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

6 months to
26 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 237 251 158
Rank change year-on-year +14 -93 +51
Contract jobs citing Data Lake 589 356 614
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 1.10% 1.09% 1.58%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.22% 6.03% 8.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 454 259 516
10th Percentile £409 £400 £428
25th Percentile £460 £463 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £725
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -20.69% +26.09%
75th Percentile £655 £750 £850
90th Percentile £750 £825 £888
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +15.79% -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 - - -32.50%

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 8,160 5,905 7,028
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.21% 18.05% 18.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,437 3,967 4,921
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.09%
75th Percentile £606 £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 251 94 100
10th Percentile £15.75 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £22.91 £29.00 £19.90
Median hourly rate £38.25 £36.75 £33.22
Median % change year-on-year +4.08% +10.64% -39.61%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.31 £54.06
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.74 £69.93
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £32.58 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.40% +8.60% -42.86%

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 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 26 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 -20 480 £575 -4.17% 115
London -39 291 £595 -8.54% 80
Work from Home -24 207 £550 -15.38% 49
UK excluding London +7 186 £550 +15.79% 61
Midlands +12 76 £600 +46.34% 14
West Midlands -3 60 £600 +50.00% 7
North of England -52 49 £550 +15.79% 10
North West -39 30 £525 +5.00% 4
South East -77 19 £459 -1.08% 8
Yorkshire -28 18 £550 +22.09% 4
Scotland -1 17 £418 -3.13% 16
East Midlands -5 16 £550 +34.15% 7
South West -31 15 £600 +26.32% 7
East of England -30 10 £575 -0.86% 1
Wales -12 3 £500 - 5
North East -41 1 £450 - 2

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 73 (12.39%) Apache Spark
2 47 (7.98%) Apache
3 38 (6.45%) Apache Airflow
4 36 (6.11%) SAS
5 19 (3.23%) Confluence
6 5 (0.85%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.51%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.34%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.17%) Apache Synapse
9 1 (0.17%) JBoss
9 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.17%) nginx
9 1 (0.17%) Oracle Coherence
Applications
1 5 (0.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.17%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.02%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 5 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.51%) Adobe Campaign
3 3 (0.51%) Salesforce CRM
4 2 (0.34%) Aladdin
4 2 (0.34%) Endur
4 2 (0.34%) Infor M3
4 2 (0.34%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.34%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.34%) Temenos T24
5 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 360 (61.12%) Azure
2 209 (35.48%) AWS
3 181 (30.73%) Power Platform
4 141 (23.94%) Azure Data Factory
5 111 (18.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 96 (16.30%) GCP
7 81 (13.75%) Azure DevOps
7 81 (13.75%) Snowflake
8 62 (10.53%) Amazon S3
9 55 (9.34%) GitHub
10 53 (9.00%) Serverless
11 36 (6.11%) AWS Lambda
12 26 (4.41%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 26 (4.41%) dbt
12 26 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
13 21 (3.57%) Microsoft Purview
14 20 (3.40%) Amazon EMR
