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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 239 219 162
Rank change year-on-year -20 -57 +40
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 548 374 637
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.07% 1.22% 1.48%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.99% 6.62% 8.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 288 514
10th Percentile £400 £402 £421
25th Percentile £459 £463 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £580 £650
Median % change year-on-year -5.17% -10.77% +13.04%
75th Percentile £663 £775 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £473 £490
% change year-on-year +16.40% -3.57% -6.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 1
10th Percentile £51.25 - -
25th Percentile £57.25 - -
Median hourly rate £64.00 - £40.50
75th Percentile £67.75 - -
90th Percentile £69.22 - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 - £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 7,845 5,647 7,536
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 18.36% 17.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,192 3,828 5,379
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £700 £751 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 100 150
10th Percentile £15.21 £19.56 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.57 £20.82
Median hourly rate £38.50 £34.99 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.03% -12.53% -29.08%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.94 £53.29
90th Percentile £76.80 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.31 £31.64 £33.00
% change year-on-year +17.92% -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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -34 458 £575 -4.17% 164
London -38 295 £591 -12.44% 99
Work from Home -36 196 £545 -19.26% 94
UK excluding London -22 160 £550 +16.40% 104
Midlands -11 59 £600 +46.34% 16
North of England -58 45 £500 +5.26% 22
West Midlands -17 40 £615 +44.71% 12
North West -32 25 £500 +2.56% 15
Scotland +11 20 £425 -26.34% 7
East Midlands +1 19 £549 +35.56% 4
Yorkshire -42 17 £600 +33.19% 3
South East -74 16 £459 +2.00% 33
South West -21 13 £600 +6.67% 14
East of England -24 9 £575 -0.86% 5
North East -30 3 £463 - 4
Wales - 1 £325 - 6

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 (13.87%) Apache Spark
2 40 (7.30%) Apache
3 38 (6.93%) Apache Airflow
4 28 (5.11%) SAS
5 22 (4.01%) Confluence
6 3 (0.55%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.36%) Apache Synapse
7 2 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 2 (0.36%) nginx
7 2 (0.36%) 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 (0.36%) Adobe Campaign
3 2 (0.36%) Endur
3 2 (0.36%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.36%) Salesforce CRM
3 2 (0.36%) Temenos T24
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 359 (65.51%) Azure
2 195 (35.58%) AWS
3 175 (31.93%) Power Platform
4 146 (26.64%) Azure Data Factory
5 133 (24.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 93 (16.97%) GCP
7 83 (15.15%) Azure DevOps
8 74 (13.50%) GitHub
9 62 (11.31%) Snowflake
10 60 (10.95%) Serverless
11 59 (10.77%) Amazon S3
12 37 (6.75%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (6.02%) AWS Lambda
14 27 (4.93%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 27 (4.93%) Microsoft Purview
15 23 (4.20%) Azure Key Vault
15 23 (4.20%) dbt
16 22 (4.01%) Azure Functions
17 21 (3.83%) AWS CloudFormation
18 20 (3.65%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.01%) Firewall
2 9 (1.64%) HTTP
3 5 (0.91%) DNS
3 5 (0.91%) WAN
4 4 (0.73%) Network Security
5 2 (0.36%) DSL
6 1 (0.18%) 4G
6 1 (0.18%) 5G
6 1 (0.18%) Ethernet
6 1 (0.18%) Modbus
6 1 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
6 1 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.18%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 192 (35.04%) Data Warehouse
2 154 (28.10%) Power BI
3 73 (13.32%) Metadata
4 64 (11.68%) Azure SQL Database
5 58 (10.58%) Amazon Redshift
6 54 (9.85%) Delta Lake
7 51 (9.31%) SQL Server
8 40 (7.30%) Amazon Athena
9 36 (6.57%) Big Data
10 34 (6.20%) BigQuery
11 31 (5.66%) PostgreSQL
12 28 (5.11%) NoSQL
13 26 (4.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 25 (4.56%) Relational Database
15 23 (4.20%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
16 21 (3.83%) Hadoop
16 21 (3.83%) Snowflake Schema
17 19 (3.47%) Spark SQL
18 18 (3.28%) Star Schema
18 18 (3.28%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 59 (10.77%) Git
2 26 (4.74%) JIRA
3 25 (4.56%) GitLab
4 18 (3.28%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.09%) ER Studio
5 6 (1.09%) ERwin
5 6 (1.09%) MLflow
6 5 (0.91%) PowerDesigner
7 4 (0.73%) JUnit
8 2 (0.36%) Bitbucket
9 1 (0.18%) Hudson
9 1 (0.18%) JMeter
9 1 (0.18%) Postman
9 1 (0.18%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.18%) SonarQube
9 1 (0.18%) Visual Studio
General
1 145 (26.46%) Finance
2 116 (21.17%) Social Skills
3 69 (12.59%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (10.77%) Public Sector
5 31 (5.66%) Banking
6 19 (3.47%) Marketing
7 17 (3.10%) Retail
8 14 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.19%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.28%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.09%) Financial Institution
11 6 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 5 (0.91%) Military
