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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 368 240 228
Rank change year-on-year -128 -12 +13
Contract jobs citing Big Data 280 327 464
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.10% 1.06%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.64% 5.89% 6.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 226 345
10th Percentile £355 £410 £361
25th Percentile £418 £476 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £569 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.34% -1.04% -4.17%
75th Percentile £649 £675 £744
90th Percentile £781 £744 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £505 £514 £510
% change year-on-year -1.73% +0.76% -15.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 3 11
10th Percentile £53.88 £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 £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 7,682 5,556 7,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.20% 18.63% 17.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,122 3,791 5,386
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 99 157
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.52 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £26.00 £20.98
Median hourly rate £41.71 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.17% -12.50% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.72 £66.00 £54.13
90th Percentile £78.58 £78.96 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.38 £31.85 £34.47
% change year-on-year +20.51% -7.60% -39.48%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 -163 213 £550 -3.51% 93
London -101 131 £586 -2.35% 49
UK excluding London -122 100 £505 -1.73% 58
Work from Home -44 95 £495 -5.71% 36
North of England -59 31 £525 -11.39% 14
Scotland +9 23 £380 -16.44% 1
South East -82 21 £538 -1.83% 19
North East -26 12 £450 -2.70% 2
Yorkshire -54 12 £569 -5.21% 1
Midlands -72 10 £540 +8.00% 1
South West -21 8 £525 -18.45% 17
East Midlands -24 7 £505 +23.17% 1
North West -41 7 - - 11
Wales - 5 £388 -
East of England -42 3 £540 -16.92% 2
West Midlands -68 3 £640 +24.90%

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
1 146 (52.14%) Apache Spark
2 42 (15.00%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (14.29%) Apache
4 8 (2.86%) Confluence
5 6 (2.14%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (2.14%) SAS
5 6 (2.14%) SharePoint
6 4 (1.43%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.36%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.36%) Camunda
Applications
1 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.71%) Endur
2 1 (0.36%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 142 (50.71%) AWS
2 116 (41.43%) Azure
3 86 (30.71%) GCP
4 43 (15.36%) Snowflake
5 33 (11.79%) Power Platform
6 30 (10.71%) Amazon S3
7 25 (8.93%) GitHub
8 23 (8.21%) Serverless
9 22 (7.86%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (7.50%) Amazon EMR
11 20 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
12 14 (5.00%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (5.00%) OpenShift
13 13 (4.64%) dbt
14 12 (4.29%) Amazon ECS
15 10 (3.57%) Azure Data Factory
16 8 (2.86%) Amazon EKS
16 8 (2.86%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 7 (2.50%) PaaS
18 6 (2.14%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.79%) IPv4
1 5 (1.79%) IPv6
2 3 (1.07%) DHCP
2 3 (1.07%) DNS
2 3 (1.07%) Firewall
2 3 (1.07%) SMTP
2 3 (1.07%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (26.43%) Hadoop
2 59 (21.07%) Data Warehouse
3 46 (16.43%) NoSQL
4 38 (13.57%) PostgreSQL
5 36 (12.86%) Data Lake
6 28 (10.00%) Power BI
7 22 (7.86%) Relational Database
8 21 (7.50%) Metadata
8 21 (7.50%) SQL Server
9 19 (6.79%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (6.43%) MongoDB
11 17 (6.07%) BigQuery
12 15 (5.36%) Tableau
13 13 (4.64%) DynamoDB
14 12 (4.29%) Apache Hive
14 12 (4.29%) MySQL
15 11 (3.93%) Amazon Athena
15 11 (3.93%) Amazon RDS
15 11 (3.93%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (3.21%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 43 (15.36%) Git
2 28 (10.00%) Jenkins
3 27 (9.64%) GitLab
4 16 (5.71%) JIRA
5 9 (3.21%) Selenium
6 6 (2.14%) Robot Framework
7 5 (1.79%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (1.07%) JUnit
8 3 (1.07%) Postman
8 3 (1.07%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.71%) ERwin
9 2 (0.71%) MLflow
10 1 (0.36%) Claude Code
General
1 96 (34.29%) Social Skills
2 75 (26.79%) Finance
3 69 (24.64%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (13.93%) Banking
5 21 (7.50%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.29%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.57%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.50%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.79%) Legal
10 5 (1.79%) Marketing
11 4 (1.43%) 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%) Pharmaceutical
13 1 (0.36%) Front Office
13 1 (0.36%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.36%) Military
Job Titles
1 85 (30.36%) Data Engineer
