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 17 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 251 193 224
Rank change year-on-year -58 +31 +54
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 409 470 476
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.37% 1.09%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.43% 7.59% 6.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 296 375 358
10th Percentile £375 £396 £413
25th Percentile £449 £484 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £607 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.39% +10.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £650 £850 £650
90th Percentile £825 £888 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £498 £525
% change year-on-year -2.01% -5.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 2
10th Percentile - - £30.98
25th Percentile - - £35.81
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £45.25
Median % change year-on-year - +43.65% +29.29%
75th Percentile - - £53.31
90th Percentile - - £57.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £30.50
% change year-on-year - - -12.86%

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 6,364 6,193 7,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.30% 18.00% 16.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,383 4,096 5,203
10th Percentile £328 £340 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £527 £535
Median % change year-on-year -5.08% -1.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £701 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -3.65% -1.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 85 140
10th Percentile £20.71 £18.20 £16.11
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.48 £21.56
Median hourly rate £43.50 £30.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +42.20% -33.76% -7.69%
75th Percentile £68.19 £60.75 £64.65
90th Percentile £85.00 £65.85 £77.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.35 £46.18
% change year-on-year +82.82% -40.78% +2.62%

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 17 December 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 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 17 December 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 -73 330 £600 -4.76% 141
London -41 237 £625 -7.41% 72
Work from Home -72 153 £575 -23.33% 99
UK excluding London -56 103 £488 -2.01% 101
North of England -48 31 £500 +8.11% 22
Scotland +8 18 £418 +10.82% 3
North West -25 18 £401 -10.89% 12
South East -23 17 £456 -16.28% 39
Midlands -34 15 £506 +13.13% 23
Yorkshire -35 12 £600 +11.63% 5
West Midlands -43 8 £556 +21.58% 13
East of England -9 7 £580 +16.00% 10
East Midlands -17 7 £465 +30.62% 10
Wales +2 6 £500 - 1
Northern Ireland -3 6 £313 -40.48%
South West -1 5 £713 +50.00% 4
North East -19 1 £525 +10.53% 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 68 (16.63%) Apache Airflow
2 59 (14.43%) Apache
3 50 (12.22%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.22%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.73%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.73%) WebLogic
6 2 (0.49%) Confluence
7 1 (0.24%) Apache Synapse
Applications
1 5 (1.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 4 (0.98%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 17 (4.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.22%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.49%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.49%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.49%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.49%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.24%) Endur
4 1 (0.24%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.24%) SAP GRC
4 1 (0.24%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 256 (62.59%) Azure
2 147 (35.94%) AWS
