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 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 241 201 225
Rank change year-on-year -40 +24 +55
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 433 436 466
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.31% 1.08%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.78% 7.26% 6.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 313 347 343
10th Percentile £375 £387 £413
25th Percentile £425 £481 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -5.58%
75th Percentile £650 £825 £661
90th Percentile £750 £888 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £495 £535
% change year-on-year -9.09% -7.48% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 3
10th Percentile - - £34.20
25th Percentile - - £43.88
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% +71.43%
75th Percentile - - £60.75
90th Percentile - - £61.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £45.75
% change year-on-year - - +30.71%

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 6,386 6,008 7,186
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.21% 18.11% 16.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,410 3,965 5,070
10th Percentile £325 £343 £350
25th Percentile £409 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £497 £500
% change year-on-year -4.43% -0.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 83 144
10th Percentile £20.71 £18.66 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.60 £23.08
Median hourly rate £52.00 £30.59 £46.84
Median % change year-on-year +69.99% -34.69% -14.84%
75th Percentile £73.70 £64.61 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.00 £77.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.00 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +118.18% -40.45% -7.64%

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 1 January 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 1 January 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 -53 351 £575 -6.05% 185
London -30 255 £603 -10.74% 91
Work from Home -51 152 £575 -14.81% 109
UK excluding London -45 107 £450 -9.09% 103
North of England -51 31 £488 +8.33% 29
South East -19 20 £425 -21.66% 23
Scotland +13 19 £432 +14.73% 7
North West -20 18 £401 -8.86% 15
Midlands -44 13 £506 +13.13% 22
Yorkshire -46 9 £575 +6.98% 6
East of England -10 8 £580 +13.17% 14
West Midlands -42 8 £556 +21.58% 12
Northern Ireland -1 7 £325 -38.10% 1
Wales -1 6 £500 -
South West -5 5 £713 +23.91% 8
East Midlands -14 5 £465 +30.62% 9
North East -16 4 £463 -2.63% 8

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 60 (13.86%) Apache Airflow
2 58 (13.39%) Apache Spark
3 54 (12.47%) Apache
4 5 (1.15%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.69%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.69%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.23%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.23%) Confluence
Applications
1 5 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.92%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 3 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.46%) Microsoft Project
5 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 18 (4.16%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.15%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.46%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.46%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.46%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.23%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.23%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 292 (67.44%) Azure
2 153 (35.33%) AWS
3 139 (32.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 133 (30.72%) Power Platform
5 117 (27.02%) Azure Data Factory
6 74 (17.09%) Snowflake
7 57 (13.16%) GCP
8 55 (12.70%) Azure DevOps
8 55 (12.70%) Serverless
