Big Data Contracts

Big Data
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring Big Data skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Big Data over the 6 months leading up to 10 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 233 253 229
Rank change year-on-year +20 -24 -79
Contract jobs citing Big Data 329 407 684
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.12% 0.95% 1.18%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 5.90% 5.58% 6.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 302 461
10th Percentile £407 £388 £463
25th Percentile £463 £469 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £570 £594 £600
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.04% -
75th Percentile £675 £744 £725
90th Percentile £750 £838 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £550 £550
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 12 20
10th Percentile £52.25 £18.20 £35.00
25th Percentile £53.75 £23.30 £57.41
Median hourly rate £57.50 £35.25 £78.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.12% -54.81% +28.93%
75th Percentile £79.38 £44.69 £84.38
90th Percentile £91.75 £52.00 £90.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £19.38 £78.00
% change year-on-year - -75.16% +30.00%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 5,575 7,289 10,420
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.96% 16.93% 17.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,839 5,212 7,411
10th Percentile £358 £350 £375
25th Percentile £420 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -3.67% -0.91%
75th Percentile £640 £650 £663
90th Percentile £763 £775 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.11% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 99 144 186
10th Percentile £20.60 £14.00 £21.24
25th Percentile £23.88 £20.98 £35.00
Median hourly rate £33.11 £40.13 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year -17.48% -33.13% +39.80%
75th Percentile £65.62 £61.60 £73.74
90th Percentile £76.50 £74.25 £81.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £31.64 £40.00 £56.95
% change year-on-year -20.90% -29.76% +62.71%

Big Data
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing Big Data as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Big Data.

Daily rate trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 10 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing Big Data.

Hourly rate trend for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Big Data over the 6 months to 10 May 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for Big Data in the UK

Big Data
Top 17 Contract 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 10 May 2025. 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 +35 296 £575 -4.17% 641
London -11 166 £575 -11.54% 441
UK excluding London +51 116 £550 - 290
Work from Home +2 101 £525 -14.98% 335
South East +59 42 £550 +26.00% 123
North of England +10 24 £593 +7.73% 62
Midlands 0 22 £500 -23.08% 32
East of England +42 16 £650 +62.50% 23
North West +10 13 £600 +17.65% 37
East Midlands +9 12 £393 -23.41% 8
West Midlands +3 10 £512 -24.09% 22
Yorkshire +5 8 £550 -2.22% 18
South West +41 6 £644 +43.06% 19
Northern Ireland -3 5 £410 -11.35% 6
Scotland -2 3 £436 -20.77% 22
North East - 3 £463 - 8
Wales - 1 £167 - 8

