Spark SQL Contract Job Trends

Apache Spark SQL
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring Spark SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 19 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 622 535 524
Rank change year-on-year -87 -11 +101
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 53 20 53
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.099% 0.061% 0.14%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.65% 0.34% 0.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 35 12 23
10th Percentile £378 £414 £328
25th Percentile £425 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £430
Median % change year-on-year - +10.47% -21.46%
75th Percentile £550 £515 £493
90th Percentile £595 £538 £755
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £389
% change year-on-year -5.26% +22.11% -35.17%

All Database & BI Skills
UK

Spark SQL falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 8,180 5,941 7,031
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.27% 18.10% 18.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,466 3,998 4,956
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 93 100
10th Percentile £15.82 £21.02 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £27.11 £19.90
Median hourly rate £38.50 £35.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% +1.55% -37.34%
75th Percentile £60.50 £63.75 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.74 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.85 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.11% +6.15% -40.00%

Spark SQL
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Spark SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

Spark SQL job vacancy trend in the UK

Spark SQL
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Spark SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing Spark SQL

Spark SQL
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Spark SQL over the 6 months to 19 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 13 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Spark SQL within the UK over the 6 months to 19 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 -85 52 £475 - 14
London -55 33 £490 +5.89% 5
UK excluding London -69 20 £450 -5.26% 11
Work from Home -60 11 £450 -5.26% 12
Midlands -35 6 £450 -5.26% 2
South East -69 6 £425 -7.36% 3
North of England -74 5 £521 - 6
West Midlands - 5 £431 - 2
Yorkshire -41 3 £550 - 2
North West - 2 £492 - 2
South West - 2 £425 -
East Midlands -15 1 £600 +26.32%
Scotland - 1 £545 -

