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 4 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 243 232 153
Rank change year-on-year -11 -79 +51
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 576 370 635
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.12% 1.62%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.11% 6.18% 8.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 438 269 522
10th Percentile £401 £400 £425
25th Percentile £458 £463 £507
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £675
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -14.81% +17.39%
75th Percentile £650 £775 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +13.68% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £48.25 - -
25th Percentile £49.38 - -
Median hourly rate £52.50 - £40.50
75th Percentile £54.38 - -
90th Percentile £54.75 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 - £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 8,101 5,991 7,088
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.33% 18.21% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,383 4,054 5,008
10th Percentile £356 £343 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £509 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.72% -3.10% -2.95%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
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 256 89 101
10th Percentile £16.35 £19.15 £15.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £39.00 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.43% -1.41% -35.45%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.25 £78.96 £72.50
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 4 August 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 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 4 August 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 -36 476 £575 -0.86% 244
London -29 295 £575 -11.54% 154
Work from Home -22 207 £529 -18.62% 121
UK excluding London -16 176 £540 +13.68% 130
Midlands +6 71 £600 +39.53% 33
West Midlands -7 54 £600 +41.18% 17
North of England -35 49 £550 +15.79% 17
North West -38 30 £500 - 7
Yorkshire -32 18 £550 +22.09% 7
South East -77 18 £461 +0.16% 48
East Midlands +2 17 £525 +28.05% 16
Scotland 0 17 £418 -27.64% 11
South West -32 14 £600 +26.32% 3
East of England -24 9 £575 -0.86% 6
Wales -13 1 £325 -35.00% 9
North East -40 1 £450 - 3

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 72 (12.50%) Apache Spark
2 44 (7.64%) Apache
3 38 (6.60%) Apache Airflow
4 33 (5.73%) SAS
5 22 (3.82%) Confluence
6 5 (0.87%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.35%) ArcGIS
7 2 (0.35%) Jupyter
7 2 (0.35%) nginx
7 2 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
8 1 (0.17%) JBoss
8 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 5 (0.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.04%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.87%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 3 (0.52%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.52%) Salesforce CRM
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%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.35%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 360 (62.50%) Azure
2 205 (35.59%) AWS
3 174 (30.21%) Power Platform
4 137 (23.78%) Azure Data Factory
5 119 (20.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 92 (15.97%) GCP
7 80 (13.89%) Azure DevOps
8 77 (13.37%) Snowflake
9 59 (10.24%) Amazon S3
10 57 (9.90%) GitHub
11 54 (9.38%) Serverless
12 36 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
13 31 (5.38%) GitHub Actions
14 27 (4.69%) dbt
15 25 (4.34%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 22 (3.82%) Microsoft Purview
17 21 (3.65%) Amazon EMR
17 21 (3.65%) Azure Key Vault