14 20 (3.40%) Entra ID
14 20 (3.40%) SaaS
15 18 (3.06%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.70%) HTTP
2 7 (1.19%) Firewall
3 6 (1.02%) DNS
4 5 (0.85%) WAN
5 3 (0.51%) Broadband
5 3 (0.51%) Network Security
6 2 (0.34%) DSL
7 1 (0.17%) AMQP
7 1 (0.17%) IPsec
7 1 (0.17%) LoRaWAN
7 1 (0.17%) Modbus
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%) SMS
7 1 (0.17%) VPN
7 1 (0.17%) X.509
Database & Business Intelligence
1 226 (38.37%) Data Warehouse
2 163 (27.67%) Power BI
3 89 (15.11%) Metadata
4 67 (11.38%) Amazon Redshift
5 59 (10.02%) Azure SQL Database
6 44 (7.47%) Amazon Athena
7 42 (7.13%) Delta Lake
8 40 (6.79%) Big Data
9 38 (6.45%) NoSQL
9 38 (6.45%) SQL Server
10 31 (5.26%) BigQuery
11 30 (5.09%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 27 (4.58%) PostgreSQL
13 26 (4.41%) Relational Database
14 24 (4.07%) Tableau
15 20 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 20 (3.40%) Star Schema
16 17 (2.89%) Amazon RDS
16 17 (2.89%) Semantic Layer
16 17 (2.89%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 52 (8.83%) Git
2 30 (5.09%) GitLab
3 24 (4.07%) JIRA
4 18 (3.06%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.53%) ERwin
6 8 (1.36%) ER Studio
7 7 (1.19%) PowerDesigner
8 5 (0.85%) MLflow
9 4 (0.68%) JUnit
10 2 (0.34%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
10 2 (0.34%) Terragrunt
11 1 (0.17%) Postman
11 1 (0.17%) Robot Framework
11 1 (0.17%) TestRail
11 1 (0.17%) Visual Studio
General
1 147 (24.96%) Finance
2 132 (22.41%) Social Skills
3 72 (12.22%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (10.53%) Public Sector
5 39 (6.62%) Banking
6 24 (4.07%) Retail
7 21 (3.57%) Marketing
8 17 (2.89%) Manufacturing
9 15 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
10 13 (2.21%) Influencing Skills
11 11 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 7 (1.19%) Police
13 6 (1.02%) Financial Institution
13 6 (1.02%) Military
14 5 (0.85%) Investment Banking
15 4 (0.68%) Legal
15 4 (0.68%) Publishing
16 3 (0.51%) Law
16 3 (0.51%) Pharmaceutical
17 2 (0.34%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 206 (34.97%) Architect
2 169 (28.69%) Data Engineer
3 129 (21.90%) Data Architect
4 87 (14.77%) Senior
5 57 (9.68%) Solutions Architect
6 50 (8.49%) Analyst
7 47 (7.98%) Azure Engineer
7 47 (7.98%) Senior Data Engineer
8 40 (6.79%) Lead
9 36 (6.11%) Data Analyst
10 35 (5.94%) Azure Data Engineer
11 31 (5.26%) Business Analyst
12 29 (4.92%) Data Business Analyst
12 29 (4.92%) Developer
13 27 (4.58%) Cloud Architect
14 23 (3.90%) Azure Architect
15 19 (3.23%) Cloud Solutions Architect
16 18 (3.06%) AWS Engineer
17 17 (2.89%) Senior Architect
17 17 (2.89%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 77 (13.07%) Terraform
2 71 (12.05%) PySpark
3 53 (9.00%) Kafka
4 29 (4.92%) REST
5 11 (1.87%) JSON
5 11 (1.87%) YAML
6 10 (1.70%) Middleware
6 10 (1.70%) Spring Boot
7 9 (1.53%) Spring
8 7 (1.19%) ARM Templates
9 6 (1.02%) .NET
9 6 (1.02%) Great Expectations
9 6 (1.02%) Model Context Protocol
10 5 (0.85%) HTML
10 5 (0.85%) LangChain
10 5 (0.85%) Langfuse
10 5 (0.85%) Node.js
10 5 (0.85%) pytest
10 5 (0.85%) React
11 4 (0.68%) A2A Protocol
Miscellaneous
1 87 (14.77%) Cloud Native
2 39 (6.62%) Data Structures
3 32 (5.43%) Product Ownership
4 22 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
4 22 (3.74%) Legacy Systems
5 17 (2.89%) Data Fabric
6 14 (2.38%) AI Agents
6 14 (2.38%) Reference Data
7 12 (2.04%) Low-Code
7 12 (2.04%) Onboarding
8 10 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
9 9 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
10 8 (1.36%) Digital Media
10 8 (1.36%) IoT
10 8 (1.36%) Management Information System
10 8 (1.36%) Marketing Technology
11 7 (1.19%) Autonomous Agent
12 6 (1.02%) Hybrid Cloud
12 6 (1.02%) Reinsurance
