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 13 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 229 212 173
Rank change year-on-year -17 -39 +33
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 549 383 595
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.30% 1.36%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.23% 6.94% 7.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 398 303 468
10th Percentile £408 £409 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £625
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +10.62%
75th Percentile £650 £775 £850
90th Percentile £750 £915 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +10.53% -4.04% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £51.25 - £42.50
25th Percentile £57.25 - £45.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
75th Percentile £67.75 - £56.25
90th Percentile £69.22 - £59.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

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 7,595 5,517 7,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.18% 18.69% 17.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,070 3,752 5,332
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £634 £650
90th Percentile £700 £756 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 241 103 155
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.84 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £25.01 £20.77
Median hourly rate £41.00 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +17.14% -12.50% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.44 £65.81 £53.94
90th Percentile £77.50 £78.46 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.85 £34.47
% change year-on-year +20.11% -7.60% -39.48%

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -46 467 £574 -4.33% 127
London -25 313 £581 -16.96% 74
Work from Home -64 184 £535 -26.21% 71
UK excluding London -41 151 £525 +10.53% 77
Midlands -24 46 £600 +35.21% 15
North of England -41 43 £500 +5.26% 23
West Midlands -31 30 £600 +33.33% 14
South East -69 22 £431 -6.25% 19
North West -33 21 £500 +2.56% 17
Scotland +3 20 £463 -19.84% 3
East Midlands -7 16 £573 +41.48% 1
Yorkshire -43 15 £550 +22.09% 5
South West -11 13 £600 +6.67% 11
East of England -30 9 £575 -0.86% 3
North East -28 7 £463 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 - 1

