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 1 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 597 517 537
Rank change year-on-year -80 +20 +127
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 58 17 54
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.055% 0.13%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.74% 0.30% 0.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 42 9 27
10th Percentile £351 £411 £339
25th Percentile £425 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.58% +5.56% -25.00%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £525
90th Percentile £575 £790 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £471 £475 £350
% change year-on-year -0.84% +35.71% -46.15%

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 7,845 5,647 7,536
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.26% 18.36% 17.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,192 3,828 5,379
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -2.33%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £700 £751 £788
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 255 100 150
10th Percentile £15.21 £19.56 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.57 £20.82
Median hourly rate £38.50 £34.99 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.03% -12.53% -29.08%
75th Percentile £63.75 £63.94 £53.29
90th Percentile £76.80 £77.50 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.31 £31.64 £33.00
% change year-on-year +17.92% -4.12% -40.00%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 -80 55 £490 +5.89% 14
London -41 39 £490 +8.83% 8
Work from Home -37 18 £413 -13.16% 14
UK excluding London -88 16 £471 -0.84% 8
Midlands -53 6 £450 -5.26%
North of England -70 6 £521 - 3
West Midlands - 5 £431 -
Yorkshire -48 3 £550 - 2
North West - 3 £492 - 1
South West - 2 £425 -
East Midlands -12 1 £600 +26.32%
South East -67 1 £550 +19.89% 3
Scotland - 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 23 (39.66%) Apache Spark
2 9 (15.52%) Apache
3 5 (8.62%) Apache Airflow
4 4 (6.90%) Confluence
5 1 (1.72%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.72%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 46 (79.31%) Azure
2 31 (53.45%) Power Platform
3 22 (37.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 21 (36.21%) Azure DevOps
5 18 (31.03%) Azure Data Factory
6 11 (18.97%) AWS
7 7 (12.07%) dbt
7 7 (12.07%) Microsoft Purview
8 5 (8.62%) GitHub
8 5 (8.62%) PowerApps
8 5 (8.62%) Serverless
9 4 (6.90%) Amazon S3
9 4 (6.90%) Azure AI
10 3 (5.17%) Azure Key Vault
10 3 (5.17%) Dynamics 365
10 3 (5.17%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (5.17%) Power Automate
11 2 (3.45%) AWS CodeCommit
11 2 (3.45%) AWS Step Functions
11 2 (3.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (53.45%) Power BI
2 27 (46.55%) Delta Lake
3 19 (32.76%) Data Lake
4 10 (17.24%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (15.52%) SQL Server
6 5 (8.62%) Big Data
6 5 (8.62%) Parquet
6 5 (8.62%) Star Schema
6 5 (8.62%) Tableau
7 4 (6.90%) Data Vault
7 4 (6.90%) Metadata
7 4 (6.90%) NoSQL
8 3 (5.17%) Amazon Athena
8 3 (5.17%) Apache Iceberg
8 3 (5.17%) Azure SQL Database
8 3 (5.17%) Relational Database
8 3 (5.17%) Snowflake Schema
8 3 (5.17%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 2 (3.45%) Amazon RDS
10 1 (1.72%) Sqoop
Development Applications
1 17 (29.31%) Git
2 7 (12.07%) GitLab
3 4 (6.90%) JIRA
4 1 (1.72%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.72%) MLflow
4 1 (1.72%) SonarQube
General
1 18 (31.03%) Finance
1 18 (31.03%) Social Skills
2 7 (12.07%) Analytical Skills
3 6 (10.34%) Public Sector
4 3 (5.17%) Law
5 2 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
5 2 (3.45%) Publishing
6 1 (1.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 36 (62.07%) Data Engineer
2 14 (24.14%) Senior
3 11 (18.97%) Senior Data Engineer
4 8 (13.79%) Lead
5 6 (10.34%) Architect
5 6 (10.34%) Azure Engineer
6 5 (8.62%) Azure Data Engineer
6 5 (8.62%) Data Analytics Engineer
7 3 (5.17%) Analyst
7 3 (5.17%) Azure Architect
7 3 (5.17%) Azure Data Architect
7 3 (5.17%) Data Analyst
7 3 (5.17%) Data Architect
7 3 (5.17%) Developer
7 3 (5.17%) Lead Data Engineer
7 3 (5.17%) Platform Engineer
7 3 (5.17%) Senior Tester
7 3 (5.17%) Tester
8 2 (3.45%) Data Migration Engineer
8 2 (3.45%) Lead Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (86.21%) PySpark
2 10 (17.24%) Kafka
3 6 (10.34%) Spark Streaming
4 5 (8.62%) JSON
5 3 (5.17%) ARM Templates
6 2 (3.45%) Jinja
6 2 (3.45%) XML
6 2 (3.45%) YAML
7 1 (1.72%) Great Expectations
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.34%) Cloud Native
2 3 (5.17%) Distributed Computing
2 3 (5.17%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.45%) Algorithms
3 2 (3.45%) Data Fabric
3 2 (3.45%) Data Structures
3 2 (3.45%) Enterprise Cloud
3 2 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
3 2 (3.45%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.45%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.72%) Educational Technology
4 1 (1.72%) IoT
4 1 (1.72%) Legacy Code
4 1 (1.72%) Life Science
4 1 (1.72%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.72%) Reference Data
4 1 (1.72%) Reinsurance
4 1 (1.72%) Renewable Energy
4 1 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.72%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (63.79%) CI/CD
2 35 (60.34%) Business Intelligence
3 33 (56.90%) DevOps
4 32 (55.17%) Analytics
4 32 (55.17%) Data Pipeline
5 29 (50.00%) Data Engineering
6 27 (46.55%) Data Modelling
7 22 (37.93%) ETL
8 21 (36.21%) Data Governance
9 17 (29.31%) Infrastructure as Code
10 13 (22.41%) Agile
10 13 (22.41%) Migration
11 12 (20.69%) AI
11 12 (20.69%) Dimensional Modelling
11 12 (20.69%) Use Case
11 12 (20.69%) Validation
12 9 (15.52%) Decision-Making
12 9 (15.52%) Machine Learning
12 9 (15.52%) Mentoring
13 8 (13.79%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 56 (96.55%) SQL
2 42 (72.41%) Python
3 7 (12.07%) T-SQL
4 5 (8.62%) PowerShell
5 3 (5.17%) Bicep
5 3 (5.17%) Java
5 3 (5.17%) Scala
6 2 (3.45%) R
7 1 (1.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (1.72%) JavaScript
7 1 (1.72%) SAS Macro
7 1 (1.72%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 11 (18.97%) Security Cleared
2 8 (13.79%) SC Cleared
3 6 (10.34%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (8.62%) Azure Certification
5 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Certification
6 2 (3.45%) DBS Check
7 1 (1.72%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 20 (34.48%) Data Quality
2 3 (5.17%) GDPR
2 3 (5.17%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.72%) MiFID
3 1 (1.72%) QA
3 1 (1.72%) SLA
3 1 (1.72%) Solvency II
System Software
1 3 (5.17%) Docker
2 1 (1.72%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 15 (25.86%) Terraform
2 3 (5.17%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.72%) Grafana
Vendors
1 36 (62.07%) Databricks
2 24 (41.38%) Microsoft
3 3 (5.17%) Foundry
4 2 (3.45%) Hitachi
4 2 (3.45%) Teradata
5 1 (1.72%) Bloomberg
5 1 (1.72%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.72%) Palantir
5 1 (1.72%) Reuters
5 1 (1.72%) Trayport