DBA Contract Job Trends

Database Administrator
UK

The median Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £488, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 1 March 2026.

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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 415 335 328
Rank change year-on-year -80 -7 +50
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 192 198 280
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.46% 0.65% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.50% 0.70% 0.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 143 99 191
10th Percentile £342 £355 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £534
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% -11.05% +10.10%
75th Percentile £525 £544 £600
90th Percentile £603 £658 £667
UK excluding London median daily rate £432 £450 £525
% change year-on-year -4.00% -14.29% +10.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 3 1
Median hourly rate £27.50 £63.75 £80.00
Median % change year-on-year -56.86% -20.32% +100.00%
UK excluding London median hourly rate £27.50 £63.75 £80.00
% change year-on-year -56.86% -20.32% +204.76%

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 38,119 28,262 41,512
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 91.82% 92.85% 92.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,936 17,829 27,270
10th Percentile £310 £290 £275
25th Percentile £409 £406 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £721 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,335 854 2,415
10th Percentile £14.71 £16.25 £13.05
25th Percentile £18.87 £21.46 £16.30
Median hourly rate £33.50 £34.06 £34.53
Median % change year-on-year -1.63% -1.38% -13.68%
75th Percentile £63.88 £64.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.18 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £32.50 £32.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year - -7.14% -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 1 March 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 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 1 March 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 -67 166 £473 -5.50% 73
UK excluding London -61 111 £432 -4.00% 59
London -50 65 £500 - 21
Work from Home -54 48 £488 +9.06% 30
North of England -39 41 £401 -9.89% 25
West Midlands -25 26 £441 -6.77% 5
Midlands -36 26 £441 +7.56% 7
North West -36 23 £424 -4.63% 14
South East -50 22 £430 -16.20% 16
Yorkshire -47 19 £360 - 10
Scotland +14 11 £500 +8.11% 1
South West -22 7 £606 -19.20% 1
Wales -5 2 - - 4
Northern Ireland -3 1 £675 -
East of England -31 1 £375 -11.76% 7

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 1 March 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.

1 100 (52.08%) Oracle
2 86 (44.79%) SQL
3 69 (35.94%) Security Cleared
4 67 (34.90%) Oracle Database
5 59 (30.73%) Performance Tuning
6 56 (29.17%) SQL Server
7 53 (27.60%) PostgreSQL
8 50 (26.04%) SC Cleared
9 43 (22.40%) AWS
10 42 (21.88%) Azure
11 41 (21.35%) Disaster Recovery
12 36 (18.75%) Database Security
13 35 (18.23%) Microsoft
13 35 (18.23%) MySQL
14 33 (17.19%) High Availability
15 30 (15.63%) DevOps
15 30 (15.63%) Migration
15 30 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
16 24 (12.50%) Oracle RMAN
16 24 (12.50%) Python
17 23 (11.98%) Amazon RDS
18 22 (11.46%) MongoDB
18 22 (11.46%) NoSQL
18 22 (11.46%) PL/SQL
19 21 (10.94%) Agile
19 21 (10.94%) Oracle RAC
20 20 (10.42%) Capacity Planning
21 19 (9.90%) Data Guard
21 19 (9.90%) Linux
21 19 (9.90%) PowerShell

