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 18 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 244 187 232
Rank change year-on-year -57 +45 +46
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 403 479 503
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.14% 1.33% 1.08%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.42% 7.58% 6.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 300 385 380
10th Percentile £375 £425 £413
25th Percentile £450 £500 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £650 £550
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% +18.18% -4.35%
75th Percentile £675 £850 £658
90th Percentile £825 £888 £725
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 3
10th Percentile - - £51.50
25th Percentile - - £53.75
Median hourly rate - - £60.00
75th Percentile - - £61.25
90th Percentile - - £62.00
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 6,279 6,320 7,792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.74% 17.53% 16.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,292 4,186 5,455
10th Percentile £333 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £435
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £530
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% - -3.64%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £720 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -0.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 84 150
10th Percentile £21.02 £17.65 £16.96
25th Percentile £29.00 £21.25 £22.69
Median hourly rate £44.25 £30.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.50% -36.84% +5.56%
75th Percentile £66.06 £48.32 £69.69
90th Percentile £83.08 £64.92 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.91% -40.45% +13.38%

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 18 November 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 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 18 November 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 -71 345 £600 -7.69% 285
London -45 244 £625 -16.67% 176
Work from Home -50 168 £600 -25.00% 208
UK excluding London -22 106 £475 -5.00% 137
North of England -32 32 £500 +5.26% 29
South East -10 22 £431 -17.86% 48
North West -15 19 £439 -2.56% 14
Midlands -31 15 £450 -13.25% 31
Scotland +3 14 £400 +12.36% 7
Yorkshire -32 13 £550 -2.22% 11
East of England -12 9 £550 +33.33% 8
West Midlands -32 8 £525 -6.67% 22
East Midlands -10 7 £430 +20.79% 9
Wales +4 6 £500 - 3
Northern Ireland -5 6 £313 -40.48% 1
South West -3 4 £713 +23.91% 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 71 (17.62%) Apache Airflow
2 65 (16.13%) Apache
3 47 (11.66%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.24%) Confluence
4 5 (1.24%) Jupyter
5 4 (0.99%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.74%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.25%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.25%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.25%) Oracle Spatial
7 1 (0.25%) Smallworld
Applications
1 3 (0.74%) Microsoft Excel
1 3 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
1 3 (0.74%) MS Visio
2 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Project
2 2 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.25%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 17 (4.22%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.24%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.50%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.50%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.50%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.50%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.25%) Endur
4 1 (0.25%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.25%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.25%) SAP Hybris
4 1 (0.25%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.25%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 245 (60.79%) Azure
2 143 (35.48%) AWS
3 116 (28.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 106 (26.30%) Power Platform
5 97 (24.07%) Azure Data Factory
6 85 (21.09%) Snowflake
7 54 (13.40%) dbt
8 51 (12.66%) GCP
9 37 (9.18%) Azure DevOps
10 32 (7.94%) Serverless
11 31 (7.69%) Amazon S3
11 31 (7.69%) GitHub
12 19 (4.71%) Microsoft Purview
13 18 (4.47%) AWS CloudFormation
14 17 (4.22%) AWS Lambda
14 17 (4.22%) Azure Machine Learning
15 16 (3.97%) Azure Key Vault
15 16 (3.97%) Entra ID
16 14 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
17 13 (3.23%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.99%) Firewall
2 7 (1.74%) VPN
3 2 (0.50%) Hyperconnected
3 2 (0.50%) Network Security
4 1 (0.25%) DSL
4 1 (0.25%) Internet
4 1 (0.25%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 129 (32.01%) Data Warehouse
2 105 (26.05%) Power BI
3 42 (10.42%) Metadata
4 41 (10.17%) Amazon Athena
5 40 (9.93%) Azure SQL Database
6 39 (9.68%) Apache Iceberg
7 36 (8.93%) Delta Lake
8 34 (8.44%) Apache Arrow
8 34 (8.44%) Apache Ignite
8 34 (8.44%) Dremio
9 33 (8.19%) Big Data
10 23 (5.71%) Relational Database
11 20 (4.96%) SQL Server
12 18 (4.47%) NoSQL
12 18 (4.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 18 (4.47%) Tableau
13 16 (3.97%) BigQuery
14 15 (3.72%) Amazon Redshift
14 15 (3.72%) Data Vault
14 15 (3.72%) PostgreSQL
Development Applications
1 28 (6.95%) Git
2 19 (4.71%) GitLab
3 10 (2.48%) ERwin
4 8 (1.99%) JIRA
5 7 (1.74%) ER Studio
5 7 (1.74%) Jenkins
6 6 (1.49%) MLflow
7 3 (0.74%) Gradle
7 3 (0.74%) Maven
8 2 (0.50%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.50%) GCC
8 2 (0.50%) Pylint
8 2 (0.50%) SonarQube
8 2 (0.50%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.25%) Hudson
9 1 (0.25%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.25%) Poetry
9 1 (0.25%) Spinnaker
9 1 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 131 (32.51%) Finance
