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

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 573 515 563
Rank change year-on-year -58 +48 +147
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 59 17 26
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.13% 0.058% 0.059%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.81% 0.30% 0.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 12 14
10th Percentile £363 £367 £458
25th Percentile £436 £448 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% -9.09% -20.00%
75th Percentile £550 £583 £694
90th Percentile £598 £784 £755
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £475 £425
% change year-on-year -2.63% +11.76% -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 7,250 5,595 7,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.76% 19.06% 16.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,965 3,853 5,185
10th Percentile £350 £354 £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 £594 £640 £650
90th Percentile £694 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £483
% change year-on-year -2.86% +1.24% -3.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 108 152
10th Percentile £18.00 £21.10 £14.00
25th Percentile £31.03 £24.25 £20.77
Median hourly rate £52.50 £33.81 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +55.30% -15.49% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.68 £65.62 £53.84
90th Percentile £83.75 £73.63 £72.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +58.03% -9.60% -39.70%

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 17 April 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 17 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 -74 53 £496 -0.80% 14
London -38 41 £515 +3.00% 6
Work from Home -5 22 £413 -13.16% 8
UK excluding London -82 14 £463 -2.63% 13
Midlands -68 6 £450 +5.88% 2
West Midlands -55 4 £431 +15.00% 2
North of England - 4 £475 - 5
East Midlands -31 2 £600 +26.32%
North West - 2 £492 - 3
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
South East -58 1 £550 +19.89% 3
Scotland - 1 - - 2
Yorkshire - 1 £325 - 2
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 23 (38.98%) Apache Spark
2 7 (11.86%) Apache
3 4 (6.78%) Confluence
4 1 (1.69%) Apache Synapse
4 1 (1.69%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (1.69%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 48 (81.36%) Azure
2 33 (55.93%) Power Platform
3 25 (42.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 21 (35.59%) Azure Data Factory
4 21 (35.59%) Azure DevOps
5 16 (27.12%) Microsoft Purview
6 6 (10.17%) AWS
6 6 (10.17%) Azure Key Vault
6 6 (10.17%) GitHub
7 5 (8.47%) Serverless
8 4 (6.78%) Azure AI
8 4 (6.78%) dbt
8 4 (6.78%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (5.08%) PowerApps
10 2 (3.39%) Anthropic Claude
10 2 (3.39%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (3.39%) Azure Functions
10 2 (3.39%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (3.39%) GCP
11 1 (1.69%) Amazon S3
Database & Business Intelligence
1 32 (54.24%) Power BI
2 30 (50.85%) Delta Lake
3 23 (38.98%) Data Lake
4 11 (18.64%) Relational Database
5 9 (15.25%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (15.25%) Metadata
6 8 (13.56%) SQL Server
6 8 (13.56%) Tableau
7 7 (11.86%) Azure SQL Database
8 6 (10.17%) NoSQL
9 5 (8.47%) Big Data
9 5 (8.47%) Parquet
9 5 (8.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 3 (5.08%) Apache Hive
10 3 (5.08%) Data Vault
10 3 (5.08%) Impala
10 3 (5.08%) Snowflake Schema
10 3 (5.08%) Sqoop
10 3 (5.08%) Star Schema
11 2 (3.39%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 26 (44.07%) Git
2 11 (18.64%) GitLab
3 5 (8.47%) JIRA
4 3 (5.08%) Jenkins
5 1 (1.69%) MLflow
General
1 23 (38.98%) Social Skills
2 21 (35.59%) Finance
3 8 (13.56%) Public Sector
4 5 (8.47%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (5.08%) Law
6 2 (3.39%) Banking
6 2 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.69%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
7 1 (1.69%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 34 (57.63%) Data Engineer
2 15 (25.42%) Senior
3 11 (18.64%) Azure Engineer
3 11 (18.64%) Senior Data Engineer
4 10 (16.95%) Azure Data Engineer
5 9 (15.25%) Developer
6 7 (11.86%) Lead
7 6 (10.17%) Architect
7 6 (10.17%) Data Architect
8 4 (6.78%) Azure Architect
8 4 (6.78%) Azure Data Architect
8 4 (6.78%) Data Analytics Engineer
8 4 (6.78%) Lead Data Engineer
9 3 (5.08%) Analyst
9 3 (5.08%) Data Analyst
9 3 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
10 2 (3.39%) Migration Engineer
10 2 (3.39%) Senior Analyst
10 2 (3.39%) Senior Tester
10 2 (3.39%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (84.75%) PySpark
2 11 (18.64%) Kafka
2 11 (18.64%) Spark Streaming
3 6 (10.17%) JSON
3 6 (10.17%) YAML
4 3 (5.08%) ARM Templates
5 2 (3.39%) XML
6 1 (1.69%) Great Expectations
6 1 (1.69%) REST
6 1 (1.69%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 10 (16.95%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (6.78%) Product Ownership
3 3 (5.08%) Cloud Native
4 2 (3.39%) Data Fabric
4 2 (3.39%) Data Structures
4 2 (3.39%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (1.69%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.69%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.69%) IoT
5 1 (1.69%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.69%) Life Science
5 1 (1.69%) Low-Code
5 1 (1.69%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.69%) Reinsurance
5 1 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.69%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 39 (66.10%) CI/CD
2 38 (64.41%) DevOps
3 36 (61.02%) Business Intelligence
4 35 (59.32%) Data Engineering
5 34 (57.63%) Data Pipeline
6 33 (55.93%) Analytics
7 25 (42.37%) Data Modelling
8 24 (40.68%) Data Governance
9 23 (38.98%) Agile
9 23 (38.98%) ETL
10 17 (28.81%) Infrastructure as Code
11 15 (25.42%) Performance Tuning
12 14 (23.73%) Dimensional Modelling
13 13 (22.03%) Data Science
13 13 (22.03%) Validation
14 11 (18.64%) Batch Processing
15 10 (16.95%) AI
15 10 (16.95%) Collaborative Working
15 10 (16.95%) Data Cleansing
15 10 (16.95%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 56 (94.92%) SQL
2 48 (81.36%) Python
3 8 (13.56%) Java
3 8 (13.56%) T-SQL
4 7 (11.86%) PowerShell
4 7 (11.86%) R
5 6 (10.17%) Scala
6 5 (8.47%) Bicep
6 5 (8.47%) JavaScript
7 2 (3.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (1.69%) SAS Macro
8 1 (1.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 16 (27.12%) Security Cleared
2 13 (22.03%) SC Cleared
3 11 (18.64%) Azure Certification
4 7 (11.86%) BPSS Clearance
5 6 (10.17%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.69%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.69%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 24 (40.68%) Data Quality
2 7 (11.86%) GDPR
2 7 (11.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (3.39%) QA
4 1 (1.69%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.69%) Solvency II
4 1 (1.69%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (16.95%) Docker
2 3 (5.08%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (28.81%) Terraform
2 10 (16.95%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.69%) Grafana
Vendors
1 35 (59.32%) Databricks
2 28 (47.46%) Microsoft
3 3 (5.08%) Foundry
4 1 (1.69%) Palantir