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

6 months to
4 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 220 185 205
Rank change year-on-year -35 +20 +13
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 519 431 498
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.47% 1.15%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.19% 7.76% 6.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 372 351 365
10th Percentile £400 £401 £413
25th Percentile £450 £473 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £600 £560
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +7.14% -0.97%
75th Percentile £650 £800 £775
90th Percentile £750 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +5.26% -2.81% -6.90%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 2 3
10th Percentile £51.25 - £30.30
25th Percentile £57.25 - £34.13
Median hourly rate £64.00 £65.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.54% +60.49% +15.71%
75th Percentile £67.75 - £51.00
90th Percentile £69.22 - £57.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £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 7,220 5,556 7,284
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.30% 18.97% 16.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,903 3,836 5,196
10th Percentile £350 £357 £350
25th Percentile £413 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £644 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £771
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £475
% change year-on-year -2.56% +2.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 103 143
10th Percentile £16.72 £19.84 £14.00
25th Percentile £27.72 £23.88 £20.98
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.81 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.39% -17.98% -31.73%
75th Percentile £74.00 £65.31 £58.88
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.13 £30.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year +60.43% -25.00% -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 May 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 4 May 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 4 May 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 -76 422 £550 -12.00% 112
London -34 299 £600 -11.11% 62
Work from Home -73 167 £525 -25.00% 60
UK excluding London -54 124 £500 +5.26% 60
Midlands -50 37 £475 +8.57% 14
North of England -53 37 £500 +8.11% 17
West Midlands -52 23 £513 +17.14% 8
Scotland +6 21 £475 -19.35% 3
South East -60 18 £442 -6.95% 15
North West -39 16 £513 +3.04% 11
East Midlands -20 14 £463 - 6
Yorkshire -37 14 £550 +25.71% 5
North East -20 7 £463 +29.19% 1
East of England -37 7 £575 -0.86% 5
South West -34 4 £500 -11.11% 5
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 84 (16.18%) Apache Spark
2 48 (9.25%) Apache
3 37 (7.13%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (2.31%) Confluence
4 12 (2.31%) SAS
5 4 (0.77%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.39%) Apache Synapse
6 2 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.39%) nginx
7 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (0.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.39%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.19%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 9 (1.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.39%) Infor M3
2 2 (0.39%) Loan IQ
3 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 371 (71.48%) Azure
2 196 (37.76%) Power Platform
3 172 (33.14%) AWS
4 171 (32.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 166 (31.98%) Azure Data Factory
6 89 (17.15%) Azure DevOps
7 83 (15.99%) GitHub
8 75 (14.45%) GCP
9 61 (11.75%) Serverless
10 54 (10.40%) Amazon S3
11 39 (7.51%) Snowflake
12 38 (7.32%) GitHub Actions
12 38 (7.32%) Microsoft Purview
13 34 (6.55%) AWS CloudFormation
14 32 (6.17%) Azure Functions
15 27 (5.20%) Azure Key Vault
16 26 (5.01%) Azure Cosmos DB
17 24 (4.62%) Collibra
18 23 (4.43%) AWS Lambda
19 18 (3.47%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.73%) HTTP
2 8 (1.54%) Firewall
3 3 (0.58%) Network Security
4 2 (0.39%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.39%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.39%) VPN
5 1 (0.19%) 4G
5 1 (0.19%) 5G
5 1 (0.19%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.19%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.19%) Modbus
5 1 (0.19%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (32.56%) Power BI
2 160 (30.83%) Data Warehouse
3 77 (14.84%) Metadata
4 69 (13.29%) SQL Server
5 67 (12.91%) Azure SQL Database
6 66 (12.72%) Delta Lake
7 42 (8.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 39 (7.51%) Amazon Athena
9 33 (6.36%) Big Data
10 31 (5.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 26 (5.01%) PostgreSQL
12 25 (4.82%) NoSQL
13 24 (4.62%) Spark SQL
14 23 (4.43%) BigQuery
15 21 (4.05%) Hadoop
16 20 (3.85%) Mixpanel
16 20 (3.85%) Relational Database
17 18 (3.47%) OLAP
17 18 (3.47%) Snowflake Schema
18 16 (3.08%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 59 (11.37%) Git
2 31 (5.97%) GitLab
3 16 (3.08%) JIRA
4 12 (2.31%) Jenkins
5 10 (1.93%) MLflow
6 5 (0.96%) ER Studio
6 5 (0.96%) ERwin
7 3 (0.58%) JMeter
7 3 (0.58%) PowerDesigner
8 2 (0.39%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.19%) Hudson
9 1 (0.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 127 (24.47%) Finance
2 108 (20.81%) Social Skills
3 56 (10.79%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (8.67%) Public Sector
5 17 (3.28%) Banking
6 13 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.12%) Influencing Skills
8 8 (1.54%) Retail
9 6 (1.16%) Manufacturing
9 6 (1.16%) Marketing
