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

6 months to
29 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 244 244 156
Rank change year-on-year 0 -88 +53
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 596 369 609
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.12% 1.58%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.26% 6.21% 8.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 458 268 516
10th Percentile £404 £400 £438
25th Percentile £457 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £750
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -23.33% +30.43%
75th Percentile £650 £750 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £528 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +11.05% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 0
10th Percentile £48.25 - -
25th Percentile £49.38 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 - -
75th Percentile £54.38 - -
90th Percentile £54.75 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - -

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 8,215 5,940 6,980
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.24% 18.03% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,475 3,981 4,887
10th Percentile £359 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.23%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 94 99
10th Percentile £15.82 £21.22 £14.85
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.02 £19.71
Median hourly rate £38.50 £38.85 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -0.89% +19.52% -40.91%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.94 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £79.63 £70.10
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £34.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.87% +13.97% -45.45%

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 29 August 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 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 29 August 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 -32 482 £575 -3.04% 365
London -42 292 £591 -9.08% 259
Work from Home -25 209 £529 -18.62% 158
UK excluding London -1 188 £528 +11.05% 172
Midlands +17 75 £600 +46.34% 26
West Midlands +15 59 £600 +50.00% 13
North of England -46 51 £530 +11.58% 35
North West -48 30 £525 +5.00% 19
Yorkshire -31 20 £550 +22.09% 9
South East -72 19 £448 -3.39% 35
Scotland -4 18 £425 - 37
East Midlands -4 16 £550 +34.15% 13
South West -26 15 £600 +26.32% 22
East of England -29 10 £575 -0.86% 5
Wales -13 3 £500 - 7
North East -37 1 £450 - 7

