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 19 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 227 210 170
Rank change year-on-year -17 -40 +32
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 549 380 624
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.27% 1.42%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.15% 6.84% 8.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 397 299 495
10th Percentile £400 £405 £419
25th Percentile £450 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £589 £625
Median % change year-on-year -6.62% -5.76% +10.86%
75th Percentile £656 £781 £850
90th Percentile £750 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +15.79% -3.06% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £51.25 - £42.50
25th Percentile £57.25 - £45.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
75th Percentile £67.75 - £56.25
90th Percentile £69.22 - £59.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

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 7,682 5,556 7,548
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.20% 18.63% 17.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,122 3,791 5,386
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 99 157
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.52 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £26.00 £20.98
Median hourly rate £41.71 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.17% -12.50% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.72 £66.00 £54.13
90th Percentile £78.58 £78.96 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.38 £31.85 £34.47
% change year-on-year +20.51% -7.60% -39.48%

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 -39 460 £575 -4.17% 107
London -39 305 £581 -16.96% 63
Work from Home -34 192 £540 -25.52% 55
UK excluding London -41 150 £550 +15.79% 72
Midlands -19 52 £600 +33.33% 15
North of England -53 39 £525 +10.53% 19
West Midlands -31 36 £620 +35.52% 15
North West -33 21 £500 +2.56% 16
Scotland +7 20 £463 -19.84% 1
South East -75 20 £425 -7.61% 21
East Midlands -7 16 £573 +41.48%
Yorkshire -49 15 £600 +33.19% 1
South West -14 13 £600 +6.67% 8
East of England -32 8 £575 -0.86% 3
North East -33 3 £463 - 2
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 - 2

