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 24 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 240 159
Rank change year-on-year +15 -81 +69
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 613 379 586
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.15% 1.54%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.43% 6.30% 8.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 478 280 493
10th Percentile £400 £380 £450
25th Percentile £450 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £750
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% -23.33% +30.43%
75th Percentile £650 £741 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +7.16% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £32.87 - -
Median hourly rate £42.73 - -
75th Percentile £53.13 - -
90th Percentile £54.25 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.73 - -

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 8,248 6,019 6,817
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.02% 18.26% 17.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,504 4,032 4,659
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £532
Median % change year-on-year - -6.02% -1.48%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £706 £738 £799
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 272 88 91
10th Percentile £16.70 £21.15 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.16 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.18 £40.25 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -0.16% +14.99% -36.36%
75th Percentile £57.81 £65.00 £60.78
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.25 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £37.48 £30.00
% change year-on-year +9.39% +24.93% -45.45%

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 -25 489 £550 -8.33% 497
London -51 282 £575 -11.54% 291
Work from Home -42 209 £525 -19.23% 211
UK excluding London +8 206 £509 +7.16% 275
Midlands +27 86 £600 +33.33% 52
West Midlands +10 61 £608 +1.25% 36
North of England -35 53 £505 +6.32% 57
North West -33 30 £525 +7.69% 28
East Midlands +2 25 £500 +21.95% 16
Scotland -8 22 £410 +14.53% 56
Yorkshire -23 21 £518 +8.95% 15
South East -67 20 £459 +0.88% 44
South West -26 16 £600 +26.32% 28
East of England -34 9 £575 +4.55% 19
Wales -12 3 £500 -16.67% 7
North East -43 2 £438 - 14

