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

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 394 259 216
Rank change year-on-year -135 -43 +34
Contract jobs citing Big Data 289 339 490
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.55% 1.04% 1.14%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.55% 5.74% 6.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 187 240 358
10th Percentile £358 £408 £358
25th Percentile £430 £463 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £645 £653 £738
90th Percentile £752 £739 £832
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £512 £510
% change year-on-year -2.34% +0.39% -9.33%
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 8,131 5,907 7,601
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.37% 18.20% 17.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,384 4,010 5,415
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -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 259 103 141
10th Percentile £15.99 £19.82 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.00 £25.38 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -9.09% -33.67%
75th Percentile £64.00 £63.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £77.10 £76.50 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £32.75
% change year-on-year +20.89% -3.39% -40.45%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -163 223 £550 - 92
London -86 135 £600 +2.39% 67
UK excluding London -119 105 £500 -2.34% 38
Work from Home -65 93 £500 -4.76% 32
North of England -62 32 £538 -8.12% 8
Scotland +10 23 £380 -16.44%
South East -80 23 £525 -0.71% 15
Yorkshire -44 13 £550 -8.33% 4
North East -23 12 £450 -2.70% 1
Midlands -73 12 £500 +5.26% 1
East Midlands -25 9 £495 +20.73%
South West -35 8 £525 +2.44% 9
North West -55 7 - - 3
Wales - 5 £388 -
East of England -39 3 £540 -10.00%
West Midlands -75 3 £640 +25.00% 1

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
1 154 (53.29%) Apache Spark
2 46 (15.92%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (15.57%) Apache
4 6 (2.08%) Confluence
4 6 (2.08%) Microsoft Exchange
4 6 (2.08%) SAS
5 5 (1.73%) SharePoint
6 4 (1.38%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.69%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.69%) CMS
7 2 (0.69%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.35%) Camunda
8 1 (0.35%) Luigi
Applications
1 4 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.69%) Endur
2 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 154 (53.29%) AWS
2 125 (43.25%) Azure
3 95 (32.87%) GCP
4 45 (15.57%) Snowflake
5 36 (12.46%) Power Platform
6 32 (11.07%) Amazon S3
7 25 (8.65%) GitHub
8 23 (7.96%) Serverless
9 22 (7.61%) AWS Lambda
10 20 (6.92%) Amazon EMR
10 20 (6.92%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (4.84%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (4.84%) OpenShift
12 13 (4.50%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (4.50%) dbt
13 10 (3.46%) Azure Data Factory
14 9 (3.11%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (2.77%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 7 (2.42%) PaaS
16 7 (2.42%) Salesforce Service Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.73%) IPv4
1 5 (1.73%) IPv6
2 3 (1.04%) DHCP
2 3 (1.04%) DNS
2 3 (1.04%) Firewall
2 3 (1.04%) SMTP
2 3 (1.04%) VPN
3 2 (0.69%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (25.61%) Hadoop
2 62 (21.45%) Data Warehouse
3 48 (16.61%) NoSQL
4 40 (13.84%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (13.49%) Data Lake
6 31 (10.73%) Power BI
7 22 (7.61%) Relational Database
8 21 (7.27%) SQL Server
9 20 (6.92%) Amazon Redshift
9 20 (6.92%) Metadata
10 19 (6.57%) MongoDB
11 18 (6.23%) BigQuery
12 16 (5.54%) Apache Hive
13 13 (4.50%) DynamoDB
13 13 (4.50%) MySQL
13 13 (4.50%) Tableau
14 12 (4.15%) Amazon Athena
14 12 (4.15%) Amazon RDS
15 10 (3.46%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (3.11%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 43 (14.88%) Git
2 29 (10.03%) Jenkins
3 28 (9.69%) GitLab
4 14 (4.84%) JIRA
5 9 (3.11%) Selenium
6 6 (2.08%) Robot Framework
7 5 (1.73%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (1.04%) JUnit
8 3 (1.04%) Postman
8 3 (1.04%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.69%) ERwin
9 2 (0.69%) MLflow
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 99 (34.26%) Social Skills
2 72 (24.91%) Analytical Skills
3 70 (24.22%) Finance
4 40 (13.84%) Banking
5 24 (8.30%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.15%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.46%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.42%) Telecoms
10 6 (2.08%) Legal
11 5 (1.73%) Marketing
12 4 (1.38%) Retail
13 2 (0.69%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.69%) Local Government
13 2 (0.69%) 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 90 (31.14%) Data Engineer
2 50 (17.30%) Architect
3 40 (13.84%) Senior
4 32 (11.07%) Developer
5 25 (8.65%) Lead