2 43 (15.36%) Architect
3 34 (12.14%) Senior
4 29 (10.36%) Developer
5 28 (10.00%) Lead
6 22 (7.86%) Analyst
7 20 (7.14%) Data Scientist
8 18 (6.43%) Data Architect
9 15 (5.36%) Data Analyst
9 15 (5.36%) Senior Data Engineer
10 14 (5.00%) Solutions Architect
11 11 (3.93%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.57%) Big Data Engineer
13 9 (3.21%) Java Engineer
14 8 (2.86%) Kafka Engineer
14 8 (2.86%) Python Engineer
14 8 (2.86%) QA Engineer
14 8 (2.86%) Scala Engineer
15 7 (2.50%) Data Integration Engineer
15 7 (2.50%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (22.14%) Kafka
2 28 (10.00%) PySpark
3 21 (7.50%) Spring
4 19 (6.79%) Spring Boot
5 17 (6.07%) REST
6 11 (3.93%) HTML
7 10 (3.57%) CSS
7 10 (3.57%) Pandas
8 9 (3.21%) PyTorch
8 9 (3.21%) TensorFlow
9 8 (2.86%) Play Framework
9 8 (2.86%) React
10 7 (2.50%) NumPy
11 6 (2.14%) Middleware
11 6 (2.14%) Node.js
11 6 (2.14%) scikit-learn
12 5 (1.79%) RESTful
13 4 (1.43%) AngularJS
13 4 (1.43%) Microsoft Graph
13 4 (1.43%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 35 (12.50%) Cloud Native
2 25 (8.93%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.79%) Product Ownership
4 17 (6.07%) Algorithms
5 12 (4.29%) Data Structures
5 12 (4.29%) Virtual Team
6 9 (3.21%) Clustering
7 8 (2.86%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (2.50%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.50%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.79%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.79%) Distributed Architecture
10 5 (1.79%) Reference Data
11 4 (1.43%) FMCG
11 4 (1.43%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.07%) AI Agents
12 3 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.07%) PKI
13 2 (0.71%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 20 (7.14%) Linux
2 16 (5.71%) Unix
3 5 (1.79%) Windows
3 5 (1.79%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (46.79%) Analytics
2 125 (44.64%) Data Pipeline
3 119 (42.50%) CI/CD
4 111 (39.64%) Data Engineering
5 102 (36.43%) Agile
6 99 (35.36%) ETL
7 79 (28.21%) AI
7 79 (28.21%) Machine Learning
8 75 (26.79%) Problem-Solving
9 72 (25.71%) Data Governance
10 71 (25.36%) Data Science
10 71 (25.36%) DevOps
11 70 (25.00%) Data Modelling
12 46 (16.43%) Containerisation
13 44 (15.71%) Scrum
14 43 (15.36%) Decision-Making
15 41 (14.64%) Visualisation
16 40 (14.29%) Business Intelligence
17 39 (13.93%) Data Architecture
18 38 (13.57%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 160 (57.14%) Python
2 146 (52.14%) SQL
3 63 (22.50%) Java
4 32 (11.43%) Scala
5 30 (10.71%) R
6 11 (3.93%) Bash
6 11 (3.93%) JavaScript
7 6 (2.14%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.79%) SAS Macro
9 4 (1.43%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.07%) C#
10 3 (1.07%) Rust
10 3 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.71%) C++
12 1 (0.36%) Ada
12 1 (0.36%) C
12 1 (0.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.36%) Korn
12 1 (0.36%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.36%) Perl
Qualifications
1 64 (22.86%) Security Cleared
2 52 (18.57%) SC Cleared
3 48 (17.14%) Degree
4 20 (7.14%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.14%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.79%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.79%) DV Cleared
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%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.36%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (22.86%) Data Quality
2 22 (7.86%) QA
3 17 (6.07%) GDPR
4 7 (2.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.50%) NIST
5 6 (2.14%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.71%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.36%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 55 (19.64%) Docker
2 7 (2.50%) HDFS
3 6 (2.14%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.07%) BitLocker
4 3 (1.07%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.07%) Microsoft App-V
4 3 (1.07%) Terminal Services
4 3 (1.07%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.07%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
5 1 (0.36%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 59 (21.07%) Kubernetes
2 38 (13.57%) Terraform
3 33 (11.79%) Grafana
4 15 (5.36%) Prometheus
5 9 (3.21%) Ansible
6 8 (2.86%) Kibana
7 4 (1.43%) Puppet
8 3 (1.07%) Nagios
8 3 (1.07%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.07%) vMotion
9 1 (0.36%) Control-M
9 1 (0.36%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.36%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 52 (18.57%) Databricks
2 25 (8.93%) Microsoft
3 20 (7.14%) Google
4 12 (4.29%) Splunk
5 11 (3.93%) Oracle
5 11 (3.93%) Salesforce
6 9 (3.21%) Informatica
6 9 (3.21%) Talend
7 8 (2.86%) IBM
8 5 (1.79%) Ab Initio
8 5 (1.79%) Teradata
9 4 (1.43%) Amplitude
9 4 (1.43%) Foundry
9 4 (1.43%) HP
9 4 (1.43%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.07%) Citrix
10 3 (1.07%) Guidewire
10 3 (1.07%) Symantec
10 3 (1.07%) Tenable
10 3 (1.07%) VMware