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 24 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 231 179 228
Rank change year-on-year -52 +49 +8
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 486 440 457
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.11% 1.51% 1.03%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.97% 7.98% 6.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 343 351 324
10th Percentile £400 £375 £387
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% +10.48% -8.70%
75th Percentile £638 £763 £650
90th Percentile £750 £938 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £470 £500
% change year-on-year -4.26% -6.00% -9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 4
10th Percentile - - £31.58
25th Percentile £64.00 - £37.31
Median hourly rate £66.50 £65.00 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.31% +29.35% +43.57%
75th Percentile £69.11 - £60.38
90th Percentile £69.31 - £61.05
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 6,977 5,514 7,288
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.92% 18.93% 16.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,796 3,816 5,146
10th Percentile £350 £350 £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 £490 £488
% change year-on-year -3.06% +0.51% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 149 98 172
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.47 £14.36
25th Percentile £29.83 £24.25 £20.70
Median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £40.13
Median % change year-on-year +58.03% -21.15% -29.54%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.50 £58.55
90th Percentile £85.00 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -14.29% -36.36%

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 24 March 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 24 March 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 -90 392 £550 -8.33% 143
London -43 289 £600 -11.11% 66
Work from Home -90 154 £550 -18.52% 69
UK excluding London -69 114 £450 -4.26% 104
North of England -61 36 £475 +5.56% 28
Scotland +17 26 £447 +3.71% 3
Midlands -63 22 £450 +2.86% 16
South East -61 19 £425 -13.44% 29
North West -36 17 £425 -10.53% 20
Yorkshire -50 13 £550 +22.22% 5
East Midlands -23 12 £445 +25.11% 7
West Midlands -66 10 £513 +17.14% 9
North East -18 6 £475 +32.68% 3
East of England -28 5 - - 11
South West -27 3 £900 +38.46% 16
Wales -8 2 £410 +14.35% 3
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 82 (16.87%) Apache Spark
2 54 (11.11%) Apache
3 49 (10.08%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (1.44%) Confluence
5 5 (1.03%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.62%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.41%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.41%) nginx
7 2 (0.41%) SAS
Applications
1 4 (0.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.62%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.41%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.21%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (2.26%) SAP S/4HANA
2 2 (0.41%) SAP MDG
3 1 (0.21%) Infor M3
3 1 (0.21%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 341 (70.16%) Azure
2 168 (34.57%) AWS
3 167 (34.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 162 (33.33%) Power Platform
5 151 (31.07%) Azure Data Factory
6 87 (17.90%) Azure DevOps
7 86 (17.70%) GitHub
8 68 (13.99%) GCP
9 66 (13.58%) Serverless
10 57 (11.73%) Amazon S3
11 45 (9.26%) Snowflake
12 42 (8.64%) AWS CloudFormation
13 40 (8.23%) GitHub Actions
14 35 (7.20%) Microsoft Purview
15 33 (6.79%) Azure Functions
16 29 (5.97%) Azure Key Vault
17 25 (5.14%) AWS Lambda
17 25 (5.14%) Collibra
18 24 (4.94%) Azure Cosmos DB
19 19 (3.91%) Amazon SQS
