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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 219 160
Rank change year-on-year -18 -59 +44
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 555 382 654
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.20% 1.51%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.98% 6.56% 8.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 409 290 533
10th Percentile £400 £402 £425
25th Percentile £463 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £650
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -11.54% +14.04%
75th Percentile £663 £763 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +15.79% -4.04% -5.71%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 1
10th Percentile £51.25 - -
25th Percentile £57.25 - -
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £40.50
75th Percentile £67.75 - -
90th Percentile £69.22 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £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 7,946 5,822 7,595
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 18.29% 17.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,243 3,941 5,416
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 103 153
10th Percentile £15.57 £19.82 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.38 £20.49
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -6.67% -34.78%
75th Percentile £63.88 £63.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £76.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +18.52% +5.47% -45.45%

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 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 -44 462 £575 -1.88% 147
London -47 294 £600 -7.69% 95
Work from Home -39 202 £568 -13.52% 99
UK excluding London -39 165 £550 +15.79% 90
Midlands -7 62 £600 +46.34% 14
North of England -51 46 £505 +6.32% 15
West Midlands -22 43 £600 +41.18% 11
North West -35 25 £500 +2.56% 9
Scotland +2 20 £425 -26.34% 10
East Midlands -2 19 £549 +35.56% 3
Yorkshire -39 18 £575 +27.64% 3
South East -77 17 £463 +1.65% 29
South West -24 13 £600 +6.67% 9
East of England -31 9 £575 -0.86% 6
North East -35 3 £463 - 3
Wales - 1 £325 - 5

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 76 (13.69%) Apache Spark
2 42 (7.57%) Apache
3 39 (7.03%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (5.05%) SAS
5 22 (3.96%) Confluence
6 3 (0.54%) 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%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.54%) Infor M3
2 3 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.36%) Adobe Campaign
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%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 357 (64.32%) Azure
2 194 (34.95%) AWS
3 171 (30.81%) Power Platform
4 139 (25.05%) Azure Data Factory
5 131 (23.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 92 (16.58%) GCP
7 81 (14.59%) Azure DevOps
8 69 (12.43%) GitHub
9 64 (11.53%) Snowflake
10 59 (10.63%) Amazon S3
11 57 (10.27%) Serverless
12 36 (6.49%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (5.95%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (4.50%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 24 (4.32%) dbt
16 22 (3.96%) Azure Key Vault
16 22 (3.96%) Microsoft Purview
17 21 (3.78%) AWS CloudFormation
17 21 (3.78%) Azure Monitor
18 20 (3.60%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.98%) Firewall
2 9 (1.62%) HTTP
3 5 (0.90%) DNS
3 5 (0.90%) WAN
4 4 (0.72%) Network Security
5 2 (0.36%) DSL
5 2 (0.36%) Modbus
6 1 (0.18%) 4G
6 1 (0.18%) 5G
6 1 (0.18%) AMQP
6 1 (0.18%) Broadband
6 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.18%) IPsec
6 1 (0.18%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.18%) MQTT
6 1 (0.18%) OpenVPN
6 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.18%) SMS
6 1 (0.18%) VPN
6 1 (0.18%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 194 (34.95%) Data Warehouse
2 152 (27.39%) Power BI
3 74 (13.33%) Metadata
4 61 (10.99%) Azure SQL Database
5 58 (10.45%) Amazon Redshift
6 52 (9.37%) Delta Lake
7 47 (8.47%) SQL Server
8 41 (7.39%) Amazon Athena
9 38 (6.85%) Big Data
10 34 (6.13%) BigQuery
11 30 (5.41%) PostgreSQL
12 27 (4.86%) NoSQL
13 24 (4.32%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 24 (4.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 23 (4.14%) Relational Database
15 21 (3.78%) Hadoop
15 21 (3.78%) Snowflake Schema
16 18 (3.24%) Star Schema
16 18 (3.24%) Tableau
17 15 (2.70%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 56 (10.09%) Git
2 25 (4.50%) JIRA
3 23 (4.14%) GitLab
4 18 (3.24%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.08%) ER Studio
5 6 (1.08%) ERwin
5 6 (1.08%) MLflow
6 5 (0.90%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.72%) JUnit
8 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.18%) Hudson
9 1 (0.18%) Postman
9 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 143 (25.77%) Finance
2 118 (21.26%) Social Skills
3 72 (12.97%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (10.27%) Public Sector
5 32 (5.77%) Banking
6 20 (3.60%) Marketing
7 18 (3.24%) Retail
8 14 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.16%) Manufacturing
10 8 (1.44%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.26%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 5 (0.90%) Military
14 4 (0.72%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.72%) Police
14 4 (0.72%) Publishing
15 2 (0.36%) Automotive
15 2 (0.36%) Front Office
15 2 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
15 2 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 180 (32.43%) Data Engineer
