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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 21 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 239 155 220
Rank change year-on-year -84 +65 +58
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 381 599 577
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 1.17% 1.56% 1.16%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.38% 8.70% 6.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 282 503 452
10th Percentile £382 £450 £425
25th Percentile £463 £513 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £750 £575
Median % change year-on-year -23.33% +30.43% -
75th Percentile £750 £850 £680
90th Percentile £825 £888 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - £50.75
25th Percentile - - £51.88
Median hourly rate - - £55.00
75th Percentile - - £59.38
90th Percentile - - £61.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £60.00
% change year-on-year - - +71.43%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 5,970 6,885 8,368
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.28% 17.94% 16.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,993 4,732 5,839
10th Percentile £340 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £540
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% -0.93% -1.82%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £738 £800 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 89 156
10th Percentile £21.23 £17.50 £20.94
25th Percentile £29.02 £21.25 £32.32
Median hourly rate £40.25 £35.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.99% -36.36% +22.22%
75th Percentile £65.00 £59.95 £73.75
90th Percentile £83.75 £71.95 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £36.00 £30.00 £55.00
% change year-on-year +20.00% -45.45% +57.14%

Data Lake
Job Vacancy Trend

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

Job vacancy trend for Data Lake 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 21 September 2025.

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 21 September 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 -76 348 £600 -20.00% 185
London -47 254 £650 -18.75% 100
Work from Home -61 173 £650 -18.75% 113
UK excluding London -38 90 £475 -5.00% 124
South East +8 24 £455 -13.33% 53
North of England -60 23 £475 -4.52% 27
East of England +10 13 £550 +69.23% 12
Midlands -21 12 £450 -3.23% 11
North West -29 12 £488 +4.84% 16
Yorkshire -28 10 £475 -6.31% 7
Northern Ireland -1 6 £313 -40.48%
Scotland -4 6 £358 -20.44% 8
West Midlands -14 6 £600 -1.96% 8
East Midlands -5 5 £410 -8.89% 3
South West +22 4 £475 -17.39% 13
Wales +6 4 £600 +20.00% 3
North East -9 1 - - 4

