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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 205 180
Rank change year-on-year -32 -25 +18
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 525 377 562
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.31% 1.30%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.13% 6.92% 7.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 376 302 432
10th Percentile £406 £408 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - +5.26%
75th Percentile £650 £775 £850
90th Percentile £750 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £513 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +7.89% -2.56% -9.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £51.25 - £42.50
25th Percentile £57.25 - £45.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
75th Percentile £67.75 - £56.25
90th Percentile £69.22 - £59.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

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 7,368 5,446 7,302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.08% 18.93% 16.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,935 3,728 5,237
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £415 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £753 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 230 100 150
10th Percentile £14.00 £19.56 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.77 £23.38 £20.77
Median hourly rate £42.11 £33.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.71% -16.26% -33.33%
75th Percentile £72.63 £65.62 £56.88
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.62 £72.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.00 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +23.26% -9.60% -40.26%

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 3 June 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 3 June 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 3 June 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 -57 439 £575 -5.15% 142
London -37 301 £600 -17.24% 88
Work from Home -52 178 £525 -27.59% 69
UK excluding London -48 135 £513 +7.89% 75
Midlands -22 47 £600 +37.14% 12
North of England -60 40 £500 +5.26% 15
West Midlands -36 31 £600 +37.14% 9
Scotland +15 20 £500 -13.34% 5
North West -36 18 £500 +5.26% 7
South East -73 18 £425 -7.61% 28
East Midlands -14 16 £549 +37.25% 3
Yorkshire -48 15 £550 +22.22% 5
East of England -32 8 £575 -0.86% 5
North East -24 7 £463 - 3
South West -27 4 £500 -11.11% 7
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 - 1