18 19 (3.30%) Entra ID
19 17 (2.95%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.56%) Firewall
1 9 (1.56%) HTTP
2 6 (1.04%) DNS
3 5 (0.87%) WAN
4 4 (0.69%) Network Security
5 3 (0.52%) Broadband
6 2 (0.35%) DSL
6 2 (0.35%) Modbus
7 1 (0.17%) 4G
7 1 (0.17%) 5G
7 1 (0.17%) AMQP
7 1 (0.17%) Ethernet
7 1 (0.17%) IPsec
7 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.17%) MQTT
7 1 (0.17%) OpenVPN
7 1 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
7 1 (0.17%) Reverse Proxy
7 1 (0.17%) VPN
7 1 (0.17%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 220 (38.19%) Data Warehouse
2 158 (27.43%) Power BI
3 76 (13.19%) Metadata
4 63 (10.94%) Amazon Redshift
5 55 (9.55%) Azure SQL Database
6 48 (8.33%) Delta Lake
7 43 (7.47%) SQL Server
8 42 (7.29%) Amazon Athena
9 39 (6.77%) Big Data
10 30 (5.21%) BigQuery
10 30 (5.21%) NoSQL
11 27 (4.69%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
11 27 (4.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 25 (4.34%) Relational Database
13 24 (4.17%) PostgreSQL
14 22 (3.82%) Tableau
15 19 (3.30%) Snowflake Schema
16 18 (3.13%) Star Schema
17 15 (2.60%) Hadoop
17 15 (2.60%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 56 (9.72%) Git
2 27 (4.69%) GitLab
2 27 (4.69%) JIRA
3 20 (3.47%) Jenkins
4 8 (1.39%) ER Studio
4 8 (1.39%) ERwin
5 7 (1.22%) PowerDesigner
6 5 (0.87%) MLflow
7 4 (0.69%) JUnit
8 2 (0.35%) Bitbucket
8 2 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (0.17%) Hudson
9 1 (0.17%) Postman
9 1 (0.17%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.17%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.17%) Terragrunt
9 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 142 (24.65%) Finance
2 130 (22.57%) Social Skills
3 75 (13.02%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (10.24%) Public Sector
5 40 (6.94%) Banking
6 22 (3.82%) Marketing
7 21 (3.65%) Retail
8 15 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (2.43%) Manufacturing
10 10 (1.74%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 6 (1.04%) Financial Institution
12 6 (1.04%) Military
12 6 (1.04%) Police
13 5 (0.87%) Investment Banking
14 4 (0.69%) Publishing
15 3 (0.52%) Legal
15 3 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
15 3 (0.52%) Telecoms
16 2 (0.35%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 190 (32.99%) Architect
2 178 (30.90%) Data Engineer
3 110 (19.10%) Data Architect
4 85 (14.76%) Senior
5 62 (10.76%) Solutions Architect
6 46 (7.99%) Senior Data Engineer
7 44 (7.64%) Analyst
7 44 (7.64%) Azure Engineer
7 44 (7.64%) Lead
8 35 (6.08%) Azure Data Engineer
9 31 (5.38%) Developer
10 30 (5.21%) Data Analyst
11 28 (4.86%) Cloud Architect
12 26 (4.51%) Business Analyst
13 25 (4.34%) Data Business Analyst
14 23 (3.99%) Azure Architect
15 21 (3.65%) AWS Engineer
16 20 (3.47%) Cloud Solutions Architect
17 15 (2.60%) AWS Data Engineer
17 15 (2.60%) Principal Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 78 (13.54%) PySpark
2 50 (8.68%) Kafka
3 25 (4.34%) REST
4 12 (2.08%) JSON
5 10 (1.74%) Middleware
5 10 (1.74%) Spring Boot
5 10 (1.74%) YAML
6 9 (1.56%) Spring
6 9 (1.56%) XML
7 8 (1.39%) Great Expectations
8 7 (1.22%) FastAPI
8 7 (1.22%) React
9 6 (1.04%) ARM Templates
9 6 (1.04%) Node.js
10 5 (0.87%) .NET
10 5 (0.87%) HTML
10 5 (0.87%) Langfuse
10 5 (0.87%) PyTorch
10 5 (0.87%) scikit-learn
11 4 (0.69%) CSS
Miscellaneous
1 85 (14.76%) Cloud Native
2 42 (7.29%) Data Structures
3 29 (5.03%) Product Ownership
4 27 (4.69%) Distributed Systems
4 27 (4.69%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (2.43%) Data Fabric
6 13 (2.26%) IoT
7 12 (2.08%) Onboarding
8 11 (1.91%) Low-Code
8 11 (1.91%) Reference Data
9 10 (1.74%) AI Agents
10 9 (1.56%) Data Protection Act
11 8 (1.39%) Digital Media
11 8 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
