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 15 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
15 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 423 311 371
Rank change year-on-year -112 +60 +6
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 134 270 301
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.41% 0.71% 0.60%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.45% 0.76% 0.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 91 166 206
10th Percentile £373 £350 £358
25th Percentile £425 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £487
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.67% -2.60%
75th Percentile £569 £625 £567
90th Percentile £670 £674 £631
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 29,544 35,467 47,344
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.03% 92.99% 94.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 18,645 21,950 32,442
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 £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +0.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,552 1,701 1,505
10th Percentile £13.69 £14.73 £14.63
25th Percentile £17.00 £20.50 £19.06
Median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.86
Median % change year-on-year -41.51% -1.96% +68.69%
75th Percentile £51.83 £65.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £45.00 £42.08
% change year-on-year -44.11% +6.95% +91.26%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 -97 105 £500 - 39
UK excluding London -45 57 £463 -2.63% 26
Work from Home -48 52 £463 -2.63% 21
London -58 51 £518 +2.13% 15
South East +9 15 £450 -25.00% 12
North of England -27 14 £450 -7.69% 9
South West +24 11 £613 +36.11% 1
North West -19 10 £450 +4.35% 2
Scotland 0 8 £463 -4.15%
Midlands -28 5 - - 4
Yorkshire -13 4 £500 -14.89% 3
West Midlands -14 4 - - 2
East of England +6 3 £475 +26.67% 1
East Midlands -15 1 - - 2
Channel Islands - 1 - -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 15 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 (57.46%) SQL
2 65 (48.51%) Oracle
3 56 (41.79%) SQL Server
4 54 (40.30%) Performance Tuning
5 51 (38.06%) Oracle Database
6 43 (32.09%) Azure
7 40 (29.85%) Disaster Recovery
8 39 (29.10%) Migration
9 37 (27.61%) High Availability
10 34 (25.37%) AWS
11 32 (23.88%) Database Security
12 30 (22.39%) PostgreSQL
13 29 (21.64%) Data Guard
14 28 (20.90%) Replication
14 28 (20.90%) Oracle RAC
14 28 (20.90%) Social Skills
15 27 (20.15%) Oracle RMAN
15 27 (20.15%) Finance
16 26 (19.40%) DevOps
17 24 (17.91%) Security Cleared
17 24 (17.91%) PL/SQL
17 24 (17.91%) Linux
18 23 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
18 23 (17.16%) Database Migration
19 22 (16.42%) SC Cleared
20 19 (14.18%) CI/CD
21 18 (13.43%) Microsoft
22 17 (12.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
22 17 (12.69%) Data Modelling
22 17 (12.69%) 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 (3.73%) Oracle Workflow
2 4 (2.99%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 4 (2.99%) WebLogic
3 2 (1.49%) Apache Airflow
3 2 (1.49%) OpenEdge
Business Applications
1 6 (4.48%) Oracle EBS R12
2 5 (3.73%) Oracle EBS
3 4 (2.99%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.75%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 43 (32.09%) Azure
2 34 (25.37%) AWS
3 12 (8.96%) OCI
4 10 (7.46%) Serverless
5 9 (6.72%) Amazon EC2
5 9 (6.72%) Azure Monitor
6 8 (5.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 7 (5.22%) Power Platform
8 6 (4.48%) Amazon S3
8 6 (4.48%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 6 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
8 6 (4.48%) Azure Functions
8 6 (4.48%) Azure Logic Apps
8 6 (4.48%) Snowflake
9 5 (3.73%) AWS CloudFormation
9 5 (3.73%) Azure Data Factory
9 5 (3.73%) Datadog
9 5 (3.73%) Virtual Private Cloud
10 4 (2.99%) Azure AKS
11 3 (2.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.49%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (41.79%) SQL Server
2 51 (38.06%) Oracle Database
3 30 (22.39%) PostgreSQL
4 16 (11.94%) Relational Database
5 15 (11.19%) Oracle Exadata
6 14 (10.45%) RDBMS
7 13 (9.70%) NoSQL
8 12 (8.96%) Amazon RDS
8 12 (8.96%) Azure SQL Database
9 11 (8.21%) MongoDB
9 11 (8.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 10 (7.46%) MySQL
11 9 (6.72%) Amazon Aurora
12 8 (5.97%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (5.97%) Oracle Database 12c
