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 29 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 602 523 519
Rank change year-on-year -79 -4 +129
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 59 21 55
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.064% 0.14%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.73% 0.35% 0.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 41 13 26
10th Percentile £363 £415 £336
25th Percentile £425 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.63% +5.56% -23.40%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £525
90th Percentile £575 £738 £769
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 8,068 5,969 7,167
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.35% 18.19% 17.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,353 4,040 5,090
10th Percentile £356 £342 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.99% -3.81% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £651
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 254 90 104
10th Percentile £16.70 £19.20 £14.48
25th Percentile £24.45 £23.50 £20.56
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -6.67% -31.82%
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.36
90th Percentile £76.35 £78.83 £72.20
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -41.46%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -78 56 £475 - 4
London -42 34 £490 +3.11% 2
UK excluding London -84 23 £450 -5.26% 3
Work from Home -53 15 £413 -13.16% 2
South East -63 7 £433 -5.72% 3
Midlands -54 6 £450 -5.26%
North of England -68 6 £521 -
West Midlands - 5 £431 -
Yorkshire -42 3 £550 -
North West - 3 £492 -
South West - 2 £425 -
Scotland - 2 £545 -
East Midlands -12 1 £600 +26.32%

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 25 (42.37%) Apache Spark
2 10 (16.95%) Apache
3 5 (8.47%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (6.78%) Confluence
5 1 (1.69%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.69%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 44 (74.58%) Azure
2 26 (44.07%) Power Platform
3 19 (32.20%) Azure DevOps
4 18 (30.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 15 (25.42%) AWS
6 13 (22.03%) Azure Data Factory
7 7 (11.86%) dbt
8 5 (8.47%) GCP
8 5 (8.47%) GitHub
8 5 (8.47%) PowerApps
9 4 (6.78%) Amazon S3
9 4 (6.78%) Azure AI
9 4 (6.78%) Serverless
10 3 (5.08%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (5.08%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (5.08%) Microsoft Purview
10 3 (5.08%) Power Automate
11 2 (3.39%) Anthropic Claude
11 2 (3.39%) AWS Lambda
11 2 (3.39%) Azure Functions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 26 (44.07%) Power BI
2 24 (40.68%) Delta Lake
3 13 (22.03%) Data Lake
4 12 (20.34%) Data Warehouse
5 8 (13.56%) Big Data
6 7 (11.86%) SQL Server
7 5 (8.47%) Parquet
7 5 (8.47%) Star Schema
8 4 (6.78%) Apache Iceberg
8 4 (6.78%) Data Vault
8 4 (6.78%) Metadata
8 4 (6.78%) Tableau
9 3 (5.08%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (5.08%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (5.08%) NoSQL
9 3 (5.08%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (3.39%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (3.39%) Semantic Layer
11 1 (1.69%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (1.69%) Impala
Development Applications
1 13 (22.03%) Git
2 5 (8.47%) GitLab
3 4 (6.78%) JIRA
4 1 (1.69%) MLflow
4 1 (1.69%) SonarQube
General
1 18 (30.51%) Finance
2 17 (28.81%) Social Skills
3 10 (16.95%) Analytical Skills
4 7 (11.86%) Public Sector
5 3 (5.08%) Law
5 3 (5.08%) Military
6 2 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.39%) Publishing
7 1 (1.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 35 (59.32%) Data Engineer
2 16 (27.12%) Senior
3 12 (20.34%) Senior Data Engineer
4 8 (13.56%) Lead
5 5 (8.47%) Architect
5 5 (8.47%) Azure Engineer
5 5 (8.47%) Tester
6 4 (6.78%) Analyst
6 4 (6.78%) Azure Data Engineer
6 4 (6.78%) Data Analyst
6 4 (6.78%) Data Analytics Engineer
6 4 (6.78%) Developer
7 3 (5.08%) Lead Data Engineer
7 3 (5.08%) Platform Engineer
7 3 (5.08%) Senior Tester
8 2 (3.39%) Data Migration Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Data Scientist
8 2 (3.39%) Lead Architect
8 2 (3.39%) Microsoft Engineer
8 2 (3.39%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 53 (89.83%) PySpark
2 8 (13.56%) Kafka
3 5 (8.47%) JSON
4 4 (6.78%) Spark Streaming
5 3 (5.08%) ARM Templates
6 2 (3.39%) Jinja
6 2 (3.39%) XML
7 1 (1.69%) Great Expectations
7 1 (1.69%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (13.56%) Cloud Native
2 3 (5.08%) Algorithms
2 3 (5.08%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.39%) Data Fabric
3 2 (3.39%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (3.39%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (3.39%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.39%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.69%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.69%) Distributed Computing
4 1 (1.69%) Educational Technology
4 1 (1.69%) IoT
4 1 (1.69%) Legacy Code
4 1 (1.69%) Life Science
4 1 (1.69%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.69%) Reference Data
4 1 (1.69%) Reinsurance
4 1 (1.69%) Renewable Energy
4 1 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.69%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 35 (59.32%) CI/CD
1 35 (59.32%) Data Pipeline
2 31 (52.54%) DevOps
3 29 (49.15%) Business Intelligence
4 28 (47.46%) Analytics
4 28 (47.46%) Data Engineering
5 26 (44.07%) Data Modelling
6 22 (37.29%) Data Governance
7 21 (35.59%) ETL
8 17 (28.81%) Migration
9 16 (27.12%) Infrastructure as Code
9 16 (27.12%) Validation
10 12 (20.34%) Agile
10 12 (20.34%) AI
10 12 (20.34%) Use Case
11 10 (16.95%) Decision-Making
11 10 (16.95%) Machine Learning
11 10 (16.95%) Test Automation
12 9 (15.25%) Mentoring
13 8 (13.56%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 57 (96.61%) SQL
2 39 (66.10%) Python
3 6 (10.17%) T-SQL
4 3 (5.08%) PowerShell
5 2 (3.39%) Bicep
5 2 (3.39%) Java
5 2 (3.39%) Scala
6 1 (1.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (1.69%) R
6 1 (1.69%) SAS Macro
6 1 (1.69%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 11 (18.64%) Security Cleared
2 8 (13.56%) SC Cleared
3 6 (10.17%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (3.39%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.69%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.69%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 25 (42.37%) Data Quality
2 4 (6.78%) QA
3 1 (1.69%) GDPR
3 1 (1.69%) MiFID
3 1 (1.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.69%) SLA
3 1 (1.69%) Solvency II
System Software
1 2 (3.39%) Docker
2 1 (1.69%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 14 (23.73%) Terraform
2 2 (3.39%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.69%) Grafana
Vendors
1 39 (66.10%) Databricks
2 20 (33.90%) Microsoft
3 3 (5.08%) Foundry
4 2 (3.39%) Hitachi
4 2 (3.39%) Teradata
5 1 (1.69%) Bloomberg
5 1 (1.69%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.69%) Palantir
5 1 (1.69%) Reuters
5 1 (1.69%) Trayport