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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 236 161
Rank change year-on-year +5 -75 +48
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 564 367 662
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.13% 1.55%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.98% 6.20% 8.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 419 275 539
10th Percentile £408 £404 £425
25th Percentile £463 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £570 £650
Median % change year-on-year -3.51% -12.31% +13.04%
75th Percentile £653 £763 £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 6 0 1
10th Percentile £51.25 - -
25th Percentile £57.25 - -
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £40.50
75th Percentile £67.75 - -
90th Percentile £69.22 - -
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 8,086 5,917 7,540
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.37% 18.23% 17.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,351 4,014 5,378
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 102 139
10th Percentile £15.99 £19.71 £14.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £25.88 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.31 £51.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.50 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £31.25
% change year-on-year +20.89% +1.25% -40.48%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -34 466 £575 -0.86% 191
London -27 292 £588 -9.62% 82
Work from Home -38 204 £550 -15.38% 148
UK excluding London -24 174 £528 +11.05% 153
Midlands -2 65 £600 +46.34% 25
North of England -50 49 £510 +7.37% 42
West Midlands -23 46 £600 +41.18% 17
North West -34 27 £500 - 25
Scotland +10 23 £425 -26.34% 20
East Midlands +1 19 £549 +35.56% 8
Yorkshire -43 19 £550 +22.09% 10
South East -76 17 £463 +1.65% 29
South West -23 13 £600 +6.67% 13
East of England -25 9 £575 -0.86% 11
North East -37 3 £463 - 7
Wales -11 1 £325 -35.00% 9

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 77 (13.65%) Apache Spark
2 46 (8.16%) Apache
3 41 (7.27%) Apache Airflow
4 29 (5.14%) SAS
5 22 (3.90%) Confluence
6 2 (0.35%) Apache Synapse
6 2 (0.35%) nginx
6 2 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.35%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.18%) Apache Superset
7 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
7 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 6 (1.06%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (0.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.53%) Adobe Campaign
2 3 (0.53%) Infor M3
2 3 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
2 3 (0.53%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.35%) Endur
3 2 (0.35%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.35%) SAP MDG
3 2 (0.35%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 355 (62.94%) Azure
2 201 (35.64%) AWS
3 171 (30.32%) Power Platform
4 137 (24.29%) Azure Data Factory
5 126 (22.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 92 (16.31%) GCP
7 81 (14.36%) Azure DevOps
8 65 (11.52%) Snowflake
9 64 (11.35%) GitHub
10 61 (10.82%) Amazon S3
11 58 (10.28%) Serverless
12 35 (6.21%) AWS Lambda
13 33 (5.85%) GitHub Actions
14 24 (4.26%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 24 (4.26%) dbt
15 22 (3.90%) Amazon EMR
16 21 (3.72%) Microsoft Purview
17 20 (3.55%) AWS CloudFormation
17 20 (3.55%) Azure Key Vault
17 20 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 11 (1.95%) Firewall
2 9 (1.60%) HTTP
3 6 (1.06%) DNS
4 5 (0.89%) WAN
5 4 (0.71%) Network Security
6 2 (0.35%) Broadband
6 2 (0.35%) DSL
6 2 (0.35%) Modbus
7 1 (0.18%) 4G
7 1 (0.18%) 5G
7 1 (0.18%) AMQP
7 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
7 1 (0.18%) IPsec
7 1 (0.18%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.18%) MQTT
7 1 (0.18%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.18%) SMS
7 1 (0.18%) VPN
7 1 (0.18%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 204 (36.17%) Data Warehouse
2 153 (27.13%) Power BI
3 79 (14.01%) Metadata
4 60 (10.64%) Amazon Redshift
4 60 (10.64%) Azure SQL Database
5 48 (8.51%) Delta Lake
6 44 (7.80%) SQL Server
7 42 (7.45%) Amazon Athena
8 40 (7.09%) Big Data
9 33 (5.85%) BigQuery
10 29 (5.14%) PostgreSQL
11 28 (4.96%) NoSQL
12 26 (4.61%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
13 23 (4.08%) Relational Database
13 23 (4.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 22 (3.90%) Hadoop
15 21 (3.72%) Snowflake Schema
16 20 (3.55%) Tableau
17 17 (3.01%) Star Schema
18 13 (2.30%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 56 (9.93%) Git
2 26 (4.61%) JIRA
3 24 (4.26%) GitLab
4 19 (3.37%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.06%) ER Studio
5 6 (1.06%) ERwin
6 5 (0.89%) MLflow
6 5 (0.89%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.71%) JUnit
8 2 (0.35%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.18%) Hudson
9 1 (0.18%) Postman
9 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 142 (25.18%) Finance
2 122 (21.63%) Social Skills
3 73 (12.94%) Analytical Skills
4 57 (10.11%) Public Sector
5 32 (5.67%) Banking
6 23 (4.08%) Marketing
7 19 (3.37%) Retail
8 14 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.13%) Manufacturing
10 8 (1.42%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.24%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.06%) Police
13 5 (0.89%) Military
14 4 (0.71%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.71%) Publishing
