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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 583 518 545
Rank change year-on-year -65 +27 +126
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 61 15 49
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.12% 0.051% 0.11%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.80% 0.27% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 46 8 27
10th Percentile £331 £411 £339
25th Percentile £425 £441 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% +8.89% -25.00%
75th Percentile £550 £600 £550
90th Percentile £581 £791 £655
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £350
% change year-on-year - +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 7,657 5,544 7,460
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.22% 18.68% 17.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,109 3,775 5,324
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -1.90% -2.78%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £763 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 247 101 153
10th Percentile £14.85 £19.59 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.11 £25.00 £20.77
Median hourly rate £41.71 £34.98 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.24% -12.55% -31.73%
75th Percentile £69.72 £66.00 £54.13
90th Percentile £78.58 £78.70 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.50 £31.64 £35.00
% change year-on-year +21.68% -9.60% -38.54%

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 17 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Spark SQL in the UK

Spark SQL
Top 14 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 17 June 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 -75 58 £481 +1.32% 5
London -31 41 £488 -20.41% 2
Work from Home -35 21 £375 -21.05% 8
UK excluding London -87 17 £475 - 6
North of England - 7 £492 - 2
Midlands -52 6 £450 -5.26%
West Midlands - 5 £431 -
North West - 3 £492 -
Yorkshire - 3 £550 - 1
South West - 2 £425 -
East Midlands -20 1 £600 +26.32%
South East -60 1 £550 +19.89%
North East - 1 £475 - 1
Scotland - 1 - - 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 24 (39.34%) Apache Spark
2 8 (13.11%) Apache
3 4 (6.56%) Confluence
4 3 (4.92%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (1.64%) Palantir Foundry
5 1 (1.64%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 50 (81.97%) Azure
2 38 (62.30%) Power Platform
3 27 (44.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 22 (36.07%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (34.43%) Azure Data Factory
6 11 (18.03%) Microsoft Purview
7 9 (14.75%) AWS
8 7 (11.48%) Serverless
9 6 (9.84%) Azure Key Vault
9 6 (9.84%) GitHub
10 5 (8.20%) dbt
10 5 (8.20%) PowerApps
11 4 (6.56%) Azure AI
11 4 (6.56%) GitHub Actions
12 3 (4.92%) Amazon S3
12 3 (4.92%) Dynamics 365
12 3 (4.92%) Power Automate
13 2 (3.28%) AWS CodeCommit
13 2 (3.28%) AWS Lambda
13 2 (3.28%) AWS Step Functions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (62.30%) Power BI
2 30 (49.18%) Delta Lake
3 24 (39.34%) Data Lake
4 12 (19.67%) SQL Server
5 9 (14.75%) Data Warehouse
6 6 (9.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (8.20%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (8.20%) Big Data
7 5 (8.20%) Data Vault
7 5 (8.20%) Metadata
7 5 (8.20%) Parquet
7 5 (8.20%) Relational Database
7 5 (8.20%) Star Schema
7 5 (8.20%) Tableau
8 4 (6.56%) NoSQL
9 3 (4.92%) Amazon Athena
9 3 (4.92%) Snowflake Schema
10 2 (3.28%) Amazon RDS
10 2 (3.28%) Apache Iceberg
10 2 (3.28%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 22 (36.07%) Git
