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 4 September 2026.

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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 367 412 314
Rank change year-on-year +45 -98 +59
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 348 137 274
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.42% 0.72%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.70% 0.47% 0.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 92 171
10th Percentile £363 £373 £350
25th Percentile £417 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.32% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £575 £555 £624
90th Percentile £675 £666 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £456 £475
% change year-on-year +4.11% -3.95% -
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 49,584 29,450 35,463
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.44% 91.15% 93.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,603 18,569 22,312
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 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,590 1,537 1,792
10th Percentile £14.85 £13.60 £14.42
25th Percentile £20.48 £17.00 £20.21
Median hourly rate £42.13 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.50% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £70.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £45.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -44.11% +12.50%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 +56 293 £501 +5.37% 66
UK excluding London +62 232 £475 +4.11% 41
North of England +8 102 £479 +6.44% 14
London -56 83 £525 +5.26% 28
North West +17 76 £480 +11.14% 14
Work from Home -57 58 £500 +9.59% 22
South East -35 51 £524 +16.39% 9
Yorkshire -20 25 £454 -9.20%
Scotland -8 23 £401 -13.30% 4
Midlands -30 23 £450 - 7
South West -37 19 £750 +22.45% 2
West Midlands -34 17 £448 - 7
East of England -15 6 £400 -15.79% 5
East Midlands -17 5 £463 -
Wales - 5 £544 -
Northern Ireland +6 3 £675 -
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 4 September 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.

1 210 (60.34%) SQL
2 186 (53.45%) Security Cleared
3 184 (52.87%) Oracle
4 159 (45.69%) SQL Server
5 143 (41.09%) SC Cleared
6 140 (40.23%) Performance Tuning
7 109 (31.32%) Oracle Database
8 100 (28.74%) PostgreSQL
9 98 (28.16%) High Availability
10 96 (27.59%) Microsoft
11 79 (22.70%) Azure
12 77 (22.13%) Disaster Recovery
13 72 (20.69%) AWS
14 64 (18.39%) MySQL
15 60 (17.24%) Migration
16 51 (14.66%) DV Cleared
17 50 (14.37%) Linux
17 50 (14.37%) Oracle RMAN
18 49 (14.08%) Database Security
19 47 (13.51%) DevOps
20 46 (13.22%) Data Guard
21 45 (12.93%) ITIL
22 44 (12.64%) PowerShell
23 40 (11.49%) Oracle RAC
24 38 (10.92%) Windows
25 36 (10.34%) Python
25 36 (10.34%) Unix
26 35 (10.06%) Microsoft Certification
27 34 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
27 34 (9.77%) Root Cause Analysis

