Data Quality Contract Job Trends

Data Quality
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Data Quality skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 12 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 63 114 118
Rank change year-on-year +51 +4 +42
Contract jobs citing Data Quality 1,694 711 802
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 3.57% 2.44% 1.86%
As % of the Quality Assurance & Compliance category 21.43% 15.48% 13.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,127 488 533
10th Percentile £350 £325 £359
25th Percentile £413 £413 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -5.91% +2.23%
75th Percentile £589 £621 £688
90th Percentile £675 £702 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 17 40
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.21 £12.25
25th Percentile £18.47 £22.98 £14.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £16.34
Median % change year-on-year +58.03% +93.69% -27.35%
75th Percentile £63.00 £34.46 £42.50
90th Percentile £81.28 £84.72 £54.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £29.07 £15.79
% change year-on-year +72.00% +84.10% -32.81%

All Quality Assurance and Compliance Skills
UK

Data Quality falls under the Quality Assurance and Compliance category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring quality assurance or compliance skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for quality assurance or compliance skills 7,903 4,594 6,155
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.64% 15.73% 14.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,102 2,940 3,909
10th Percentile £340 £265 £288
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £510
Median % change year-on-year - -1.96% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £625
90th Percentile £700 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £482
% change year-on-year +5.26% -1.35% +0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 461 172 383
10th Percentile £14.25 £18.10 £10.95
25th Percentile £18.50 £22.24 £13.18
Median hourly rate £35.00 £35.00 £21.12
Median % change year-on-year - +65.76% -39.67%
75th Percentile £67.25 £65.15 £45.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £82.94 £68.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £51.25 £18.27
% change year-on-year -21.95% +180.51% -45.27%

Data Quality
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Data Quality relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Data Quality job vacancy trend in the UK

Data Quality
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Quality.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Quality

Data Quality
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Data Quality over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Data Quality in the UK

Data Quality
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Quality.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Data Quality

Data Quality
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Data Quality over the 6 months to 12 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Data Quality in the UK

Data Quality
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 Quality within the UK over the 6 months to 12 May 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 +40 1,453 £500 -4.76% 630
London +50 809 £525 - 291
UK excluding London +33 694 £475 -5.00% 443
Work from Home +43 522 £500 +5.26% 293
North of England +4 176 £498 +10.56% 110
Midlands +20 160 £500 +5.26% 67
West Midlands +16 131 £500 -0.10% 47
South East +10 117 £450 -12.20% 158
North West +18 109 £495 +4.21% 62
Scotland +48 87 £407 -5.51% 11
South West +20 86 £498 -5.24% 48
East of England -25 60 £581 -3.77% 46
Yorkshire -39 46 £500 +33.33% 31
East Midlands -20 30 £525 +14.38% 20
North East +1 21 £475 -7.99% 17
Northern Ireland +5 7 £450 -16.28%
Wales -7 6 £400 +80.97% 10

