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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 240 236 151
Rank change year-on-year -4 -85 +54
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 569 369 643
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.08% 1.12% 1.61%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.05% 6.18% 8.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 425 268 523
10th Percentile £409 £400 £425
25th Percentile £463 £461 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £567 £675
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -16.07% +17.39%
75th Percentile £656 £746 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -5.00% -5.66%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 1
10th Percentile £49.75 - -
25th Percentile £53.13 - -
Median hourly rate £59.50 - £40.50
75th Percentile £65.36 - -
90th Percentile £67.81 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £59.50 - £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 8,068 5,969 7,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.35% 18.19% 17.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,353 4,040 5,090
10th Percentile £356 £342 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 90 104
10th Percentile £16.70 £19.20 £14.48
25th Percentile £24.45 £23.50 £20.56
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.36
90th Percentile £76.35 £78.83 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -41.46%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 -21 477 £575 - 127
London -24 296 £575 -11.54% 71
Work from Home -35 209 £529 -18.62% 72
UK excluding London -22 174 £550 +15.79% 82
Midlands -3 70 £600 +39.53% 25
West Midlands -12 53 £600 +41.18% 19
North of England -51 48 £530 +11.58% 15
North West -39 27 £500 - 7
South East -77 19 £463 +2.78% 25
Yorkshire -34 18 £550 +22.09% 3
East Midlands -2 17 £525 +28.05% 6
Scotland -6 15 £409 -29.12% 5
South West -27 14 £600 +26.32% 4
East of England -24 10 £575 -0.86% 1
North East -44 3 £463 - 5
Wales -14 1 £325 -35.00% 4

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 (13.53%) Apache Spark
2 45 (7.91%) Apache
3 40 (7.03%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (5.80%) SAS
5 20 (3.51%) Confluence
6 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
6 2 (0.35%) Jupyter
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%) Apache Synapse
7 1 (0.18%) JBoss
7 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 5 (0.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.05%) SAP S/4HANA
2 4 (0.70%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.53%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
3 3 (0.53%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.35%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.35%) Endur
4 2 (0.35%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.35%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.35%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 359 (63.09%) Azure
2 204 (35.85%) AWS
3 172 (30.23%) Power Platform
4 137 (24.08%) Azure Data Factory
5 121 (21.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 95 (16.70%) GCP
7 79 (13.88%) Azure DevOps
8 74 (13.01%) Snowflake
9 61 (10.72%) Amazon S3
10 59 (10.37%) GitHub
11 58 (10.19%) Serverless
12 38 (6.68%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (5.45%) GitHub Actions
14 29 (5.10%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 27 (4.75%) dbt
16 23 (4.04%) Microsoft Purview
17 22 (3.87%) Amazon EMR
18 20 (3.51%) Azure Key Vault
19 19 (3.34%) Entra ID
20 18 (3.16%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.58%) Firewall
1 9 (1.58%) HTTP
2 6 (1.05%) DNS
3 5 (0.88%) WAN
4 4 (0.70%) Network Security
5 3 (0.53%) 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%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.18%) VPN
7 1 (0.18%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 215 (37.79%) Data Warehouse
2 154 (27.07%) Power BI
3 81 (14.24%) Metadata
4 62 (10.90%) Amazon Redshift
5 58 (10.19%) Azure SQL Database
6 44 (7.73%) Delta Lake
6 44 (7.73%) SQL Server
7 42 (7.38%) Big Data
8 40 (7.03%) Amazon Athena
9 31 (5.45%) BigQuery
10 30 (5.27%) NoSQL
11 27 (4.75%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 27 (4.75%) PostgreSQL
12 24 (4.22%) Relational Database
13 23 (4.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 21 (3.69%) Tableau
15 20 (3.51%) Snowflake Schema
16 19 (3.34%) Hadoop
17 18 (3.16%) Star Schema
18 14 (2.46%) Base SAS
Development Applications
1 55 (9.67%) Git
2 25 (4.39%) GitLab
2 25 (4.39%) JIRA
3 19 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 7 (1.23%) ER Studio
4 7 (1.23%) ERwin
5 6 (1.05%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.88%) MLflow
7 4 (0.70%) JUnit
8 2 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
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
1 140 (24.60%) Finance
2 125 (21.97%) Social Skills
3 70 (12.30%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (10.90%) Public Sector
5 38 (6.68%) Banking
6 24 (4.22%) Marketing
7 19 (3.34%) Retail
8 16 (2.81%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.11%) Manufacturing
10 11 (1.93%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.23%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.05%) Military
12 6 (1.05%) Police
13 5 (0.88%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.70%) Publishing
15 3 (0.53%) Legal
15 3 (0.53%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.53%) Telecoms
16 2 (0.35%) Front Office
Job Titles
