DBA Contract Job Trends

Database Administrator
UK

The median Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £479, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 12 August 2026.

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

6 months to
12 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 336 412 290
Rank change year-on-year +76 -122 +82
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 367 134 300
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.69% 0.41% 0.77%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.74% 0.44% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 274 94 199
10th Percentile £363 £375 £350
25th Percentile £403 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £479 £469 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.19% -3.85% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £547 £608
90th Percentile £675 £657 £673
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £450
% change year-on-year - - -5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 2
10th Percentile - £26.90 £32.45
25th Percentile - £28.25 £39.13
Median hourly rate - £30.00 £51.50
Median % change year-on-year - -41.75% +17.99%
75th Percentile - £42.63 £65.13
90th Percentile - £63.55 £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 49,398 30,125 36,175
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.56% 91.38% 92.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,694 19,103 23,309
10th Percentile £328 £282 £300
25th Percentile £425 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -1.87%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £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 3,473 1,514 2,025
10th Percentile £15.00 £13.60 £14.16
25th Percentile £20.75 £17.12 £20.50
Median hourly rate £42.25 £25.15 £43.00
Median % change year-on-year +67.99% -41.51% +2.87%
75th Percentile £67.84 £53.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £72.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.68 £25.08 £45.00
% change year-on-year +70.20% -44.28% +27.66%

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 12 August 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 12 August 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 +78 320 £475 +2.70% 50
UK excluding London +61 246 £450 - 33
North of England +14 107 £435 -2.68% 9
London -25 92 £501 -4.67% 24
North West +15 77 £463 +3.93% 7
South East -14 65 £417 -7.28% 12
Work from Home -48 65 £500 +11.11% 19
Yorkshire -18 29 £400 -20.00% 2
Midlands -31 26 £449 - 8
West Midlands -31 20 £448 - 5
South West -33 19 £750 +22.45% 1
Scotland +1 17 £463 - 1
East Midlands -3 5 £463 - 3
East of England -16 5 £387 -18.63% 1
Wales - 5 £544 -
Northern Ireland +8 2 £675 - 2
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 12 August 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.

1 211 (57.49%) SQL
2 204 (55.59%) Oracle
3 186 (50.68%) Security Cleared
4 169 (46.05%) SQL Server
5 141 (38.42%) SC Cleared
6 138 (37.60%) Performance Tuning
7 123 (33.51%) Oracle Database
8 104 (28.34%) High Availability
9 103 (28.07%) PostgreSQL
10 97 (26.43%) Microsoft
11 80 (21.80%) Disaster Recovery
12 76 (20.71%) Azure
13 72 (19.62%) AWS
14 64 (17.44%) Migration
15 63 (17.17%) MySQL
16 58 (15.80%) Oracle RMAN
17 54 (14.71%) Database Security
18 51 (13.90%) Linux
19 49 (13.35%) DV Cleared
19 49 (13.35%) ITIL
20 46 (12.53%) Data Guard
20 46 (12.53%) Oracle RAC
21 44 (11.99%) DevOps
22 40 (10.90%) Unix
23 37 (10.08%) Windows
24 36 (9.81%) PowerShell
24 36 (9.81%) Python
25 35 (9.54%) Microsoft Certification
26 34 (9.26%) Problem-Solving
27 32 (8.72%) Database Tuning

