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

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 185 192
Rank change year-on-year -39 +7 +17
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 516 427 519
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.47% 1.22%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.13% 7.73% 7.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 365 342 390
10th Percentile £400 £400 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £607 £575
Median % change year-on-year -11.04% +5.57% +0.88%
75th Percentile £650 £800 £850
90th Percentile £750 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 3
10th Percentile £51.25 - £30.30
25th Percentile £57.25 - £34.13
Median hourly rate £64.00 £65.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.54% +60.49% +15.71%
75th Percentile £67.75 - £51.00
90th Percentile £69.22 - £57.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £40.50
% change year-on-year - - +15.71%

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 7,232 5,525 7,261
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.16% 19.01% 17.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,873 3,790 5,194
10th Percentile £350 £358 £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 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £484 £475
% change year-on-year -1.86% +1.89% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 210 97 144
10th Percentile £16.63 £21.06 £14.00
25th Percentile £26.50 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £47.54 £34.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +37.80% -13.75% -32.54%
75th Percentile £73.94 £65.62 £61.53
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.75 £74.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.54 £31.64 £40.00
% change year-on-year +50.25% -20.90% -27.27%

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 15 May 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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Lake over the 6 months to 15 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Lake in the UK

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 15 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 -87 423 £550 -15.38% 104
London -49 298 £600 -11.11% 65
Work from Home -69 163 £518 -26.07% 65
UK excluding London -52 124 £500 +5.26% 59
Midlands -43 38 £513 +17.14% 6
North of England -55 38 £500 +8.11% 15
West Midlands -48 25 £513 +17.14% 6
Scotland +15 19 £450 -23.60% 7
South East -62 18 £442 -6.95% 17
North West -34 17 £500 +0.53% 11
Yorkshire -47 14 £550 +25.71% 4
East Midlands -18 13 £475 +18.75%
East of England -34 8 £575 -0.86% 4
North East -20 7 £463 +29.19%
South West -31 3 £475 -15.56% 6
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 -