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 73 (11.91%) Apache Spark
2 51 (8.32%) Apache
3 47 (7.67%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (5.87%) SAS
5 20 (3.26%) Confluence
6 13 (2.12%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.49%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.33%) nginx
8 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.16%) JBoss
9 1 (0.16%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.49%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.33%) Endur
4 2 (0.33%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.33%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.33%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.16%) Actimize
5 1 (0.16%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.16%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.16%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 384 (62.64%) Azure
2 215 (35.07%) AWS
3 185 (30.18%) Power Platform
4 150 (24.47%) Azure Data Factory
5 112 (18.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 95 (15.50%) GCP
7 93 (15.17%) Snowflake
8 85 (13.87%) Azure DevOps
9 64 (10.44%) Amazon S3
10 61 (9.95%) Serverless
11 55 (8.97%) GitHub
12 49 (7.99%) Azure Databricks
13 39 (6.36%) AWS Lambda
14 35 (5.71%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 34 (5.55%) dbt
15 34 (5.55%) Entra ID
16 29 (4.73%) Amazon EMR
17 26 (4.24%) GitHub Actions
17 26 (4.24%) Microsoft Purview
18 25 (4.08%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.96%) Firewall
2 11 (1.79%) HTTP
3 9 (1.47%) DNS
4 5 (0.82%) WAN
5 3 (0.49%) Broadband
6 2 (0.33%) DSL
6 2 (0.33%) Network Security
7 1 (0.16%) AMQP
7 1 (0.16%) IPsec
7 1 (0.16%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.16%) Modbus
7 1 (0.16%) MQTT
7 1 (0.16%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.16%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.16%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.16%) SMS
7 1 (0.16%) VPN
7 1 (0.16%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 247 (40.29%) Data Warehouse
2 167 (27.24%) Power BI
3 98 (15.99%) Metadata
4 59 (9.62%) Amazon Redshift
5 54 (8.81%) Azure SQL Database
6 47 (7.67%) NoSQL
7 40 (6.53%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.36%) Amazon Athena
9 38 (6.20%) Big Data
10 35 (5.71%) SQL Server
11 30 (4.89%) BigQuery
12 29 (4.73%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 26 (4.24%) Relational Database
14 25 (4.08%) PostgreSQL
15 22 (3.59%) Tableau
16 21 (3.43%) Semantic Layer
17 18 (2.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (2.94%) Star Schema
18 16 (2.61%) Hadoop
18 16 (2.61%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 60 (9.79%) Git
2 43 (7.01%) GitLab
3 26 (4.24%) JIRA
4 17 (2.77%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.47%) ERwin
6 7 (1.14%) ER Studio
7 6 (0.98%) PowerDesigner
8 4 (0.65%) JUnit
8 4 (0.65%) MLflow
8 4 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.49%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.16%) TestRail
11 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 156 (25.45%) Social Skills
2 142 (23.16%) Finance
3 71 (11.58%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (9.95%) Public Sector
5 44 (7.18%) Banking
6 31 (5.06%) Retail
7 26 (4.24%) Marketing
8 22 (3.59%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
11 11 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.14%) Investment Banking
12 7 (1.14%) Military
12 7 (1.14%) Police
13 6 (0.98%) Publishing
14 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
15 4 (0.65%) Front Office
15 4 (0.65%) Legal
15 4 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
15 4 (0.65%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 214 (34.91%) Architect
2 163 (26.59%) Data Engineer
3 140 (22.84%) Data Architect
4 93 (15.17%) Senior
5 61 (9.95%) Azure Engineer
6 54 (8.81%) Solutions Architect
7 51 (8.32%) Analyst
8 49 (7.99%) Senior Data Engineer
9 40 (6.53%) Azure Data Engineer
10 38 (6.20%) Lead
11 37 (6.04%) Data Analyst
12 33 (5.38%) Business Analyst
12 33 (5.38%) Developer
13 31 (5.06%) Data Business Analyst
14 25 (4.08%) Databricks Engineer
15 21 (3.43%) Azure Architect
15 21 (3.43%) Cloud Architect
15 21 (3.43%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 18 (2.94%) Technical Leader
17 17 (2.77%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (15.82%) Terraform
2 71 (11.58%) PySpark
3 48 (7.83%) Kafka
4 32 (5.22%) REST
5 14 (2.28%) .NET
6 13 (2.12%) JSON
6 13 (2.12%) YAML
7 11 (1.79%) Model Context Protocol
7 11 (1.79%) Spring Boot
8 10 (1.63%) Spring
9 8 (1.31%) Apache NiFi
9 8 (1.31%) LangChain
9 8 (1.31%) Middleware
9 8 (1.31%) OAuth
10 7 (1.14%) ARM Templates
10 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Graph
10 7 (1.14%) OAuth2
10 7 (1.14%) XML
11 6 (0.98%) Node.js
11 6 (0.98%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 89 (14.52%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.18%) Data Structures
3 30 (4.89%) Product Ownership
4 22 (3.59%) Distributed Systems
5 20 (3.26%) Onboarding
6 19 (3.10%) AI Agents
6 19 (3.10%) Data Fabric
6 19 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
7 14 (2.28%) Reference Data
8 12 (1.96%) Enterprise Software
8 12 (1.96%) Low-Code
8 12 (1.96%) Marketing Technology
9 10 (1.63%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.47%) Autonomous Agent
10 9 (1.47%) Reinsurance
11 8 (1.31%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.14%) Fixed Income
12 7 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
12 7 (1.14%) IoT
13 6 (0.98%) Enterprise Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.43%) Linux
2 13 (2.12%) Unix
3 6 (0.98%) Windows
4 4 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.49%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (51.06%) Analytics
2 268 (43.72%) Data Modelling
3 252 (41.11%) ETL
4 240 (39.15%) Data Pipeline
5 234 (38.17%) CI/CD
6 212 (34.58%) Data Engineering
7 202 (32.95%) Business Intelligence
8 199 (32.46%) Data Governance
9 186 (30.34%) Agile
10 177 (28.87%) DevOps
11 170 (27.73%) AI
12 168 (27.41%) Data Architecture
13 166 (27.08%) Migration
14 128 (20.88%) Stakeholder Management
15 119 (19.41%) Lakehouse
16 102 (16.64%) Data Integration
17 98 (15.99%) Data Transformation
18 93 (15.17%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 92 (15.01%) Machine Learning
20 86 (14.03%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 325 (53.02%) SQL
2 192 (31.32%) Python
3 40 (6.53%) Java
4 22 (3.59%) PowerShell
5 21 (3.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 20 (3.26%) Bicep
7 18 (2.94%) Bash
8 17 (2.77%) C#
9 13 (2.12%) Scala
10 8 (1.31%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.31%) Shell Script
11 7 (1.14%) T-SQL
12 6 (0.98%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.82%) R
14 4 (0.65%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.33%) Cypher
16 2 (0.33%) Go
16 2 (0.33%) SHACL
16 2 (0.33%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 146 (23.82%) Security Cleared
2 108 (17.62%) SC Cleared
3 28 (4.57%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.10%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.77%) Degree
7 14 (2.28%) AWS Certification
8 11 (1.79%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 9 (1.47%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.47%) Microsoft Certification
10 8 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
11 7 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (0.98%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.65%) CSPO
14 3 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) CISM
14 3 (0.49%) CISSP
14 3 (0.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 3 (0.49%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 209 (34.09%) Data Quality
2 40 (6.53%) GDPR
3 23 (3.75%) QA
4 10 (1.63%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.14%) GRC
6 7 (1.14%) NIST
7 6 (0.98%) Solvency II
8 5 (0.82%) MiFID
8 5 (0.82%) NCSC
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.49%) PMO
9 3 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.49%) SLA
10 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.16%) Disclosure Scotland
11 1 (0.16%) SEPA
11 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 40 (6.53%) Docker
2 11 (1.79%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.65%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 45 (7.34%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.45%) Grafana
3 10 (1.63%) Ansible
4 8 (1.31%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.82%) Puppet
6 4 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.49%) Argo
8 2 (0.33%) Control-M
9 1 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.16%) Istio
9 1 (0.16%) linkerd
9 1 (0.16%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 235 (38.34%) Databricks
2 147 (23.98%) Microsoft
3 30 (4.89%) Informatica
4 28 (4.57%) Google
5 23 (3.75%) Oracle
6 20 (3.26%) OpenAI
7 18 (2.94%) SAP
8 17 (2.77%) Denodo
9 13 (2.12%) Talend
10 8 (1.31%) Adobe
10 8 (1.31%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.31%) Teradata
11 7 (1.14%) Cloudera
11 7 (1.14%) Sparx
12 6 (0.98%) Dynatrace
12 6 (0.98%) MuleSoft
12 6 (0.98%) SnapLogic
13 5 (0.82%) IBM
13 5 (0.82%) Infor
14 4 (0.65%) MicroStrategy