DBA Contract Job Trends

Database Administrator
UK

The median Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £480, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 8 July 2026.

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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 359 416 326
Rank change year-on-year +57 -90 +46
Contract jobs requiring a DBA 330 128 297
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.63% 0.40% 0.69%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.68% 0.44% 0.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 249 88 202
10th Percentile £363 £375 £351
25th Percentile £403 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £494 £491
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% +0.51% -1.75%
75th Percentile £588 £570 £612
90th Percentile £675 £675 £688
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £450 £450
% change year-on-year +5.56% - -7.22%
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 48,237 29,379 40,107
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.46% 91.96% 93.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 29,223 18,754 25,817
10th Percentile £325 £287 £285
25th Percentile £417 £400 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £493
% change year-on-year +5.26% -3.65% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,243 1,333 2,768
10th Percentile £15.75 £13.75 £12.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £17.44 £16.62
Median hourly rate £43.00 £26.45 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +62.57% -29.47% -12.79%
75th Percentile £67.50 £55.25 £62.50
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £40.00
% change year-on-year +78.93% -37.13% +1.07%

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 8 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 8 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 +60 283 £475 -5.00% 25
UK excluding London +44 229 £475 +5.56% 26
North of England +1 95 £450 +1.12% 9
London -45 71 £500 -4.76% 8
North West +6 65 £475 +6.74% 9
South East -14 64 £417 -7.28% 6
Work from Home -44 54 £500 +5.26% 13
Yorkshire -14 30 £400 -25.58%
Midlands -44 22 £463 - 5
South West -24 20 £750 +8.30%
Scotland -6 16 £475 +2.70% 3
West Midlands -48 16 £449 - 4
East Midlands -9 5 £463 - 1
East of England -26 5 £387 -9.06%
Wales - 5 £544 -
Northern Ireland +6 2 £675 - 3
North East - 1 £501 -

DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities

For the 6 months to 8 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.