12 6 (1.02%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 18 (3.06%) Linux
2 12 (2.04%) Unix
3 4 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (0.51%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.34%) Windows
6 1 (0.17%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 305 (51.78%) Analytics
2 267 (45.33%) ETL
3 248 (42.11%) Data Modelling
4 237 (40.24%) Data Pipeline
5 212 (35.99%) CI/CD
6 211 (35.82%) Data Engineering
7 201 (34.13%) Business Intelligence
8 191 (32.43%) Data Governance
9 173 (29.37%) Data Architecture
10 169 (28.69%) Agile
11 162 (27.50%) DevOps
12 152 (25.81%) AI
13 151 (25.64%) Migration
14 109 (18.51%) Stakeholder Management
15 104 (17.66%) Data Transformation
16 94 (15.96%) Data Integration
17 90 (15.28%) Stakeholder Engagement
18 86 (14.60%) Machine Learning
19 83 (14.09%) Validation
20 81 (13.75%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 320 (54.33%) SQL
2 180 (30.56%) Python
3 36 (6.11%) Java
4 21 (3.57%) PowerShell
5 19 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 19 (3.23%) Scala
6 14 (2.38%) Bicep
7 13 (2.21%) Bash
8 11 (1.87%) C#
8 11 (1.87%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.36%) JavaScript
9 8 (1.36%) T-SQL
10 7 (1.19%) PL/SQL
11 5 (0.85%) R
12 4 (0.68%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.34%) Cypher
13 2 (0.34%) SHACL
13 2 (0.34%) SOQL
14 1 (0.17%) Ada
14 1 (0.17%) Kusto Query Language
Qualifications
1 144 (24.45%) Security Cleared
2 114 (19.35%) SC Cleared
3 26 (4.41%) Azure Certification
4 17 (2.89%) BPSS Clearance
5 16 (2.72%) DV Cleared
6 14 (2.38%) Degree
7 7 (1.19%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.19%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.19%) Master's Degree
7 7 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.02%) Microsoft Certified Professional
9 4 (0.68%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 4 (0.68%) CSPO
10 3 (0.51%) (ISC)2 CCSP
10 3 (0.51%) CCSP
10 3 (0.51%) Cisco Certification
10 3 (0.51%) CISM
10 3 (0.51%) CISSP
10 3 (0.51%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
11 2 (0.34%) IBM Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 198 (33.62%) Data Quality
2 50 (8.49%) GDPR
3 31 (5.26%) QA
4 8 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 7 (1.19%) Accessibility
6 6 (1.02%) NIST
6 6 (1.02%) Solvency II
7 5 (0.85%) GRC
7 5 (0.85%) MiFID
7 5 (0.85%) PCI DSS
8 4 (0.68%) IFRS
9 3 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.51%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.51%) PMO
9 3 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 3 (0.51%) SLA
10 2 (0.34%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.34%) NCSC
11 1 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials
11 1 (0.17%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
System Software
1 33 (5.60%) Docker
2 11 (1.87%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.36%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.85%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.34%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 38 (6.45%) Kubernetes
2 13 (2.21%) Grafana
3 8 (1.36%) Ansible
4 5 (0.85%) Prometheus
5 4 (0.68%) Puppet
6 3 (0.51%) Argo
6 3 (0.51%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.34%) Control-M
8 1 (0.17%) IBM Guardium
8 1 (0.17%) Istio
8 1 (0.17%) linkerd
8 1 (0.17%) QRadar
Vendors
1 214 (36.33%) Databricks
2 138 (23.43%) Microsoft
3 39 (6.62%) Informatica
4 28 (4.75%) Google
5 24 (4.07%) Oracle
6 17 (2.89%) OpenAI
7 16 (2.72%) SAP
8 15 (2.55%) Denodo
9 14 (2.38%) Talend
10 10 (1.70%) Salesforce
11 9 (1.53%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.36%) Adobe
13 6 (1.02%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.02%) Sparx
13 6 (1.02%) Teradata
14 5 (0.85%) IBM
14 5 (0.85%) Infor
14 5 (0.85%) MuleSoft
14 5 (0.85%) SnapLogic
15 4 (0.68%) Hortonworks