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

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 242 180 227
Rank change year-on-year -62 +47 +3
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 481 438 456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.50% 1.03%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.93% 7.91% 6.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 348 325
10th Percentile £400 £375 £375
25th Percentile £448 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £580 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.90% +10.48% -8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £763 £640
90th Percentile £739 £938 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £473 £500
% change year-on-year -4.76% -5.50% -9.09%
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 6,943 5,537 7,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.96% 18.92% 16.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,780 3,823 5,158
10th Percentile £350 £350 £349
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £488
% change year-on-year -3.06% +0.51% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 97 173
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.35 £14.36
25th Percentile £28.79 £24.25 £20.77
Median hourly rate £51.00 £31.64 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +61.19% -21.39% -29.32%
75th Percentile £74.92 £64.50 £58.75
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £29.90 £35.00
% change year-on-year +67.22% -14.57% -36.36%

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 20 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 20 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 -79 386 £550 -8.33% 144
London -42 284 £600 -11.11% 70
Work from Home -87 152 £550 -18.52% 66
UK excluding London -63 113 £450 -4.76% 101
North of England -65 35 £475 +5.56% 25
Scotland +19 26 £447 +3.71% 1
Midlands -60 22 £450 +2.86% 16
South East -68 19 £425 -13.44% 29
North West -34 17 £425 -10.53% 17
East Midlands -27 12 £445 +25.11% 7
Yorkshire -50 12 £525 +16.67% 5
West Midlands -69 10 £513 +17.14% 9
North East -15 6 £475 +32.68% 3
East of England -21 5 - - 12
South West -26 3 £900 +38.46% 17
Wales -9 2 £410 +14.35% 3
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 -