13 7 (5.22%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (5.22%) Power BI
14 6 (4.48%) DB2
15 5 (3.73%) MariaDB
15 5 (3.73%) Oracle Database 11g
Development Applications
1 6 (4.48%) Git
2 4 (2.99%) Oracle APEX
3 3 (2.24%) ERwin
4 1 (0.75%) GitLab
4 1 (0.75%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.75%) Toad
General
1 28 (20.90%) Social Skills
2 27 (20.15%) Finance
3 12 (8.96%) Banking
4 9 (6.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 8 (5.97%) Public Sector
6 4 (2.99%) Analytical Skills
7 3 (2.24%) Electronics
7 3 (2.24%) Local Government
7 3 (2.24%) Manufacturing
7 3 (2.24%) Marketing
7 3 (2.24%) Telecoms
8 2 (1.49%) Financial Institution
8 2 (1.49%) French Language
8 2 (1.49%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.75%) Automotive
9 1 (0.75%) Back Office
9 1 (0.75%) Front Office
9 1 (0.75%) Law
9 1 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (11.19%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 5 (3.73%) Node.js
3 4 (2.99%) .NET
3 4 (2.99%) .NET Core
3 4 (2.99%) ASP.NET
3 4 (2.99%) JSON
3 4 (2.99%) XML
4 2 (1.49%) ARM Templates
4 2 (1.49%) FastAPI
4 2 (1.49%) Kafka
4 2 (1.49%) pgvector
4 2 (1.49%) PostGIS
5 1 (0.75%) WS-I
Miscellaneous
1 28 (20.90%) Replication
2 17 (12.69%) Clustering
3 8 (5.97%) Cloud Native
4 5 (3.73%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (2.99%) Hybrid Cloud
6 3 (2.24%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.49%) Data Centre
7 2 (1.49%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.49%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.49%) Virtual Team
8 1 (0.75%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (0.75%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.75%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 24 (17.91%) Linux
2 8 (5.97%) Windows
3 7 (5.22%) Unix
4 3 (2.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (1.49%) AIX
5 2 (1.49%) VMS
6 1 (0.75%) Solaris
6 1 (0.75%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 54 (40.30%) Performance Tuning
2 40 (29.85%) Disaster Recovery
3 39 (29.10%) Migration
4 37 (27.61%) High Availability
5 32 (23.88%) Database Security
6 26 (19.40%) DevOps
7 23 (17.16%) Database Migration
7 23 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
8 19 (14.18%) CI/CD
9 17 (12.69%) Data Modelling
10 16 (11.94%) Task Automation
11 15 (11.19%) Capacity Planning
11 15 (11.19%) Database Tuning
12 12 (8.96%) Data Protection
13 11 (8.21%) ETL
14 10 (7.46%) Analytics
14 10 (7.46%) Business Intelligence
14 10 (7.46%) Infrastructure as Code
14 10 (7.46%) ITIL
15 9 (6.72%) Proactive Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 77 (57.46%) SQL
2 24 (17.91%) PL/SQL
3 13 (9.70%) Python
4 10 (7.46%) Bash
4 10 (7.46%) T-SQL
5 7 (5.22%) PowerShell
6 6 (4.48%) Shell Script
7 4 (2.99%) C#
7 4 (2.99%) Perl
8 2 (1.49%) AWK
8 2 (1.49%) Bicep
8 2 (1.49%) sed
9 1 (0.75%) ANSI SQL
9 1 (0.75%) C
9 1 (0.75%) Java
9 1 (0.75%) JavaScript
9 1 (0.75%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 24 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 22 (16.42%) SC Cleared
3 7 (5.22%) Azure Certification
4 5 (3.73%) Microsoft Certification
4 5 (3.73%) OCP
4 5 (3.73%) Oracle Certification
5 4 (2.99%) DV Cleared
6 2 (1.49%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (1.49%) Degree
6 2 (1.49%) MCSE
6 2 (1.49%) OCA
7 1 (0.75%) AWS Certification
7 1 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (5.22%) GDPR
2 6 (4.48%) PCI DSS
3 5 (3.73%) QA
4 3 (2.24%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.49%) SLA
6 1 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.75%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 28 (20.90%) Oracle RAC
2 3 (2.24%) NFS
3 2 (1.49%) GPFS
4 1 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (21.64%) Data Guard
2 27 (20.15%) Oracle RMAN
3 17 (12.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 10 (7.46%) Terraform
5 4 (2.99%) Ansible
5 4 (2.99%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
6 2 (1.49%) yum
7 1 (0.75%) Microsoft Clustering
7 1 (0.75%) Oracle ZFS
Vendors
1 65 (48.51%) Oracle
2 18 (13.43%) Microsoft
3 4 (2.99%) Red Hat
4 3 (2.24%) Delphix
4 3 (2.24%) SAP
4 3 (2.24%) Teradata
5 2 (1.49%) Cisco
5 2 (1.49%) Google
5 2 (1.49%) IBM
5 2 (1.49%) RedGate
5 2 (1.49%) Salesforce
5 2 (1.49%) Sybase
6 1 (0.75%) BMC
6 1 (0.75%) SolarWinds
6 1 (0.75%) Virgin Media
6 1 (0.75%) VMware