DBA Contract Job Trends

Database Administrator
UK

The median Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £500, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 21 August 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 341 423 297
Rank change year-on-year +82 -126 +78
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 360 135 295
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.41% 0.76%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.73% 0.45% 0.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 268 91 191
10th Percentile £363 £373 £350
25th Percentile £404 £425 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £463 £488
Median % change year-on-year +8.11% -5.13% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £544 £603
90th Percentile £675 £670 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +2.78% - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 2
10th Percentile - £27.20 £32.45
25th Percentile - £29.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £30.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year - -41.75% +17.99%
75th Percentile - £31.00 £65.13
90th Percentile - £58.90 £72.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £51.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year - -0.97% +48.01%

All Contract IT Job Roles
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 49,522 29,914 36,178
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.26% 92.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,686 18,901 23,122
10th Percentile £325 £280 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £620 £638
90th Percentile £730 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,509 1,556 1,977
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.30 £19.59
Median hourly rate £41.74 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +65.94% -41.51% +2.38%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.99 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.25 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +14.67%

DBA
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'DBA' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

DBA job vacancy trend in the UK

DBA
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DBA job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for DBA job vacancies in the UK

DBA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DBA over the 6 months to 21 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for DBA in the UK

DBA
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DBA job vacancies in the UK.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for DBA job vacancies in the UK

DBA
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 DBA within the UK over the 6 months to 21 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 +63 310 £480 +5.21% 23
UK excluding London +56 238 £463 +2.78% 20
North of England +6 104 £452 +1.06% 2
London -35 92 £525 +5.26% 8
North West +19 77 £463 +3.93% 2
Work from Home -60 65 £488 +8.33% 10
South East -20 59 £417 -7.28% 8
Yorkshire -19 26 £450 -10.00%
Midlands -31 24 £449 - 6
Scotland -7 20 £425 -8.11% 1
South West -40 19 £750 +22.45%
West Midlands -38 18 £448 - 4
East of England -12 5 £387 -18.63% 2
East Midlands -14 5 £463 - 2
Wales - 5 £544 -
Northern Ireland +3 2 £675 - 1
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 21 August 2026, DBA contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring DBA in the job title.

1 209 (58.06%) SQL
2 194 (53.89%) Oracle
3 184 (51.11%) Security Cleared
4 162 (45.00%) SQL Server
5 140 (38.89%) SC Cleared
6 138 (38.33%) Performance Tuning
7 114 (31.67%) Oracle Database
8 103 (28.61%) High Availability
8 103 (28.61%) PostgreSQL
9 92 (25.56%) Microsoft
10 83 (23.06%) Disaster Recovery
11 74 (20.56%) Azure
12 72 (20.00%) AWS
13 64 (17.78%) Migration
14 58 (16.11%) MySQL
15 54 (15.00%) Oracle RMAN
16 52 (14.44%) Database Security
17 50 (13.89%) Linux
18 49 (13.61%) DV Cleared
19 46 (12.78%) Data Guard
19 46 (12.78%) ITIL
20 45 (12.50%) DevOps
20 45 (12.50%) Oracle RAC
21 37 (10.28%) Windows
22 36 (10.00%) PowerShell
22 36 (10.00%) Unix
23 34 (9.44%) Python
24 32 (8.89%) CI/CD
24 32 (8.89%) Database Tuning
24 32 (8.89%) Microsoft Certification