9 6 (1.16%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (0.96%) Military
11 3 (0.58%) Financial Institution
11 3 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.39%) Back Office
12 2 (0.39%) Front Office
12 2 (0.39%) Legal
12 2 (0.39%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.39%) Publishing
12 2 (0.39%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 183 (35.26%) Data Engineer
2 133 (25.63%) Architect
3 81 (15.61%) Data Architect
4 76 (14.64%) Senior
5 47 (9.06%) Senior Data Engineer
6 42 (8.09%) Azure Engineer
6 42 (8.09%) Lead
7 40 (7.71%) Solutions Architect
8 35 (6.74%) Developer
9 29 (5.59%) Principal Engineer
10 28 (5.39%) Azure Data Engineer
11 22 (4.24%) Cloud Architect
11 22 (4.24%) Software Engineer
12 21 (4.05%) Cloud Solutions Architect
13 20 (3.85%) AWS Engineer
14 19 (3.66%) Principal Software Engineer
15 18 (3.47%) Analyst
15 18 (3.47%) Azure Architect
16 17 (3.28%) Principal Data Engineer
17 15 (2.89%) Azure Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 106 (20.42%) PySpark
2 55 (10.60%) Kafka
3 29 (5.59%) REST
4 18 (3.47%) Great Expectations
5 15 (2.89%) Model Context Protocol
6 14 (2.70%) JSON
7 13 (2.50%) LangChain
8 12 (2.31%) LangGraph
8 12 (2.31%) Microsoft Graph
9 11 (2.12%) XML
10 10 (1.93%) Pandas
11 9 (1.73%) A2A Protocol
11 9 (1.73%) Spark Streaming
11 9 (1.73%) YAML
12 8 (1.54%) PyTorch
12 8 (1.54%) scikit-learn
13 7 (1.35%) TensorFlow
14 5 (0.96%) FastAPI
14 5 (0.96%) Middleware
14 5 (0.96%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 75 (14.45%) Cloud Native
2 23 (4.43%) Data Structures
3 19 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
4 18 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (2.89%) Distributed Computing
5 15 (2.89%) IoT
6 14 (2.70%) Product Ownership
7 11 (2.12%) Low-Code
8 10 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
8 10 (1.93%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.73%) Data Fabric
10 8 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.54%) Digital Media
11 6 (1.16%) Algorithms
12 5 (0.96%) AI Agents
12 5 (0.96%) Reference Data
12 5 (0.96%) Replication
12 5 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (0.77%) Onboarding
13 4 (0.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 13 (2.50%) Linux
2 9 (1.73%) Unix
3 4 (0.77%) Windows
4 2 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 289 (55.68%) Analytics
2 263 (50.67%) ETL
3 240 (46.24%) Data Modelling
4 222 (42.77%) Data Pipeline
5 206 (39.69%) CI/CD
6 204 (39.31%) Data Engineering
7 192 (36.99%) Business Intelligence
8 170 (32.76%) DevOps
9 169 (32.56%) Data Governance
10 133 (25.63%) AI
10 133 (25.63%) Data Architecture
11 106 (20.42%) Agile
12 102 (19.65%) Migration
13 94 (18.11%) Machine Learning
14 79 (15.22%) Infrastructure as Code
14 79 (15.22%) Problem-Solving
15 68 (13.10%) Data Integration
16 67 (12.91%) Data Transformation
17 58 (11.18%) Data Science
18 54 (10.40%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 307 (59.15%) SQL
2 238 (45.86%) Python
3 37 (7.13%) Java
4 29 (5.59%) C#
5 22 (4.24%) Scala
5 22 (4.24%) T-SQL
6 19 (3.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 18 (3.47%) Bicep
7 18 (3.47%) PowerShell
8 8 (1.54%) Bash
9 6 (1.16%) JavaScript
9 6 (1.16%) PL/SQL
9 6 (1.16%) R
10 5 (0.96%) Shell Script
11 2 (0.39%) Ada
11 2 (0.39%) C++
12 1 (0.19%) ANSI SQL
12 1 (0.19%) C
12 1 (0.19%) Perl
12 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 106 (20.42%) Security Cleared
2 82 (15.80%) SC Cleared
3 25 (4.82%) Degree
4 24 (4.62%) Azure Certification
5 15 (2.89%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.31%) Master's Degree
7 10 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
8 9 (1.73%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 8 (1.54%) AWS Certification
10 7 (1.35%) TOGAF Certification
11 5 (0.96%) CISM
11 5 (0.96%) CISSP
12 4 (0.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 4 (0.77%) DV Cleared
13 3 (0.58%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.58%) ISTQB
13 3 (0.58%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 2 (0.39%) PMI Certification
14 2 (0.39%) PMP
14 2 (0.39%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (30.83%) Data Quality
2 63 (12.14%) GDPR
3 29 (5.59%) QA
4 7 (1.35%) PCI DSS
4 7 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.16%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.77%) NIST
7 3 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.58%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 3 (0.58%) HIPAA
7 3 (0.58%) MiFID
8 2 (0.39%) IFRS
8 2 (0.39%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.39%) PMO
9 1 (0.19%) Basel II
9 1 (0.19%) GRC
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 34 (6.55%) Docker
2 5 (0.96%) HDFS
3 2 (0.39%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.19%) Lustre
4 1 (0.19%) NFS
4 1 (0.19%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 97 (18.69%) Terraform
2 34 (6.55%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.93%) Grafana
4 5 (0.96%) Ansible
5 3 (0.58%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.19%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.19%) Oozie
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.19%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.19%) Puppet
7 1 (0.19%) Salt
7 1 (0.19%) SELinux
Vendors
1 216 (41.62%) Databricks
2 159 (30.64%) Microsoft
3 42 (8.09%) Informatica
4 27 (5.20%) Oracle
5 26 (5.01%) Google
6 20 (3.85%) SAP
7 19 (3.66%) OpenAI
8 14 (2.70%) Talend
9 9 (1.73%) Denodo
10 7 (1.35%) Cloudera
11 6 (1.16%) Dynatrace
11 6 (1.16%) Salesforce
11 6 (1.16%) ServiceNow
12 5 (0.96%) Infor
13 4 (0.77%) BiZZdesign
13 4 (0.77%) CheckPoint
13 4 (0.77%) Fortinet
13 4 (0.77%) Greenplum
13 4 (0.77%) Hortonworks
14 3 (0.58%) Red Hat