9 48 (11.09%) GitHub
10 41 (9.47%) Amazon S3
11 36 (8.31%) dbt
12 32 (7.39%) Microsoft Purview
13 29 (6.70%) AWS CloudFormation
14 28 (6.47%) Azure Functions
15 24 (5.54%) GitHub Actions
16 22 (5.08%) AWS Lambda
17 20 (4.62%) Azure Cosmos DB
18 19 (4.39%) Azure Key Vault
19 18 (4.16%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.62%) VPN
2 6 (1.39%) Firewall
3 3 (0.69%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.46%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.46%) Network Security
5 1 (0.23%) DSL
5 1 (0.23%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.23%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 133 (30.72%) Data Warehouse
2 124 (28.64%) Power BI
3 52 (12.01%) Azure SQL Database
4 49 (11.32%) Metadata
5 45 (10.39%) SQL Server
6 41 (9.47%) Delta Lake
7 39 (9.01%) Amazon Athena
8 30 (6.93%) Big Data
9 28 (6.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 27 (6.24%) Relational Database
11 25 (5.77%) Apache Iceberg
12 21 (4.85%) NoSQL
13 20 (4.62%) Apache Arrow
13 20 (4.62%) Apache Ignite
13 20 (4.62%) BigQuery
13 20 (4.62%) Dremio
13 20 (4.62%) Tableau
14 19 (4.39%) Amazon Redshift
14 19 (4.39%) PostgreSQL
15 14 (3.23%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 38 (8.78%) Git
2 31 (7.16%) GitLab
3 9 (2.08%) MLflow
4 6 (1.39%) ER Studio
4 6 (1.39%) ERwin
4 6 (1.39%) Jenkins
5 4 (0.92%) JIRA
6 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
6 2 (0.46%) GCC
6 2 (0.46%) JMeter
6 2 (0.46%) Pylint
6 2 (0.46%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.46%) Terragrunt
7 1 (0.23%) Gradle
7 1 (0.23%) Hudson
7 1 (0.23%) Liquibase
7 1 (0.23%) Maven
7 1 (0.23%) Poetry
7 1 (0.23%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio
General
1 125 (28.87%) Social Skills
2 124 (28.64%) Finance
3 54 (12.47%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (8.78%) Public Sector
5 32 (7.39%) Banking
6 26 (6.00%) Front Office
7 20 (4.62%) Investment Banking
8 18 (4.16%) Influencing Skills
9 16 (3.70%) Pharmaceutical
10 12 (2.77%) Documentation Skills
11 7 (1.62%) Retail
12 6 (1.39%) Legal
13 4 (0.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 4 (0.92%) Manufacturing
14 3 (0.69%) Back Office
14 3 (0.69%) Marketing
14 3 (0.69%) Military
15 2 (0.46%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.46%) Police
15 2 (0.46%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 130 (30.02%) Data Engineer
2 80 (18.48%) Architect
3 74 (17.09%) Senior
4 52 (12.01%) Azure Engineer
5 45 (10.39%) AWS Engineer
6 44 (10.16%) Data Architect
7 37 (8.55%) Developer
8 34 (7.85%) Software Engineer
9 32 (7.39%) Azure Data Engineer
9 32 (7.39%) Lead
10 31 (7.16%) Python Engineer
11 24 (5.54%) AWS Software Engineer
12 22 (5.08%) Senior Data Engineer
13 21 (4.85%) Java Engineer
13 21 (4.85%) Java Software Engineer
14 20 (4.62%) Python Software Engineer
14 20 (4.62%) Senior Software Engineer
15 19 (4.39%) DevOps Engineer
15 19 (4.39%) Senior Java Engineer
15 19 (4.39%) Senior Java Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (16.40%) PySpark
2 38 (8.78%) Kafka
3 33 (7.62%) Pandas
4 27 (6.24%) NumPy
5 22 (5.08%) SciPy
6 20 (4.62%) gRPC
6 20 (4.62%) Protocol Buffers
7 16 (3.70%) REST
8 13 (3.00%) JSON
9 12 (2.77%) LangChain
9 12 (2.77%) PyTorch
9 12 (2.77%) scikit-learn
9 12 (2.77%) TensorFlow
10 11 (2.54%) LangGraph
10 11 (2.54%) Microsoft Graph
11 10 (2.31%) Spark Streaming
12 8 (1.85%) Great Expectations
13 6 (1.39%) React
13 6 (1.39%) SOAP
14 5 (1.15%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 31 (7.16%) Cloud Native
2 22 (5.08%) Equities
3 21 (4.85%) Derivative
3 21 (4.85%) Fixed Income
4 20 (4.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 20 (4.62%) Hedge funds
4 20 (4.62%) Pricing Data
5 13 (3.00%) Distributed Computing
6 12 (2.77%) Data Structures
6 12 (2.77%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.31%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.08%) Data Fabric
