Data Lake Contract Job Trends

Data Lakes
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Lake skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 11 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 235 246 155
Rank change year-on-year +11 -91 +63
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 602 375 611
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.14% 1.58%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.26% 6.30% 8.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 472 278 519
10th Percentile £400 £375 £445
25th Percentile £450 £458 £516
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £750
Median % change year-on-year - -26.67% +30.43%
75th Percentile £650 £743 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +10.53% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £48.25 - -
25th Percentile £49.38 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 - -
75th Percentile £54.38 - -
90th Percentile £54.75 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - -

All Database & BI Skills
UK

Data Lake 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 8,288 5,957 6,923
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.18% 18.04% 17.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,520 3,985 4,800
10th Percentile £358 £338 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.86%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £743 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £477
% change year-on-year - -0.42% -4.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 267 93 86
10th Percentile £16.42 £22.85 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.48 £30.96 £20.88
Median hourly rate £40.18 £40.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +16.06% -35.58%
75th Percentile £60.75 £65.00 £59.34
90th Percentile £76.00 £80.00 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.30% +18.30% -42.86%

Data Lake
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Lake relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Lake job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Lake
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Lake.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Lake

Data Lake
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Lake over the 6 months to 11 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Lake in the UK

Data Lake
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Lake.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Lake

Data Lake
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 Data Lake within the UK over the 6 months to 11 September 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 -29 485 £550 -5.17% 226
London -45 294 £575 -11.54% 144
Work from Home -42 208 £525 -19.23% 86
UK excluding London -1 189 £525 +10.53% 127
Midlands +19 77 £600 +46.34% 17
West Midlands +6 57 £608 +51.88% 11
North of England -44 50 £550 +15.79% 20
North West -25 30 £525 +10.53% 12
East Midlands +2 20 £500 +21.95% 6
Yorkshire -28 19 £550 +18.85% 7
Scotland -3 18 £425 +18.72% 32
South East -63 18 £448 -1.48% 26
South West -34 16 £600 +26.32% 12
East of England -35 10 £575 +4.55% 14
Wales -14 3 £500 -28.57% 5
North East -46 1 £450 - 1