DBA Skill Set
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 11 (3.06%) Confluence
2 6 (1.67%) WebLogic
3 3 (0.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle Service Bus
4 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.56%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.28%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 11 (3.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (2.78%) Oracle Applications
2 10 (2.78%) Oracle EBS
3 6 (1.67%) Oracle Payables
3 6 (1.67%) Teamcenter
4 3 (0.83%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 74 (20.56%) Azure
2 72 (20.00%) AWS
3 15 (4.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 13 (3.61%) AWS KMS
4 13 (3.61%) Power Platform
4 13 (3.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (2.78%) AWS CloudFormation
5 10 (2.78%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (2.78%) GCP
6 9 (2.50%) Azure Monitor
7 7 (1.94%) Azure Data Factory
8 6 (1.67%) OCI
9 5 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
9 5 (1.39%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 5 (1.39%) SaaS
9 5 (1.39%) Serverless
10 4 (1.11%) Amazon S3
10 4 (1.11%) Snowflake
11 3 (0.83%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (0.83%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.22%) SSL
2 4 (1.11%) Firewall
3 1 (0.28%) HTTP
3 1 (0.28%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.28%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 162 (45.00%) SQL Server
2 114 (31.67%) Oracle Database
3 103 (28.61%) PostgreSQL
4 58 (16.11%) MySQL
5 28 (7.78%) Amazon RDS
6 27 (7.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 25 (6.94%) MongoDB
8 23 (6.39%) Amazon Aurora
9 22 (6.11%) Oracle Database 11g
9 22 (6.11%) Oracle Database 12c
10 21 (5.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 18 (5.00%) Relational Database
12 15 (4.17%) RDBMS
13 14 (3.89%) Azure SQL Database
13 14 (3.89%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 13 (3.61%) Power BI
15 11 (3.06%) Oracle Reports
16 9 (2.50%) NoSQL
17 8 (2.22%) Oracle Database 10g
17 8 (2.22%) Redis
Development Applications
1 12 (3.33%) Git
2 10 (2.78%) JIRA
3 9 (2.50%) GitLab
4 7 (1.94%) Jenkins
5 4 (1.11%) Flyway
5 4 (1.11%) Oracle Forms
5 4 (1.11%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 3 (0.83%) Toad
7 2 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
8 1 (0.28%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 74 (20.56%) Social Skills
2 44 (12.22%) Finance
3 36 (10.00%) Public Sector
4 26 (7.22%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (4.17%) Banking
6 6 (1.67%) Legal
7 5 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.11%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.83%) Police
9 3 (0.83%) Publishing
10 2 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.56%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.56%) Military
11 1 (0.28%) Advertising
11 1 (0.28%) Billing
11 1 (0.28%) International Banking
11 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (7.78%) Terraform
2 16 (4.44%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 12 (3.33%) JSON
4 10 (2.78%) XML
5 7 (1.94%) Kafka
6 6 (1.67%) OLE
7 3 (0.83%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.83%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.83%) Matplotlib
7 3 (0.83%) Middleware
7 3 (0.83%) Oracle Streams
7 3 (0.83%) Pandas
7 3 (0.83%) Polars
7 3 (0.83%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.56%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.56%) REST
9 1 (0.28%) Node.js
9 1 (0.28%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.28%) Spring
9 1 (0.28%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (14.72%) Replication
2 30 (8.33%) Clustering
3 13 (3.61%) Data Centre
4 8 (2.22%) Data Structures
5 6 (1.67%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.39%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.11%) Cloud Native
7 4 (1.11%) NHS
8 3 (0.83%) Mainframe
9 2 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
9 2 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (0.56%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.28%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.28%) Distributed Systems
10 1 (0.28%) Enterprise Storage
10 1 (0.28%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.28%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.28%) Security Posture
10 1 (0.28%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 50 (13.89%) Linux
2 37 (10.28%) Windows
3 36 (10.00%) Unix
4 22 (6.11%) Windows Server
5 9 (2.50%) Solaris
6 8 (2.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.11%) AIX
7 4 (1.11%) Amazon Linux
7 4 (1.11%) Oracle Linux
8 3 (0.83%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.28%) HPUX
9 1 (0.28%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.28%) VMS
9 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (38.33%) Performance Tuning
2 103 (28.61%) High Availability
3 83 (23.06%) Disaster Recovery
4 64 (17.78%) Migration
5 52 (14.44%) Database Security
6 46 (12.78%) ITIL
7 45 (12.50%) DevOps
8 32 (8.89%) CI/CD
8 32 (8.89%) Database Tuning
8 32 (8.89%) Problem-Solving
8 32 (8.89%) Stakeholder Management
9 31 (8.61%) Data Modelling
9 31 (8.61%) Root Cause Analysis
10 28 (7.78%) Capacity Planning
11 27 (7.50%) Performance Optimisation
12 22 (6.11%) Infrastructure as Code
13 20 (5.56%) Agile
13 20 (5.56%) Database Migration
13 20 (5.56%) Task Automation
14 19 (5.28%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 209 (58.06%) SQL
2 36 (10.00%) PowerShell
3 34 (9.44%) Python
4 26 (7.22%) T-SQL
5 25 (6.94%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.61%) Shell Script
7 8 (2.22%) Korn
8 7 (1.94%) Bash
9 6 (1.67%) Java
10 5 (1.39%) Perl
11 4 (1.11%) Groovy
12 3 (0.83%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.56%) Bicep
14 1 (0.28%) C#
14 1 (0.28%) Cypher
14 1 (0.28%) RPG
14 1 (0.28%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 184 (51.11%) Security Cleared
2 140 (38.89%) SC Cleared
3 49 (13.61%) DV Cleared
4 32 (8.89%) Microsoft Certification
5 16 (4.44%) Oracle Certification
6 15 (4.17%) Degree
7 13 (3.61%) AWS Certification
8 12 (3.33%) Azure Certification
9 11 (3.06%) BPSS Clearance
9 11 (3.06%) OCP
10 8 (2.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (1.67%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 5 (1.39%) Computer Science Degree
13 4 (1.11%) MCITP
13 4 (1.11%) MCTS
14 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.17%) Data Quality
2 14 (3.89%) QA
3 7 (1.94%) GDPR
4 6 (1.67%) SLA
5 5 (1.39%) ISO 9000
6 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 45 (12.50%) Oracle RAC
2 13 (3.61%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.50%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.39%) Docker
5 1 (0.28%) ACF2
5 1 (0.28%) RACF
Systems Management
1 54 (15.00%) Oracle RMAN
2 46 (12.78%) Data Guard
3 19 (5.28%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 15 (4.17%) Ansible
5 11 (3.06%) SCOM
6 9 (2.50%) Microsoft Clustering
7 7 (1.94%) Prometheus
8 6 (1.67%) Grafana
9 4 (1.11%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
9 4 (1.11%) Failover Clustering
10 3 (0.83%) Nagios
11 2 (0.56%) Foglight
11 2 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
12 1 (0.28%) EMC NetWorker
12 1 (0.28%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 194 (53.89%) Oracle
2 92 (25.56%) Microsoft
3 16 (4.44%) ServiceNow
4 13 (3.61%) Remedy
5 11 (3.06%) BMC
6 9 (2.50%) VMware
7 7 (1.94%) Sybase
8 6 (1.67%) SolarWinds
9 5 (1.39%) RedGate
10 4 (1.11%) Commvault
10 4 (1.11%) Google
10 4 (1.11%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.83%) Databricks
11 3 (0.83%) Dynatrace
11 3 (0.83%) Greenplum
11 3 (0.83%) Informatica
11 3 (0.83%) Talend
12 2 (0.56%) Cerner
12 2 (0.56%) IBM
13 1 (0.28%) Adobe