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 6 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 363 234 232
Rank change year-on-year -129 -2 -46
Contract jobs citing Big Data 247 339 449
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 1.09% 1.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.85% 5.89% 6.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 221 307
10th Percentile £322 £365 £400
25th Percentile £384 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -8.33%
75th Percentile £618 £675 £700
90th Percentile £763 £744 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £446 £613 £510
% change year-on-year -27.18% +20.10% -11.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 27
10th Percentile £52.75 - £22.28
25th Percentile £55.00 £51.25 £33.88
Median hourly rate £64.00 £52.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +21.90% +13.69% +5.84%
75th Percentile - £53.75 £62.25
90th Percentile £67.26 - £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £46.18

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 6,421 5,760 7,273
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.40% 18.49% 16.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,417 3,805 5,193
10th Percentile £336 £356 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 118 89 183
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.65
25th Percentile £29.00 £25.09 £20.99
Median hourly rate £53.25 £38.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +39.73% -10.33% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.73 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.30 £70.75 £77.31
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.25 £30.11 £40.00
% change year-on-year +86.85% -24.74% -29.65%

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 6 February 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 6 February 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 6 February 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 -137 197 £500 -11.50% 126
London -74 130 £550 - 61
UK excluding London -107 79 £446 -27.18% 83
Work from Home -49 74 £449 -14.24% 55
Scotland +16 21 £460 +17.95% 6
North of England -56 17 £448 -33.70% 22
South East -51 16 £438 -12.50% 30
North West -21 13 £473 -30.00% 16
Midlands -49 13 £428 -5.94% 5
East Midlands -22 9 £423 -3.43% 2
South West -28 8 £525 -21.35% 4
West Midlands -42 4 £449 -24.24% 3
Wales -2 3 £375 -34.44% 2
North East -19 3 £413 +0.86% 4
East of England -34 2 £505 -22.31% 14
Yorkshire -60 1 - - 2