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 80 (14.57%) Apache Spark
2 40 (7.29%) Apache
3 35 (6.38%) Apache Airflow
4 21 (3.83%) SAS
5 15 (2.73%) Confluence
6 3 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.36%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.36%) nginx
7 2 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 4 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.55%) Infor M3
3 2 (0.36%) Endur
3 2 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.36%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 374 (68.12%) Azure
2 198 (36.07%) AWS
3 196 (35.70%) Power Platform
4 162 (29.51%) Azure Data Factory
5 146 (26.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 90 (16.39%) GCP
7 89 (16.21%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (14.75%) GitHub
9 66 (12.02%) Serverless
10 59 (10.75%) Amazon S3
11 52 (9.47%) Snowflake
12 39 (7.10%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (6.01%) AWS Lambda
14 32 (5.83%) Microsoft Purview
15 27 (4.92%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 27 (4.92%) Azure Key Vault
16 26 (4.74%) Azure Functions
17 23 (4.19%) AWS CloudFormation
18 19 (3.46%) Amazon EMR
18 19 (3.46%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.64%) HTTP
2 8 (1.46%) Firewall
3 5 (0.91%) DNS
3 5 (0.91%) WAN
4 3 (0.55%) Network Security
5 1 (0.18%) 4G
5 1 (0.18%) 5G
5 1 (0.18%) DSL
5 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.18%) Modbus
5 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.18%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 182 (33.15%) Data Warehouse
2 172 (31.33%) Power BI
3 76 (13.84%) Metadata
4 70 (12.75%) Azure SQL Database
5 67 (12.20%) SQL Server
6 61 (11.11%) Delta Lake
7 54 (9.84%) Amazon Redshift
8 42 (7.65%) Amazon Athena
9 36 (6.56%) Big Data
10 32 (5.83%) BigQuery
11 31 (5.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 30 (5.46%) NoSQL
13 25 (4.55%) PostgreSQL
13 25 (4.55%) Relational Database
14 24 (4.37%) Spark SQL
15 21 (3.83%) Hadoop
15 21 (3.83%) Snowflake Schema
16 18 (3.28%) Star Schema
16 18 (3.28%) Tableau
17 16 (2.91%) Mixpanel
Development Applications
1 67 (12.20%) Git
2 26 (4.74%) GitLab
3 20 (3.64%) JIRA
4 17 (3.10%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.09%) MLflow
6 5 (0.91%) ER Studio
6 5 (0.91%) ERwin
6 5 (0.91%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.73%) JUnit
8 3 (0.55%) JMeter
9 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.18%) Hudson
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 138 (25.14%) Finance
2 118 (21.49%) Social Skills
3 67 (12.20%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (10.56%) Public Sector
5 25 (4.55%) Banking
6 16 (2.91%) Documentation Skills
7 14 (2.55%) Marketing
8 12 (2.19%) Retail
9 7 (1.28%) Military
10 6 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.91%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.73%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.73%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.55%) Publishing
14 2 (0.36%) Automotive
14 2 (0.36%) Back Office
14 2 (0.36%) Front Office
14 2 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 187 (34.06%) Data Engineer
2 153 (27.87%) Architect
3 89 (16.21%) Data Architect
4 87 (15.85%) Senior
5 52 (9.47%) Senior Data Engineer
6 44 (8.01%) Solutions Architect
7 43 (7.83%) Lead
8 36 (6.56%) Azure Engineer
9 35 (6.38%) Developer
10 27 (4.92%) Azure Data Engineer
11 26 (4.74%) Analyst
12 25 (4.55%) Principal Engineer
13 24 (4.37%) Cloud Architect
14 21 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
14 21 (3.83%) Azure Architect
14 21 (3.83%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 17 (3.10%) Software Engineer
16 16 (2.91%) Data Analyst
17 15 (2.73%) AWS Data Engineer
17 15 (2.73%) Principal Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (17.85%) PySpark
2 53 (9.65%) Kafka
3 32 (5.83%) REST
4 15 (2.73%) Great Expectations
5 14 (2.55%) Model Context Protocol
6 13 (2.37%) XML
7 11 (2.00%) JSON
7 11 (2.00%) LangChain
8 10 (1.82%) LangGraph
8 10 (1.82%) Middleware
8 10 (1.82%) Pandas
9 9 (1.64%) YAML
10 8 (1.46%) .NET
10 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Graph
10 8 (1.46%) Node.js
10 8 (1.46%) PyTorch
10 8 (1.46%) scikit-learn
10 8 (1.46%) Spring Boot
11 7 (1.28%) A2A Protocol
11 7 (1.28%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 81 (14.75%) Cloud Native
2 25 (4.55%) Distributed Systems
3 23 (4.19%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.64%) Legacy Systems
5 17 (3.10%) Product Ownership
6 15 (2.73%) IoT
7 12 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (2.00%) Distributed Computing
8 11 (2.00%) Low-Code
8 11 (2.00%) Management Information System
9 10 (1.82%) AI Agents
10 9 (1.64%) Reference Data
11 8 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
11 8 (1.46%) Digital Media
12 7 (1.28%) Data Fabric
12 7 (1.28%) Onboarding
13 6 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
14 5 (0.91%) Fixed Income
14 5 (0.91%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.00%) Unix
2 9 (1.64%) Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 299 (54.46%) Analytics
2 275 (50.09%) ETL
3 238 (43.35%) Data Modelling
4 225 (40.98%) Data Pipeline
5 217 (39.53%) Data Engineering
6 211 (38.43%) CI/CD
7 207 (37.70%) Business Intelligence
8 170 (30.97%) DevOps
9 168 (30.60%) Data Governance
10 160 (29.14%) AI
11 145 (26.41%) Data Architecture
12 123 (22.40%) Agile
13 110 (20.04%) Migration
14 105 (19.13%) Machine Learning
15 91 (16.58%) Problem-Solving
16 76 (13.84%) Infrastructure as Code
17 74 (13.48%) Data Integration
18 72 (13.11%) Data Transformation
19 68 (12.39%) Stakeholder Management
20 66 (12.02%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 335 (61.02%) SQL
2 229 (41.71%) Python
3 44 (8.01%) Java
4 24 (4.37%) C#
5 22 (4.01%) Scala
5 22 (4.01%) T-SQL
6 19 (3.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 16 (2.91%) Bicep
8 15 (2.73%) PowerShell
9 10 (1.82%) PL/SQL
10 9 (1.64%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.64%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.46%) Bash
12 5 (0.91%) R
13 2 (0.36%) Ada
13 2 (0.36%) C++
13 2 (0.36%) SOQL
13 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.18%) C
14 1 (0.18%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 125 (22.77%) Security Cleared
2 98 (17.85%) SC Cleared
3 27 (4.92%) Azure Certification
4 20 (3.64%) Degree
5 14 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.64%) Master's Degree
8 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.28%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.28%) DV Cleared
9 7 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
10 5 (0.91%) CISM
10 5 (0.91%) CISSP
11 3 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.55%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 2 (0.36%) CSPO
12 2 (0.36%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.36%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (32.97%) Data Quality
2 56 (10.20%) GDPR
3 32 (5.83%) QA
4 5 (0.91%) Accessibility
4 5 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.73%) MiFID
5 4 (0.73%) NIST
5 4 (0.73%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.73%) Solvency II
6 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.55%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.55%) IFRS
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.36%) PMO
8 1 (0.18%) Basel II
8 1 (0.18%) GRC
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 26 (4.74%) Docker
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.55%) HDFS
4 2 (0.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 95 (17.30%) Terraform
2 32 (5.83%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.82%) Grafana
4 6 (1.09%) Ansible
5 3 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.36%) Argo
6 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Oozie
Vendors
1 205 (37.34%) Databricks
2 156 (28.42%) Microsoft
3 41 (7.47%) Informatica
4 32 (5.83%) Google
4 32 (5.83%) Oracle
5 20 (3.64%) OpenAI
6 16 (2.91%) Talend
7 14 (2.55%) SAP
8 9 (1.64%) Denodo
9 7 (1.28%) Infor
9 7 (1.28%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.09%) Adobe
10 6 (1.09%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.09%) ServiceNow
11 5 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
11 5 (0.91%) Cloudera
12 4 (0.73%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.73%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.73%) Greenplum
12 4 (0.73%) Hortonworks