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 81 (15.43%) Apache Spark
2 40 (7.62%) Apache
3 34 (6.48%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (3.81%) SAS
5 12 (2.29%) Confluence
6 2 (0.38%) Apache Synapse
6 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.38%) nginx
6 2 (0.38%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
Applications
1 3 (0.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.76%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.57%) Infor M3
3 2 (0.38%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Endur
4 1 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 374 (71.24%) Azure
2 188 (35.81%) AWS
3 185 (35.24%) Power Platform
4 164 (31.24%) Azure Data Factory
5 156 (29.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 93 (17.71%) Azure DevOps
7 87 (16.57%) GCP
8 82 (15.62%) GitHub
9 57 (10.86%) Serverless
10 48 (9.14%) Amazon S3
11 43 (8.19%) Snowflake
12 40 (7.62%) GitHub Actions
13 34 (6.48%) Microsoft Purview
14 27 (5.14%) Azure Functions
15 25 (4.76%) Azure Key Vault
16 24 (4.57%) AWS CloudFormation
16 24 (4.57%) AWS Lambda
16 24 (4.57%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 18 (3.43%) Collibra
18 17 (3.24%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.71%) HTTP
2 7 (1.33%) Firewall
3 2 (0.38%) Network Security
4 1 (0.19%) 4G
4 1 (0.19%) 5G
4 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
4 1 (0.19%) Kerberos
4 1 (0.19%) Modbus
4 1 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
4 1 (0.19%) SMS
4 1 (0.19%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 167 (31.81%) Data Warehouse
2 161 (30.67%) Power BI
3 76 (14.48%) Metadata
4 70 (13.33%) SQL Server
5 67 (12.76%) Azure SQL Database
6 65 (12.38%) Delta Lake
7 45 (8.57%) Amazon Redshift
8 38 (7.24%) Big Data
9 34 (6.48%) Amazon Athena
10 31 (5.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 30 (5.71%) BigQuery
12 29 (5.52%) NoSQL
13 25 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
13 25 (4.76%) Spark SQL
14 22 (4.19%) Hadoop
15 21 (4.00%) Relational Database
16 19 (3.62%) Snowflake Schema
17 17 (3.24%) Mixpanel
18 16 (3.05%) Star Schema
19 15 (2.86%) OLAP
Development Applications
1 64 (12.19%) Git
2 27 (5.14%) GitLab
3 17 (3.24%) JIRA
4 14 (2.67%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.33%) ER Studio
5 7 (1.33%) ERwin
6 6 (1.14%) MLflow
7 5 (0.95%) PowerDesigner
8 3 (0.57%) JMeter
9 2 (0.38%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.19%) Hudson
10 1 (0.19%) Postman
10 1 (0.19%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 123 (23.43%) Finance
2 113 (21.52%) Social Skills
3 65 (12.38%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.57%) Public Sector
5 18 (3.43%) Banking
6 15 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (1.90%) Retail
8 9 (1.71%) Marketing
9 7 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
10 5 (0.95%) Manufacturing
10 5 (0.95%) Military
11 4 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.76%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.57%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.38%) Back Office
13 2 (0.38%) Billing
13 2 (0.38%) Front Office
13 2 (0.38%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.38%) Publishing
13 2 (0.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 188 (35.81%) Data Engineer
2 140 (26.67%) Architect
3 86 (16.38%) Data Architect
4 81 (15.43%) Senior
5 52 (9.90%) Senior Data Engineer
6 43 (8.19%) Lead
7 40 (7.62%) Solutions Architect
8 39 (7.43%) Azure Engineer
9 31 (5.90%) Developer
10 29 (5.52%) Azure Data Engineer
11 26 (4.95%) Principal Engineer
12 24 (4.57%) Cloud Architect
13 22 (4.19%) Analyst
14 21 (4.00%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 19 (3.62%) Software Engineer
16 17 (3.24%) AWS Engineer
16 17 (3.24%) Azure Architect
17 16 (3.05%) Principal Software Engineer
18 15 (2.86%) Data Analyst
18 15 (2.86%) Principal Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 105 (20.00%) PySpark
2 52 (9.90%) Kafka
3 31 (5.90%) REST
4 16 (3.05%) Great Expectations
5 13 (2.48%) Model Context Protocol
6 12 (2.29%) XML
7 11 (2.10%) JSON
7 11 (2.10%) Pandas
8 10 (1.90%) LangChain
8 10 (1.90%) LangGraph
9 9 (1.71%) Middleware
9 9 (1.71%) scikit-learn
9 9 (1.71%) YAML
10 8 (1.52%) Microsoft Graph
10 8 (1.52%) PyTorch
11 7 (1.33%) A2A Protocol
11 7 (1.33%) TensorFlow
12 6 (1.14%) .NET
12 6 (1.14%) Spark Streaming
13 5 (0.95%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 79 (15.05%) Cloud Native
2 23 (4.38%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (3.81%) Legacy Systems
4 19 (3.62%) Data Structures
5 15 (2.86%) IoT
6 14 (2.67%) Product Ownership
7 12 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.29%) Distributed Computing
8 11 (2.10%) Low-Code
8 11 (2.10%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.71%) AI Agents
9 9 (1.71%) Reference Data
10 8 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.52%) Data Fabric
10 8 (1.52%) Digital Media
11 7 (1.33%) Onboarding
12 5 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (0.95%) Fixed Income
12 5 (0.95%) Replication
12 5 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 9 (1.71%) Linux
2 7 (1.33%) Unix
3 2 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.38%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 285 (54.29%) Analytics
2 277 (52.76%) ETL
3 235 (44.76%) Data Modelling
4 225 (42.86%) Data Pipeline
5 207 (39.43%) CI/CD
6 205 (39.05%) Data Engineering
7 189 (36.00%) Business Intelligence
8 178 (33.90%) DevOps
9 163 (31.05%) Data Governance
10 137 (26.10%) AI
11 135 (25.71%) Data Architecture
12 114 (21.71%) Agile
13 108 (20.57%) Migration
14 94 (17.90%) Machine Learning
15 79 (15.05%) Problem-Solving
16 76 (14.48%) Infrastructure as Code
17 70 (13.33%) Data Integration
18 68 (12.95%) Data Transformation
19 67 (12.76%) Validation
20 57 (10.86%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 319 (60.76%) SQL
2 227 (43.24%) Python
3 40 (7.62%) Java
4 26 (4.95%) C#
5 22 (4.19%) Scala
5 22 (4.19%) T-SQL
6 16 (3.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (2.86%) Bicep
7 15 (2.86%) PowerShell
8 8 (1.52%) Bash
9 6 (1.14%) PL/SQL
10 5 (0.95%) JavaScript
10 5 (0.95%) R
10 5 (0.95%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.38%) Ada
11 2 (0.38%) C++
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) SOQL
12 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 119 (22.67%) Security Cleared
2 96 (18.29%) SC Cleared
3 24 (4.57%) Azure Certification
4 21 (4.00%) Degree
5 13 (2.48%) Microsoft Certification
6 9 (1.71%) Master's Degree
7 7 (1.33%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
7 7 (1.33%) TOGAF Certification
8 6 (1.14%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.95%) CISM
9 5 (0.95%) CISSP
10 3 (0.57%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.57%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.57%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.38%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.38%) PMP
11 2 (0.38%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.38%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 171 (32.57%) Data Quality
2 53 (10.10%) GDPR
3 33 (6.29%) QA
4 6 (1.14%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (0.95%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.76%) MiFID
6 4 (0.76%) NIST
7 3 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.57%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.38%) IFRS
8 2 (0.38%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.38%) PMO
9 1 (0.19%) Basel II
9 1 (0.19%) GRC
9 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
9 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 29 (5.52%) Docker
2 4 (0.76%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 90 (17.14%) Terraform
2 32 (6.10%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.71%) Grafana
4 5 (0.95%) Ansible
5 3 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.38%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.19%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.19%) Oozie
Vendors
1 210 (40.00%) Databricks
2 149 (28.38%) Microsoft
3 42 (8.00%) Informatica
4 29 (5.52%) Oracle
5 25 (4.76%) Google
6 19 (3.62%) OpenAI
7 16 (3.05%) Talend
8 14 (2.67%) SAP
9 9 (1.71%) Denodo
10 7 (1.33%) Infor
11 6 (1.14%) Cloudera
11 6 (1.14%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.14%) Salesforce
11 6 (1.14%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.76%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.76%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.76%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.76%) Greenplum
12 4 (0.76%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.57%) Splunk