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 16 July 2026.

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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 345 408 315
Rank change year-on-year +63 -93 +49
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 344 129 302
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.65% 0.40% 0.71%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.71% 0.43% 0.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 91 207
10th Percentile £363 £375 £350
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £490
Median % change year-on-year - -3.06% -2.00%
75th Percentile £586 £568 £610
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £450
% change year-on-year -2.70% +2.78% -8.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 2
10th Percentile - - £32.45
25th Percentile - £72.50 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £75.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year - +45.63% +48.01%
75th Percentile - £77.50 £65.13
90th Percentile - - £72.55
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £75.00 £51.50
% change year-on-year - +45.63% +186.11%

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 48,701 29,792 39,645
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.54% 91.70% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,482 18,952 25,549
10th Percentile £325 £287 £288
25th Percentile £419 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £495
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.04% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,274 1,409 2,702
10th Percentile £15.93 £13.75 £13.00
25th Percentile £21.27 £17.30 £17.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £26.21 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +71.69% -34.48% -5.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 £55.49 £63.75
90th Percentile £80.04 £74.00 £73.98
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.56 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +81.13% -37.13% +6.67%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 +67 294 £463 -7.50% 28
UK excluding London +61 243 £450 -2.70% 33
North of England +6 103 £447 +0.45% 14
North West +10 73 £449 +0.79% 13
London -43 71 £500 -4.76% 7
South East -10 64 £417 -7.28% 6
Work from Home -65 60 £500 +11.11% 14
Yorkshire -25 30 £400 -25.58% 1
Midlands -41 26 £450 - 3
West Midlands -42 20 £447 - 2
South West -20 19 £750 +22.45% 1
Scotland -1 18 £463 - 1
Wales - 6 £544 -
East Midlands -7 5 £463 - 1
East of England -21 5 £387 -11.66%
Northern Ireland +2 2 £675 - 8
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 16 July 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.

1 199 (57.85%) Oracle
2 194 (56.40%) SQL
3 166 (48.26%) Security Cleared
4 160 (46.51%) SQL Server
5 131 (38.08%) Performance Tuning
6 124 (36.05%) Oracle Database
7 119 (34.59%) SC Cleared
8 94 (27.33%) High Availability
9 92 (26.74%) Microsoft
10 91 (26.45%) PostgreSQL
11 76 (22.09%) Azure
12 69 (20.06%) Disaster Recovery
13 62 (18.02%) AWS
14 56 (16.28%) Database Security
15 55 (15.99%) Oracle RMAN
16 53 (15.41%) Linux
16 53 (15.41%) Migration
17 52 (15.12%) DV Cleared
17 52 (15.12%) MySQL
18 49 (14.24%) ITIL
19 43 (12.50%) Oracle RAC
20 42 (12.21%) Data Guard
21 41 (11.92%) DevOps
21 41 (11.92%) Unix
22 39 (11.34%) Problem-Solving
23 35 (10.17%) Capacity Planning
23 35 (10.17%) PowerShell
23 35 (10.17%) Python
24 30 (8.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
24 30 (8.72%) Windows

