Skills › concept
Data lake jobs: demand and pay (October 2026)
509 open data & AI postings at 292 companies mention Data lake, or 3.9% of all data & AI postings we track (as of October 18, 2026).
3.9%share of data & AI postings
292companies hiring
$178Kmedian pay, US (n=169)
—week over week (needs more history)
Data lake pay by level
| Level (from title) | Median pay | Postings with pay (n) |
|---|---|---|
| Entry / junior | — | 1 |
| Mid (II) | — | 4 |
| Senior | $187K | 63 |
| Staff / lead | $200K | 17 |
| Principal | $197K | 11 |
| Manager | $229K | 10 |
| Director+ | — | 8 |
| Level not stated | $166K | 55 |
Median of the published range midpoint, US postings in USD, annualized. Shown only when n ≥ 10; “—” means fewer.
Roles that ask for Data lake
| Role | Postings | % of that role |
|---|---|---|
| Data Engineer | 270 | 15.2% |
| Data Architect | 62 | 15.6% |
| Data & AI leadership | 34 | 3.2% |
| Database Engineer / DBA | 26 | 8.6% |
| AI Engineer | 23 | 0.6% |
| Machine Learning Engineer | 23 | 1.2% |
| Data Scientist | 20 | 1.3% |
| Data Analyst | 15 | 1.3% |
| Analytics Engineer | 14 | 3.8% |
| BI Developer / Analyst | 9 | 6.0% |
| Data Governance & Quality | 8 | 3.6% |
| AI Research Scientist | 5 | 1.1% |
The weekly Data Skills Index
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How it's measured: a posting counts if its title or description matches the Data lake patterns in our taxonomy. Postings by the vendor itself are excluded. See the methodology.