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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 240 232 176
Rank change year-on-year -8 -56 +63
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 625 397 549
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 1.20% 1.46%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.63% 6.58% 8.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 483 288 452
10th Percentile £400 £375 £445
25th Percentile £441 £454 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £572 £688
Median % change year-on-year -8.14% -16.87% +19.57%
75th Percentile £639 £725 £850
90th Percentile £724 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £32.87 - -
Median hourly rate £35.45 - -
75th Percentile £55.00 - -
90th Percentile £61.75 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.45 - -

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 8,190 6,029 6,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.81% 18.16% 17.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,443 4,049 4,524
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £482
% change year-on-year - -1.45% -3.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 82 89
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.78 £17.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.18 £39.48 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% +16.36% -33.54%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.69 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £80.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.53% +18.30% -40.63%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -30 492 £538 -10.42% 403
London -48 274 £550 -13.73% 233
UK excluding London +9 220 £500 +5.26% 179
Work from Home -37 216 £525 -12.50% 194
Midlands +32 92 £570 +26.67% 33
West Midlands +13 62 £600 - 24
North of England -50 50 £500 +5.26% 66
South East -58 33 £500 +12.68% 21
East Midlands +14 30 £500 +21.95% 9
North West -37 28 £500 +5.26% 37
Scotland -9 25 £410 +6.88% 20
Yorkshire -31 21 £493 -14.35% 18
South West -28 14 £600 +26.32% 19
East of England -33 6 £350 -36.36% 14
Wales -14 3 £500 - 4
North East -36 1 £425 - 11

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 78 (12.48%) Apache Spark
2 58 (9.28%) Apache
3 50 (8.00%) Apache Airflow
4 34 (5.44%) SAS
5 20 (3.20%) Confluence
6 16 (2.56%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.48%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.48%) nginx
8 2 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.16%) GeoServer
9 1 (0.16%) JBoss
9 1 (0.16%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 8 (1.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 4 (0.64%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.48%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.48%) Infor M3
3 3 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.32%) Endur
4 2 (0.32%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.32%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.16%) Actimize
5 1 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
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
1 398 (63.68%) Azure
2 215 (34.40%) AWS
3 188 (30.08%) Power Platform
4 151 (24.16%) Azure Data Factory
5 113 (18.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 102 (16.32%) GCP
7 96 (15.36%) Snowflake
8 93 (14.88%) Azure DevOps
9 66 (10.56%) Amazon S3
9 66 (10.56%) Serverless
10 60 (9.60%) GitHub
11 58 (9.28%) Azure Databricks
12 40 (6.40%) AWS Lambda
12 40 (6.40%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 38 (6.08%) Entra ID
14 35 (5.60%) dbt
15 33 (5.28%) Amazon EMR
16 27 (4.32%) SaaS
17 26 (4.16%) Azure Monitor
17 26 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
Communications & Networking
1 16 (2.56%) Firewall
2 12 (1.92%) DNS
3 11 (1.76%) HTTP
4 5 (0.80%) WAN
5 3 (0.48%) Broadband
5 3 (0.48%) Network Security
5 3 (0.48%) Reverse Proxy
6 2 (0.32%) DSL
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%) VPN
7 1 (0.16%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 250 (40.00%) Data Warehouse
2 169 (27.04%) Power BI
3 101 (16.16%) Metadata
4 62 (9.92%) Amazon Redshift
5 59 (9.44%) Azure SQL Database
6 48 (7.68%) NoSQL
7 42 (6.72%) Amazon Athena
7 42 (6.72%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.24%) Big Data
9 34 (5.44%) SQL Server
10 33 (5.28%) BigQuery
11 28 (4.48%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 27 (4.32%) PostgreSQL
13 26 (4.16%) Relational Database
13 26 (4.16%) Tableau
14 21 (3.36%) Semantic Layer
15 20 (3.20%) Hadoop
16 19 (3.04%) Amazon RDS
17 18 (2.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 17 (2.72%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 64 (10.24%) Git
2 45 (7.20%) GitLab
3 26 (4.16%) JIRA
4 18 (2.88%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.44%) ERwin
6 7 (1.12%) ER Studio
7 6 (0.96%) PowerDesigner
8 4 (0.64%) JUnit
8 4 (0.64%) MLflow
8 4 (0.64%) SonarQube
8 4 (0.64%) Terragrunt
9 2 (0.32%) Sonatype Nexus
10 1 (0.16%) CircleCI
10 1 (0.16%) Postman
10 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.16%) Snyk
10 1 (0.16%) TestRail
10 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 162 (25.92%) Social Skills
2 153 (24.48%) Finance
3 81 (12.96%) Analytical Skills
4 64 (10.24%) Public Sector
5 52 (8.32%) Banking
6 34 (5.44%) Retail
7 27 (4.32%) Marketing
8 23 (3.68%) Manufacturing
9 18 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
10 16 (2.56%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 9 (1.44%) Investment Banking
13 8 (1.28%) Military
13 8 (1.28%) Police
14 7 (1.12%) Legal
15 5 (0.80%) Financial Institution
15 5 (0.80%) Publishing
16 4 (0.64%) Front Office
16 4 (0.64%) Organisational Skills