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 6 (1.74%) Confluence
1 6 (1.74%) WebLogic
2 3 (0.87%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.58%) Oracle Service Bus
3 2 (0.58%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.29%) Mendix
4 1 (0.29%) OpenEdge
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.16%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.58%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.29%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 10 (2.91%) Oracle Applications
1 10 (2.91%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.74%) Teamcenter
3 5 (1.45%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.87%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.87%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.29%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 76 (22.09%) Azure
2 62 (18.02%) AWS
3 9 (2.62%) GCP
4 8 (2.33%) Azure Data Factory
4 8 (2.33%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (2.03%) Azure Monitor
5 7 (2.03%) OCI
6 6 (1.74%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 6 (1.74%) Power Platform
7 5 (1.45%) SaaS
7 5 (1.45%) Serverless
8 4 (1.16%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.87%) Amazon EC2
9 3 (0.87%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.87%) GitHub
9 3 (0.87%) PaaS
10 2 (0.58%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.58%) AWS KMS
10 2 (0.58%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (0.58%) IBM Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.74%) SSL
2 2 (0.58%) Firewall
3 1 (0.29%) HTTP
3 1 (0.29%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.29%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (46.51%) SQL Server
2 124 (36.05%) Oracle Database
3 91 (26.45%) PostgreSQL
4 52 (15.12%) MySQL
5 30 (8.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 24 (6.98%) Oracle Database 11g
6 24 (6.98%) Oracle Database 12c
7 20 (5.81%) Amazon RDS
8 19 (5.52%) MongoDB
8 19 (5.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 18 (5.23%) Relational Database
10 17 (4.94%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (4.36%) RDBMS
12 12 (3.49%) Oracle Reports
13 10 (2.91%) Oracle Database 10g
14 9 (2.62%) Amazon Aurora
14 9 (2.62%) NoSQL
15 8 (2.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 7 (2.03%) Oracle Exadata
16 7 (2.03%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 11 (3.20%) Git
2 10 (2.91%) GitLab
3 7 (2.03%) Jenkins
4 6 (1.74%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 4 (1.16%) Flyway
5 4 (1.16%) JIRA
5 4 (1.16%) Oracle Forms
6 3 (0.87%) Toad
7 2 (0.58%) Oracle APEX
8 1 (0.29%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 61 (17.73%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.47%) Finance
3 32 (9.30%) Public Sector
4 31 (9.01%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (2.91%) Banking
6 8 (2.33%) Legal
7 5 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.16%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.87%) Military
9 3 (0.87%) Publishing
10 2 (0.58%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.58%) Police
10 2 (0.58%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.29%) Advertising
11 1 (0.29%) Billing
11 1 (0.29%) International Banking
11 1 (0.29%) Local Government
11 1 (0.29%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.29%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (4.65%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 12 (3.49%) JSON
3 10 (2.91%) XML
4 7 (2.03%) Kafka
5 6 (1.74%) OLE
6 4 (1.16%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.87%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.87%) Matplotlib
7 3 (0.87%) Middleware
7 3 (0.87%) Oracle Streams
7 3 (0.87%) Pandas
7 3 (0.87%) Polars
7 3 (0.87%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.58%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.58%) REST
9 1 (0.29%) .NET Core
9 1 (0.29%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.29%) Node.js
9 1 (0.29%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.29%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 46 (13.37%) Replication
2 27 (7.85%) Clustering
3 11 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (1.74%) Data Structures
4 6 (1.74%) Enterprise Cloud
5 4 (1.16%) Legacy Applications
5 4 (1.16%) Onboarding
6 3 (0.87%) Data Centre
7 2 (0.58%) Cloud Native
7 2 (0.58%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.58%) Mainframe
7 2 (0.58%) NHS
7 2 (0.58%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.29%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.29%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.29%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.29%) Life Science
8 1 (0.29%) Operational Technology
8 1 (0.29%) SCADA
8 1 (0.29%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 53 (15.41%) Linux
2 41 (11.92%) Unix
3 30 (8.72%) Windows
4 22 (6.40%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 8 (2.33%) Solaris
6 4 (1.16%) AIX
6 4 (1.16%) Oracle Linux
7 2 (0.58%) Amazon Linux
8 1 (0.29%) Data ONTAP
8 1 (0.29%) HPUX
8 1 (0.29%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.29%) VMS
8 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 131 (38.08%) Performance Tuning
2 94 (27.33%) High Availability
3 69 (20.06%) Disaster Recovery
4 56 (16.28%) Database Security
5 53 (15.41%) Migration
6 49 (14.24%) ITIL
7 41 (11.92%) DevOps
8 39 (11.34%) Problem-Solving
9 35 (10.17%) Capacity Planning
10 25 (7.27%) Database Tuning
11 22 (6.40%) CI/CD
11 22 (6.40%) Performance Optimisation
12 21 (6.10%) Root Cause Analysis
12 21 (6.10%) Task Automation
13 20 (5.81%) Agile
13 20 (5.81%) Continuous Improvement
14 18 (5.23%) Data Modelling
15 17 (4.94%) Data Protection
15 17 (4.94%) Database Migration
16 16 (4.65%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 194 (56.40%) SQL
2 35 (10.17%) PowerShell
2 35 (10.17%) Python
3 28 (8.14%) T-SQL
4 23 (6.69%) PL/SQL
5 17 (4.94%) Shell Script
6 10 (2.91%) Korn
7 9 (2.62%) Bash
8 4 (1.16%) TypeScript
9 3 (0.87%) Bicep
9 3 (0.87%) Java
9 3 (0.87%) Perl
10 2 (0.58%) Groovy
11 1 (0.29%) C#
11 1 (0.29%) Cypher
11 1 (0.29%) JCL
11 1 (0.29%) RPG
11 1 (0.29%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 166 (48.26%) Security Cleared
2 119 (34.59%) SC Cleared
3 52 (15.12%) DV Cleared
4 29 (8.43%) Microsoft Certification
5 15 (4.36%) Oracle Certification
6 11 (3.20%) Degree
7 9 (2.62%) OCP
8 8 (2.33%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.16%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 4 (1.16%) MCITP
9 4 (1.16%) MCTS
10 3 (0.87%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.87%) Computer Science Degree
11 1 (0.29%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (3.20%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.62%) GDPR
3 8 (2.33%) QA
3 8 (2.33%) SLA
4 5 (1.45%) ISO 9000
5 4 (1.16%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.29%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.29%) NIST
6 1 (0.29%) NIST 800
System Software
1 43 (12.50%) Oracle RAC
2 7 (2.03%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.03%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.87%) Docker
Systems Management
1 55 (15.99%) Oracle RMAN
2 42 (12.21%) Data Guard
3 23 (6.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 18 (5.23%) Terraform
5 17 (4.94%) Ansible
6 5 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.45%) SCOM
7 4 (1.16%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 4 (1.16%) Grafana
8 3 (0.87%) Failover Clustering
8 3 (0.87%) Foglight
8 3 (0.87%) Nagios
9 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.29%) EMC NetWorker
10 1 (0.29%) Kubernetes
10 1 (0.29%) SCCM
Vendors
1 199 (57.85%) Oracle
2 92 (26.74%) Microsoft
3 14 (4.07%) ServiceNow
4 11 (3.20%) SolarWinds
5 10 (2.91%) RedGate
6 8 (2.33%) Sybase
7 5 (1.45%) Remedy
8 4 (1.16%) Databricks
8 4 (1.16%) Google
8 4 (1.16%) Red Hat
9 3 (0.87%) BMC
9 3 (0.87%) Dynatrace
9 3 (0.87%) Greenplum
9 3 (0.87%) Informatica
9 3 (0.87%) Talend
10 2 (0.58%) IBM
10 2 (0.58%) Splunk
11 1 (0.29%) Adobe
11 1 (0.29%) Cloudera
11 1 (0.29%) Commvault