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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 235 178 214
Rank change year-on-year -57 +36 +14
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 489 441 470
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.52% 1.06%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.83% 8.00% 6.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 354 352 344
10th Percentile £400 £383 £400
25th Percentile £450 £464 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £585 £534
Median % change year-on-year -5.90% +9.51% -7.17%
75th Percentile £639 £763 £666
90th Percentile £750 £938 £850
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +2.32% -5.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 3
10th Percentile - - £30.30
25th Percentile £64.00 - £34.13
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% +60.49% +15.71%
75th Percentile £69.11 - £51.00
90th Percentile £69.31 - £57.30
UK excluding London median hourly rate £66.50 - £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 7,155 5,513 7,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.95% 18.96% 16.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,928 3,825 5,148
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £488
% change year-on-year -2.56% - -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 100 156
10th Percentile £18.23 £20.72 £14.00
25th Percentile £30.90 £24.25 £20.81
Median hourly rate £51.00 £32.23 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +58.26% -19.44% -33.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £53.84
90th Percentile £84.00 £76.38 £72.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £28.78 £38.50
% change year-on-year +73.73% -25.25% -30.00%

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 3 April 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 17 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 3 April 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 -84 398 £550 -8.33% 144
London -59 287 £600 -11.11% 67
Work from Home -82 159 £563 -16.67% 70
UK excluding London -79 118 £486 +2.32% 107
North of England -54 40 £500 +9.59% 31
Midlands -59 23 £450 +2.86% 14
Scotland +16 22 £500 +16.01% 3
North West -44 19 £459 -7.82% 22
South East -65 19 £425 -13.44% 32
Yorkshire -49 15 £550 +22.22% 5
East Midlands -21 12 £445 +25.11% 7
West Midlands -68 11 £513 +15.49% 7
East of England -35 8 £575 -0.86% 10
North East -14 6 £475 +32.68% 4
South West -26 3 £675 +3.85% 15
Wales -9 2 £410 +14.35% 4
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 -

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 83 (16.97%) Apache Spark
2 54 (11.04%) Apache
3 45 (9.20%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (1.43%) Confluence
5 4 (0.82%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.61%) Apache Synapse
6 3 (0.61%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.41%) nginx
7 2 (0.41%) SAS
8 1 (0.20%) Jupyter
Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 2 (0.41%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.20%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
3 1 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (2.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.41%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.20%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.20%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 344 (70.35%) Azure
2 171 (34.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 170 (34.76%) AWS
4 169 (34.56%) Power Platform
5 156 (31.90%) Azure Data Factory
6 87 (17.79%) Azure DevOps
7 83 (16.97%) GitHub
8 68 (13.91%) GCP
9 66 (13.50%) Serverless
10 59 (12.07%) Amazon S3
11 43 (8.79%) AWS CloudFormation
12 41 (8.38%) Snowflake
13 38 (7.77%) GitHub Actions
14 37 (7.57%) Microsoft Purview
15 31 (6.34%) Azure Functions
16 29 (5.93%) Azure Key Vault
17 27 (5.52%) AWS Lambda
18 26 (5.32%) Collibra
19 23 (4.70%) Azure Cosmos DB
20 20 (4.09%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.04%) Firewall
2 4 (0.82%) VPN
3 3 (0.61%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.61%) Network Security
4 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.20%) 4G
5 1 (0.20%) 5G
5 1 (0.20%) DSL
5 1 (0.20%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.20%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.20%) Modbus
5 1 (0.20%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 153 (31.29%) Power BI
2 136 (27.81%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (14.31%) Metadata
4 64 (13.09%) Azure SQL Database
5 62 (12.68%) Delta Lake
5 62 (12.68%) SQL Server
6 38 (7.77%) Amazon Athena
7 34 (6.95%) Amazon Redshift
8 30 (6.13%) Big Data
8 30 (6.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 26 (5.32%) PostgreSQL
10 22 (4.50%) BigQuery
10 22 (4.50%) Hadoop
10 22 (4.50%) Mixpanel
10 22 (4.50%) NoSQL
10 22 (4.50%) Spark SQL
11 20 (4.09%) OLAP
11 20 (4.09%) Relational Database
12 19 (3.89%) Snowflake Schema
13 17 (3.48%) OLTP
Development Applications
1 48 (9.82%) Git
2 31 (6.34%) GitLab
3 13 (2.66%) Jenkins
4 10 (2.04%) JIRA
5 9 (1.84%) MLflow
6 3 (0.61%) ER Studio
6 3 (0.61%) ERwin
6 3 (0.61%) JMeter
7 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
8 1 (0.20%) Hudson
8 1 (0.20%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.20%) PowerDesigner
8 1 (0.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.20%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.20%) Visual Studio
General
1 125 (25.56%) Finance
2 108 (22.09%) Social Skills
3 57 (11.66%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (9.20%) Public Sector
5 16 (3.27%) Banking
6 15 (3.07%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
8 10 (2.04%) Pharmaceutical
9 6 (1.23%) Marketing
10 5 (1.02%) Retail
11 4 (0.82%) Front Office
11 4 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (0.82%) Manufacturing
12 3 (0.61%) Military
13 2 (0.41%) Back Office
13 2 (0.41%) Billing
13 2 (0.41%) Investment Banking
