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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 236 248 160
Rank change year-on-year +12 -88 +54
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 592 355 608
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.09% 1.57%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.24% 6.06% 8.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 259 515
10th Percentile £404 £396 £445
25th Percentile £456 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £750
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -23.33% +30.43%
75th Percentile £650 £763 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £525 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +10.53% -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 8,173 5,858 6,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.25% 18.01% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,444 3,920 4,881
10th Percentile £358 £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 258 94 100
10th Percentile £15.88 £21.22 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.02 £19.77
Median hourly rate £38.38 £38.85 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% +19.52% -40.91%
75th Percentile £61.31 £64.94 £55.63
90th Percentile £75.30 £79.63 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £34.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.87% +13.97% -42.86%

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 2 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
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 2 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 -26 478 £565 -5.83% 411
London -36 289 £588 -9.62% 284
Work from Home -26 211 £525 -19.23% 179
UK excluding London -2 188 £525 +10.53% 197
Midlands +9 76 £600 +46.34% 24
West Midlands +7 58 £600 +50.00% 12
North of England -51 50 £550 +15.79% 40
North West -34 30 £525 +10.53% 26
Yorkshire -28 19 £550 +22.09% 10
South East -71 19 £448 -3.39% 35
East Midlands -3 18 £500 +21.95% 12
Scotland -5 18 £425 - 44
South West -28 15 £600 +26.32% 25
East of England -26 10 £575 +4.55% 17
Wales -13 3 £500 - 6
North East -45 1 £450 - 4

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 70 (11.82%) Apache Spark
2 47 (7.94%) Apache
3 40 (6.76%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (6.08%) SAS
5 19 (3.21%) Confluence
6 8 (1.35%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.51%) 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 (0.51%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.51%) 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
1 371 (62.67%) Azure
2 207 (34.97%) AWS
3 177 (29.90%) Power Platform
4 145 (24.49%) Azure Data Factory
5 113 (19.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 96 (16.22%) GCP
7 87 (14.70%) Azure DevOps
8 84 (14.19%) Snowflake
9 62 (10.47%) Amazon S3
10 61 (10.30%) GitHub
11 57 (9.63%) Serverless
12 53 (8.95%) Azure Databricks
13 36 (6.08%) AWS Lambda
14 32 (5.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 30 (5.07%) dbt
16 28 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
17 27 (4.56%) Entra ID
18 22 (3.72%) Azure Monitor
18 22 (3.72%) SaaS
19 20 (3.38%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.69%) Firewall
1 10 (1.69%) HTTP
2 7 (1.18%) DNS
3 5 (0.84%) WAN
4 3 (0.51%) Broadband
4 3 (0.51%) Network Security
5 2 (0.34%) DSL
6 1 (0.17%) AMQP
6 1 (0.17%) IPsec
6 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
6 1 (0.17%) Modbus
6 1 (0.17%) MQTT
6 1 (0.17%) OpenVPN
6 1 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.17%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.17%) SMS
6 1 (0.17%) VPN
6 1 (0.17%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 229 (38.68%) Data Warehouse
2 160 (27.03%) Power BI
3 89 (15.03%) Metadata
4 63 (10.64%) Amazon Redshift
5 58 (9.80%) Azure SQL Database
6 41 (6.93%) Amazon Athena
6 41 (6.93%) Delta Lake
7 40 (6.76%) NoSQL
8 39 (6.59%) Big Data
9 37 (6.25%) SQL Server
10 30 (5.07%) BigQuery
10 30 (5.07%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 26 (4.39%) PostgreSQL
12 25 (4.22%) Relational Database
13 24 (4.05%) Tableau
14 19 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 19 (3.21%) Star Schema
15 18 (3.04%) Semantic Layer
16 16 (2.70%) Amazon RDS
17 15 (2.53%) Base SAS
Development Applications
1 56 (9.46%) Git
2 32 (5.41%) GitLab
3 25 (4.22%) JIRA
4 18 (3.04%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.35%) ERwin
6 7 (1.18%) ER Studio
7 6 (1.01%) PowerDesigner
8 5 (0.84%) MLflow
9 4 (0.68%) JUnit
10 3 (0.51%) 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
1 147 (24.83%) Finance
2 137 (23.14%) Social Skills
3 71 (11.99%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (9.80%) Public Sector
5 43 (7.26%) Banking
6 26 (4.39%) Retail
7 22 (3.72%) Marketing
8 19 (3.21%) Manufacturing
9 14 (2.36%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (2.36%) Influencing Skills
10 10 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 7 (1.18%) Military
11 7 (1.18%) Police
12 6 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.01%) Investment Banking
13 4 (0.68%) Legal
13 4 (0.68%) Publishing
14 3 (0.51%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.51%) Law
14 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 201 (33.95%) Architect
2 170 (28.72%) Data Engineer