Big Data
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 150 (45.59%) Apache Spark
2 69 (20.97%) Apache
3 19 (5.78%) Apache Airflow
4 15 (4.56%) Confluence
5 9 (2.74%) Microsoft Exchange
6 4 (1.22%) nginx
6 4 (1.22%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.91%) Oracle Coherence
8 2 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 2 (0.61%) SAS
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Pulsar
9 1 (0.30%) Luigi
9 1 (0.30%) MS Project Server
9 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
Applications
1 9 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (2.43%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.30%) CATIA
4 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 4 (1.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 2 (0.61%) Avolution ABACUS
2 2 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.61%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 134 (40.73%) AWS
2 115 (34.95%) Azure
3 56 (17.02%) GCP
4 28 (8.51%) Azure DevOps
5 27 (8.21%) Power Platform
5 27 (8.21%) Serverless
6 26 (7.90%) Amazon S3
7 24 (7.29%) AWS Lambda
8 20 (6.08%) Azure Data Factory
9 16 (4.86%) PaaS
10 13 (3.95%) Amazon EC2
10 13 (3.95%) GitHub
10 13 (3.95%) OpenShift
11 10 (3.04%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 10 (3.04%) Snowflake
12 9 (2.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 9 (2.74%) Cloud Computing
12 9 (2.74%) IaaS
13 8 (2.43%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.13%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.65%) DNS
2 9 (2.74%) DHCP
2 9 (2.74%) Firewall
2 9 (2.74%) SMTP
2 9 (2.74%) VPN
3 1 (0.30%) HTTP
3 1 (0.30%) Internet
3 1 (0.30%) Kerberos
3 1 (0.30%) NAS
3 1 (0.30%) Network Security
3 1 (0.30%) SAN
3 1 (0.30%) Structured Cabling
3 1 (0.30%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (35.87%) Hadoop
2 65 (19.76%) Data Warehouse
3 47 (14.29%) Data Lake
4 36 (10.94%) Tableau
5 33 (10.03%) Apache Hive
6 32 (9.73%) Relational Database
7 30 (9.12%) NoSQL
8 27 (8.21%) Elasticsearch
9 25 (7.60%) Amazon RDS
10 23 (6.99%) SQL Server
11 21 (6.38%) Power BI
12 20 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
13 19 (5.78%) Amazon Redshift
13 19 (5.78%) Impala
13 19 (5.78%) Metadata
14 17 (5.17%) MongoDB
15 9 (2.74%) HBase
16 8 (2.43%) Apache Cassandra
16 8 (2.43%) Data Mining
16 8 (2.43%) Flink
Development Applications
1 36 (10.94%) Git
2 28 (8.51%) Jenkins
3 19 (5.78%) ERwin
3 19 (5.78%) JIRA
4 9 (2.74%) GitLab
5 6 (1.82%) Bitbucket
5 6 (1.82%) PowerDesigner
5 6 (1.82%) TeamCity
6 5 (1.52%) ER Studio
7 4 (1.22%) MLflow
8 3 (0.91%) SonarQube
8 3 (0.91%) Sonatype Nexus
8 3 (0.91%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.61%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 2 (0.61%) JUnit
9 2 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
10 1 (0.30%) Cucumber
10 1 (0.30%) JMeter
10 1 (0.30%) Mockito
10 1 (0.30%) WebDriver
General
1 93 (28.27%) Finance
2 82 (24.92%) Social Skills
3 76 (23.10%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (10.94%) Banking
5 29 (8.81%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.26%) Presentation Skills
7 11 (3.34%) Investment Banking
8 7 (2.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 7 (2.13%) Legal
8 7 (2.13%) Marketing
8 7 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (1.82%) Financial Institution
9 6 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.52%) Law
10 5 (1.52%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.22%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.22%) Military
11 4 (1.22%) Retail
12 3 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
12 3 (0.91%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 64 (19.45%) Developer
2 62 (18.84%) Data Engineer
3 60 (18.24%) Architect
4 39 (11.85%) Senior
5 29 (8.81%) Data Architect
6 23 (6.99%) Lead
7 21 (6.38%) Java Developer
7 21 (6.38%) Solutions Architect
8 17 (5.17%) Data Scientist
9 16 (4.86%) AWS Engineer
9 16 (4.86%) Senior Developer
10 14 (4.26%) DevOps Engineer
11 13 (3.95%) Apache Spark Developer
11 13 (3.95%) Big Data Engineer
11 13 (3.95%) Data Modeller
12 12 (3.65%) Azure Engineer
12 12 (3.65%) Data Science Developer
12 12 (3.65%) Senior Data Engineer
13 10 (3.04%) AWS Data Engineer
13 10 (3.04%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (15.81%) Kafka
2 28 (8.51%) PySpark
3 23 (6.99%) TensorFlow
4 22 (6.69%) scikit-learn
5 21 (6.38%) PyTorch
6 19 (5.78%) Pandas
7 18 (5.47%) NumPy
8 15 (4.56%) Matplotlib
9 14 (4.26%) Seaborn
10 11 (3.34%) Apache NiFi