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.06%) Firewall
2 4 (0.82%) VPN
3 3 (0.62%) Kerberos
3 3 (0.62%) Network Security
4 2 (0.41%) Hyperconnected
5 1 (0.21%) 4G
5 1 (0.21%) 5G
5 1 (0.21%) DSL
5 1 (0.21%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.21%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.21%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 147 (30.25%) Power BI
2 136 (27.98%) Data Warehouse
3 70 (14.40%) Metadata
4 63 (12.96%) Azure SQL Database
4 63 (12.96%) Delta Lake
5 60 (12.35%) SQL Server
6 38 (7.82%) Amazon Athena
7 33 (6.79%) Amazon Redshift
8 32 (6.58%) Big Data
9 30 (6.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 27 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
11 24 (4.94%) Hadoop
11 24 (4.94%) NoSQL
12 22 (4.53%) BigQuery
12 22 (4.53%) Mixpanel
12 22 (4.53%) Relational Database
13 20 (4.12%) Spark SQL
14 19 (3.91%) OLAP
15 17 (3.50%) OLTP
15 17 (3.50%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 47 (9.67%) Git
2 31 (6.38%) GitLab
3 13 (2.67%) Jenkins
4 12 (2.47%) MLflow
5 10 (2.06%) JIRA
6 4 (0.82%) ER Studio
6 4 (0.82%) ERwin
7 3 (0.62%) JMeter
8 2 (0.41%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.21%) Hudson
9 1 (0.21%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.21%) PowerDesigner
9 1 (0.21%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 1 (0.21%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.21%) Visual Studio
General
1 123 (25.31%) Finance
2 121 (24.90%) Social Skills
3 60 (12.35%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 16 (3.29%) Banking
6 15 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
6 15 (3.09%) Influencing Skills
7 9 (1.85%) Pharmaceutical
8 7 (1.44%) Retail
9 6 (1.23%) Marketing
10 4 (0.82%) Front Office
10 4 (0.82%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.82%) Military
11 3 (0.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.41%) Back Office
12 2 (0.41%) Billing
12 2 (0.41%) Legal
12 2 (0.41%) Local Government
12 2 (0.41%) Presentation Skills
12 2 (0.41%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 173 (35.60%) Data Engineer
2 106 (21.81%) Architect
3 64 (13.17%) Senior
4 63 (12.96%) Data Architect
5 46 (9.47%) Azure Engineer
5 46 (9.47%) Lead
6 33 (6.79%) Senior Data Engineer
7 31 (6.38%) AWS Engineer
7 31 (6.38%) Developer
8 30 (6.17%) Principal Engineer
8 30 (6.17%) Solutions Architect
9 27 (5.56%) Azure Data Engineer
10 25 (5.14%) Software Engineer
11 20 (4.12%) Principal Software Engineer
12 19 (3.91%) Lead Data Engineer
12 19 (3.91%) Principal Data Engineer
13 17 (3.50%) DevOps Engineer
13 17 (3.50%) Platform Engineer
14 16 (3.29%) Analyst
14 16 (3.29%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 102 (20.99%) PySpark
2 59 (12.14%) Kafka
3 24 (4.94%) REST
4 19 (3.91%) Great Expectations
5 17 (3.50%) JSON
6 13 (2.67%) Model Context Protocol
6 13 (2.67%) Pandas
7 12 (2.47%) Microsoft Graph
8 11 (2.26%) LangChain
8 11 (2.26%) PyTorch
8 11 (2.26%) scikit-learn
8 11 (2.26%) Spark Streaming
8 11 (2.26%) XML
9 10 (2.06%) LangGraph
9 10 (2.06%) YAML
10 8 (1.65%) TensorFlow
11 7 (1.44%) A2A Protocol
11 7 (1.44%) FastAPI
11 7 (1.44%) NumPy
12 5 (1.03%) ARM Templates
Miscellaneous
1 55 (11.32%) Cloud Native
2 19 (3.91%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.50%) Distributed Computing
3 17 (3.50%) IoT
4 16 (3.29%) Legacy Systems
5 13 (2.67%) Product Ownership
6 12 (2.47%) Distributed Systems
7 11 (2.26%) Management Information System
8 10 (2.06%) Onboarding
9 9 (1.85%) Data Fabric
10 7 (1.44%) Algorithms
10 7 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.23%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (1.23%) NHS
12 5 (1.03%) AI Agents
12 5 (1.03%) Digital Media
12 5 (1.03%) Replication
13 4 (0.82%) Self-Motivation
14 3 (0.62%) Security Operations Centre