2 9 (14.75%) GitLab
3 4 (6.56%) JIRA
4 1 (1.64%) Jenkins
4 1 (1.64%) MLflow
4 1 (1.64%) SonarQube
General
1 20 (32.79%) Social Skills
2 18 (29.51%) Finance
3 7 (11.48%) Analytical Skills
4 6 (9.84%) Public Sector
5 3 (4.92%) Law
6 2 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.28%) Publishing
7 1 (1.64%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 37 (60.66%) Data Engineer
2 14 (22.95%) Senior
3 11 (18.03%) Senior Data Engineer
4 7 (11.48%) Architect
4 7 (11.48%) Azure Engineer
4 7 (11.48%) Lead
5 6 (9.84%) Azure Data Engineer
6 5 (8.20%) Data Analytics Engineer
6 5 (8.20%) Data Architect
7 4 (6.56%) Azure Architect
7 4 (6.56%) Azure Data Architect
7 4 (6.56%) Developer
8 3 (4.92%) Analyst
8 3 (4.92%) Data Analyst
8 3 (4.92%) Lead Data Engineer
8 3 (4.92%) Platform Engineer
8 3 (4.92%) Senior Tester
8 3 (4.92%) Tester
9 2 (3.28%) Microsoft Engineer
9 2 (3.28%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (83.61%) PySpark
2 11 (18.03%) Kafka
3 8 (13.11%) Spark Streaming
4 6 (9.84%) JSON
5 3 (4.92%) ARM Templates
6 2 (3.28%) XML
6 2 (3.28%) YAML
7 1 (1.64%) Great Expectations
7 1 (1.64%) Jinja
7 1 (1.64%) REST
Miscellaneous
1 6 (9.84%) Cloud Native
1 6 (9.84%) Distributed Computing
2 3 (4.92%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (3.28%) Algorithms
3 2 (3.28%) Data Fabric
3 2 (3.28%) Data Structures
3 2 (3.28%) Product Ownership
3 2 (3.28%) Video\Live Streaming
4 1 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
4 1 (1.64%) Educational Technology
4 1 (1.64%) Enterprise Cloud
4 1 (1.64%) IoT
4 1 (1.64%) Legacy Code
4 1 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.64%) Life Science
4 1 (1.64%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.64%) Reference Data
4 1 (1.64%) Reinsurance
4 1 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.64%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (68.85%) Business Intelligence
2 39 (63.93%) CI/CD
3 36 (59.02%) Analytics
3 36 (59.02%) DevOps
4 35 (57.38%) Data Pipeline
5 34 (55.74%) Data Engineering
6 29 (47.54%) Data Modelling
7 23 (37.70%) Data Governance
7 23 (37.70%) ETL
8 18 (29.51%) Infrastructure as Code
9 17 (27.87%) Dimensional Modelling
10 16 (26.23%) Agile
11 14 (22.95%) AI
11 14 (22.95%) Validation
12 13 (21.31%) Use Case
13 12 (19.67%) Migration
14 10 (16.39%) Performance Tuning
15 9 (14.75%) Change Data Capture
15 9 (14.75%) Data Science
15 9 (14.75%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 59 (96.72%) SQL
2 46 (75.41%) Python
3 10 (16.39%) T-SQL
4 8 (13.11%) PowerShell
5 5 (8.20%) Bicep
5 5 (8.20%) Java
6 2 (3.28%) R
6 2 (3.28%) Scala
7 1 (1.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 1 (1.64%) JavaScript
7 1 (1.64%) SAS Macro
7 1 (1.64%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 11 (18.03%) Security Cleared
2 9 (14.75%) Azure Certification
3 8 (13.11%) SC Cleared
4 6 (9.84%) BPSS Clearance
4 6 (9.84%) Microsoft Certification
5 2 (3.28%) DBS Check
6 1 (1.64%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 22 (36.07%) Data Quality
2 5 (8.20%) GDPR
2 5 (8.20%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (1.64%) MiFID
3 1 (1.64%) QA
3 1 (1.64%) SLA
3 1 (1.64%) Solvency II
System Software
1 5 (8.20%) Docker
2 1 (1.64%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 17 (27.87%) Terraform
2 5 (8.20%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.64%) Grafana
Vendors
1 37 (60.66%) Databricks
2 29 (47.54%) Microsoft
3 3 (4.92%) Foundry
4 1 (1.64%) Hitachi
4 1 (1.64%) OpenAI
4 1 (1.64%) Palantir
4 1 (1.64%) Teradata