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

6 months to
18 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 225 215 172
Rank change year-on-year -10 -43 +32
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 551 379 610
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.09% 1.27% 1.39%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.19% 6.83% 8.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 400 300 483
10th Percentile £400 £405 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £486
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £595 £600
Median % change year-on-year -7.49% -0.92% +6.43%
75th Percentile £652 £778 £850
90th Percentile £750 £875 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £540 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +13.68% -4.04% -5.71%
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 7,664 5,546 7,513
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.21% 18.63% 17.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,109 3,780 5,361
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% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 248 101 155
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.59 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.16 £25.01 £20.88
Median hourly rate £41.71 £35.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.17% -12.50% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.58 £66.00 £53.94
90th Percentile £78.31 £78.70 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.38 £31.85 £34.47
% change year-on-year +20.51% -7.60% -39.48%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -37 464 £575 -4.17% 115
London -22 309 £575 -17.86% 66
Work from Home -47 190 £538 -25.86% 61
UK excluding London -35 150 £540 +13.68% 74
Midlands -15 51 £600 +33.33% 13
North of England -55 40 £513 +7.89% 15
West Midlands -23 35 £618 +34.97% 10
North West -33 21 £500 +2.56% 10
Scotland +6 20 £463 -19.84% 2
South East -66 20 £425 -7.61% 18
East Midlands -10 16 £573 +41.48% 3
Yorkshire -51 15 £600 +33.19% 2
South West -15 13 £600 +6.67% 13
East of England -31 8 £575 -0.86% 6
North East -33 4 £450 - 3
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 - 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 79 (14.34%) Apache Spark
2 39 (7.08%) Apache
3 35 (6.35%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (4.90%) SAS
5 16 (2.90%) Confluence
6 3 (0.54%) 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 (0.54%) Infor M3
2 3 (0.54%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
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%) Adobe Campaign
4 1 (0.18%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.18%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.18%) SAP MDG
Cloud Services
1 374 (67.88%) Azure
2 197 (35.75%) AWS
3 193 (35.03%) Power Platform
4 157 (28.49%) Azure Data Factory
5 142 (25.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 90 (16.33%) GCP
7 87 (15.79%) Azure DevOps
8 81 (14.70%) GitHub
9 64 (11.62%) Serverless
10 58 (10.53%) Amazon S3
11 51 (9.26%) Snowflake
12 38 (6.90%) GitHub Actions
13 33 (5.99%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (5.63%) Microsoft Purview
15 28 (5.08%) Azure Cosmos DB
16 27 (4.90%) Azure Key Vault
17 25 (4.54%) Azure Functions
18 22 (3.99%) AWS CloudFormation
19 19 (3.45%) Amazon EMR
20 18 (3.27%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.63%) HTTP
2 8 (1.45%) Firewall
3 5 (0.91%) DNS
3 5 (0.91%) WAN
4 3 (0.54%) 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%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (33.76%) Data Warehouse
2 170 (30.85%) Power BI
3 76 (13.79%) Metadata
4 69 (12.52%) Azure SQL Database
5 66 (11.98%) SQL Server
6 59 (10.71%) Delta Lake
7 54 (9.80%) Amazon Redshift
8 40 (7.26%) Amazon Athena
9 35 (6.35%) Big Data
10 31 (5.63%) BigQuery
10 31 (5.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 29 (5.26%) NoSQL
12 26 (4.72%) PostgreSQL
13 25 (4.54%) Relational Database
14 23 (4.17%) Spark SQL
15 22 (3.99%) Hadoop
16 21 (3.81%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
17 20 (3.63%) Snowflake Schema
18 18 (3.27%) Star Schema
19 17 (3.09%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 65 (11.80%) Git
2 26 (4.72%) GitLab
3 21 (3.81%) JIRA
4 17 (3.09%) 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 3 (0.54%) JMeter
9 2 (0.36%) 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
1 141 (25.59%) Finance
2 116 (21.05%) Social Skills
3 65 (11.80%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (10.89%) Public Sector
5 25 (4.54%) Banking
6 16 (2.90%) Documentation Skills
7 15 (2.72%) Marketing
8 12 (2.18%) Retail
9 7 (1.27%) Military
10 6 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.91%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.73%) Financial Institution
12 4 (0.73%) Investment Banking
13 3 (0.54%) Publishing
14 2 (0.36%) Automotive
14 2 (0.36%) Back Office
14 2 (0.36%) Front Office
14 2 (0.36%) Pharmaceutical
14 2 (0.36%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 188 (34.12%) Data Engineer
2 156 (28.31%) Architect
3 91 (16.52%) Data Architect
4 89 (16.15%) Senior