15 3 (0.53%) Legal
16 2 (0.35%) Automotive
16 2 (0.35%) Front Office
16 2 (0.35%) Law
Job Titles
1 176 (31.21%) Architect
1 176 (31.21%) Data Engineer
2 105 (18.62%) Data Architect
3 86 (15.25%) Senior
4 57 (10.11%) Solutions Architect
5 45 (7.98%) Lead
5 45 (7.98%) Senior Data Engineer
6 44 (7.80%) Azure Engineer
7 37 (6.56%) Analyst
8 34 (6.03%) Azure Data Engineer
8 34 (6.03%) Developer
9 24 (4.26%) Data Analyst
10 23 (4.08%) Cloud Architect
11 21 (3.72%) AWS Engineer
11 21 (3.72%) Azure Architect
11 21 (3.72%) Principal Engineer
12 20 (3.55%) Cloud Solutions Architect
13 18 (3.19%) Business Analyst
14 17 (3.01%) Data Business Analyst
14 17 (3.01%) Lead Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 88 (15.60%) PySpark
2 53 (9.40%) Kafka
3 26 (4.61%) REST
4 12 (2.13%) Great Expectations
5 11 (1.95%) JSON
5 11 (1.95%) XML
5 11 (1.95%) YAML
6 10 (1.77%) Middleware
6 10 (1.77%) Spring Boot
7 9 (1.60%) Model Context Protocol
7 9 (1.60%) Spring
8 8 (1.42%) React
9 7 (1.24%) FastAPI
10 6 (1.06%) .NET
10 6 (1.06%) ARM Templates
10 6 (1.06%) Node.js
11 5 (0.89%) LangChain
11 5 (0.89%) Langfuse
11 5 (0.89%) PyTorch
11 5 (0.89%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 84 (14.89%) Cloud Native
2 34 (6.03%) Data Structures
3 28 (4.96%) Distributed Systems
4 25 (4.43%) Legacy Systems
5 24 (4.26%) Product Ownership
6 15 (2.66%) IoT
7 12 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
8 11 (1.95%) Low-Code
9 10 (1.77%) AI Agents
9 10 (1.77%) Onboarding
9 10 (1.77%) Reference Data
10 9 (1.60%) Management Information System
11 8 (1.42%) Digital Media
12 7 (1.24%) Data Fabric
12 7 (1.24%) Marketing Technology
13 6 (1.06%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (1.06%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (1.06%) Reinsurance
13 6 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
Operating Systems
1 15 (2.66%) Linux
2 10 (1.77%) Unix
3 5 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.53%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.35%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 297 (52.66%) Analytics
2 253 (44.86%) ETL
3 247 (43.79%) Data Modelling
4 234 (41.49%) Data Pipeline
5 218 (38.65%) Data Engineering
6 197 (34.93%) CI/CD
7 194 (34.40%) Business Intelligence
8 187 (33.16%) Data Governance
9 159 (28.19%) Data Architecture
10 153 (27.13%) DevOps
11 146 (25.89%) AI
12 142 (25.18%) Agile
13 136 (24.11%) Migration
14 99 (17.55%) Machine Learning
15 94 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
16 89 (15.78%) Data Transformation
17 84 (14.89%) Data Integration
18 83 (14.72%) Validation
19 82 (14.54%) Stakeholder Management
20 74 (13.12%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 314 (55.67%) SQL
2 207 (36.70%) Python
3 40 (7.09%) Java
4 21 (3.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 21 (3.72%) Scala
5 20 (3.55%) C#
6 16 (2.84%) PowerShell
7 15 (2.66%) T-SQL
8 11 (1.95%) Bicep
9 10 (1.77%) Bash
9 10 (1.77%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.60%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.42%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.89%) TypeScript
13 4 (0.71%) R
14 2 (0.35%) Cypher
14 2 (0.35%) SHACL
14 2 (0.35%) SOQL
15 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 129 (22.87%) Security Cleared
2 106 (18.79%) SC Cleared
3 24 (4.26%) Azure Certification
3 24 (4.26%) Degree
4 14 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (1.95%) Master's Degree
6 9 (1.60%) AWS Certification
6 9 (1.60%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.24%) TOGAF Certification
8 5 (0.89%) CISM
8 5 (0.89%) CISSP
8 5 (0.89%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 4 (0.71%) CSPO
10 3 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.35%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.35%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.18%) PMP
12 1 (0.18%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 183 (32.45%) Data Quality
2 56 (9.93%) GDPR
3 28 (4.96%) QA
4 6 (1.06%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.06%) Solvency II
5 5 (0.89%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.71%) IFRS
6 4 (0.71%) MiFID
7 3 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.53%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.35%) IFRS 9
8 2 (0.35%) PMO
8 2 (0.35%) SLA
9 1 (0.18%) Basel II
9 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.18%) NIST
9 1 (0.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 31 (5.50%) Docker
2 8 (1.42%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.89%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.71%) Active Directory
5 3 (0.53%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 83 (14.72%) Terraform
2 38 (6.74%) Kubernetes
3 12 (2.13%) Grafana
4 8 (1.42%) Ansible
5 4 (0.71%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.53%) Argo
6 3 (0.53%) Prometheus
7 2 (0.35%) Puppet
8 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
8 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.18%) Oozie
Vendors
1 194 (34.40%) Databricks
2 121 (21.45%) Microsoft
3 41 (7.27%) Informatica
4 32 (5.67%) Oracle
5 29 (5.14%) Google
6 18 (3.19%) OpenAI
6 18 (3.19%) SAP
7 16 (2.84%) Talend
8 9 (1.60%) Denodo
8 9 (1.60%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.42%) Adobe
9 8 (1.42%) Cloudera
10 7 (1.24%) Infor
11 6 (1.06%) Dynatrace
12 5 (0.89%) BiZZdesign
13 4 (0.71%) CheckPoint
13 4 (0.71%) Fortinet
13 4 (0.71%) Hortonworks
14 3 (0.53%) Greenplum
14 3 (0.53%) Red Hat