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 12 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 232 196 224
Rank change year-on-year -36 +28 +54
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 424 418 456
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.17% 1.33% 1.06%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.90% 7.28% 6.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 304 335 326
10th Percentile £375 £386 £413
25th Percentile £425 £481 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £600 £550
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% +9.09% -5.17%
75th Percentile £638 £813 £650
90th Percentile £750 £938 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £489 £543
% change year-on-year -7.88% -9.95% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 3
10th Percentile - - £34.20
25th Percentile - - £43.88
Median hourly rate - £65.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year - +8.33% +71.43%
75th Percentile - - £60.75
90th Percentile - - £61.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - £45.75
% change year-on-year - - +30.71%

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 6,144 5,739 7,113
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.95% 18.21% 16.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,236 3,784 5,020
10th Percentile £330 £350 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £534
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 76 151
10th Percentile £19.60 £19.71 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £22.12
Median hourly rate £48.72 £35.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +39.20% -24.21% -16.04%
75th Percentile £73.13 £64.73 £64.52
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.88 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.50 £28.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year +100.00% -37.74% -12.08%

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 12 January 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 12 January 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 -61 343 £575 -7.03% 235
London -29 249 £603 -10.74% 61
Work from Home -68 143 £550 -18.52% 105
UK excluding London -34 105 £450 -7.88% 204
North of England -43 31 £488 +8.33% 39
Scotland +9 20 £447 +18.65% 5
South East -25 19 £425 -21.30% 70
North West -24 18 £401 -8.86% 16
Midlands -49 13 £506 +13.13% 32
Yorkshire -31 9 £575 +6.98% 14
West Midlands -43 8 £556 +21.58% 12
Northern Ireland +1 7 £325 -38.10% 3
East of England -14 7 £580 +13.17% 32
Wales -1 5 £555 +11.00% 8
South West -13 5 £713 +23.91% 19
East Midlands -16 5 £465 +30.62% 20
North East -16 4 £463 -2.63% 9

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 57 (13.44%) Apache Spark
2 55 (12.97%) Apache Airflow
3 51 (12.03%) Apache
4 5 (1.18%) SharePoint
5 3 (0.71%) Jupyter
5 3 (0.71%) WebLogic
6 1 (0.24%) Apache Synapse
6 1 (0.24%) Confluence
Applications
1 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (0.94%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 3 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.24%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 18 (4.25%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.18%) Aladdin
3 2 (0.47%) SAP CO
3 2 (0.47%) SAP FI
3 2 (0.47%) SAP FI/CO
3 2 (0.47%) SAP MDG
4 1 (0.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.24%) JDE EnterpriseOne
4 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.24%) SAP MM
4 1 (0.24%) SAP Oil and Gas
Cloud Services
1 288 (67.92%) Azure
2 149 (35.14%) AWS
3 133 (31.37%) Power Platform
4 132 (31.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 118 (27.83%) Azure Data Factory
6 71 (16.75%) Snowflake
7 57 (13.44%) GCP
8 56 (13.21%) Azure DevOps
9 52 (12.26%) Serverless
