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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 228 188 231
Rank change year-on-year -40 +43 +58
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 436 430 443
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.18% 1.35% 1.05%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.97% 7.40% 6.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 312 346 315
10th Percentile £375 £379 £411
25th Percentile £425 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -5.17%
75th Percentile £641 £784 £650
90th Percentile £750 £938 £733
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £482 £535
% change year-on-year -6.64% -9.91% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 3
10th Percentile - - £34.20
25th Percentile - - £43.88
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% +71.43%
75th Percentile - - £60.75
90th Percentile - - £61.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £45.75
% change year-on-year - - +30.71%

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 6,257 5,814 6,999
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.87% 18.26% 16.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,316 3,838 4,938
10th Percentile £330 £350 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £533
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -3.09%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -0.99%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 78 150
10th Percentile £20.05 £19.76 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £22.61
Median hourly rate £46.50 £32.80 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +41.79% -28.98% -16.04%
75th Percentile £72.00 £64.67 £64.50
90th Percentile £84.20 £68.33 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £56.10 £28.65 £46.18
% change year-on-year +95.81% -37.96% -16.04%

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 January 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
Top 17 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 January 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 -55 350 £575 -6.05% 167
London -34 256 £603 -10.74% 63
Work from Home -60 149 £563 -16.67% 106
UK excluding London -54 106 £450 -6.64% 131
North of England -38 32 £488 +6.85% 23
Scotland +10 20 £447 +18.65% 4
South East -25 19 £425 -21.30% 48
North West -18 18 £401 -10.89% 10
Midlands -41 13 £506 +13.13% 22
Yorkshire -39 10 £575 +6.98% 6
West Midlands -42 8 £556 +21.58% 14
Northern Ireland +1 7 £325 -38.10% 1
East of England -15 7 £580 +13.17% 20
Wales -3 5 £555 +11.00% 5
South West -15 5 £713 +23.91% 10
East Midlands -23 5 £465 +30.62% 8
North East -19 4 £463 -2.63% 7

