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 26 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 243 220 165
Rank change year-on-year -23 -55 +40
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 547 375 637
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.24% 1.47%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.03% 6.70% 8.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 399 291 512
10th Percentile £400 £403 £419
25th Percentile £458 £469 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £589 £650
Median % change year-on-year -6.62% -9.38% +15.56%
75th Percentile £658 £794 £850
90th Percentile £750 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £473 £495
% change year-on-year +16.40% -4.55% -7.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 2
10th Percentile £51.25 - £42.50
25th Percentile £57.25 - £45.50
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
75th Percentile £67.75 - £56.25
90th Percentile £69.22 - £59.40
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £50.75
% change year-on-year - - +45.00%

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 7,783 5,600 7,567
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.30% 18.51% 17.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,177 3,806 5,402
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 249 98 153
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.49 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £25.88 £20.77
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -12.50% -31.09%
75th Percentile £64.00 £64.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £31.64 £33.00
% change year-on-year +18.52% -4.12% -40.00%

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 26 June 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 26 June 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 26 June 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 -42 458 £575 -4.17% 119
London -28 297 £575 -17.86% 78
Work from Home -50 195 £550 -21.43% 59
UK excluding London -39 156 £550 +16.40% 75
Midlands -18 57 £600 +46.34% 13
North of England -49 44 £513 +7.89% 16
West Midlands -25 38 £615 +44.71% 10
North West -37 24 £500 +2.56% 13
Scotland +5 19 £425 -26.34% 3
East Midlands +4 19 £549 +35.56% 3
Yorkshire -38 17 £600 +33.19% 1
South East -68 16 £459 +2.00% 27
South West -24 13 £600 +6.67% 10
East of England -32 9 £575 -0.86% 3
North East -29 3 £463 - 2
Wales - 1 £325 - 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 76 (13.89%) Apache Spark
2 39 (7.13%) Apache
3 37 (6.76%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (5.12%) SAS
5 21 (3.84%) Confluence
6 3 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.37%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.37%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.37%) nginx
7 2 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.18%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.18%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.18%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 4 (0.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 4 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
2 3 (0.55%) Infor M3
2 3 (0.55%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 2 (0.37%) Endur
3 2 (0.37%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.37%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.37%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.18%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 362 (66.18%) Azure
2 192 (35.10%) AWS
3 179 (32.72%) Power Platform
4 150 (27.42%) Azure Data Factory
5 136 (24.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 93 (17.00%) GCP
7 81 (14.81%) Azure DevOps
8 75 (13.71%) GitHub
9 60 (10.97%) Serverless
10 59 (10.79%) Snowflake
11 58 (10.60%) Amazon S3
12 37 (6.76%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (6.03%) AWS Lambda
14 27 (4.94%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 26 (4.75%) Microsoft Purview
16 24 (4.39%) Azure Key Vault
17 22 (4.02%) Azure Functions
18 21 (3.84%) AWS CloudFormation
19 20 (3.66%) Azure Monitor
19 20 (3.66%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.01%) Firewall
2 9 (1.65%) HTTP
3 5 (0.91%) DNS
3 5 (0.91%) WAN
4 4 (0.73%) Network Security
5 1 (0.18%) 4G
5 1 (0.18%) 5G
5 1 (0.18%) DSL
5 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
5 1 (0.18%) Modbus
5 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
5 1 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.18%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (35.10%) Data Warehouse
2 158 (28.88%) Power BI
3 77 (14.08%) Metadata
4 66 (12.07%) Azure SQL Database
5 57 (10.42%) Amazon Redshift
6 55 (10.05%) Delta Lake
7 53 (9.69%) SQL Server
8 39 (7.13%) Amazon Athena
9 35 (6.40%) Big Data
10 34 (6.22%) BigQuery
11 29 (5.30%) PostgreSQL
12 28 (5.12%) NoSQL
13 27 (4.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 25 (4.57%) Relational Database
15 23 (4.20%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
16 21 (3.84%) Hadoop
17 20 (3.66%) Star Schema
18 19 (3.47%) Snowflake Schema
19 18 (3.29%) Tableau
20 17 (3.11%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 59 (10.79%) Git
2 27 (4.94%) JIRA
3 24 (4.39%) GitLab
4 18 (3.29%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.10%) ER Studio
5 6 (1.10%) ERwin
5 6 (1.10%) MLflow
6 5 (0.91%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.73%) JUnit
8 3 (0.55%) JMeter
9 2 (0.37%) Bitbucket
10 1 (0.18%) Hudson
10 1 (0.18%) Postman
10 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
10 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 143 (26.14%) Finance
2 116 (21.21%) Social Skills
3 68 (12.43%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (10.60%) Public Sector
5 31 (5.67%) Banking
6 17 (3.11%) Marketing
6 17 (3.11%) Retail
7 14 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
