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

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 390 261 206
Rank change year-on-year -129 -55 +47
Contract jobs citing Big Data 284 343 480
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.54% 1.05% 1.17%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.50% 5.76% 6.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 184 242 348
10th Percentile £358 £406 £350
25th Percentile £425 £455 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year - -2.22% -6.25%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £739
90th Percentile £738 £738 £832
UK excluding London median daily rate £503 £500 £520
% change year-on-year +0.50% -3.85% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 3 6
10th Percentile £54.25 £42.42 £18.20
25th Percentile £63.25 £47.61 £22.71
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 £43.75
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £46.25
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 8,109 5,957 7,356
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.38% 18.24% 17.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,360 4,029 5,243
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 256 96 114
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.42 £14.08
25th Percentile £24.85 £25.99 £20.19
Median hourly rate £41.36 £38.48 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +7.48% +1.26% -30.91%
75th Percentile £63.81 £65.25 £56.88
90th Percentile £77.00 £78.10 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £32.05 £30.00
% change year-on-year +23.24% +6.83% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -177 221 £550 - 124
London -104 133 £598 +2.75% 94
UK excluding London -114 104 £503 +0.50% 40
Work from Home -70 96 £498 -3.19% 40
North of England -57 32 £550 +4.76% 8
Scotland +12 23 £380 -14.99%
South East -91 20 £525 -4.11% 17
Midlands -70 15 £414 -3.94% 4
Yorkshire -42 14 £550 -8.33% 2
North East -31 10 £510 +10.27% 1
East Midlands -20 9 £495 +20.73% 2
South West -35 9 £515 +14.44% 8
North West -45 8 £600 +14.29% 5
West Midlands -67 6 £410 -20.02% 2
East of England -40 3 £540 -1.82% 5
Wales - 3 £425 -

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
1 148 (52.11%) Apache Spark
2 46 (16.20%) Apache Airflow
3 45 (15.85%) Apache
4 10 (3.52%) Confluence
5 6 (2.11%) SAS
6 5 (1.76%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.76%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (1.06%) CMS
9 2 (0.70%) Apache Pig
9 2 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.35%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.35%) Camunda
10 1 (0.35%) Luigi
Applications
1 4 (1.41%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 2 (0.70%) Endur
2 1 (0.35%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 149 (52.46%) AWS
2 115 (40.49%) Azure
3 91 (32.04%) GCP
4 45 (15.85%) Snowflake
5 35 (12.32%) Power Platform
6 32 (11.27%) Amazon S3
7 23 (8.10%) GitHub
8 22 (7.75%) Serverless
9 21 (7.39%) Amazon EMR
9 21 (7.39%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.69%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (4.93%) Amazon ECS
11 14 (4.93%) dbt
12 13 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
13 12 (4.23%) OpenShift
14 10 (3.52%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (3.17%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (2.46%) PaaS
16 7 (2.46%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 6 (2.11%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.76%) IPv4
1 5 (1.76%) IPv6
2 3 (1.06%) Broadband
2 3 (1.06%) DHCP
2 3 (1.06%) DNS
2 3 (1.06%) Firewall
2 3 (1.06%) SMTP
2 3 (1.06%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (23.94%) Hadoop
2 59 (20.77%) Data Warehouse
3 45 (15.85%) NoSQL
4 44 (15.49%) Data Lake
5 35 (12.32%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (11.27%) Power BI
7 21 (7.39%) Metadata
8 20 (7.04%) Amazon Redshift
9 19 (6.69%) Relational Database
9 19 (6.69%) SQL Server
10 18 (6.34%) Apache Hive
10 18 (6.34%) BigQuery
11 17 (5.99%) MongoDB
12 14 (4.93%) DynamoDB
13 13 (4.58%) Amazon Athena
13 13 (4.58%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (4.58%) MySQL
13 13 (4.58%) Tableau
14 9 (3.17%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (3.17%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 41 (14.44%) Git
2 28 (9.86%) GitLab
3 27 (9.51%) Jenkins
4 18 (6.34%) JIRA
5 8 (2.82%) Selenium
6 5 (1.76%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (1.41%) Robot Framework
8 3 (1.06%) JUnit
8 3 (1.06%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.70%) ERwin
9 2 (0.70%) MLflow
10 1 (0.35%) Claude Code
10 1 (0.35%) Postman
General
1 94 (33.10%) Social Skills
2 69 (24.30%) Analytical Skills
3 65 (22.89%) Finance
4 40 (14.08%) Banking
5 23 (8.10%) Public Sector
6 13 (4.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
8 10 (3.52%) Investment Banking
9 7 (2.46%) Telecoms
10 6 (2.11%) Legal
11 5 (1.76%) Marketing
12 4 (1.41%) Retail
13 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
13 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.70%) Local Government
13 2 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
14 1 (0.35%) Agriculture
14 1 (0.35%) Corporate Banking