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
1 118 (47.77%) Apache Spark
2 42 (17.00%) Apache
3 34 (13.77%) Apache Airflow
4 17 (6.88%) Confluence
5 9 (3.64%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (1.62%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.81%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.81%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.81%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.40%) Camunda
8 1 (0.40%) IIS
8 1 (0.40%) nginx
8 1 (0.40%) SAS
Applications
1 3 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.40%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.40%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 2 (0.81%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 105 (42.51%) AWS
2 82 (33.20%) Azure
3 52 (21.05%) GCP
4 31 (12.55%) Power Platform
5 28 (11.34%) Serverless
6 26 (10.53%) Snowflake
7 18 (7.29%) GitHub
8 14 (5.67%) GitHub Actions
9 13 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
10 11 (4.45%) Amazon S3
10 11 (4.45%) AWS Lambda
11 9 (3.64%) Azure DevOps
12 7 (2.83%) Amazon ECS
13 6 (2.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 6 (2.43%) Amazon SageMaker
13 6 (2.43%) OpenShift
14 5 (2.02%) Amazon EKS
14 5 (2.02%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 5 (2.02%) Microsoft Copilot
15 4 (1.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.21%) Kerberos
1 3 (1.21%) VPN
2 1 (0.40%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 89 (36.03%) Hadoop
2 64 (25.91%) Data Warehouse
3 36 (14.57%) NoSQL
4 32 (12.96%) Data Lake
5 29 (11.74%) Metadata
5 29 (11.74%) Power BI
6 27 (10.93%) Relational Database
7 25 (10.12%) SQL Server
8 23 (9.31%) PostgreSQL
9 22 (8.91%) Apache Hive
10 20 (8.10%) Elasticsearch
11 16 (6.48%) Tableau
12 14 (5.67%) RDBMS
13 11 (4.45%) Impala
14 10 (4.05%) HBase
15 9 (3.64%) MongoDB
15 9 (3.64%) MySQL
16 8 (3.24%) Amazon Redshift
16 8 (3.24%) BigQuery
17 7 (2.83%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 33 (13.36%) Git
2 21 (8.50%) JIRA
3 20 (8.10%) GitLab
3 20 (8.10%) Jenkins
4 5 (2.02%) ERwin
4 5 (2.02%) MLflow
5 4 (1.62%) ER Studio
6 3 (1.21%) Postman
6 3 (1.21%) Robot Framework
6 3 (1.21%) Selenium
7 2 (0.81%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.81%) Cypress.io
7 2 (0.81%) Subversion
7 2 (0.81%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (0.40%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.40%) Gradle
8 1 (0.40%) Pylint
8 1 (0.40%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.40%) SpecFlow
8 1 (0.40%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 85 (34.41%) Social Skills
2 66 (26.72%) Finance
3 39 (15.79%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (11.74%) Banking
5 19 (7.69%) Public Sector
6 9 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.02%) Investment Banking
8 4 (1.62%) Telecoms
9 3 (1.21%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.81%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.81%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.40%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.40%) Front Office
11 1 (0.40%) Marketing
11 1 (0.40%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.40%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 72 (29.15%) Data Engineer
2 31 (12.55%) Senior
3 28 (11.34%) Lead
4 24 (9.72%) Data Scientist
5 22 (8.91%) Architect
6 21 (8.50%) Developer
7 20 (8.10%) Data Architect
8 14 (5.67%) Analyst
9 12 (4.86%) Data Analyst
10 9 (3.64%) Senior Data Engineer
11 8 (3.24%) Java Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) AWS Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) Big Data Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) Data Modeller
12 7 (2.83%) Machine Learning Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) Platform Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) QA Engineer
12 7 (2.83%) Senior Data Scientist
12 7 (2.83%) Software Engineer
13 6 (2.43%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (19.03%) Kafka
2 31 (12.55%) PySpark
3 16 (6.48%) Apache NiFi
3 16 (6.48%) scikit-learn
4 15 (6.07%) Pandas
5 12 (4.86%) REST
5 12 (4.86%) TensorFlow
6 10 (4.05%) RESTful
7 9 (3.64%) Flask
7 9 (3.64%) HTML
7 9 (3.64%) NumPy
7 9 (3.64%) React
7 9 (3.64%) Spring
8 8 (3.24%) .NET
8 8 (3.24%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (3.24%) PyTorch
8 8 (3.24%) RabbitMQ
8 8 (3.24%) Spring Boot
9 7 (2.83%) JSON
9 7 (2.83%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 22 (8.91%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.67%) Algorithms
2 14 (5.67%) Distributed Computing
3 8 (3.24%) Virtual Team
4 7 (2.83%) Data Protection Act
4 7 (2.83%) Data Structures
5 6 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (2.43%) Management Information System
5 6 (2.43%) Onboarding
5 6 (2.43%) Product Ownership
6 5 (2.02%) Reference Data
7 4 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
7 4 (1.62%) Derivative
7 4 (1.62%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.21%) AI Agents
8 3 (1.21%) Data Centre
9 2 (0.81%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.81%) FMCG
9 2 (0.81%) Legacy Systems
9 2 (0.81%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 27 (10.93%) Linux
2 13 (5.26%) Unix
3 1 (0.40%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 94 (38.06%) Analytics
2 92 (37.25%) ETL
3 81 (32.79%) Data Pipeline
4 80 (32.39%) Data Modelling
5 78 (31.58%) Problem-Solving
6 74 (29.96%) Agile
6 74 (29.96%) CI/CD
7 72 (29.15%) Data Governance
8 66 (26.72%) Data Engineering
9 63 (25.51%) Data Science
10 60 (24.29%) Machine Learning
11 51 (20.65%) Visualisation
12 50 (20.24%) DevOps
13 49 (19.84%) AI
14 39 (15.79%) Data Architecture
15 37 (14.98%) Business Intelligence
16 36 (14.57%) Computer Science
16 36 (14.57%) Decision-Making
17 33 (13.36%) Software Engineering
18 32 (12.96%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 159 (64.37%) Python
2 131 (53.04%) SQL
3 47 (19.03%) Java
4 27 (10.93%) R
5 25 (10.12%) Scala
6 13 (5.26%) Bash
6 13 (5.26%) C#
6 13 (5.26%) C++
6 13 (5.26%) JavaScript
7 6 (2.43%) Shell Script
8 4 (1.62%) Perl
9 3 (1.21%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.81%) Ada
10 2 (0.81%) PL/SQL
10 2 (0.81%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.81%) T-SQL
11 1 (0.40%) Go
11 1 (0.40%) Korn
11 1 (0.40%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 62 (25.10%) Security Cleared
2 49 (19.84%) SC Cleared
3 47 (19.03%) Degree
4 23 (9.31%) Computer Science Degree
4 23 (9.31%) Master's Degree
5 18 (7.29%) DV Cleared
6 6 (2.43%) Azure Certification
7 4 (1.62%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.62%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.21%) IBM Certification
8 3 (1.21%) ITIL Certification
8 3 (1.21%) PhD
9 2 (0.81%) Numerate Degree
10 1 (0.40%) HP APS
10 1 (0.40%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.40%) OCP
10 1 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
10 1 (0.40%) Postgraduate
10 1 (0.40%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (25.10%) Data Quality
2 16 (6.48%) QA
3 15 (6.07%) GDPR
4 5 (2.02%) Actionable Recommendations
5 4 (1.62%) Accessibility
6 3 (1.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.81%) PCI DSS
7 2 (0.81%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.40%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.40%) IFRS
8 1 (0.40%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.40%) ISO 13485
8 1 (0.40%) Solvency II
System Software
1 42 (17.00%) Docker
2 12 (4.86%) HDFS
3 2 (0.81%) Slurm Workload Manager
4 1 (0.40%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 43 (17.41%) Kubernetes
2 19 (7.69%) Terraform
3 12 (4.86%) Grafana
4 11 (4.45%) Prometheus
5 6 (2.43%) Kibana
6 5 (2.02%) logstash
7 4 (1.62%) Ansible
8 3 (1.21%) Argo
8 3 (1.21%) Nagios
8 3 (1.21%) Rancher
9 2 (0.81%) Hadoop YARN
10 1 (0.40%) HP ALM
10 1 (0.40%) Kustomize
10 1 (0.40%) Oozie
10 1 (0.40%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 44 (17.81%) Databricks
2 18 (7.29%) Microsoft
3 16 (6.48%) Google
4 12 (4.86%) Cloudera
5 11 (4.45%) Oracle
6 9 (3.64%) Foundry
6 9 (3.64%) Palantir
7 8 (3.24%) Informatica
8 7 (2.83%) Talend
9 6 (2.43%) Ab Initio
10 5 (2.02%) IBM
10 5 (2.02%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.21%) OpenAI
12 2 (0.81%) Salesforce
12 2 (0.81%) Splunk
12 2 (0.81%) Sybase
12 2 (0.81%) Teradata
13 1 (0.40%) Atlassian
13 1 (0.40%) HP
13 1 (0.40%) Vertica