PySpark Contract Job Trends

PySpark - Spark Python API
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring PySpark skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 256 278 366
Rank change year-on-year +22 +88 +65
Contract jobs citing PySpark 444 269 226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.92% 0.92% 0.53%
As % of the Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards category 4.69% 4.04% 2.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 191 181
10th Percentile £373 £375 £413
25th Percentile £413 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £525
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +9.52% -12.50%
75th Percentile £575 £838 £625
90th Percentile £649 £875 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £493 £469 £500
% change year-on-year +5.07% -6.25% -16.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 5
10th Percentile - - £15.45
25th Percentile - - £15.81
Median hourly rate £35.00 £65.00 £20.47
Median % change year-on-year -46.15% +217.54% -
75th Percentile - - £21.50
90th Percentile - - £22.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 - £18.14

All Software Libraries and Frameworks
UK

PySpark falls under the Software Libraries and Frameworks category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for technical specification, industry standards, software libraries and framework skills 9,466 6,658 8,900
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 19.67% 22.66% 20.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,241 4,561 6,172
10th Percentile £360 £363 £350
25th Percentile £417 £420 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -1.87% -2.73%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £728 £775 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £478 £500
% change year-on-year +4.60% -4.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 271 109 247
10th Percentile £32.50 £29.21 £21.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.00 £43.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%
75th Percentile £72.50 £68.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £82.27 £74.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £47.50
% change year-on-year - +36.84% -26.92%

PySpark
Job Vacancy Trend

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

PySpark job vacancy trend in the UK

PySpark
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PySpark

PySpark
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing PySpark over the 6 months to 17 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for PySpark in the UK

PySpark
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing PySpark

PySpark
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 PySpark within the UK over the 6 months to 17 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 -12 373 £513 -19.92% 87
London +3 247 £525 -32.26% 49
Work from Home -23 121 £516 -31.17% 49
UK excluding London -56 120 £493 +5.07% 49
Midlands -39 36 £475 - 5
North of England -60 34 £513 +7.89% 20
West Midlands -42 26 £493 -0.51% 3
South East -59 19 £525 +3.96% 18
North West -33 18 £513 +7.89% 12
Scotland +3 16 £474 +2.38% 2
Yorkshire -51 13 £525 +5.00% 3
East Midlands -15 10 £473 -0.53% 2
South West -26 7 £475 +11.76% 2
Wales -7 6 £400 -40.74%
North East -24 3 £513 +43.16% 5
East of England -31 2 £450 +41.51% 2
Northern Ireland - 1 £430 - 1

