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 25 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 421 275 209
Rank change year-on-year -146 -66 +21
Contract jobs citing Big Data 259 305 461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.48% 0.93% 1.19%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.18% 5.16% 6.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 180 214 317
10th Percentile £374 £405 £362
25th Percentile £440 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £544 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% -8.33% -
75th Percentile £639 £667 £738
90th Percentile £738 £746 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year - -9.09% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 2 6
10th Percentile £61.15 £45.06 £28.75
25th Percentile £64.38 £54.22 £37.50
Median hourly rate £70.00 £69.48 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.75% +54.40% -42.31%
75th Percentile £75.00 £84.74 £52.50
90th Percentile £88.50 £93.90 £53.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £70.00 £38.96 -
% change year-on-year +79.67% - -

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 8,137 5,916 7,029
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.17% 18.07% 18.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,423 3,970 4,922
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -3.27%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 252 96 100
10th Percentile £15.77 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £22.96 £29.00 £19.90
Median hourly rate £38.25 £35.50 £33.22
Median % change year-on-year +7.75% +6.88% -39.61%
75th Percentile £60.38 £62.44 £54.06
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.73 £69.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £32.05 £30.00
% change year-on-year +19.34% +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 25 August 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 25 August 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 25 August 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 -153 219 £550 - 304
London -96 137 £598 +2.05% 225
UK excluding London -116 88 £500 - 127
Work from Home -73 86 £504 -3.08% 103
North of England -49 32 £518 +0.98% 20
Yorkshire -25 18 £550 -8.33% 4
South East -84 18 £500 -9.09% 21
Midlands -69 14 £410 -2.50% 8
Scotland -10 12 £416 -10.05% 25
East Midlands -22 9 £495 +19.28% 2
South West -41 9 £515 +7.01% 26
North East -34 7 £425 - 1
North West -40 7 £600 +20.00% 15
West Midlands -48 5 £405 -14.10% 6
East of England -33 2 £540 +8.00% 16
Wales - 2 £475 - 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
1 126 (48.65%) Apache Spark
2 39 (15.06%) Apache
3 37 (14.29%) Apache Airflow
4 9 (3.47%) Confluence
5 6 (2.32%) JBoss
6 5 (1.93%) Jupyter
6 5 (1.93%) SAS
6 5 (1.93%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (1.54%) Palantir Foundry
8 3 (1.16%) CMS
9 2 (0.77%) Apache Pig
9 2 (0.77%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.39%) Luigi
Business Applications
1 2 (0.77%) Endur
2 1 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
2 1 (0.39%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 122 (47.10%) AWS
2 99 (38.22%) Azure
3 79 (30.50%) GCP
4 41 (15.83%) Snowflake
5 33 (12.74%) Power Platform
6 31 (11.97%) Amazon S3
7 22 (8.49%) GitHub
8 21 (8.11%) Amazon EMR
8 21 (8.11%) Azure DevOps
9 20 (7.72%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (6.18%) Serverless
11 14 (5.41%) Amazon ECS
12 13 (5.02%) dbt
13 12 (4.63%) GitHub Actions
14 10 (3.86%) Amazon EKS
14 10 (3.86%) OpenShift
14 10 (3.86%) PaaS
15 9 (3.47%) Azure Data Factory
