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

6 months to
7 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 374 244 230
Rank change year-on-year -130 -14 +3
Contract jobs citing Big Data 283 312 442
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.57% 1.07% 1.02%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.79% 5.67% 5.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 192 217 338
10th Percentile £355 £409 £371
25th Percentile £423 £466 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £568 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.17% -1.22% -4.17%
75th Percentile £645 £675 £750
90th Percentile £781 £743 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £520 £515
% change year-on-year -3.85% +0.97% -12.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 10
10th Percentile £58.60 £42.42 £18.20
25th Percentile £64.00 £47.61 £19.90
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £41.25
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +39.39% -47.12%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £46.56
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £51.13
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 £19.38
% change year-on-year +79.67% +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 7,464 5,507 7,376
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.08% 18.84% 16.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,998 3,746 5,288
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.10% -1.71% -4.28%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £761 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 232 102 152
10th Percentile £14.09 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.80 £23.50 £20.77
Median hourly rate £42.75 £34.19 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.04% -14.53% -33.33%
75th Percentile £73.00 £65.34 £55.63
90th Percentile £82.05 £77.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.84% -9.60% -40.26%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 -169 214 £550 -3.51% 156
London -97 132 £581 -0.85% 87
UK excluding London -109 99 £500 -3.85% 79
Work from Home -52 93 £488 -7.14% 94
North of England -68 27 £550 -8.33% 31
Scotland +13 23 £389 -14.57% 3
South East -71 23 £513 -6.39% 12
Yorkshire -51 11 £588 -2.08% 4
Midlands -63 11 £495 -1.00% 2
North East -15 10 £510 +10.27% 11
South West -23 8 £525 -19.23% 20
East Midlands -33 7 £495 +20.73% 1
North West -51 6 - - 17
Wales - 5 £388 - 1
West Midlands -64 4 £545 +6.36% 1
East of England -36 3 £540 -16.92% 4

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
1 150 (53.00%) Apache Spark
2 42 (14.84%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (14.13%) Apache
4 12 (4.24%) Confluence
5 5 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
5 5 (1.77%) SAS
5 5 (1.77%) SharePoint
6 3 (1.06%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.71%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.35%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.35%) Camunda
Applications
1 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 1 (0.35%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 143 (50.53%) AWS
2 121 (42.76%) Azure
3 86 (30.39%) GCP
4 40 (14.13%) Snowflake
5 32 (11.31%) Power Platform
6 29 (10.25%) GitHub
7 28 (9.89%) Amazon S3
8 27 (9.54%) Serverless
9 25 (8.83%) AWS Lambda
10 20 (7.07%) Amazon EMR
11 19 (6.71%) Azure DevOps
12 18 (6.36%) GitHub Actions
13 13 (4.59%) dbt
13 13 (4.59%) OpenShift
14 11 (3.89%) Azure Data Factory
15 9 (3.18%) Amazon ECS
16 7 (2.47%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 6 (2.12%) Amazon EKS
17 6 (2.12%) PaaS
18 5 (1.77%) Datadog
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.77%) IPv4
1 5 (1.77%) IPv6
2 3 (1.06%) VPN
3 2 (0.71%) DHCP
3 2 (0.71%) DNS
3 2 (0.71%) Firewall
3 2 (0.71%) SMTP
4 1 (0.35%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (26.50%) Hadoop
2 65 (22.97%) Data Warehouse
3 46 (16.25%) NoSQL
4 37 (13.07%) Data Lake
5 35 (12.37%) PostgreSQL
6 27 (9.54%) Power BI
7 22 (7.77%) Amazon Redshift
7 22 (7.77%) Relational Database
8 20 (7.07%) Metadata
8 20 (7.07%) SQL Server
9 18 (6.36%) MongoDB
10 17 (6.01%) BigQuery
11 14 (4.95%) Tableau
12 13 (4.59%) DynamoDB
13 12 (4.24%) Apache Hive
14 11 (3.89%) MySQL
15 10 (3.53%) Elasticsearch
16 9 (3.18%) Amazon Athena
16 9 (3.18%) Amazon Aurora
16 9 (3.18%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 44 (15.55%) Git
2 29 (10.25%) Jenkins
3 26 (9.19%) GitLab
4 20 (7.07%) JIRA
5 10 (3.53%) Selenium
6 7 (2.47%) Robot Framework
7 4 (1.41%) Postman
7 4 (1.41%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (1.06%) JUnit
8 3 (1.06%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.71%) ERwin
9 2 (0.71%) MLflow
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
General
1 97 (34.28%) Social Skills
2 73 (25.80%) Finance
3 68 (24.03%) Analytical Skills
4 35 (12.37%) Banking
5 22 (7.77%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.89%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.53%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.47%) Telecoms
10 5 (1.77%) Legal
10 5 (1.77%) Marketing
11 4 (1.41%) 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%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.35%) Agriculture
13 1 (0.35%) Corporate Banking
13 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 89 (31.45%) Data Engineer
