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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 648 541 507
Rank change year-on-year -107 -34 +94
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 49 20 56
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.089% 0.060% 0.15%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.60% 0.33% 0.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27 13 26
10th Percentile £400 £425 £335
25th Percentile £425 £450 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £475 £430
Median % change year-on-year +1.05% +10.47% -21.82%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £495
90th Percentile £710 £635 £781
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £613 £355
% change year-on-year -22.04% +72.54% -40.83%

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 8,190 6,029 6,710
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 14.81% 18.16% 17.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,443 4,049 4,524
10th Percentile £356 £340 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £622 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £482
% change year-on-year - -1.45% -3.60%
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 82 89
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.78 £17.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £21.25
Median hourly rate £40.18 £39.48 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year +1.77% +16.36% -33.54%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.69 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £80.00 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.71 £35.49 £30.00
% change year-on-year +17.53% +18.30% -40.63%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -100 47 £478 +0.53% 47
London -71 27 £488 +2.63% 26
UK excluding London -79 21 £478 -22.04% 19
Work from Home -70 8 £525 -16.00% 30
South East - 8 £425 - 2
North of England -67 7 £538 -12.24% 14
Yorkshire -36 6 £538 -10.42% 9
Midlands - 3 £463 -
South West - 2 £425 - 3
West Midlands - 2 £450 -
Scotland - 1 £545 -
North West - 1 - - 4
East Midlands - 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 20 (40.82%) Apache Spark
2 10 (20.41%) Apache
3 6 (12.24%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (2.04%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 1 (2.04%) Aladdin
1 1 (2.04%) FIS Private Capital Suite
Cloud Services
1 35 (71.43%) Azure
2 17 (34.69%) AWS
2 17 (34.69%) Power Platform
3 13 (26.53%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (20.41%) Azure Databricks
5 9 (18.37%) Azure Data Factory
5 9 (18.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 7 (14.29%) AWS Lambda
6 7 (14.29%) Serverless
7 6 (12.24%) GCP
7 6 (12.24%) Microsoft Purview
8 5 (10.20%) dbt
8 5 (10.20%) Dynamics 365
9 4 (8.16%) Amazon S3
9 4 (8.16%) Azure Functions
10 3 (6.12%) AWS Step Functions
11 2 (4.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 2 (4.08%) AWS CodeCommit
11 2 (4.08%) Power Automate
11 2 (4.08%) PowerApps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (34.69%) Power BI
2 14 (28.57%) Delta Lake
3 12 (24.49%) Data Warehouse
4 11 (22.45%) Data Lake
5 10 (20.41%) Metadata
6 6 (12.24%) SQL Server
7 5 (10.20%) Big Data
8 4 (8.16%) Apache Iceberg
9 3 (6.12%) Data Vault
9 3 (6.12%) Star Schema
10 2 (4.08%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (4.08%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (4.08%) Azure SQL Database
10 2 (4.08%) Parquet
10 2 (4.08%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (4.08%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 2 (4.08%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 2 (4.08%) Tableau
11 1 (2.04%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (2.04%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 11 (22.45%) Git
2 4 (8.16%) Selenium
3 3 (6.12%) MLflow
4 2 (4.08%) GitLab
5 1 (2.04%) Jenkins
5 1 (2.04%) SonarQube
General
1 17 (34.69%) Finance
2 11 (22.45%) Social Skills
3 10 (20.41%) Analytical Skills
4 5 (10.20%) Military
5 3 (6.12%) Retail
6 2 (4.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (4.08%) Public Sector
6 2 (4.08%) Publishing
7 1 (2.04%) Banking
7 1 (2.04%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (2.04%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (2.04%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 30 (61.22%) Data Engineer
2 12 (24.49%) Databricks Engineer
3 11 (22.45%) Databricks Data Engineer
4 9 (18.37%) Senior
5 7 (14.29%) Architect
5 7 (14.29%) Lead
5 7 (14.29%) Senior Data Engineer
6 5 (10.20%) Analyst
6 5 (10.20%) Data Analyst
6 5 (10.20%) Databricks Architect
6 5 (10.20%) Lead Data Engineer
7 4 (8.16%) Platform Engineer
8 3 (6.12%) Data Architect
8 3 (6.12%) Tester
9 2 (4.08%) Azure Engineer
9 2 (4.08%) Data Modeller
9 2 (4.08%) Data Scientist
9 2 (4.08%) Developer
9 2 (4.08%) Enterprise Architect
9 2 (4.08%) Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (87.76%) PySpark
2 11 (22.45%) Terraform
3 6 (12.24%) Kafka
4 5 (10.20%) Great Expectations
5 4 (8.16%) Playwright
5 4 (8.16%) pytest
5 4 (8.16%) React
6 2 (4.08%) Jinja
7 1 (2.04%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 5 (10.20%) Cloud Native
2 4 (8.16%) Low-Code
3 2 (4.08%) AI Agents
3 2 (4.08%) Algorithms
3 2 (4.08%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (4.08%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (4.08%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.04%) Data Structures
4 1 (2.04%) Educational Technology
4 1 (2.04%) EPoS
4 1 (2.04%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.04%) Reference Data
4 1 (2.04%) Renewable Energy
4 1 (2.04%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (2.04%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.04%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (61.22%) CI/CD
2 27 (55.10%) Data Pipeline
3 26 (53.06%) Analytics
3 26 (53.06%) Data Engineering
4 25 (51.02%) Lakehouse
5 23 (46.94%) Data Governance
5 23 (46.94%) ETL
6 22 (44.90%) Business Intelligence
7 19 (38.78%) Data Modelling
7 19 (38.78%) DevOps
8 18 (36.73%) Validation
9 14 (28.57%) AI
9 14 (28.57%) Continuous Improvement
10 13 (26.53%) Infrastructure as Code
10 13 (26.53%) Migration
11 12 (24.49%) Agile
12 11 (22.45%) Data Ingestion
13 8 (16.33%) Data Architecture
14 7 (14.29%) Technical Leadership
14 7 (14.29%) Use Case
Programming Languages
1 49 (100.00%) SQL
2 33 (67.35%) Python
3 5 (10.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
3 5 (10.20%) T-SQL
4 4 (8.16%) JavaScript
5 2 (4.08%) Java
6 1 (2.04%) PowerShell
6 1 (2.04%) Scala
6 1 (2.04%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 2 (4.08%) DBS Check
2 1 (2.04%) SC Cleared
2 1 (2.04%) Security Cleared
2 1 (2.04%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 27 (55.10%) Data Quality
2 7 (14.29%) QA
3 3 (6.12%) GDPR
4 1 (2.04%) Disclosure Scotland
4 1 (2.04%) GRC
4 1 (2.04%) MiFID
4 1 (2.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (2.04%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (12.24%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (8.16%) Ansible
2 2 (4.08%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 36 (73.47%) Databricks
2 16 (32.65%) Microsoft
3 2 (4.08%) Hitachi
3 2 (4.08%) Teradata
4 1 (2.04%) Anaplan
4 1 (2.04%) Bloomberg
4 1 (2.04%) eFront
4 1 (2.04%) OpenAI
4 1 (2.04%) Reuters
4 1 (2.04%) Trayport