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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 243 231 171
Rank change year-on-year -12 -60 +52
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 616 387 568
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.17% 1.49%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.54% 6.41% 8.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 479 279 474
10th Percentile £400 £375 £450
25th Percentile £450 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £725
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -20.69% +26.09%
75th Percentile £641 £738 £850
90th Percentile £728 £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 6 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £32.87 - -
Median hourly rate £42.73 - -
75th Percentile £54.38 - -
90th Percentile £55.00 - -
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 8,168 6,036 6,845
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.89% 18.21% 18.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,444 4,038 4,635
10th Percentile £353 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +0.10% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £620 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £484
% change year-on-year - -1.76% -3.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 286 88 91
10th Percentile £16.70 £21.02 £17.50
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £41.36 £39.48 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.75% +12.80% -33.33%
75th Percentile £58.44 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £79.13 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £36.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year +15.86% +20.00% -42.86%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -36 488 £550 -8.33% 530
London -58 278 £575 -11.54% 280
UK excluding London -6 210 £500 +5.26% 384
Work from Home -34 207 £525 -17.71% 322
Midlands +27 90 £590 +31.00% 60
West Midlands +15 62 £600 - 40
North of England -45 52 £500 +5.26% 74
North West -32 29 £550 +15.79% 35
East Midlands +6 28 £500 +21.95% 20
South East -59 24 £461 +2.39% 61
Scotland -11 23 £410 +7.01% 85
Yorkshire -27 21 £505 +6.32% 22
South West -27 15 £600 +26.32% 37
East of England -30 6 £350 -36.36% 23
Wales -13 3 £500 -16.67% 28
North East -44 2 £438 - 18

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 (12.01%) Apache Spark
2 54 (8.77%) Apache
3 49 (7.95%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (5.84%) SAS
5 20 (3.25%) Confluence
6 14 (2.27%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.49%) nginx
8 2 (0.32%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.32%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.16%) JBoss
9 1 (0.16%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.81%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.49%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.32%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.32%) Endur
4 2 (0.32%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.32%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.32%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.16%) Actimize
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
1 390 (63.31%) Azure
2 210 (34.09%) AWS
3 186 (30.19%) Power Platform
4 152 (24.68%) Azure Data Factory
5 113 (18.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 98 (15.91%) GCP
7 96 (15.58%) Snowflake
8 90 (14.61%) Azure DevOps
9 65 (10.55%) Amazon S3
10 62 (10.06%) Serverless
11 58 (9.42%) GitHub
12 52 (8.44%) Azure Databricks
13 38 (6.17%) AWS Lambda
14 37 (6.01%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 36 (5.84%) Entra ID
16 34 (5.52%) dbt
17 30 (4.87%) Amazon EMR
18 27 (4.38%) SaaS
19 26 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
19 26 (4.22%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.44%) Firewall
2 11 (1.79%) HTTP
3 10 (1.62%) DNS
4 5 (0.81%) WAN
5 3 (0.49%) Broadband
5 3 (0.49%) Network Security
5 3 (0.49%) 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
1 252 (40.91%) Data Warehouse
2 168 (27.27%) Power BI
3 101 (16.40%) Metadata
4 60 (9.74%) Amazon Redshift
5 54 (8.77%) Azure SQL Database
6 49 (7.95%) NoSQL
7 41 (6.66%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.33%) Amazon Athena
9 38 (6.17%) Big Data
10 34 (5.52%) SQL Server
11 33 (5.36%) BigQuery
12 28 (4.55%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 27 (4.38%) Relational Database
14 25 (4.06%) PostgreSQL
14 25 (4.06%) Tableau
15 21 (3.41%) Semantic Layer
16 19 (3.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (2.92%) Star Schema
18 17 (2.76%) Hadoop
19 16 (2.60%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 63 (10.23%) Git
2 43 (6.98%) GitLab
3 26 (4.22%) JIRA
4 17 (2.76%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.46%) ERwin
6 7 (1.14%) ER Studio
7 6 (0.97%) PowerDesigner
8 4 (0.65%) JUnit
8 4 (0.65%) MLflow
8 4 (0.65%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.49%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.32%) 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
1 164 (26.62%) Social Skills
2 147 (23.86%) Finance
3 78 (12.66%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (10.23%) Public Sector
5 47 (7.63%) Banking
6 33 (5.36%) Retail
7 27 (4.38%) Marketing
8 23 (3.73%) Manufacturing
9 18 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.30%) Military
13 7 (1.14%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.14%) Legal
13 7 (1.14%) Police
14 6 (0.97%) Publishing
15 5 (0.81%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.65%) Front Office
16 4 (0.65%) Pharmaceutical