14 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
14 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 86 (30.28%) Data Engineer
2 53 (18.66%) Architect
3 44 (15.49%) Senior
4 30 (10.56%) Developer
5 23 (8.10%) Data Architect
6 19 (6.69%) Lead
7 18 (6.34%) Senior Data Engineer
7 18 (6.34%) Solutions Architect
8 16 (5.63%) Data Scientist
9 15 (5.28%) Analyst
10 11 (3.87%) Big Data Engineer
11 10 (3.52%) Java Developer
12 9 (3.17%) Data Analyst
13 8 (2.82%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
13 8 (2.82%) DevOps Engineer
13 8 (2.82%) Kafka Engineer
13 8 (2.82%) Python Engineer
13 8 (2.82%) Scala Engineer
14 7 (2.46%) Data Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.46%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 68 (23.94%) Kafka
2 31 (10.92%) PySpark
3 20 (7.04%) REST
4 18 (6.34%) Spring
5 16 (5.63%) Spring Boot
6 9 (3.17%) CSS
6 9 (3.17%) HTML
6 9 (3.17%) Pandas
6 9 (3.17%) PyTorch
6 9 (3.17%) TensorFlow
7 8 (2.82%) Apache NiFi
7 8 (2.82%) Play Framework
7 8 (2.82%) React
8 6 (2.11%) Elastic Stack
8 6 (2.11%) Middleware
9 5 (1.76%) Microsoft Graph
9 5 (1.76%) Node.js
9 5 (1.76%) NumPy
9 5 (1.76%) RESTful
9 5 (1.76%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 42 (14.79%) Cloud Native
2 27 (9.51%) Distributed Systems
3 19 (6.69%) Product Ownership
4 16 (5.63%) Virtual Team
5 14 (4.93%) Algorithms
6 13 (4.58%) Data Structures
7 9 (3.17%) Clustering
7 9 (3.17%) Distributed Computing
7 9 (3.17%) Onboarding
8 7 (2.46%) Data Centre
9 6 (2.11%) Cyber Threat
9 6 (2.11%) Data Protection Act
10 5 (1.76%) Distributed Architecture
10 5 (1.76%) Reference Data
11 4 (1.41%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.41%) FMCG
11 4 (1.41%) Management Information System
12 3 (1.06%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 3 (1.06%) PKI
12 3 (1.06%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 22 (7.75%) Linux
2 15 (5.28%) Unix
3 5 (1.76%) Windows
3 5 (1.76%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.35%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (48.94%) Data Pipeline
2 130 (45.77%) Analytics
3 116 (40.85%) CI/CD
4 110 (38.73%) Agile
5 109 (38.38%) Data Engineering
6 99 (34.86%) ETL
7 80 (28.17%) AI
7 80 (28.17%) Machine Learning
8 76 (26.76%) Problem-Solving
9 74 (26.06%) DevOps
10 72 (25.35%) Data Modelling
11 70 (24.65%) Data Governance
12 69 (24.30%) Data Science
13 47 (16.55%) Containerisation
13 47 (16.55%) Scrum
14 43 (15.14%) Business Intelligence
15 42 (14.79%) Decision-Making
15 42 (14.79%) Validation
16 41 (14.44%) Data Architecture
17 40 (14.08%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 162 (57.04%) Python
2 139 (48.94%) SQL
3 64 (22.54%) Java
4 33 (11.62%) Scala
5 23 (8.10%) R
6 13 (4.58%) Bash
7 11 (3.87%) JavaScript
7 11 (3.87%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.76%) SAS Macro
9 4 (1.41%) C#
9 4 (1.41%) TypeScript
10 3 (1.06%) Rust
10 3 (1.06%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.70%) Go
12 1 (0.35%) C
12 1 (0.35%) C++
12 1 (0.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 1 (0.35%) Korn
12 1 (0.35%) MATLAB
12 1 (0.35%) Perl
Qualifications
1 66 (23.24%) Security Cleared
2 51 (17.96%) SC Cleared
3 45 (15.85%) Degree
4 23 (8.10%) Master's Degree
5 16 (5.63%) Computer Science Degree
6 9 (3.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.46%) DV Cleared
8 6 (2.11%) AWS Certification
8 6 (2.11%) Azure Certification
9 3 (1.06%) IBM Certification
9 3 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.06%) PhD
9 3 (1.06%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.70%) CISSP
10 2 (0.70%) MCITP
10 2 (0.70%) MCTS
10 2 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.35%) AWS Certified Developer
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (23.94%) Data Quality
2 23 (8.10%) QA
3 19 (6.69%) GDPR
4 7 (2.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.46%) NIST
5 3 (1.06%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (1.06%) SLA
6 2 (0.70%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.35%) NCSC
7 1 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 53 (18.66%) Docker
2 8 (2.82%) HDFS
3 6 (2.11%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.06%) BitLocker
4 3 (1.06%) Hyper-V
4 3 (1.06%) Microsoft App-V
4 3 (1.06%) Terminal Services
4 3 (1.06%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (1.06%) VMware ESXi
4 3 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.70%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 55 (19.37%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.73%) Terraform
3 33 (11.62%) Grafana
4 16 (5.63%) Prometheus
5 10 (3.52%) Ansible
6 8 (2.82%) Kibana
7 5 (1.76%) Puppet
8 3 (1.06%) Nagios
8 3 (1.06%) vCenter Server
8 3 (1.06%) vMotion
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 56 (19.72%) Databricks
2 26 (9.15%) Google
2 26 (9.15%) Microsoft
3 15 (5.28%) Splunk
4 12 (4.23%) Salesforce
5 11 (3.87%) Oracle
6 9 (3.17%) Talend
7 8 (2.82%) IBM
7 8 (2.82%) Informatica
8 6 (2.11%) Cloudera
9 5 (1.76%) Amplitude
9 5 (1.76%) Foundry
10 4 (1.41%) Ab Initio
10 4 (1.41%) HP
10 4 (1.41%) OpenAI
10 4 (1.41%) Teradata
11 3 (1.06%) Citrix
11 3 (1.06%) Symantec
11 3 (1.06%) Tenable
11 3 (1.06%) VMware