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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 356 241 242
Rank change year-on-year -115 +1 -21
Contract jobs citing Big Data 286 328 415
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.60% 1.13% 0.96%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.94% 5.93% 5.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 226 307
10th Percentile £355 £407 £388
25th Percentile £413 £463 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £573 £588
Median % change year-on-year -3.93% -2.55% -2.08%
75th Percentile £650 £675 £750
90th Percentile £796 £750 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £563 £550
% change year-on-year -11.11% +2.27% -
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% -54.81%
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 - - -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 7,251 5,528 7,298
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.28% 19.00% 16.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,906 3,799 5,213
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £422 £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 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £488 £475
% change year-on-year -3.13% +2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 208 102 144
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.89 £14.00
25th Percentile £27.09 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.70% -17.60% -32.54%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.46 £59.44
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.88 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +58.47% -25.00% -28.19%

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -158 217 £550 -4.35% 108
London -76 143 £572 -0.54% 57
UK excluding London -121 91 £500 -11.11% 56
Work from Home -38 89 £488 -7.14% 51
Scotland +13 23 £389 -10.84% 1
North of England -62 23 £550 -8.33% 23
South East -86 23 £513 -6.82% 10
Midlands -80 11 £500 - 11
North East -10 9 £518 +11.89% 10
East Midlands -32 8 £495 +26.11% 4
North West -45 7 £358 -40.33% 11
Yorkshire -48 7 £588 -2.08% 2
Wales -5 5 £388 +131.94% 1
South West -40 4 £550 -15.38% 9
East of England -43 3 £540 -16.92% 1
West Midlands -63 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
1 154 (53.85%) Apache Spark
2 44 (15.38%) Apache Airflow
3 43 (15.03%) 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
1 140 (48.95%) AWS
2 119 (41.61%) Azure
3 82 (28.67%) GCP
4 34 (11.89%) Snowflake
5 32 (11.19%) Power Platform
6 31 (10.84%) Serverless
7 30 (10.49%) GitHub
8 29 (10.14%) Amazon S3
9 27 (9.44%) AWS Lambda
10 19 (6.64%) Amazon EMR
11 18 (6.29%) Azure DevOps
11 18 (6.29%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (4.55%) Azure Data Factory
12 13 (4.55%) dbt
13 11 (3.85%) OpenShift
14 9 (3.15%) Amazon ECS
15 7 (2.45%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (2.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 6 (2.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 6 (2.10%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.75%) IPv4
1 5 (1.75%) IPv6
2 2 (0.70%) Kerberos
2 2 (0.70%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 87 (30.42%) Hadoop
2 68 (23.78%) Data Warehouse
3 47 (16.43%) NoSQL
4 34 (11.89%) Data Lake
5 33 (11.54%) PostgreSQL
6 27 (9.44%) Power BI
7 23 (8.04%) Metadata
8 22 (7.69%) Relational Database
9 19 (6.64%) SQL Server
10 18 (6.29%) Amazon Redshift
10 18 (6.29%) MongoDB
11 14 (4.90%) Apache Hive
12 13 (4.55%) BigQuery
12 13 (4.55%) DynamoDB
13 12 (4.20%) Tableau
14 11 (3.85%) MySQL
15 9 (3.15%) Amazon Aurora
16 8 (2.80%) Amazon Athena
16 8 (2.80%) Data Vault
16 8 (2.80%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 37 (12.94%) Git
2 28 (9.79%) Jenkins
3 25 (8.74%) 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%) Visual Studio
10 1 (0.35%) Visual Studio Coded UI
General
1 103 (36.01%) Social Skills
2 79 (27.62%) Finance
3 65 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (10.84%) Banking
5 25 (8.74%) Public Sector
6 15 (5.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (3.85%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.80%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.80%) Telecoms
9 5 (1.75%) Legal
9 5 (1.75%) Marketing
10 3 (1.05%) Retail
11 2 (0.70%) Aerospace
11 2 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.70%) Local Government
