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

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 238 239 157
Rank change year-on-year +1 -82 +66
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 609 381 582
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.12% 1.16% 1.52%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.51% 6.35% 8.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 473 280 487
10th Percentile £400 £380 £448
25th Percentile £450 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £529 £575 £725
Median % change year-on-year -8.00% -20.69% +26.09%
75th Percentile £650 £741 £850
90th Percentile £738 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £509 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +7.16% -5.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £32.87 - -
Median hourly rate £35.45 - -
75th Percentile £52.50 - -
90th Percentile £54.00 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.45 - -

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 8,109 6,002 6,840
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.91% 18.29% 17.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,415 4,021 4,648
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -1.85%
75th Percentile £619 £625 £650
90th Percentile £711 £738 £794
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £485
% change year-on-year - -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 269 85 88
10th Percentile £16.56 £21.09 £17.50
25th Percentile £22.82 £29.00 £21.13
Median hourly rate £40.18 £40.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.45% +14.29% -33.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £79.50 £72.18
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +15.53% +18.30% -44.95%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 -24 486 £550 -8.33% 399
London -52 281 £575 -11.54% 212
UK excluding London +10 203 £509 +7.16% 223
Work from Home -32 203 £525 -19.23% 181
Midlands +31 87 £600 +33.33% 47
West Midlands +9 61 £600 - 31
North of England -39 50 £505 +6.32% 49
North West -37 28 £550 +12.82% 25
East Midlands +6 26 £500 +21.95% 16
South East -59 23 £459 +2.00% 31
Scotland -13 22 £410 +7.01% 42
Yorkshire -30 20 £510 +7.37% 11
South West -27 15 £600 +26.32% 24
East of England -28 6 £350 -36.36% 16
Wales -15 3 £500 -16.67% 6
North East -37 2 £438 - 13

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 73 (11.99%) Apache Spark
2 54 (8.87%) Apache
3 49 (8.05%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (5.91%) SAS
5 20 (3.28%) Confluence
6 13 (2.13%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.49%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.33%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.33%) nginx
8 2 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.16%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.16%) JBoss
9 1 (0.16%) MQSeries
9 1 (0.16%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.82%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.49%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.49%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.33%) Endur
4 2 (0.33%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.33%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.33%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.16%) Actimize
5 1 (0.16%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.16%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.16%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 385 (63.22%) Azure
2 214 (35.14%) AWS
3 181 (29.72%) Power Platform
4 147 (24.14%) Azure Data Factory
5 110 (18.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 98 (16.09%) GCP
7 94 (15.44%) Snowflake
8 85 (13.96%) Azure DevOps
9 64 (10.51%) Amazon S3
10 61 (10.02%) Serverless
11 55 (9.03%) GitHub
12 50 (8.21%) Azure Databricks
13 39 (6.40%) AWS Lambda
14 36 (5.91%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 35 (5.75%) Entra ID
16 34 (5.58%) dbt
17 29 (4.76%) Amazon EMR