10 50 (11.79%) GitHub
11 39 (9.20%) Amazon S3
12 34 (8.02%) Microsoft Purview
13 31 (7.31%) dbt
14 28 (6.60%) AWS CloudFormation
15 26 (6.13%) Azure Functions
16 25 (5.90%) GitHub Actions
17 21 (4.95%) AWS Lambda
18 18 (4.25%) Azure Key Vault
19 17 (4.01%) Azure Cosmos DB
19 17 (4.01%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.18%) VPN
2 4 (0.94%) Firewall
3 3 (0.71%) Kerberos
4 2 (0.47%) Hyperconnected
4 2 (0.47%) Network Security
5 1 (0.24%) DSL
5 1 (0.24%) InfiniBand
5 1 (0.24%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 124 (29.25%) Data Warehouse
1 124 (29.25%) Power BI
2 49 (11.56%) Metadata
3 47 (11.08%) Azure SQL Database
4 46 (10.85%) SQL Server
5 44 (10.38%) Delta Lake
6 34 (8.02%) Amazon Athena
7 30 (7.08%) Big Data
8 28 (6.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 27 (6.37%) Relational Database
10 22 (5.19%) NoSQL
11 21 (4.95%) Apache Iceberg
12 20 (4.72%) BigQuery
13 19 (4.48%) PostgreSQL
14 18 (4.25%) Amazon Redshift
14 18 (4.25%) Tableau
15 17 (4.01%) Apache Arrow
15 17 (4.01%) Apache Ignite
15 17 (4.01%) Dremio
15 17 (4.01%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 37 (8.73%) Git
2 32 (7.55%) GitLab
3 9 (2.12%) MLflow
4 6 (1.42%) ER Studio
4 6 (1.42%) ERwin
4 6 (1.42%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.18%) JIRA
6 3 (0.71%) JMeter
7 2 (0.47%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.47%) Pylint
7 2 (0.47%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.47%) Terragrunt
8 1 (0.24%) GCC
8 1 (0.24%) Gradle
8 1 (0.24%) Hudson
8 1 (0.24%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.24%) Maven
8 1 (0.24%) Poetry
8 1 (0.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.24%) Visual Studio
General
1 118 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 117 (27.59%) Finance
3 48 (11.32%) Analytical Skills
4 37 (8.73%) Public Sector
5 30 (7.08%) Banking
6 23 (5.42%) Front Office
7 18 (4.25%) Influencing Skills
8 17 (4.01%) Investment Banking
8 17 (4.01%) Pharmaceutical
9 12 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.65%) Retail
11 5 (1.18%) Legal
12 4 (0.94%) Back Office
12 4 (0.94%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (0.94%) Manufacturing
13 3 (0.71%) Marketing
13 3 (0.71%) Military
14 2 (0.47%) Police
14 2 (0.47%) Presentation Skills
14 2 (0.47%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 128 (30.19%) Data Engineer
2 78 (18.40%) Architect
3 72 (16.98%) Senior
4 50 (11.79%) Azure Engineer
5 46 (10.85%) Data Architect
6 42 (9.91%) AWS Engineer
7 36 (8.49%) Developer
8 32 (7.55%) Software Engineer
9 31 (7.31%) Lead
10 30 (7.08%) Azure Data Engineer
11 28 (6.60%) Python Engineer
12 24 (5.66%) Senior Data Engineer
13 21 (4.95%) AWS Software Engineer
14 18 (4.25%) DevOps Engineer
14 18 (4.25%) Java Engineer
14 18 (4.25%) Java Software Engineer
15 17 (4.01%) Python Software Engineer
15 17 (4.01%) Senior Software Engineer
16 16 (3.77%) Analyst
16 16 (3.77%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 71 (16.75%) PySpark
2 36 (8.49%) Kafka
3 32 (7.55%) Pandas
4 24 (5.66%) NumPy
5 19 (4.48%) REST
5 19 (4.48%) SciPy
6 17 (4.01%) gRPC
6 17 (4.01%) Protocol Buffers
7 14 (3.30%) JSON
8 13 (3.07%) PyTorch
8 13 (3.07%) scikit-learn
8 13 (3.07%) TensorFlow
9 12 (2.83%) LangChain
10 11 (2.59%) LangGraph
10 11 (2.59%) Microsoft Graph
10 11 (2.59%) Spark Streaming
11 8 (1.89%) Great Expectations
12 6 (1.42%) React
12 6 (1.42%) SOAP
12 6 (1.42%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 30 (7.08%) Cloud Native
2 19 (4.48%) Equities
3 18 (4.25%) Derivative
3 18 (4.25%) Fixed Income
4 17 (4.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 17 (4.01%) Hedge funds
4 17 (4.01%) Pricing Data
5 14 (3.30%) Distributed Computing
6 13 (3.07%) Data Structures
7 12 (2.83%) Product Ownership