8 12 (2.19%) Manufacturing
9 7 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.10%) Military
11 5 (0.91%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.73%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.55%) Publishing
14 2 (0.37%) Automotive
14 2 (0.37%) Billing
14 2 (0.37%) General Ledger
14 2 (0.37%) Local Government
14 2 (0.37%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 178 (32.54%) Data Engineer
2 158 (28.88%) Architect
3 92 (16.82%) Data Architect
4 89 (16.27%) Senior
5 50 (9.14%) Senior Data Engineer
6 48 (8.78%) Solutions Architect
7 44 (8.04%) Lead
8 43 (7.86%) Azure Engineer
9 33 (6.03%) Developer
10 32 (5.85%) Azure Data Engineer
11 31 (5.67%) Analyst
12 23 (4.20%) Cloud Architect
13 22 (4.02%) Principal Engineer
14 21 (3.84%) AWS Engineer
15 20 (3.66%) Azure Architect
15 20 (3.66%) Cloud Solutions Architect
16 19 (3.47%) Data Analyst
17 15 (2.74%) AWS Data Engineer
18 14 (2.56%) Azure Data Architect
18 14 (2.56%) Lead Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (16.64%) PySpark
2 51 (9.32%) Kafka
3 28 (5.12%) REST
4 13 (2.38%) Great Expectations
5 12 (2.19%) XML
6 11 (2.01%) JSON
7 10 (1.83%) Middleware
7 10 (1.83%) Model Context Protocol
8 9 (1.65%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.65%) YAML
9 8 (1.46%) Spring
10 7 (1.28%) .NET
10 7 (1.28%) ARM Templates
10 7 (1.28%) LangChain
10 7 (1.28%) React
11 6 (1.10%) FastAPI
11 6 (1.10%) LangGraph
11 6 (1.10%) Microsoft Graph
11 6 (1.10%) PyTorch
11 6 (1.10%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 78 (14.26%) Cloud Native
2 26 (4.75%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (4.39%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
4 20 (3.66%) Product Ownership
5 14 (2.56%) IoT
6 11 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (2.01%) Low-Code
7 9 (1.65%) AI Agents
7 9 (1.65%) Reference Data
8 8 (1.46%) Digital Media
8 8 (1.46%) Management Information System
9 7 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
9 7 (1.28%) Data Fabric
9 7 (1.28%) Distributed Computing
9 7 (1.28%) Onboarding
10 6 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
11 5 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
11 5 (0.91%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.19%) Linux
2 10 (1.83%) Unix
3 5 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.55%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.37%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 296 (54.11%) Analytics
2 261 (47.71%) ETL
3 237 (43.33%) Data Modelling
4 225 (41.13%) Data Pipeline
5 217 (39.67%) Data Engineering
6 205 (37.48%) CI/CD
7 196 (35.83%) Business Intelligence
8 172 (31.44%) Data Governance
9 159 (29.07%) DevOps
10 151 (27.61%) AI
11 148 (27.06%) Data Architecture
12 135 (24.68%) Agile
13 122 (22.30%) Migration
14 104 (19.01%) Machine Learning
15 92 (16.82%) Problem-Solving
16 79 (14.44%) Data Transformation
17 74 (13.53%) Infrastructure as Code
18 72 (13.16%) Data Integration
18 72 (13.16%) Stakeholder Management
19 70 (12.80%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 317 (57.95%) SQL
2 213 (38.94%) Python
3 41 (7.50%) Java
4 23 (4.20%) Scala
5 20 (3.66%) C#
5 20 (3.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 17 (3.11%) T-SQL
7 15 (2.74%) PowerShell
8 13 (2.38%) Bicep
9 10 (1.83%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.65%) Bash
10 9 (1.65%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 3 (0.55%) R
12 3 (0.55%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.37%) SOQL
14 1 (0.18%) C
14 1 (0.18%) Cypher
14 1 (0.18%) SHACL
Qualifications
1 131 (23.95%) Security Cleared
2 106 (19.38%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.75%) Azure Certification
4 22 (4.02%) Degree
5 14 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.83%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.46%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.46%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
9 6 (1.10%) Computer Science Degree
9 6 (1.10%) Microsoft Certified Professional
10 5 (0.91%) CISM
10 5 (0.91%) CISSP
11 3 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.55%) CSPO
11 3 (0.55%) ISTQB
11 3 (0.55%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
12 2 (0.37%) Postgraduate
12 2 (0.37%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 178 (32.54%) Data Quality
2 57 (10.42%) GDPR
3 31 (5.67%) QA
4 5 (0.91%) PCI DSS
4 5 (0.91%) Solvency II
5 4 (0.73%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.73%) IFRS
5 4 (0.73%) MiFID
5 4 (0.73%) NIST
6 3 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.55%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.55%) IFRS 17
6 3 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.37%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.37%) PMO
8 1 (0.18%) Basel II
8 1 (0.18%) GRC
8 1 (0.18%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.18%) SOC 2
System Software
1 29 (5.30%) Docker
2 8 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.73%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.37%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 88 (16.09%) Terraform
2 36 (6.58%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.83%) Grafana
4 6 (1.10%) Ansible
5 3 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.37%) Argo
6 2 (0.37%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Oozie
7 1 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 202 (36.93%) Databricks
2 139 (25.41%) Microsoft
3 40 (7.31%) Informatica
4 32 (5.85%) Oracle
5 30 (5.48%) Google
6 18 (3.29%) OpenAI
7 16 (2.93%) Talend
8 14 (2.56%) SAP
9 9 (1.65%) Denodo
10 8 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.28%) Infor
12 6 (1.10%) Adobe
12 6 (1.10%) Cloudera
12 6 (1.10%) Dynatrace
13 5 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (0.73%) CheckPoint
14 4 (0.73%) Fortinet
14 4 (0.73%) Hortonworks
14 4 (0.73%) ServiceNow
15 3 (0.55%) Greenplum