal
9 3 (1.32%) Retail
9 3 (1.32%) Telecoms
10 2 (0.88%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.88%) Front Office
10 2 (0.88%) Local Government
11 1 (0.44%) Advertising
11 1 (0.44%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.44%) Military
11 1 (0.44%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 75 (32.89%) Data Engineer
2 40 (17.54%) Senior
3 28 (12.28%) Architect
4 17 (7.46%) Analyst
4 17 (7.46%) Senior Data Engineer
5 15 (6.58%) DevOps Engineer
6 14 (6.14%) Developer
7 12 (5.26%) Azure Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) Big Data Engineer
7 12 (5.26%) Data Architect
7 12 (5.26%) Solutions Architect
8 11 (4.82%) Data Analyst
9 10 (4.39%) Python Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
10 9 (3.95%) Databricks Engineer
11 8 (3.51%) Databricks Data Engineer
11 8 (3.51%) Scala Engineer
12 7 (3.07%) Data Integration Engineer
12 7 (3.07%) Lead
12 7 (3.07%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (20.61%) Kafka
1 47 (20.61%) Terraform
2 29 (12.72%) PySpark
3 17 (7.46%) REST
4 16 (7.02%) Apache NiFi
5 11 (4.82%) Spring
5 11 (4.82%) Spring Boot
6 8 (3.51%) CSS
6 8 (3.51%) Elastic Stack
6 8 (3.51%) HTML
6 8 (3.51%) Pandas
6 8 (3.51%) Play Framework
7 6 (2.63%) .NET
7 6 (2.63%) NumPy
7 6 (2.63%) PyTorch
7 6 (2.63%) TensorFlow
8 5 (2.19%) Langfuse
8 5 (2.19%) Microsoft Graph
8 5 (2.19%) Middleware
8 5 (2.19%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 32 (14.04%) Cloud Native
2 23 (10.09%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (6.14%) Onboarding
4 13 (5.70%) Data Structures
4 13 (5.70%) Product Ownership
5 12 (5.26%) Clustering
5 12 (5.26%) Virtual Team
6 11 (4.82%) Algorithms
7 6 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (2.19%) Distributed Architecture
9 4 (1.75%) Distributed Computing
10 3 (1.32%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.32%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.32%) Cyber Threat
10 3 (1.32%) Data Centre
10 3 (1.32%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.32%) PKI
10 3 (1.32%) Social Media
11 2 (0.88%) Management Information System
11 2 (0.88%) Media Streaming
Operating Systems
1 27 (11.84%) Linux
2 8 (3.51%) Unix
3 6 (2.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 4 (1.75%) Windows
5 3 (1.32%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.44%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (50.88%) Data Pipeline
2 93 (40.79%) Analytics
3 90 (39.47%) CI/CD
4 87 (38.16%) ETL
5 83 (36.40%) Data Engineering
6 81 (35.53%) AI
7 69 (30.26%) Agile
8 64 (28.07%) DevOps
9 61 (26.75%) Machine Learning
10 53 (23.25%) Data Modelling
11 44 (19.30%) Data Science
12 42 (18.42%) Problem-Solving
13 41 (17.98%) Containerisation
14 39 (17.11%) Infrastructure as Code
15 36 (15.79%) Data Governance
15 36 (15.79%) Test Automation
15 36 (15.79%) Validation
16 35 (15.35%) Data Analysis
17 33 (14.47%) Data Integration
17 33 (14.47%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 135 (59.21%) Python
2 118 (51.75%) SQL
3 53 (23.25%) Java
4 29 (12.72%) Scala
5 23 (10.09%) PowerShell
6 15 (6.58%) JavaScript
7 12 (5.26%) Bash
8 10 (4.39%) C#
8 10 (4.39%) R
9 4 (1.75%) Kusto Query Language
10 3 (1.32%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.88%) Go
11 2 (0.88%) Korn
12 1 (0.44%) Bicep
12 1 (0.44%) C
12 1 (0.44%) C++
12 1 (0.44%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.44%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.44%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 58 (25.44%) Security Cleared
2 40 (17.54%) SC Cleared
3 31 (13.60%) Degree
4 14 (6.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 13 (5.70%) DV Cleared
6 10 (4.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (4.39%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.75%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.75%) Azure Certification
8 3 (1.32%) PhD
9 2 (0.88%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 1 (0.44%) FFIEC
10 1 (0.44%) ISEB
10 1 (0.44%) MBA
10 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.44%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.44%) PMP
10 1 (0.44%) SnowPro
10 1 (0.44%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (20.61%) Data Quality
2 16 (7.02%) QA
3 8 (3.51%) GDPR
4 3 (1.32%) Actionable Recommendations
4 3 (1.32%) SLA
5 1 (0.44%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.44%) EMIR
5 1 (0.44%) EU AI Act
5 1 (0.44%) GLBA
5 1 (0.44%) IFRS
5 1 (0.44%) IFRS 9
5 1 (0.44%) MiFID
5 1 (0.44%) NCSC
5 1 (0.44%) NIST
5 1 (0.44%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.44%) PSD2
5 1 (0.44%) SEPA
System Software
1 43 (18.86%) Docker
2 9 (3.95%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (3.07%) HDFS
4 5 (2.19%) Active Directory
5 3 (1.32%) BitLocker
5 3 (1.32%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.32%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (1.32%) Terminal Services
5 3 (1.32%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.88%) Apache Flume
6 2 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 48 (21.05%) Kubernetes
2 24 (10.53%) Grafana
3 17 (7.46%) Ansible
4 13 (5.70%) Puppet
5 8 (3.51%) Kibana
6 6 (2.63%) Prometheus
6 6 (2.63%) Red Hat Satellite
7 5 (2.19%) Failover Clustering
8 3 (1.32%) Nagios
8 3 (1.32%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.32%) vMotion
9 1 (0.44%) Control-M
9 1 (0.44%) HAProxy
9 1 (0.44%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 61 (26.75%) Databricks
2 22 (9.65%) Google
3 19 (8.33%) Microsoft
4 16 (7.02%) Cloudera
4 16 (7.02%) Splunk
5 10 (4.39%) Oracle
6 9 (3.95%) Salesforce
6 9 (3.95%) VMware
7 7 (3.07%) Red Hat
8 5 (2.19%) Amplitude
8 5 (2.19%) Cisco
8 5 (2.19%) IBM
8 5 (2.19%) Informatica
9 4 (1.75%) Foundry
10 3 (1.32%) Dynatrace
10 3 (1.32%) HP
10 3 (1.32%) New Relic
10 3 (1.32%) Palantir
10 3 (1.32%) Talend
10 3 (1.32%) Tenable