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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 181 239
Rank change year-on-year -63 +58 +6
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 482 447 461
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 1.46% 1.03%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.99% 7.70% 6.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 346 356 319
10th Percentile £394 £393 £396
25th Percentile £447 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +10.48% -8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £763 £625
90th Percentile £731 £938 £715
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £480 £513
% change year-on-year -6.25% -6.34% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 4
10th Percentile - - £31.58
25th Percentile £64.00 - £37.31
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% +29.35% +43.57%
75th Percentile £69.11 - £60.38
90th Percentile £69.31 - £61.05
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 6,896 5,806 7,313
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.15% 18.94% 16.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,749 3,959 5,160
10th Percentile £344 £351 £340
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 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £490
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 96 174
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.59 £15.68
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £52.50 £30.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.39% -29.16% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.56 £62.50
90th Percentile £84.80 £69.38 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -29.37%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 -81 379 £557 -7.13% 150
London -39 273 £603 -10.74% 75
Work from Home -84 153 £550 -18.52% 81
UK excluding London -50 122 £450 -6.25% 106
North of England -56 36 £480 +3.78% 22
Scotland +27 30 £447 +7.58% 10
Midlands -60 23 £481 +10.00% 10
South East -41 20 £438 -12.50% 34
North West -32 18 £425 -10.53% 10
Yorkshire -51 12 £550 +22.22% 7
West Midlands -58 12 £513 +17.14% 5
East Midlands -22 11 £444 +24.65% 5
North East -14 6 £475 +21.79% 5
Wales -2 5 £555 +11.00% 5
South West -24 4 £900 +38.46% 23
East of England -24 4 - - 3
Northern Ireland -2 2 £430 -18.10%

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 74 (15.35%) Apache Spark
2 50 (10.37%) Apache Airflow
3 49 (10.17%) Apache
4 7 (1.45%) Confluence
5 6 (1.24%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.62%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.41%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.41%) nginx
8 1 (0.21%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.21%) SAS
Applications
1 5 (1.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.62%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (2.28%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.41%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.41%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.21%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.21%) JDE EnterpriseOne
3 1 (0.21%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.21%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 335 (69.50%) Azure
2 166 (34.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 162 (33.61%) AWS
4 155 (32.16%) Power Platform
5 145 (30.08%) Azure Data Factory
6 77 (15.98%) Azure DevOps
7 70 (14.52%) GitHub
8 68 (14.11%) Serverless
9 67 (13.90%) GCP
10 53 (11.00%) Amazon S3
11 50 (10.37%) Snowflake
12 41 (8.51%) AWS CloudFormation
13 38 (7.88%) Microsoft Purview
14 35 (7.26%) GitHub Actions
15 34 (7.05%) Azure Functions
16 26 (5.39%) AWS Lambda
16 26 (5.39%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 26 (5.39%) Azure Key Vault
17 22 (4.56%) Collibra
18 20 (4.15%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.87%) Firewall
2 4 (0.83%) VPN
3 3 (0.62%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.41%) Network Security
5 1 (0.21%) 4G
5 1 (0.21%) 5G
5 1 (0.21%) DSL
5 1 (0.21%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.21%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.21%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 146 (30.29%) Data Warehouse
2 140 (29.05%) Power BI
3 69 (14.32%) Metadata
4 61 (12.66%) Delta Lake
5 60 (12.45%) SQL Server
6 57 (11.83%) Azure SQL Database
7 36 (7.47%) Amazon Athena
8 32 (6.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 30 (6.22%) Big Data
10 27 (5.60%) Amazon Redshift
10 27 (5.60%) PostgreSQL
11 25 (5.19%) Relational Database
12 23 (4.77%) BigQuery
12 23 (4.77%) NoSQL
13 22 (4.56%) Hadoop
14 20 (4.15%) Mixpanel
15 19 (3.94%) Spark SQL
16 18 (3.73%) Snowflake Schema
17 16 (3.32%) OLAP
18 15 (3.11%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 48 (9.96%) Git
2 33 (6.85%) GitLab
3 11 (2.28%) Jenkins
3 11 (2.28%) MLflow
4 10 (2.07%) JIRA
5 4 (0.83%) Bitbucket
5 4 (0.83%) ER Studio
5 4 (0.83%) ERwin
6 3 (0.62%) JMeter
7 1 (0.21%) Hudson
7 1 (0.21%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
7 1 (0.21%) Pylint
7 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
7 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.21%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio
General
1 130 (26.97%) Social Skills
2 116 (24.07%) Finance
3 60 (12.45%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (11.20%) Public Sector
5 20 (4.15%) Banking
6 17 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
6 17 (3.53%) Influencing Skills
7 10 (2.07%) Pharmaceutical