Data Lake
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 71 (18.64%) Apache Airflow
2 68 (17.85%) Apache
3 32 (8.40%) Apache Spark
4 10 (2.62%) Confluence
5 9 (2.36%) Jupyter
6 3 (0.79%) ArcGIS
6 3 (0.79%) Oracle Spatial
6 3 (0.79%) Smallworld
7 1 (0.26%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (1.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.52%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (2.36%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.57%) Aladdin
3 3 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.52%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.52%) Endur
4 2 (0.52%) SAP CO
4 2 (0.52%) SAP FI
4 2 (0.52%) SAP FI/CO
5 1 (0.26%) JDE EnterpriseOne
5 1 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.26%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.26%) SAP GRC
5 1 (0.26%) SAP Hybris
5 1 (0.26%) SAP MDG
5 1 (0.26%) SAP MM
5 1 (0.26%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 214 (56.17%) Azure
2 139 (36.48%) AWS
3 96 (25.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 85 (22.31%) Snowflake
5 82 (21.52%) Power Platform
6 81 (21.26%) Azure Data Factory
7 68 (17.85%) dbt
8 55 (14.44%) GCP
9 30 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
10 23 (6.04%) Microsoft Purview
10 23 (6.04%) Serverless
11 19 (4.99%) Amazon S3
12 15 (3.94%) GitHub
12 15 (3.94%) SaaS
13 14 (3.67%) Azure Key Vault
14 13 (3.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 10 (2.62%) Azure Functions
15 10 (2.62%) Entra ID
16 9 (2.36%) Azure Machine Learning
16 9 (2.36%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.89%) Firewall
1 11 (2.89%) VPN
2 3 (0.79%) Network Security
3 2 (0.52%) Cisco ISE
3 2 (0.52%) SD-WAN
3 2 (0.52%) TCP/IP
3 2 (0.52%) WAN
3 2 (0.52%) Wireless
4 1 (0.26%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 118 (30.97%) Data Warehouse
2 81 (21.26%) Power BI
3 53 (13.91%) Amazon Athena
4 52 (13.65%) Apache Iceberg
5 48 (12.60%) Apache Arrow
5 48 (12.60%) Apache Ignite
5 48 (12.60%) Dremio
6 40 (10.50%) Metadata
7 37 (9.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 37 (9.71%) Big Data
7 37 (9.71%) Delta Lake
8 22 (5.77%) Relational Database
9 21 (5.51%) SQL Server
10 19 (4.99%) BigQuery
10 19 (4.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 17 (4.46%) NoSQL
12 12 (3.15%) PostgreSQL
13 11 (2.89%) Amazon Redshift
13 11 (2.89%) RDBMS
13 11 (2.89%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 26 (6.82%) Git
2 14 (3.67%) JIRA
3 13 (3.41%) ERwin
4 8 (2.10%) GitLab
5 7 (1.84%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.79%) Gradle
6 3 (0.79%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.79%) Maven
6 3 (0.79%) MLflow
7 2 (0.52%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.52%) GCC
7 2 (0.52%) Hudson
8 1 (0.26%) Poetry
8 1 (0.26%) Pylint
8 1 (0.26%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.26%) Spinnaker
8 1 (0.26%) Terragrunt
General
1 129 (33.86%) Finance
2 88 (23.10%) Social Skills
3 68 (17.85%) Banking
4 52 (13.65%) Front Office
5 49 (12.86%) Investment Banking
6 43 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
7 13 (3.41%) Retail
8 10 (2.62%) Pharmaceutical
8 10 (2.62%) Public Sector
9 7 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.84%) Marketing
10 6 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (1.31%) Manufacturing
11 5 (1.31%) Publishing
12 4 (1.05%) Legal
13 2 (0.52%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.52%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.52%) Law
13 2 (0.52%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 95 (24.93%) Senior
2 91 (23.88%) Data Engineer
3 72 (18.90%) Architect
4 52 (13.65%) AWS Engineer
4 52 (13.65%) Python Engineer
4 52 (13.65%) Software Engineer
5 51 (13.39%) Java Engineer
5 51 (13.39%) Java Software Engineer
6 48 (12.60%) AWS Software Engineer
6 48 (12.60%) Python Software Engineer
6 48 (12.60%) Senior Java Engineer
6 48 (12.60%) Senior Java Software Engineer
6 48 (12.60%) Senior Software Engineer
7 41 (10.76%) Azure Engineer
8 37 (9.71%) Data Architect
9 33 (8.66%) Analyst
10 30 (7.87%) Azure Data Engineer
11 27 (7.09%) Developer
12 24 (6.30%) Azure Architect
13 22 (5.77%) Data Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (13.91%) PySpark
2 52 (13.65%) Pandas
3 50 (13.12%) NumPy
4 48 (12.60%) gRPC
4 48 (12.60%) Protocol Buffers
4 48 (12.60%) SciPy