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 (3.00%) Confluence
2 6 (1.63%) WebLogic
3 3 (0.82%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 2 (0.54%) Oracle Service Bus
4 2 (0.54%) SharePoint
5 1 (0.27%) Mendix
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Application Server
5 1 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.54%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.27%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 10 (2.72%) Oracle Applications
1 10 (2.72%) Oracle EBS
1 10 (2.72%) Remedy ITSM
2 6 (1.63%) Oracle Payables
2 6 (1.63%) Teamcenter
3 3 (0.82%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.27%) FLEXCUBE
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 76 (20.71%) Azure
2 72 (19.62%) AWS
3 12 (3.27%) Amazon CloudWatch
3 12 (3.27%) Power Platform
4 11 (3.00%) AWS KMS
4 11 (3.00%) Virtual Private Cloud
5 10 (2.72%) Azure DevOps
5 10 (2.72%) GCP
6 9 (2.45%) Azure Monitor
7 8 (2.18%) AWS CloudFormation
8 7 (1.91%) Azure Data Factory
8 7 (1.91%) OCI
9 5 (1.36%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 5 (1.36%) SaaS
9 5 (1.36%) Serverless
10 4 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
10 4 (1.09%) Snowflake
11 3 (0.82%) Amazon S3
11 3 (0.82%) GitHub
11 3 (0.82%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.18%) SSL
2 3 (0.82%) Firewall
3 1 (0.27%) HTTP
3 1 (0.27%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.27%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 169 (46.05%) SQL Server
2 123 (33.51%) Oracle Database
3 103 (28.07%) PostgreSQL
4 63 (17.17%) MySQL
5 28 (7.63%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (7.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 26 (7.08%) MongoDB
7 24 (6.54%) Oracle Database 11g
7 24 (6.54%) Oracle Database 12c
8 22 (5.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 19 (5.18%) Amazon Aurora
10 18 (4.90%) Relational Database
11 15 (4.09%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (4.09%) RDBMS
12 13 (3.54%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 12 (3.27%) Oracle Reports
13 12 (3.27%) Power BI
14 9 (2.45%) NoSQL
14 9 (2.45%) Oracle Database 10g
15 7 (1.91%) Oracle Exadata
Development Applications
1 12 (3.27%) Git
2 10 (2.72%) GitLab
3 9 (2.45%) JIRA
4 7 (1.91%) Jenkins
5 5 (1.36%) Flyway
6 4 (1.09%) Oracle Forms
6 4 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 3 (0.82%) Toad
8 2 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
9 1 (0.27%) Liquibase
9 1 (0.27%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 75 (20.44%) Social Skills
2 44 (11.99%) Finance
3 33 (8.99%) Public Sector
4 28 (7.63%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (4.09%) Banking
6 8 (2.18%) Legal
7 5 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.09%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.82%) Police
9 3 (0.82%) Publishing
10 2 (0.54%) Documentation Skills
10 2 (0.54%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.54%) Military
10 2 (0.54%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.27%) Advertising
11 1 (0.27%) Billing
11 1 (0.27%) International Banking
11 1 (0.27%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.27%) Pharmaceutical
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (4.90%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 12 (3.27%) JSON
3 10 (2.72%) XML
4 7 (1.91%) Kafka
5 6 (1.63%) OLE
6 4 (1.09%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.82%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.82%) Matplotlib
7 3 (0.82%) Middleware
7 3 (0.82%) Oracle Streams
7 3 (0.82%) Pandas
7 3 (0.82%) Polars
7 3 (0.82%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.54%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.54%) REST
9 1 (0.27%) .NET
9 1 (0.27%) Node.js
9 1 (0.27%) PostGIS
9 1 (0.27%) Spring
9 1 (0.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 53 (14.44%) Replication
2 29 (7.90%) Clustering
3 12 (3.27%) Data Centre
4 10 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (1.63%) Data Structures