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 4 (2.08%) WebLogic
2 2 (1.04%) Liferay
2 2 (1.04%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 2 (1.04%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (0.52%) Confluence
3 1 (0.52%) OpenEdge
3 1 (0.52%) Oracle Application Server
3 1 (0.52%) SharePoint
Applications
1 3 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (0.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (3.13%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (2.60%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (1.04%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.52%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.52%) Oracle Applications
Cloud Services
1 43 (22.40%) AWS
2 42 (21.88%) Azure
3 19 (9.90%) Serverless
4 14 (7.29%) Azure Cosmos DB
5 6 (3.13%) Amazon S3
5 6 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
5 6 (3.13%) SaaS
6 5 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 5 (2.60%) Azure DevOps
6 5 (2.60%) Snowflake
7 4 (2.08%) Amazon EC2
7 4 (2.08%) Azure AKS
7 4 (2.08%) Azure Functions
7 4 (2.08%) Azure Logic Apps
7 4 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
7 4 (2.08%) GCP
7 4 (2.08%) OCI
8 3 (1.56%) Azure Storage
8 3 (1.56%) PaaS
8 3 (1.56%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.52%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (34.90%) Oracle Database
2 56 (29.17%) SQL Server
3 53 (27.60%) PostgreSQL
4 35 (18.23%) MySQL
5 23 (11.98%) Amazon RDS
6 22 (11.46%) MongoDB
6 22 (11.46%) NoSQL
7 18 (9.38%) Oracle Reports
8 17 (8.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 16 (8.33%) Relational Database
10 13 (6.77%) RDBMS
11 10 (5.21%) DynamoDB
11 10 (5.21%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 9 (4.69%) Azure SQL Database
13 8 (4.17%) Amazon Aurora
14 6 (3.13%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 5 (2.60%) Oracle Database 12c
15 5 (2.60%) Oracle Exadata
16 4 (2.08%) Data Lake
16 4 (2.08%) Oracle BI EE
Development Applications
1 6 (3.13%) Oracle APEX
2 5 (2.60%) Git
3 4 (2.08%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 3 (1.56%) GitLab
5 2 (1.04%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.52%) Flyway
6 1 (0.52%) JIRA
6 1 (0.52%) TeamCity
6 1 (0.52%) Toad
General
1 32 (16.67%) Public Sector
2 26 (13.54%) Social Skills
3 17 (8.85%) Finance
4 12 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (5.73%) Banking
6 4 (2.08%) Legal
6 4 (2.08%) Telecoms
7 3 (1.56%) Military
8 2 (1.04%) Aviation
8 2 (1.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 2 (1.04%) Local Government
9 1 (0.52%) Advertising
9 1 (0.52%) Back Office
9 1 (0.52%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.52%) Financial Institution
9 1 (0.52%) Investment Banking
9 1 (0.52%) Manufacturing
9 1 (0.52%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.52%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (7.81%) JSON
1 15 (7.81%) XML
2 9 (4.69%) Kafka
2 9 (4.69%) Oracle GoldenGate
3 8 (4.17%) Node.js
4 4 (2.08%) .NET
5 3 (1.56%) .NET Core
5 3 (1.56%) ASP.NET
6 2 (1.04%) Oracle ADF
6 2 (1.04%) PostGIS
7 1 (0.52%) AWS CDK
7 1 (0.52%) Elastic Stack
7 1 (0.52%) Oracle Fusion
7 1 (0.52%) pgvector
Miscellaneous
1 19 (9.90%) Replication
2 14 (7.29%) Enterprise Cloud
3 11 (5.73%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (5.21%) Cloud Native
4 10 (5.21%) Clustering
5 8 (4.17%) Data Structures
5 8 (4.17%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (2.08%) Legacy Applications
7 2 (1.04%) Driving Licence
7 2 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
7 2 (1.04%) Mainframe
8 1 (0.52%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.52%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.52%) Life Science
8 1 (0.52%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.52%) Operational Technology
8 1 (0.52%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.52%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.52%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 19 (9.90%) Linux
2 18 (9.38%) Unix
3 7 (3.65%) Windows
4 5 (2.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (2.08%) Solaris
6 3 (1.56%) Windows Server
7 2 (1.04%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 59 (30.73%) Performance Tuning
2 41 (21.35%) Disaster Recovery
3 36 (18.75%) Database Security
4 33 (17.19%) High Availability
5 30 (15.63%) DevOps
5 30 (15.63%) Migration
5 30 (15.63%) Problem-Solving
6 21 (10.94%) Agile
7 20 (10.42%) Capacity Planning
8 15 (7.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 15 (7.81%) Task Automation
9 14 (7.29%) Data Migration
9 14 (7.29%) Data Modelling
9 14 (7.29%) Mentoring
10 13 (6.77%) CI/CD
11 11 (5.73%) Data Protection
11 11 (5.73%) Performance Monitoring
11 11 (5.73%) Performance Optimisation
11 11 (5.73%) Statistics
12 9 (4.69%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 86 (44.79%) SQL
2 24 (12.50%) Python
3 22 (11.46%) PL/SQL
4 19 (9.90%) PowerShell
5 16 (8.33%) Shell Script
6 8 (4.17%) T-SQL
7 5 (2.60%) Bash
8 4 (2.08%) C#
8 4 (2.08%) Java
8 4 (2.08%) Korn
9 3 (1.56%) Bicep
9 3 (1.56%) Perl
10 1 (0.52%) JCL
10 1 (0.52%) PHP
10 1 (0.52%) TypeScript
10 1 (0.52%) VB
Qualifications
1 69 (35.94%) Security Cleared
2 50 (26.04%) SC Cleared
3 13 (6.77%) DV Cleared
4 10 (5.21%) Oracle Certification
5 9 (4.69%) OCP
6 8 (4.17%) Microsoft Certification
7 4 (2.08%) AWS Certification
8 3 (1.56%) Azure Certification
9 2 (1.04%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (1.04%) Degree
10 1 (0.52%) BC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (5.73%) SLA
2 9 (4.69%) GDPR
3 4 (2.08%) Disclosure Scotland
4 3 (1.56%) QA
5 2 (1.04%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.52%) HIPAA
6 1 (0.52%) NIST
6 1 (0.52%) NIST 800
6 1 (0.52%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 21 (10.94%) Oracle RAC
2 4 (2.08%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (1.56%) NFS
3 3 (1.56%) Oracle Clusterware
4 1 (0.52%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 24 (12.50%) Oracle RMAN
2 19 (9.90%) Data Guard
3 17 (8.85%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 8 (4.17%) Ansible
5 5 (2.60%) Terraform
6 3 (1.56%) Foglight
6 3 (1.56%) Microsoft Clustering
7 2 (1.04%) EMC NetWorker
7 2 (1.04%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 2 (1.04%) systemd
8 1 (0.52%) SCCM
Vendors
1 100 (52.08%) Oracle
2 35 (18.23%) Microsoft
3 6 (3.13%) RedGate
3 6 (3.13%) ServiceNow
3 6 (3.13%) SolarWinds
4 5 (2.60%) Red Hat
5 4 (2.08%) Greenplum
5 4 (2.08%) Informatica
5 4 (2.08%) Talend
6 3 (1.56%) Google
7 2 (1.04%) Databricks
8 1 (0.52%) Cloudera
8 1 (0.52%) Commvault
8 1 (0.52%) EMC
8 1 (0.52%) IBM
8 1 (0.52%) NEC
8 1 (0.52%) Splunk
8 1 (0.52%) Sybase
8 1 (0.52%) Wonderware