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 80 (15.50%) Apache Spark
2 44 (8.53%) Apache
3 35 (6.78%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (2.33%) Confluence
4 12 (2.33%) SAS
5 3 (0.58%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.39%) Apache Synapse
6 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.39%) nginx
7 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
Applications
1 5 (0.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.39%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (0.97%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.58%) Infor M3
3 2 (0.39%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 363 (70.35%) Azure
2 187 (36.24%) Power Platform
3 176 (34.11%) AWS
4 163 (31.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 161 (31.20%) Azure Data Factory
6 91 (17.64%) Azure DevOps
7 83 (16.09%) GitHub
8 80 (15.50%) GCP
9 60 (11.63%) Serverless
10 51 (9.88%) Amazon S3
11 38 (7.36%) GitHub Actions
12 37 (7.17%) Microsoft Purview
13 36 (6.98%) Snowflake
14 31 (6.01%) AWS CloudFormation
14 31 (6.01%) Azure Functions
15 27 (5.23%) Azure Key Vault
16 26 (5.04%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 23 (4.46%) AWS Lambda
18 22 (4.26%) Collibra
19 18 (3.49%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.74%) HTTP
2 7 (1.36%) Firewall
3 2 (0.39%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.39%) Network Security
3 2 (0.39%) VPN
4 1 (0.19%) 4G
4 1 (0.19%) 5G
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.19%) InfiniBand
4 1 (0.19%) Modbus
4 1 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.19%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 161 (31.20%) Data Warehouse
2 160 (31.01%) Power BI
3 75 (14.53%) Metadata
4 69 (13.37%) SQL Server
5 66 (12.79%) Azure SQL Database
5 66 (12.79%) Delta Lake
6 39 (7.56%) Amazon Athena
6 39 (7.56%) Amazon Redshift
7 33 (6.40%) Big Data
8 32 (6.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 27 (5.23%) BigQuery
10 26 (5.04%) PostgreSQL
11 25 (4.84%) NoSQL
11 25 (4.84%) Spark SQL
12 22 (4.26%) Relational Database
13 21 (4.07%) Hadoop
14 20 (3.88%) Mixpanel
15 18 (3.49%) OLAP
15 18 (3.49%) Snowflake Schema
16 16 (3.10%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 60 (11.63%) Git
2 30 (5.81%) GitLab
3 17 (3.29%) JIRA
4 11 (2.13%) Jenkins
5 10 (1.94%) MLflow
6 7 (1.36%) ER Studio
6 7 (1.36%) ERwin
7 5 (0.97%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (0.58%) JMeter
9 2 (0.39%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.19%) Hudson
10 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 123 (23.84%) Finance
2 102 (19.77%) Social Skills
3 57 (11.05%) Analytical Skills
4 44 (8.53%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.49%) Banking
6 13 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (1.94%) Retail
8 9 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (1.55%) Marketing
10 5 (0.97%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.97%) Military
11 4 (0.78%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.58%) Financial Institution
12 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (0.58%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (0.58%) Telecoms
13 2 (0.39%) Back Office
13 2 (0.39%) Front Office
13 2 (0.39%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.39%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 184 (35.66%) Data Engineer
2 129 (25.00%) Architect
3 79 (15.31%) Data Architect
4 76 (14.73%) Senior
5 47 (9.11%) Senior Data Engineer
6 45 (8.72%) Azure Engineer
7 44 (8.53%) Lead
8 39 (7.56%) Solutions Architect
9 33 (6.40%) Developer
10 31 (6.01%) Azure Data Engineer
11 29 (5.62%) Principal Engineer
12 23 (4.46%) Cloud Architect
13 22 (4.26%) Software Engineer
14 21 (4.07%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 20 (3.88%) Analyst
16 19 (3.68%) Principal Software Engineer
17 18 (3.49%) AWS Engineer
18 17 (3.29%) Principal Data Engineer
19 16 (3.10%) Azure Architect
20 14 (2.71%) Lead Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 107 (20.74%) PySpark
2 56 (10.85%) Kafka
3 28 (5.43%) REST
4 18 (3.49%) Great Expectations
5 15 (2.91%) Model Context Protocol
6 13 (2.52%) JSON
7 12 (2.33%) LangChain
7 12 (2.33%) LangGraph
8 11 (2.13%) XML
9 10 (1.94%) Microsoft Graph
10 9 (1.74%) A2A Protocol
10 9 (1.74%) YAML
11 8 (1.55%) Pandas
11 8 (1.55%) Spark Streaming
12 7 (1.36%) PyTorch
12 7 (1.36%) scikit-learn
13 5 (0.97%) FastAPI
13 5 (0.97%) Node.js
13 5 (0.97%) TensorFlow
14 4 (0.78%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 75 (14.53%) Cloud Native
2 22 (4.26%) Data Structures
3 20 (3.88%) Legacy Systems
4 19 (3.68%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (2.91%) Distributed Computing
5 15 (2.91%) IoT
6 14 (2.71%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.13%) Low-Code
8 10 (1.94%) Data Protection Act
9 9 (1.74%) Management Information System
10 8 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.55%) Digital Media
11 7 (1.36%) Data Fabric
11 7 (1.36%) Reference Data
12 6 (1.16%) AI Agents
13 5 (0.97%) Algorithms
13 5 (0.97%) Fixed Income
13 5 (0.97%) Replication
13 5 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
14 4 (0.78%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.33%) Linux
2 9 (1.74%) Unix
3 4 (0.78%) Windows
4 2 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 283 (54.84%) Analytics
2 261 (50.58%) ETL
3 234 (45.35%) Data Modelling
4 219 (42.44%) Data Pipeline
5 206 (39.92%) CI/CD
6 203 (39.34%) Data Engineering
7 188 (36.43%) Business Intelligence
8 173 (33.53%) DevOps
9 164 (31.78%) Data Governance
10 131 (25.39%) AI
10 131 (25.39%) Data Architecture
11 106 (20.54%) Agile
12 103 (19.96%) Migration
13 90 (17.44%) Machine Learning
14 79 (15.31%) Infrastructure as Code
15 75 (14.53%) Problem-Solving
16 68 (13.18%) Data Integration
17 65 (12.60%) Data Transformation
18 59 (11.43%) Validation
19 54 (10.47%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 311 (60.27%) SQL
2 233 (45.16%) Python
3 37 (7.17%) Java
4 28 (5.43%) C#
5 22 (4.26%) Scala
5 22 (4.26%) T-SQL
6 17 (3.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 17 (3.29%) PowerShell
7 16 (3.10%) Bicep
8 7 (1.36%) Bash
9 6 (1.16%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.97%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.97%) R
10 5 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.39%) Ada
11 2 (0.39%) C++
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) Perl
12 1 (0.19%) SOQL
12 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 106 (20.54%) Security Cleared
2 83 (16.09%) SC Cleared
3 25 (4.84%) Azure Certification
4 23 (4.46%) Degree
5 14 (2.71%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.94%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.74%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 7 (1.36%) TOGAF Certification
9 6 (1.16%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.16%) DV Cleared
10 5 (0.97%) CISM
10 5 (0.97%) CISSP
11 3 (0.58%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.58%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 2 (0.39%) Computer Science Degree
12 2 (0.39%) PMP
12 2 (0.39%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.39%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 162 (31.40%) Data Quality
2 58 (11.24%) GDPR
3 30 (5.81%) QA
4 7 (1.36%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.16%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.78%) MiFID
6 4 (0.78%) NIST
7 3 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.58%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.58%) HIPAA
8 2 (0.39%) IFRS
8 2 (0.39%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.39%) PMO
9 1 (0.19%) Basel II
9 1 (0.19%) GRC
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 31 (6.01%) Docker
2 5 (0.97%) HDFS
3 1 (0.19%) Lustre
3 1 (0.19%) NFS
Systems Management
1 95 (18.41%) Terraform
2 33 (6.40%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.74%) Grafana
4 5 (0.97%) Ansible
5 2 (0.39%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.19%) IBM Guardium
6 1 (0.19%) Oozie
6 1 (0.19%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.19%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.19%) Puppet
6 1 (0.19%) Salt
6 1 (0.19%) SELinux
Vendors
1 213 (41.28%) Databricks
2 153 (29.65%) Microsoft
3 40 (7.75%) Informatica
4 28 (5.43%) Google
5 26 (5.04%) Oracle
6 18 (3.49%) OpenAI
7 16 (3.10%) SAP
8 15 (2.91%) Talend
9 9 (1.74%) Denodo
10 7 (1.36%) Cloudera
10 7 (1.36%) Infor
11 6 (1.16%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.16%) Salesforce
11 6 (1.16%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.78%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.78%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.78%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.78%) Greenplum
12 4 (0.78%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.58%) Splunk