5 6 (1.63%) Enterprise Cloud
6 5 (1.36%) Onboarding
7 4 (1.09%) Mainframe
8 3 (0.82%) Cloud Native
8 3 (0.82%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (0.54%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.54%) NHS
9 2 (0.54%) Public Cloud
10 1 (0.27%) Analytical Mindset
10 1 (0.27%) Enterprise Software
10 1 (0.27%) Enterprise Storage
10 1 (0.27%) Hybrid Cloud
10 1 (0.27%) Life Science
10 1 (0.27%) SCADA
10 1 (0.27%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 51 (13.90%) Linux
2 40 (10.90%) Unix
3 37 (10.08%) Windows
4 23 (6.27%) Windows Server
5 9 (2.45%) Solaris
6 8 (2.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.09%) AIX
7 4 (1.09%) Oracle Linux
8 3 (0.82%) Amazon Linux
8 3 (0.82%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.27%) HPUX
9 1 (0.27%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.27%) VMS
9 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (37.60%) Performance Tuning
2 104 (28.34%) High Availability
3 80 (21.80%) Disaster Recovery
4 64 (17.44%) Migration
5 54 (14.71%) Database Security
6 49 (13.35%) ITIL
7 44 (11.99%) DevOps
8 34 (9.26%) Problem-Solving
9 32 (8.72%) Database Tuning
10 31 (8.45%) Data Modelling
11 30 (8.17%) Capacity Planning
11 30 (8.17%) Root Cause Analysis
11 30 (8.17%) Stakeholder Management
12 29 (7.90%) CI/CD
13 25 (6.81%) Performance Optimisation
14 21 (5.72%) Task Automation
15 20 (5.45%) Continuous Improvement
16 19 (5.18%) Agile
16 19 (5.18%) Database Migration
16 19 (5.18%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 211 (57.49%) SQL
2 36 (9.81%) PowerShell
2 36 (9.81%) Python
3 28 (7.63%) T-SQL
4 25 (6.81%) PL/SQL
5 15 (4.09%) Shell Script
6 10 (2.72%) Korn
7 9 (2.45%) Bash
8 5 (1.36%) Java
9 4 (1.09%) Perl
9 4 (1.09%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.82%) Groovy
11 2 (0.54%) Bicep
12 1 (0.27%) C#
12 1 (0.27%) Cypher
12 1 (0.27%) RPG
12 1 (0.27%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 186 (50.68%) Security Cleared
2 141 (38.42%) SC Cleared
3 49 (13.35%) DV Cleared
4 35 (9.54%) Microsoft Certification
5 19 (5.18%) Oracle Certification
6 16 (4.36%) Degree
7 14 (3.81%) OCP
8 11 (3.00%) AWS Certification
8 11 (3.00%) Azure Certification
9 10 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
10 7 (1.91%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 6 (1.63%) Computer Science Degree
11 6 (1.63%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 4 (1.09%) MCITP
12 4 (1.09%) MCTS
13 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (4.09%) Data Quality
2 13 (3.54%) QA
3 8 (2.18%) SLA
4 7 (1.91%) GDPR
5 5 (1.36%) ISO 9000
6 1 (0.27%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.27%) ISO 20022
6 1 (0.27%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.27%) NIST
6 1 (0.27%) NIST 800
System Software
1 46 (12.53%) Oracle RAC
2 12 (3.27%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.45%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (1.09%) Docker
6 1 (0.27%) ACF2
6 1 (0.27%) RACF
Systems Management
1 58 (15.80%) Oracle RMAN
2 46 (12.53%) Data Guard
3 25 (6.81%) Terraform
4 21 (5.72%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 15 (4.09%) Ansible
6 11 (3.00%) SCOM
7 8 (2.18%) Microsoft Clustering
8 6 (1.63%) Prometheus
9 5 (1.36%) Grafana
10 4 (1.09%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
10 4 (1.09%) Failover Clustering
11 3 (0.82%) Foglight
11 3 (0.82%) Nagios
12 2 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.27%) EMC NetWorker
13 1 (0.27%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 204 (55.59%) Oracle
2 97 (26.43%) Microsoft
3 16 (4.36%) ServiceNow
4 12 (3.27%) Remedy
5 10 (2.72%) BMC
6 8 (2.18%) VMware
7 7 (1.91%) Sybase
8 6 (1.63%) SolarWinds
9 5 (1.36%) RedGate
10 4 (1.09%) Commvault
10 4 (1.09%) Databricks
10 4 (1.09%) Google
10 4 (1.09%) Red Hat
11 3 (0.82%) Dynatrace
11 3 (0.82%) Greenplum
11 3 (0.82%) Informatica
11 3 (0.82%) Talend
12 2 (0.54%) IBM
13 1 (0.27%) NetApp
13 1 (0.27%) Wonderware