5 54 (9.80%) Senior Data Engineer
6 45 (8.17%) Solutions Architect
7 42 (7.62%) Azure Engineer
7 42 (7.62%) Lead
8 35 (6.35%) Developer
9 32 (5.81%) Azure Data Engineer
10 24 (4.36%) Analyst
10 24 (4.36%) Cloud Architect
11 23 (4.17%) Principal Engineer
12 21 (3.81%) AWS Engineer
12 21 (3.81%) Azure Architect
12 21 (3.81%) Cloud Solutions Architect
13 16 (2.90%) Data Analyst
14 15 (2.72%) AWS Data Engineer
14 15 (2.72%) Azure Data Architect
14 15 (2.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 96 (17.42%) PySpark
2 52 (9.44%) Kafka
3 32 (5.81%) REST
4 14 (2.54%) Great Expectations
4 14 (2.54%) Model Context Protocol
5 13 (2.36%) XML
6 11 (2.00%) LangChain
7 10 (1.81%) JSON
7 10 (1.81%) LangGraph
7 10 (1.81%) Middleware
7 10 (1.81%) Pandas
8 9 (1.63%) PyTorch
8 9 (1.63%) scikit-learn
8 9 (1.63%) YAML
9 8 (1.45%) .NET
9 8 (1.45%) Microsoft Graph
9 8 (1.45%) Node.js
9 8 (1.45%) Spring Boot
10 7 (1.27%) HTML
10 7 (1.27%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 79 (14.34%) Cloud Native
2 25 (4.54%) Distributed Systems
3 24 (4.36%) Data Structures
4 19 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
5 17 (3.09%) Product Ownership
6 14 (2.54%) IoT
7 11 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.00%) Low-Code
7 11 (2.00%) Management Information System
8 10 (1.81%) AI Agents
9 9 (1.63%) Distributed Computing
9 9 (1.63%) Reference Data
10 8 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.45%) Digital Media
11 7 (1.27%) Data Fabric
11 7 (1.27%) Onboarding
12 6 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (0.91%) Distributed Architecture
13 5 (0.91%) Fixed Income
13 5 (0.91%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 11 (2.00%) Unix
2 9 (1.63%) Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 2 (0.36%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 293 (53.18%) Analytics
2 269 (48.82%) ETL
3 237 (43.01%) Data Modelling
4 223 (40.47%) Data Pipeline
5 220 (39.93%) Data Engineering
6 207 (37.57%) CI/CD
7 204 (37.02%) Business Intelligence
8 167 (30.31%) Data Governance
9 165 (29.95%) DevOps
10 156 (28.31%) AI
11 145 (26.32%) Data Architecture
12 125 (22.69%) Agile
13 115 (20.87%) Migration
14 103 (18.69%) Machine Learning
15 92 (16.70%) Problem-Solving
16 74 (13.43%) Data Transformation
17 73 (13.25%) Infrastructure as Code
18 72 (13.07%) Data Integration
19 67 (12.16%) Validation
20 66 (11.98%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 327 (59.35%) SQL
2 226 (41.02%) Python
3 44 (7.99%) Java
4 23 (4.17%) C#
5 22 (3.99%) Scala
6 20 (3.63%) T-SQL
7 19 (3.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 15 (2.72%) Bicep
8 15 (2.72%) PowerShell
9 10 (1.81%) JavaScript
10 9 (1.63%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.45%) Bash
11 8 (1.45%) PL/SQL
12 5 (0.91%) R
13 2 (0.36%) Ada
13 2 (0.36%) C++
13 2 (0.36%) SOQL
13 2 (0.36%) TypeScript
14 1 (0.18%) C
14 1 (0.18%) Cypher
Qualifications
1 131 (23.77%) Security Cleared
2 104 (18.87%) SC Cleared
3 27 (4.90%) Azure Certification
4 21 (3.81%) Degree
5 13 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
5 13 (2.36%) Microsoft Certification
6 10 (1.81%) Master's Degree
7 8 (1.45%) AWS Certification
7 8 (1.45%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 7 (1.27%) DV Cleared
9 6 (1.09%) TOGAF Certification
10 5 (0.91%) CISM
10 5 (0.91%) CISSP
11 4 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
12 3 (0.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 3 (0.54%) ISTQB
12 3 (0.54%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 2 (0.36%) CSPO
13 2 (0.36%) Postgraduate
13 2 (0.36%) SAP Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 181 (32.85%) Data Quality
2 54 (9.80%) GDPR
3 31 (5.63%) QA
4 5 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.73%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.73%) MiFID
5 4 (0.73%) NIST
5 4 (0.73%) PCI DSS
5 4 (0.73%) Solvency II
6 3 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.54%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 3 (0.54%) IFRS
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.36%) IFRS 9
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 27 (4.90%) Docker
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Desktop
2 5 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.54%) HDFS
4 2 (0.36%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 92 (16.70%) Terraform
2 33 (5.99%) Kubernetes
3 10 (1.81%) Grafana
4 6 (1.09%) Ansible
5 3 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.36%) Argo
6 2 (0.36%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.18%) Hadoop YARN
7 1 (0.18%) IBM Guardium
7 1 (0.18%) Oozie
Vendors
1 206 (37.39%) Databricks
2 153 (27.77%) Microsoft
3 40 (7.26%) Informatica
4 33 (5.99%) Oracle
5 30 (5.44%) Google
6 21 (3.81%) OpenAI
7 17 (3.09%) Talend
8 14 (2.54%) SAP
9 9 (1.63%) Denodo
10 8 (1.45%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.27%) Infor
12 6 (1.09%) Adobe
12 6 (1.09%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.09%) ServiceNow
13 5 (0.91%) BiZZdesign
13 5 (0.91%) Cloudera
14 4 (0.73%) CheckPoint
14 4 (0.73%) Fortinet
14 4 (0.73%) Greenplum
14 4 (0.73%) Hortonworks