16 7 (2.70%) Salesforce Service Cloud
17 6 (2.32%) Amazon EventBridge
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.32%) Kerberos
2 5 (1.93%) IPv4
2 5 (1.93%) IPv6
3 3 (1.16%) Broadband
3 3 (1.16%) DHCP
3 3 (1.16%) DNS
3 3 (1.16%) Firewall
3 3 (1.16%) SMTP
3 3 (1.16%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (20.08%) Hadoop
2 46 (17.76%) Data Warehouse
3 40 (15.44%) Data Lake
4 33 (12.74%) NoSQL
5 32 (12.36%) Power BI
6 28 (10.81%) PostgreSQL
7 21 (8.11%) Amazon Redshift
8 19 (7.34%) Apache Hive
8 19 (7.34%) BigQuery
9 15 (5.79%) MongoDB
9 15 (5.79%) Relational Database
10 13 (5.02%) Amazon Athena
10 13 (5.02%) Amazon RDS
11 12 (4.63%) DynamoDB
11 12 (4.63%) SQL Server
11 12 (4.63%) Tableau
12 11 (4.25%) Metadata
13 9 (3.47%) Amazon Aurora
13 9 (3.47%) Elasticsearch
14 7 (2.70%) HBase
Development Applications
1 35 (13.51%) Git
2 32 (12.36%) GitLab
3 28 (10.81%) Jenkins
4 16 (6.18%) JIRA
5 7 (2.70%) Selenium
6 4 (1.54%) PowerDesigner
7 3 (1.16%) JUnit
7 3 (1.16%) Robot Framework
7 3 (1.16%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.77%) JMeter
8 2 (0.77%) LoadRunner
8 2 (0.77%) MLflow
9 1 (0.39%) Claude Code
9 1 (0.39%) eggPlant
9 1 (0.39%) Gatling
9 1 (0.39%) TeamCity
General
1 86 (33.20%) Social Skills
2 69 (26.64%) Analytical Skills
3 57 (22.01%) Finance
4 28 (10.81%) Banking
5 22 (8.49%) Public Sector
6 10 (3.86%) Documentation Skills
7 9 (3.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 8 (3.09%) Investment Banking
8 8 (3.09%) Marketing
8 8 (3.09%) Telecoms
9 7 (2.70%) Legal
10 3 (1.16%) Aerospace
10 3 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
10 3 (1.16%) Retail
11 2 (0.77%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.77%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.77%) Local Government
12 1 (0.39%) Advertising
12 1 (0.39%) Manufacturing
12 1 (0.39%) Military
Job Titles
1 82 (31.66%) Data Engineer
2 43 (16.60%) Architect
3 42 (16.22%) Senior
4 24 (9.27%) Developer
5 18 (6.95%) Solutions Architect
6 16 (6.18%) Analyst
6 16 (6.18%) Lead
7 14 (5.41%) Data Architect
8 13 (5.02%) Senior Data Engineer
9 12 (4.63%) Big Data Engineer
10 11 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.86%) Data Analyst
12 9 (3.47%) Data Scientist
12 9 (3.47%) Java Developer
12 9 (3.47%) Test Engineer
13 8 (3.09%) Kafka Engineer
13 8 (3.09%) Python Engineer
13 8 (3.09%) Scala Engineer
14 7 (2.70%) Data Integration Engineer
14 7 (2.70%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (22.78%) Kafka
2 40 (15.44%) Terraform
3 30 (11.58%) PySpark
4 19 (7.34%) REST
5 15 (5.79%) Spring
6 14 (5.41%) Spring Boot
7 12 (4.63%) Pandas
8 8 (3.09%) Apache NiFi
8 8 (3.09%) CSS
8 8 (3.09%) Elastic Stack
8 8 (3.09%) HTML
8 8 (3.09%) Middleware
8 8 (3.09%) Play Framework
9 7 (2.70%) NumPy
10 6 (2.32%) PyTorch
10 6 (2.32%) TensorFlow
11 5 (1.93%) Langfuse
11 5 (1.93%) Microsoft Graph
11 5 (1.93%) RESTful
12 4 (1.54%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 36 (13.90%) Cloud Native
2 28 (10.81%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (5.79%) Clustering
3 15 (5.79%) Product Ownership
4 12 (4.63%) Data Structures
5 11 (4.25%) Onboarding
5 11 (4.25%) Virtual Team
6 7 (2.70%) Algorithms
6 7 (2.70%) Data Centre
7 6 (2.32%) Cyber Threat
8 5 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
8 5 (1.93%) Distributed Architecture
8 5 (1.93%) Distributed Computing
9 4 (1.54%) FMCG
10 3 (1.16%) AI Agents
10 3 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
10 3 (1.16%) Management Information System
10 3 (1.16%) PKI
10 3 (1.16%) Social Media
11 2 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
Operating Systems
1 25 (9.65%) Linux
