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 25 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 574 498 572
Rank change year-on-year -76 +74 +146
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 52 21 24
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.072% 0.054%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.74% 0.38% 0.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 16 13
10th Percentile £338 £336 £485
25th Percentile £448 £374 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -12.73% -6.38%
75th Percentile £556 £525 £725
90th Percentile £600 £772 £758
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £413 -
% change year-on-year +19.27% - -

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 6,990 5,512 7,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.92% 18.95% 16.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,800 3,816 5,149
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £756 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £488
% change year-on-year -3.06% +0.51% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 152 99 172
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.60 £14.36
25th Percentile £29.86 £24.25 £20.70
Median hourly rate £50.50 £31.64 £40.13
Median % change year-on-year +59.61% -21.15% -28.86%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.50 £58.55
90th Percentile £84.90 £70.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year +66.67% -14.29% -36.36%

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 25 March 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 25 March 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 -84 46 £520 +7.22% 20
London -41 37 £515 +3.00% 12
Work from Home -11 20 £450 -2.70% 12
UK excluding London -97 11 £492 +19.27% 13
North of England - 5 £484 - 5
East Midlands -32 2 £600 +26.32%
Midlands -68 2 £600 +41.18% 2
North East - 2 £550 - 1
North West - 2 £492 - 2
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
Scotland +9 1 - -
South East -50 1 £550 +19.89% 6
Yorkshire - 1 £325 - 2

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 (38.46%) Apache Spark
2 6 (11.54%) Apache
3 4 (7.69%) Confluence
4 2 (3.85%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.92%) Apache Synapse
5 1 (1.92%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 44 (84.62%) Azure
2 29 (55.77%) Power Platform
3 21 (40.38%) Azure Data Factory
3 21 (40.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 20 (38.46%) Azure DevOps
5 14 (26.92%) Microsoft Purview
6 6 (11.54%) Azure Key Vault
7 5 (9.62%) Serverless
8 4 (7.69%) AWS
8 4 (7.69%) Azure AI
8 4 (7.69%) dbt
8 4 (7.69%) GitHub
9 3 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
10 2 (3.85%) Anthropic Claude
10 2 (3.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (3.85%) Azure Functions
10 2 (3.85%) Cloud Computing
10 2 (3.85%) GCP
11 1 (1.92%) Amazon EMR
11 1 (1.92%) Amazon S3
Database & Business Intelligence
1 28 (53.85%) Power BI
2 25 (48.08%) Delta Lake
3 20 (38.46%) Data Lake
4 11 (21.15%) Relational Database
5 10 (19.23%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (15.38%) Metadata
7 6 (11.54%) Azure SQL Database
7 6 (11.54%) NoSQL
7 6 (11.54%) SQL Server
8 5 (9.62%) Big Data
8 5 (9.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (9.62%) Tableau
9 4 (7.69%) Parquet
10 3 (5.77%) Apache Hive
10 3 (5.77%) Impala
10 3 (5.77%) Sqoop
11 2 (3.85%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
11 2 (3.85%) Data Vault
11 2 (3.85%) Star Schema
12 1 (1.92%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 25 (48.08%) Git
2 11 (21.15%) GitLab
3 5 (9.62%) JIRA
4 3 (5.77%) Jenkins
5 1 (1.92%) Gradle
General
1 22 (42.31%) Finance
2 20 (38.46%) Social Skills
3 7 (13.46%) Public Sector
4 5 (9.62%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (5.77%) Law
6 2 (3.85%) Banking
7 1 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (1.92%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 27 (51.92%) Data Engineer
2 13 (25.00%) Senior
3 12 (23.08%) Azure Engineer
4 11 (21.15%) Azure Data Engineer
5 9 (17.31%) Developer
5 9 (17.31%) Senior Data Engineer
6 8 (15.38%) Lead
7 6 (11.54%) Architect
7 6 (11.54%) Data Architect
8 5 (9.62%) Lead Data Engineer
9 4 (7.69%) Azure Architect
9 4 (7.69%) Azure Data Architect
10 3 (5.77%) Analyst
10 3 (5.77%) Data Analyst
11 2 (3.85%) Data Visualisation Analyst
11 2 (3.85%) Microsoft Engineer
11 2 (3.85%) Senior Data Analyst
11 2 (3.85%) Senior Tester
11 2 (3.85%) Tableau Analyst
11 2 (3.85%) Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (82.69%) PySpark
2 11 (21.15%) Spark Streaming
3 9 (17.31%) Kafka
4 6 (11.54%) YAML
5 5 (9.62%) JSON
6 3 (5.77%) ARM Templates
7 1 (1.92%) CSS
7 1 (1.92%) Great Expectations
7 1 (1.92%) HTML
7 1 (1.92%) REST
7 1 (1.92%) Shiny
7 1 (1.92%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (21.15%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (7.69%) Product Ownership
3 3 (5.77%) Cloud Native
4 2 (3.85%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.92%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.92%) Data Fabric
5 1 (1.92%) IoT
5 1 (1.92%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.92%) Low-Code
5 1 (1.92%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.92%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.92%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (71.15%) DevOps
2 34 (65.38%) CI/CD
3 33 (63.46%) Data Engineering
4 30 (57.69%) Business Intelligence
5 27 (51.92%) Analytics
5 27 (51.92%) Data Pipeline
6 24 (46.15%) Agile
7 21 (40.38%) ETL
8 19 (36.54%) Data Governance
8 19 (36.54%) Data Modelling
9 14 (26.92%) Performance Tuning
10 12 (23.08%) Data Science
10 12 (23.08%) Infrastructure as Code
11 11 (21.15%) Batch Processing
11 11 (21.15%) Dimensional Modelling
11 11 (21.15%) Validation
12 10 (19.23%) Data Architecture
12 10 (19.23%) Data Cleansing
12 10 (19.23%) Use Case
13 8 (15.38%) AI
Programming Languages
1 49 (94.23%) SQL
2 47 (90.38%) Python
3 8 (15.38%) Java
4 7 (13.46%) PowerShell
4 7 (13.46%) R
4 7 (13.46%) T-SQL
5 6 (11.54%) JavaScript
5 6 (11.54%) Scala
6 5 (9.62%) Bicep
7 2 (3.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 1 (1.92%) SAS Macro
8 1 (1.92%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 14 (26.92%) Security Cleared
2 12 (23.08%) SC Cleared
3 11 (21.15%) Azure Certification
4 7 (13.46%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (9.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 1 (1.92%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.92%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (42.31%) Data Quality
2 7 (13.46%) GDPR
2 7 (13.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (3.85%) QA
4 1 (1.92%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.92%) Solvency II
4 1 (1.92%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (19.23%) Docker
2 3 (5.77%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 14 (26.92%) Terraform
2 10 (19.23%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.92%) Grafana
Vendors
1 30 (57.69%) Databricks
2 23 (44.23%) Microsoft
3 4 (7.69%) Foundry
4 2 (3.85%) Palantir