8 10 (2.36%) Onboarding
9 9 (2.12%) Data Fabric
10 8 (1.89%) Algorithms
10 8 (1.89%) IoT
11 7 (1.65%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.65%) NHS
12 6 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
12 6 (1.42%) Enterprise Software
12 6 (1.42%) Management Information System
13 5 (1.18%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 14 (3.30%) Linux
2 11 (2.59%) Unix
3 7 (1.65%) Windows
4 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (0.24%) VMS
4 1 (0.24%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 201 (47.41%) Analytics
2 187 (44.10%) ETL
3 165 (38.92%) Data Pipeline
4 141 (33.25%) CI/CD
5 139 (32.78%) Business Intelligence
6 138 (32.55%) Data Modelling
7 125 (29.48%) DevOps
8 118 (27.83%) Data Engineering
9 113 (26.65%) Data Governance
10 93 (21.93%) Data Architecture
11 90 (21.23%) Agile
11 90 (21.23%) AI
12 77 (18.16%) Machine Learning
13 64 (15.09%) Infrastructure as Code
14 54 (12.74%) Data Integration
15 52 (12.26%) Data Science
16 49 (11.56%) Software Engineering
17 46 (10.85%) Migration
18 44 (10.38%) Problem-Solving
19 42 (9.91%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 237 (55.90%) SQL
2 214 (50.47%) Python
3 45 (10.61%) Java
4 25 (5.90%) JavaScript
5 22 (5.19%) TypeScript
6 21 (4.95%) C#
7 19 (4.48%) T-SQL
8 14 (3.30%) Bicep
8 14 (3.30%) Scala
9 13 (3.07%) PowerShell
10 12 (2.83%) R
11 11 (2.59%) Bash
12 10 (2.36%) PL/SQL
13 9 (2.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 3 (0.71%) Korn
15 2 (0.47%) Ada
15 2 (0.47%) C++
15 2 (0.47%) Perl
16 1 (0.24%) C
16 1 (0.24%) HiveQL
Qualifications
1 47 (11.08%) Security Cleared
2 33 (7.78%) SC Cleared
3 26 (6.13%) Degree
4 22 (5.19%) Azure Certification
5 16 (3.77%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.83%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.89%) MCP
8 7 (1.65%) AWS Certification
9 6 (1.42%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.71%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.71%) ISTQB
10 3 (0.71%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
10 3 (0.71%) PMI Certification
10 3 (0.71%) PMP
11 2 (0.47%) ACCA
11 2 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 2 (0.47%) CIMA
12 1 (0.24%) APMG
12 1 (0.24%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 98 (23.11%) Data Quality
2 55 (12.97%) GDPR
3 16 (3.77%) QA
4 14 (3.30%) HIPAA
5 12 (2.83%) NIST
6 8 (1.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 6 (1.42%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.71%) PCI DSS
9 2 (0.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 33 (7.78%) Docker
2 7 (1.65%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.18%) zsh
4 4 (0.94%) HDFS
4 4 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.24%) Lustre
5 1 (0.24%) NFS
Systems Management
1 69 (16.27%) Terraform
2 27 (6.37%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.89%) Ansible
4 7 (1.65%) Grafana
5 3 (0.71%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.47%) Fluentd
6 2 (0.47%) Packer
7 1 (0.24%) Argo
7 1 (0.24%) Kibana
7 1 (0.24%) Kubeflow
7 1 (0.24%) logstash
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle ZFS
7 1 (0.24%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.24%) Puppet
7 1 (0.24%) Salt
7 1 (0.24%) SELinux
7 1 (0.24%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 162 (38.21%) Databricks
2 125 (29.48%) Microsoft
3 27 (6.37%) SAP
4 19 (4.48%) Google
5 17 (4.01%) OpenAI
6 13 (3.07%) Informatica
6 13 (3.07%) Oracle
7 7 (1.65%) Cloudera
8 6 (1.42%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.18%) ServiceNow
10 4 (0.94%) Greenplum
10 4 (0.94%) Talend
11 3 (0.71%) Ab Initio
12 2 (0.47%) Ariba
12 2 (0.47%) BiZZdesign
12 2 (0.47%) Charles River
12 2 (0.47%) Hyperion
12 2 (0.47%) NVIDIA
12 2 (0.47%) SimCorp
12 2 (0.47%) Sparx