2 40 (14.13%) Architect
3 34 (12.01%) Senior
4 29 (10.25%) Lead
5 28 (9.89%) Developer
6 24 (8.48%) Analyst
7 21 (7.42%) Data Scientist
8 18 (6.36%) Data Architect
9 16 (5.65%) Data Analyst
10 15 (5.30%) Senior Data Engineer
11 12 (4.24%) Solutions Architect
12 10 (3.53%) Java Developer
12 10 (3.53%) Java Engineer
13 9 (3.18%) QA Engineer
14 8 (2.83%) Business Analyst
14 8 (2.83%) Kafka Engineer
14 8 (2.83%) Scala Engineer
15 7 (2.47%) Data Integration Engineer
15 7 (2.47%) Python Engineer
15 7 (2.47%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (21.91%) Kafka
2 33 (11.66%) PySpark
3 21 (7.42%) Spring
4 19 (6.71%) Spring Boot
5 15 (5.30%) REST
6 13 (4.59%) HTML
7 12 (4.24%) Pandas
7 12 (4.24%) TensorFlow
8 11 (3.89%) CSS
8 11 (3.89%) PyTorch
9 9 (3.18%) scikit-learn
10 8 (2.83%) NumPy
10 8 (2.83%) Play Framework
11 7 (2.47%) Node.js
11 7 (2.47%) React
12 5 (1.77%) Keras
12 5 (1.77%) Middleware
12 5 (1.77%) RESTful
13 4 (1.41%) Matplotlib
13 4 (1.41%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.31%) Cloud Native
2 20 (7.07%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.71%) Product Ownership
4 17 (6.01%) Algorithms
5 12 (4.24%) Data Structures
6 9 (3.18%) Virtual Team
7 8 (2.83%) Clustering
7 8 (2.83%) Distributed Computing
8 7 (2.47%) Onboarding
9 6 (2.12%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.12%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.77%) Cyber Threat
10 5 (1.77%) Distributed Architecture
10 5 (1.77%) Reference Data
11 4 (1.41%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.41%) FMCG
12 3 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
12 3 (1.06%) Educational Technology
12 3 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.06%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 19 (6.71%) Linux
2 16 (5.65%) Unix
3 4 (1.41%) Windows
3 4 (1.41%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (45.58%) Analytics
2 125 (44.17%) Data Pipeline
3 122 (43.11%) CI/CD
4 110 (38.87%) Data Engineering
5 108 (38.16%) ETL
6 102 (36.04%) Agile
7 77 (27.21%) Machine Learning
8 74 (26.15%) AI
8 74 (26.15%) Problem-Solving
9 73 (25.80%) DevOps
10 72 (25.44%) Data Governance
11 71 (25.09%) Data Modelling
11 71 (25.09%) Data Science
12 45 (15.90%) Scrum
13 42 (14.84%) Visualisation
14 40 (14.13%) Business Intelligence
14 40 (14.13%) Containerisation
15 39 (13.78%) Decision-Making
16 38 (13.43%) Data Analysis
17 37 (13.07%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 162 (57.24%) Python
2 155 (54.77%) SQL
3 64 (22.61%) Java
4 32 (11.31%) Scala
5 31 (10.95%) R
6 12 (4.24%) JavaScript
7 8 (2.83%) Bash
8 5 (1.77%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.77%) SAS Macro
8 5 (1.77%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.41%) C#
10 3 (1.06%) C++
10 3 (1.06%) Rust
10 3 (1.06%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.71%) Ada
12 1 (0.35%) C
12 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.35%) Korn
12 1 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 68 (24.03%) Security Cleared
2 55 (19.43%) SC Cleared
3 49 (17.31%) Degree
4 23 (8.13%) Master's Degree
5 19 (6.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (2.12%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.77%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.41%) AWS Certification
10 3 (1.06%) IBM Certification
10 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.06%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.71%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 2 (0.71%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.71%) CISSP
11 2 (0.71%) MCITP
11 2 (0.71%) MCTS
11 2 (0.71%) Numerate Degree
11 2 (0.71%) PhD
11 2 (0.71%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (24.03%) Data Quality
2 24 (8.48%) QA
3 17 (6.01%) GDPR
4 7 (2.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.47%) NIST
5 6 (2.12%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.71%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.71%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.35%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 53 (18.73%) Docker
2 8 (2.83%) HDFS
3 5 (1.77%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.71%) BitLocker
5 2 (0.71%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.71%) Microsoft App-V
5 2 (0.71%) Terminal Services
5 2 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.35%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 57 (20.14%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.78%) Terraform
3 33 (11.66%) Grafana
4 15 (5.30%) Prometheus
5 8 (2.83%) Kibana
6 6 (2.12%) Ansible
7 2 (0.71%) Nagios
7 2 (0.71%) Puppet
7 2 (0.71%) vCenter Server
7 2 (0.71%) vMotion
8 1 (0.35%) Control-M
8 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
8 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 58 (20.49%) Databricks
2 26 (9.19%) Microsoft
3 20 (7.07%) Google
4 12 (4.24%) Splunk
5 10 (3.53%) Oracle
6 9 (3.18%) Informatica
6 9 (3.18%) Talend
7 7 (2.47%) IBM
7 7 (2.47%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.77%) Ab Initio
8 5 (1.77%) Foundry
8 5 (1.77%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.77%) Teradata
9 4 (1.41%) Cloudera
10 3 (1.06%) Guidewire
10 3 (1.06%) HP
10 3 (1.06%) Palantir
10 3 (1.06%) Tenable
11 2 (0.71%) Citrix
11 2 (0.71%) VMware