2 171 (30.81%) Architect
3 100 (18.02%) Data Architect
4 86 (15.50%) Senior
5 55 (9.91%) Solutions Architect
6 46 (8.29%) Senior Data Engineer
7 45 (8.11%) Azure Engineer
8 43 (7.75%) Lead
9 34 (6.13%) Azure Data Engineer
10 33 (5.95%) Developer
11 32 (5.77%) Analyst
12 23 (4.14%) Cloud Architect
13 22 (3.96%) Azure Architect
13 22 (3.96%) Principal Engineer
14 21 (3.78%) AWS Engineer
15 20 (3.60%) Cloud Solutions Architect
16 19 (3.42%) Data Analyst
17 16 (2.88%) Azure Data Architect
17 16 (2.88%) Lead Data Engineer
18 15 (2.70%) AWS Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (15.86%) PySpark
2 52 (9.37%) Kafka
3 26 (4.68%) REST
4 13 (2.34%) Great Expectations
5 11 (1.98%) JSON
5 11 (1.98%) XML
6 10 (1.80%) Middleware
6 10 (1.80%) Spring Boot
6 10 (1.80%) YAML
7 9 (1.62%) Model Context Protocol
7 9 (1.62%) Spring
8 8 (1.44%) React
9 7 (1.26%) FastAPI
10 6 (1.08%) .NET
10 6 (1.08%) ARM Templates
10 6 (1.08%) Node.js
11 5 (0.90%) HTML
11 5 (0.90%) LangChain
11 5 (0.90%) Pandas
11 5 (0.90%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 80 (14.41%) Cloud Native
2 27 (4.86%) Data Structures
3 26 (4.68%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (3.96%) Legacy Systems
5 21 (3.78%) Product Ownership
6 15 (2.70%) IoT
7 12 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (1.98%) Low-Code
9 10 (1.80%) AI Agents
10 9 (1.62%) Onboarding
10 9 (1.62%) Reference Data
11 8 (1.44%) Digital Media
11 8 (1.44%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.26%) Data Fabric
13 6 (1.08%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.90%) Distributed Computing
14 5 (0.90%) Enterprise Software
14 5 (0.90%) Marketing Technology
14 5 (0.90%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.34%) Linux
2 10 (1.80%) Unix
3 5 (0.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.54%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.36%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 295 (53.15%) Analytics
2 253 (45.59%) ETL
3 235 (42.34%) Data Modelling
4 228 (41.08%) Data Pipeline
5 216 (38.92%) Data Engineering
6 200 (36.04%) CI/CD
7 193 (34.77%) Business Intelligence
8 180 (32.43%) Data Governance
9 155 (27.93%) DevOps
10 153 (27.57%) Data Architecture
11 150 (27.03%) AI
12 133 (23.96%) Agile
13 127 (22.88%) Migration
14 102 (18.38%) Machine Learning
15 93 (16.76%) Problem-Solving
16 85 (15.32%) Data Transformation
17 77 (13.87%) Data Integration
18 76 (13.69%) Infrastructure as Code
18 76 (13.69%) Validation
19 75 (13.51%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 309 (55.68%) SQL
2 209 (37.66%) Python
3 40 (7.21%) Java
4 23 (4.14%) Scala
5 21 (3.78%) C#
5 21 (3.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 16 (2.88%) T-SQL
7 15 (2.70%) PowerShell
8 12 (2.16%) Bicep
9 10 (1.80%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.62%) Bash
10 9 (1.62%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.44%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.90%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.72%) R
14 2 (0.36%) Cypher
14 2 (0.36%) SHACL
14 2 (0.36%) SOQL
15 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 127 (22.88%) Security Cleared
2 104 (18.74%) SC Cleared
3 25 (4.50%) Azure Certification
4 23 (4.14%) Degree
5 15 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.80%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.62%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (1.26%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.26%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (0.90%) CISM
9 5 (0.90%) CISSP
9 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.90%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 3 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.54%) CSPO
11 2 (0.36%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.18%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
12 1 (0.18%) CGEIT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (32.07%) Data Quality
2 56 (10.09%) GDPR
3 28 (5.05%) QA
4 6 (1.08%) Solvency II
5 5 (0.90%) Accessibility
5 5 (0.90%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.72%) IFRS
6 4 (0.72%) MiFID
7 3 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.54%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.36%) PMO
9 1 (0.18%) Basel II
9 1 (0.18%) GRC
9 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.18%) NIST
9 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.18%) SLA
9 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 31 (5.59%) Docker
2 8 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.72%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.36%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 88 (15.86%) Terraform
2 37 (6.67%) Kubernetes
3 11 (1.98%) Grafana
4 7 (1.26%) Ansible
5 4 (0.72%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.54%) Argo
7 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
8 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
8 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.18%) Oozie
8 1 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 201 (36.22%) Databricks
2 123 (22.16%) Microsoft
3 41 (7.39%) Informatica
4 32 (5.77%) Oracle
5 30 (5.41%) Google
6 18 (3.24%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.06%) SAP
8 16 (2.88%) Talend
9 9 (1.62%) Denodo
10 8 (1.44%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.26%) Adobe
11 7 (1.26%) Infor
12 6 (1.08%) Cloudera
12 6 (1.08%) Dynatrace
13 5 (0.90%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (0.72%) CheckPoint
14 4 (0.72%) Fortinet
14 4 (0.72%) Hortonworks
15 3 (0.54%) Greenplum
15 3 (0.54%) Red Hat