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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 558 507 565
Rank change year-on-year -51 +58 +148
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 46 20 28
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.11% 0.066% 0.063%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.68% 0.35% 0.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 16 16
10th Percentile £369 £336 £500
25th Percentile £450 £374 £525
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £493 £550
Median % change year-on-year +4.57% -10.45% -8.33%
75th Percentile £578 £581 £669
90th Percentile £614 £772 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £550 £399 -
% change year-on-year +37.93% - -

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 6,719 5,731 7,235
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.18% 18.83% 16.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,639 3,883 5,118
10th Percentile £343 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £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 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £498
% change year-on-year -5.00% +0.50% -0.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 131 95 168
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.66 £15.97
25th Percentile £29.13 £24.50 £20.98
Median hourly rate £52.50 £35.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.00% -17.65% -22.73%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.86 £62.62
90th Percentile £85.25 £70.00 £76.53
UK excluding London median hourly rate £51.25 £27.63 £40.00
% change year-on-year +85.49% -30.93% -27.27%

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 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 1 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 -52 40 £550 +10.00% 25
London -22 31 £535 +7.00% 12
Work from Home -3 15 £438 -2.78% 20
UK excluding London -76 11 £550 +37.93% 21
North of England - 5 £546 - 8
Midlands -49 2 £600 +60.00% 3
North East - 2 £550 - 1
North West - 2 £492 - 4
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
East Midlands - 2 £600 -
Scotland +12 1 - - 3
South East -36 1 £550 +19.89% 6
Yorkshire - 1 £600 - 3

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 18 (39.13%) Apache Spark
2 5 (10.87%) Apache
3 4 (8.70%) Confluence
4 1 (2.17%) Apache Synapse
4 1 (2.17%) Palantir Foundry
4 1 (2.17%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 39 (84.78%) Azure
2 29 (63.04%) Power Platform
3 18 (39.13%) Azure Data Factory
4 16 (34.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 15 (32.61%) Azure DevOps
5 15 (32.61%) Microsoft Purview
6 6 (13.04%) Azure Key Vault
7 5 (10.87%) Serverless
8 4 (8.70%) Azure AI
8 4 (8.70%) dbt
9 2 (4.35%) Anthropic Claude
9 2 (4.35%) AWS
9 2 (4.35%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 2 (4.35%) Azure Functions
9 2 (4.35%) Cloud Computing
9 2 (4.35%) GitHub
9 2 (4.35%) GitHub Actions
10 1 (2.17%) Amazon EMR
10 1 (2.17%) Amazon S3
10 1 (2.17%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 27 (58.70%) Power BI
2 20 (43.48%) Delta Lake
3 19 (41.30%) Data Lake
4 11 (23.91%) Relational Database
5 10 (21.74%) Data Warehouse
6 8 (17.39%) Metadata
7 6 (13.04%) NoSQL
8 5 (10.87%) Azure SQL Database
8 5 (10.87%) Big Data
8 5 (10.87%) SQL Server
8 5 (10.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 5 (10.87%) Tableau
9 3 (6.52%) Apache Hive
9 3 (6.52%) Impala
9 3 (6.52%) Sqoop
10 2 (4.35%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (4.35%) Data Vault
10 2 (4.35%) PostgreSQL
11 1 (2.17%) Amazon Athena
11 1 (2.17%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 23 (50.00%) Git
2 11 (23.91%) GitLab
3 5 (10.87%) JIRA
4 3 (6.52%) Jenkins
5 1 (2.17%) Gradle
General
1 22 (47.83%) Social Skills
2 20 (43.48%) Finance
3 5 (10.87%) Public Sector
4 4 (8.70%) Analytical Skills
5 3 (6.52%) Law
6 2 (4.35%) Banking
6 2 (4.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 1 (2.17%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 23 (50.00%) Data Engineer
2 12 (26.09%) Azure Engineer
3 11 (23.91%) Azure Data Engineer
4 10 (21.74%) Senior
5 9 (19.57%) Developer
6 8 (17.39%) Lead
6 8 (17.39%) Senior Data Engineer
7 7 (15.22%) Architect
7 7 (15.22%) Data Architect
8 5 (10.87%) Lead Data Engineer
9 4 (8.70%) Azure Architect
9 4 (8.70%) Azure Data Architect
10 3 (6.52%) Analyst
10 3 (6.52%) Data Analyst
11 2 (4.35%) Data Visualisation Analyst
11 2 (4.35%) Microsoft Engineer
11 2 (4.35%) Platform Engineer
11 2 (4.35%) Senior Analyst
11 2 (4.35%) Senior Data Analyst
11 2 (4.35%) Tableau Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (80.43%) PySpark
2 10 (21.74%) Spark Streaming
3 7 (15.22%) Kafka
4 6 (13.04%) YAML
5 3 (6.52%) ARM Templates
6 2 (4.35%) JSON
7 1 (2.17%) CSS
7 1 (2.17%) HTML
7 1 (2.17%) REST
7 1 (2.17%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 11 (23.91%) Distributed Computing
2 3 (6.52%) Cloud Native
2 3 (6.52%) Product Ownership
3 2 (4.35%) Data Structures
3 2 (4.35%) Low-Code
4 1 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (2.17%) Legacy Code
4 1 (2.17%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.17%) Onboarding
4 1 (2.17%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 1 (2.17%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (71.74%) DevOps
2 32 (69.57%) CI/CD
2 32 (69.57%) Data Engineering
3 29 (63.04%) Business Intelligence
4 26 (56.52%) Analytics
4 26 (56.52%) Data Pipeline
5 24 (52.17%) Agile
6 19 (41.30%) ETL
7 18 (39.13%) Data Governance
7 18 (39.13%) Data Modelling
8 14 (30.43%) Performance Tuning
9 12 (26.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 11 (23.91%) Batch Processing
10 11 (23.91%) Data Architecture
10 11 (23.91%) Data Cleansing
10 11 (23.91%) Dimensional Modelling
11 10 (21.74%) Data Science
12 9 (19.57%) Use Case
12 9 (19.57%) Validation
13 8 (17.39%) AI
Programming Languages
1 42 (91.30%) SQL
2 41 (89.13%) Python
3 9 (19.57%) Java
4 6 (13.04%) JavaScript
4 6 (13.04%) R
4 6 (13.04%) Scala
5 5 (10.87%) Bicep
5 5 (10.87%) PowerShell
5 5 (10.87%) T-SQL
6 1 (2.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (2.17%) SAS Macro
6 1 (2.17%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 11 (23.91%) Azure Certification
2 10 (21.74%) SC Cleared
2 10 (21.74%) Security Cleared
3 6 (13.04%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (10.87%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (2.17%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 21 (45.65%) Data Quality
2 7 (15.22%) GDPR
2 7 (15.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (4.35%) Accessibility
3 2 (4.35%) QA
4 1 (2.17%) Solvency II
4 1 (2.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (21.74%) Docker
2 3 (6.52%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 14 (30.43%) Terraform
2 10 (21.74%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 25 (54.35%) Databricks
2 23 (50.00%) Microsoft
3 3 (6.52%) Foundry
4 1 (2.17%) Palantir