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 10 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 550 509 555
Rank change year-on-year -41 +46 +172
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 37 23 45
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.094% 0.075% 0.10%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.57% 0.41% 0.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 15 30
10th Percentile £383 £334 £474
25th Percentile £448 £358 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £485 £548
Median % change year-on-year +9.28% -11.42% -8.75%
75th Percentile £591 £638 £575
90th Percentile £622 £790 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £380 -
% change year-on-year +44.74% - -

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 6,460 5,655 7,338
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.41% 18.42% 16.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,439 3,732 5,226
10th Percentile £336 £355 £350
25th Percentile £412 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 87 178
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.97
25th Percentile £29.00 £25.17 £21.16
Median hourly rate £53.25 £38.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.31% -9.41% -25.26%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.86 £62.50
90th Percentile £85.00 £71.50 £76.82
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £30.21 £40.25
% change year-on-year +81.07% -24.94% -29.21%

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 10 February 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 10 February 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 -57 33 £550 +11.68% 16
London -26 26 £550 +10.00% 6
Work from Home -12 13 £500 +23.84% 14
UK excluding London -61 8 £550 +44.74% 16
North of England -62 4 £600 - 6
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
North East - 2 £550 -
Midlands -55 1 £600 +60.00% 1
Yorkshire -58 1 £600 - 2
East Midlands - 1 £600 -
North West - 1 - - 4
South East - 1 £550 - 5

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 14 (37.84%) Apache Spark
2 4 (10.81%) Apache
3 1 (2.70%) Apache Synapse
3 1 (2.70%) Palantir Foundry
Cloud Services
1 31 (83.78%) Azure
2 24 (64.86%) Power Platform
3 16 (43.24%) Azure Data Factory
3 16 (43.24%) Microsoft Purview
4 11 (29.73%) Azure DevOps
4 11 (29.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 5 (13.51%) Azure Key Vault
6 3 (8.11%) Serverless
7 2 (5.41%) Cloud Computing
7 2 (5.41%) GitHub
7 2 (5.41%) GitHub Actions
8 1 (2.70%) AWS
8 1 (2.70%) Azure Stack
8 1 (2.70%) dbt
8 1 (2.70%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 21 (56.76%) Power BI
2 18 (48.65%) Data Lake
3 15 (40.54%) Delta Lake
4 11 (29.73%) Relational Database
5 9 (24.32%) Metadata
6 7 (18.92%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (13.51%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (13.51%) SQL Server
7 5 (13.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (13.51%) Tableau
8 4 (10.81%) NoSQL
9 3 (8.11%) Apache Hive
9 3 (8.11%) Big Data
9 3 (8.11%) Impala
9 3 (8.11%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (8.11%) Sqoop
10 2 (5.41%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (5.41%) Data Vault
11 1 (2.70%) Parquet
11 1 (2.70%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 17 (45.95%) Git
2 7 (18.92%) GitLab
3 3 (8.11%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.70%) Gradle
4 1 (2.70%) JIRA
General
1 18 (48.65%) Social Skills
2 16 (43.24%) Finance
3 4 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (10.81%) Public Sector
4 3 (8.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (5.41%) Banking
5 2 (5.41%) Law
6 1 (2.70%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 15 (40.54%) Data Engineer
2 8 (21.62%) Architect
2 8 (21.62%) Azure Data Engineer
2 8 (21.62%) Azure Engineer
2 8 (21.62%) Data Architect
2 8 (21.62%) Developer
3 7 (18.92%) Senior
4 5 (13.51%) Senior Data Engineer
5 4 (10.81%) Azure Architect
5 4 (10.81%) Azure Data Architect
5 4 (10.81%) Lead
6 3 (8.11%) Analyst
6 3 (8.11%) Data Analyst
7 2 (5.41%) Data Visualisation Analyst
7 2 (5.41%) Lead Data Engineer
7 2 (5.41%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (5.41%) Senior Data Analyst
7 2 (5.41%) Tableau Analyst
8 1 (2.70%) Data Analytics Engineer
8 1 (2.70%) Platform Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (75.68%) PySpark
2 8 (21.62%) Spark Streaming
3 7 (18.92%) Kafka
4 5 (13.51%) YAML
5 2 (5.41%) ARM Templates
5 2 (5.41%) JSON
6 1 (2.70%) CSS
6 1 (2.70%) HTML
6 1 (2.70%) REST
6 1 (2.70%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 10 (27.03%) Distributed Computing
2 3 (8.11%) Low-Code
3 2 (5.41%) Data Structures
3 2 (5.41%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.70%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.70%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.70%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (64.86%) DevOps
2 23 (62.16%) Business Intelligence
2 23 (62.16%) Data Engineering
3 22 (59.46%) CI/CD
4 20 (54.05%) Analytics
5 19 (51.35%) Data Pipeline
6 18 (48.65%) Agile
6 18 (48.65%) Data Governance
6 18 (48.65%) ETL
7 12 (32.43%) Data Architecture
7 12 (32.43%) Data Modelling
8 11 (29.73%) Data Cleansing
9 10 (27.03%) Performance Tuning
10 9 (24.32%) Dimensional Modelling
10 9 (24.32%) Validation
11 8 (21.62%) Data Science
11 8 (21.62%) Deployment Automation
11 8 (21.62%) RBAC
12 7 (18.92%) Batch Processing
12 7 (18.92%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 34 (91.89%) SQL
2 32 (86.49%) Python
3 10 (27.03%) Java
4 6 (16.22%) JavaScript
4 6 (16.22%) R
4 6 (16.22%) Scala
5 5 (13.51%) Bicep
5 5 (13.51%) PowerShell
5 5 (13.51%) T-SQL
6 1 (2.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (2.70%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 10 (27.03%) Azure Certification
2 6 (16.22%) SC Cleared
2 6 (16.22%) Security Cleared
3 5 (13.51%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.70%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (37.84%) Data Quality
2 7 (18.92%) GDPR
2 7 (18.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (5.41%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.70%) QA
4 1 (2.70%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (27.03%) Docker
2 3 (8.11%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 10 (27.03%) Kubernetes
2 8 (21.62%) Terraform
Vendors
1 22 (59.46%) Databricks
2 18 (48.65%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.70%) Foundry
3 1 (2.70%) Palantir