16 4 (0.64%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 206 (32.96%) Architect
2 169 (27.04%) Data Engineer
3 137 (21.92%) Data Architect
4 93 (14.88%) Senior
5 69 (11.04%) Azure Engineer
6 57 (9.12%) Analyst
7 48 (7.68%) Senior Data Engineer
8 45 (7.20%) Solutions Architect
9 40 (6.40%) Azure Data Engineer
10 39 (6.24%) Business Analyst
11 38 (6.08%) Data Analyst
12 37 (5.92%) Lead
13 34 (5.44%) Developer
14 33 (5.28%) Data Business Analyst
15 26 (4.16%) Databricks Engineer
16 21 (3.36%) Azure Architect
16 21 (3.36%) Databricks Data Engineer
17 18 (2.88%) DevOps Engineer
17 18 (2.88%) Technical Leader
18 17 (2.72%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 101 (16.16%) Terraform
2 79 (12.64%) PySpark
3 51 (8.16%) Kafka
4 35 (5.60%) REST
5 20 (3.20%) .NET
6 16 (2.56%) YAML
7 13 (2.08%) JSON
8 11 (1.76%) ARM Templates
8 11 (1.76%) Model Context Protocol
9 10 (1.60%) Spring Boot
10 9 (1.44%) Apache NiFi
10 9 (1.44%) LangChain
10 9 (1.44%) Spring
11 8 (1.28%) Middleware
11 8 (1.28%) Node.js
11 8 (1.28%) OAuth
12 7 (1.12%) Microsoft Graph
12 7 (1.12%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.12%) XML
13 6 (0.96%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 88 (14.08%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.04%) Data Structures
3 33 (5.28%) Product Ownership
4 25 (4.00%) Onboarding
5 23 (3.68%) AI Agents
6 22 (3.52%) Distributed Systems
7 20 (3.20%) Data Fabric
8 17 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
9 14 (2.24%) Reference Data
10 13 (2.08%) Enterprise Software
10 13 (2.08%) Marketing Technology
11 11 (1.76%) Data Protection Act
11 11 (1.76%) Low-Code
12 9 (1.44%) Autonomous Agent
12 9 (1.44%) Reinsurance
13 8 (1.28%) Clustering
13 8 (1.28%) Replication
14 7 (1.12%) Fixed Income
14 7 (1.12%) IoT
14 7 (1.12%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 25 (4.00%) Linux
2 13 (2.08%) Unix
3 8 (1.28%) Windows
4 5 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.64%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.32%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 316 (50.56%) Analytics
2 278 (44.48%) Data Modelling
3 260 (41.60%) ETL
4 242 (38.72%) Data Pipeline
5 233 (37.28%) CI/CD
6 208 (33.28%) Data Governance
7 207 (33.12%) Data Engineering
8 203 (32.48%) Business Intelligence
9 193 (30.88%) Agile
10 182 (29.12%) DevOps
11 177 (28.32%) AI
12 168 (26.88%) Data Architecture
13 159 (25.44%) Migration
14 137 (21.92%) Stakeholder Management
15 121 (19.36%) Lakehouse
16 106 (16.96%) Data Integration
17 95 (15.20%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 94 (15.04%) Machine Learning
19 91 (14.56%) Data Transformation
20 87 (13.92%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 336 (53.76%) SQL
2 205 (32.80%) Python
3 40 (6.40%) Java
4 26 (4.16%) PowerShell
5 24 (3.84%) C#
6 23 (3.68%) Bash
7 20 (3.20%) Bicep
8 19 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 13 (2.08%) Scala
10 10 (1.60%) JavaScript
11 8 (1.28%) Shell Script
12 6 (0.96%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.80%) Kusto Query Language
13 5 (0.80%) T-SQL
14 4 (0.64%) R
14 4 (0.64%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.32%) Cypher
15 2 (0.32%) Go
15 2 (0.32%) SHACL
15 2 (0.32%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 154 (24.64%) Security Cleared
2 116 (18.56%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.16%) Azure Certification
4 23 (3.68%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (3.20%) Degree
5 20 (3.20%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.72%) AWS Certification
7 11 (1.76%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 9 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
8 9 (1.44%) Master's Degree
9 8 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 7 (1.12%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (0.96%) TOGAF Certification
12 4 (0.64%) CSPO
13 3 (0.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
13 3 (0.48%) CCSP
13 3 (0.48%) Cisco Certification
13 3 (0.48%) CISM
13 3 (0.48%) CISSP
13 3 (0.48%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (34.24%) Data Quality
2 38 (6.08%) GDPR
3 23 (3.68%) QA
4 10 (1.60%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.28%) GRC
6 8 (1.28%) NIST
7 6 (0.96%) Solvency II
8 5 (0.80%) MiFID
8 5 (0.80%) NCSC
9 3 (0.48%) IFRS
9 3 (0.48%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.48%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.48%) PMO
9 3 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.48%) SLA
10 2 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.16%) GLBA
11 1 (0.16%) PSD2
11 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 40 (6.40%) Docker
2 13 (2.08%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.28%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.80%) HDFS
4 5 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 48 (7.68%) Kubernetes
2 18 (2.88%) Grafana
3 14 (2.24%) Ansible
4 10 (1.60%) Prometheus
5 6 (0.96%) Puppet
6 4 (0.64%) Argo
6 4 (0.64%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.32%) Control-M
7 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.16%) Cilium
8 1 (0.16%) Istio
8 1 (0.16%) linkerd
8 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 251 (40.16%) Databricks
2 152 (24.32%) Microsoft
3 34 (5.44%) Google
4 31 (4.96%) Informatica
5 23 (3.68%) OpenAI
5 23 (3.68%) Oracle
6 15 (2.40%) Denodo
6 15 (2.40%) Talend
7 14 (2.24%) SAP
8 9 (1.44%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.28%) Adobe
9 8 (1.28%) Cloudera
9 8 (1.28%) Teradata
10 7 (1.12%) Sparx
11 6 (0.96%) Dynatrace
11 6 (0.96%) Foundry
11 6 (0.96%) MuleSoft
11 6 (0.96%) SnapLogic
12 5 (0.80%) Greenplum
12 5 (0.80%) Infor