2 10 (3.86%) Unix
3 6 (2.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.93%) Windows
4 5 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 126 (48.65%) Data Pipeline
2 108 (41.70%) Analytics
3 97 (37.45%) CI/CD
4 95 (36.68%) Data Engineering
5 90 (34.75%) Agile
6 87 (33.59%) ETL
7 77 (29.73%) AI
8 65 (25.10%) Machine Learning
9 61 (23.55%) DevOps
10 57 (22.01%) Problem-Solving
11 56 (21.62%) Data Modelling
12 52 (20.08%) Data Governance
13 45 (17.37%) Containerisation
13 45 (17.37%) Data Science
14 39 (15.06%) Business Intelligence
14 39 (15.06%) Scrum
15 37 (14.29%) Validation
16 36 (13.90%) Data Analysis
17 34 (13.13%) Test Automation
18 33 (12.74%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 141 (54.44%) Python
2 123 (47.49%) SQL
3 59 (22.78%) Java
4 31 (11.97%) Scala
5 20 (7.72%) PowerShell
6 17 (6.56%) R
7 13 (5.02%) JavaScript
8 11 (4.25%) Bash
9 6 (2.32%) C#
10 4 (1.54%) Shell Script
11 3 (1.16%) Rust
12 2 (0.77%) Go
12 2 (0.77%) Korn
12 2 (0.77%) Kusto Query Language
12 2 (0.77%) SAS Macro
12 2 (0.77%) TypeScript
13 1 (0.39%) C++
13 1 (0.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 1 (0.39%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.39%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 59 (22.78%) Security Cleared
2 45 (17.37%) SC Cleared
3 27 (10.42%) Degree
4 15 (5.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (4.25%) Master's Degree
6 10 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (3.09%) AWS Certification
8 7 (2.70%) Azure Certification
8 7 (2.70%) DV Cleared
9 3 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (1.16%) PhD
9 3 (1.16%) SnowPro
10 2 (0.77%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 2 (0.77%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
10 2 (0.77%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.77%) CISSP
10 2 (0.77%) MCITP
10 2 (0.77%) MCTS
11 1 (0.39%) PMI Certification
11 1 (0.39%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (20.85%) Data Quality
2 20 (7.72%) QA
3 14 (5.41%) GDPR
4 7 (2.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (2.70%) NIST
5 3 (1.16%) SLA
6 2 (0.77%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.77%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.39%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 1 (0.39%) EMIR
7 1 (0.39%) EU AI Act
7 1 (0.39%) IFRS
7 1 (0.39%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.39%) MiFID
7 1 (0.39%) NCSC
System Software
1 52 (20.08%) Docker
2 9 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 7 (2.70%) Active Directory
4 6 (2.32%) HDFS
5 3 (1.16%) BitLocker
5 3 (1.16%) Hyper-V
5 3 (1.16%) Microsoft App-V
5 3 (1.16%) Terminal Services
5 3 (1.16%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (1.16%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.77%) Apache Flume
Systems Management
1 54 (20.85%) Kubernetes
2 31 (11.97%) Grafana
3 12 (4.63%) Prometheus
4 11 (4.25%) Puppet
5 10 (3.86%) Ansible
6 8 (3.09%) Kibana
7 6 (2.32%) Red Hat Satellite
8 5 (1.93%) Failover Clustering
9 3 (1.16%) Nagios
9 3 (1.16%) vCenter Server
9 3 (1.16%) vMotion
10 2 (0.77%) Control-M
11 1 (0.39%) HP ALM
11 1 (0.39%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 60 (23.17%) Databricks
2 27 (10.42%) Google
3 24 (9.27%) Microsoft
4 17 (6.56%) Splunk
5 12 (4.63%) Cloudera
5 12 (4.63%) Salesforce
6 9 (3.47%) Oracle
6 9 (3.47%) VMware
7 7 (2.70%) Foundry
8 6 (2.32%) Cisco
8 6 (2.32%) IBM
8 6 (2.32%) Informatica
8 6 (2.32%) Red Hat
9 5 (1.93%) Amplitude
10 4 (1.54%) HP
10 4 (1.54%) Palantir
11 3 (1.16%) Citrix
11 3 (1.16%) Symantec
11 3 (1.16%) Talend
11 3 (1.16%) Teradata