DBA Contracts

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 July 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jul 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 420 318 371
Rank change year-on-year -102 +53 +31
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 131 298 341
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.41% 0.69% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.74% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 90 203 232
10th Percentile £375 £351 £382
25th Percentile £425 £413 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £493 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -
75th Percentile £573 £610 £575
90th Percentile £675 £688 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £485
% change year-on-year - -7.22% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 5
10th Percentile - £32.45 £14.30
25th Percentile £72.50 £39.13 £17.00
Median hourly rate £75.00 £51.50 £34.80
Median % change year-on-year +45.63% +48.01% -33.72%
75th Percentile £77.50 £65.13 £53.75
90th Percentile - £72.55 £74.48
UK excluding London median hourly rate £75.00 £51.50 £18.00
% change year-on-year +45.63% +186.11% -64.00%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 29,079 40,388 53,054
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.02% 92.98% 94.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,553 25,970 36,860
10th Percentile £288 £286 £313
25th Percentile £401 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% +1.42%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,311 2,837 1,549
10th Percentile £13.78 £12.87 £14.25
25th Percentile £17.44 £16.65 £19.00
Median hourly rate £26.50 £37.75 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year -29.80% -12.21% +68.63%
75th Percentile £55.25 £62.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £74.00 £76.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £40.00 £39.60
% change year-on-year -37.13% +1.01% +94.88%

DBA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured DBA in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for DBA in the UK

DBA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing DBA.

Daily rate trend for DBA in the UK

DBA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing DBA over the 6 months to 4 July 2025.

Daily rate histogram for DBA in the UK

DBA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing DBA.

Hourly rate trend for DBA in the UK

DBA
Top 15 Contract 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 July 2025. 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 -64 103 £500 +3.63% 317
UK excluding London -34 61 £450 - 248
Work from Home -45 55 £475 - 136
London -38 49 £525 -2.33% 85
South East +28 14 £450 -25.00% 38
North of England -25 14 £445 -1.11% 75
North West +3 11 £445 +4.71% 38
Scotland 0 10 £463 +8.82% 4
South West +34 9 £693 +53.89% 32
Midlands -5 7 - - 46
East of England +24 6 £425 +3.03% 38
West Midlands +6 6 - - 27
Yorkshire -21 3 £538 +19.44% 33
East Midlands -4 1 - - 19
Northern Ireland - 1 - - 4

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 4 July 2025, DBA contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring DBA in the job title.

1 78 (59.54%) SQL
2 74 (56.49%) Oracle
3 65 (49.62%) Performance Tuning
4 54 (41.22%) Oracle Database
5 48 (36.64%) SQL Server
6 45 (34.35%) High Availability
7 44 (33.59%) Disaster Recovery
7 44 (33.59%) PostgreSQL
8 43 (32.82%) Database Security
9 40 (30.53%) Migration
10 38 (29.01%) AWS
11 32 (24.43%) Social Skills
12 29 (22.14%) Security Cleared
13 28 (21.37%) Azure
13 28 (21.37%) Problem-Solving
14 27 (20.61%) Replication
15 26 (19.85%) Oracle RMAN
16 25 (19.08%) Relational Database
16 25 (19.08%) Database Migration
17 23 (17.56%) Finance
17 23 (17.56%) PL/SQL
18 22 (16.79%) RDBMS
18 22 (16.79%) Microsoft
18 22 (16.79%) SC Cleared
19 21 (16.03%) Database Tuning
19 21 (16.03%) DevOps
20 20 (15.27%) Data Guard
20 20 (15.27%) Oracle RAC
21 18 (13.74%) Linux
21 18 (13.74%) MongoDB

