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 1 September 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 342 420 320
Rank change year-on-year +78 -100 +53
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 359 135 283
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.67% 0.41% 0.73%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.72% 0.45% 0.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 91 176
10th Percentile £363 £373 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £617
90th Percentile £675 £670 £674
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £456 £475
% change year-on-year +4.11% -3.95% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 5 2
10th Percentile - £27.20 £32.45
25th Percentile - £29.00 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £30.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year - -41.75% +17.99%
75th Percentile - £31.00 £65.13
90th Percentile - £58.90 £72.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £51.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year - -0.97% +48.01%

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 49,606 29,880 35,937
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.25% 93.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,580 18,873 22,662
10th Percentile £325 £281 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.69%
75th Percentile £625 £623 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,581 1,559 1,838
10th Percentile £14.96 £13.69 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.53 £17.04 £20.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +1.18%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.81 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £70.33 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.95
% change year-on-year +68.99% -42.78% +11.13%

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 1 September 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 17 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 1 September 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 +61 306 £500 +5.26% 69
UK excluding London +61 237 £475 +4.11% 48
North of England +20 106 £478 +6.22% 18
London -35 90 £525 +5.26% 27
North West +8 77 £478 +10.68% 16
Work from Home -49 57 £475 +4.11% 26
South East -23 53 £500 +11.11% 9
Yorkshire -12 28 £452 -9.60% 2
Midlands -36 23 £450 - 9
Scotland -8 22 £402 -13.08% 3
South West -30 19 £750 +22.45% 1
West Midlands -36 17 £448 - 7
East of England -19 6 £400 -15.79% 6
East Midlands -10 5 £463 - 2
Wales - 5 £544 - 1
Northern Ireland +6 3 £675 - 1
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 September 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.

1 215 (59.89%) SQL
2 190 (52.92%) Security Cleared
3 187 (52.09%) Oracle
4 165 (45.96%) SQL Server
5 145 (40.39%) SC Cleared
6 144 (40.11%) Performance Tuning
7 112 (31.20%) Oracle Database
8 103 (28.69%) High Availability
9 101 (28.13%) PostgreSQL
10 97 (27.02%) Microsoft
11 80 (22.28%) Azure
11 80 (22.28%) Disaster Recovery
12 72 (20.06%) AWS
13 63 (17.55%) MySQL
14 61 (16.99%) Migration
15 51 (14.21%) DV Cleared
15 51 (14.21%) Linux
15 51 (14.21%) Oracle RMAN
16 49 (13.65%) Database Security
17 47 (13.09%) Data Guard
18 46 (12.81%) DevOps
18 46 (12.81%) ITIL
19 43 (11.98%) PowerShell
20 42 (11.70%) Oracle RAC
21 41 (11.42%) Windows
22 36 (10.03%) Microsoft Certification
23 35 (9.75%) Python
24 34 (9.47%) CI/CD
24 34 (9.47%) Root Cause Analysis
25 33 (9.19%) Problem-Solving

