DBA Contract Job Trends

Database Administrator
UK

The median Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 29 November 2025.

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

6 months to
29 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 434 312 354
Rank change year-on-year -122 +42 +45
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 150 278 284
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.42% 0.76% 0.62%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.46% 0.82% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 97 145 205
10th Percentile £345 £359 £363
25th Percentile £375 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% +1.01%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £578
90th Percentile £675 £664 £619
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £500
% change year-on-year - -10.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 2
10th Percentile £27.20 - £61.73
25th Percentile £29.00 - £64.78
Median hourly rate £30.00 £22.48 £71.03
Median % change year-on-year +33.45% -68.35% +29.14%
75th Percentile £31.00 - £76.10
90th Percentile £58.90 - £78.44
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £22.48 £71.03
% change year-on-year +126.87% -68.35% +77.56%

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 32,783 33,839 42,964
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 90.95% 92.83% 93.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 20,795 20,464 29,004
10th Percentile £281 £300 £290
25th Percentile £402 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £649
90th Percentile £725 £738 £740
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,905 1,235 1,530
10th Percentile £14.25 £15.22 £15.16
25th Percentile £17.89 £20.63 £19.08
Median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +48.33%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £71.50 £73.75 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £33.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -23.79% -25.84% +78.00%

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 29 November 2025.

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
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing DBA over the 6 months to 29 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for DBA 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 29 November 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 -119 124 £468 -6.50% 49
UK excluding London -71 72 £450 - 35
London -52 54 £520 +2.62% 20
Work from Home -84 50 £464 +3.06% 24
North of England -40 31 £425 -4.49% 8
North West -35 19 £442 -0.67% 5
South West +7 13 £535 +18.89% 7
Midlands -36 12 £365 -8.75% 7
Yorkshire - 12 £365 - 3
West Midlands -15 11 £365 -22.83% 6
South East -27 9 £450 -14.29% 9
Scotland +2 5 - -
Wales -2 1 - -
East Midlands -25 1 - - 1
Channel Islands - 1 - -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 29 November 2025, 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 75 (50.00%) Oracle
2 59 (39.33%) SQL
3 55 (36.67%) Oracle Database
4 46 (30.67%) Performance Tuning
5 42 (28.00%) SQL Server
6 41 (27.33%) Azure
7 39 (26.00%) PostgreSQL
8 36 (24.00%) Disaster Recovery
9 35 (23.33%) AWS
10 34 (22.67%) Migration
11 33 (22.00%) Security Cleared
12 31 (20.67%) DevOps
13 27 (18.00%) Data Guard
14 25 (16.67%) High Availability
14 25 (16.67%) SC Cleared
15 24 (16.00%) Linux
15 24 (16.00%) Python
16 23 (15.33%) MySQL
16 23 (15.33%) Oracle RMAN
17 22 (14.67%) Database Security
17 22 (14.67%) NoSQL
18 21 (14.00%) CI/CD
18 21 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
19 20 (13.33%) Oracle RAC
20 19 (12.67%) Agile
20 19 (12.67%) Serverless
21 17 (11.33%) Data Modelling
22 16 (10.67%) MongoDB
22 16 (10.67%) PL/SQL
22 16 (10.67%) Relational Database