Data Quality
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
1 122 (7.20%) Apache Spark
2 82 (4.84%) Apache Airflow
3 62 (3.66%) Apache
4 51 (3.01%) Confluence
5 45 (2.66%) SAS
5 45 (2.66%) SharePoint
6 12 (0.71%) ArcGIS
7 9 (0.53%) Appian
8 5 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.24%) CMS
10 3 (0.18%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.12%) Alfresco
11 2 (0.12%) Apache Synapse
11 2 (0.12%) GeoServer
11 2 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.12%) Smallworld
12 1 (0.059%) Apache Superset
12 1 (0.059%) Jupyter
12 1 (0.059%) NetWeaver
12 1 (0.059%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 152 (8.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
3 25 (1.48%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 22 (1.30%) MS Visio
5 19 (1.12%) Spreadsheet
6 3 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 3 (0.18%) Trello
7 1 (0.059%) CATIA
Business Applications
1 56 (3.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (0.83%) Dynamics CRM
3 13 (0.77%) Loan IQ
4 11 (0.65%) iTrent
5 10 (0.59%) NEC Housing
6 8 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
7 7 (0.41%) SAP MM
8 6 (0.35%) Adobe Campaign
8 6 (0.35%) Finacle
8 6 (0.35%) Sage X3
8 6 (0.35%) SAP PM
8 6 (0.35%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 6 (0.35%) SystmOne
9 5 (0.30%) BambooHR
9 5 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
9 5 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 5 (0.30%) SAP ERP
9 5 (0.30%) SAP MDG
10 4 (0.24%) SAP FI
10 4 (0.24%) SAP FI/CO
Cloud Services
1 510 (30.11%) Azure
2 419 (24.73%) Power Platform
3 290 (17.12%) AWS
4 196 (11.57%) Azure Data Factory
5 126 (7.44%) GCP
6 124 (7.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 111 (6.55%) Azure DevOps
8 105 (6.20%) Snowflake
9 101 (5.96%) dbt
10 80 (4.72%) Amazon S3
11 76 (4.49%) GitHub
12 66 (3.90%) Collibra
13 65 (3.84%) Serverless
14 48 (2.83%) AWS Lambda
15 43 (2.54%) Microsoft Purview
16 34 (2.01%) Power Automate
17 30 (1.77%) SaaS
18 29 (1.71%) AWS CloudFormation
19 27 (1.59%) GitHub Actions
20 25 (1.48%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 7 (0.41%) Firewall
2 6 (0.35%) VPN
3 2 (0.12%) Broadband
3 2 (0.12%) DNS
3 2 (0.12%) HTTP
3 2 (0.12%) VoIP
4 1 (0.059%) 4G
4 1 (0.059%) 5G
4 1 (0.059%) Hyperconnected
4 1 (0.059%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 399 (23.55%) Power BI
2 280 (16.53%) Data Warehouse
3 249 (14.70%) Metadata
4 161 (9.50%) Data Lake
5 122 (7.20%) Tableau
6 114 (6.73%) SQL Server
7 87 (5.14%) Delta Lake
8 69 (4.07%) BigQuery
9 67 (3.96%) Azure SQL Database
10 66 (3.90%) Big Data
11 63 (3.72%) Relational Database
12 54 (3.19%) NoSQL
13 51 (3.01%) Snowflake Schema
14 46 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 45 (2.66%) Amazon Redshift
16 42 (2.48%) Amazon Athena
17 40 (2.36%) PostgreSQL
18 33 (1.95%) Power Query
19 30 (1.77%) Star Schema
20 28 (1.65%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 135 (7.97%) Git
2 126 (7.44%) JIRA
3 51 (3.01%) Jenkins
4 29 (1.71%) GitLab
5 17 (1.00%) MLflow
6 16 (0.94%) ERwin
7 10 (0.59%) PowerDesigner
8 7 (0.41%) ER Studio
8 7 (0.41%) Selenium
9 6 (0.35%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 5 (0.30%) LSMW
10 5 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
11 4 (0.24%) Eclipse
11 4 (0.24%) Visual Studio Code
12 3 (0.18%) Ant
12 3 (0.18%) Robot Framework
12 3 (0.18%) Zephyr
13 2 (0.12%) Postman
13 2 (0.12%) REST Assured
13 2 (0.12%) Terragrunt
General
1 533 (31.46%) Social Skills
2 494 (29.16%) Finance
3 390 (23.02%) Analytical Skills
4 197 (11.63%) Public Sector
5 144 (8.50%) Banking
6 49 (2.89%) Marketing
6 49 (2.89%) Retail
7 42 (2.48%) Documentation Skills
8 32 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 29 (1.71%) Influencing Skills
9 29 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
10 27 (1.59%) Legal
11 26 (1.53%) Local Government
12 22 (1.30%) Investment Banking
13 21 (1.24%) Manufacturing
13 21 (1.24%) Military
14 20 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
15 19 (1.12%) Law
16 18 (1.06%) Front Office
17 16 (0.94%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 439 (25.91%) Data Engineer
2 371 (21.90%) Analyst
3 224 (13.22%) Data Analyst
4 190 (11.22%) Senior
5 149 (8.80%) Lead
6 147 (8.68%) Architect
7 112 (6.61%) Business Analyst
8 92 (5.43%) Developer
9 88 (5.19%) Data Architect
10 79 (4.66%) Senior Data Engineer
11 65 (3.84%) Consultant
12 52 (3.07%) Azure Engineer
12 52 (3.07%) Data Business Analyst
13 48 (2.83%) Data Manager
14 47 (2.77%) Azure Data Engineer
15 35 (2.07%) Project Manager
16 32 (1.89%) Senior Analyst
17 30 (1.77%) Python Engineer