7 10 (2.07%) Retail
8 8 (1.66%) Marketing
9 6 (1.24%) Front Office
10 4 (0.83%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.83%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.83%) Military
11 3 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.62%) Legal
12 2 (0.41%) Back Office
12 2 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.41%) Publishing
12 2 (0.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 161 (33.40%) Data Engineer
2 100 (20.75%) Architect
3 68 (14.11%) Senior
4 60 (12.45%) Data Architect
5 50 (10.37%) Azure Engineer
6 48 (9.96%) Lead
7 36 (7.47%) Developer
8 31 (6.43%) AWS Engineer
9 30 (6.22%) Senior Data Engineer
10 28 (5.81%) Azure Data Engineer
11 27 (5.60%) Principal Engineer
12 26 (5.39%) Software Engineer
13 25 (5.19%) Solutions Architect
14 20 (4.15%) Lead Data Engineer
15 19 (3.94%) DevOps Engineer
15 19 (3.94%) Principal Software Engineer
16 17 (3.53%) Principal Data Engineer
17 16 (3.32%) Azure Architect
17 16 (3.32%) Data Analytics Engineer
17 16 (3.32%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (20.95%) PySpark
2 54 (11.20%) Kafka
3 22 (4.56%) REST
4 17 (3.53%) JSON
5 16 (3.32%) Great Expectations
5 16 (3.32%) Pandas
6 13 (2.70%) Microsoft Graph
6 13 (2.70%) Model Context Protocol
6 13 (2.70%) PyTorch
6 13 (2.70%) scikit-learn
7 12 (2.49%) LangChain
8 11 (2.28%) LangGraph
8 11 (2.28%) XML
9 10 (2.07%) Spark Streaming
9 10 (2.07%) TensorFlow
9 10 (2.07%) YAML
10 9 (1.87%) NumPy
11 7 (1.45%) A2A Protocol
11 7 (1.45%) FastAPI
11 7 (1.45%) React
Miscellaneous
1 48 (9.96%) Cloud Native
2 18 (3.73%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.53%) Distributed Computing
4 15 (3.11%) IoT
5 13 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (2.28%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.07%) Data Fabric
7 10 (2.07%) Management Information System
7 10 (2.07%) Onboarding
8 8 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.45%) Algorithms
9 7 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.45%) NHS
10 5 (1.04%) Fixed Income
11 4 (0.83%) Derivative
11 4 (0.83%) Digital Media
11 4 (0.83%) Equities
11 4 (0.83%) Hedge funds
11 4 (0.83%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.70%) Linux
2 8 (1.66%) Unix
3 6 (1.24%) Windows
4 2 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 262 (54.36%) Analytics
2 232 (48.13%) ETL
3 199 (41.29%) Data Pipeline
4 196 (40.66%) Data Modelling
5 183 (37.97%) CI/CD
6 165 (34.23%) Business Intelligence
7 164 (34.02%) Data Engineering
8 162 (33.61%) Data Governance
9 154 (31.95%) DevOps
10 118 (24.48%) AI
11 116 (24.07%) Data Architecture
12 99 (20.54%) Agile
13 93 (19.29%) Machine Learning
14 89 (18.46%) Infrastructure as Code
15 74 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
16 69 (14.32%) Data Science
17 62 (12.86%) Data Integration
18 60 (12.45%) Migration
19 50 (10.37%) Data Ingestion
19 50 (10.37%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 283 (58.71%) SQL
2 238 (49.38%) Python
3 36 (7.47%) Java
4 32 (6.64%) C#
5 23 (4.77%) T-SQL
6 20 (4.15%) Scala
7 19 (3.94%) PowerShell
8 17 (3.53%) Bicep
9 14 (2.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 13 (2.70%) Bash
11 12 (2.49%) JavaScript
12 10 (2.07%) PL/SQL
13 7 (1.45%) R
13 7 (1.45%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.41%) Ada
14 2 (0.41%) C++
15 1 (0.21%) ANSI SQL
15 1 (0.21%) C
15 1 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
15 1 (0.21%) Perl
Qualifications
1 79 (16.39%) Security Cleared
2 57 (11.83%) SC Cleared
3 31 (6.43%) Degree
4 22 (4.56%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (2.90%) Master's Degree
7 10 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.45%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.45%) TOGAF Certification
10 6 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.04%) CISM
11 5 (1.04%) CISSP
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMP
13 2 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.41%) DV Cleared
13 2 (0.41%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 133 (27.59%) Data Quality
2 74 (15.35%) GDPR
3 21 (4.36%) QA
4 14 (2.90%) HIPAA
5 13 (2.70%) NIST
6 8 (1.66%) Accessibility
6 8 (1.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.24%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.41%) PMO
9 2 (0.41%) Solvency II
10 1 (0.21%) IFRS
10 1 (0.21%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 34 (7.05%) Docker
2 7 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.04%) HDFS
4 3 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.41%) zsh
6 1 (0.21%) Lustre
6 1 (0.21%) NFS
Systems Management
1 99 (20.54%) Terraform
2 31 (6.43%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.24%) Ansible
3 6 (1.24%) Grafana
4 4 (0.83%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.21%) Fluentd
5 1 (0.21%) Hadoop YARN
5 1 (0.21%) Kibana
5 1 (0.21%) logstash
5 1 (0.21%) Oozie
5 1 (0.21%) Oracle ZFS
5 1 (0.21%) Packer
5 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
5 1 (0.21%) Puppet
5 1 (0.21%) Salt
5 1 (0.21%) SELinux
5 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 200 (41.49%) Databricks
2 146 (30.29%) Microsoft
3 26 (5.39%) Google
4 23 (4.77%) Informatica
4 23 (4.77%) Oracle
5 19 (3.94%) SAP
6 18 (3.73%) OpenAI
7 10 (2.07%) Talend
8 6 (1.24%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.24%) ServiceNow
9 4 (0.83%) BiZZdesign
9 4 (0.83%) CheckPoint
9 4 (0.83%) Cloudera
9 4 (0.83%) Fortinet
9 4 (0.83%) Greenplum
10 3 (0.62%) Ab Initio
10 3 (0.62%) Red Hat
11 2 (0.41%) Infor
11 2 (0.41%) New Relic
11 2 (0.41%) Splunk