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 1 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 236 252
Rank change year-on-year -123 +16 -27
Contract jobs citing Big Data 286 331 406
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.61% 1.13% 0.93%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.93% 5.96% 5.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 194 231 301
10th Percentile £352 £408 £400
25th Percentile £401 £463 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £539 £570 £583
Median % change year-on-year -5.48% -2.23% -2.83%
75th Percentile £643 £675 £744
90th Percentile £794 £750 £838
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -11.82% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 3 12
10th Percentile £58.60 £52.25 £18.20
25th Percentile £64.00 £53.75 £23.30
Median hourly rate £70.00 £57.50 £35.25
Median % change year-on-year +21.74% +63.12% -51.71%
75th Percentile £75.00 £79.38 £44.69
90th Percentile £90.00 £91.75 £52.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 - £19.38
% change year-on-year - - -74.34%

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 7,273 5,550 7,317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.39% 18.97% 16.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,956 3,833 5,210
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £640 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £480
% change year-on-year -2.86% +1.88% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 104 143
10th Percentile £16.72 £19.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £28.56 £24.06 £20.98
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.70% -17.60% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.15 £58.62
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.13 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.72 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +62.40% -25.00% -31.09%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 -150 218 £550 -4.35% 91
London -69 144 £550 -4.35% 39
UK excluding London -127 90 £485 -11.82% 62
Work from Home -44 87 £484 -7.86% 36
South East -81 23 £513 -5.96% 9
Scotland +14 22 £389 -5.01% 4
North of England -68 19 £550 -8.33% 31
Midlands -83 14 £450 -10.00% 9
East Midlands -31 11 £428 +8.92% 2
North East -14 8 £525 +13.51% 8
North West -47 7 £358 -40.33% 20
Wales -4 5 £388 +131.94% 1
South West -33 5 £575 -10.68% 7
Yorkshire -53 4 £588 -2.08% 3
East of England -40 3 £540 -16.92% 2
West Midlands -68 3 £640 +24.90% 7

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
1 155 (54.20%) Apache Spark
2 42 (14.69%) Apache Airflow
3 40 (13.99%) Apache
4 13 (4.55%) Confluence
5 5 (1.75%) SAS
6 4 (1.40%) Palantir Foundry
6 4 (1.40%) SharePoint
7 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.35%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.35%) Camunda
8 1 (0.35%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (1.40%) Microsoft Project
Cloud Services
1 145 (50.70%) AWS
2 123 (43.01%) Azure
3 85 (29.72%) GCP
4 33 (11.54%) Snowflake
5 32 (11.19%) Serverless
6 31 (10.84%) GitHub
6 31 (10.84%) Power Platform
7 30 (10.49%) Amazon S3
8 28 (9.79%) AWS Lambda
9 19 (6.64%) Amazon EMR
9 19 (6.64%) GitHub Actions
10 18 (6.29%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (4.90%) Azure Data Factory
12 12 (4.20%) dbt
13 10 (3.50%) OpenShift
14 9 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
15 8 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
16 7 (2.45%) Amazon EC2
16 7 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
16 7 (2.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.75%) IPv4
1 5 (1.75%) IPv6
2 3 (1.05%) Kerberos
2 3 (1.05%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 92 (32.17%) Hadoop
2 70 (24.48%) Data Warehouse
3 47 (16.43%) NoSQL
4 35 (12.24%) Data Lake
5 34 (11.89%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (9.09%) Power BI
7 25 (8.74%) Metadata
8 21 (7.34%) Relational Database
9 19 (6.64%) SQL Server
10 18 (6.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (6.29%) Apache Hive
11 17 (5.94%) MongoDB
12 13 (4.55%) BigQuery
12 13 (4.55%) DynamoDB
12 13 (4.55%) Tableau
13 12 (4.20%) MySQL
14 9 (3.15%) Amazon Aurora
15 8 (2.80%) Amazon Athena
15 8 (2.80%) Data Vault
15 8 (2.80%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 37 (12.94%) Git
2 29 (10.14%) Jenkins
3 26 (9.09%) GitLab
4 22 (7.69%) JIRA
5 8 (2.80%) Selenium
6 7 (2.45%) Robot Framework
7 4 (1.40%) Postman
7 4 (1.40%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (1.05%) SonarQube
9 2 (0.70%) ERwin
9 2 (0.70%) MLflow
9 2 (0.70%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.35%) NUnit
10 1 (0.35%) Poetry
10 1 (0.35%) SpecFlow
10 1 (0.35%) Subversion
10 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 104 (36.36%) Social Skills
2 79 (27.62%) Finance
3 65 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (11.19%) Banking
5 25 (8.74%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.90%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.80%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.45%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.75%) Legal
10 5 (1.75%) Marketing
11 3 (1.05%) Retail
12 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