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 10 (2.87%) Confluence
2 8 (2.30%) WebLogic
3 5 (1.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.57%) Oracle Service Bus
4 2 (0.57%) SharePoint
4 2 (0.57%) WebLogic Portal
5 1 (0.29%) Mendix
5 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.15%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.57%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.29%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 11 (3.16%) Remedy ITSM
2 10 (2.87%) Oracle Applications
2 10 (2.87%) Oracle EBS
3 7 (2.01%) Oracle Payables
4 6 (1.72%) Teamcenter
5 5 (1.44%) Oracle EBS R12
6 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
6 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 79 (22.70%) Azure
2 72 (20.69%) AWS
3 17 (4.89%) Power Platform
4 15 (4.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 13 (3.74%) AWS KMS
5 13 (3.74%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (3.74%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 12 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
6 12 (3.45%) Azure Monitor
7 10 (2.87%) GCP
8 7 (2.01%) Amazon EC2
8 7 (2.01%) Azure Data Factory
9 6 (1.72%) Amazon S3
10 5 (1.44%) OCI
11 4 (1.15%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 4 (1.15%) Snowflake
12 3 (0.86%) Cloud Computing
12 3 (0.86%) GitHub
12 3 (0.86%) PaaS
12 3 (0.86%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 12 (3.45%) SSL
2 4 (1.15%) Firewall
3 1 (0.29%) HTTP
3 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.29%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 159 (45.69%) SQL Server
2 109 (31.32%) Oracle Database
3 100 (28.74%) PostgreSQL
4 64 (18.39%) MySQL
5 32 (9.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 29 (8.33%) Amazon RDS
7 25 (7.18%) Oracle Database 11g
8 23 (6.61%) Amazon Aurora
9 22 (6.32%) Oracle Database 12c
10 20 (5.75%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 19 (5.46%) MongoDB
12 17 (4.89%) Power BI
13 14 (4.02%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 13 (3.74%) Azure SQL Database
14 13 (3.74%) Relational Database
15 10 (2.87%) Oracle Database 10g
15 10 (2.87%) RDBMS
16 9 (2.59%) Data Warehouse
17 8 (2.30%) Redis
18 7 (2.01%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 11 (3.16%) Git
2 10 (2.87%) JIRA
3 7 (2.01%) GitLab
4 6 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.72%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 5 (1.44%) Flyway
6 4 (1.15%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.86%) Oracle APEX
7 3 (0.86%) Toad
8 1 (0.29%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 81 (23.28%) Social Skills
2 39 (11.21%) Finance
3 36 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 27 (7.76%) Analytical Skills
5 16 (4.60%) Banking
6 7 (2.01%) Legal
7 4 (1.15%) Investment Banking
8 3 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
8 3 (0.86%) Police
8 3 (0.86%) Publishing
9 2 (0.57%) Documentation Skills
9 2 (0.57%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.29%) Billing
10 1 (0.29%) International Banking
10 1 (0.29%) Military
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (7.18%) Terraform
2 10 (2.87%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 8 (2.30%) JSON
4 6 (1.72%) XML
5 5 (1.44%) OLE
6 4 (1.15%) Middleware
7 3 (0.86%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.86%) Kafka
7 3 (0.86%) Matplotlib
7 3 (0.86%) Oracle Streams
7 3 (0.86%) Pandas
7 3 (0.86%) Polars
7 3 (0.86%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.57%) .NET
8 2 (0.57%) AWS CDK
8 2 (0.57%) REST
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle Fusion
9 1 (0.29%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.29%) Spring
9 1 (0.29%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 60 (17.24%) Replication
2 33 (9.48%) Clustering
3 14 (4.02%) Data Centre
4 10 (2.87%) Data Structures
5 6 (1.72%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.15%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (1.15%) NHS
7 3 (0.86%) Cloud Native
8 2 (0.57%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.57%) Enterprise Cloud
8 2 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.57%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.29%) Analytical Mindset
9 1 (0.29%) Enterprise Software
9 1 (0.29%) Enterprise Storage
9 1 (0.29%) Hybrid Cloud
9 1 (0.29%) Product Ownership
9 1 (0.29%) Public Cloud
9 1 (0.29%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 50 (14.37%) Linux
2 38 (10.92%) Windows
3 36 (10.34%) Unix
4 23 (6.61%) Windows Server
5 12 (3.45%) Solaris
6 6 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.15%) Amazon Linux
8 3 (0.86%) AIX
8 3 (0.86%) Oracle Linux
8 3 (0.86%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.29%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.29%) HPUX
9 1 (0.29%) VMS
9 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
9 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (40.23%) Performance Tuning
2 98 (28.16%) High Availability
3 77 (22.13%) Disaster Recovery
4 60 (17.24%) Migration
5 49 (14.08%) Database Security
6 47 (13.51%) DevOps
7 45 (12.93%) ITIL
8 34 (9.77%) Problem-Solving
8 34 (9.77%) Root Cause Analysis
9 33 (9.48%) Data Modelling
9 33 (9.48%) Database Tuning
10 32 (9.20%) CI/CD
10 32 (9.20%) Stakeholder Management
11 28 (8.05%) Capacity Planning
12 26 (7.47%) Performance Optimisation
13 24 (6.90%) Continuous Improvement
14 22 (6.32%) Infrastructure as Code
15 20 (5.75%) Change Management
16 19 (5.46%) Database Migration
17 17 (4.89%) Technical Leadership
Programming Languages
1 210 (60.34%) SQL
2 44 (12.64%) PowerShell
3 36 (10.34%) Python
4 30 (8.62%) T-SQL
5 28 (8.05%) PL/SQL
6 9 (2.59%) Shell Script
7 7 (2.01%) Bash
8 6 (1.72%) Java
8 6 (1.72%) Perl
9 4 (1.15%) Groovy
10 3 (0.86%) Korn
11 2 (0.57%) Bicep
11 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 1 (0.29%) Cypher
12 1 (0.29%) RPG
Qualifications
1 186 (53.45%) Security Cleared
2 143 (41.09%) SC Cleared
3 51 (14.66%) DV Cleared
4 35 (10.06%) Microsoft Certification
5 18 (5.17%) Degree
6 17 (4.89%) Oracle Certification
7 15 (4.31%) Azure Certification
7 15 (4.31%) BPSS Clearance
8 13 (3.74%) AWS Certification
9 12 (3.45%) OCP
10 10 (2.87%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 8 (2.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 5 (1.44%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.86%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 16 (4.60%) QA
2 15 (4.31%) Data Quality
3 7 (2.01%) GDPR
3 7 (2.01%) SLA
4 5 (1.44%) ISO 9000
5 1 (0.29%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.29%) Disclosure Scotland
5 1 (0.29%) ISO 20022
5 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
5 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 40 (11.49%) Oracle RAC
2 13 (3.74%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (2.59%) VMware Infrastructure
4 8 (2.30%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.44%) Docker
6 3 (0.86%) ACF2
6 3 (0.86%) RACF
Systems Management
1 50 (14.37%) Oracle RMAN
2 46 (13.22%) Data Guard
3 16 (4.60%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
3 16 (4.60%) SCOM
4 14 (4.02%) Ansible
5 9 (2.59%) Microsoft Clustering
6 6 (1.72%) Prometheus
7 5 (1.44%) Failover Clustering
7 5 (1.44%) Grafana
8 4 (1.15%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
9 3 (0.86%) Nagios
10 2 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.29%) EMC NetWorker
11 1 (0.29%) Foglight
11 1 (0.29%) Kubernetes
11 1 (0.29%) SQL Sentry
Vendors
1 184 (52.87%) Oracle
2 96 (27.59%) Microsoft
3 22 (6.32%) ServiceNow
4 13 (3.74%) Remedy
5 11 (3.16%) BMC
6 9 (2.59%) VMware
7 8 (2.30%) Sybase
8 7 (2.01%) SolarWinds
9 6 (1.72%) RedGate
10 4 (1.15%) Cerner
10 4 (1.15%) Commvault
10 4 (1.15%) Google
11 3 (0.86%) Dynatrace
11 3 (0.86%) Greenplum
11 3 (0.86%) IBM
11 3 (0.86%) Informatica
11 3 (0.86%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.86%) Talend
12 2 (0.57%) Databricks
13 1 (0.29%) Splunk