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 17 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 183 212
Rank change year-on-year -61 +29 +10
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 489 437 482
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.06% 1.49% 1.10%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.74% 7.81% 6.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 355 355
10th Percentile £401 £386 £400
25th Percentile £451 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £763 £713
90th Percentile £750 £938 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 3
10th Percentile - - £30.30
25th Percentile £64.00 - £34.13
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% +60.49% +15.71%
75th Percentile £69.11 - £51.00
90th Percentile £69.31 - £57.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - £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 7,250 5,595 7,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.76% 19.06% 16.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,965 3,853 5,185
10th Percentile £350 £354 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £594 £640 £650
90th Percentile £694 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £483
% change year-on-year -2.86% +1.24% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 108 152
10th Percentile £18.00 £21.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £31.03 £24.25 £20.77
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.81 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.30% -15.49% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.68 £65.62 £53.84
90th Percentile £83.75 £73.63 £72.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +58.03% -9.60% -39.70%

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 17 April 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 17 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 17 April 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 -89 402 £575 -4.17% 105
London -54 289 £600 -11.11% 48
Work from Home -74 153 £550 -18.52% 50
UK excluding London -67 116 £500 +5.26% 70
North of England -63 37 £500 +9.59% 18
Midlands -60 30 £475 +8.57% 14
Scotland +13 20 £475 -4.62% 2
North West -36 17 £500 +5.26% 8
West Midlands -57 16 £513 +15.49% 9
South East -70 16 £475 -3.26% 19
East Midlands -21 14 £449 +25.98% 5
Yorkshire -44 13 £525 +20.00% 8
North East -18 7 £463 +29.19% 4
East of England -28 7 £575 -0.86% 8
South West -30 4 £500 -11.11% 9
Wales -10 1 - - 1
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 84 (17.18%) Apache Spark
2 50 (10.22%) Apache
3 40 (8.18%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (1.23%) Confluence
4 6 (1.23%) SAS
5 4 (0.82%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.61%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.41%) nginx
8 1 (0.20%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.84%) SAP S/4HANA
2 1 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.20%) Infor M3
2 1 (0.20%) Loan IQ
2 1 (0.20%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 343 (70.14%) Azure
2 173 (35.38%) Power Platform
3 169 (34.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 166 (33.95%) AWS
5 160 (32.72%) Azure Data Factory
6 86 (17.59%) Azure DevOps
7 81 (16.56%) GitHub
8 68 (13.91%) GCP
9 61 (12.47%) Serverless
10 56 (11.45%) Amazon S3
11 40 (8.18%) AWS CloudFormation
12 39 (7.98%) GitHub Actions
13 38 (7.77%) Snowflake
14 37 (7.57%) Microsoft Purview
15 31 (6.34%) Azure Functions
16 28 (5.73%) Azure Key Vault
17 26 (5.32%) Collibra
18 24 (4.91%) AWS Lambda
19 23 (4.70%) Azure Cosmos DB
20 20 (4.09%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.84%) Firewall
2 3 (0.61%) Kerberos
2 3 (0.61%) Network Security
2 3 (0.61%) VPN
3 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
4 1 (0.20%) 4G
4 1 (0.20%) 5G
4 1 (0.20%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.20%) InfiniBand
4 1 (0.20%) Modbus
4 1 (0.20%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 156 (31.90%) Power BI
2 142 (29.04%) Data Warehouse
3 74 (15.13%) Metadata
4 65 (13.29%) SQL Server
5 64 (13.09%) Delta Lake
6 62 (12.68%) Azure SQL Database
7 36 (7.36%) Amazon Athena
8 35 (7.16%) Amazon Redshift
9 30 (6.13%) Big Data
9 30 (6.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 27 (5.52%) PostgreSQL
11 24 (4.91%) NoSQL
12 23 (4.70%) Spark SQL
13 22 (4.50%) Hadoop
13 22 (4.50%) Mixpanel
14 21 (4.29%) BigQuery
15 20 (4.09%) OLAP
16 19 (3.89%) Relational Database
17 18 (3.68%) Snowflake Schema
18 17 (3.48%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 50 (10.22%) Git
2 28 (5.73%) GitLab
3 13 (2.66%) Jenkins
4 9 (1.84%) JIRA
4 9 (1.84%) MLflow
5 3 (0.61%) ER Studio
5 3 (0.61%) ERwin
5 3 (0.61%) JMeter
6 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
7 1 (0.20%) Hudson
7 1 (0.20%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.20%) PowerDesigner
7 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 118 (24.13%) Finance
2 107 (21.88%) Social Skills
3 53 (10.84%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (8.59%) Public Sector
5 13 (2.66%) Influencing Skills
6 12 (2.45%) Banking
7 11 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.64%) Retail
9 7 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
10 6 (1.23%) Manufacturing
10 6 (1.23%) Marketing
11 3 (0.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.61%) Military
12 2 (0.41%) Back Office
12 2 (0.41%) Billing