11 2 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.70%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.35%) Corporate Banking
12 1 (0.35%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.35%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 93 (32.52%) Data Engineer
2 39 (13.64%) Architect
3 36 (12.59%) Senior
4 32 (11.19%) Lead
5 28 (9.79%) Developer
6 24 (8.39%) Data Scientist
7 20 (6.99%) Analyst
8 18 (6.29%) Data Architect
9 15 (5.24%) Senior Data Engineer
10 12 (4.20%) Data Analyst
10 12 (4.20%) Solutions Architect
11 9 (3.15%) Java Engineer
11 9 (3.15%) Senior Data Scientist
12 8 (2.80%) Business Analyst
12 8 (2.80%) Java Developer
12 8 (2.80%) Lead Data Scientist
12 8 (2.80%) Scala Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) AWS Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
13 7 (2.45%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 61 (21.33%) Kafka
2 35 (12.24%) PySpark
3 19 (6.64%) Spring
4 17 (5.94%) Spring Boot
5 14 (4.90%) Pandas
5 14 (4.90%) TensorFlow
6 13 (4.55%) HTML
6 13 (4.55%) REST
7 12 (4.20%) PyTorch
8 11 (3.85%) CSS
8 11 (3.85%) scikit-learn
9 9 (3.15%) NumPy
10 8 (2.80%) Play Framework
11 7 (2.45%) React
11 7 (2.45%) RESTful
12 6 (2.10%) Apache NiFi
12 6 (2.10%) Node.js
13 5 (1.75%) Keras
13 5 (1.75%) pytest
13 5 (1.75%) Spark Streaming
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 10 (3.50%) Data Structures
4 10 (3.50%) Distributed Computing
5 9 (3.15%) Virtual Team
6 8 (2.80%) Onboarding
7 6 (2.10%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.75%) FMCG
8 5 (1.75%) Management Information System
8 5 (1.75%) Reference Data
9 4 (1.40%) Cyber Threat
9 4 (1.40%) Data Centre
9 4 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 3 (1.05%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
10 3 (1.05%) Clustering
10 3 (1.05%) Educational Technology
10 3 (1.05%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.34%) Linux
2 17 (5.94%) Unix
3 2 (0.70%) Windows
3 2 (0.70%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 128 (44.76%) Analytics
2 122 (42.66%) Data Pipeline
3 120 (41.96%) CI/CD
4 106 (37.06%) Agile
5 105 (36.71%) Data Engineering
5 105 (36.71%) ETL
6 83 (29.02%) Problem-Solving
7 80 (27.97%) Data Governance
8 78 (27.27%) Machine Learning
9 76 (26.57%) Data Modelling
10 75 (26.22%) DevOps
11 72 (25.17%) Data Science
12 64 (22.38%) AI
13 46 (16.08%) Visualisation
14 43 (15.03%) Scrum
15 42 (14.69%) Business Intelligence
16 41 (14.34%) Decision-Making
17 39 (13.64%) Data Integration
17 39 (13.64%) Technical Leadership
18 38 (13.29%) Data Architecture
Programming Languages
1 166 (58.04%) Python
2 147 (51.40%) SQL
3 62 (21.68%) Java
4 35 (12.24%) R
5 34 (11.89%) Scala
6 16 (5.59%) JavaScript
7 10 (3.50%) Bash
8 6 (2.10%) C#
9 5 (1.75%) SAS Macro
9 5 (1.75%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.40%) C++
10 4 (1.40%) PowerShell
10 4 (1.40%) Shell Script
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 75 (26.22%) 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 8 (2.80%) 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 67 (23.43%) Data Quality
2 19 (6.64%) GDPR
3 18 (6.29%) QA
4 7 (2.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.45%) NIST
5 6 (2.10%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (1.05%) PCI DSS
6 3 (1.05%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.70%) Accessibility
8 1 (0.35%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.35%) ISO 13485
System Software
1 49 (17.13%) Docker
2 10 (3.50%) HDFS
3 3 (1.05%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.35%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 55 (19.23%) Kubernetes
2 39 (13.64%) Terraform
3 33 (11.54%) Grafana
4 17 (5.94%) Prometheus
5 8 (2.80%) Kibana
6 5 (1.75%) Ansible
7 2 (0.70%) Argo
7 2 (0.70%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.70%) Nagios
7 2 (0.70%) Rancher
8 1 (0.35%) Control-M
8 1 (0.35%) Kubeflow
8 1 (0.35%) Tivoli
Vendors
1 60 (20.98%) Databricks
2 22 (7.69%) 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%) Talend
7 6 (2.10%) Ab Initio
7 6 (2.10%) Foundry
7 6 (2.10%) Oracle
7 6 (2.10%) Salesforce
8 5 (1.75%) Cloudera
8 5 (1.75%) OpenAI
8 5 (1.75%) Teradata
9 4 (1.40%) Palantir
10 3 (1.05%) Guidewire
10 3 (1.05%) Tenable
11 2 (0.70%) HP
11 2 (0.70%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud
12 1 (0.35%) ServiceNow