10 11 (3.34%) Spark Streaming
11 10 (3.04%) OpenTelemetry
12 8 (2.43%) .NET
12 8 (2.43%) React
12 8 (2.43%) REST
12 8 (2.43%) Spring
12 8 (2.43%) Web Services
13 7 (2.13%) JSON
13 7 (2.13%) RabbitMQ
14 6 (1.82%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 27 (8.21%) Algorithms
2 26 (7.90%) Distributed Computing
3 16 (4.86%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (4.26%) Market Risk
5 13 (3.95%) Self-Motivation
6 11 (3.34%) Data Centre
7 9 (2.74%) Cloud Native
7 9 (2.74%) Clustering
7 9 (2.74%) PKI
7 9 (2.74%) Public Cloud
8 8 (2.43%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
9 7 (2.13%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.82%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.82%) Greenfield Project
10 6 (1.82%) IoT
10 6 (1.82%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.82%) Product Ownership
11 5 (1.52%) Private Cloud
12 4 (1.22%) Distributed Architecture
Operating Systems
1 50 (15.20%) Linux
2 22 (6.69%) Windows
3 19 (5.78%) Windows Server
4 14 (4.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 14 (4.26%) Unix
5 7 (2.13%) Ubuntu
6 4 (1.22%) Windows Server 2003
7 3 (0.91%) CentOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (35.56%) Analytics
2 87 (26.44%) DevOps
2 87 (26.44%) ETL
2 87 (26.44%) Machine Learning
3 84 (25.53%) Problem-Solving
4 80 (24.32%) Data Pipeline
5 75 (22.80%) Artificial Intelligence
6 74 (22.49%) CI/CD
6 74 (22.49%) Data Science
7 73 (22.19%) Data Modelling
8 66 (20.06%) Agile
8 66 (20.06%) Data Engineering
9 47 (14.29%) Visualisation
10 45 (13.68%) Data Architecture
10 45 (13.68%) Data Governance
11 43 (13.07%) Business Intelligence
11 43 (13.07%) Data Analysis
12 38 (11.55%) Computer Science
13 34 (10.33%) Decision-Making
13 34 (10.33%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 167 (50.76%) Python
2 119 (36.17%) SQL
3 67 (20.36%) Java
4 36 (10.94%) Scala
5 35 (10.64%) R
6 24 (7.29%) PowerShell
7 15 (4.56%) JavaScript
8 14 (4.26%) C#
9 11 (3.34%) Shell Script
10 7 (2.13%) C++
10 7 (2.13%) TypeScript
11 6 (1.82%) T-SQL
12 5 (1.52%) C
12 5 (1.52%) Perl
13 3 (0.91%) Bash
14 2 (0.61%) Go
14 2 (0.61%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 1 (0.30%) Kotlin
15 1 (0.30%) Rust
Qualifications
1 58 (17.63%) Degree
2 52 (15.81%) Security Cleared
3 36 (10.94%) SC Cleared
4 25 (7.60%) Master's Degree
5 19 (5.78%) DV Cleared
6 17 (5.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 17 (5.17%) PhD
7 8 (2.43%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (1.22%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.22%) BPSS Clearance
10 1 (0.30%) ACCA
10 1 (0.30%) CIMA
10 1 (0.30%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.30%) PMI Certification
10 1 (0.30%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (18.54%) Data Quality
2 18 (5.47%) GDPR
3 4 (1.22%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.22%) QA
4 3 (0.91%) HIPAA
4 3 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 2 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 14001
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.30%) SEPA
System Software
1 31 (9.42%) Docker
2 12 (3.65%) Active Directory
2 12 (3.65%) VMware Infrastructure
3 9 (2.74%) BitLocker
3 9 (2.74%) Hyper-V
3 9 (2.74%) Microsoft App-V
3 9 (2.74%) Terminal Services
3 9 (2.74%) VMware ESXi
4 7 (2.13%) HDFS
5 3 (0.91%) vCloud
5 3 (0.91%) VMware Workstation
5 3 (0.91%) vSphere
6 2 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.30%) Apache Flume
7 1 (0.30%) KVM
7 1 (0.30%) Tivoli Workload Scheduler
7 1 (0.30%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 50 (15.20%) Kubernetes
2 47 (14.29%) Terraform
3 32 (9.73%) Ansible
4 19 (5.78%) Grafana
5 10 (3.04%) Argo
6 9 (2.74%) Nagios
6 9 (2.74%) Puppet
6 9 (2.74%) vCenter Server
6 9 (2.74%) vMotion
7 8 (2.43%) Kibana
7 8 (2.43%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.61%) Hadoop YARN
8 2 (0.61%) HAProxy
8 2 (0.61%) Kubeflow
9 1 (0.30%) Apache Ranger
9 1 (0.30%) Istio
9 1 (0.30%) linkerd
9 1 (0.30%) Tivoli
9 1 (0.30%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 56 (17.02%) Microsoft
2 52 (15.81%) Databricks
3 37 (11.25%) Google
4 24 (7.29%) Cloudera
5 23 (6.99%) Oracle
6 13 (3.95%) VMware
7 10 (3.04%) Informatica
8 9 (2.74%) Citrix
8 9 (2.74%) HP
8 9 (2.74%) SAP
8 9 (2.74%) Symantec
9 8 (2.43%) Splunk
10 6 (1.82%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.52%) OpenAI
11 5 (1.52%) Sparx
12 4 (1.22%) Atlassian
12 4 (1.22%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (1.22%) IBM
12 4 (1.22%) Sybase
12 4 (1.22%) Talend