3 123 (30.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 104 (25.43%) Power Platform
5 99 (24.21%) Azure Data Factory
6 82 (20.05%) Snowflake
7 57 (13.94%) GCP
8 47 (11.49%) Serverless
9 44 (10.76%) Azure DevOps
10 42 (10.27%) dbt
11 39 (9.54%) Amazon S3
12 37 (9.05%) GitHub
13 27 (6.60%) AWS CloudFormation
14 24 (5.87%) Azure Functions
14 24 (5.87%) Microsoft Purview
15 21 (5.13%) AWS Lambda
16 20 (4.89%) GitHub Actions
17 19 (4.65%) Azure Key Vault
18 17 (4.16%) Azure Cosmos DB
19 16 (3.91%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.20%) VPN
2 8 (1.96%) Firewall
3 3 (0.73%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.49%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.49%) Network Security
5 1 (0.24%) DSL
5 1 (0.24%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.24%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (30.81%) Data Warehouse
2 100 (24.45%) Power BI
3 42 (10.27%) Amazon Athena
3 42 (10.27%) Metadata
4 41 (10.02%) Azure SQL Database
4 41 (10.02%) Delta Lake
5 31 (7.58%) Apache Iceberg
5 31 (7.58%) Big Data
6 26 (6.36%) Apache Arrow
6 26 (6.36%) Apache Ignite
6 26 (6.36%) Dremio
7 25 (6.11%) Relational Database
7 25 (6.11%) SQL Server
8 20 (4.89%) Tableau
9 19 (4.65%) PostgreSQL
10 18 (4.40%) BigQuery
10 18 (4.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 17 (4.16%) NoSQL
12 16 (3.91%) Amazon Redshift
13 14 (3.42%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 32 (7.82%) Git
2 27 (6.60%) GitLab
3 9 (2.20%) Jenkins
3 9 (2.20%) MLflow
4 6 (1.47%) ER Studio
4 6 (1.47%) ERwin
5 4 (0.98%) JIRA
6 2 (0.49%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.49%) GCC
6 2 (0.49%) Pylint
6 2 (0.49%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.49%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.24%) Gradle
7 1 (0.24%) Hudson
7 1 (0.24%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.24%) Maven
7 1 (0.24%) Poetry
7 1 (0.24%) Spinnaker
7 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
General
1 126 (30.81%) Social Skills
2 118 (28.85%) Finance
3 55 (13.45%) Analytical Skills
4 40 (9.78%) Banking
5 35 (8.56%) Public Sector
6 32 (7.82%) Front Office
7 26 (6.36%) Investment Banking
8 17 (4.16%) Influencing Skills
9 16 (3.91%) Pharmaceutical
10 9 (2.20%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.47%) Legal
11 6 (1.47%) Retail
12 4 (0.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.98%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.73%) Marketing
13 3 (0.73%) Publishing
14 2 (0.49%) Back Office
14 2 (0.49%) General Ledger
14 2 (0.49%) Law
14 2 (0.49%) Police
Job Titles
1 111 (27.14%) Data Engineer
2 77 (18.83%) Architect
2 77 (18.83%) Senior
3 50 (12.22%) AWS Engineer
4 45 (11.00%) Azure Engineer
5 39 (9.54%) Data Architect
6 37 (9.05%) Software Engineer
7 35 (8.56%) Developer
7 35 (8.56%) Python Engineer
8 30 (7.33%) AWS Software Engineer
9 29 (7.09%) Lead
10 27 (6.60%) Azure Data Engineer
10 27 (6.60%) Java Engineer
10 27 (6.60%) Java Software Engineer
11 26 (6.36%) Python Software Engineer
11 26 (6.36%) Senior Software Engineer
12 25 (6.11%) Senior Java Engineer
12 25 (6.11%) Senior Java Software Engineer
13 18 (4.40%) Analyst
13 18 (4.40%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 66 (16.14%) PySpark
2 34 (8.31%) Kafka
2 34 (8.31%) Pandas
3 30 (7.33%) NumPy
4 26 (6.36%) gRPC
4 26 (6.36%) Protocol Buffers
4 26 (6.36%) SciPy
5 11 (2.69%) JSON
5 11 (2.69%) REST
6 10 (2.44%) scikit-learn
7 9 (2.20%) PyTorch
7 9 (2.20%) TensorFlow
8 7 (1.71%) Microsoft Graph
8 7 (1.71%) Spark Streaming
9 6 (1.47%) Great Expectations
9 6 (1.47%) LangChain
9 6 (1.47%) React
9 6 (1.47%) SOAP
10 5 (1.22%) GraphQL
10 5 (1.22%) LangGraph
Miscellaneous
1 28 (6.85%) Cloud Native
1 28 (6.85%) Equities
2 27 (6.60%) Derivative
2 27 (6.60%) Fixed Income
3 26 (6.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 26 (6.36%) Hedge funds
3 26 (6.36%) Pricing Data
4 13 (3.18%) Product Ownership
5 10 (2.44%) Data Structures