13 4 (0.73%) Investment Banking
14 3 (0.55%) Publishing
15 2 (0.36%) Billing
15 2 (0.36%) Front Office
15 2 (0.36%) General Ledger
15 2 (0.36%) Local Government
15 2 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 178 (32.48%) Data Engineer
2 162 (29.56%) Architect
3 95 (17.34%) Data Architect
4 86 (15.69%) Senior
5 49 (8.94%) Solutions Architect
6 47 (8.58%) Senior Data Engineer
7 45 (8.21%) Azure Engineer
8 43 (7.85%) Lead
9 34 (6.20%) Azure Data Engineer
10 33 (6.02%) Developer
11 31 (5.66%) Analyst
12 23 (4.20%) Cloud Architect
13 22 (4.01%) Principal Engineer
14 21 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
14 21 (3.83%) Azure Architect
15 20 (3.65%) Cloud Solutions Architect
16 19 (3.47%) Data Analyst
17 15 (2.74%) AWS Data Engineer
17 15 (2.74%) Azure Data Architect
17 15 (2.74%) Lead Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 91 (16.61%) PySpark
2 53 (9.67%) Kafka
3 28 (5.11%) REST
4 13 (2.37%) Great Expectations
4 13 (2.37%) XML
5 12 (2.19%) JSON
6 11 (2.01%) Model Context Protocol
6 11 (2.01%) YAML
7 10 (1.82%) Middleware
7 10 (1.82%) Spring Boot
8 9 (1.64%) Spring
9 8 (1.46%) React
10 7 (1.28%) .NET
10 7 (1.28%) ARM Templates
10 7 (1.28%) FastAPI
10 7 (1.28%) LangChain
11 6 (1.09%) LangGraph
11 6 (1.09%) Microsoft Graph
11 6 (1.09%) PyTorch
11 6 (1.09%) scikit-learn
Miscellaneous
1 77 (14.05%) Cloud Native
2 26 (4.74%) Data Structures
2 26 (4.74%) Distributed Systems
3 20 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 19 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
5 14 (2.55%) IoT
6 11 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (2.01%) Low-Code
7 10 (1.82%) AI Agents
8 9 (1.64%) Reference Data
9 8 (1.46%) Digital Media
9 8 (1.46%) Management Information System
9 8 (1.46%) Onboarding
10 7 (1.28%) Analytical Mindset
10 7 (1.28%) Data Fabric
10 7 (1.28%) Distributed Computing
11 6 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
12 5 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
12 5 (0.91%) Enterprise Cloud
12 5 (0.91%) Marketing Technology
Operating Systems
1 12 (2.19%) Linux
2 10 (1.82%) Unix
3 5 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.55%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.36%) Windows
6 1 (0.18%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 294 (53.65%) Analytics
2 259 (47.26%) ETL
3 234 (42.70%) Data Modelling
4 225 (41.06%) Data Pipeline
5 217 (39.60%) Data Engineering
6 205 (37.41%) CI/CD
7 192 (35.04%) Business Intelligence
8 177 (32.30%) Data Governance
9 159 (29.01%) DevOps
10 150 (27.37%) AI
11 148 (27.01%) Data Architecture
12 133 (24.27%) Agile
13 123 (22.45%) Migration
14 100 (18.25%) Machine Learning
15 91 (16.61%) Problem-Solving
16 80 (14.60%) Data Transformation
17 75 (13.69%) Infrastructure as Code
18 74 (13.50%) Stakeholder Management
18 74 (13.50%) Validation
19 73 (13.32%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 312 (56.93%) SQL
2 213 (38.87%) Python
3 42 (7.66%) Java
4 23 (4.20%) Scala
5 20 (3.65%) C#
5 20 (3.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 17 (3.10%) T-SQL
7 15 (2.74%) PowerShell
8 14 (2.55%) Bicep
9 10 (1.82%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.64%) Bash
10 9 (1.64%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.46%) PL/SQL
12 4 (0.73%) R
12 4 (0.73%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.36%) Cypher
13 2 (0.36%) SHACL
13 2 (0.36%) SOQL
14 1 (0.18%) C
Qualifications
1 128 (23.36%) Security Cleared
2 103 (18.80%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.74%) Azure Certification
4 23 (4.20%) Degree
5 14 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.82%) Master's Degree
7 9 (1.64%) AWS Certification
8 7 (1.28%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
8 7 (1.28%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 7 (1.28%) TOGAF Certification
9 5 (0.91%) CISM
9 5 (0.91%) CISSP
10 3 (0.55%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
10 3 (0.55%) CSPO
11 2 (0.36%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.36%) SnowPro
12 1 (0.18%) PMP
12 1 (0.18%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 176 (32.12%) Data Quality
2 59 (10.77%) GDPR
3 29 (5.29%) QA
4 5 (0.91%) Accessibility
4 5 (0.91%) PCI DSS
4 5 (0.91%) Solvency II
5 4 (0.73%) IFRS
5 4 (0.73%) MiFID
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 (0.36%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.36%) NIST
7 2 (0.36%) 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 (5.29%) Docker
2 8 (1.46%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (0.73%) Active Directory
5 2 (0.36%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 89 (16.24%) Terraform
2 36 (6.57%) Kubernetes
3 11 (2.01%) Grafana
4 7 (1.28%) Ansible
5 3 (0.55%) Argo
5 3 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Oozie
7 1 (0.18%) Puppet
Vendors
1 201 (36.68%) Databricks
2 133 (24.27%) Microsoft
3 42 (7.66%) Informatica
4 32 (5.84%) Oracle
5 31 (5.66%) Google
6 19 (3.47%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.10%) Talend
8 14 (2.55%) SAP
9 9 (1.64%) Denodo
10 8 (1.46%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.28%) Adobe
11 7 (1.28%) Infor
12 6 (1.09%) Cloudera
12 6 (1.09%) Dynatrace
13 5 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
14 4 (0.73%) CheckPoint
14 4 (0.73%) Fortinet
14 4 (0.73%) Greenplum
14 4 (0.73%) Hortonworks
15 3 (0.55%) Red Hat