16 4 (0.65%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 207 (33.60%) Architect
2 166 (26.95%) Data Engineer
3 139 (22.56%) Data Architect
4 99 (16.07%) Senior
5 65 (10.55%) Azure Engineer
6 56 (9.09%) Analyst
7 52 (8.44%) Senior Data Engineer
8 46 (7.47%) Solutions Architect
9 40 (6.49%) Azure Data Engineer
10 38 (6.17%) Data Analyst
11 37 (6.01%) Business Analyst
12 35 (5.68%) Lead
13 33 (5.36%) Data Business Analyst
13 33 (5.36%) Developer
14 24 (3.90%) Databricks Engineer
15 21 (3.41%) Azure Architect
15 21 (3.41%) Databricks Data Engineer
16 17 (2.76%) Technical Leader
17 16 (2.60%) DevOps Engineer
17 16 (2.60%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 99 (16.07%) Terraform
2 71 (11.53%) PySpark
3 47 (7.63%) Kafka
4 33 (5.36%) REST
5 16 (2.60%) .NET
6 15 (2.44%) YAML
7 13 (2.11%) JSON
8 12 (1.95%) Model Context Protocol
9 10 (1.62%) LangChain
9 10 (1.62%) Spring Boot
10 9 (1.46%) ARM Templates
10 9 (1.46%) Spring
11 8 (1.30%) Apache NiFi
11 8 (1.30%) Middleware
11 8 (1.30%) OAuth
12 7 (1.14%) A2A Protocol
12 7 (1.14%) Microsoft Graph
12 7 (1.14%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.14%) XML
13 6 (0.97%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 90 (14.61%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.14%) Data Structures
3 31 (5.03%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
4 23 (3.73%) Onboarding
5 21 (3.41%) AI Agents
6 20 (3.25%) Data Fabric
7 19 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.27%) Reference Data
9 13 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
9 13 (2.11%) Marketing Technology
10 11 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 11 (1.79%) Low-Code
11 9 (1.46%) Autonomous Agent
11 9 (1.46%) Reinsurance
12 7 (1.14%) Fixed Income
12 7 (1.14%) Hybrid Cloud
12 7 (1.14%) IoT
12 7 (1.14%) Management Information System
13 6 (0.97%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 23 (3.73%) Linux
2 13 (2.11%) Unix
3 7 (1.14%) Windows
4 5 (0.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (0.65%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.32%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 313 (50.81%) Analytics
2 272 (44.16%) Data Modelling
3 254 (41.23%) ETL
4 243 (39.45%) Data Pipeline
5 237 (38.47%) CI/CD
6 207 (33.60%) Data Engineering
7 203 (32.95%) Business Intelligence
7 203 (32.95%) Data Governance
8 192 (31.17%) Agile
9 182 (29.55%) DevOps
10 179 (29.06%) AI
11 171 (27.76%) Data Architecture
12 161 (26.14%) Migration
13 136 (22.08%) Stakeholder Management
14 119 (19.32%) Lakehouse
15 105 (17.05%) Data Integration
16 97 (15.75%) Stakeholder Engagement
17 96 (15.58%) Machine Learning
18 94 (15.26%) Data Transformation
19 86 (13.96%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 330 (53.57%) SQL
2 197 (31.98%) Python
3 42 (6.82%) Java
4 25 (4.06%) PowerShell
5 20 (3.25%) Bash
5 20 (3.25%) Bicep
5 20 (3.25%) C#
5 20 (3.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 14 (2.27%) Scala
7 8 (1.30%) JavaScript
7 8 (1.30%) Shell Script
8 6 (0.97%) PL/SQL
9 5 (0.81%) T-SQL
10 4 (0.65%) Kusto Query Language
10 4 (0.65%) R
10 4 (0.65%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.32%) Cypher
11 2 (0.32%) Go
11 2 (0.32%) SHACL
11 2 (0.32%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 146 (23.70%) Security Cleared
2 108 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 27 (4.38%) Azure Certification
4 22 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.08%) Degree
6 18 (2.92%) DV Cleared
7 15 (2.44%) AWS Certification
8 12 (1.95%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 9 (1.46%) Computer Science Degree
9 9 (1.46%) Master's Degree
10 8 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (1.14%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (0.97%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.65%) CSPO
14 3 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) Cisco Certification
14 3 (0.49%) CISM
14 3 (0.49%) CISSP
14 3 (0.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 214 (34.74%) Data Quality
2 40 (6.49%) GDPR
3 23 (3.73%) QA
4 10 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 8 (1.30%) GRC
6 8 (1.30%) NIST
7 6 (0.97%) Solvency II
8 5 (0.81%) MiFID
8 5 (0.81%) NCSC
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.49%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.49%) PMO
9 3 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.49%) SLA
10 2 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 1 (0.16%) GLBA
11 1 (0.16%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 39 (6.33%) Docker
2 13 (2.11%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.30%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.81%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.65%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 45 (7.31%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.60%) Grafana
3 11 (1.79%) Ansible
4 9 (1.46%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.81%) Puppet
6 4 (0.65%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.49%) Argo
8 2 (0.32%) Control-M
8 2 (0.32%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.16%) Istio
9 1 (0.16%) linkerd
9 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 244 (39.61%) Databricks
2 147 (23.86%) Microsoft
3 32 (5.19%) Google
4 30 (4.87%) Informatica
5 23 (3.73%) Oracle
6 22 (3.57%) OpenAI
7 18 (2.92%) SAP
8 17 (2.76%) Denodo
9 13 (2.11%) Talend
10 9 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.30%) Adobe
11 8 (1.30%) Teradata
12 7 (1.14%) Cloudera
12 7 (1.14%) Sparx
13 6 (0.97%) Dynatrace
13 6 (0.97%) MuleSoft
13 6 (0.97%) SnapLogic
14 5 (0.81%) Foundry
14 5 (0.81%) IBM
14 5 (0.81%) Infor