9 8 (1.85%) Algorithms
9 8 (1.85%) IoT
9 8 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
10 7 (1.62%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.62%) NHS
11 6 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.15%) Hybrid Cloud
12 5 (1.15%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 14 (3.23%) Linux
2 11 (2.54%) Unix
3 7 (1.62%) Windows
4 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.23%) VMS
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (47.11%) Analytics
2 187 (43.19%) ETL
3 166 (38.34%) Data Pipeline
4 144 (33.26%) CI/CD
5 140 (32.33%) Data Modelling
6 139 (32.10%) Business Intelligence
7 122 (28.18%) DevOps
8 116 (26.79%) Data Engineering
8 116 (26.79%) Data Governance
9 95 (21.94%) Data Architecture
10 93 (21.48%) Agile
11 85 (19.63%) AI
12 75 (17.32%) Machine Learning
13 70 (16.17%) Infrastructure as Code
14 56 (12.93%) Data Integration
15 55 (12.70%) Data Science
16 52 (12.01%) Migration
16 52 (12.01%) Software Engineering
17 45 (10.39%) Problem-Solving
18 44 (10.16%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 242 (55.89%) SQL
2 215 (49.65%) Python
3 47 (10.85%) Java
4 27 (6.24%) JavaScript
5 25 (5.77%) TypeScript
6 20 (4.62%) C#
7 19 (4.39%) T-SQL
8 14 (3.23%) Bicep
8 14 (3.23%) Scala
9 12 (2.77%) Bash
9 12 (2.77%) PowerShell
9 12 (2.77%) R
10 11 (2.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 10 (2.31%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.69%) Korn
13 2 (0.46%) Ada
13 2 (0.46%) C++
13 2 (0.46%) Perl
14 1 (0.23%) C
14 1 (0.23%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 50 (11.55%) Security Cleared
2 36 (8.31%) SC Cleared
3 28 (6.47%) Degree
4 20 (4.62%) Azure Certification
5 15 (3.46%) Microsoft Certification
6 13 (3.00%) Master's Degree
7 9 (2.08%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.85%) AWS Certification
8 8 (1.85%) MCP
9 7 (1.62%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.69%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.69%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.69%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.69%) PMP
11 2 (0.46%) ACCA
11 2 (0.46%) CIMA
11 2 (0.46%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.46%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 1 (0.23%) APMG
12 1 (0.23%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 97 (22.40%) Data Quality
2 54 (12.47%) GDPR
3 17 (3.93%) QA
4 15 (3.46%) HIPAA
5 11 (2.54%) NIST
6 7 (1.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.39%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.69%) PCI DSS
9 1 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.23%) GRC
9 1 (0.23%) IFRS
9 1 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 35 (8.08%) Docker
2 11 (2.54%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.15%) zsh
5 4 (0.92%) HDFS
6 1 (0.23%) Lustre
6 1 (0.23%) NFS
Systems Management
1 72 (16.63%) Terraform
2 30 (6.93%) Kubernetes
3 7 (1.62%) Ansible
3 7 (1.62%) Grafana
4 3 (0.69%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.46%) Fluentd
5 2 (0.46%) Packer
6 1 (0.23%) Argo
6 1 (0.23%) Kibana
6 1 (0.23%) Kubeflow
6 1 (0.23%) logstash
6 1 (0.23%) Oracle ZFS
6 1 (0.23%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.23%) Puppet
6 1 (0.23%) Salt
6 1 (0.23%) SELinux
6 1 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 167 (38.57%) Databricks
2 124 (28.64%) Microsoft
3 27 (6.24%) SAP
4 19 (4.39%) Google
5 17 (3.93%) OpenAI
6 13 (3.00%) Oracle
7 12 (2.77%) Informatica
8 7 (1.62%) Cloudera
9 6 (1.39%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.15%) ServiceNow
11 3 (0.69%) Ab Initio
11 3 (0.69%) Greenplum
11 3 (0.69%) Talend
12 2 (0.46%) Ariba
12 2 (0.46%) BiZZdesign
12 2 (0.46%) Charles River
12 2 (0.46%) eFront
12 2 (0.46%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.46%) SimCorp
12 2 (0.46%) Sparx