1 186 (56.36%) Oracle
2 183 (55.45%) SQL
3 157 (47.58%) Security Cleared
4 148 (44.85%) SQL Server
5 120 (36.36%) Oracle Database
6 117 (35.45%) Performance Tuning
7 112 (33.94%) SC Cleared
8 87 (26.36%) High Availability
9 84 (25.45%) Microsoft
9 84 (25.45%) PostgreSQL
10 74 (22.42%) Azure
11 61 (18.48%) AWS
12 60 (18.18%) Disaster Recovery
13 51 (15.45%) Migration
13 51 (15.45%) Oracle RMAN
14 50 (15.15%) DV Cleared
14 50 (15.15%) Linux
15 49 (14.85%) MySQL
16 47 (14.24%) Database Security
17 46 (13.94%) ITIL
18 40 (12.12%) Unix
19 39 (11.82%) DevOps
20 38 (11.52%) Oracle RAC
21 36 (10.91%) Data Guard
21 36 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
22 35 (10.61%) Python
23 33 (10.00%) PowerShell
24 30 (9.09%) Capacity Planning
24 30 (9.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
24 30 (9.09%) 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 (1.82%) Confluence
1 6 (1.82%) WebLogic
2 3 (0.91%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 2 (0.61%) Oracle Service Bus
3 2 (0.61%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.30%) Mendix
4 1 (0.30%) OpenEdge
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle Application Server
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.30%) Tomcat
Applications
1 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Excel
1 4 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.30%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 10 (3.03%) Oracle Applications
1 10 (3.03%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.82%) Teamcenter
3 5 (1.52%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.91%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (0.91%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.30%) FLEXCUBE
5 1 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 74 (22.42%) Azure
2 61 (18.48%) AWS
3 9 (2.73%) Azure Data Factory
4 8 (2.42%) Azure DevOps
5 7 (2.12%) Azure Monitor
5 7 (2.12%) GCP
5 7 (2.12%) OCI
5 7 (2.12%) Power Platform
6 6 (1.82%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 5 (1.52%) SaaS
7 5 (1.52%) Serverless
8 4 (1.21%) Snowflake
9 3 (0.91%) Amazon EC2
9 3 (0.91%) Cloud Computing
9 3 (0.91%) GitHub
9 3 (0.91%) PaaS
10 2 (0.61%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 2 (0.61%) Amazon S3
10 2 (0.61%) IBM Cloud
10 2 (0.61%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.82%) SSL
2 2 (0.61%) Firewall
3 1 (0.30%) HTTP
3 1 (0.30%) HTTPS
3 1 (0.30%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (44.85%) SQL Server
2 120 (36.36%) Oracle Database
3 84 (25.45%) PostgreSQL
4 49 (14.85%) MySQL
5 30 (9.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 23 (6.97%) Oracle Database 11g
7 21 (6.36%) Amazon RDS
8 20 (6.06%) MongoDB
8 20 (6.06%) Oracle Database 12c
9 19 (5.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 17 (5.15%) Relational Database
11 16 (4.85%) Azure SQL Database
12 14 (4.24%) RDBMS
13 12 (3.64%) Oracle Reports
14 10 (3.03%) Amazon Aurora
15 9 (2.73%) NoSQL
15 9 (2.73%) Oracle Database 10g
16 8 (2.42%) SQL Server Analysis Services
17 7 (2.12%) Oracle Exadata
17 7 (2.12%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 11 (3.33%) Git
2 10 (3.03%) GitLab
3 7 (2.12%) Jenkins
4 5 (1.52%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 4 (1.21%) Flyway
5 4 (1.21%) JIRA
5 4 (1.21%) Oracle Forms
6 3 (0.91%) Oracle APEX
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Developer 2000
General
1 57 (17.27%) Social Skills
2 36 (10.91%) Finance
3 31 (9.39%) Public Sector
4 29 (8.79%) Analytical Skills
5 10 (3.03%) Banking
6 8 (2.42%) Legal
7 5 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.21%) Investment Banking
9 3 (0.91%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.91%) Military
9 3 (0.91%) Publishing
10 2 (0.61%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.61%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.30%) Advertising
11 1 (0.30%) Billing
11 1 (0.30%) International Banking
11 1 (0.30%) Local Government
11 1 (0.30%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.30%) Pharmaceutical
11 1 (0.30%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (4.55%) Oracle GoldenGate
2 12 (3.64%) JSON
3 10 (3.03%) XML
4 7 (2.12%) Kafka
5 6 (1.82%) OLE
6 4 (1.21%) AWS CDK
7 3 (0.91%) GeoJSON
7 3 (0.91%) Matplotlib
7 3 (0.91%) Middleware
7 3 (0.91%) Pandas
