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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 564 508 546
Rank change year-on-year -56 +38 +153
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 64 14 34
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.13% 0.049% 0.080%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.87% 0.26% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 10 18
10th Percentile £363 £402 £385
25th Percentile £428 £425 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -4.76% -12.50%
75th Percentile £550 £534 £575
90th Percentile £580 £789 £745
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £444 £375
% change year-on-year +4.23% +18.33% -42.31%

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 7,352 5,397 7,276
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.09% 18.89% 17.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,944 3,705 5,228
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 227 94 148
10th Percentile £14.51 £19.97 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.02 £23.69 £20.77
Median hourly rate £43.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.46% -17.60% -31.73%
75th Percentile £70.47 £65.62 £61.53
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.13 £73.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.00 £31.64 £38.50
% change year-on-year +29.58% -17.82% -32.40%

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 27 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 14 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 27 May 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 -77 58 £492 -1.60% 6
London -32 43 £492 -1.60% 4
Work from Home -25 22 £413 -35.29% 5
UK excluding London -101 17 £463 +4.23% 2
North of England - 7 £492 - 2
Midlands -66 6 £450 +5.88%
West Midlands -57 5 £431 +15.00%
Yorkshire - 3 £550 - 1
North West - 3 £492 - 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
East Midlands -31 1 £600 +26.32%
South East -61 1 £550 +19.89%
Scotland - 1 - -
North East - 1 £475 -

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 27 (42.19%) Apache Spark
2 10 (15.63%) Apache
3 4 (6.25%) Confluence
4 3 (4.69%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (1.56%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.56%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 51 (79.69%) Azure
2 38 (59.38%) Power Platform
3 27 (42.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 22 (34.38%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (32.81%) Azure Data Factory
6 13 (20.31%) Microsoft Purview
7 7 (10.94%) AWS
8 6 (9.38%) Azure Key Vault
8 6 (9.38%) GitHub
9 5 (7.81%) dbt
9 5 (7.81%) PowerApps
9 5 (7.81%) Serverless
10 4 (6.25%) Azure AI
10 4 (6.25%) GitHub Actions
11 3 (4.69%) Power Automate
12 2 (3.13%) Amazon S3
12 2 (3.13%) Anthropic Claude
12 2 (3.13%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 2 (3.13%) Azure Functions
12 2 (3.13%) Dynamics 365
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (59.38%) Power BI
2 31 (48.44%) Delta Lake
3 26 (40.63%) Data Lake
4 11 (17.19%) SQL Server
5 8 (12.50%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (12.50%) Relational Database
6 7 (10.94%) Metadata
6 7 (10.94%) Tableau
7 6 (9.38%) Big Data
7 6 (9.38%) Parquet
8 5 (7.81%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (7.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 4 (6.25%) Data Vault
9 4 (6.25%) NoSQL
9 4 (6.25%) Star Schema
10 3 (4.69%) Apache Hive
10 3 (4.69%) Impala
10 3 (4.69%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (4.69%) Sqoop
11 2 (3.13%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 25 (39.06%) Git
2 11 (17.19%) GitLab
3 5 (7.81%) JIRA
4 1 (1.56%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.56%) MLflow
4 1 (1.56%) SonarQube
General
1 22 (34.38%) Finance
2 21 (32.81%) Social Skills
3 7 (10.94%) Analytical Skills
3 7 (10.94%) Public Sector
4 3 (4.69%) Law
5 2 (3.13%) Banking
5 2 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (3.13%) Publishing
6 1 (1.56%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.56%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 38 (59.38%) Data Engineer
2 16 (25.00%) Senior
3 11 (17.19%) Senior Data Engineer
4 9 (14.06%) Azure Engineer
5 8 (12.50%) Azure Data Engineer
5 8 (12.50%) Lead
6 7 (10.94%) Developer
7 6 (9.38%) Architect
8 5 (7.81%) Analyst
8 5 (7.81%) Data Analyst
8 5 (7.81%) Data Analytics Engineer
8 5 (7.81%) Data Architect
9 4 (6.25%) Azure Architect
9 4 (6.25%) Azure Data Architect
9 4 (6.25%) Lead Data Engineer
10 3 (4.69%) Platform Engineer
10 3 (4.69%) Senior Tester
10 3 (4.69%) Tester
11 2 (3.13%) Migration Engineer
11 2 (3.13%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 54 (84.38%) PySpark
2 11 (17.19%) Kafka
3 10 (15.63%) Spark Streaming
4 7 (10.94%) JSON
5 4 (6.25%) YAML
6 3 (4.69%) ARM Templates
7 2 (3.13%) XML
8 1 (1.56%) Great Expectations
8 1 (1.56%) Jinja
8 1 (1.56%) REST
8 1 (1.56%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 9 (14.06%) Distributed Computing
2 5 (7.81%) Cloud Native
3 3 (4.69%) Product Ownership
4 2 (3.13%) Algorithms
4 2 (3.13%) Data Fabric
4 2 (3.13%) Data Structures
4 2 (3.13%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (3.13%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (1.56%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.56%) Enterprise Cloud
5 1 (1.56%) IoT
5 1 (1.56%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.56%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.56%) Life Science
5 1 (1.56%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.56%) Reference Data
5 1 (1.56%) Reinsurance
5 1 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.56%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (65.63%) Business Intelligence
2 41 (64.06%) CI/CD
3 40 (62.50%) Analytics
4 39 (60.94%) DevOps
5 38 (59.38%) Data Pipeline
6 37 (57.81%) Data Engineering
7 28 (43.75%) Data Modelling
8 25 (39.06%) ETL
9 23 (35.94%) Data Governance
10 22 (34.38%) Agile
11 18 (28.13%) Infrastructure as Code
12 15 (23.44%) Dimensional Modelling
12 15 (23.44%) Validation
13 14 (21.88%) Performance Tuning
14 13 (20.31%) Use Case
15 12 (18.75%) AI
15 12 (18.75%) Migration
16 11 (17.19%) Data Science
17 10 (15.63%) Batch Processing
18 9 (14.06%) Change Data Capture
Programming Languages
1 62 (96.88%) SQL
2 50 (78.13%) Python
3 9 (14.06%) T-SQL
4 8 (12.50%) PowerShell
5 7 (10.94%) Java
6 5 (7.81%) Bicep
6 5 (7.81%) R
7 4 (6.25%) Scala
8 3 (4.69%) JavaScript
9 2 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 1 (1.56%) SAS Macro
10 1 (1.56%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 13 (20.31%) Security Cleared
2 10 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 9 (14.06%) Azure Certification
4 7 (10.94%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (9.38%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (4.69%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.56%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (39.06%) Data Quality
2 7 (10.94%) GDPR
2 7 (10.94%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.56%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.56%) MiFID
3 1 (1.56%) QA
3 1 (1.56%) SLA
3 1 (1.56%) Solvency II
3 1 (1.56%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (10.94%) Docker
2 3 (4.69%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (26.56%) Terraform
2 7 (10.94%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.56%) Grafana
Vendors
1 39 (60.94%) Databricks
2 30 (46.88%) Microsoft
3 3 (4.69%) Foundry
4 1 (1.56%) Hitachi
4 1 (1.56%) Palantir
4 1 (1.56%) Teradata