18 29 (1.71%) Data Migration Lead
19 28 (1.65%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 160 (9.45%) PySpark
2 109 (6.43%) Kafka
3 52 (3.07%) REST
4 51 (3.01%) Pandas
5 31 (1.83%) Great Expectations
6 30 (1.77%) JSON
7 25 (1.48%) scikit-learn
8 21 (1.24%) NumPy
8 21 (1.24%) Web Services
9 18 (1.06%) Middleware
10 16 (0.94%) Oracle Fusion
10 16 (0.94%) PyTorch
11 15 (0.89%) SOAP
12 13 (0.77%) OAuth
12 13 (0.77%) TensorFlow
12 13 (0.77%) YAML
13 12 (0.71%) Flask
13 12 (0.71%) pytest
14 11 (0.65%) GeoJSON
14 11 (0.65%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 134 (7.91%) Data Structures
2 116 (6.85%) Legacy Systems
3 83 (4.90%) Cloud Native
4 78 (4.60%) Onboarding
5 72 (4.25%) Product Ownership
6 67 (3.96%) Management Information System
7 55 (3.25%) CMDB
8 36 (2.13%) Reference Data
9 27 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
10 26 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 24 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
12 21 (1.24%) AI Agents
13 20 (1.18%) Clustering
13 20 (1.18%) Distributed Systems
14 19 (1.12%) NHS
15 17 (1.00%) Virtual Team
16 15 (0.89%) Greenfield Project
16 15 (0.89%) Taxonomies
17 14 (0.83%) Derivative
18 12 (0.71%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 11 (0.65%) Windows
2 10 (0.59%) Linux
3 8 (0.47%) Unix
4 1 (0.059%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 727 (42.92%) Data Modelling
2 623 (36.78%) Analytics
3 561 (33.12%) Data Governance
4 526 (31.05%) ETL
5 495 (29.22%) Business Intelligence
5 495 (29.22%) Data Pipeline
6 390 (23.02%) Agile
7 386 (22.79%) Validation
8 375 (22.14%) Migration
9 369 (21.78%) Data Engineering
10 345 (20.37%) Problem-Solving
11 329 (19.42%) Decision-Making
12 314 (18.54%) CI/CD
13 262 (15.47%) AI
14 258 (15.23%) Data Architecture
15 252 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
16 243 (14.34%) DevOps
17 240 (14.17%) Data Migration
18 224 (13.22%) Continuous Improvement
19 214 (12.63%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 829 (48.94%) SQL
2 509 (30.05%) Python
3 60 (3.54%) Java
4 57 (3.36%) Scala
5 53 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 44 (2.60%) T-SQL
7 32 (1.89%) PL/SQL
8 23 (1.36%) C#
9 21 (1.24%) PowerShell
9 21 (1.24%) R
10 19 (1.12%) Bicep
11 18 (1.06%) VBA
12 17 (1.00%) JavaScript
13 10 (0.59%) C++
13 10 (0.59%) TypeScript
14 9 (0.53%) Shell Script
15 8 (0.47%) Apex Code
16 7 (0.41%) Bash
17 6 (0.35%) Kotlin
18 5 (0.30%) Search Processing Language
Qualifications
1 320 (18.89%) Security Cleared
2 245 (14.46%) SC Cleared
3 104 (6.14%) Degree
4 65 (3.84%) BPSS Clearance
5 25 (1.48%) Azure Certification
6 23 (1.36%) Master's Degree
7 21 (1.24%) Computer Science Degree
8 11 (0.65%) DV Cleared
9 10 (0.59%) AWS Certification
10 9 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (0.30%) ACCA
11 5 (0.30%) CIMA
11 5 (0.30%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.30%) PMI Certification
11 5 (0.30%) SnowPro
12 4 (0.24%) ISTQB
12 4 (0.24%) PhD
13 3 (0.18%) IBM Certification
13 3 (0.18%) PMP
14 2 (0.12%) CFA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 135 (7.97%) GDPR
2 121 (7.14%) QA
3 41 (2.42%) Accessibility
4 27 (1.59%) PMO
5 17 (1.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (0.89%) SLA
7 12 (0.71%) Solvency II
8 10 (0.59%) FINREP
9 8 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.47%) COREP
9 8 (0.47%) IFRS
10 7 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 6 (0.35%) NIST
12 5 (0.30%) GRC
12 5 (0.30%) MiFID
13 4 (0.24%) Basel III
13 4 (0.24%) BS7666
13 4 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 3 (0.18%) Disclosure Scotland
15 2 (0.12%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 73 (4.31%) Docker
2 6 (0.35%) Active Directory
2 6 (0.35%) etcd
3 3 (0.18%) HDFS
4 1 (0.059%) RACF
4 1 (0.059%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 106 (6.26%) Terraform
2 81 (4.78%) Kubernetes
3 14 (0.83%) Prometheus
4 12 (0.71%) Grafana
5 8 (0.47%) Ansible
6 6 (0.35%) Fluentd
6 6 (0.35%) Kibana
6 6 (0.35%) SCCM
7 5 (0.30%) HP ALM
8 3 (0.18%) logstash
8 3 (0.18%) Single Sign-On
9 2 (0.12%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.059%) Control-M
10 1 (0.059%) Istio
10 1 (0.059%) Nessus
10 1 (0.059%) RSA Archer
Vendors
1 292 (17.24%) Databricks
2 270 (15.94%) Microsoft
3 131 (7.73%) SAP
4 118 (6.97%) Oracle
5 76 (4.49%) Informatica
6 73 (4.31%) Salesforce
7 70 (4.13%) ServiceNow
8 58 (3.42%) Google
9 49 (2.89%) Talend
10 29 (1.71%) Denodo
11 24 (1.42%) IBM
12 17 (1.00%) OpenAI
12 17 (1.00%) Workday
13 14 (0.83%) Adobe
13 14 (0.83%) GoldenSource
14 11 (0.65%) Avaloq
14 11 (0.65%) NEC
15 10 (0.59%) Alteryx
16 9 (0.53%) Automation Anywhere
16 9 (0.53%) Sage