12 2 (0.41%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.41%) Front Office
12 2 (0.41%) Legal
12 2 (0.41%) Local Government
12 2 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 172 (35.17%) Data Engineer
2 123 (25.15%) Architect
3 73 (14.93%) Data Architect
4 63 (12.88%) Senior
5 44 (9.00%) Azure Engineer
6 43 (8.79%) Lead
7 38 (7.77%) Solutions Architect
8 36 (7.36%) Senior Data Engineer
9 33 (6.75%) Principal Engineer
10 31 (6.34%) Developer
11 26 (5.32%) Azure Data Engineer
11 26 (5.32%) Software Engineer
12 23 (4.70%) Principal Software Engineer
13 21 (4.29%) AWS Engineer
14 20 (4.09%) Cloud Architect
15 19 (3.89%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 19 (3.89%) Principal Data Engineer
16 17 (3.48%) Analyst
17 16 (3.27%) Azure Architect
17 16 (3.27%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (21.47%) PySpark
2 60 (12.27%) Kafka
3 20 (4.09%) Great Expectations
4 19 (3.89%) REST
5 16 (3.27%) JSON
6 14 (2.86%) Model Context Protocol
7 12 (2.45%) LangChain
7 12 (2.45%) Microsoft Graph
8 11 (2.25%) LangGraph
8 11 (2.25%) Spark Streaming
8 11 (2.25%) XML
9 10 (2.04%) Pandas
9 10 (2.04%) YAML
10 8 (1.64%) A2A Protocol
10 8 (1.64%) PyTorch
10 8 (1.64%) scikit-learn
11 7 (1.43%) TensorFlow
12 5 (1.02%) .NET
12 5 (1.02%) Node.js
12 5 (1.02%) React
Miscellaneous
1 65 (13.29%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.89%) Data Structures
2 19 (3.89%) Legacy Systems
3 17 (3.48%) Distributed Computing
4 16 (3.27%) IoT
5 14 (2.86%) Product Ownership
6 13 (2.66%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (2.25%) Management Information System
8 9 (1.84%) Data Fabric
9 8 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
9 8 (1.64%) Digital Media
10 7 (1.43%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.02%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.02%) Algorithms
11 5 (1.02%) Replication
12 4 (0.82%) Onboarding
12 4 (0.82%) Security Posture
12 4 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (0.61%) Autonomous Agent
13 3 (0.61%) EPoS
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.86%) Linux
2 10 (2.04%) Unix
3 5 (1.02%) Windows
4 2 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 279 (57.06%) Analytics
2 244 (49.90%) ETL
3 221 (45.19%) Data Modelling
4 209 (42.74%) Data Pipeline
5 198 (40.49%) CI/CD
6 192 (39.26%) Data Engineering
7 182 (37.22%) Business Intelligence
8 167 (34.15%) DevOps
9 165 (33.74%) Data Governance
10 131 (26.79%) AI
11 127 (25.97%) Data Architecture
12 93 (19.02%) Machine Learning
13 92 (18.81%) Agile
14 87 (17.79%) Migration
15 83 (16.97%) Infrastructure as Code
15 83 (16.97%) Problem-Solving
16 65 (13.29%) Data Integration
17 62 (12.68%) Data Transformation
18 60 (12.27%) Data Science
19 49 (10.02%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 289 (59.10%) SQL
2 240 (49.08%) Python
3 34 (6.95%) Java
4 32 (6.54%) C#
5 23 (4.70%) Scala
5 23 (4.70%) T-SQL
6 19 (3.89%) Bicep
6 19 (3.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 19 (3.89%) PowerShell
7 8 (1.64%) Bash
8 7 (1.43%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.23%) PL/SQL
9 6 (1.23%) R
10 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.41%) Ada
11 2 (0.41%) C++
12 1 (0.20%) ANSI SQL
12 1 (0.20%) C
12 1 (0.20%) Perl
12 1 (0.20%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 93 (19.02%) Security Cleared
2 72 (14.72%) SC Cleared
3 26 (5.32%) Degree
4 22 (4.50%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (2.66%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.64%) AWS Certification
8 8 (1.64%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
10 5 (1.02%) CISM
10 5 (1.02%) CISSP
11 4 (0.82%) Computer Science Degree
11 4 (0.82%) DV Cleared
12 3 (0.61%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 2 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.41%) PMI Certification
13 2 (0.41%) PMP
13 2 (0.41%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 154 (31.49%) Data Quality
2 66 (13.50%) GDPR
3 23 (4.70%) QA
4 7 (1.43%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.43%) PCI DSS
4 7 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.82%) NIST
6 3 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.61%) HIPAA
7 2 (0.41%) PMO
8 1 (0.20%) IFRS
8 1 (0.20%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.20%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Solvency II
System Software
1 34 (6.95%) Docker
2 5 (1.02%) HDFS
3 4 (0.82%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.20%) Lustre
5 1 (0.20%) NFS
Systems Management
1 102 (20.86%) Terraform
2 34 (6.95%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.23%) Ansible
3 6 (1.23%) Grafana
4 5 (1.02%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.20%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.20%) IBM Guardium
6 1 (0.20%) Oozie
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.20%) Packer
6 1 (0.20%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.20%) Puppet
6 1 (0.20%) Salt
6 1 (0.20%) SELinux
Vendors
1 202 (41.31%) Databricks
2 153 (31.29%) Microsoft
3 33 (6.75%) Informatica
4 28 (5.73%) Google
5 20 (4.09%) OpenAI
5 20 (4.09%) Oracle
6 18 (3.68%) SAP
7 11 (2.25%) Talend
8 7 (1.43%) Cloudera
9 6 (1.23%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.02%) ServiceNow
11 4 (0.82%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (0.82%) CheckPoint
11 4 (0.82%) Fortinet
11 4 (0.82%) Greenplum
11 4 (0.82%) Infor
12 3 (0.61%) Ab Initio
12 3 (0.61%) Hortonworks
12 3 (0.61%) Red Hat
12 3 (0.61%) Splunk