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 18 September 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
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 430 308 368
Rank change year-on-year -122 +60 +6
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 138 269 297
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.42% 0.70% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.46% 0.75% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 93 164 203
10th Percentile £373 £350 £358
25th Percentile £425 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £484
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +3.31% -3.20%
75th Percentile £569 £625 £572
90th Percentile £662 £674 £635
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -2.63% - -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 1 4
10th Percentile £27.20 - £21.62
25th Percentile £29.00 £72.50 £28.55
Median hourly rate £30.00 £75.00 £43.65
Median % change year-on-year -60.00% +71.83% -20.64%
75th Percentile £31.00 £77.50 £56.41
90th Percentile £58.90 - £61.21
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.00 £75.00 £34.80
% change year-on-year -32.00% +115.55% -30.41%

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 30,003 35,798 46,379
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.06% 92.95% 94.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,960 22,064 31,748
10th Percentile £278 £300 £300
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £530
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
75th Percentile £623 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,577 1,684 1,483
10th Percentile £13.75 £14.73 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.30 £20.30 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £44.50
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -3.37% +71.15%
75th Percentile £52.50 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -44.11% +4.65% +95.45%

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
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 18 September 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 18 September 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 18 September 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 -97 107 £500 - 44
UK excluding London -56 58 £463 -2.63% 31
Work from Home -44 55 £463 -2.63% 22
London -51 52 £518 +0.32% 14
South East +3 16 £450 -25.00% 14
North of England -24 14 £450 -5.26% 8
South West +23 11 £613 +36.11% 3
North West -22 10 £450 +4.35% 3
Scotland +4 8 £463 -4.15%
Midlands -32 5 - - 6
West Midlands -12 4 - - 1
Yorkshire -14 4 £500 -14.89% 3
East of England +5 3 £475 +26.67% 1
East Midlands -16 1 - - 5
Channel Islands - 1 - -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 18 September 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 77 (55.80%) SQL
2 65 (47.10%) Oracle
3 56 (40.58%) SQL Server
4 54 (39.13%) Performance Tuning
5 51 (36.96%) Oracle Database
6 43 (31.16%) Azure
7 41 (29.71%) Disaster Recovery
8 40 (28.99%) Migration
9 37 (26.81%) AWS
9 37 (26.81%) High Availability
10 32 (23.19%) Database Security
11 30 (21.74%) PostgreSQL
12 29 (21.01%) Data Guard
13 28 (20.29%) Replication
13 28 (20.29%) Oracle RAC
13 28 (20.29%) Social Skills
14 27 (19.57%) Oracle RMAN
14 27 (19.57%) Finance
15 26 (18.84%) DevOps
16 24 (17.39%) Security Cleared
16 24 (17.39%) PL/SQL
16 24 (17.39%) Linux
17 23 (16.67%) Database Migration
17 23 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
18 22 (15.94%) SC Cleared
19 19 (13.77%) CI/CD
20 18 (13.04%) Data Modelling
20 18 (13.04%) Microsoft
21 17 (12.32%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
21 17 (12.32%) Clustering

