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 5 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
5 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 551 501 599
Rank change year-on-year -50 +98 +186
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 19 57 34
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.055% 0.16% 0.073%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.30% 0.88% 0.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 27 26
10th Percentile £430 £324 £444
25th Percentile £463 £383 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £430 £540
Median % change year-on-year +22.09% -20.37% -10.00%
75th Percentile £625 £511 £584
90th Percentile £635 £775 £625
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £385 £600
% change year-on-year +55.84% -35.83% -

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,252 6,441 7,780
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 18.08% 17.64% 16.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,236 4,300 5,423
10th Percentile £331 £341 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £534
Median % change year-on-year -5.57% -0.84% -2.91%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -2.56% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 88 153
10th Percentile £20.73 £17.85 £17.25
25th Percentile £29.00 £21.81 £23.24
Median hourly rate £43.50 £31.55 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +37.90% -33.59% -4.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £54.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £83.60 £66.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.75 £30.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +39.17% -35.04% +5.38%

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 5 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 9 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 5 November 2025. 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 -32 19 £525 +16.67% 11
London -1 15 £475 +7.95% 7
Work from Home -13 4 £625 +32.98% 4
UK excluding London -56 4 £600 +55.84% 7
North of England -57 3 £613 -30.00% 2
Yorkshire -44 2 £600 -31.43% 2
East Midlands - 1 £600 -
Midlands - 1 £600 -
North East - 1 £625 -

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 5 (26.32%) Apache Spark
2 3 (15.79%) Apache
3 2 (10.53%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (5.26%) Apache Synapse
Cloud Services
1 17 (89.47%) Azure
2 8 (42.11%) Microsoft Purview
2 8 (42.11%) Power Platform
3 4 (21.05%) AWS
4 3 (15.79%) Azure Data Factory
4 3 (15.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 2 (10.53%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (5.26%) Amazon EMR
6 1 (5.26%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (5.26%) Azure Monitor
6 1 (5.26%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (47.37%) Metadata
2 8 (42.11%) Data Lake
3 7 (36.84%) PostgreSQL
4 5 (26.32%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (15.79%) Apache Hive
5 3 (15.79%) Delta Lake
5 3 (15.79%) Hadoop
6 1 (5.26%) Amazon Athena
6 1 (5.26%) BigQuery
6 1 (5.26%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 1 (5.26%) Git
1 1 (5.26%) Gradle
General
1 13 (68.42%) Social Skills
2 7 (36.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 7 (36.84%) Public Sector
3 6 (31.58%) Finance
4 5 (26.32%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (5.26%) Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Corporate Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Investment Banking
5 1 (5.26%) Publishing
5 1 (5.26%) Retail
5 1 (5.26%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 9 (47.37%) Data Engineer
2 7 (36.84%) Architect
2 7 (36.84%) Data Architect
3 3 (15.79%) Senior
3 3 (15.79%) Senior Data Engineer
4 2 (10.53%) Azure Data Engineer
4 2 (10.53%) Azure Engineer
4 2 (10.53%) Lead
5 1 (5.26%) Analyst
5 1 (5.26%) Data Analyst
5 1 (5.26%) Developer
5 1 (5.26%) Lead Data Engineer
5 1 (5.26%) Lead Developer
5 1 (5.26%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (84.21%) PySpark
2 4 (21.05%) CSS
2 4 (21.05%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (36.84%) Low-Code
2 4 (21.05%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (21.05%) Product Ownership
3 3 (15.79%) Virtual Team
4 1 (5.26%) Cloud Native
4 1 (5.26%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (68.42%) Data Modelling
2 12 (63.16%) Problem-Solving
3 10 (52.63%) Data Governance
4 9 (47.37%) Data Architecture
5 8 (42.11%) Data Pipeline
5 8 (42.11%) Metadata Management
6 7 (36.84%) Agile
6 7 (36.84%) Strategic Planning
6 7 (36.84%) Strategic Thinking
7 6 (31.58%) Scrum
8 5 (26.32%) Analytics
8 5 (26.32%) ETL
9 4 (21.05%) Data Analytics
9 4 (21.05%) Data Engineering
9 4 (21.05%) Data Science
9 4 (21.05%) Data Transformation
10 3 (15.79%) CI/CD
10 3 (15.79%) Data Ingestion
10 3 (15.79%) DevOps
10 3 (15.79%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 17 (89.47%) Python
2 12 (63.16%) SQL
3 7 (36.84%) Java
4 4 (21.05%) JavaScript
5 1 (5.26%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 3 (15.79%) Degree
2 2 (10.53%) SC Cleared
2 2 (10.53%) Security Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (15.79%) Data Quality
2 1 (5.26%) Accessibility
2 1 (5.26%) QA
Systems Management
1 3 (15.79%) Kubernetes
1 3 (15.79%) Terraform
Vendors
1 7 (36.84%) Databricks
1 7 (36.84%) Microsoft
2 5 (26.32%) Foundry
2 5 (26.32%) Palantir