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 2 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 617 545 526
Rank change year-on-year -72 -19 +84
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 55 18 56
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.10% 0.055% 0.15%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.67% 0.31% 0.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 11 24
10th Percentile £374 £425 £331
25th Percentile £425 £438 £397
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £430
Median % change year-on-year - +10.47% -20.37%
75th Percentile £550 £513 £492
90th Percentile £651 £538 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £440 £475 £389
% change year-on-year -7.37% +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 8,173 5,858 6,996
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.25% 18.01% 18.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,444 3,920 4,881
10th Percentile £358 £340 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.23%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £480
% change year-on-year - -1.04% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 258 94 100
10th Percentile £15.88 £21.22 £14.93
25th Percentile £23.00 £29.02 £19.77
Median hourly rate £38.38 £38.85 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% +19.52% -40.91%
75th Percentile £61.31 £64.94 £55.63
90th Percentile £75.30 £79.63 £71.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £34.19 £30.00
% change year-on-year +11.87% +13.97% -42.86%

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 2 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 12 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 2 September 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 54 £475 - 11
London -49 36 £488 +2.63% 9
UK excluding London -88 19 £440 -7.37% 4
Work from Home -52 13 £488 +2.63% 4
South East -60 7 £425 - 3
Midlands -51 5 £431 -9.21%
West Midlands - 5 £431 -
North of England -74 4 £550 -
Yorkshire -37 3 £550 -
South West - 2 £425 -
Scotland - 1 £545 - 1
North West - 1 - -

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 19 (34.55%) Apache Spark
2 8 (14.55%) Apache
3 6 (10.91%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.82%) Palantir Foundry
Cloud Services
1 41 (74.55%) Azure
2 21 (38.18%) Power Platform
3 20 (36.36%) AWS
4 16 (29.09%) Azure DevOps
4 16 (29.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 12 (21.82%) Azure Data Factory
6 9 (16.36%) Azure Databricks
7 7 (12.73%) GCP
7 7 (12.73%) Microsoft Purview
8 6 (10.91%) AWS Lambda
8 6 (10.91%) Serverless
9 5 (9.09%) Dynamics 365
9 5 (9.09%) PowerApps
10 4 (7.27%) Azure Functions
10 4 (7.27%) dbt
10 4 (7.27%) GitHub
11 3 (5.45%) Amazon S3
11 3 (5.45%) Power Automate
12 2 (3.64%) AWS CodeCommit
12 2 (3.64%) AWS Step Functions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (38.18%) Power BI
2 20 (36.36%) Delta Lake
3 14 (25.45%) Data Lake
4 11 (20.00%) Data Warehouse
5 10 (18.18%) Metadata
6 7 (12.73%) SQL Server
7 5 (9.09%) Big Data
7 5 (9.09%) Parquet
8 4 (7.27%) Apache Iceberg
8 4 (7.27%) Data Vault
8 4 (7.27%) Star Schema
8 4 (7.27%) Tableau
9 3 (5.45%) Azure SQL Database
9 3 (5.45%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (3.64%) Amazon Athena
10 2 (3.64%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (3.64%) Semantic Layer
11 1 (1.82%) Amazon Redshift
11 1 (1.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 1 (1.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 11 (20.00%) Git
2 4 (7.27%) MLflow
2 4 (7.27%) Selenium
3 1 (1.82%) GitLab
3 1 (1.82%) SonarQube
General
1 17 (30.91%) Finance
2 11 (20.00%) Social Skills
3 10 (18.18%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (10.91%) Public Sector
5 4 (7.27%) Military
6 2 (3.64%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (3.64%) Publishing
6 2 (3.64%) Retail
7 1 (1.82%) Local Government
7 1 (1.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 33 (60.00%) Data Engineer
2 14 (25.45%) Senior
3 10 (18.18%) Databricks Engineer
3 10 (18.18%) Senior Data Engineer
4 9 (16.36%) Databricks Data Engineer
5 7 (12.73%) Architect
6 6 (10.91%) Lead
7 5 (9.09%) Analyst
7 5 (9.09%) Data Analyst
7 5 (9.09%) Databricks Architect
7 5 (9.09%) Platform Engineer
7 5 (9.09%) Tester
8 4 (7.27%) Data Analytics Engineer
8 4 (7.27%) Lead Data Engineer
9 3 (5.45%) Data Architect
9 3 (5.45%) Senior Tester
10 2 (3.64%) Data Scientist
10 2 (3.64%) Developer
10 2 (3.64%) Enterprise Architect
10 2 (3.64%) Financial Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (90.91%) PySpark
2 13 (23.64%) Terraform
3 9 (16.36%) Kafka
4 5 (9.09%) Great Expectations
4 5 (9.09%) JSON
5 4 (7.27%) Playwright
5 4 (7.27%) pytest
5 4 (7.27%) React
6 2 (3.64%) Jinja
6 2 (3.64%) XML
7 1 (1.82%) Spark Streaming
Miscellaneous
1 5 (9.09%) Cloud Native
2 4 (7.27%) Low-Code
3 3 (5.45%) Algorithms
3 3 (5.45%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (3.64%) AI Agents
4 2 (3.64%) Data Fabric
4 2 (3.64%) Enterprise Cloud
4 2 (3.64%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (3.64%) Video\Live Streaming
5 1 (1.82%) Educational Technology
5 1 (1.82%) IoT
5 1 (1.82%) Life Science
5 1 (1.82%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.82%) Reference Data
5 1 (1.82%) Renewable Energy
5 1 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.82%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (56.36%) CI/CD
2 30 (54.55%) Data Pipeline
3 29 (52.73%) Analytics
4 28 (50.91%) Business Intelligence
5 27 (49.09%) Data Governance
5 27 (49.09%) Lakehouse
6 25 (45.45%) Data Engineering
7 22 (40.00%) DevOps
8 21 (38.18%) Data Modelling
9 20 (36.36%) ETL
10 18 (32.73%) Validation
11 17 (30.91%) Infrastructure as Code
12 15 (27.27%) AI
12 15 (27.27%) Migration
13 12 (21.82%) Agile
13 12 (21.82%) Continuous Improvement
14 8 (14.55%) Data Ingestion
14 8 (14.55%) Decision-Making
14 8 (14.55%) Test Automation
15 7 (12.73%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 55 (100.00%) SQL
2 35 (63.64%) Python
3 6 (10.91%) T-SQL
4 5 (9.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 4 (7.27%) JavaScript
6 3 (5.45%) PowerShell
7 2 (3.64%) Java
8 1 (1.82%) Bicep
8 1 (1.82%) R
8 1 (1.82%) Scala
Qualifications
1 7 (12.73%) Security Cleared
2 4 (7.27%) SC Cleared
3 2 (3.64%) DBS Check
4 1 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.82%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (47.27%) Data Quality
2 7 (12.73%) QA
3 1 (1.82%) GDPR
3 1 (1.82%) MiFID
3 1 (1.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.82%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (10.91%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (7.27%) Ansible
2 2 (3.64%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.82%) Grafana
Vendors
1 39 (70.91%) Databricks
2 20 (36.36%) Microsoft
3 2 (3.64%) Hitachi
3 2 (3.64%) Teradata
4 1 (1.82%) Bloomberg
4 1 (1.82%) Foundry
4 1 (1.82%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.82%) Palantir
4 1 (1.82%) Reuters
4 1 (1.82%) Trayport