18 26 (4.27%) GitHub Actions
19 25 (4.11%) Microsoft Purview
19 25 (4.11%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (1.97%) Firewall
2 11 (1.81%) HTTP
3 9 (1.48%) DNS
4 5 (0.82%) WAN
5 3 (0.49%) Broadband
6 2 (0.33%) DSL
6 2 (0.33%) Network Security
7 1 (0.16%) AMQP
7 1 (0.16%) IPsec
7 1 (0.16%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.16%) Modbus
7 1 (0.16%) MQTT
7 1 (0.16%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.16%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.16%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.16%) SMS
7 1 (0.16%) VPN
7 1 (0.16%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 246 (40.39%) Data Warehouse
2 163 (26.77%) Power BI
3 100 (16.42%) Metadata
4 60 (9.85%) Amazon Redshift
5 52 (8.54%) Azure SQL Database
6 47 (7.72%) NoSQL
7 43 (7.06%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.40%) Amazon Athena
9 37 (6.08%) Big Data
10 33 (5.42%) BigQuery
10 33 (5.42%) SQL Server
11 27 (4.43%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 26 (4.27%) Relational Database
13 25 (4.11%) PostgreSQL
14 22 (3.61%) Tableau
15 21 (3.45%) Semantic Layer
16 19 (3.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (2.96%) Star Schema
18 16 (2.63%) Hadoop
18 16 (2.63%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 62 (10.18%) Git
2 43 (7.06%) GitLab
3 26 (4.27%) JIRA
4 17 (2.79%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.48%) ERwin
6 7 (1.15%) ER Studio
7 6 (0.99%) PowerDesigner
8 4 (0.66%) JUnit
8 4 (0.66%) MLflow
8 4 (0.66%) SonarQube
9 3 (0.49%) Terragrunt
10 2 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 1 (0.16%) Postman
11 1 (0.16%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.16%) TestRail
11 1 (0.16%) Visual Studio
General
1 159 (26.11%) Social Skills
2 142 (23.32%) Finance
3 75 (12.32%) Analytical Skills
4 63 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 46 (7.55%) Banking
6 31 (5.09%) Retail
7 26 (4.27%) Marketing
8 22 (3.61%) Manufacturing
9 17 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
10 14 (2.30%) Documentation Skills
11 10 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 8 (1.31%) Military
13 7 (1.15%) Investment Banking
13 7 (1.15%) Police
14 6 (0.99%) Legal
14 6 (0.99%) Publishing
15 5 (0.82%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.66%) Corporate Banking
16 4 (0.66%) Front Office
16 4 (0.66%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 211 (34.65%) Architect
2 165 (27.09%) Data Engineer
3 139 (22.82%) Data Architect
4 95 (15.60%) Senior
5 60 (9.85%) Azure Engineer
6 52 (8.54%) Analyst
7 51 (8.37%) Solutions Architect
8 50 (8.21%) Senior Data Engineer
9 39 (6.40%) Azure Data Engineer
10 37 (6.08%) Data Analyst
11 36 (5.91%) Lead
12 34 (5.58%) Business Analyst
13 33 (5.42%) Developer
14 31 (5.09%) Data Business Analyst
15 25 (4.11%) Databricks Engineer
16 21 (3.45%) Databricks Data Engineer
17 20 (3.28%) Azure Architect
18 19 (3.12%) Cloud Architect
19 18 (2.96%) Technical Leader
20 16 (2.63%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (16.09%) Terraform
2 73 (11.99%) PySpark
3 47 (7.72%) Kafka
4 32 (5.25%) REST
5 14 (2.30%) .NET
6 13 (2.13%) JSON
6 13 (2.13%) YAML
7 12 (1.97%) Model Context Protocol
8 11 (1.81%) Spring Boot
9 10 (1.64%) Spring
10 9 (1.48%) LangChain
11 8 (1.31%) Apache NiFi
11 8 (1.31%) ARM Templates
11 8 (1.31%) Middleware
11 8 (1.31%) OAuth
12 7 (1.15%) A2A Protocol
12 7 (1.15%) Microsoft Graph
12 7 (1.15%) OAuth2
12 7 (1.15%) XML
13 6 (0.99%) JWT
Miscellaneous
1 90 (14.78%) Cloud Native
2 44 (7.22%) Data Structures
3 29 (4.76%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.78%) Distributed Systems
5 21 (3.45%) Onboarding
6 20 (3.28%) AI Agents
7 19 (3.12%) Data Fabric
7 19 (3.12%) Legacy Systems
8 14 (2.30%) Reference Data
9 13 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.97%) Marketing Technology
11 11 (1.81%) Low-Code
12 10 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (1.48%) Autonomous Agent
13 9 (1.48%) Reinsurance