1 188 (33.04%) Architect
2 174 (30.58%) Data Engineer
3 113 (19.86%) Data Architect
4 86 (15.11%) Senior
5 58 (10.19%) Solutions Architect
6 45 (7.91%) Azure Engineer
6 45 (7.91%) Senior Data Engineer
7 44 (7.73%) Lead
8 39 (6.85%) Analyst
9 36 (6.33%) Azure Data Engineer
10 32 (5.62%) Developer
11 28 (4.92%) Cloud Architect
12 27 (4.75%) Data Analyst
13 25 (4.39%) Azure Architect
14 21 (3.69%) AWS Engineer
14 21 (3.69%) Business Analyst
15 20 (3.51%) Cloud Solutions Architect
15 20 (3.51%) Data Business Analyst
16 16 (2.81%) Principal Engineer
17 15 (2.64%) Senior Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 80 (14.06%) PySpark
2 52 (9.14%) Kafka
3 25 (4.39%) REST
4 12 (2.11%) JSON
5 10 (1.76%) Middleware
5 10 (1.76%) Spring Boot
5 10 (1.76%) YAML
6 9 (1.58%) Great Expectations
6 9 (1.58%) Spring
6 9 (1.58%) XML
7 8 (1.41%) React
8 7 (1.23%) FastAPI
9 6 (1.05%) ARM Templates
9 6 (1.05%) Node.js
10 5 (0.88%) .NET
10 5 (0.88%) HTML
10 5 (0.88%) LangChain
10 5 (0.88%) Model Context Protocol
10 5 (0.88%) PyTorch
10 5 (0.88%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 84 (14.76%) Cloud Native
2 38 (6.68%) Data Structures
3 28 (4.92%) Distributed Systems
3 28 (4.92%) Product Ownership
4 27 (4.75%) Legacy Systems
5 15 (2.64%) IoT
6 12 (2.11%) Data Fabric
6 12 (2.11%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.11%) Reference Data
7 11 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (1.93%) Low-Code
8 10 (1.76%) AI Agents
9 8 (1.41%) Digital Media
9 8 (1.41%) Management Information System
9 8 (1.41%) Marketing Technology
10 6 (1.05%) Enterprise Cloud
10 6 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.05%) Fixed Income
10 6 (1.05%) Reinsurance
10 6 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (2.99%) Linux
2 12 (2.11%) Unix
3 5 (0.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.53%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.35%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 301 (52.90%) Analytics
2 257 (45.17%) ETL
3 245 (43.06%) Data Modelling
4 239 (42.00%) Data Pipeline
5 216 (37.96%) Data Engineering
6 201 (35.33%) CI/CD
7 197 (34.62%) Business Intelligence
8 188 (33.04%) Data Governance
9 161 (28.30%) Data Architecture
10 154 (27.07%) DevOps
11 149 (26.19%) Agile
12 143 (25.13%) Migration
13 142 (24.96%) AI
14 96 (16.87%) Data Transformation
15 89 (15.64%) Machine Learning
16 88 (15.47%) Problem-Solving
17 86 (15.11%) Stakeholder Management
17 86 (15.11%) Validation
18 85 (14.94%) Data Integration
19 75 (13.18%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 312 (54.83%) SQL
2 199 (34.97%) Python
3 37 (6.50%) Java
4 20 (3.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 18 (3.16%) Scala
6 17 (2.99%) C#
6 17 (2.99%) PowerShell
7 14 (2.46%) Bicep
7 14 (2.46%) T-SQL
8 11 (1.93%) Shell Script
9 10 (1.76%) Bash
9 10 (1.76%) JavaScript
10 8 (1.41%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.88%) R
11 5 (0.88%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.35%) Cypher
12 2 (0.35%) SHACL
12 2 (0.35%) SOQL
13 1 (0.18%) Ada
13 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 135 (23.73%) Security Cleared
2 110 (19.33%) SC Cleared
3 27 (4.75%) Azure Certification
4 19 (3.34%) Degree
5 14 (2.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (2.11%) DV Cleared
7 9 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 8 (1.41%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.05%) CISM
9 6 (1.05%) CISSP
9 6 (1.05%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.05%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (0.88%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 5 (0.88%) TOGAF Certification
11 4 (0.70%) CSPO
12 3 (0.53%) (ISC)2 CCSP
12 3 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.53%) CCSP
12 3 (0.53%) Cisco Certification
12 3 (0.53%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 186 (32.69%) Data Quality
2 57 (10.02%) GDPR
3 29 (5.10%) QA
4 7 (1.23%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 7 (1.23%) Solvency II
5 6 (1.05%) NIST
5 6 (1.05%) PCI DSS
6 5 (0.88%) GRC
6 5 (0.88%) MiFID
7 4 (0.70%) IFRS
8 3 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.53%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.53%) PMO
8 3 (0.53%) SLA
9 2 (0.35%) IFRS 9
10 1 (0.18%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials
10 1 (0.18%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 1 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 31 (5.45%) Docker
2 9 (1.58%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.41%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.88%) Virtual Desktop
5 3 (0.53%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 74 (13.01%) Terraform
2 37 (6.50%) Kubernetes
3 12 (2.11%) Grafana
4 8 (1.41%) Ansible
5 4 (0.70%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.53%) Argo
7 2 (0.35%) Puppet
8 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
8 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.18%) Oozie
8 1 (0.18%) QRadar
Vendors
1 193 (33.92%) Databricks
2 131 (23.02%) Microsoft
3 41 (7.21%) Informatica
4 26 (4.57%) Google
5 25 (4.39%) Oracle
6 19 (3.34%) SAP
7 18 (3.16%) OpenAI
8 14 (2.46%) Talend
9 13 (2.28%) Denodo
10 10 (1.76%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.58%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.41%) Adobe
13 6 (1.05%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.05%) Infor
14 5 (0.88%) IBM
15 4 (0.70%) Guidewire
15 4 (0.70%) Hortonworks
15 4 (0.70%) Red Hat
15 4 (0.70%) Sparx
16 3 (0.53%) BiZZdesign