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

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 206 180
Rank change year-on-year -31 -26 +24
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 536 388 578
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.33% 1.33%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.14% 7.04% 7.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 385 306 448
10th Percentile £410 £407 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £485
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £600
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - +6.15%
75th Percentile £650 £772 £850
90th Percentile £750 £938 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £519 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +9.21% -2.56% -7.14%
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 7,509 5,512 7,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.12% 18.83% 17.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,024 3,745 5,279
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% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £762 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 235 102 152
10th Percentile £14.34 £19.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £22.91 £23.50 £20.77
Median hourly rate £43.00 £34.19 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.77% -14.53% -33.33%
75th Percentile £73.00 £65.34 £55.63
90th Percentile £81.43 £77.38 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +24.84% -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 9 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 9 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 9 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 -59 451 £560 -6.67% 102
London -27 307 £588 -16.07% 57
Work from Home -53 185 £525 -25.00% 121
UK excluding London -45 139 £519 +9.21% 69
Midlands -29 46 £600 +37.14% 9
North of England -56 40 £500 +5.26% 18
West Midlands -37 31 £600 +37.14% 8
South East -65 22 £431 -6.25% 21
Scotland +6 18 £500 -13.34% 4
North West -36 18 £500 +5.26% 13
East Midlands -17 15 £549 +35.56% 1
Yorkshire -48 15 £550 +22.22% 3
East of England -33 8 £575 -0.86% 3
North East -19 7 £463 - 2
South West -24 7 £515 -8.44% 8
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 82 (15.30%) Apache Spark
2 42 (7.84%) Apache
3 36 (6.72%) Apache Airflow
4 20 (3.73%) SAS
5 14 (2.61%) Confluence
6 2 (0.37%) Apache Synapse
6 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
6 2 (0.37%) nginx
6 2 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.37%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.19%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.19%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 3 (0.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (0.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.56%) Infor M3
3 2 (0.37%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.19%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.19%) Endur
4 1 (0.19%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.19%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 369 (68.84%) Azure
2 194 (36.19%) AWS
2 194 (36.19%) Power Platform
3 162 (30.22%) Azure Data Factory
4 154 (28.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 93 (17.35%) Azure DevOps
6 91 (16.98%) GCP
7 83 (15.49%) GitHub
8 63 (11.75%) Serverless
9 58 (10.82%) Amazon S3
10 44 (8.21%) Snowflake
11 41 (7.65%) GitHub Actions
12 34 (6.34%) Microsoft Purview
13 32 (5.97%) AWS Lambda
14 25 (4.66%) AWS CloudFormation
14 25 (4.66%) Azure Functions
15 24 (4.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 23 (4.29%) Azure Key Vault
17 20 (3.73%) Collibra
18 19 (3.54%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.68%) HTTP
2 7 (1.31%) Firewall
3 2 (0.37%) 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
1 177 (33.02%) Data Warehouse
2 170 (31.72%) Power BI
3 76 (14.18%) Metadata
4 70 (13.06%) SQL Server
5 68 (12.69%) Azure SQL Database
6 63 (11.75%) Delta Lake
7 54 (10.07%) Amazon Redshift
8 42 (7.84%) Amazon Athena
9 37 (6.90%) Big Data
10 33 (6.16%) BigQuery
11 31 (5.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 29 (5.41%) NoSQL
13 25 (4.66%) Spark SQL
14 24 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
14 24 (4.48%) Relational Database
15 22 (4.10%) Hadoop
16 18 (3.36%) Tableau
17 17 (3.17%) Mixpanel
17 17 (3.17%) Snowflake Schema
18 16 (2.99%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 68 (12.69%) Git
2 27 (5.04%) GitLab
3 19 (3.54%) JIRA
4 18 (3.36%) Jenkins
5 7 (1.31%) ER Studio
5 7 (1.31%) ERwin
6 6 (1.12%) MLflow
7 5 (0.93%) PowerDesigner
8 4 (0.75%) JUnit
9 3 (0.56%) JMeter
10 2 (0.37%) Bitbucket
11 1 (0.19%) Hudson
11 1 (0.19%) Postman
11 1 (0.19%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.19%) SonarQube
11 1 (0.19%) Visual Studio
General
1 130 (24.25%) Finance
2 115 (21.46%) Social Skills
3 65 (12.13%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (10.07%) Public Sector
5 22 (4.10%) Banking
6 16 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (2.24%) Marketing
8 11 (2.05%) Retail
9 7 (1.31%) Influencing Skills
9 7 (1.31%) Military
10 5 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 5 (0.93%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.75%) Investment Banking
12 3 (0.56%) Financial Institution
13 2 (0.37%) Back Office
13 2 (0.37%) Front Office
13 2 (0.37%) General Ledger
13 2 (0.37%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.37%) Publishing
13 2 (0.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 190 (35.45%) Data Engineer
