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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 224 179 230
Rank change year-on-year -45 +51 +22
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 478 437 455
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.13% 1.45% 1.03%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.01% 7.70% 6.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 347 349 315
10th Percentile £398 £389 £389
25th Percentile £448 £467 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +10.48% -8.30%
75th Percentile £638 £763 £630
90th Percentile £725 £938 £720
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £478 £513
% change year-on-year -3.14% -6.83% -6.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 4
10th Percentile - - £31.58
25th Percentile £64.00 - £37.31
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% +29.35% +43.57%
75th Percentile £69.11 - £60.38
90th Percentile £69.31 - £61.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - £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 6,818 5,672 7,173
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.18% 18.88% 16.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,707 3,863 5,064
10th Percentile £344 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £490
% change year-on-year -5.00% +2.04% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 93 166
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.13 £15.95
25th Percentile £29.13 £24.25 £20.98
Median hourly rate £52.50 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +60.01% -22.80% -23.70%
75th Percentile £74.84 £64.73 £62.85
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.75 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £27.50 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.82% -31.25% -27.27%

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 4 March 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 4 March 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 -79 377 £565 -5.92% 155
London -49 270 £601 -10.93% 77
Work from Home -75 152 £540 -20.00% 74
UK excluding London -57 123 £463 -3.14% 104
North of England -49 37 £486 +5.08% 22
Scotland +23 31 £436 +4.93% 9
Midlands -58 21 £481 +10.00% 6
South East -38 19 £431 -13.75% 37
North West -34 18 £425 -10.53% 10
Yorkshire -51 13 £550 +22.22% 8
East Midlands -21 11 £444 +24.65% 2
West Midlands -61 10 £513 +17.14% 4
North East -16 6 £475 +21.79% 4
Wales -5 5 £555 +11.00% 2
East of England -24 5 £580 - 7
South West -25 5 £713 +9.62% 21
Northern Ireland -1 2 £430 -18.10%

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 71 (14.85%) Apache Spark
2 49 (10.25%) Apache Airflow
3 47 (9.83%) Apache
4 7 (1.46%) Confluence
5 6 (1.26%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.63%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.42%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.42%) nginx
8 1 (0.21%) Jupyter
Applications
1 5 (1.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.63%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 12 (2.51%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.42%) Aladdin
2 2 (0.42%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.21%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.21%) JDE EnterpriseOne
3 1 (0.21%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.21%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.21%) SAP CO
3 1 (0.21%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.21%) SAP FI/CO
3 1 (0.21%) SAP MM
Cloud Services
1 339 (70.92%) Azure
2 166 (34.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 157 (32.85%) Power Platform
4 156 (32.64%) AWS
5 145 (30.33%) Azure Data Factory
6 77 (16.11%) Azure DevOps
7 68 (14.23%) GitHub
8 66 (13.81%) GCP
8 66 (13.81%) Serverless
9 51 (10.67%) Snowflake
10 48 (10.04%) Amazon S3
11 40 (8.37%) AWS CloudFormation
12 38 (7.95%) Microsoft Purview
13 34 (7.11%) Azure Functions
