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 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 195 226
Rank change year-on-year -46 +31 +56
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 439 433 454
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.16% 1.37% 1.05%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.97% 7.45% 6.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 315 349 324
10th Percentile £375 £381 £400
25th Percentile £428 £482 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £543
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +10.60% -5.65%
75th Percentile £638 £825 £638
90th Percentile £750 £938 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £495 £525
% change year-on-year -9.09% -5.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 3
10th Percentile - - £34.20
25th Percentile - - £43.88
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% +71.43%
75th Percentile - - £60.75
90th Percentile - - £61.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £45.75
% change year-on-year - - +30.71%

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 6,295 5,810 7,051
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.65% 18.33% 16.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,340 3,827 5,000
10th Percentile £336 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £479 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.20% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 84 166
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.26 £16.06
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £44.25 £30.40 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.56% -28.47% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.56 £62.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.43 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £46.86 £27.50 £41.38
% change year-on-year +70.40% -33.53% -24.77%

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 22 January 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 22 January 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 -55 347 £575 -8.00% 215
London -48 252 £603 -10.74% 56
Work from Home -67 148 £550 -18.52% 129
UK excluding London -54 108 £450 -9.09% 197
North of England -56 31 £488 +6.85% 33
Scotland +8 21 £449 +19.04% 8
South East -39 19 £425 -22.02% 65
North West -22 18 £401 -12.11% 14
Midlands -49 16 £481 +10.00% 30
Yorkshire -44 9 £575 +27.78% 12
East Midlands -15 8 £445 +25.11% 13
West Midlands -51 8 £556 +24.30% 16
Northern Ireland 0 7 £325 -38.10% 3
East of England -13 6 £580 +13.17% 28
Wales -5 5 £555 +11.00% 10
South West -9 5 £713 +16.33% 24
North East -21 4 £463 -2.63% 7