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 11 (3.06%) Confluence
2 6 (1.67%) WebLogic
3 3 (0.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.56%) Oracle Service Bus
4 2 (0.56%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.28%) Mendix
5 1 (0.28%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.56%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.28%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 11 (3.06%) Remedy ITSM
2 9 (2.51%) Oracle Applications
3 8 (2.23%) Oracle EBS
4 7 (1.95%) Oracle Payables
5 6 (1.67%) Teamcenter
6 3 (0.84%) Oracle EBS R12
7 1 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
7 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 80 (22.28%) Azure
2 72 (20.06%) AWS
3 16 (4.46%) Power Platform
4 15 (4.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 13 (3.62%) AWS KMS
5 13 (3.62%) Azure DevOps
5 13 (3.62%) Virtual Private Cloud
6 12 (3.34%) Azure Monitor
7 10 (2.79%) AWS CloudFormation
7 10 (2.79%) GCP
8 7 (1.95%) Azure Data Factory
9 6 (1.67%) OCI
10 5 (1.39%) Amazon EC2
10 5 (1.39%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 5 (1.39%) SaaS
11 4 (1.11%) Amazon S3
11 4 (1.11%) Snowflake
12 3 (0.84%) Cloud Computing
12 3 (0.84%) GitHub
12 3 (0.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.06%) SSL
2 4 (1.11%) Firewall
3 1 (0.28%) HTTP
3 1 (0.28%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.28%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 165 (45.96%) SQL Server
2 112 (31.20%) Oracle Database
3 101 (28.13%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (17.55%) MySQL
5 32 (8.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 28 (7.80%) Amazon RDS
7 23 (6.41%) Amazon Aurora
7 23 (6.41%) Oracle Database 11g
8 22 (6.13%) Oracle Database 12c
9 21 (5.85%) MongoDB
9 21 (5.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 16 (4.46%) Power BI
11 14 (3.90%) Relational Database
11 14 (3.90%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 13 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (3.06%) RDBMS
14 8 (2.23%) Oracle Database 10g
14 8 (2.23%) Redis
15 7 (1.95%) Data Warehouse
15 7 (1.95%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 11 (3.06%) Git
2 10 (2.79%) JIRA
3 9 (2.51%) GitLab
4 7 (1.95%) Jenkins
5 6 (1.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 4 (1.11%) Flyway
6 4 (1.11%) Oracle Forms
7 3 (0.84%) Toad
8 2 (0.56%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.28%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 81 (22.56%) Social Skills
2 43 (11.98%) Finance
3 35 (9.75%) Public Sector
4 30 (8.36%) Analytical Skills
5 17 (4.74%) Banking
6 7 (1.95%) Legal
7 5 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.11%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.84%) Police
9 3 (0.84%) Publishing
10 2 (0.56%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.56%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.56%) Military
11 1 (0.28%) Billing
11 1 (0.28%) International Banking
11 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (7.24%) Terraform
2 12 (3.34%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 8 (2.23%) JSON
4 6 (1.67%) OLE
4 6 (1.67%) XML
5 3 (0.84%) .NET
5 3 (0.84%) AWS CDK
5 3 (0.84%) GeoJSON
5 3 (0.84%) Kafka
5 3 (0.84%) Matplotlib
5 3 (0.84%) Middleware
5 3 (0.84%) Oracle Streams
5 3 (0.84%) Pandas
5 3 (0.84%) Polars
5 3 (0.84%) scikit-learn
6 2 (0.56%) REST
7 1 (0.28%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.28%) pgvector
7 1 (0.28%) PostGIS
7 1 (0.28%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 58 (16.16%) Replication
2 33 (9.19%) Clustering
3 13 (3.62%) Data Centre
4 9 (2.51%) Data Structures
5 6 (1.67%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.11%) Cloud Native
6 4 (1.11%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (1.11%) NHS
7 2 (0.56%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.56%) Enterprise Cloud
7 2 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (0.56%) Mainframe
7 2 (0.56%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.28%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.28%) Distributed Systems
8 1 (0.28%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.28%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.28%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.28%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.28%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 51 (14.21%) Linux
2 41 (11.42%) Windows
3 33 (9.19%) Unix
4 26 (7.24%) Windows Server
5 11 (3.06%) Solaris
6 8 (2.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.11%) AIX
7 4 (1.11%) Amazon Linux
7 4 (1.11%) Oracle Linux
8 3 (0.84%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.28%) HPUX
9 1 (0.28%) VMS
9 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (40.11%) Performance Tuning
2 103 (28.69%) High Availability
3 80 (22.28%) Disaster Recovery
4 61 (16.99%) Migration
5 49 (13.65%) Database Security
6 46 (12.81%) DevOps
6 46 (12.81%) ITIL
7 34 (9.47%) CI/CD
7 34 (9.47%) Root Cause Analysis
8 33 (9.19%) Problem-Solving
9 32 (8.91%) Data Modelling
9 32 (8.91%) Database Tuning
9 32 (8.91%) Stakeholder Management
10 27 (7.52%) Capacity Planning
10 27 (7.52%) Performance Optimisation
11 23 (6.41%) Infrastructure as Code
12 22 (6.13%) Continuous Improvement
13 20 (5.57%) Change Management
14 19 (5.29%) Database Migration
15 18 (5.01%) Task Automation
Programming Languages
1 215 (59.89%) SQL
2 43 (11.98%) PowerShell
3 35 (9.75%) Python
4 29 (8.08%) T-SQL
5 26 (7.24%) PL/SQL
6 9 (2.51%) Shell Script
7 7 (1.95%) Bash
8 6 (1.67%) Java
9 5 (1.39%) Perl
10 4 (1.11%) Groovy
10 4 (1.11%) Korn
11 3 (0.84%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.56%) Bicep
13 1 (0.28%) C#
13 1 (0.28%) Cypher
13 1 (0.28%) RPG
Qualifications
1 190 (52.92%) Security Cleared
2 145 (40.39%) SC Cleared
3 51 (14.21%) DV Cleared
4 36 (10.03%) Microsoft Certification
5 18 (5.01%) Degree
6 17 (4.74%) Oracle Certification
7 14 (3.90%) Azure Certification
7 14 (3.90%) BPSS Clearance
8 13 (3.62%) AWS Certification
9 12 (3.34%) OCP
10 9 (2.51%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 8 (2.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 6 (1.67%) Computer Science Degree
13 3 (0.84%) DBS Check
13 3 (0.84%) MCITP
13 3 (0.84%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.18%) Data Quality
1 15 (4.18%) QA
2 7 (1.95%) GDPR
2 7 (1.95%) SLA
3 5 (1.39%) ISO 9000
4 1 (0.28%) Accessibility
4 1 (0.28%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (0.28%) ISO 20022
4 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
4 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 42 (11.70%) Oracle RAC
2 12 (3.34%) Active Directory
2 12 (3.34%) Virtual Machines
3 9 (2.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.39%) Docker
5 2 (0.56%) ACF2
5 2 (0.56%) RACF
Systems Management
1 51 (14.21%) Oracle RMAN
2 47 (13.09%) Data Guard
3 15 (4.18%) Ansible
3 15 (4.18%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
3 15 (4.18%) SCOM
4 9 (2.51%) Microsoft Clustering
5 7 (1.95%) Prometheus
6 6 (1.67%) Grafana
7 4 (1.11%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 4 (1.11%) Failover Clustering
8 3 (0.84%) Nagios
9 2 (0.56%) Foglight
9 2 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.28%) EMC NetWorker
10 1 (0.28%) Kubernetes
10 1 (0.28%) SQL Sentry
Vendors
1 187 (52.09%) Oracle
2 97 (27.02%) Microsoft
3 22 (6.13%) ServiceNow
4 13 (3.62%) Remedy
5 11 (3.06%) BMC
6 9 (2.51%) VMware
7 7 (1.95%) SolarWinds
7 7 (1.95%) Sybase
8 6 (1.67%) RedGate
9 4 (1.11%) Commvault
9 4 (1.11%) Google
9 4 (1.11%) Red Hat
10 3 (0.84%) Cerner
10 3 (0.84%) Databricks
10 3 (0.84%) Dynatrace
10 3 (0.84%) Greenplum
10 3 (0.84%) IBM
10 3 (0.84%) Informatica
10 3 (0.84%) Talend
11 1 (0.28%) Adobe