7 3 (0.91%) Polars
7 3 (0.91%) scikit-learn
8 2 (0.61%) Oracle Fusion
8 2 (0.61%) REST
9 1 (0.30%) .NET Core
9 1 (0.30%) Elastic Stack
9 1 (0.30%) Node.js
9 1 (0.30%) pgvector
9 1 (0.30%) PySpark
9 1 (0.30%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 39 (11.82%) Replication
2 26 (7.88%) Clustering
3 11 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (1.82%) Enterprise Cloud
5 4 (1.21%) Data Structures
5 4 (1.21%) Legacy Applications
6 3 (0.91%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.61%) Cloud Native
7 2 (0.61%) Mainframe
7 2 (0.61%) NHS
7 2 (0.61%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.30%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.30%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.30%) Data Protection Act
8 1 (0.30%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.30%) Enterprise Storage
8 1 (0.30%) Life Science
8 1 (0.30%) SCADA
8 1 (0.30%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.30%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 50 (15.15%) Linux
2 40 (12.12%) Unix
3 30 (9.09%) Windows
4 22 (6.67%) Windows Server
5 8 (2.42%) Solaris
6 5 (1.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 4 (1.21%) AIX
7 4 (1.21%) Oracle Linux
8 2 (0.61%) Amazon Linux
9 1 (0.30%) Data ONTAP
9 1 (0.30%) HPUX
9 1 (0.30%) OpenVMS
9 1 (0.30%) VMS
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (35.45%) Performance Tuning
2 87 (26.36%) High Availability
3 60 (18.18%) Disaster Recovery
4 51 (15.45%) Migration
5 47 (14.24%) Database Security
6 46 (13.94%) ITIL
7 39 (11.82%) DevOps
8 36 (10.91%) Problem-Solving
9 30 (9.09%) Capacity Planning
10 21 (6.36%) CI/CD
10 21 (6.36%) Performance Optimisation
11 20 (6.06%) Agile
11 20 (6.06%) Continuous Improvement
11 20 (6.06%) Database Tuning
11 20 (6.06%) Task Automation
12 19 (5.76%) Root Cause Analysis
13 17 (5.15%) Data Protection
13 17 (5.15%) Database Migration
14 15 (4.55%) Data Migration
15 14 (4.24%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 183 (55.45%) SQL
2 35 (10.61%) Python
3 33 (10.00%) PowerShell
4 27 (8.18%) T-SQL
5 22 (6.67%) PL/SQL
6 17 (5.15%) Shell Script
7 10 (3.03%) Korn
8 8 (2.42%) Bash
9 4 (1.21%) TypeScript
10 3 (0.91%) Bicep
10 3 (0.91%) Java
11 2 (0.61%) Groovy
11 2 (0.61%) Perl
12 1 (0.30%) C#
12 1 (0.30%) Cypher
12 1 (0.30%) JCL
12 1 (0.30%) RPG
12 1 (0.30%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 157 (47.58%) Security Cleared
2 112 (33.94%) SC Cleared
3 50 (15.15%) DV Cleared
4 25 (7.58%) Microsoft Certification
5 12 (3.64%) Degree
6 11 (3.33%) Oracle Certification
7 8 (2.42%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.52%) OCP
9 4 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
9 4 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
9 4 (1.21%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 4 (1.21%) MCITP
9 4 (1.21%) MCTS
10 3 (0.91%) AWS Certification
11 1 (0.30%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (3.03%) GDPR
2 9 (2.73%) Data Quality
2 9 (2.73%) SLA
3 8 (2.42%) QA
4 5 (1.52%) ISO 9000
5 4 (1.21%) Disclosure Scotland
6 1 (0.30%) Accessibility
6 1 (0.30%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.30%) NIST
6 1 (0.30%) NIST 800
System Software
1 38 (11.52%) Oracle RAC
2 7 (2.12%) Active Directory
2 7 (2.12%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.91%) Docker
Systems Management
1 51 (15.45%) Oracle RMAN
2 36 (10.91%) Data Guard
3 19 (5.76%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 18 (5.45%) Terraform
5 17 (5.15%) Ansible
6 5 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 5 (1.52%) SCOM
7 4 (1.21%) Grafana
8 3 (0.91%) Failover Clustering
8 3 (0.91%) Foglight
9 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Clustering
9 2 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.30%) EMC NetWorker
10 1 (0.30%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
10 1 (0.30%) Kubernetes
10 1 (0.30%) SCCM
Vendors
1 186 (56.36%) Oracle
2 84 (25.45%) Microsoft
3 14 (4.24%) ServiceNow
4 10 (3.03%) SolarWinds
5 9 (2.73%) RedGate
6 8 (2.42%) Sybase
7 5 (1.52%) Databricks
7 5 (1.52%) Remedy
8 4 (1.21%) Google
9 3 (0.91%) BMC
9 3 (0.91%) Dynatrace
9 3 (0.91%) Greenplum
9 3 (0.91%) Informatica
9 3 (0.91%) Talend
10 2 (0.61%) IBM
10 2 (0.61%) Splunk
11 1 (0.30%) NetApp
11 1 (0.30%) Red Hat
11 1 (0.30%) Teradata
11 1 (0.30%) Wonderware