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 (3.62%) Oracle Workflow
2 4 (2.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 4 (2.90%) WebLogic
3 2 (1.45%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.45%) OpenEdge
Business Applications
1 6 (4.35%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (3.62%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (2.90%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.72%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 43 (31.16%) Azure
2 37 (26.81%) AWS
3 12 (8.70%) OCI
4 11 (7.97%) Serverless
5 9 (6.52%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 9 (6.52%) Amazon EC2
5 9 (6.52%) Azure Monitor
6 7 (5.07%) Power Platform
7 6 (4.35%) Amazon S3
7 6 (4.35%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 6 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (4.35%) Azure Functions
7 6 (4.35%) Azure Logic Apps
7 6 (4.35%) Snowflake
8 5 (3.62%) AWS CloudFormation
8 5 (3.62%) Azure Data Factory
8 5 (3.62%) Datadog
8 5 (3.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
9 4 (2.90%) Azure AKS
10 3 (2.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 3 (2.17%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (40.58%) SQL Server
2 51 (36.96%) Oracle Database
3 30 (21.74%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (11.59%) Relational Database
5 15 (10.87%) Oracle Exadata
6 14 (10.14%) NoSQL
6 14 (10.14%) RDBMS
7 13 (9.42%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (8.70%) Azure SQL Database
8 12 (8.70%) MySQL
9 11 (7.97%) MongoDB
9 11 (7.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 10 (7.25%) Amazon Aurora
11 8 (5.80%) Data Warehouse
11 8 (5.80%) Oracle Database 12c
12 7 (5.07%) Oracle Reports
12 7 (5.07%) Power BI
13 6 (4.35%) DB2
14 5 (3.62%) MariaDB
14 5 (3.62%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 6 (4.35%) Git
2 4 (2.90%) Oracle APEX
3 3 (2.17%) ERwin
4 1 (0.72%) GitLab
4 1 (0.72%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.72%) Toad
General
1 28 (20.29%) Social Skills
2 27 (19.57%) Finance
3 12 (8.70%) Banking
4 9 (6.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 8 (5.80%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.90%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (2.17%) Electronics
7 3 (2.17%) Local Government
7 3 (2.17%) Manufacturing
7 3 (2.17%) Marketing
7 3 (2.17%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.45%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.45%) French Language
8 2 (1.45%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.72%) Automotive
9 1 (0.72%) Back Office
9 1 (0.72%) Front Office
9 1 (0.72%) Law
9 1 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (10.87%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 6 (4.35%) Node.js
3 4 (2.90%) .NET
3 4 (2.90%) .NET Core
3 4 (2.90%) ASP.NET
3 4 (2.90%) JSON
3 4 (2.90%) XML
4 2 (1.45%) ARM Templates
4 2 (1.45%) FastAPI
4 2 (1.45%) Kafka
4 2 (1.45%) pgvector
4 2 (1.45%) PostGIS
5 1 (0.72%) WS-I
Miscellaneous
1 28 (20.29%) Replication
2 17 (12.32%) Clustering
3 9 (6.52%) Cloud Native
4 6 (4.35%) Distributed Systems
5 5 (3.62%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (2.90%) Hybrid Cloud
7 3 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
8 2 (1.45%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (1.45%) Onboarding
8 2 (1.45%) Virtual Team
9 1 (0.72%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.72%) Mainframe
9 1 (0.72%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 24 (17.39%) Linux
2 8 (5.80%) Windows
3 7 (5.07%) Unix
4 3 (2.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.45%) AIX
5 2 (1.45%) VMS
6 1 (0.72%) Solaris
6 1 (0.72%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (39.13%) Performance Tuning
2 41 (29.71%) Disaster Recovery
3 40 (28.99%) Migration
4 37 (26.81%) High Availability
5 32 (23.19%) Database Security
6 26 (18.84%) DevOps
7 23 (16.67%) Database Migration
7 23 (16.67%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (13.77%) CI/CD
9 18 (13.04%) Data Modelling
10 17 (12.32%) Task Automation
11 15 (10.87%) Capacity Planning
11 15 (10.87%) Database Tuning
12 12 (8.70%) Data Protection
13 11 (7.97%) ETL
13 11 (7.97%) ITIL
14 10 (7.25%) Analytics
14 10 (7.25%) Business Intelligence
14 10 (7.25%) Infrastructure as Code
15 9 (6.52%) Proactive Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 77 (55.80%) SQL
2 24 (17.39%) PL/SQL
3 15 (10.87%) Python
4 11 (7.97%) Bash
5 10 (7.25%) T-SQL
6 7 (5.07%) PowerShell
6 7 (5.07%) Shell Script
7 4 (2.90%) C#
7 4 (2.90%) Perl
8 2 (1.45%) AWK
8 2 (1.45%) Bicep
8 2 (1.45%) Java
8 2 (1.45%) sed
9 1 (0.72%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.72%) C
9 1 (0.72%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.72%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (17.39%) Security Cleared
2 22 (15.94%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.07%) Azure Certification
4 5 (3.62%) Microsoft Certification
4 5 (3.62%) OCP
4 5 (3.62%) Oracle Certification
5 4 (2.90%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.45%) AWS Certification
6 2 (1.45%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.45%) Degree
6 2 (1.45%) MCSE
6 2 (1.45%) OCA
7 1 (0.72%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.07%) GDPR
2 6 (4.35%) PCI DSS
3 5 (3.62%) QA
4 3 (2.17%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.45%) SLA
6 1 (0.72%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.72%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.72%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 28 (20.29%) Oracle RAC
2 3 (2.17%) NFS
3 2 (1.45%) GPFS
4 1 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (21.01%) Data Guard
2 27 (19.57%) Oracle RMAN
3 17 (12.32%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 10 (7.25%) Terraform
5 4 (2.90%) Ansible
5 4 (2.90%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
6 2 (1.45%) yum
7 1 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.72%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 65 (47.10%) Oracle
2 18 (13.04%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.90%) Red Hat
4 3 (2.17%) Delphix
4 3 (2.17%) SAP
4 3 (2.17%) Teradata
5 2 (1.45%) Cisco
5 2 (1.45%) Google
5 2 (1.45%) IBM
5 2 (1.45%) RedGate
5 2 (1.45%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.45%) Sybase
6 1 (0.72%) BMC
6 1 (0.72%) SolarWinds
6 1 (0.72%) Virgin Media
6 1 (0.72%) VMware