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 79 (14.39%) Apache Spark
2 39 (7.10%) Apache
3 36 (6.56%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (5.10%) SAS
5 16 (2.91%) Confluence
6 3 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.36%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.36%) nginx
7 2 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 4 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.55%) Infor M3
2 3 (0.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.36%) Endur
3 2 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.36%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 372 (67.76%) Azure
2 198 (36.07%) AWS
3 190 (34.61%) Power Platform
4 153 (27.87%) Azure Data Factory
5 139 (25.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 92 (16.76%) GCP
7 85 (15.48%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (14.75%) GitHub
9 64 (11.66%) Serverless
10 58 (10.56%) Amazon S3
11 52 (9.47%) Snowflake
12 38 (6.92%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (6.01%) AWS Lambda
14 29 (5.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 29 (5.28%) Microsoft Purview
15 25 (4.55%) Azure Functions
15 25 (4.55%) Azure Key Vault
16 22 (4.01%) AWS CloudFormation
17 18 (3.28%) Amazon EMR
17 18 (3.28%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.64%) HTTP
2 8 (1.46%) Firewall
3 5 (0.91%) DNS
3 5 (0.91%) WAN
4 3 (0.55%) Network Security
5 1 (0.18%) 4G
5 1 (0.18%) 5G
5 1 (0.18%) DSL
5 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.18%) Modbus
5 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.18%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 187 (34.06%) Data Warehouse
2 167 (30.42%) Power BI
3 77 (14.03%) Metadata
4 69 (12.57%) Azure SQL Database
5 62 (11.29%) SQL Server
6 56 (10.20%) Delta Lake
7 53 (9.65%) Amazon Redshift
8 40 (7.29%) Amazon Athena
9 36 (6.56%) Big Data
10 31 (5.65%) BigQuery
11 29 (5.28%) NoSQL
12 28 (5.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 26 (4.74%) PostgreSQL
14 25 (4.55%) Relational Database
15 22 (4.01%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
15 22 (4.01%) Hadoop
16 21 (3.83%) Spark SQL
17 20 (3.64%) Snowflake Schema
18 18 (3.28%) Star Schema
19 17 (3.10%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 64 (11.66%) Git
2 27 (4.92%) GitLab
3 21 (3.83%) JIRA
4 18 (3.28%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.09%) ER Studio
5 6 (1.09%) ERwin
5 6 (1.09%) MLflow
6 5 (0.91%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.73%) JUnit
8 3 (0.55%) JMeter
9 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.18%) Hudson
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 142 (25.87%) Finance
2 116 (21.13%) Social Skills
3 66 (12.02%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (10.75%) Public Sector
5 26 (4.74%) Banking
6 16 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.73%) Marketing
8 12 (2.19%) Retail
9 7 (1.28%) Military
10 6 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 5 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.91%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.73%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.73%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.55%) Publishing
14 2 (0.36%) Back Office
14 2 (0.36%) Front Office
14 2 (0.36%) General Ledger
14 2 (0.36%) Local Government
14 2 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 186 (33.88%) Data Engineer
2 154 (28.05%) Architect
3 89 (16.21%) Senior
4 87 (15.85%) Data Architect
5 53 (9.65%) Senior Data Engineer
6 47 (8.56%) Solutions Architect
7 43 (7.83%) Lead
8 42 (7.65%) Azure Engineer
9 35 (6.38%) Developer
10 31 (5.65%) Azure Data Engineer
11 25 (4.55%) Analyst
12 24 (4.37%) Cloud Architect
13 23 (4.19%) Principal Engineer
14 21 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
14 21 (3.83%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 20 (3.64%) Azure Architect
16 17 (3.10%) Data Analyst
17 16 (2.91%) Software Engineer
18 15 (2.73%) AWS Data Engineer
19 14 (2.55%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 94 (17.12%) PySpark
2 52 (9.47%) Kafka
3 31 (5.65%) REST
4 14 (2.55%) Great Expectations
5 13 (2.37%) Model Context Protocol
5 13 (2.37%) XML
6 10 (1.82%) JSON
6 10 (1.82%) LangChain
6 10 (1.82%) Middleware
7 9 (1.64%) LangGraph
7 9 (1.64%) YAML
8 8 (1.46%) .NET
8 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Graph
8 8 (1.46%) Pandas
8 8 (1.46%) PyTorch
8 8 (1.46%) scikit-learn
8 8 (1.46%) Spring Boot
9 7 (1.28%) A2A Protocol
9 7 (1.28%) Node.js
9 7 (1.28%) React
Miscellaneous
1 81 (14.75%) Cloud Native
2 27 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (4.37%) Data Structures
4 19 (3.46%) Legacy Systems
5 18 (3.28%) Product Ownership
6 14 (2.55%) IoT
7 11 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.00%) Low-Code
7 11 (2.00%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.64%) AI Agents
8 9 (1.64%) Distributed Computing
8 9 (1.64%) Reference Data
9 8 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
9 8 (1.46%) Digital Media
10 7 (1.28%) Data Fabric
10 7 (1.28%) Onboarding
11 6 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (0.91%) Fixed Income
12 5 (0.91%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.00%) Unix
2 10 (1.82%) Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 289 (52.64%) Analytics
2 269 (49.00%) ETL
3 237 (43.17%) Data Modelling
4 224 (40.80%) Data Pipeline
5 217 (39.53%) Data Engineering
6 206 (37.52%) CI/CD
7 202 (36.79%) Business Intelligence
8 168 (30.60%) Data Governance
9 163 (29.69%) DevOps
10 156 (28.42%) AI
11 143 (26.05%) Data Architecture
12 127 (23.13%) Agile
13 114 (20.77%) Migration
14 105 (19.13%) Machine Learning
15 93 (16.94%) Problem-Solving
16 75 (13.66%) Data Transformation
17 73 (13.30%) Data Integration
17 73 (13.30%) Infrastructure as Code
18 67 (12.20%) Data Science
18 67 (12.20%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 324 (59.02%) SQL
2 224 (40.80%) Python
3 43 (7.83%) Java
4 23 (4.19%) C#
5 22 (4.01%) Scala
6 19 (3.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 17 (3.10%) T-SQL
8 14 (2.55%) Bicep
9 13 (2.37%) PowerShell
10 11 (2.00%) JavaScript
11 9 (1.64%) Bash
11 9 (1.64%) Shell Script
12 8 (1.46%) PL/SQL
13 4 (0.73%) R
14 3 (0.55%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.36%) SOQL
16 1 (0.18%) Ada
16 1 (0.18%) C++
16 1 (0.18%) Cypher
16 1 (0.18%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 132 (24.04%) Security Cleared
2 105 (19.13%) SC Cleared
3 25 (4.55%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.83%) Degree
5 13 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (2.00%) Microsoft Certification
7 10 (1.82%) Master's Degree
8 8 (1.46%) AWS Certification
8 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.28%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.09%) TOGAF Certification
11 5 (0.91%) CISM
11 5 (0.91%) CISSP
12 4 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 3 (0.55%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 2 (0.36%) CSPO
14 2 (0.36%) Postgraduate
14 2 (0.36%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (32.97%) Data Quality
2 54 (9.84%) GDPR
3 31 (5.65%) QA
4 5 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.73%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.73%) MiFID
5 4 (0.73%) NIST
5 4 (0.73%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.73%) Solvency II
6 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.55%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.55%) IFRS
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.36%) PMO
8 1 (0.18%) Basel II
8 1 (0.18%) GRC
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 29 (5.28%) Docker
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.55%) HDFS
4 2 (0.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 91 (16.58%) Terraform
2 35 (6.38%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.82%) Grafana
4 7 (1.28%) Ansible
5 3 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.36%) Argo
6 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Oozie
7 1 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 199 (36.25%) Databricks
2 150 (27.32%) Microsoft
3 40 (7.29%) Informatica
4 33 (6.01%) Oracle
5 30 (5.46%) Google
6 21 (3.83%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.10%) Talend
8 14 (2.55%) SAP
9 9 (1.64%) Denodo
10 8 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.28%) Infor
12 6 (1.09%) Adobe
12 6 (1.09%) Cloudera
12 6 (1.09%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.09%) ServiceNow
13 5 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (0.73%) CheckPoint
14 4 (0.73%) Fortinet
14 4 (0.73%) Greenplum
14 4 (0.73%) Hortonworks