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 83 (17.26%) Apache Spark
2 55 (11.43%) Apache
3 49 (10.19%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (1.46%) Confluence
5 5 (1.04%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.62%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.42%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.42%) nginx
7 2 (0.42%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (0.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.62%) 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 11 (2.29%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.42%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.21%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.21%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 340 (70.69%) Azure
2 167 (34.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 165 (34.30%) AWS
4 161 (33.47%) Power Platform
5 152 (31.60%) Azure Data Factory
6 87 (18.09%) Azure DevOps
7 85 (17.67%) GitHub
8 68 (14.14%) GCP
9 66 (13.72%) Serverless
10 57 (11.85%) Amazon S3
11 45 (9.36%) Snowflake
12 42 (8.73%) AWS CloudFormation
13 41 (8.52%) GitHub Actions
14 35 (7.28%) Microsoft Purview
15 33 (6.86%) Azure Functions
16 29 (6.03%) Azure Key Vault
17 25 (5.20%) AWS Lambda
17 25 (5.20%) Collibra
18 24 (4.99%) Azure Cosmos DB
19 19 (3.95%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.08%) Firewall
2 4 (0.83%) VPN
3 3 (0.62%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.62%) Network Security
4 2 (0.42%) Hyperconnected
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
1 146 (30.35%) Power BI
2 136 (28.27%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (14.55%) Metadata
4 63 (13.10%) Delta Lake
5 60 (12.47%) Azure SQL Database
5 60 (12.47%) SQL Server
6 38 (7.90%) Amazon Athena
7 33 (6.86%) Amazon Redshift
7 33 (6.86%) Big Data
8 30 (6.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 27 (5.61%) PostgreSQL
10 24 (4.99%) Hadoop
10 24 (4.99%) NoSQL
11 22 (4.57%) BigQuery
11 22 (4.57%) Mixpanel
11 22 (4.57%) Relational Database
12 20 (4.16%) Spark SQL
13 19 (3.95%) OLAP
14 17 (3.53%) OLTP
14 17 (3.53%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 47 (9.77%) Git
2 32 (6.65%) GitLab
3 13 (2.70%) Jenkins
4 12 (2.49%) MLflow
5 10 (2.08%) JIRA
6 4 (0.83%) ER Studio
6 4 (0.83%) ERwin
7 3 (0.62%) JMeter
8 2 (0.42%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.21%) Hudson
9 1 (0.21%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
9 1 (0.21%) Pylint
9 1 (0.21%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.21%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio
General
1 121 (25.16%) Finance
1 121 (25.16%) Social Skills
2 60 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
3 52 (10.81%) Public Sector
4 16 (3.33%) Banking
5 15 (3.12%) Documentation Skills
5 15 (3.12%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
7 7 (1.46%) Retail
8 6 (1.25%) Marketing
9 4 (0.83%) Front Office
9 4 (0.83%) Manufacturing
9 4 (0.83%) Military
10 3 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.42%) Back Office
11 2 (0.42%) Financial Institution
11 2 (0.42%) Legal
11 2 (0.42%) Local Government
11 2 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
11 2 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 171 (35.55%) Data Engineer
2 102 (21.21%) Architect
3 64 (13.31%) Senior
4 62 (12.89%) Data Architect
5 48 (9.98%) Azure Engineer
6 46 (9.56%) Lead
7 33 (6.86%) Senior Data Engineer
8 31 (6.44%) AWS Engineer
8 31 (6.44%) Developer
9 30 (6.24%) Principal Engineer
10 27 (5.61%) Azure Data Engineer
10 27 (5.61%) Solutions Architect
11 25 (5.20%) Software Engineer
12 20 (4.16%) Principal Software Engineer
13 19 (3.95%) DevOps Engineer
13 19 (3.95%) Lead Data Engineer
13 19 (3.95%) Principal Data Engineer
14 17 (3.53%) Platform Engineer
15 16 (3.33%) Analyst
15 16 (3.33%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (21.41%) PySpark
2 60 (12.47%) Kafka
3 24 (4.99%) REST
4 19 (3.95%) Great Expectations
5 17 (3.53%) JSON
6 14 (2.91%) Pandas
7 13 (2.70%) Model Context Protocol
8 12 (2.49%) Microsoft Graph
9 11 (2.29%) LangChain
9 11 (2.29%) PyTorch
9 11 (2.29%) scikit-learn
9 11 (2.29%) Spark Streaming
9 11 (2.29%) XML
10 10 (2.08%) LangGraph
10 10 (2.08%) YAML
11 8 (1.66%) FastAPI
11 8 (1.66%) TensorFlow
12 7 (1.46%) A2A Protocol
12 7 (1.46%) NumPy
13 5 (1.04%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 55 (11.43%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.95%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.53%) Distributed Computing
3 17 (3.53%) IoT
4 16 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
5 12 (2.49%) Distributed Systems
5 12 (2.49%) Product Ownership
6 11 (2.29%) Management Information System
7 10 (2.08%) Onboarding
8 9 (1.87%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.46%) Algorithms
9 7 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.25%) NHS
11 5 (1.04%) AI Agents
11 5 (1.04%) Digital Media
11 5 (1.04%) Replication
12 4 (0.83%) Self-Motivation
13 3 (0.62%) Hybrid Cloud
13 3 (0.62%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 16 (3.33%) Linux
2 11 (2.29%) Unix
3 6 (1.25%) Windows
4 2 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 268 (55.72%) Analytics
2 234 (48.65%) ETL
3 204 (42.41%) Data Pipeline
4 201 (41.79%) Data Modelling
5 190 (39.50%) CI/CD
6 177 (36.80%) Data Engineering
7 169 (35.14%) Business Intelligence
7 169 (35.14%) DevOps
8 163 (33.89%) Data Governance
9 122 (25.36%) Data Architecture
10 118 (24.53%) AI
11 93 (19.33%) Agile
12 92 (19.13%) Machine Learning
13 89 (18.50%) Infrastructure as Code
14 77 (16.01%) Problem-Solving
15 68 (14.14%) Migration
16 65 (13.51%) Data Science
17 63 (13.10%) Data Integration
18 52 (10.81%) Data Ingestion
19 51 (10.60%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 284 (59.04%) SQL
2 240 (49.90%) Python
3 34 (7.07%) Java
4 32 (6.65%) C#
5 24 (4.99%) Scala
6 20 (4.16%) PowerShell
6 20 (4.16%) T-SQL
7 17 (3.53%) Bicep
8 16 (3.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 13 (2.70%) Bash
10 10 (2.08%) PL/SQL
11 8 (1.66%) JavaScript
12 6 (1.25%) R
13 4 (0.83%) Shell Script
14 3 (0.62%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.42%) Ada
15 2 (0.42%) C++
16 1 (0.21%) ANSI SQL
16 1 (0.21%) Kusto Query Language
16 1 (0.21%) Perl
Qualifications
1 90 (18.71%) Security Cleared
2 68 (14.14%) SC Cleared
3 31 (6.44%) Degree
4 22 (4.57%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.33%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (3.12%) Master's Degree
7 10 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.46%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.46%) TOGAF Certification
10 6 (1.25%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.04%) CISM
11 5 (1.04%) CISSP
12 3 (0.62%) DV Cleared
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMP
13 2 (0.42%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.42%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (29.73%) Data Quality
2 75 (15.59%) GDPR
3 22 (4.57%) QA
4 12 (2.49%) HIPAA
4 12 (2.49%) NIST
5 8 (1.66%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.46%) PCI DSS
6 7 (1.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.42%) PMO
9 1 (0.21%) IFRS
9 1 (0.21%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.21%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 35 (7.28%) Docker
2 6 (1.25%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.04%) HDFS
4 3 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.21%) Lustre
5 1 (0.21%) NFS
5 1 (0.21%) zsh
Systems Management
1 102 (21.21%) Terraform
2 33 (6.86%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.66%) Grafana
4 6 (1.25%) Ansible
5 5 (1.04%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.21%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.21%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.21%) Kibana
7 1 (0.21%) logstash
7 1 (0.21%) Oozie
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.21%) Packer
7 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.21%) Puppet
7 1 (0.21%) Salt
7 1 (0.21%) SELinux
Vendors
1 202 (42.00%) Databricks
2 146 (30.35%) Microsoft
3 29 (6.03%) Informatica
4 28 (5.82%) Google
5 22 (4.57%) Oracle
6 18 (3.74%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.53%) SAP
8 11 (2.29%) Talend
9 8 (1.66%) Cloudera
10 6 (1.25%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.04%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.83%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.83%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.83%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.83%) Greenplum
13 3 (0.62%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.62%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.62%) Red Hat
13 3 (0.62%) Splunk
14 2 (0.42%) Infor