13 34 (7.11%) GitHub Actions
14 26 (5.44%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 26 (5.44%) Azure Key Vault
15 24 (5.02%) AWS Lambda
16 21 (4.39%) Collibra
17 19 (3.97%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.88%) Firewall
2 4 (0.84%) VPN
3 3 (0.63%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.42%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.42%) Network Security
5 1 (0.21%) 4G
5 1 (0.21%) 5G
5 1 (0.21%) DSL
5 1 (0.21%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.21%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.21%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 144 (30.13%) Data Warehouse
2 142 (29.71%) Power BI
3 66 (13.81%) Metadata
4 61 (12.76%) SQL Server
5 60 (12.55%) Delta Lake
6 58 (12.13%) Azure SQL Database
7 33 (6.90%) Amazon Athena
8 32 (6.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 30 (6.28%) Big Data
10 27 (5.65%) PostgreSQL
11 25 (5.23%) Relational Database
12 23 (4.81%) BigQuery
12 23 (4.81%) NoSQL
13 22 (4.60%) Amazon Redshift
13 22 (4.60%) Hadoop
14 19 (3.97%) Mixpanel
14 19 (3.97%) Spark SQL
15 16 (3.35%) OLAP
16 15 (3.14%) OLTP
16 15 (3.14%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 48 (10.04%) Git
2 31 (6.49%) GitLab
3 11 (2.30%) MLflow
4 10 (2.09%) JIRA
5 9 (1.88%) Jenkins
6 4 (0.84%) Bitbucket
6 4 (0.84%) ER Studio
6 4 (0.84%) ERwin
7 3 (0.63%) JMeter
8 1 (0.21%) Hudson
8 1 (0.21%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
8 1 (0.21%) Pylint
8 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.21%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio
General
1 130 (27.20%) Social Skills
2 115 (24.06%) Finance
3 60 (12.55%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (10.88%) Public Sector
5 19 (3.97%) Banking
6 17 (3.56%) Influencing Skills
7 15 (3.14%) Documentation Skills
8 11 (2.30%) Pharmaceutical
9 10 (2.09%) Retail
10 8 (1.67%) Marketing
11 6 (1.26%) Front Office
12 4 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.84%) Investment Banking
12 4 (0.84%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.84%) Military
13 3 (0.63%) Legal
14 2 (0.42%) Back Office
14 2 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.42%) Publishing
14 2 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 158 (33.05%) Data Engineer
2 100 (20.92%) Architect
3 69 (14.44%) Senior
4 59 (12.34%) Data Architect
5 49 (10.25%) Azure Engineer
6 48 (10.04%) Lead
7 37 (7.74%) Developer
8 31 (6.49%) Senior Data Engineer
9 28 (5.86%) AWS Engineer
10 27 (5.65%) Azure Data Engineer
11 26 (5.44%) Solutions Architect
12 24 (5.02%) Software Engineer
13 23 (4.81%) Principal Engineer
14 20 (4.18%) Lead Data Engineer
15 19 (3.97%) DevOps Engineer
16 17 (3.56%) Analyst
16 17 (3.56%) Principal Software Engineer
17 16 (3.35%) Azure Architect
17 16 (3.35%) Platform Engineer
17 16 (3.35%) Principal Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 97 (20.29%) PySpark
2 50 (10.46%) Kafka
3 22 (4.60%) REST
4 17 (3.56%) JSON
4 17 (3.56%) Pandas
5 16 (3.35%) Great Expectations
6 13 (2.72%) Microsoft Graph
6 13 (2.72%) Model Context Protocol
6 13 (2.72%) PyTorch
6 13 (2.72%) scikit-learn
7 12 (2.51%) LangChain
8 11 (2.30%) LangGraph
8 11 (2.30%) XML
9 10 (2.09%) NumPy
9 10 (2.09%) Spark Streaming
9 10 (2.09%) TensorFlow
9 10 (2.09%) YAML
10 7 (1.46%) A2A Protocol
10 7 (1.46%) FastAPI
10 7 (1.46%) React
Miscellaneous
1 47 (9.83%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.97%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.56%) Distributed Computing
4 15 (3.14%) IoT
5 12 (2.51%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (2.51%) Legacy Systems
6 11 (2.30%) Onboarding
7 10 (2.09%) Management Information System
7 10 (2.09%) Product Ownership
8 9 (1.88%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.46%) Algorithms
9 7 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
9 7 (1.46%) NHS
10 6 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
