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 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 563 507 555
Rank change year-on-year -56 +48 +207
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 30 29 40
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.081% 0.087% 0.092%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.47% 0.48% 0.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 17 27
10th Percentile £425 £339 £470
25th Percentile £450 £363 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £545
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -8.26% -9.17%
75th Percentile £600 £756 £575
90th Percentile £625 £843 £671
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £455 -
% change year-on-year +18.13% - -

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 6,348 6,030 7,237
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.21% 18.10% 16.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,387 3,985 5,107
10th Percentile £325 £345 £350
25th Percentile £408 £425 £427
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £535
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
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 88 83 142
10th Percentile £20.72 £18.66 £16.12
25th Percentile £29.00 £22.60 £22.77
Median hourly rate £52.00 £30.59 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +69.99% -33.76% -16.04%
75th Percentile £72.57 £64.61 £64.88
90th Percentile £85.00 £69.00 £77.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £58.75 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +113.64% -40.45% -7.64%

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 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 10 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 December 2025. 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 -44 27 £538 +7.50% 41
London -4 23 £518 +3.50% 16
Work from Home +3 7 £510 +26.32% 27
UK excluding London -55 6 £538 +18.13% 28
North of England -53 3 £600 -31.43% 7
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
North East - 2 £550 - 1
Midlands -42 1 £600 +60.00% 3
Yorkshire -53 1 £600 -31.43% 4
East Midlands - 1 £600 - 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 8 (26.67%) Apache Spark
2 3 (10.00%) Apache
3 1 (3.33%) Apache Synapse
Cloud Services
1 25 (83.33%) Azure
2 21 (70.00%) Power Platform
3 16 (53.33%) Microsoft Purview
4 9 (30.00%) Azure Data Factory
5 8 (26.67%) Azure DevOps
6 7 (23.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 3 (10.00%) Azure Key Vault
8 2 (6.67%) Cloud Computing
8 2 (6.67%) Serverless
9 1 (3.33%) AWS
9 1 (3.33%) Azure Stack
9 1 (3.33%) dbt
9 1 (3.33%) GCP
9 1 (3.33%) GitHub
9 1 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (46.67%) Power BI
2 12 (40.00%) Data Lake
2 12 (40.00%) Metadata
3 11 (36.67%) Delta Lake
4 8 (26.67%) Relational Database
5 7 (23.33%) PostgreSQL
6 4 (13.33%) Azure SQL Database
6 4 (13.33%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (13.33%) Tableau
7 3 (10.00%) SQL Server
7 3 (10.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 2 (6.67%) Apache Hive
8 2 (6.67%) Big Data
8 2 (6.67%) Data Vault
8 2 (6.67%) Impala
8 2 (6.67%) NoSQL
8 2 (6.67%) Sqoop
9 1 (3.33%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 1 (3.33%) Parquet
9 1 (3.33%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 12 (40.00%) Git
2 5 (16.67%) GitLab
3 2 (6.67%) Jenkins
4 1 (3.33%) Gradle
4 1 (3.33%) JIRA
General
1 16 (53.33%) Social Skills
2 13 (43.33%) Finance
3 8 (26.67%) Public Sector
4 7 (23.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (6.67%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (6.67%) Banking
6 1 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 11 (36.67%) Data Engineer
2 10 (33.33%) Architect
2 10 (33.33%) Data Architect
3 7 (23.33%) Azure Data Engineer
3 7 (23.33%) Azure Engineer
4 6 (20.00%) Developer
4 6 (20.00%) Senior
5 4 (13.33%) Senior Data Engineer
6 3 (10.00%) Analyst
6 3 (10.00%) Data Analyst
7 2 (6.67%) Azure Architect
7 2 (6.67%) Azure Data Architect
7 2 (6.67%) Data Visualisation Analyst
7 2 (6.67%) Lead
7 2 (6.67%) Lead Data Engineer
7 2 (6.67%) Senior Analyst
7 2 (6.67%) Senior Data Analyst
7 2 (6.67%) Tableau Analyst
8 1 (3.33%) Business Intelligence Developer
8 1 (3.33%) Business Intelligence Lead
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (80.00%) PySpark
2 5 (16.67%) Spark Streaming
3 4 (13.33%) Kafka
3 4 (13.33%) YAML
4 2 (6.67%) JSON
5 1 (3.33%) CSS
5 1 (3.33%) HTML
5 1 (3.33%) REST
5 1 (3.33%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 8 (26.67%) Distributed Computing
2 7 (23.33%) Low-Code
3 2 (6.67%) Product Ownership
4 1 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 17 (56.67%) Data Governance
1 17 (56.67%) DevOps
2 16 (53.33%) Data Engineering
3 15 (50.00%) Business Intelligence
3 15 (50.00%) CI/CD
3 15 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
4 14 (46.67%) Agile
4 14 (46.67%) Analytics
5 13 (43.33%) Data Architecture
5 13 (43.33%) Data Modelling
6 12 (40.00%) ETL
7 10 (33.33%) Metadata Management
8 9 (30.00%) Data Cleansing
8 9 (30.00%) Problem-Solving
9 8 (26.67%) Performance Tuning
10 7 (23.33%) Strategic Planning
10 7 (23.33%) Strategic Thinking
11 6 (20.00%) Deployment Automation
11 6 (20.00%) Validation
12 5 (16.67%) Thought Leadership
Programming Languages
1 27 (90.00%) Python
2 23 (76.67%) SQL
3 12 (40.00%) Java
4 5 (16.67%) JavaScript
4 5 (16.67%) R
5 4 (13.33%) Scala
6 3 (10.00%) Bicep
6 3 (10.00%) PowerShell
6 3 (10.00%) T-SQL
7 1 (3.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 6 (20.00%) Azure Certification
1 6 (20.00%) SC Cleared
1 6 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 3 (10.00%) Microsoft Certification
3 1 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
3 1 (3.33%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (36.67%) Data Quality
2 5 (16.67%) GDPR
2 5 (16.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (6.67%) Accessibility
4 1 (3.33%) QA
4 1 (3.33%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (23.33%) Docker
2 2 (6.67%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 7 (23.33%) Kubernetes
2 4 (13.33%) Terraform
Vendors
1 16 (53.33%) Microsoft
2 14 (46.67%) Databricks
3 1 (3.33%) Foundry
3 1 (3.33%) Palantir