Data Lake
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 66 (10.96%) Apache Spark
2 49 (8.14%) Apache
3 45 (7.48%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (5.65%) SAS
5 20 (3.32%) Confluence
6 11 (1.83%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.33%) nginx
8 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.17%) JBoss
9 1 (0.17%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.00%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.83%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.50%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.33%) Endur
4 2 (0.33%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.33%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.33%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.17%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.17%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 385 (63.95%) Azure
2 203 (33.72%) AWS
3 179 (29.73%) Power Platform
4 153 (25.42%) Azure Data Factory
5 118 (19.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 95 (15.78%) GCP
7 93 (15.45%) Azure DevOps
8 89 (14.78%) Snowflake
9 62 (10.30%) GitHub
10 57 (9.47%) Serverless
11 55 (9.14%) Amazon S3
12 54 (8.97%) Azure Databricks
13 35 (5.81%) AWS Lambda
14 34 (5.65%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 32 (5.32%) dbt
16 31 (5.15%) Entra ID
17 29 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
18 25 (4.15%) SaaS
19 24 (3.99%) Azure Monitor
20 23 (3.82%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.99%) Firewall
2 11 (1.83%) HTTP
3 8 (1.33%) DNS
4 5 (0.83%) WAN
5 3 (0.50%) Broadband
5 3 (0.50%) Network Security
6 2 (0.33%) DSL
7 1 (0.17%) AMQP
7 1 (0.17%) IPsec
7 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.17%) Modbus
7 1 (0.17%) MQTT
7 1 (0.17%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.17%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.17%) SMS
7 1 (0.17%) VPN
7 1 (0.17%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 235 (39.04%) Data Warehouse
2 161 (26.74%) Power BI
3 94 (15.61%) Metadata
4 59 (9.80%) Azure SQL Database
5 58 (9.63%) Amazon Redshift
6 43 (7.14%) NoSQL
7 41 (6.81%) Delta Lake
8 38 (6.31%) Big Data
9 37 (6.15%) Amazon Athena
10 36 (5.98%) SQL Server
11 31 (5.15%) BigQuery
11 31 (5.15%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 26 (4.32%) PostgreSQL
13 25 (4.15%) Relational Database
14 23 (3.82%) Tableau
15 20 (3.32%) Semantic Layer
15 20 (3.32%) Star Schema
16 18 (2.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 16 (2.66%) Amazon RDS
18 15 (2.49%) Base SAS
Development Applications
1 58 (9.63%) Git
2 33 (5.48%) GitLab
3 26 (4.32%) JIRA
4 18 (2.99%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.33%) ERwin
6 7 (1.16%) ER Studio
7 6 (1.00%) PowerDesigner
8 5 (0.83%) MLflow
9 4 (0.66%) JUnit
9 4 (0.66%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.50%) Terragrunt
11 2 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
12 1 (0.17%) Postman
12 1 (0.17%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.17%) TestRail
12 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 145 (24.09%) Finance
2 139 (23.09%) Social Skills
3 72 (11.96%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (9.47%) Public Sector
5 41 (6.81%) Banking
6 30 (4.98%) Retail
7 26 (4.32%) Marketing
8 20 (3.32%) Manufacturing
9 15 (2.49%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.16%) Military
12 7 (1.16%) Police
13 6 (1.00%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.00%) Investment Banking
13 6 (1.00%) Publishing
14 4 (0.66%) Corporate Banking
14 4 (0.66%) Legal
14 4 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.50%) Law
Job Titles
1 205 (34.05%) Architect
2 169 (28.07%) Data Engineer
3 132 (21.93%) Data Architect
4 92 (15.28%) Senior
5 59 (9.80%) Azure Engineer
6 56 (9.30%) Solutions Architect
7 49 (8.14%) Analyst
7 49 (8.14%) Senior Data Engineer
8 39 (6.48%) Azure Data Engineer
9 36 (5.98%) Data Analyst
9 36 (5.98%) Lead
10 32 (5.32%) Business Analyst
10 32 (5.32%) Developer
11 30 (4.98%) Data Business Analyst
12 26 (4.32%) Databricks Engineer
13 25 (4.15%) Cloud Architect
14 21 (3.49%) Azure Architect
14 21 (3.49%) Databricks Data Engineer
15 18 (2.99%) Technical Leader
16 17 (2.82%) Cloud Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 89 (14.78%) Terraform
2 70 (11.63%) PySpark
3 48 (7.97%) Kafka
4 33 (5.48%) REST
5 13 (2.16%) .NET
6 12 (1.99%) JSON
6 12 (1.99%) YAML
7 11 (1.83%) Spring Boot
8 10 (1.66%) Model Context Protocol
8 10 (1.66%) Spring
9 9 (1.50%) Middleware
10 8 (1.33%) LangChain
11 7 (1.16%) Apache NiFi
11 7 (1.16%) ARM Templates
12 6 (1.00%) Microsoft Graph
12 6 (1.00%) Node.js
12 6 (1.00%) OAuth
