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 1 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 572 498 574
Rank change year-on-year -74 +76 +135
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 53 21 26
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.072% 0.059%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.74% 0.38% 0.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 38 16 15
10th Percentile £348 £336 £460
25th Percentile £450 £374 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £480 £550
Median % change year-on-year +5.21% -12.73% -
75th Percentile £575 £525 £663
90th Percentile £605 £772 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £413 £425
% change year-on-year +19.27% -2.94% -39.29%

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 7,115 5,488 7,290
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.93% 18.90% 16.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,895 3,814 5,164
10th Percentile £350 £351 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £759 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £488
% change year-on-year -2.06% -0.51% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 160 100 162
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.72 £14.04
25th Percentile £32.19 £24.25 £20.78
Median hourly rate £51.75 £31.64 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +63.56% -20.90% -33.33%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.63 £55.94
90th Percentile £85.00 £70.63 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £29.80 £39.25
% change year-on-year +67.79% -24.08% -28.64%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 -79 47 £525 +8.25% 19
London -41 38 £523 +4.50% 11
Work from Home -25 21 £471 +1.84% 11
UK excluding London -91 11 £492 +19.27% 12
North of England - 5 £484 - 5
East Midlands -31 2 £600 +26.32%
Midlands -71 2 £600 +41.18% 2
North East - 2 £550 - 1
North West - 2 £492 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
Scotland +7 1 - -
South East -55 1 £550 +19.89% 5
Yorkshire - 1 £325 - 2

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 21 (39.62%) Apache Spark
2 6 (11.32%) Apache
3 4 (7.55%) Confluence
4 1 (1.89%) Apache Synapse
4 1 (1.89%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (1.89%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 46 (86.79%) Azure
2 30 (56.60%) Power Platform
3 22 (41.51%) Azure Data Factory
3 22 (41.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 21 (39.62%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (28.30%) Microsoft Purview
6 6 (11.32%) Azure Key Vault
7 5 (9.43%) AWS
7 5 (9.43%) GitHub
7 5 (9.43%) Serverless
8 4 (7.55%) Azure AI
8 4 (7.55%) dbt
8 4 (7.55%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (3.77%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (3.77%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 2 (3.77%) Azure Functions
9 2 (3.77%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (3.77%) GCP
10 1 (1.89%) Amazon EMR
10 1 (1.89%) Amazon S3
Database & Business Intelligence
1 29 (54.72%) Power BI
2 26 (49.06%) Delta Lake
3 21 (39.62%) Data Lake
4 11 (20.75%) Relational Database
5 9 (16.98%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (15.09%) Metadata
7 6 (11.32%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (11.32%) NoSQL
7 6 (11.32%) SQL Server
8 5 (9.43%) Big Data
8 5 (9.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (9.43%) Tableau
9 4 (7.55%) Parquet
10 3 (5.66%) Apache Hive
10 3 (5.66%) Impala
10 3 (5.66%) Sqoop
11 2 (3.77%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 2 (3.77%) Data Vault
11 2 (3.77%) Star Schema
12 1 (1.89%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 26 (49.06%) Git
2 11 (20.75%) GitLab
3 5 (9.43%) JIRA
4 3 (5.66%) Jenkins
5 1 (1.89%) MLflow
General
1 21 (39.62%) Finance
1 21 (39.62%) Social Skills
2 7 (13.21%) Public Sector
3 5 (9.43%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.66%) Law
5 2 (3.77%) Banking
6 1 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (1.89%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.89%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 28 (52.83%) Data Engineer
2 14 (26.42%) Senior
3 12 (22.64%) Azure Engineer
4 11 (20.75%) Azure Data Engineer
5 10 (18.87%) Senior Data Engineer
6 9 (16.98%) Developer
7 8 (15.09%) Lead
8 6 (11.32%) Architect
8 6 (11.32%) Data Architect
9 5 (9.43%) Lead Data Engineer
10 4 (7.55%) Azure Architect
10 4 (7.55%) Azure Data Architect
11 3 (5.66%) Analyst
11 3 (5.66%) Data Analyst
11 3 (5.66%) Platform Engineer
12 2 (3.77%) Data Visualisation Analyst
12 2 (3.77%) Microsoft Engineer
12 2 (3.77%) Senior Analyst
12 2 (3.77%) Senior Data Analyst
12 2 (3.77%) Senior Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (83.02%) PySpark
2 11 (20.75%) Spark Streaming
3 10 (18.87%) Kafka
4 6 (11.32%) YAML
5 5 (9.43%) JSON
6 3 (5.66%) ARM Templates
7 1 (1.89%) Great Expectations
7 1 (1.89%) REST
7 1 (1.89%) Shiny
7 1 (1.89%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 10 (18.87%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (7.55%) Product Ownership
3 3 (5.66%) Cloud Native
4 2 (3.77%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.89%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.89%) Data Fabric
5 1 (1.89%) IoT
5 1 (1.89%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.89%) Life Science
5 1 (1.89%) Low-Code
5 1 (1.89%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.89%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.89%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (71.70%) DevOps
2 36 (67.92%) CI/CD
3 34 (64.15%) Data Engineering
4 31 (58.49%) Business Intelligence
5 28 (52.83%) Analytics
5 28 (52.83%) Data Pipeline
6 23 (43.40%) Agile
7 21 (39.62%) ETL
8 20 (37.74%) Data Governance
9 19 (35.85%) Data Modelling
10 14 (26.42%) Infrastructure as Code
10 14 (26.42%) Performance Tuning
11 13 (24.53%) Data Science
12 11 (20.75%) Batch Processing
12 11 (20.75%) Dimensional Modelling
12 11 (20.75%) Validation
13 10 (18.87%) Data Architecture
13 10 (18.87%) Data Cleansing
13 10 (18.87%) Use Case
14 9 (16.98%) AI
Programming Languages
1 50 (94.34%) SQL
2 46 (86.79%) Python
3 8 (15.09%) Java
3 8 (15.09%) T-SQL
4 7 (13.21%) PowerShell
4 7 (13.21%) R
5 6 (11.32%) Bicep
5 6 (11.32%) Scala
6 5 (9.43%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (1.89%) SAS Macro
8 1 (1.89%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 14 (26.42%) Security Cleared
2 12 (22.64%) SC Cleared
3 11 (20.75%) Azure Certification
4 7 (13.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (11.32%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.89%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.89%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (41.51%) Data Quality
2 7 (13.21%) GDPR
2 7 (13.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (3.77%) QA
4 1 (1.89%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.89%) Solvency II
4 1 (1.89%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (18.87%) Docker
2 3 (5.66%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 16 (30.19%) Terraform
2 10 (18.87%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.89%) Grafana
Vendors
1 31 (58.49%) Databricks
2 24 (45.28%) Microsoft
3 3 (5.66%) Foundry
4 1 (1.89%) Palantir