11 5 (1.05%) Fixed Income
12 4 (0.84%) Derivative
12 4 (0.84%) Equities
12 4 (0.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 4 (0.84%) Replication
12 4 (0.84%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.93%) Linux
2 8 (1.67%) Unix
3 6 (1.26%) Windows
4 2 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 257 (53.77%) Analytics
2 230 (48.12%) ETL
3 197 (41.21%) Data Pipeline
4 192 (40.17%) Data Modelling
5 178 (37.24%) CI/CD
6 165 (34.52%) Business Intelligence
7 159 (33.26%) Data Engineering
8 156 (32.64%) Data Governance
9 155 (32.43%) DevOps
10 115 (24.06%) AI
10 115 (24.06%) Data Architecture
11 98 (20.50%) Agile
12 93 (19.46%) Machine Learning
13 88 (18.41%) Infrastructure as Code
14 74 (15.48%) Problem-Solving
15 70 (14.64%) Data Science
16 62 (12.97%) Data Integration
17 60 (12.55%) Migration
18 53 (11.09%) Decision-Making
19 48 (10.04%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 281 (58.79%) SQL
2 234 (48.95%) Python
3 35 (7.32%) Java
4 31 (6.49%) C#
5 23 (4.81%) T-SQL
6 18 (3.77%) Scala
7 17 (3.56%) Bicep
7 17 (3.56%) PowerShell
8 14 (2.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 12 (2.51%) Bash
9 12 (2.51%) JavaScript
10 11 (2.30%) PL/SQL
11 7 (1.46%) R
11 7 (1.46%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.42%) Ada
12 2 (0.42%) C++
13 1 (0.21%) ANSI SQL
13 1 (0.21%) C
13 1 (0.21%) Korn
13 1 (0.21%) Perl
Qualifications
1 77 (16.11%) Security Cleared
2 56 (11.72%) SC Cleared
3 31 (6.49%) Degree
4 22 (4.60%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.35%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (2.93%) Master's Degree
7 10 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (1.46%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 7 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
9 6 (1.26%) Computer Science Degree
10 5 (1.05%) CISM
10 5 (1.05%) CISSP
11 3 (0.63%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.63%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.63%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.63%) PMP
12 2 (0.42%) DV Cleared
12 2 (0.42%) Postgraduate
13 1 (0.21%) CGEIT
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 134 (28.03%) Data Quality
2 71 (14.85%) GDPR
3 20 (4.18%) QA
4 14 (2.93%) HIPAA
5 13 (2.72%) NIST
6 9 (1.88%) Accessibility
7 8 (1.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.84%) PCI DSS
9 3 (0.63%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.42%) PMO
10 2 (0.42%) Solvency II
11 1 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
11 1 (0.21%) IFRS
11 1 (0.21%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 1 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 34 (7.11%) Docker
2 7 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.05%) HDFS
4 3 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
4 3 (0.63%) zsh
5 1 (0.21%) Lustre
5 1 (0.21%) NFS
Systems Management
1 98 (20.50%) Terraform
2 31 (6.49%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.26%) Ansible
4 5 (1.05%) Grafana
5 3 (0.63%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.21%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.21%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.21%) Kibana
6 1 (0.21%) logstash
6 1 (0.21%) Oozie
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.21%) Packer
6 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.21%) Puppet
6 1 (0.21%) Salt
6 1 (0.21%) SELinux
6 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 201 (42.05%) Databricks
2 144 (30.13%) Microsoft
3 25 (5.23%) Google
4 24 (5.02%) Oracle
5 22 (4.60%) Informatica
6 20 (4.18%) SAP
7 18 (3.77%) OpenAI
8 10 (2.09%) Talend
9 6 (1.26%) Salesforce
9 6 (1.26%) ServiceNow
10 5 (1.05%) Cloudera
11 4 (0.84%) BiZZdesign
11 4 (0.84%) CheckPoint
11 4 (0.84%) Fortinet
11 4 (0.84%) Greenplum
12 3 (0.63%) Ab Initio
12 3 (0.63%) Red Hat
13 2 (0.42%) Infor
13 2 (0.42%) New Relic
13 2 (0.42%) Splunk