2 123 (30.52%) Social Skills
3 53 (13.15%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (12.16%) Banking
5 40 (9.93%) Front Office
6 35 (8.68%) Investment Banking
7 32 (7.94%) Public Sector
8 16 (3.97%) Pharmaceutical
9 15 (3.72%) Influencing Skills
10 11 (2.73%) Retail
11 10 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
12 7 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 6 (1.49%) Legal
14 4 (0.99%) Manufacturing
15 3 (0.74%) Marketing
15 3 (0.74%) Publishing
16 2 (0.50%) General Ledger
16 2 (0.50%) Local Government
16 2 (0.50%) Police
16 2 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 105 (26.05%) Data Engineer
2 82 (20.35%) Senior
3 77 (19.11%) Architect
4 55 (13.65%) AWS Engineer
5 44 (10.92%) Azure Engineer
6 41 (10.17%) Data Architect
6 41 (10.17%) Software Engineer
7 39 (9.68%) Python Engineer
8 37 (9.18%) Developer
8 37 (9.18%) Java Engineer
8 37 (9.18%) Java Software Engineer
9 36 (8.93%) AWS Software Engineer
10 34 (8.44%) Python Software Engineer
11 33 (8.19%) Senior Java Engineer
11 33 (8.19%) Senior Java Software Engineer
11 33 (8.19%) Senior Software Engineer
12 27 (6.70%) Azure Data Engineer
13 26 (6.45%) Azure Architect
14 25 (6.20%) Analyst
15 23 (5.71%) Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (12.66%) PySpark
2 42 (10.42%) Pandas
3 38 (9.43%) NumPy
4 34 (8.44%) gRPC
4 34 (8.44%) Protocol Buffers
4 34 (8.44%) SciPy
5 27 (6.70%) Kafka
6 11 (2.73%) PyTorch
6 11 (2.73%) REST
6 11 (2.73%) scikit-learn
7 10 (2.48%) TensorFlow
8 9 (2.23%) JSON
9 7 (1.74%) React
10 6 (1.49%) HTML
10 6 (1.49%) SOAP
11 5 (1.24%) GraphQL
11 5 (1.24%) Microsoft Graph
12 4 (0.99%) ARM Templates
12 4 (0.99%) OAuth
12 4 (0.99%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 36 (8.93%) Equities
2 35 (8.68%) Derivative
2 35 (8.68%) Fixed Income
3 34 (8.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 34 (8.44%) Hedge funds
3 34 (8.44%) Pricing Data
4 25 (6.20%) Cloud Native
5 14 (3.47%) Product Ownership
6 13 (3.23%) Legacy Systems
7 11 (2.73%) Data Structures
8 10 (2.48%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.74%) Hybrid Cloud
9 7 (1.74%) NHS
10 6 (1.49%) Data Fabric
10 6 (1.49%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
10 6 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.49%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.49%) Reinsurance
11 5 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.98%) Linux
2 10 (2.48%) Unix
3 6 (1.49%) Windows
4 3 (0.74%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.25%) VMS
5 1 (0.25%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (43.67%) Analytics
2 140 (34.74%) Data Pipeline
3 135 (33.50%) ETL
4 127 (31.51%) Data Modelling
5 111 (27.54%) Business Intelligence
6 106 (26.30%) CI/CD
7 105 (26.05%) Agile
8 100 (24.81%) Data Governance
9 88 (21.84%) DevOps
10 87 (21.59%) Data Architecture
11 83 (20.60%) Data Engineering
12 62 (15.38%) Infrastructure as Code
13 60 (14.89%) Machine Learning
14 56 (13.90%) Software Engineering
15 55 (13.65%) AI
16 52 (12.90%) Data Science
17 49 (12.16%) Migration
18 48 (11.91%) Data Integration
18 48 (11.91%) Data Transformation
19 43 (10.67%) Asset Management
Programming Languages
1 203 (50.37%) SQL
2 179 (44.42%) Python
3 54 (13.40%) Java
4 43 (10.67%) JavaScript
5 39 (9.68%) TypeScript
6 19 (4.71%) Scala
7 16 (3.97%) T-SQL
8 15 (3.72%) R
9 13 (3.23%) Bash
9 13 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 11 (2.73%) Bicep
11 10 (2.48%) PowerShell
12 9 (2.23%) C#
13 8 (1.99%) PL/SQL
14 3 (0.74%) C
14 3 (0.74%) Korn
15 1 (0.25%) C++
15 1 (0.25%) Magik
15 1 (0.25%) Perl
15 1 (0.25%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 38 (9.43%) Security Cleared
2 30 (7.44%) Degree
3 29 (7.20%) SC Cleared
4 18 (4.47%) Azure Certification
5 13 (3.23%) Master's Degree
6 10 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (1.99%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.99%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
9 3 (0.74%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 2 (0.50%) ACCA
10 2 (0.50%) CIMA
10 2 (0.50%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.50%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.50%) PMP
11 1 (0.25%) APMG
11 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.25%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.25%) PRINCE2 Certification
11 1 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (16.38%) Data Quality
2 41 (10.17%) GDPR
3 13 (3.23%) HIPAA
3 13 (3.23%) QA
4 9 (2.23%) NIST
5 7 (1.74%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.99%) Solvency II
7 2 (0.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.50%) GRC
8 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.25%) IFRS
8 1 (0.25%) PCI DSS
8 1 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 27 (6.70%) Docker
2 14 (3.47%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.99%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.24%) zsh
Systems Management
1 56 (13.90%) Terraform
2 31 (7.69%) Kubernetes
3 9 (2.23%) Grafana
4 5 (1.24%) Ansible
5 3 (0.74%) Argo
5 3 (0.74%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.50%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.50%) Packer
6 2 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.25%) Kibana
7 1 (0.25%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.25%) logstash
Vendors
1 136 (33.75%) Databricks
2 87 (21.59%) Microsoft
3 26 (6.45%) SAP
4 16 (3.97%) Google
5 14 (3.47%) Oracle
6 12 (2.98%) Informatica
7 10 (2.48%) OpenAI
8 7 (1.74%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.49%) Cloudera
9 6 (1.49%) Foundry
9 6 (1.49%) Palantir
10 5 (1.24%) Guidewire
10 5 (1.24%) Talend
11 3 (0.74%) Dataiku
11 3 (0.74%) Duck Creek
11 3 (0.74%) Sparx
12 2 (0.50%) BiZZdesign
12 2 (0.50%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.50%) Qualtrics
12 2 (0.50%) SimCorp