12 6 (1.00%) pytest
12 6 (1.00%) XML
13 5 (0.83%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 90 (14.95%) Cloud Native
2 43 (7.14%) Data Structures
3 33 (5.48%) Product Ownership
4 21 (3.49%) Distributed Systems
5 20 (3.32%) Legacy Systems
6 19 (3.16%) Data Fabric
7 18 (2.99%) AI Agents
7 18 (2.99%) Onboarding
8 13 (2.16%) Low-Code
9 12 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 12 (1.99%) Reference Data
10 11 (1.83%) Marketing Technology
11 8 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
12 7 (1.16%) Autonomous Agent
12 7 (1.16%) Hybrid Cloud
12 7 (1.16%) IoT
12 7 (1.16%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.16%) Reinsurance
13 6 (1.00%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (1.00%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 23 (3.82%) Linux
2 16 (2.66%) Unix
3 6 (1.00%) Windows
4 4 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.50%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 306 (50.83%) Analytics
2 262 (43.52%) Data Modelling
3 256 (42.52%) ETL
4 244 (40.53%) Data Pipeline
5 225 (37.38%) CI/CD
6 216 (35.88%) Data Engineering
7 199 (33.06%) Business Intelligence
8 189 (31.40%) Data Governance
9 182 (30.23%) Agile
10 178 (29.57%) DevOps
11 168 (27.91%) Data Architecture
12 163 (27.08%) AI
13 157 (26.08%) Migration
14 117 (19.44%) Stakeholder Management
15 110 (18.27%) Lakehouse
16 104 (17.28%) Data Transformation
17 99 (16.45%) Data Integration
18 96 (15.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 90 (14.95%) Machine Learning
20 84 (13.95%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 326 (54.15%) SQL
2 185 (30.73%) Python
3 36 (5.98%) Java
4 22 (3.65%) PowerShell
5 19 (3.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 18 (2.99%) Bash
6 18 (2.99%) Bicep
7 14 (2.33%) C#
7 14 (2.33%) Scala
8 11 (1.83%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.33%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.33%) T-SQL
10 6 (1.00%) PL/SQL
11 4 (0.66%) R
11 4 (0.66%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
13 2 (0.33%) Cypher
13 2 (0.33%) SHACL
13 2 (0.33%) SOQL
14 1 (0.17%) Ada
Qualifications
1 147 (24.42%) Security Cleared
2 112 (18.60%) SC Cleared
3 28 (4.65%) Azure Certification
4 20 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.16%) DV Cleared
6 16 (2.66%) Degree
7 10 (1.66%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 9 (1.50%) AWS Certification
9 8 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
9 8 (1.33%) Master's Degree
10 7 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.83%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.66%) CSPO
12 4 (0.66%) TOGAF Certification
13 3 (0.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 3 (0.50%) CCSP
13 3 (0.50%) CISM
13 3 (0.50%) CISSP
13 3 (0.50%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 3 (0.50%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 205 (34.05%) Data Quality
2 41 (6.81%) GDPR
3 30 (4.98%) QA
4 9 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.16%) NIST
6 6 (1.00%) GRC
6 6 (1.00%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.83%) MiFID
7 5 (0.83%) NCSC
8 3 (0.50%) IFRS
8 3 (0.50%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.50%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.50%) PMO
8 3 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.50%) SLA
9 2 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.17%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.17%) SOC 2
System Software
1 40 (6.64%) Docker
2 11 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.33%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.83%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.33%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 46 (7.64%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.66%) Grafana
3 9 (1.50%) Ansible
3 9 (1.50%) Prometheus
4 4 (0.66%) Puppet
4 4 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
5 3 (0.50%) Argo
6 2 (0.33%) Control-M
7 1 (0.17%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.17%) Istio
7 1 (0.17%) linkerd
7 1 (0.17%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 227 (37.71%) Databricks
2 149 (24.75%) Microsoft
3 37 (6.15%) Informatica
4 27 (4.49%) Google
5 24 (3.99%) Oracle
6 20 (3.32%) OpenAI
7 18 (2.99%) SAP
8 15 (2.49%) Denodo
9 14 (2.33%) Talend
10 10 (1.66%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.50%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.33%) Adobe
13 6 (1.00%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.00%) MuleSoft
13 6 (1.00%) SnapLogic
13 6 (1.00%) Sparx
13 6 (1.00%) Teradata
14 5 (0.83%) IBM
14 5 (0.83%) Infor
15 4 (0.66%) Foundry