2 142 (26.49%) Architect
3 87 (16.23%) Data Architect
3 87 (16.23%) Senior
4 52 (9.70%) Senior Data Engineer
5 42 (7.84%) Lead
6 41 (7.65%) Solutions Architect
7 39 (7.28%) Azure Engineer
8 34 (6.34%) Developer
9 29 (5.41%) Azure Data Engineer
10 26 (4.85%) Principal Engineer
11 25 (4.66%) Analyst
12 24 (4.48%) Cloud Architect
13 21 (3.92%) AWS Engineer
13 21 (3.92%) Cloud Solutions Architect
14 18 (3.36%) Software Engineer
15 17 (3.17%) Azure Architect
16 16 (2.99%) Principal Software Engineer
17 15 (2.80%) Data Analyst
17 15 (2.80%) Principal Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 104 (19.40%) PySpark
2 52 (9.70%) Kafka
3 31 (5.78%) REST
4 16 (2.99%) Great Expectations
5 13 (2.43%) Model Context Protocol
6 11 (2.05%) LangChain
6 11 (2.05%) XML
7 10 (1.87%) JSON
7 10 (1.87%) LangGraph
7 10 (1.87%) Pandas
8 9 (1.68%) Middleware
8 9 (1.68%) YAML
9 8 (1.49%) Microsoft Graph
9 8 (1.49%) PyTorch
9 8 (1.49%) scikit-learn
10 7 (1.31%) .NET
10 7 (1.31%) A2A Protocol
10 7 (1.31%) HTML
10 7 (1.31%) Spring Boot
11 6 (1.12%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 80 (14.93%) Cloud Native
2 23 (4.29%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (3.73%) Legacy Systems
4 18 (3.36%) Data Structures
5 16 (2.99%) Product Ownership
6 15 (2.80%) IoT
7 12 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
7 12 (2.24%) Distributed Computing
8 11 (2.05%) Low-Code
8 11 (2.05%) Management Information System
9 9 (1.68%) AI Agents
9 9 (1.68%) Reference Data
10 8 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.49%) Digital Media
11 7 (1.31%) Data Fabric
12 6 (1.12%) Onboarding
13 5 (0.93%) Distributed Architecture
13 5 (0.93%) Fixed Income
13 5 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
14 4 (0.75%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.05%) Unix
2 9 (1.68%) Linux
3 2 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.37%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 297 (55.41%) Analytics
2 276 (51.49%) ETL
3 236 (44.03%) Data Modelling
4 230 (42.91%) Data Pipeline
5 221 (41.23%) CI/CD
6 215 (40.11%) Data Engineering
7 203 (37.87%) Business Intelligence
8 179 (33.40%) DevOps
9 164 (30.60%) Data Governance
10 152 (28.36%) AI
11 143 (26.68%) Data Architecture
12 121 (22.57%) Agile
13 106 (19.78%) Migration
14 100 (18.66%) Machine Learning
15 84 (15.67%) Problem-Solving
16 77 (14.37%) Infrastructure as Code
17 71 (13.25%) Data Integration
18 67 (12.50%) Data Transformation
18 67 (12.50%) Validation
19 64 (11.94%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 333 (62.13%) SQL
2 234 (43.66%) Python
3 45 (8.40%) Java
4 26 (4.85%) C#
5 22 (4.10%) Scala
5 22 (4.10%) T-SQL
6 17 (3.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (2.80%) Bicep
7 15 (2.80%) PowerShell
8 11 (2.05%) PL/SQL
9 9 (1.68%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.68%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.49%) Bash
11 4 (0.75%) R
12 2 (0.37%) Ada
12 2 (0.37%) C++
12 2 (0.37%) SOQL
13 1 (0.19%) C
13 1 (0.19%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 121 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 96 (17.91%) SC Cleared
3 24 (4.48%) Azure Certification
4 20 (3.73%) Degree
5 13 (2.43%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 9 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 7 (1.31%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.31%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.31%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 7 (1.31%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (0.93%) CISM
9 5 (0.93%) CISSP
10 3 (0.56%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.56%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 2 (0.37%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.37%) CSPO
11 2 (0.37%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.37%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 180 (33.58%) Data Quality
2 54 (10.07%) GDPR
3 33 (6.16%) QA
4 6 (1.12%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.12%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.75%) MiFID
5 4 (0.75%) NIST
5 4 (0.75%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.56%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.37%) IFRS
7 2 (0.37%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.19%) Basel II
8 1 (0.19%) GRC
8 1 (0.19%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.19%) IFRS 17
8 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.19%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.19%) Solvency II
System Software
1 29 (5.41%) Docker
2 4 (0.75%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 97 (18.10%) Terraform
2 33 (6.16%) Kubernetes
3 9 (1.68%) Grafana
4 3 (0.56%) Ansible
4 3 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.19%) Argo
6 1 (0.19%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.19%) IBM Guardium
6 1 (0.19%) Oozie
Vendors
1 212 (39.55%) Databricks
2 147 (27.43%) Microsoft
3 40 (7.46%) Informatica
4 35 (6.53%) Oracle
5 31 (5.78%) Google
6 19 (3.54%) OpenAI
7 14 (2.61%) SAP
7 14 (2.61%) Talend
8 9 (1.68%) Denodo
9 7 (1.31%) Infor
9 7 (1.31%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.12%) Cloudera
10 6 (1.12%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.12%) ServiceNow
11 5 (0.93%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.75%) Adobe
12 4 (0.75%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.75%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.75%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.56%) Red Hat