PySpark
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 97 (21.85%) Apache Spark
2 39 (8.78%) Apache
3 33 (7.43%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (2.93%) SAS
5 11 (2.48%) Confluence
6 8 (1.80%) Palantir Foundry
7 4 (0.90%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.23%) Camunda
8 1 (0.23%) CMS
Applications
1 4 (0.90%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
1 1 (0.23%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 270 (60.81%) Azure
2 150 (33.78%) AWS
3 119 (26.80%) Azure Data Factory
4 101 (22.75%) Power Platform
5 95 (21.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 89 (20.05%) Azure DevOps
7 68 (15.32%) GitHub
7 68 (15.32%) Serverless
8 61 (13.74%) Amazon S3
9 48 (10.81%) AWS Lambda
10 38 (8.56%) GitHub Actions
11 28 (6.31%) Amazon EMR
11 28 (6.31%) GCP
12 27 (6.08%) dbt
13 25 (5.63%) AWS CloudFormation
14 20 (4.50%) Microsoft Purview
15 19 (4.28%) AWS Step Functions
16 18 (4.05%) Azure Key Vault
17 17 (3.83%) Snowflake
18 14 (3.15%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.23%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 108 (24.32%) Data Lake
2 99 (22.30%) Delta Lake
2 99 (22.30%) Power BI
3 83 (18.69%) Data Warehouse
4 52 (11.71%) Spark SQL
5 45 (10.14%) Metadata
6 42 (9.46%) Amazon Athena
6 42 (9.46%) Azure SQL Database
7 35 (7.88%) Amazon Redshift
8 33 (7.43%) Big Data
9 24 (5.41%) NoSQL
10 23 (5.18%) SQL Server
11 22 (4.95%) Tableau
12 18 (4.05%) Snowflake Schema
13 14 (3.15%) Relational Database
14 10 (2.25%) Parquet
15 9 (2.03%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
15 9 (2.03%) PostgreSQL
15 9 (2.03%) Star Schema
16 8 (1.80%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 94 (21.17%) Git
2 37 (8.33%) GitLab
3 25 (5.63%) MLflow
4 18 (4.05%) JIRA
5 15 (3.38%) Jenkins
6 3 (0.68%) Bitbucket
7 2 (0.45%) ER Studio
7 2 (0.45%) ERwin
8 1 (0.23%) Claude Code
8 1 (0.23%) git-flow
8 1 (0.23%) Postman
8 1 (0.23%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.23%) SonarQube
8 1 (0.23%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.23%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 104 (23.42%) Finance
2 92 (20.72%) Social Skills
3 49 (11.04%) Analytical Skills
4 34 (7.66%) Public Sector
5 29 (6.53%) Banking
6 10 (2.25%) Retail
7 9 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 6 (1.35%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.13%) Marketing
10 4 (0.90%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (0.90%) Investment Banking
10 4 (0.90%) Law
11 3 (0.68%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.45%) Billing
12 2 (0.45%) Corporate Banking
12 2 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.45%) Military
12 2 (0.45%) Publishing
12 2 (0.45%) Retail Banking
13 1 (0.23%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 272 (61.26%) Data Engineer
2 86 (19.37%) Senior
3 56 (12.61%) Senior Data Engineer
4 55 (12.39%) Azure Engineer
5 47 (10.59%) Azure Data Engineer
6 36 (8.11%) Lead
7 34 (7.66%) Developer
8 31 (6.98%) Architect
9 24 (5.41%) Python Engineer
10 22 (4.95%) AWS Engineer
11 17 (3.83%) AWS Data Engineer
12 16 (3.60%) Data Architect
13 15 (3.38%) Data Analytics Engineer
13 15 (3.38%) Python Data Engineer
14 12 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 11 (2.48%) Data Scientist
15 11 (2.48%) Lead Data Engineer
16 10 (2.25%) Microsoft Engineer
17 9 (2.03%) Principal Engineer
18 8 (1.80%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (9.91%) Kafka
2 41 (9.23%) Pandas
3 17 (3.83%) REST
4 15 (3.38%) scikit-learn
5 14 (3.15%) PyTorch
5 14 (3.15%) Spark Streaming
6 13 (2.93%) React
7 12 (2.70%) Great Expectations
8 11 (2.48%) JSON
9 10 (2.25%) pytest
10 9 (2.03%) Node.js
10 9 (2.03%) NumPy
11 7 (1.58%) Spring
11 7 (1.58%) Spring Boot
11 7 (1.58%) TensorFlow
12 6 (1.35%) RESTful
12 6 (1.35%) YAML
13 5 (1.13%) .NET
13 5 (1.13%) HTML
13 5 (1.13%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 53 (11.94%) Cloud Native
2 22 (4.95%) Distributed Computing
3 15 (3.38%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (3.38%) Product Ownership
4 13 (2.93%) Algorithms
5 12 (2.70%) Greenfield Project
6 10 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
7 9 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
8 8 (1.80%) Data Structures
9 7 (1.58%) AI Agents
9 7 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
10 6 (1.35%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.13%) Onboarding
11 5 (1.13%) Reference Data
11 5 (1.13%) Virtual Team
12 4 (0.90%) Data Fabric
12 4 (0.90%) IoT
13 3 (0.68%) Life Science
13 3 (0.68%) Marketing Technology
13 3 (0.68%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 7 (1.58%) Unix
2 6 (1.35%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 245 (55.18%) Data Pipeline
2 213 (47.97%) Data Engineering
3 210 (47.30%) Analytics
4 199 (44.82%) CI/CD
5 195 (43.92%) ETL
6 182 (40.99%) Data Modelling
7 153 (34.46%) DevOps
8 135 (30.41%) Agile
9 117 (26.35%) Data Governance
10 107 (24.10%) Business Intelligence
11 85 (19.14%) AI
12 76 (17.12%) Infrastructure as Code
13 75 (16.89%) Data Science
14 72 (16.22%) Problem-Solving
15 65 (14.64%) Machine Learning
15 65 (14.64%) Migration
16 57 (12.84%) Data Architecture
17 50 (11.26%) Performance Tuning
18 49 (11.04%) Data Ingestion
19 48 (10.81%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 354 (79.73%) Python
2 298 (67.12%) SQL
3 59 (13.29%) Scala
4 36 (8.11%) Java
5 20 (4.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 18 (4.05%) T-SQL
7 10 (2.25%) JavaScript
7 10 (2.25%) TypeScript
8 9 (2.03%) Bicep
9 8 (1.80%) C#
9 8 (1.80%) R
10 6 (1.35%) SAS Macro
10 6 (1.35%) Shell Script
11 4 (0.90%) PowerShell
12 3 (0.68%) Bash
12 3 (0.68%) PL/SQL
13 2 (0.45%) Ada
13 2 (0.45%) C++
13 2 (0.45%) SPARQL
Qualifications
1 120 (27.03%) Security Cleared
2 100 (22.52%) SC Cleared
3 19 (4.28%) Degree
4 13 (2.93%) Azure Certification
5 12 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.25%) Computer Science Degree
7 7 (1.58%) Master's Degree
8 3 (0.68%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.45%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.45%) PhD
10 1 (0.23%) AWS Certification
10 1 (0.23%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 160 (36.04%) Data Quality
2 21 (4.73%) GDPR
3 10 (2.25%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.58%) QA
4 7 (1.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.90%) WCAG
6 2 (0.45%) Government Security Classifications
6 2 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 1 (0.23%) ISO 20022
7 1 (0.23%) MiFID
7 1 (0.23%) SLA
7 1 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 35 (7.88%) Docker
2 2 (0.45%) HDFS
2 2 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 85 (19.14%) Terraform
2 31 (6.98%) Kubernetes
3 8 (1.80%) Grafana
4 3 (0.68%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.45%) Ansible
Vendors
1 256 (57.66%) Databricks
2 103 (23.20%) Microsoft
3 14 (3.15%) Informatica
4 10 (2.25%) Foundry
5 8 (1.80%) Google
5 8 (1.80%) Palantir
6 7 (1.58%) OpenAI
7 6 (1.35%) Oracle
8 4 (0.90%) Cloudera
8 4 (0.90%) Hortonworks
8 4 (0.90%) Salesforce
9 3 (0.68%) Apple
9 3 (0.68%) SAP
9 3 (0.68%) Splunk
10 2 (0.45%) Ab Initio
10 2 (0.45%) ServiceNow
11 1 (0.23%) New Relic
11 1 (0.23%) SimCorp
11 1 (0.23%) Tagetik
11 1 (0.23%) Teradata