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 31 January 2026.

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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 422 330 343
Rank change year-on-year -92 +13 +35
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 170 214 274
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.44% 0.68% 0.61%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.48% 0.73% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 114 98 186
10th Percentile £317 £354 £363
25th Percentile £401 £413 £452
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £474 £534
Median % change year-on-year +5.49% -11.24% +10.10%
75th Percentile £538 £547 £589
90th Percentile £606 £633 £650
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £454 £533
% change year-on-year -0.83% -14.87% +12.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 3 2
10th Percentile - £30.36 £61.73
25th Percentile £27.50 £42.18 £64.78
Median hourly rate £30.00 £63.75 £71.03
Median % change year-on-year -52.94% -10.25% +77.56%
75th Percentile £31.00 £65.62 £76.10
90th Percentile - - £78.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £63.75 £71.03
% change year-on-year -56.86% -10.25% +170.57%

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 35,445 29,208 41,662
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.48% 92.89% 93.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,347 17,858 27,594
10th Percentile £300 £296 £275
25th Percentile £405 £409 £411
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £719 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £479 £495
% change year-on-year -0.84% -3.23% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,112 858 2,186
10th Percentile £14.38 £15.91 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £21.25 £17.00
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.50 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -8.92% -10.96% +4.29%
75th Percentile £61.18 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £31.52 £38.00
% change year-on-year -12.75% -17.05% +26.67%

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 31 January 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 15 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 31 January 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 -83 144 £492 +3.58% 38
UK excluding London -68 86 £450 -0.83% 39
London -58 66 £500 - 8
Work from Home -56 43 £488 +9.55% 24
North of England -44 30 £402 -9.66% 11
West Midlands -24 20 £438 -7.51% 3
Midlands -38 20 £438 +9.38% 5
North West -30 19 £442 -0.67% 6
South East -46 15 £510 -0.59% 12
Yorkshire -36 12 £350 - 5
Scotland +6 10 £500 +8.11% 3
South West -18 7 £606 -7.83% 3
Wales 0 2 - - 1
Northern Ireland -2 1 £675 -
East of England -15 1 £375 +16.68% 6

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 31 January 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 83 (48.82%) SQL
2 82 (48.24%) Oracle
3 60 (35.29%) Oracle Database
4 53 (31.18%) Security Cleared
5 49 (28.82%) Performance Tuning
6 45 (26.47%) Azure
7 41 (24.12%) PostgreSQL
8 39 (22.94%) AWS
9 37 (21.76%) SQL Server
10 34 (20.00%) SC Cleared
11 33 (19.41%) Migration
12 31 (18.24%) Disaster Recovery
13 30 (17.65%) DevOps
13 30 (17.65%) High Availability
14 24 (14.12%) PL/SQL
14 24 (14.12%) Python
15 23 (13.53%) Microsoft
15 23 (13.53%) MySQL
16 21 (12.35%) Database Security
16 21 (12.35%) NoSQL
17 20 (11.76%) Data Guard
17 20 (11.76%) Linux
17 20 (11.76%) Oracle RAC
17 20 (11.76%) Serverless
18 19 (11.18%) Amazon RDS
18 19 (11.18%) MongoDB
18 19 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
19 18 (10.59%) Oracle RMAN
20 17 (10.00%) Agile
20 17 (10.00%) Azure Cosmos DB