11 8 (1.39%) Marketing Technology
12 7 (1.22%) Management Information System
13 6 (1.04%) Enterprise Cloud
13 6 (1.04%) Fixed Income
13 6 (1.04%) Reinsurance
13 6 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 18 (3.13%) Linux
2 13 (2.26%) Unix
3 5 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.52%) Ubuntu
4 3 (0.52%) Windows
5 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 303 (52.60%) Analytics
2 257 (44.62%) ETL
3 247 (42.88%) Data Modelling
4 242 (42.01%) Data Pipeline
5 210 (36.46%) Data Engineering
6 206 (35.76%) Business Intelligence
7 203 (35.24%) CI/CD
8 184 (31.94%) Data Governance
9 160 (27.78%) Data Architecture
10 157 (27.26%) Agile
11 156 (27.08%) DevOps
12 144 (25.00%) Migration
13 139 (24.13%) AI
14 99 (17.19%) Data Transformation
15 92 (15.97%) Stakeholder Management
16 87 (15.10%) Problem-Solving
16 87 (15.10%) Validation
17 86 (14.93%) Machine Learning
18 85 (14.76%) Data Integration
19 78 (13.54%) Integration Patterns
Programming Languages
1 310 (53.82%) SQL
2 195 (33.85%) Python
3 37 (6.42%) Java
4 21 (3.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 19 (3.30%) PowerShell
6 17 (2.95%) C#
6 17 (2.95%) Scala
7 15 (2.60%) Bicep
8 14 (2.43%) T-SQL
9 12 (2.08%) Bash
10 11 (1.91%) Shell Script
11 10 (1.74%) JavaScript
12 8 (1.39%) PL/SQL
13 5 (0.87%) R
14 4 (0.69%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.35%) Cypher
15 2 (0.35%) SHACL
15 2 (0.35%) SOQL
16 1 (0.17%) Ada
16 1 (0.17%) C
Qualifications
1 132 (22.92%) Security Cleared
2 105 (18.23%) SC Cleared
3 27 (4.69%) Azure Certification
4 16 (2.78%) Degree
5 15 (2.60%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.22%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.04%) CISM
8 6 (1.04%) CISSP
8 6 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.04%) Master's Degree
8 6 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (0.87%) TOGAF Certification
10 4 (0.69%) CSPO
10 4 (0.69%) Microsoft Certified Professional
11 3 (0.52%) (ISC)2 CCSP
11 3 (0.52%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 3 (0.52%) CCSP
11 3 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
11 3 (0.52%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 184 (31.94%) Data Quality
2 55 (9.55%) GDPR
3 29 (5.03%) QA
4 8 (1.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.22%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.22%) Solvency II
6 6 (1.04%) NIST
6 6 (1.04%) PCI DSS
7 5 (0.87%) GRC
7 5 (0.87%) MiFID
8 4 (0.69%) IFRS
8 4 (0.69%) PMO
9 3 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.52%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.52%) SLA
10 2 (0.35%) IFRS 9
11 1 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
11 1 (0.17%) NCSC
11 1 (0.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 32 (5.56%) Docker
2 9 (1.56%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.39%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.87%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.35%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 73 (12.67%) Terraform
2 38 (6.60%) Kubernetes
3 12 (2.08%) Grafana
4 8 (1.39%) Ansible
5 4 (0.69%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.52%) Argo
7 2 (0.35%) Puppet
8 1 (0.17%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 196 (34.03%) Databricks
2 131 (22.74%) Microsoft
3 37 (6.42%) Informatica
4 24 (4.17%) Google
5 22 (3.82%) Oracle
6 18 (3.13%) SAP
7 16 (2.78%) OpenAI
8 13 (2.26%) Denodo
9 11 (1.91%) Talend
10 10 (1.74%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.56%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.39%) Adobe
13 6 (1.04%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.04%) Infor
14 5 (0.87%) IBM
14 5 (0.87%) Sparx
15 4 (0.69%) Guidewire
15 4 (0.69%) Hortonworks
15 4 (0.69%) Red Hat
16 3 (0.52%) Greenplum