Spark SQL
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 20 (37.74%) Apache Spark
2 9 (16.98%) Apache
3 5 (9.43%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.89%) Palantir Foundry
Cloud Services
1 40 (75.47%) Azure
2 22 (41.51%) Power Platform
3 19 (35.85%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (30.19%) AWS
4 16 (30.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 12 (22.64%) Azure Data Factory
6 6 (11.32%) Serverless
7 5 (9.43%) GCP
7 5 (9.43%) Microsoft Purview
7 5 (9.43%) PowerApps
8 4 (7.55%) AWS Lambda
8 4 (7.55%) Azure Functions
8 4 (7.55%) dbt
8 4 (7.55%) Dynamics 365
8 4 (7.55%) GitHub
9 3 (5.66%) Amazon S3
9 3 (5.66%) Power Automate
10 2 (3.77%) AWS CodeCommit
10 2 (3.77%) AWS Step Functions
10 2 (3.77%) Fivetran
Database & Business Intelligence
1 22 (41.51%) Power BI
2 19 (35.85%) Delta Lake
3 14 (26.42%) Data Lake
4 10 (18.87%) Data Warehouse
5 7 (13.21%) Big Data
5 7 (13.21%) Metadata
5 7 (13.21%) SQL Server
6 5 (9.43%) Parquet
7 4 (7.55%) Apache Iceberg
7 4 (7.55%) Data Vault
7 4 (7.55%) Star Schema
7 4 (7.55%) Tableau
8 3 (5.66%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (5.66%) Snowflake Schema
9 2 (3.77%) Amazon Athena
9 2 (3.77%) Amazon RDS
9 2 (3.77%) NoSQL
9 2 (3.77%) Semantic Layer
10 1 (1.89%) Amazon Redshift
10 1 (1.89%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 9 (16.98%) Git
2 2 (3.77%) MLflow
2 2 (3.77%) Selenium
3 1 (1.89%) GitLab
3 1 (1.89%) SonarQube
General
1 18 (33.96%) Finance
2 12 (22.64%) Social Skills
3 9 (16.98%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (11.32%) Public Sector
5 3 (5.66%) Military
6 2 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.77%) Publishing
7 1 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.89%) Local Government
7 1 (1.89%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (1.89%) Retail
Job Titles
1 32 (60.38%) Data Engineer
2 13 (24.53%) Senior
3 9 (16.98%) Senior Data Engineer
4 7 (13.21%) Lead
5 6 (11.32%) Architect
6 5 (9.43%) Tester
7 4 (7.55%) Analyst
7 4 (7.55%) Azure Engineer
7 4 (7.55%) Data Analyst
7 4 (7.55%) Data Analytics Engineer
7 4 (7.55%) Lead Data Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Azure Data Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Platform Engineer
8 3 (5.66%) Senior Tester
9 2 (3.77%) Data Architect
9 2 (3.77%) Data Migration Engineer
9 2 (3.77%) Data Scientist
9 2 (3.77%) Developer
9 2 (3.77%) Lead Architect
9 2 (3.77%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (90.57%) PySpark
2 7 (13.21%) Kafka
3 5 (9.43%) JSON
4 3 (5.66%) Great Expectations
4 3 (5.66%) Spark Streaming
5 2 (3.77%) Jinja
5 2 (3.77%) Playwright
5 2 (3.77%) pytest
5 2 (3.77%) React
5 2 (3.77%) XML
6 1 (1.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (15.09%) Cloud Native
2 3 (5.66%) Algorithms
2 3 (5.66%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.77%) Data Fabric
3 2 (3.77%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (3.77%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (3.77%) Low-Code
3 2 (3.77%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.77%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (1.89%) AI Agents
4 1 (1.89%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (1.89%) Educational Technology
4 1 (1.89%) IoT
4 1 (1.89%) Life Science
4 1 (1.89%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.89%) Reference Data
4 1 (1.89%) Reinsurance
4 1 (1.89%) Renewable Energy
4 1 (1.89%) Self-Motivation
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (58.49%) Data Pipeline
2 30 (56.60%) CI/CD
3 29 (54.72%) Analytics
4 27 (50.94%) Business Intelligence
5 25 (47.17%) DevOps
6 24 (45.28%) Data Engineering
6 24 (45.28%) Data Governance
7 22 (41.51%) Data Modelling
8 19 (35.85%) ETL
9 16 (30.19%) Validation
10 15 (28.30%) Migration
11 12 (22.64%) AI
11 12 (22.64%) Infrastructure as Code
12 11 (20.75%) Agile
13 10 (18.87%) Continuous Improvement
13 10 (18.87%) Decision-Making
14 8 (15.09%) Test Automation
14 8 (15.09%) Use Case
15 7 (13.21%) Data Integration
16 6 (11.32%) Dimensional Modelling
Programming Languages
1 51 (96.23%) SQL
2 34 (64.15%) Python
3 6 (11.32%) T-SQL
4 3 (5.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 3 (5.66%) PowerShell
5 2 (3.77%) Java
5 2 (3.77%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.89%) Bicep
6 1 (1.89%) R
6 1 (1.89%) Scala
Qualifications
1 7 (13.21%) Security Cleared
2 4 (7.55%) SC Cleared
3 2 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (3.77%) DBS Check
4 1 (1.89%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (45.28%) Data Quality
2 5 (9.43%) QA
3 1 (1.89%) GDPR
3 1 (1.89%) MiFID
3 1 (1.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.89%) SLA
3 1 (1.89%) Solvency II
System Software
1 4 (7.55%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (16.98%) Terraform
2 2 (3.77%) Ansible
2 2 (3.77%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.89%) Grafana
Vendors
1 37 (69.81%) Databricks
2 19 (35.85%) Microsoft
3 3 (5.66%) Foundry
4 2 (3.77%) Hitachi
4 2 (3.77%) Teradata
5 1 (1.89%) Bloomberg
5 1 (1.89%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.89%) Palantir
5 1 (1.89%) Reuters
5 1 (1.89%) Trayport