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 4 (2.35%) WebLogic
2 2 (1.18%) Liferay
2 2 (1.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (1.18%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.59%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.59%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 5 (2.94%) Oracle EBS
1 5 (2.94%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (1.18%) Oracle ERP
3 1 (0.59%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.59%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 45 (26.47%) Azure
2 39 (22.94%) AWS
3 20 (11.76%) Serverless
4 17 (10.00%) Azure Cosmos DB
5 9 (5.29%) Azure DevOps
5 9 (5.29%) Azure Monitor
6 8 (4.71%) Azure Functions
6 8 (4.71%) Azure Logic Apps
7 7 (4.12%) Azure AKS
8 6 (3.53%) Amazon S3
8 6 (3.53%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (3.53%) SaaS
9 5 (2.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 5 (2.94%) Snowflake
10 4 (2.35%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (2.35%) GCP
10 4 (2.35%) OCI
11 3 (1.76%) Azure Storage
11 3 (1.76%) Cloud Computing
11 3 (1.76%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.76%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 60 (35.29%) Oracle Database
2 41 (24.12%) PostgreSQL
3 37 (21.76%) SQL Server
4 23 (13.53%) MySQL
5 21 (12.35%) NoSQL
6 19 (11.18%) Amazon RDS
6 19 (11.18%) MongoDB
7 14 (8.24%) Oracle Reports
8 12 (7.06%) Relational Database
9 10 (5.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 9 (5.29%) Azure SQL Database
10 9 (5.29%) DynamoDB
10 9 (5.29%) Oracle Exadata
10 9 (5.29%) RDBMS
11 8 (4.71%) Amazon Aurora
12 7 (4.12%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 7 (4.12%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 4 (2.35%) Oracle BI EE
13 4 (2.35%) Snowflake Schema
13 4 (2.35%) SQLPlus
Development Applications
1 10 (5.88%) Oracle APEX
2 7 (4.12%) Git
3 5 (2.94%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 2 (1.18%) GitLab
5 1 (0.59%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.59%) JIRA
5 1 (0.59%) TeamCity
5 1 (0.59%) Toad
General
1 23 (13.53%) Public Sector
2 18 (10.59%) Social Skills
3 16 (9.41%) Finance
4 14 (8.24%) Banking
5 8 (4.71%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (2.35%) Local Government
7 3 (1.76%) Military
7 3 (1.76%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.18%) Aviation
8 2 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.18%) Legal
9 1 (0.59%) Back Office
9 1 (0.59%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.59%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.59%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 11 (6.47%) JSON
1 11 (6.47%) Node.js
1 11 (6.47%) XML
2 7 (4.12%) .NET
2 7 (4.12%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 6 (3.53%) .NET Core
3 6 (3.53%) ASP.NET
4 5 (2.94%) Kafka
5 3 (1.76%) PostGIS
6 2 (1.18%) Oracle ADF
6 2 (1.18%) pgvector
7 1 (0.59%) ARM Templates
7 1 (0.59%) Elastic Stack
Miscellaneous
1 16 (9.41%) Replication
2 14 (8.24%) Cloud Native
3 11 (6.47%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (5.88%) Enterprise Cloud
5 8 (4.71%) Clustering
5 8 (4.71%) Data Structures
6 7 (4.12%) Legacy Systems
7 4 (2.35%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.76%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (1.18%) Driving Licence
9 2 (1.18%) Onboarding
10 1 (0.59%) Data Centre
10 1 (0.59%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.59%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.59%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.59%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 20 (11.76%) Linux
2 12 (7.06%) Unix
3 5 (2.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 5 (2.94%) Windows
4 3 (1.76%) Solaris
5 2 (1.18%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (1.18%) VMS
5 2 (1.18%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.59%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (28.82%) Performance Tuning
2 33 (19.41%) Migration
3 31 (18.24%) Disaster Recovery
4 30 (17.65%) DevOps
4 30 (17.65%) High Availability
5 21 (12.35%) Database Security
6 19 (11.18%) Problem-Solving
7 17 (10.00%) Agile
7 17 (10.00%) Data Migration
7 17 (10.00%) Data Modelling
8 16 (9.41%) CI/CD
9 15 (8.82%) Performance Monitoring
9 15 (8.82%) Task Automation
10 13 (7.65%) Continuous Improvement
11 12 (7.06%) Data Protection
12 11 (6.47%) Performance Optimisation
12 11 (6.47%) Statistics
13 10 (5.88%) Capacity Planning
13 10 (5.88%) Mentoring
14 9 (5.29%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 83 (48.82%) SQL
2 24 (14.12%) PL/SQL
2 24 (14.12%) Python
3 16 (9.41%) Shell Script
4 13 (7.65%) PowerShell
5 7 (4.12%) C#
6 6 (3.53%) Bash
7 4 (2.35%) Bicep
7 4 (2.35%) Java
8 3 (1.76%) Perl
8 3 (1.76%) T-SQL
9 1 (0.59%) PHP
9 1 (0.59%) VB
Qualifications
1 53 (31.18%) Security Cleared
2 34 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 14 (8.24%) DV Cleared
4 4 (2.35%) AWS Certification
4 4 (2.35%) OCP
4 4 (2.35%) Oracle Certification
5 3 (1.76%) Azure Certification
5 3 (1.76%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (0.59%) BC Cleared
6 1 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 1 (0.59%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (4.71%) GDPR
1 8 (4.71%) SLA
2 3 (1.76%) Disclosure Scotland
2 3 (1.76%) QA
3 2 (1.18%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.59%) Actionable Recommendations
4 1 (0.59%) HIPAA
4 1 (0.59%) PCI DSS
4 1 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 20 (11.76%) Oracle RAC
2 5 (2.94%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.76%) NFS
3 3 (1.76%) Oracle Clusterware
4 1 (0.59%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 20 (11.76%) Data Guard
2 18 (10.59%) Oracle RMAN
3 13 (7.65%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 8 (4.71%) Ansible
5 6 (3.53%) Terraform
6 4 (2.35%) Microsoft Clustering
7 2 (1.18%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (1.18%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 2 (1.18%) Foglight
7 2 (1.18%) systemd
8 1 (0.59%) Oracle ZFS
8 1 (0.59%) SCCM
Vendors
1 82 (48.24%) Oracle
2 23 (13.53%) Microsoft
3 6 (3.53%) Red Hat
4 5 (2.94%) ServiceNow
5 4 (2.35%) Greenplum
5 4 (2.35%) Informatica
5 4 (2.35%) SolarWinds
5 4 (2.35%) Talend
6 3 (1.76%) Google
6 3 (1.76%) RedGate
7 2 (1.18%) IBM
8 1 (0.59%) Databricks
8 1 (0.59%) Delphix
8 1 (0.59%) EMC
8 1 (0.59%) NEC
8 1 (0.59%) Splunk
8 1 (0.59%) Sybase