3 128 (21.62%) Data Architect
4 89 (15.03%) Senior
5 56 (9.46%) Solutions Architect
6 52 (8.78%) Azure Engineer
7 50 (8.45%) Analyst
8 47 (7.94%) Senior Data Engineer
9 37 (6.25%) Lead
10 36 (6.08%) Data Analyst
11 35 (5.91%) Azure Data Engineer
12 31 (5.24%) Business Analyst
12 31 (5.24%) Developer
13 29 (4.90%) Data Business Analyst
14 26 (4.39%) Cloud Architect
15 24 (4.05%) Databricks Engineer
16 21 (3.55%) Azure Architect
17 20 (3.38%) Databricks Data Engineer
18 18 (3.04%) Cloud Solutions Architect
19 17 (2.87%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 84 (14.19%) Terraform
2 71 (11.99%) PySpark
3 52 (8.78%) Kafka
4 29 (4.90%) REST
5 12 (2.03%) YAML
6 11 (1.86%) JSON
7 10 (1.69%) .NET
7 10 (1.69%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.52%) Middleware
8 9 (1.52%) Model Context Protocol
8 9 (1.52%) Spring
9 7 (1.18%) ARM Templates
9 7 (1.18%) LangChain
10 5 (0.84%) A2A Protocol
10 5 (0.84%) Great Expectations
10 5 (0.84%) Langfuse
10 5 (0.84%) LangGraph
10 5 (0.84%) Microsoft Graph
10 5 (0.84%) Node.js
10 5 (0.84%) pytest
Miscellaneous
1 88 (14.86%) Cloud Native
2 40 (6.76%) Data Structures
3 32 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 23 (3.89%) Distributed Systems
5 20 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
6 18 (3.04%) AI Agents
7 16 (2.70%) Data Fabric
8 13 (2.20%) Onboarding
9 12 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
9 12 (2.03%) Low-Code
9 12 (2.03%) Reference Data
10 9 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
10 9 (1.52%) IoT
10 9 (1.52%) Marketing Technology
11 8 (1.35%) Management Information System
12 7 (1.18%) Autonomous Agent
12 7 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
13 6 (1.01%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (1.01%) Reinsurance
13 6 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 21 (3.55%) Linux
2 14 (2.36%) Unix
3 4 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 4 (0.68%) Windows
4 3 (0.51%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 304 (51.35%) Analytics
2 263 (44.43%) ETL
3 255 (43.07%) Data Modelling
4 241 (40.71%) Data Pipeline
5 219 (36.99%) CI/CD
6 211 (35.64%) Data Engineering
7 198 (33.45%) Business Intelligence
8 189 (31.93%) Data Governance
9 176 (29.73%) Agile
10 169 (28.55%) DevOps
11 166 (28.04%) Data Architecture
12 161 (27.20%) AI
13 150 (25.34%) Migration
14 111 (18.75%) Stakeholder Management
15 106 (17.91%) Lakehouse
16 101 (17.06%) Data Transformation
17 97 (16.39%) Data Integration
18 91 (15.37%) Stakeholder Engagement
19 89 (15.03%) Machine Learning
20 85 (14.36%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 322 (54.39%) SQL
2 188 (31.76%) Python
3 36 (6.08%) Java
4 24 (4.05%) PowerShell
5 18 (3.04%) Bash
5 18 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 18 (3.04%) Scala
6 17 (2.87%) Bicep
7 14 (2.36%) C#
8 11 (1.86%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.35%) JavaScript
10 7 (1.18%) T-SQL
11 6 (1.01%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.84%) R
13 4 (0.68%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.51%) Kusto Query Language
15 2 (0.34%) Cypher
15 2 (0.34%) SHACL
15 2 (0.34%) SOQL
16 1 (0.17%) Ada
Qualifications
1 144 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 113 (19.09%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.39%) Azure Certification
4 19 (3.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.70%) DV Cleared
6 15 (2.53%) Degree
7 9 (1.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 8 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
8 8 (1.35%) Master's Degree
9 7 (1.18%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 4 (0.68%) CSPO
11 3 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 3 (0.51%) CCSP
11 3 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.51%) CISM
11 3 (0.51%) CISSP
11 3 (0.51%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 3 (0.51%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 196 (33.11%) Data Quality
2 45 (7.60%) GDPR
3 30 (5.07%) QA
4 9 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.18%) NIST
6 6 (1.01%) GRC
6 6 (1.01%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.84%) MiFID
7 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
8 3 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.51%) IFRS
8 3 (0.51%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.51%) PMO
8 3 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 3 (0.51%) 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 37 (6.25%) Docker
2 11 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.35%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.84%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.34%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 43 (7.26%) Kubernetes
2 16 (2.70%) Grafana
3 9 (1.52%) Ansible
4 8 (1.35%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.68%) Puppet
6 3 (0.51%) Argo
6 3 (0.51%) 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
1 220 (37.16%) Databricks
2 144 (24.32%) Microsoft
3 38 (6.42%) Informatica
4 28 (4.73%) Google
5 23 (3.89%) Oracle
6 20 (3.38%) OpenAI
7 16 (2.70%) SAP
8 15 (2.53%) Denodo
9 14 (2.36%) Talend
10 10 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.52%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.35%) 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 (0.68%) Foundry