14 3 (0.62%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 15 (3.09%) Linux
2 10 (2.06%) Unix
3 5 (1.03%) Windows
4 2 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.21%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 270 (55.56%) Analytics
2 238 (48.97%) ETL
3 206 (42.39%) Data Pipeline
4 203 (41.77%) Data Modelling
5 188 (38.68%) CI/CD
6 181 (37.24%) Data Engineering
7 171 (35.19%) Business Intelligence
8 169 (34.77%) DevOps
9 163 (33.54%) Data Governance
10 124 (25.51%) Data Architecture
11 120 (24.69%) AI
12 93 (19.14%) Machine Learning
13 92 (18.93%) Agile
14 88 (18.11%) Infrastructure as Code
15 80 (16.46%) Problem-Solving
16 71 (14.61%) Migration
17 66 (13.58%) Data Science
18 64 (13.17%) Data Integration
19 55 (11.32%) Data Transformation
20 52 (10.70%) Data Ingestion
Programming Languages
1 287 (59.05%) SQL
2 239 (49.18%) Python
3 34 (7.00%) Java
4 32 (6.58%) C#
5 24 (4.94%) Scala
6 20 (4.12%) T-SQL
7 19 (3.91%) PowerShell
8 17 (3.50%) Bicep
9 16 (3.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 12 (2.47%) Bash
11 10 (2.06%) PL/SQL
12 8 (1.65%) JavaScript
13 6 (1.23%) R
14 4 (0.82%) Shell Script
15 3 (0.62%) TypeScript
16 2 (0.41%) Ada
16 2 (0.41%) C++
17 1 (0.21%) ANSI SQL
17 1 (0.21%) C
17 1 (0.21%) Perl
Qualifications
1 91 (18.72%) Security Cleared
2 69 (14.20%) SC Cleared
3 31 (6.38%) Degree
4 21 (4.32%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.29%) Microsoft Certification
6 15 (3.09%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.85%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (1.65%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.44%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 7 (1.44%) TOGAF Certification
10 6 (1.23%) Computer Science Degree
11 5 (1.03%) CISM
11 5 (1.03%) CISSP
12 3 (0.62%) DV Cleared
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.62%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMI Certification
12 3 (0.62%) PMP
13 2 (0.41%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 2 (0.41%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 143 (29.42%) Data Quality
2 76 (15.64%) GDPR
3 24 (4.94%) QA
4 12 (2.47%) HIPAA
4 12 (2.47%) NIST
5 8 (1.65%) Accessibility
6 7 (1.44%) PCI DSS
6 7 (1.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 3 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
7 3 (0.62%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 2 (0.41%) PMO
9 1 (0.21%) IFRS
9 1 (0.21%) IFRS 9
9 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.21%) SOC 2
9 1 (0.21%) Solvency II
System Software
1 34 (7.00%) Docker
2 6 (1.23%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.03%) HDFS
4 3 (0.62%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.21%) Lustre
5 1 (0.21%) NFS
5 1 (0.21%) zsh
Systems Management
1 100 (20.58%) Terraform
2 33 (6.79%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.65%) Grafana
4 6 (1.23%) Ansible
5 5 (1.03%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
7 1 (0.21%) Fluentd
7 1 (0.21%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.21%) Kibana
7 1 (0.21%) logstash
7 1 (0.21%) Oozie
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.21%) Packer
7 1 (0.21%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.21%) Puppet
7 1 (0.21%) Salt
7 1 (0.21%) SELinux
Vendors
1 201 (41.36%) Databricks
2 148 (30.45%) Microsoft
3 31 (6.38%) Informatica
4 28 (5.76%) Google
5 22 (4.53%) Oracle
6 18 (3.70%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.50%) SAP
8 11 (2.26%) Talend
9 8 (1.65%) Cloudera
10 6 (1.23%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.03%) ServiceNow
12 4 (0.82%) BiZZdesign
12 4 (0.82%) CheckPoint
12 4 (0.82%) Fortinet
12 4 (0.82%) Greenplum
13 3 (0.62%) Ab Initio
13 3 (0.62%) Hortonworks
13 3 (0.62%) Red Hat
13 3 (0.62%) Splunk
14 2 (0.41%) Infor