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 16 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.
| 6 months to 16 Oct 2026 |
Same period 2025 | Same period 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rank | 239 | 232 | 174 |
| Rank change year-on-year | -7 | -58 | +61 |
| Contract jobs citing Data Lake | 627 | 399 | 545 |
| As % of all contract jobs in the UK | 1.13% | 1.20% | 1.45% |
| As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category | 7.68% | 6.60% | 8.14% |
| Number of daily rates quoted | 485 | 289 | 448 |
| 10th Percentile | £400 | £375 | £445 |
| 25th Percentile | £443 | £450 | £513 |
| Median daily rate (50th Percentile) | £525 | £575 | £688 |
| Median % change year-on-year | -8.70% | -16.36% | +19.57% |
| 75th Percentile | £639 | £725 | £850 |
| 90th Percentile | £725 | £825 | £888 |
| UK excluding London median daily rate | £509 | £455 | £500 |
| % change year-on-year | +11.81% | -8.95% | -9.09% |
| Number of hourly rates quoted | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| 10th Percentile | - | - | - |
| 25th Percentile | £32.87 | - | - |
| Median hourly rate | £35.45 | - | - |
| 75th Percentile | £55.00 | - | - |
| 90th Percentile | £61.75 | - | - |
| UK excluding London median hourly rate | £35.45 | - | - |
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.
| 6 months to 16 Oct 2026 |
Same period 2025 | Same period 2024 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills | 8,169 | 6,043 | 6,698 |
| As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK | 14.77% | 18.16% | 17.81% |
| Number of daily rates quoted | 5,433 | 4,055 | 4,509 |
| 10th Percentile | £356 | £340 | £350 |
| 25th Percentile | £419 | £413 | £425 |
| Median daily rate (50th Percentile) | £505 | £500 | £528 |
| Median % change year-on-year | +1.00% | -5.21% | -2.31% |
| 75th Percentile | £623 | £625 | £650 |
| 90th Percentile | £713 | £736 | £788 |
| UK excluding London median daily rate | £475 | £475 | £485 |
| % change year-on-year | - | -2.06% | -3.00% |
| Number of hourly rates quoted | 307 | 82 | 90 |
| 10th Percentile | £16.88 | £20.78 | £17.50 |
| 25th Percentile | £21.63 | £29.00 | £21.25 |
| Median hourly rate | £40.18 | £39.48 | £33.22 |
| Median % change year-on-year | +1.77% | +18.86% | -34.94% |
| 75th Percentile | £57.50 | £64.69 | £61.19 |
| 90th Percentile | £74.68 | £80.00 | £71.50 |
| UK excluding London median hourly rate | £41.71 | £35.49 | £30.00 |
| % change year-on-year | +17.53% | +18.30% | -40.63% |
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 Daily Rate Trend
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 16 October 2026.
Data Lake Hourly Rate Trend
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 16 October 2026.
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 16 October 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 | -33 | 490 | £550 | -8.33% | 352 |
| London | -56 | 272 | £550 | -12.94% | 192 |
| UK excluding London | +15 | 220 | £509 | +11.81% | 172 |
| Work from Home | -43 | 216 | £525 | -12.50% | 182 |
| Midlands | +29 | 91 | £575 | +27.78% | 29 |
| West Midlands | +11 | 62 | £600 | - | 20 |
| North of England | -45 | 49 | £500 | +5.26% | 61 |
| South East | -50 | 33 | £500 | +14.29% | 23 |
| East Midlands | +18 | 29 | £500 | +21.95% | 9 |
| North West | -34 | 27 | £500 | +5.26% | 33 |
| Scotland | -14 | 25 | £410 | +6.88% | 17 |
| Yorkshire | -24 | 21 | £493 | -14.35% | 17 |
| South West | -22 | 16 | £600 | +14.29% | 21 |
| East of England | -34 | 6 | £350 | -36.36% | 13 |
| Wales | -14 | 3 | £500 | - | 5 |
| North East | -38 | 1 | £425 | - | 11 |
Data Lake Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities by Category
The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.
Database & Business Intelligence
| Rank | Skill | Share | Job Ads |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Data Warehouse | 39.9% | 250 |
| 2 | Power BI | 27.0% | 169 |
| 3 | Metadata | 16.4% | 103 |
| 4 | Amazon Redshift | 9.9% | 62 |
| 4 | Azure SQL Database | 9.9% | 62 |
| 6 | NoSQL | 7.7% | 48 |
| 7 | Delta Lake | 6.9% | 43 |
| 8 | Amazon Athena | 6.7% | 42 |
| 9 | Big Data | 6.2% | 39 |
| 10 | SQL Server | 5.6% | 35 |
| 11 | BigQuery | 5.3% | 33 |
| 12 | Enterprise Data Warehouse | 4.5% | 28 |
| 13 | PostgreSQL | 4.3% | 27 |
| 13 | Relational Database | 4.3% | 27 |
| 15 | Tableau | 4.1% | 26 |
| 16 | Semantic Layer | 3.3% | 21 |
| 17 | Hadoop | 3.2% | 20 |
| 18 | Amazon RDS | 3.0% | 19 |
| 18 | Star Schema | 3.0% | 19 |
| 20 | SQL Server Integration Services | 2.9% | 18 |