5 20 (5.25%) Kafka
6 10 (2.62%) PyTorch
6 10 (2.62%) TensorFlow
7 7 (1.84%) Hugging Face
7 7 (1.84%) scikit-learn
8 6 (1.57%) HTML
9 5 (1.31%) ARM Templates
9 5 (1.31%) JSON
9 5 (1.31%) Middleware
9 5 (1.31%) OpenTelemetry
9 5 (1.31%) React
9 5 (1.31%) REST
9 5 (1.31%) XML
10 4 (1.05%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 50 (13.12%) Equities
2 49 (12.86%) Derivative
3 48 (12.60%) Fixed Income
3 48 (12.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 48 (12.60%) Hedge funds
3 48 (12.60%) Pricing Data
4 20 (5.25%) Cloud Native
5 15 (3.94%) Product Ownership
6 13 (3.41%) Legacy Systems
7 12 (3.15%) Data Structures
8 6 (1.57%) Enterprise Software
8 6 (1.57%) Hybrid Cloud
8 6 (1.57%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.57%) Reference Data
8 6 (1.57%) Reinsurance
8 6 (1.57%) Virtual Team
9 5 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
9 5 (1.31%) Distributed Computing
9 5 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
9 5 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 9 (2.36%) Linux
2 7 (1.84%) Unix
3 6 (1.57%) Windows
4 5 (1.31%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.79%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.26%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (37.80%) Analytics
2 128 (33.60%) ETL
3 125 (32.81%) Agile
3 125 (32.81%) Data Modelling
4 118 (30.97%) Data Pipeline
5 98 (25.72%) Business Intelligence
6 92 (24.15%) Data Governance
7 81 (21.26%) CI/CD
8 78 (20.47%) Data Engineering
9 75 (19.69%) Data Architecture
10 66 (17.32%) DevOps
11 61 (16.01%) Software Engineering
12 58 (15.22%) Asset Management
13 57 (14.96%) Investment Management
14 51 (13.39%) Migration
15 48 (12.60%) Data Integration
16 44 (11.55%) Data Transformation
17 43 (11.29%) Infrastructure as Code
18 42 (11.02%) Data Science
18 42 (11.02%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 191 (50.13%) SQL
2 173 (45.41%) Python
3 65 (17.06%) Java
4 55 (14.44%) JavaScript
5 53 (13.91%) TypeScript
6 23 (6.04%) Scala
7 15 (3.94%) R
8 14 (3.67%) T-SQL
9 10 (2.62%) Bicep
10 9 (2.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 6 (1.57%) Bash
11 6 (1.57%) C#
12 5 (1.31%) PL/SQL
13 4 (1.05%) PowerShell
14 3 (0.79%) C
14 3 (0.79%) Korn
14 3 (0.79%) Magik
15 1 (0.26%) C++
15 1 (0.26%) Perl
15 1 (0.26%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 30 (7.87%) Security Cleared
2 25 (6.56%) Degree
3 23 (6.04%) SC Cleared
4 21 (5.51%) Azure Certification
5 9 (2.36%) Master's Degree
6 6 (1.57%) Microsoft Certification
6 6 (1.57%) PMI Certification
7 5 (1.31%) AWS Certification
7 5 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.31%) PMP
8 4 (1.05%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.79%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.52%) ACCA
10 2 (0.52%) CIMA
10 2 (0.52%) DV Cleared
11 1 (0.26%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.26%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 1 (0.26%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.26%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 60 (15.75%) Data Quality
2 25 (6.56%) GDPR
3 11 (2.89%) Accessibility
4 9 (2.36%) QA
5 5 (1.31%) HIPAA
6 4 (1.05%) Solvency II
7 2 (0.52%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.52%) GRC
8 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.26%) IFRS
8 1 (0.26%) NIST
8 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 23 (6.04%) Docker
2 10 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (1.05%) zsh
Systems Management
1 38 (9.97%) Terraform
2 34 (8.92%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.57%) Ansible
3 6 (1.57%) Grafana
4 5 (1.31%) Argo
5 4 (1.05%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.52%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.26%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.26%) Packer
Vendors
1 124 (32.55%) Databricks
2 73 (19.16%) Microsoft
3 23 (6.04%) Google
4 20 (5.25%) Informatica
5 17 (4.46%) SAP
6 12 (3.15%) Oracle
7 7 (1.84%) OpenAI
8 6 (1.57%) Foundry
8 6 (1.57%) Palantir
8 6 (1.57%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.57%) Talend
9 5 (1.31%) Guidewire
10 4 (1.05%) Cloudera
10 4 (1.05%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.79%) Duck Creek
11 3 (0.79%) ESRI
11 3 (0.79%) Palo Alto
12 2 (0.52%) Charles River
12 2 (0.52%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.52%) Sybase