13 2 (0.41%) Local Government
13 2 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
13 2 (0.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 171 (34.97%) Data Engineer
2 116 (23.72%) Architect
3 67 (13.70%) Data Architect
4 59 (12.07%) Senior
5 46 (9.41%) Azure Engineer
6 45 (9.20%) Lead
7 38 (7.77%) Solutions Architect
8 33 (6.75%) Senior Data Engineer
9 31 (6.34%) Principal Engineer
10 30 (6.13%) AWS Engineer
10 30 (6.13%) Developer
11 27 (5.52%) Azure Data Engineer
12 26 (5.32%) Software Engineer
13 21 (4.29%) Principal Software Engineer
14 19 (3.89%) Cloud Architect
14 19 (3.89%) Principal Data Engineer
15 17 (3.48%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 17 (3.48%) DevOps Engineer
16 16 (3.27%) Azure Architect
16 16 (3.27%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 103 (21.06%) PySpark
2 61 (12.47%) Kafka
3 23 (4.70%) REST
4 19 (3.89%) Great Expectations
5 16 (3.27%) JSON
6 13 (2.66%) Model Context Protocol
7 12 (2.45%) Pandas
8 11 (2.25%) LangChain
8 11 (2.25%) Microsoft Graph
8 11 (2.25%) Spark Streaming
8 11 (2.25%) XML
9 10 (2.04%) LangGraph
9 10 (2.04%) YAML
10 8 (1.64%) PyTorch
10 8 (1.64%) scikit-learn
11 7 (1.43%) A2A Protocol
11 7 (1.43%) TensorFlow
12 6 (1.23%) NumPy
13 5 (1.02%) Node.js
13 5 (1.02%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 60 (12.27%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.89%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.48%) Distributed Computing
3 17 (3.48%) IoT
3 17 (3.48%) Legacy Systems
4 14 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
4 14 (2.86%) Product Ownership
5 11 (2.25%) Management Information System
6 9 (1.84%) Data Fabric
7 8 (1.64%) Onboarding
8 7 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
9 6 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
9 6 (1.23%) Digital Media
9 6 (1.23%) NHS
10 5 (1.02%) AI Agents
10 5 (1.02%) Replication
11 4 (0.82%) Algorithms
11 4 (0.82%) Security Posture
11 4 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
12 3 (0.61%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 14 (2.86%) Linux
2 10 (2.04%) Unix
3 5 (1.02%) Windows
4 2 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.20%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 281 (57.46%) Analytics
2 245 (50.10%) ETL
3 209 (42.74%) Data Modelling
4 204 (41.72%) Data Pipeline
5 195 (39.88%) CI/CD
6 191 (39.06%) Data Engineering
7 176 (35.99%) Business Intelligence
8 172 (35.17%) DevOps
9 167 (34.15%) Data Governance
10 126 (25.77%) Data Architecture
11 122 (24.95%) AI
12 92 (18.81%) Agile
13 89 (18.20%) Machine Learning
14 85 (17.38%) Problem-Solving
15 84 (17.18%) Infrastructure as Code
16 81 (16.56%) Migration
17 66 (13.50%) Data Integration
18 62 (12.68%) Data Transformation
19 59 (12.07%) Data Science
20 52 (10.63%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 290 (59.30%) SQL
2 235 (48.06%) Python
3 32 (6.54%) C#
3 32 (6.54%) Java
4 23 (4.70%) Scala
5 22 (4.50%) T-SQL
6 20 (4.09%) PowerShell
7 19 (3.89%) Bicep
8 18 (3.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (1.84%) Bash
9 9 (1.84%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.84%) PL/SQL
10 6 (1.23%) R
11 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
12 3 (0.61%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.41%) Ada
13 2 (0.41%) C++
14 1 (0.20%) ANSI SQL
14 1 (0.20%) C
14 1 (0.20%) Perl
Qualifications
1 89 (18.20%) Security Cleared
2 68 (13.91%) SC Cleared
3 30 (6.13%) Degree
4 21 (4.29%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.27%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (3.07%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.43%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.43%) TOGAF Certification
10 5 (1.02%) CISM
10 5 (1.02%) CISSP
10 5 (1.02%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.61%) DV Cleared
11 3 (0.61%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.61%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
11 3 (0.61%) PMI Certification
11 3 (0.61%) PMP
12 2 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 2 (0.41%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 147 (30.06%) Data Quality
2 71 (14.52%) GDPR
3 23 (4.70%) QA
4 7 (1.43%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.43%) PCI DSS
4 7 (1.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.82%) HIPAA
5 4 (0.82%) NIST
6 3 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.61%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 2 (0.41%) PMO
8 1 (0.20%) IFRS
8 1 (0.20%) IFRS 9
8 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.20%) SOC 2
8 1 (0.20%) Solvency II
System Software
1 34 (6.95%) Docker
2 5 (1.02%) Active Directory
2 5 (1.02%) HDFS
3 3 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.20%) Lustre
4 1 (0.20%) NFS
Systems Management
1 104 (21.27%) Terraform
2 35 (7.16%) Kubernetes
3 6 (1.23%) Ansible
3 6 (1.23%) Grafana
4 5 (1.02%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.20%) Fluentd
6 1 (0.20%) Hadoop YARN
6 1 (0.20%) IBM Guardium
6 1 (0.20%) Kibana
6 1 (0.20%) logstash
6 1 (0.20%) Oozie
6 1 (0.20%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.20%) Packer
6 1 (0.20%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.20%) Puppet
6 1 (0.20%) Salt
6 1 (0.20%) SELinux
Vendors
1 202 (41.31%) Databricks
2 155 (31.70%) Microsoft
3 31 (6.34%) Informatica
4 28 (5.73%) Google
5 22 (4.50%) Oracle
6 18 (3.68%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.48%) SAP
8 11 (2.25%) Talend
9 7 (1.43%) Cloudera
10 6 (1.23%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.02%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.82%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.82%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.82%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.82%) Greenplum
13 3 (0.61%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.61%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.61%) Red Hat
13 3 (0.61%) Splunk
14 2 (0.41%) Infor