14 7 (1.15%) Fixed Income
14 7 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
14 7 (1.15%) IoT
14 7 (1.15%) Management Information System
15 6 (0.99%) Clustering
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.45%) Linux
2 13 (2.13%) Unix
3 6 (0.99%) Windows
4 4 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.49%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.16%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 312 (51.23%) Analytics
2 268 (44.01%) Data Modelling
3 251 (41.22%) ETL
4 240 (39.41%) Data Pipeline
5 235 (38.59%) CI/CD
6 208 (34.15%) Data Engineering
7 200 (32.84%) Business Intelligence
7 200 (32.84%) Data Governance
8 187 (30.71%) Agile
9 178 (29.23%) DevOps
10 173 (28.41%) AI
11 168 (27.59%) Data Architecture
12 164 (26.93%) Migration
13 132 (21.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 118 (19.38%) Lakehouse
15 103 (16.91%) Data Integration
16 95 (15.60%) Data Transformation
17 94 (15.44%) Machine Learning
17 94 (15.44%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 86 (14.12%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 323 (53.04%) SQL
2 195 (32.02%) Python
3 40 (6.57%) Java
4 22 (3.61%) PowerShell
5 20 (3.28%) Bicep
5 20 (3.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 19 (3.12%) Bash
7 17 (2.79%) C#
8 13 (2.13%) Scala
9 8 (1.31%) Shell Script
10 7 (1.15%) JavaScript
11 6 (0.99%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.82%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.66%) R
13 4 (0.66%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.49%) Kusto Query Language
15 2 (0.33%) Cypher
15 2 (0.33%) Go
15 2 (0.33%) SHACL
15 2 (0.33%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 146 (23.97%) Security Cleared
2 107 (17.57%) SC Cleared
3 28 (4.60%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.45%) BPSS Clearance
5 19 (3.12%) DV Cleared
6 17 (2.79%) Degree
7 14 (2.30%) AWS Certification
8 12 (1.97%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 9 (1.48%) Master's Degree
10 8 (1.31%) Computer Science Degree
10 8 (1.31%) Microsoft Certification
11 7 (1.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (0.99%) TOGAF Certification
13 4 (0.66%) CSPO
14 3 (0.49%) (ISC)2 CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) CCSP
14 3 (0.49%) CISM
14 3 (0.49%) CISSP
14 3 (0.49%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
14 3 (0.49%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 210 (34.48%) Data Quality
2 39 (6.40%) GDPR
3 23 (3.78%) QA
4 10 (1.64%) Accessibility
5 9 (1.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 7 (1.15%) GRC
6 7 (1.15%) NIST
7 6 (0.99%) Solvency II
8 5 (0.82%) MiFID
8 5 (0.82%) NCSC
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS
9 3 (0.49%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.49%) PMO
9 3 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.49%) SLA
10 2 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.33%) PCI DSS
11 1 (0.16%) Basel II
11 1 (0.16%) PSD2
11 1 (0.16%) SOC 2
System Software
1 41 (6.73%) Docker
2 12 (1.97%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.31%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.82%) Virtual Desktop
5 4 (0.66%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 44 (7.22%) Kubernetes
2 15 (2.46%) Grafana
3 10 (1.64%) Ansible
4 8 (1.31%) Prometheus
5 5 (0.82%) Puppet
6 4 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
7 3 (0.49%) Argo
8 2 (0.33%) Control-M
9 1 (0.16%) IBM Guardium
9 1 (0.16%) Istio
9 1 (0.16%) linkerd
9 1 (0.16%) Progress Chef
9 1 (0.16%) QRadar
Vendors
1 237 (38.92%) Databricks
2 145 (23.81%) Microsoft
3 31 (5.09%) Google
4 30 (4.93%) Informatica
5 23 (3.78%) Oracle
6 21 (3.45%) OpenAI
7 18 (2.96%) SAP
8 17 (2.79%) Denodo
9 13 (2.13%) Talend
10 8 (1.31%) Adobe
10 8 (1.31%) Salesforce
10 8 (1.31%) Teradata
11 7 (1.15%) Cloudera
11 7 (1.15%) Sparx
12 6 (0.99%) Dynatrace
12 6 (0.99%) MuleSoft
12 6 (0.99%) SnapLogic
13 5 (0.82%) IBM
13 5 (0.82%) Infor
14 4 (0.66%) MicroStrategy