6 21 (7.27%) Data Architect
7 20 (6.92%) Data Scientist
8 18 (6.23%) Senior Data Engineer
9 17 (5.88%) Solutions Architect
10 15 (5.19%) Analyst
11 12 (4.15%) Java Developer
12 11 (3.81%) Big Data Engineer
13 9 (3.11%) Data Analyst
13 9 (3.11%) Python Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) Java Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) Kafka Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) QA Engineer
14 8 (2.77%) Scala Engineer
15 7 (2.42%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 70 (24.22%) Kafka
2 32 (11.07%) PySpark
3 21 (7.27%) Spring
4 19 (6.57%) REST
4 19 (6.57%) Spring Boot
5 10 (3.46%) CSS
5 10 (3.46%) HTML
5 10 (3.46%) Pandas
5 10 (3.46%) PyTorch
5 10 (3.46%) TensorFlow
6 8 (2.77%) Play Framework
6 8 (2.77%) React
7 6 (2.08%) Middleware
7 6 (2.08%) NumPy
8 5 (1.73%) Apache NiFi
8 5 (1.73%) Microsoft Graph
8 5 (1.73%) Node.js
8 5 (1.73%) RESTful
8 5 (1.73%) scikit-learn
9 4 (1.38%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 40 (13.84%) Cloud Native
2 26 (9.00%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.57%) Product Ownership
4 17 (5.88%) Algorithms
5 14 (4.84%) Virtual Team
6 12 (4.15%) Data Structures
7 9 (3.11%) Clustering
7 9 (3.11%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (2.42%) Data Centre
8 7 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
8 7 (2.42%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.73%) Cyber Threat
9 5 (1.73%) Distributed Architecture
9 5 (1.73%) Reference Data
10 4 (1.38%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.38%) FMCG
10 4 (1.38%) Management Information System
11 3 (1.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 3 (1.04%) PKI
12 2 (0.69%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.61%) Linux
2 16 (5.54%) Unix
3 5 (1.73%) Windows
3 5 (1.73%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (48.44%) Data Pipeline
2 130 (44.98%) Analytics
3 124 (42.91%) CI/CD
4 116 (40.14%) Data Engineering
5 105 (36.33%) Agile
5 105 (36.33%) ETL
6 83 (28.72%) AI
6 83 (28.72%) Machine Learning
7 78 (26.99%) Problem-Solving
8 74 (25.61%) Data Governance
8 74 (25.61%) Data Science
9 73 (25.26%) Data Modelling
9 73 (25.26%) DevOps
10 52 (17.99%) Containerisation
11 46 (15.92%) Scrum
12 45 (15.57%) Decision-Making
13 42 (14.53%) Data Architecture
14 41 (14.19%) Business Intelligence
14 41 (14.19%) Validation
15 40 (13.84%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 165 (57.09%) Python
2 147 (50.87%) SQL
3 67 (23.18%) Java
4 34 (11.76%) Scala
5 26 (9.00%) R
6 13 (4.50%) Bash
7 12 (4.15%) JavaScript
8 9 (3.11%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.73%) SAS Macro
10 4 (1.38%) C#
10 4 (1.38%) TypeScript
11 3 (1.04%) Rust
11 3 (1.04%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.69%) 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 68 (23.53%) Security Cleared
2 55 (19.03%) SC Cleared
3 50 (17.30%) Degree
4 23 (7.96%) Master's Degree
5 17 (5.88%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.08%) AWS Certification
7 6 (2.08%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.73%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.04%) IBM Certification
9 3 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.04%) PhD
9 3 (1.04%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.69%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.69%) CISSP
10 2 (0.69%) MCITP
10 2 (0.69%) MCTS
10 2 (0.69%) Numerate Degree
10 2 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (23.88%) Data Quality
2 25 (8.65%) QA
3 20 (6.92%) GDPR
4 7 (2.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.42%) NIST
5 4 (1.38%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.69%) PCI DSS
6 2 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.69%) SLA
7 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.35%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 58 (20.07%) Docker
2 8 (2.77%) HDFS
3 6 (2.08%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.04%) BitLocker
4 3 (1.04%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.04%) Microsoft App-V
4 3 (1.04%) Terminal Services
4 3 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.69%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 62 (21.45%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.49%) Terraform
3 33 (11.42%) Grafana
4 15 (5.19%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.46%) Ansible
6 8 (2.77%) Kibana
7 5 (1.73%) Puppet
8 3 (1.04%) Nagios
8 3 (1.04%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.04%) vMotion
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 58 (20.07%) Databricks
2 27 (9.34%) Microsoft
3 22 (7.61%) Google
4 12 (4.15%) Salesforce
4 12 (4.15%) Splunk
5 11 (3.81%) Oracle
6 9 (3.11%) Informatica
6 9 (3.11%) Talend
7 8 (2.77%) IBM
8 5 (1.73%) Ab Initio
8 5 (1.73%) Amplitude
8 5 (1.73%) Foundry
8 5 (1.73%) Teradata
9 4 (1.38%) Cloudera
9 4 (1.38%) HP
9 4 (1.38%) OpenAI
10 3 (1.04%) Citrix
10 3 (1.04%) Symantec
10 3 (1.04%) Tenable
10 3 (1.04%) VMware