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 58 (13.21%) Apache Spark
2 52 (11.85%) Apache Airflow
3 49 (11.16%) Apache
4 6 (1.37%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.68%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.68%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.46%) Confluence
7 1 (0.23%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (0.91%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.68%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 18 (4.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.91%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.46%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.23%) Infor M3
4 1 (0.23%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.23%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 301 (68.56%) Azure
2 152 (34.62%) AWS
3 143 (32.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 140 (31.89%) Power Platform
5 124 (28.25%) Azure Data Factory
6 67 (15.26%) Snowflake
7 64 (14.58%) Azure DevOps
8 59 (13.44%) GCP
8 59 (13.44%) Serverless
9 56 (12.76%) GitHub
10 42 (9.57%) Amazon S3
11 36 (8.20%) Microsoft Purview
12 31 (7.06%) AWS CloudFormation
13 29 (6.61%) Azure Functions
13 29 (6.61%) GitHub Actions
14 28 (6.38%) dbt
15 23 (5.24%) Azure Key Vault
16 22 (5.01%) AWS Lambda
17 18 (4.10%) Azure Cosmos DB
18 17 (3.87%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.14%) Firewall
1 5 (1.14%) VPN
2 3 (0.68%) Kerberos
3 2 (0.46%) Hyperconnected
3 2 (0.46%) Network Security
4 1 (0.23%) DSL
4 1 (0.23%) InfiniBand
4 1 (0.23%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 130 (29.61%) Power BI
2 123 (28.02%) Data Warehouse
3 51 (11.62%) Delta Lake
3 51 (11.62%) Metadata
4 48 (10.93%) Azure SQL Database
4 48 (10.93%) SQL Server
5 35 (7.97%) Amazon Athena
6 28 (6.38%) Relational Database
6 28 (6.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 27 (6.15%) Big Data
8 26 (5.92%) NoSQL
9 21 (4.78%) BigQuery
10 19 (4.33%) Amazon Redshift
10 19 (4.33%) PostgreSQL
11 18 (4.10%) Spark SQL
12 17 (3.87%) Apache Iceberg
12 17 (3.87%) Tableau
13 14 (3.19%) Apache Arrow
13 14 (3.19%) Apache Ignite
13 14 (3.19%) Dremio
Development Applications
1 38 (8.66%) Git
2 31 (7.06%) GitLab
3 10 (2.28%) MLflow
4 6 (1.37%) ER Studio
4 6 (1.37%) ERwin
4 6 (1.37%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.37%) JIRA
5 3 (0.68%) JMeter
6 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.46%) Pylint
6 2 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.46%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.23%) Hudson
7 1 (0.23%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.23%) Poetry
7 1 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 116 (26.42%) Finance
2 113 (25.74%) Social Skills
3 53 (12.07%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (9.57%) Public Sector
5 27 (6.15%) Banking
6 20 (4.56%) Front Office
7 18 (4.10%) Influencing Skills
8 16 (3.64%) Pharmaceutical
9 14 (3.19%) Investment Banking
10 12 (2.73%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.59%) Retail
12 5 (1.14%) Legal
13 4 (0.91%) Back Office
13 4 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.91%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.91%) Marketing
13 4 (0.91%) Military
14 2 (0.46%) Local Government
14 2 (0.46%) Police
14 2 (0.46%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 140 (31.89%) Data Engineer
2 81 (18.45%) Architect
3 70 (15.95%) Senior
4 51 (11.62%) Azure Engineer
5 47 (10.71%) Data Architect
6 38 (8.66%) AWS Engineer
7 35 (7.97%) Developer
8 34 (7.74%) Lead
9 31 (7.06%) Software Engineer
10 30 (6.83%) Azure Data Engineer
11 27 (6.15%) Python Engineer
12 24 (5.47%) Senior Data Engineer
13 19 (4.33%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (4.10%) AWS Software Engineer
15 16 (3.64%) Analyst
15 16 (3.64%) Principal Engineer
16 15 (3.42%) Data Analytics Engineer
17 14 (3.19%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
17 14 (3.19%) Principal Software Engineer
17 14 (3.19%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 81 (18.45%) PySpark
2 39 (8.88%) Kafka
3 29 (6.61%) Pandas
4 21 (4.78%) NumPy
4 21 (4.78%) REST
5 16 (3.64%) SciPy
6 14 (3.19%) gRPC
6 14 (3.19%) JSON
6 14 (3.19%) Protocol Buffers
7 13 (2.96%) PyTorch
7 13 (2.96%) scikit-learn
7 13 (2.96%) TensorFlow
8 12 (2.73%) LangChain
9 11 (2.51%) LangGraph
9 11 (2.51%) Microsoft Graph
9 11 (2.51%) Spark Streaming
10 10 (2.28%) Great Expectations
11 6 (1.37%) React
11 6 (1.37%) SOAP
11 6 (1.37%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (8.88%) Cloud Native
2 16 (3.64%) Equities
3 15 (3.42%) Derivative
3 15 (3.42%) Distributed Computing
3 15 (3.42%) Fixed Income
4 14 (3.19%) Data Structures
4 14 (3.19%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 14 (3.19%) Hedge funds
4 14 (3.19%) Pricing Data
5 10 (2.28%) Onboarding
5 10 (2.28%) Product Ownership
6 9 (2.05%) Data Fabric
7 8 (1.82%) Algorithms
7 8 (1.82%) IoT
8 7 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (1.59%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.59%) NHS
9 6 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
10 5 (1.14%) Analytical Mindset
10 5 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.96%) Linux
2 10 (2.28%) Unix
3 6 (1.37%) Windows
4 1 (0.23%) VMS
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 218 (49.66%) Analytics
2 203 (46.24%) ETL
3 171 (38.95%) Data Pipeline
4 156 (35.54%) CI/CD
5 154 (35.08%) Data Modelling
6 145 (33.03%) Business Intelligence
7 134 (30.52%) DevOps
8 129 (29.38%) Data Governance
9 126 (28.70%) Data Engineering
10 101 (23.01%) Data Architecture
11 94 (21.41%) AI
12 90 (20.50%) Agile
13 80 (18.22%) Machine Learning
14 73 (16.63%) Infrastructure as Code
15 53 (12.07%) Data Integration
15 53 (12.07%) Data Science
16 51 (11.62%) Problem-Solving
17 48 (10.93%) Software Engineering
18 47 (10.71%) Migration
19 45 (10.25%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 251 (57.18%) SQL
2 224 (51.03%) Python
3 43 (9.79%) Java
4 23 (5.24%) C#
5 22 (5.01%) JavaScript
6 19 (4.33%) T-SQL
6 19 (4.33%) TypeScript
7 17 (3.87%) Scala
8 13 (2.96%) Bicep
8 13 (2.96%) PowerShell
9 12 (2.73%) R
10 11 (2.51%) Bash
11 10 (2.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 10 (2.28%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.68%) Korn
13 2 (0.46%) Ada
13 2 (0.46%) C++
13 2 (0.46%) Perl
14 1 (0.23%) HiveQL
14 1 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 58 (13.21%) Security Cleared
2 41 (9.34%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.38%) Degree
4 23 (5.24%) Azure Certification
5 17 (3.87%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.73%) Master's Degree
7 9 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.82%) AWS Certification
8 8 (1.82%) MCP
9 7 (1.59%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.68%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.68%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.68%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.68%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.68%) PMP
11 2 (0.46%) ACCA
11 2 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.46%) CIMA
11 2 (0.46%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.23%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 107 (24.37%) Data Quality
2 58 (13.21%) GDPR
3 17 (3.87%) QA
4 15 (3.42%) HIPAA
5 12 (2.73%) NIST
6 8 (1.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.37%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.68%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 3 (0.68%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 36 (8.20%) Docker
2 7 (1.59%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.14%) zsh
4 4 (0.91%) HDFS
4 4 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.23%) Lustre
5 1 (0.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 77 (17.54%) Terraform
2 26 (5.92%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.59%) Ansible
4 6 (1.37%) Grafana
5 3 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.46%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.46%) Packer
7 1 (0.23%) Kibana
7 1 (0.23%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.23%) logstash
7 1 (0.23%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.23%) Puppet
7 1 (0.23%) Salt
7 1 (0.23%) SELinux
7 1 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 177 (40.32%) Databricks
2 126 (28.70%) Microsoft
3 25 (5.69%) SAP
4 20 (4.56%) Google
5 17 (3.87%) OpenAI
6 14 (3.19%) Informatica
7 13 (2.96%) Oracle
8 6 (1.37%) Cloudera
8 6 (1.37%) ServiceNow
9 5 (1.14%) Salesforce
10 4 (0.91%) Greenplum
10 4 (0.91%) Talend
11 3 (0.68%) Ab Initio
12 2 (0.46%) Anaplan
12 2 (0.46%) Ariba
12 2 (0.46%) Charles River
12 2 (0.46%) eFront
12 2 (0.46%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.46%) New Relic
12 2 (0.46%) SimCorp