12 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.70%) Local Government
12 2 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
13 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
13 1 (0.35%) Military
13 1 (0.35%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 90 (31.47%) Data Engineer
2 39 (13.64%) Architect
3 36 (12.59%) Senior
4 32 (11.19%) Developer
5 31 (10.84%) Lead
6 24 (8.39%) Data Scientist
7 18 (6.29%) Analyst
7 18 (6.29%) Data Architect
8 15 (5.24%) Senior Data Engineer
9 12 (4.20%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (3.50%) Data Analyst
11 9 (3.15%) Java Developer
11 9 (3.15%) Java Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Scala Engineer
12 8 (2.80%) Senior Data Scientist
13 7 (2.45%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) Business Analyst
13 7 (2.45%) DevOps Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) Lead Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 60 (20.98%) Kafka
2 32 (11.19%) PySpark
3 17 (5.94%) Spring
4 15 (5.24%) Pandas
4 15 (5.24%) REST
4 15 (5.24%) Spring Boot
4 15 (5.24%) TensorFlow
5 13 (4.55%) HTML
6 12 (4.20%) PyTorch
6 12 (4.20%) scikit-learn
7 11 (3.85%) CSS
8 9 (3.15%) NumPy
9 8 (2.80%) Play Framework
10 7 (2.45%) React
10 7 (2.45%) RESTful
11 6 (2.10%) Apache NiFi
11 6 (2.10%) JSON
11 6 (2.10%) Node.js
11 6 (2.10%) Spark Streaming
12 5 (1.75%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 27 (9.44%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.94%) Algorithms
2 17 (5.94%) Product Ownership
3 13 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (3.85%) Distributed Computing
5 9 (3.15%) Data Structures
6 8 (2.80%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.45%) Onboarding
8 6 (2.10%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.75%) FMCG
9 5 (1.75%) Reference Data
10 4 (1.40%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 3 (1.05%) AI Agents
11 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (1.05%) Clustering
11 3 (1.05%) Cyber Threat
11 3 (1.05%) Educational Technology
11 3 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 25 (8.74%) Linux
2 20 (6.99%) Unix
3 2 (0.70%) Windows
3 2 (0.70%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (43.71%) Analytics
2 124 (43.36%) CI/CD
3 121 (42.31%) Data Pipeline
4 107 (37.41%) ETL
5 106 (37.06%) Agile
6 102 (35.66%) Data Engineering
7 85 (29.72%) Problem-Solving
8 81 (28.32%) Data Governance
9 78 (27.27%) Data Modelling
9 78 (27.27%) DevOps
10 77 (26.92%) Machine Learning
11 70 (24.48%) Data Science
12 61 (21.33%) AI
13 44 (15.38%) Scrum
13 44 (15.38%) Visualisation
14 41 (14.34%) Business Intelligence
14 41 (14.34%) Decision-Making
15 39 (13.64%) Data Integration
16 37 (12.94%) Computer Science
16 37 (12.94%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 164 (57.34%) Python
2 149 (52.10%) SQL
3 63 (22.03%) Java
4 35 (12.24%) R
5 34 (11.89%) Scala
6 16 (5.59%) JavaScript
7 11 (3.85%) Bash
8 6 (2.10%) C#
8 6 (2.10%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.75%) SAS Macro
9 5 (1.75%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.40%) C++
10 4 (1.40%) PowerShell
11 3 (1.05%) Rust
12 2 (0.70%) Ada
13 1 (0.35%) Perl
13 1 (0.35%) PL/SQL
13 1 (0.35%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 77 (26.92%) Security Cleared
2 61 (21.33%) SC Cleared
3 49 (17.13%) Degree
4 25 (8.74%) Master's Degree
5 23 (8.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 10 (3.50%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (3.15%) DV Cleared
8 7 (2.45%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.40%) AWS Certification
10 3 (1.05%) IBM Certification
10 3 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
10 3 (1.05%) PhD
10 3 (1.05%) SnowPro
11 2 (0.70%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 2 (0.70%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.70%) CISSP
11 2 (0.70%) MCITP
11 2 (0.70%) MCTS
11 2 (0.70%) Numerate Degree
11 2 (0.70%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (23.78%) Data Quality
2 20 (6.99%) GDPR
3 19 (6.64%) QA
4 7 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.45%) NIST
5 6 (2.10%) Actionable Recommendations
6 4 (1.40%) PCI DSS
7 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.70%) Accessibility
9 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.35%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 50 (17.48%) Docker
2 11 (3.85%) HDFS
3 3 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 54 (18.88%) Kubernetes
2 40 (13.99%) Terraform
3 33 (11.54%) Grafana
4 18 (6.29%) Prometheus
5 8 (2.80%) Kibana
6 6 (2.10%) Ansible
7 3 (1.05%) Argo
7 3 (1.05%) Nagios
7 3 (1.05%) Rancher
8 2 (0.70%) HP ALM
9 1 (0.35%) Control-M
9 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.35%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 58 (20.28%) Databricks
2 23 (8.04%) Microsoft
3 17 (5.94%) Google
4 12 (4.20%) Splunk
5 9 (3.15%) IBM
5 9 (3.15%) Informatica
6 8 (2.80%) Ab Initio
6 8 (2.80%) Talend
7 7 (2.45%) Oracle
8 6 (2.10%) Cloudera
8 6 (2.10%) Foundry
8 6 (2.10%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.75%) OpenAI
9 5 (1.75%) Teradata
10 4 (1.40%) Palantir
11 3 (1.05%) Guidewire
11 3 (1.05%) Tenable
12 2 (0.70%) HP
12 2 (0.70%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
13 1 (0.35%) Sybase