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 1 (0.67%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (0.67%) OpenEdge
1 1 (0.67%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
1 1 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.67%) NEC Housing
1 1 (0.67%) Oracle Applications
1 1 (0.67%) Oracle EBS R12
Cloud Services
1 41 (27.33%) Azure
2 35 (23.33%) AWS
3 19 (12.67%) Serverless
4 10 (6.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 10 (6.67%) Azure Monitor
5 8 (5.33%) Azure Cosmos DB
5 8 (5.33%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (4.67%) Azure Functions
6 7 (4.67%) Azure Logic Apps
7 6 (4.00%) Amazon EC2
7 6 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
7 6 (4.00%) SaaS
8 5 (3.33%) Azure AKS
9 4 (2.67%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (2.00%) Azure Data Factory
10 3 (2.00%) Datadog
10 3 (2.00%) OCI
10 3 (2.00%) Snowflake
10 3 (2.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.00%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (36.67%) Oracle Database
2 42 (28.00%) SQL Server
3 39 (26.00%) PostgreSQL
4 23 (15.33%) MySQL
5 22 (14.67%) NoSQL
6 16 (10.67%) MongoDB
6 16 (10.67%) Relational Database
7 13 (8.67%) Amazon RDS
7 13 (8.67%) Oracle Exadata
7 13 (8.67%) RDBMS
8 11 (7.33%) Azure SQL Database
9 8 (5.33%) Oracle Database 12c
9 8 (5.33%) Oracle Reports
10 7 (4.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 6 (4.00%) Amazon Aurora
11 6 (4.00%) DB2
11 6 (4.00%) DynamoDB
12 4 (2.67%) Power BI
13 3 (2.00%) MariaDB
13 3 (2.00%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 7 (4.67%) Git
2 4 (2.67%) Oracle APEX
3 2 (1.33%) Toad
4 1 (0.67%) ERwin
4 1 (0.67%) JIRA
4 1 (0.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 26 (17.33%) Finance
2 20 (13.33%) Social Skills
3 14 (9.33%) Banking
4 12 (8.00%) Public Sector
5 8 (5.33%) Analytical Skills
6 6 (4.00%) Telecoms
7 5 (3.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 4 (2.67%) Local Government
9 3 (2.00%) Electronics
9 3 (2.00%) Investment Banking
9 3 (2.00%) Manufacturing
9 3 (2.00%) Marketing
10 2 (1.33%) Financial Institution
11 1 (0.67%) Automotive
11 1 (0.67%) Back Office
11 1 (0.67%) Law
11 1 (0.67%) Legal
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (8.67%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 9 (6.00%) Node.js
3 8 (5.33%) JSON
3 8 (5.33%) XML
4 5 (3.33%) .NET
4 5 (3.33%) .NET Core
4 5 (3.33%) ASP.NET
4 5 (3.33%) Kafka
5 3 (2.00%) PostGIS
6 2 (1.33%) ARM Templates
6 2 (1.33%) FastAPI
6 2 (1.33%) pgvector
Miscellaneous
1 20 (13.33%) Replication
2 14 (9.33%) Clustering
3 11 (7.33%) Cloud Native
4 10 (6.67%) Enterprise Cloud
5 9 (6.00%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (4.00%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (3.33%) Data Structures
7 5 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
8 4 (2.67%) Hybrid Cloud
9 2 (1.33%) Data Centre
9 2 (1.33%) Onboarding
9 2 (1.33%) Product Ownership
10 1 (0.67%) Data Protection Act
10 1 (0.67%) Mainframe
10 1 (0.67%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.67%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 24 (16.00%) Linux
2 11 (7.33%) Unix
2 11 (7.33%) Windows
3 5 (3.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 3 (2.00%) Solaris
5 2 (1.33%) AIX
5 2 (1.33%) Oracle Linux
5 2 (1.33%) VMS
5 2 (1.33%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (30.67%) Performance Tuning
2 36 (24.00%) Disaster Recovery
3 34 (22.67%) Migration
4 31 (20.67%) DevOps
5 25 (16.67%) High Availability
6 22 (14.67%) Database Security
7 21 (14.00%) CI/CD
7 21 (14.00%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (12.67%) Agile
9 17 (11.33%) Data Modelling
10 13 (8.67%) Task Automation
11 12 (8.00%) Performance Monitoring
12 11 (7.33%) Continuous Improvement
12 11 (7.33%) Database Migration
13 10 (6.67%) Data Protection
13 10 (6.67%) Line Management
13 10 (6.67%) Mentoring
13 10 (6.67%) Stakeholder Management
14 9 (6.00%) Data Migration
14 9 (6.00%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 59 (39.33%) SQL
2 24 (16.00%) Python
3 16 (10.67%) PL/SQL
4 14 (9.33%) Shell Script
5 10 (6.67%) Bash
5 10 (6.67%) T-SQL
6 9 (6.00%) PowerShell
7 5 (3.33%) C#
8 4 (2.67%) Java
9 2 (1.33%) AWK
9 2 (1.33%) Bicep
9 2 (1.33%) sed
10 1 (0.67%) C
10 1 (0.67%) JavaScript
10 1 (0.67%) Perl
10 1 (0.67%) PHP
10 1 (0.67%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 33 (22.00%) Security Cleared
2 25 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 7 (4.67%) DV Cleared
4 6 (4.00%) Microsoft Certification
5 5 (3.33%) OCP
5 5 (3.33%) Oracle Certification
6 4 (2.67%) AWS Certification
6 4 (2.67%) Azure Certification
7 2 (1.33%) Degree
7 2 (1.33%) MCSE
7 2 (1.33%) OCA
8 1 (0.67%) BC Cleared
8 1 (0.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.67%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (4.00%) SLA
2 5 (3.33%) GDPR
2 5 (3.33%) PCI DSS
3 4 (2.67%) QA
4 2 (1.33%) Actionable Recommendations
5 1 (0.67%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.67%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.67%) HIPAA
5 1 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 20 (13.33%) Oracle RAC
2 5 (3.33%) NFS
3 2 (1.33%) GPFS
4 1 (0.67%) Active Directory
4 1 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 27 (18.00%) Data Guard
2 23 (15.33%) Oracle RMAN
3 14 (9.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 7 (4.67%) Terraform
5 4 (2.67%) Ansible
6 2 (1.33%) EMC NetWorker
6 2 (1.33%) yum
7 1 (0.67%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.67%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 75 (50.00%) Oracle
2 15 (10.00%) Microsoft
3 6 (4.00%) Red Hat
4 4 (2.67%) ServiceNow
5 3 (2.00%) SAP
6 2 (1.33%) Delphix
6 2 (1.33%) IBM
6 2 (1.33%) Sybase
7 1 (0.67%) BMC
7 1 (0.67%) EMC
7 1 (0.67%) NEC
7 1 (0.67%) SolarWinds