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 (12.25%) Apache Spark
2 48 (8.05%) Apache
3 40 (6.71%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (6.04%) SAS
5 19 (3.19%) Confluence
6 7 (1.17%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.50%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.34%) nginx
8 2 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.17%) JBoss
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.01%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.84%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.50%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.34%) Endur
4 2 (0.34%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.34%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.34%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.17%) Loan IQ
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 369 (61.91%) Azure
2 212 (35.57%) AWS
3 184 (30.87%) Power Platform
4 144 (24.16%) Azure Data Factory
5 112 (18.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 97 (16.28%) GCP
7 87 (14.60%) Azure DevOps
8 83 (13.93%) Snowflake
9 63 (10.57%) Amazon S3
10 60 (10.07%) GitHub
11 56 (9.40%) Serverless
12 36 (6.04%) AWS Lambda
13 30 (5.03%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 30 (5.03%) dbt
14 29 (4.87%) GitHub Actions
15 24 (4.03%) Entra ID
16 21 (3.52%) Azure Monitor
16 21 (3.52%) Microsoft Purview
17 20 (3.36%) Amazon EMR
17 20 (3.36%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.68%) HTTP
2 8 (1.34%) Firewall
3 7 (1.17%) DNS
4 5 (0.84%) WAN
5 3 (0.50%) Broadband
5 3 (0.50%) Network Security
6 2 (0.34%) DSL
7 1 (0.17%) AMQP
7 1 (0.17%) IPsec
7 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.17%) Modbus
7 1 (0.17%) MQTT
7 1 (0.17%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.17%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.17%) SMS
7 1 (0.17%) VPN
7 1 (0.17%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 231 (38.76%) Data Warehouse
2 166 (27.85%) Power BI
3 91 (15.27%) Metadata
4 65 (10.91%) Amazon Redshift
5 59 (9.90%) Azure SQL Database
6 44 (7.38%) Amazon Athena
7 43 (7.21%) Delta Lake
8 39 (6.54%) Big Data
9 37 (6.21%) NoSQL
10 36 (6.04%) SQL Server
11 31 (5.20%) BigQuery
12 30 (5.03%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 25 (4.19%) PostgreSQL
13 25 (4.19%) Relational Database
14 24 (4.03%) Tableau
15 21 (3.52%) Star Schema
16 20 (3.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 18 (3.02%) Semantic Layer
17 18 (3.02%) Snowflake Schema
18 17 (2.85%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 55 (9.23%) Git
2 32 (5.37%) GitLab
3 24 (4.03%) JIRA
4 18 (3.02%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.34%) ERwin
6 7 (1.17%) ER Studio
7 6 (1.01%) PowerDesigner
8 5 (0.84%) MLflow
9 4 (0.67%) JUnit
10 3 (0.50%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.34%) Terragrunt
12 1 (0.17%) Postman
12 1 (0.17%) Robot Framework
12 1 (0.17%) TestRail
12 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 145 (24.33%) Finance
2 136 (22.82%) Social Skills
3 72 (12.08%) Analytical Skills
4 61 (10.23%) Public Sector
5 39 (6.54%) Banking
6 26 (4.36%) Retail
7 22 (3.69%) Marketing
8 17 (2.85%) Manufacturing
9 15 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (2.18%) Influencing Skills
11 10 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.17%) Military
12 7 (1.17%) Police
13 6 (1.01%) Financial Institution
14 5 (0.84%) Investment Banking
15 4 (0.67%) Legal
15 4 (0.67%) Publishing
16 3 (0.50%) Law
16 3 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
17 2 (0.34%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 203 (34.06%) Architect
2 171 (28.69%) Data Engineer
3 129 (21.64%) Data Architect
4 88 (14.77%) Senior
5 56 (9.40%) Solutions Architect
6 50 (8.39%) Analyst
6 50 (8.39%) Azure Engineer
7 48 (8.05%) Senior Data Engineer
8 40 (6.71%) Lead
9 36 (6.04%) Data Analyst
10 35 (5.87%) Azure Data Engineer
11 31 (5.20%) Business Analyst
12 30 (5.03%) Developer
13 29 (4.87%) Data Business Analyst
14 26 (4.36%) Cloud Architect
15 21 (3.52%) Azure Architect
16 18 (3.02%) AWS Engineer
16 18 (3.02%) Cloud Solutions Architect
17 17 (2.85%) Technical Leader
18 16 (2.68%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (14.09%) Terraform
2 72 (12.08%) PySpark
3 54 (9.06%) Kafka
4 29 (4.87%) REST
5 12 (2.01%) YAML
6 11 (1.85%) JSON
7 10 (1.68%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.51%) Middleware
8 9 (1.51%) Spring
9 8 (1.34%) .NET
9 8 (1.34%) ARM Templates
10 7 (1.17%) Model Context Protocol
11 6 (1.01%) Great Expectations
11 6 (1.01%) LangChain
12 5 (0.84%) HTML
12 5 (0.84%) Langfuse
12 5 (0.84%) Node.js
12 5 (0.84%) pytest
12 5 (0.84%) React
13 4 (0.67%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 90 (15.10%) Cloud Native
2 40 (6.71%) Data Structures
3 32 (5.37%) Product Ownership
4 22 (3.69%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (3.69%) Legacy Systems
5 17 (2.85%) Data Fabric
6 16 (2.68%) AI Agents
7 13 (2.18%) Onboarding
7 13 (2.18%) Reference Data
8 12 (2.01%) Low-Code
9 10 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 9 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.51%) IoT
10 9 (1.51%) Marketing Technology
11 8 (1.34%) Digital Media
11 8 (1.34%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.17%) Autonomous Agent
13 6 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (1.01%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (1.01%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.52%) Linux
2 14 (2.35%) Unix
3 4 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (0.67%) Windows
4 3 (0.50%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 311 (52.18%) Analytics
2 266 (44.63%) ETL
3 256 (42.95%) Data Modelling
4 241 (40.44%) Data Pipeline
5 217 (36.41%) CI/CD
6 212 (35.57%) Data Engineering
7 204 (34.23%) Business Intelligence
8 194 (32.55%) Data Governance
9 175 (29.36%) Agile
10 173 (29.03%) Data Architecture
11 168 (28.19%) DevOps
12 161 (27.01%) AI
13 149 (25.00%) Migration
14 111 (18.62%) Stakeholder Management
15 104 (17.45%) Data Transformation
16 96 (16.11%) Data Integration
17 91 (15.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 89 (14.93%) Machine Learning
19 85 (14.26%) Validation
20 79 (13.26%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 326 (54.70%) SQL
2 187 (31.38%) Python
3 36 (6.04%) Java
4 25 (4.19%) PowerShell
5 19 (3.19%) Bash
5 19 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 18 (3.02%) Scala
7 17 (2.85%) Bicep
8 13 (2.18%) C#
9 11 (1.85%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.34%) JavaScript
11 7 (1.17%) T-SQL
12 6 (1.01%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.84%) R
14 4 (0.67%) TypeScript
15 3 (0.50%) Kusto Query Language
16 2 (0.34%) Cypher
16 2 (0.34%) SHACL
16 2 (0.34%) SOQL
17 1 (0.17%) Ada
Qualifications
1 145 (24.33%) Security Cleared
2 114 (19.13%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.36%) Azure Certification
4 19 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.68%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.35%) Degree
7 7 (1.17%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.17%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.17%) Master's Degree
7 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.17%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 4 (0.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 4 (0.67%) CSPO
9 3 (0.50%) (ISC)2 CCSP
9 3 (0.50%) CCSP
9 3 (0.50%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.50%) CISM
9 3 (0.50%) CISSP
9 3 (0.50%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 2 (0.34%) IBM Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 200 (33.56%) Data Quality
2 50 (8.39%) GDPR
3 31 (5.20%) QA
4 9 (1.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.17%) NIST
6 6 (1.01%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.84%) GRC
7 5 (0.84%) MiFID
7 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.50%) IFRS
8 3 (0.50%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.50%) PMO
8 3 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.50%) SLA
9 2 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.34%) NCSC
10 1 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.17%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 34 (5.70%) Docker
2 11 (1.85%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.34%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 39 (6.54%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.68%) Grafana
3 9 (1.51%) Ansible
4 8 (1.34%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.67%) Puppet
6 3 (0.50%) Argo
6 3 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.34%) Control-M
8 1 (0.17%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.17%) Istio
8 1 (0.17%) linkerd
8 1 (0.17%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 218 (36.58%) Databricks
2 144 (24.16%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.38%) Informatica
4 29 (4.87%) Google
5 23 (3.86%) Oracle
6 19 (3.19%) OpenAI
7 16 (2.68%) SAP
8 15 (2.52%) Denodo
9 14 (2.35%) Talend
10 10 (1.68%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.51%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.34%) Adobe
13 6 (1.01%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.01%) SnapLogic
13 6 (1.01%) Sparx
13 6 (1.01%) Teradata
14 5 (0.84%) IBM
14 5 (0.84%) Infor
14 5 (0.84%) MuleSoft
15 4 (0.67%) Hortonworks