5 10 (2.44%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.20%) Data Fabric
6 9 (2.20%) Distributed Computing
6 9 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
7 8 (1.96%) Algorithms
7 8 (1.96%) IoT
8 7 (1.71%) Hybrid Cloud
9 6 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
9 6 (1.47%) NHS
9 6 (1.47%) Reinsurance
10 5 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 14 (3.42%) Linux
2 10 (2.44%) Unix
3 6 (1.47%) Windows
4 2 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.24%) VMS
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 184 (44.99%) Analytics
2 157 (38.39%) Data Pipeline
3 154 (37.65%) ETL
4 132 (32.27%) CI/CD
5 120 (29.34%) Data Modelling
6 113 (27.63%) Business Intelligence
7 106 (25.92%) Data Governance
8 105 (25.67%) Data Engineering
8 105 (25.67%) DevOps
9 95 (23.23%) Agile
10 90 (22.00%) Data Architecture
11 69 (16.87%) Infrastructure as Code
12 68 (16.63%) Machine Learning
13 64 (15.65%) AI
14 55 (13.45%) Data Integration
14 55 (13.45%) Software Engineering
15 53 (12.96%) Migration
16 52 (12.71%) Data Science
17 45 (11.00%) Data Transformation
17 45 (11.00%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 210 (51.34%) SQL
2 195 (47.68%) Python
3 49 (11.98%) Java
4 32 (7.82%) JavaScript
5 31 (7.58%) TypeScript
6 18 (4.40%) Scala
7 15 (3.67%) C#
7 15 (3.67%) T-SQL
8 12 (2.93%) Bash
9 11 (2.69%) Bicep
9 11 (2.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 10 (2.44%) PL/SQL
10 10 (2.44%) R
11 9 (2.20%) PowerShell
12 3 (0.73%) Korn
13 2 (0.49%) Perl
14 1 (0.24%) ANSI SQL
14 1 (0.24%) C
14 1 (0.24%) HiveQL
14 1 (0.24%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 42 (10.27%) Security Cleared
2 31 (7.58%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.85%) Degree
4 16 (3.91%) Azure Certification
5 14 (3.42%) Master's Degree
6 8 (1.96%) AWS Certification
6 8 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.96%) Computer Science Degree
6 8 (1.96%) Microsoft Certification
7 3 (0.73%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 3 (0.73%) DV Cleared
7 3 (0.73%) PMI Certification
7 3 (0.73%) PMP
8 2 (0.49%) ACCA
8 2 (0.49%) CIMA
8 2 (0.49%) MCP
9 1 (0.24%) APMG
9 1 (0.24%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 76 (18.58%) Data Quality
2 51 (12.47%) GDPR
3 15 (3.67%) HIPAA
3 15 (3.67%) QA
4 9 (2.20%) NIST
5 6 (1.47%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.98%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.73%) PCI DSS
8 2 (0.49%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.49%) GRC
9 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.24%) IFRS
9 1 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 32 (7.82%) Docker
2 13 (3.18%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.96%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.22%) zsh
5 2 (0.49%) HDFS
6 1 (0.24%) Lustre
6 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 69 (16.87%) Terraform
2 28 (6.85%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.96%) Grafana
4 7 (1.71%) Ansible
5 3 (0.73%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.49%) Argo
6 2 (0.49%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.49%) Packer
7 1 (0.24%) Kibana
7 1 (0.24%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.24%) logstash
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.24%) Puppet
7 1 (0.24%) Salt
7 1 (0.24%) SELinux
7 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 156 (38.14%) Databricks
2 91 (22.25%) Microsoft
3 27 (6.60%) SAP
4 18 (4.40%) Google
5 15 (3.67%) Informatica
6 14 (3.42%) Oracle
7 11 (2.69%) OpenAI
8 8 (1.96%) Cloudera
9 6 (1.47%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.47%) Talend
10 3 (0.73%) Ab Initio
11 2 (0.49%) Anaplan
11 2 (0.49%) Charles River
11 2 (0.49%) Greenplum
11 2 (0.49%) Guidewire
11 2 (0.49%) Hyperion
11 2 (0.49%) New Relic
11 2 (0.49%) Qualtrics
11 2 (0.49%) ServiceNow
11 2 (0.49%) SimCorp