DBA Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (3.82%) Confluence
1 5 (3.82%) Oracle Workflow
2 4 (3.05%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 4 (3.05%) WebLogic
3 3 (2.29%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (1.53%) OpenEdge
5 1 (0.76%) Apache
Business Applications
1 5 (3.82%) Oracle EBS
1 5 (3.82%) Oracle EBS R12
2 4 (3.05%) Oracle ERP
3 2 (1.53%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 38 (29.01%) AWS
2 28 (21.37%) Azure
3 12 (9.16%) Amazon EC2
4 10 (7.63%) Amazon S3
4 10 (7.63%) GCP
5 9 (6.87%) OCI
6 8 (6.11%) Serverless
7 7 (5.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 6 (4.58%) Azure Data Factory
8 6 (4.58%) Power Platform
9 5 (3.82%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (3.82%) Miro
9 5 (3.82%) Snowflake
10 4 (3.05%) Datadog
10 4 (3.05%) Virtual Private Cloud
11 3 (2.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 2 (1.53%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 2 (1.53%) Azure Monitor
12 2 (1.53%) OpenShift
13 1 (0.76%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 54 (41.22%) Oracle Database
2 48 (36.64%) SQL Server
3 44 (33.59%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (19.08%) Relational Database
5 22 (16.79%) RDBMS
6 18 (13.74%) MongoDB
7 15 (11.45%) Amazon RDS
8 14 (10.69%) MySQL
8 14 (10.69%) NoSQL
9 11 (8.40%) Oracle Reports
10 10 (7.63%) Azure SQL Database
10 10 (7.63%) Data Warehouse
11 7 (5.34%) Amazon Aurora
11 7 (5.34%) Oracle Database 12c
11 7 (5.34%) Oracle Exadata
11 7 (5.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (4.58%) Oracle Database 11g
12 6 (4.58%) Power BI
13 5 (3.82%) Data Lake
14 4 (3.05%) MariaDB
Development Applications
1 6 (4.58%) GitLab
2 5 (3.82%) DBeaver
2 5 (3.82%) JIRA
3 3 (2.29%) ERwin
4 1 (0.76%) SonarQube
4 1 (0.76%) Toad
General
1 32 (24.43%) Social Skills
2 23 (17.56%) Finance
3 13 (9.92%) Public Sector
4 11 (8.40%) Analytical Skills
5 9 (6.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 7 (5.34%) Banking
7 4 (3.05%) Telecoms
8 3 (2.29%) Electronics
8 3 (2.29%) Manufacturing
8 3 (2.29%) Marketing
9 2 (1.53%) French Language
9 2 (1.53%) Legal
10 1 (0.76%) Back Office
10 1 (0.76%) Financial Institution
10 1 (0.76%) Front Office
10 1 (0.76%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.76%) Law
10 1 (0.76%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (8.40%) JSON
1 11 (8.40%) XML
2 9 (6.87%) Kafka
3 8 (6.11%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 2 (1.53%) Elastic Stack
5 1 (0.76%) AngularJS
5 1 (0.76%) JDBC
5 1 (0.76%) NumPy
5 1 (0.76%) ODBC
5 1 (0.76%) Pandas
5 1 (0.76%) PostGIS
5 1 (0.76%) PySpark
5 1 (0.76%) React
5 1 (0.76%) WS-I
Miscellaneous
1 27 (20.61%) Replication
2 15 (11.45%) Clustering
3 6 (4.58%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (3.05%) Cloud Native
4 4 (3.05%) Data Centre
5 3 (2.29%) Oracle Licensing
5 3 (2.29%) Virtual Team
6 2 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.53%) Legacy Applications
7 1 (0.76%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (0.76%) IBM Mainframe
7 1 (0.76%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.76%) Mainframe
7 1 (0.76%) NHS
7 1 (0.76%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.76%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 18 (13.74%) Linux
2 9 (6.87%) Unix
2 9 (6.87%) Windows
3 3 (2.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.53%) AIX
5 1 (0.76%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (49.62%) Performance Tuning
2 45 (34.35%) High Availability
3 44 (33.59%) Disaster Recovery
4 43 (32.82%) Database Security
5 40 (30.53%) Migration
6 28 (21.37%) Problem-Solving
7 25 (19.08%) Database Migration
8 21 (16.03%) Database Tuning
8 21 (16.03%) DevOps
9 15 (11.45%) Task Automation
10 14 (10.69%) Agile
11 11 (8.40%) Business Intelligence
11 11 (8.40%) Data Migration
12 10 (7.63%) Analytics
12 10 (7.63%) Capacity Planning
12 10 (7.63%) Mentoring
12 10 (7.63%) SQL Optimisation
13 9 (6.87%) CI/CD
13 9 (6.87%) Data Management
13 9 (6.87%) Data Protection
Programming Languages
1 78 (59.54%) SQL
2 23 (17.56%) PL/SQL
3 13 (9.92%) Python
4 9 (6.87%) PowerShell
5 7 (5.34%) T-SQL
6 5 (3.82%) Bash
6 5 (3.82%) Perl
7 3 (2.29%) Java
8 2 (1.53%) AWK
8 2 (1.53%) sed
8 2 (1.53%) Shell Script
8 2 (1.53%) VB
9 1 (0.76%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.76%) C
9 1 (0.76%) C#
9 1 (0.76%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.76%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 29 (22.14%) Security Cleared
2 22 (16.79%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.34%) Azure Certification
3 7 (5.34%) Microsoft Certification
4 6 (4.58%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.58%) OCP
4 6 (4.58%) Oracle Certification
5 5 (3.82%) AWS Certification
6 4 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (3.05%) Degree
7 2 (1.53%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.53%) MCSE
8 1 (0.76%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.34%) GDPR
2 6 (4.58%) PCI DSS
2 6 (4.58%) QA
3 2 (1.53%) HIPAA
3 2 (1.53%) SLA
4 1 (0.76%) Actionable Recommendations
System Software
1 20 (15.27%) Oracle RAC
2 3 (2.29%) Docker
3 2 (1.53%) GPFS
3 2 (1.53%) NFS
4 1 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 26 (19.85%) Oracle RMAN
2 20 (15.27%) Data Guard
3 17 (12.98%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 7 (5.34%) Terraform
5 5 (3.82%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
6 4 (3.05%) Ansible
7 1 (0.76%) Nagios
7 1 (0.76%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.76%) Prometheus
7 1 (0.76%) Puppet
Vendors
1 74 (56.49%) Oracle
2 22 (16.79%) Microsoft
3 8 (6.11%) Google
4 4 (3.05%) SAP
5 3 (2.29%) Red Hat
5 3 (2.29%) Teradata
6 2 (1.53%) Cisco
6 2 (1.53%) Delphix
6 2 (1.53%) IBM
6 2 (1.53%) RedGate
6 2 (1.53%) Salesforce
6 2 (1.53%) ServiceNow
6 2 (1.53%) Sybase
6 2 (1.53%) VMware
7 1 (0.76%) BMC
7 1 (0.76%) Checkmarx
7 1 (0.76%) Dynatrace
7 1 (0.76%) SolarWinds
7 1 (0.76%) Sun
7 1 (0.76%) Virgin Media