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 59 (13.53%) Apache Spark
2 56 (12.84%) Apache Airflow
3 52 (11.93%) Apache
4 6 (1.38%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.69%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.69%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.23%) Confluence
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 4 (0.92%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (0.92%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 18 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.15%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.46%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.23%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 299 (68.58%) Azure
2 151 (34.63%) AWS
3 141 (32.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 138 (31.65%) Power Platform
5 125 (28.67%) Azure Data Factory
6 72 (16.51%) Snowflake
7 59 (13.53%) Azure DevOps
7 59 (13.53%) GCP
8 54 (12.39%) GitHub
8 54 (12.39%) Serverless
9 39 (8.94%) Amazon S3
10 35 (8.03%) Microsoft Purview
11 32 (7.34%) dbt
12 29 (6.65%) AWS CloudFormation
13 27 (6.19%) Azure Functions
13 27 (6.19%) GitHub Actions
14 21 (4.82%) AWS Lambda
15 20 (4.59%) Azure Key Vault
16 18 (4.13%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 17 (3.90%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.15%) VPN
2 4 (0.92%) Firewall
3 3 (0.69%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.46%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.46%) Network Security
5 1 (0.23%) DSL
5 1 (0.23%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.23%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 128 (29.36%) Power BI
2 127 (29.13%) Data Warehouse
3 50 (11.47%) Azure SQL Database
4 49 (11.24%) Metadata
5 48 (11.01%) SQL Server
6 47 (10.78%) Delta Lake
7 35 (8.03%) Amazon Athena
8 29 (6.65%) Big Data
9 28 (6.42%) Relational Database
9 28 (6.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 23 (5.28%) NoSQL
11 21 (4.82%) Apache Iceberg
11 21 (4.82%) BigQuery
12 19 (4.36%) PostgreSQL
13 18 (4.13%) Amazon Redshift
13 18 (4.13%) Spark SQL
13 18 (4.13%) Tableau
14 17 (3.90%) Apache Arrow
14 17 (3.90%) Apache Ignite
14 17 (3.90%) Dremio
Development Applications
1 38 (8.72%) Git
2 32 (7.34%) GitLab
3 10 (2.29%) MLflow
4 6 (1.38%) ER Studio
4 6 (1.38%) ERwin
4 6 (1.38%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.15%) JIRA
6 3 (0.69%) JMeter
7 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.46%) Pylint
7 2 (0.46%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.46%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.23%) GCC
8 1 (0.23%) Gradle
8 1 (0.23%) Hudson
8 1 (0.23%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.23%) Maven
8 1 (0.23%) Poetry
8 1 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 118 (27.06%) Finance
1 118 (27.06%) Social Skills
2 49 (11.24%) Analytical Skills
3 39 (8.94%) Public Sector
4 30 (6.88%) Banking
5 23 (5.28%) Front Office
6 18 (4.13%) Influencing Skills
7 17 (3.90%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.90%) Pharmaceutical
8 12 (2.75%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (1.61%) Retail
10 5 (1.15%) Legal
11 4 (0.92%) Back Office
11 4 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.92%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.92%) Military
12 3 (0.69%) Marketing
13 2 (0.46%) Local Government
13 2 (0.46%) Police
13 2 (0.46%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 137 (31.42%) Data Engineer
2 80 (18.35%) Architect
3 73 (16.74%) Senior
4 52 (11.93%) Azure Engineer
5 48 (11.01%) Data Architect
6 42 (9.63%) AWS Engineer
7 36 (8.26%) Developer
8 33 (7.57%) Software Engineer
9 31 (7.11%) Azure Data Engineer
9 31 (7.11%) Lead
10 28 (6.42%) Python Engineer
11 25 (5.73%) Senior Data Engineer
12 21 (4.82%) AWS Software Engineer
13 19 (4.36%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (4.13%) Java Engineer
14 18 (4.13%) Java Software Engineer
15 17 (3.90%) Python Software Engineer
15 17 (3.90%) Senior Software Engineer
16 16 (3.67%) Senior Java Engineer
16 16 (3.67%) Senior Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 75 (17.20%) PySpark
2 39 (8.94%) Kafka
3 32 (7.34%) Pandas
4 24 (5.50%) NumPy
5 19 (4.36%) REST
5 19 (4.36%) SciPy
6 17 (3.90%) gRPC
6 17 (3.90%) Protocol Buffers
7 15 (3.44%) JSON
8 13 (2.98%) PyTorch
8 13 (2.98%) scikit-learn
8 13 (2.98%) TensorFlow
9 12 (2.75%) LangChain
10 11 (2.52%) LangGraph
10 11 (2.52%) Microsoft Graph
10 11 (2.52%) Spark Streaming
11 9 (2.06%) Great Expectations
12 6 (1.38%) React
12 6 (1.38%) SOAP
12 6 (1.38%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.34%) Cloud Native
2 19 (4.36%) Equities
3 18 (4.13%) Derivative
3 18 (4.13%) Fixed Income
4 17 (3.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 17 (3.90%) Hedge funds
4 17 (3.90%) Pricing Data
5 15 (3.44%) Distributed Computing
6 14 (3.21%) Data Structures
7 12 (2.75%) Product Ownership
8 10 (2.29%) Onboarding
9 9 (2.06%) Data Fabric
10 8 (1.83%) Algorithms
10 8 (1.83%) IoT
11 7 (1.61%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.61%) NHS
12 6 (1.38%) Distributed Systems
12 6 (1.38%) Management Information System
13 5 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
13 5 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.98%) Linux
2 11 (2.52%) Unix
3 7 (1.61%) Windows
4 1 (0.23%) VMS
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 211 (48.39%) Analytics
2 197 (45.18%) ETL
3 171 (39.22%) Data Pipeline
4 148 (33.94%) CI/CD
5 146 (33.49%) Data Modelling
6 144 (33.03%) Business Intelligence
7 130 (29.82%) DevOps
8 121 (27.75%) Data Engineering
8 121 (27.75%) Data Governance
9 97 (22.25%) Data Architecture
10 93 (21.33%) AI
11 90 (20.64%) Agile
12 79 (18.12%) Machine Learning
13 68 (15.60%) Infrastructure as Code
14 54 (12.39%) Data Integration
14 54 (12.39%) Data Science
15 50 (11.47%) Software Engineering
16 46 (10.55%) Migration
17 45 (10.32%) Problem-Solving
18 42 (9.63%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 248 (56.88%) SQL
2 222 (50.92%) Python
3 46 (10.55%) Java
4 25 (5.73%) JavaScript
5 22 (5.05%) C#
5 22 (5.05%) TypeScript
6 19 (4.36%) T-SQL
7 16 (3.67%) Scala
8 14 (3.21%) Bicep
9 13 (2.98%) PowerShell
10 12 (2.75%) R
11 11 (2.52%) Bash
12 10 (2.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 10 (2.29%) PL/SQL
13 3 (0.69%) Korn
14 2 (0.46%) Ada
14 2 (0.46%) C++
14 2 (0.46%) Perl
15 1 (0.23%) C
15 1 (0.23%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 52 (11.93%) Security Cleared
2 37 (8.49%) SC Cleared
3 26 (5.96%) Degree
4 22 (5.05%) Azure Certification
5 17 (3.90%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.75%) Master's Degree
7 9 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.83%) MCP
9 7 (1.61%) AWS Certification
10 6 (1.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.69%) DV Cleared
11 3 (0.69%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.69%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.69%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.69%) PMP
12 2 (0.46%) ACCA
12 2 (0.46%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.46%) CIMA
13 1 (0.23%) APMG
13 1 (0.23%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (23.62%) Data Quality
2 56 (12.84%) GDPR
3 17 (3.90%) QA
4 14 (3.21%) HIPAA
5 12 (2.75%) NIST
6 8 (1.83%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.38%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 34 (7.80%) Docker
2 7 (1.61%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.15%) zsh
4 4 (0.92%) HDFS
4 4 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.23%) Lustre
5 1 (0.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 73 (16.74%) Terraform
2 27 (6.19%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.61%) Ansible
4 6 (1.38%) Grafana
5 3 (0.69%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.46%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.46%) Packer
7 1 (0.23%) Kibana
7 1 (0.23%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.23%) logstash
7 1 (0.23%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.23%) Puppet
7 1 (0.23%) Salt
7 1 (0.23%) SELinux
7 1 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 172 (39.45%) Databricks
2 128 (29.36%) Microsoft
3 27 (6.19%) SAP
4 20 (4.59%) Google
5 17 (3.90%) OpenAI
6 14 (3.21%) Informatica
7 13 (2.98%) Oracle
8 7 (1.61%) Cloudera
9 6 (1.38%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.38%) ServiceNow
10 4 (0.92%) Greenplum
10 4 (0.92%) Talend
11 3 (0.69%) Ab Initio
12 2 (0.46%) Anaplan
12 2 (0.46%) Ariba
12 2 (0.46%) Charles River
12 2 (0.46%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.46%) New Relic
12 2 (0.46%) NVIDIA
12 2 (0.46%) SimCorp