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

6 months to
5 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 555 509 568
Rank change year-on-year -46 +59 +199
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 22 52 36
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.060% 0.14% 0.080%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.35% 0.80% 0.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 25 26
10th Percentile £427 £350 £444
25th Percentile £463 £400 £491
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £450 £540
Median % change year-on-year +15.00% -16.67% -10.00%
75th Percentile £611 £525 £575
90th Percentile £625 £813 £676
UK excluding London median daily rate £600 £457 -
% change year-on-year +31.29% - -

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,371 6,489 7,579
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.46% 17.96% 16.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,380 4,285 5,310
10th Percentile £329 £345 £350
25th Percentile £409 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £534
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.75% -2.91%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £494 £500
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 88 143
10th Percentile £22.94 £18.35 £16.61
25th Percentile £29.06 £22.66 £21.50
Median hourly rate £47.61 £31.55 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +50.93% -31.69% -7.64%
75th Percentile £68.19 £54.25 £64.77
90th Percentile £84.13 £65.30 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £54.70 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +98.91% -40.45% +2.62%

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 5 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 5 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 -60 21 £525 +16.67% 9
London -10 17 £493 +9.44% 5
UK excluding London -61 5 £600 +31.29% 8
Work from Home -5 3 £610 +39.43% 7
North of England -57 3 £613 -30.00%
Yorkshire -46 2 £600 -31.43%
East Midlands - 1 £600 -
Midlands - 1 £600 -
North East - 1 £625 -
Northern Ireland - 1 £463 -

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 6 (27.27%) Apache Spark
2 3 (13.64%) Apache
3 1 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (4.55%) Apache Synapse
Cloud Services
1 19 (86.36%) Azure
2 12 (54.55%) Microsoft Purview
2 12 (54.55%) Power Platform
3 5 (22.73%) Azure Data Factory
4 4 (18.18%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (9.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 2 (9.09%) Cloud Computing
6 1 (4.55%) AWS
6 1 (4.55%) Azure Monitor
6 1 (4.55%) GCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (50.00%) Metadata
2 7 (31.82%) Delta Lake
2 7 (31.82%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (27.27%) Data Lake
4 5 (22.73%) Power BI
4 5 (22.73%) Relational Database
5 4 (18.18%) Data Warehouse
6 3 (13.64%) Tableau
7 2 (9.09%) Apache Hive
7 2 (9.09%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (9.09%) Big Data
7 2 (9.09%) NoSQL
8 1 (4.55%) BigQuery
8 1 (4.55%) Hadoop
8 1 (4.55%) Impala
8 1 (4.55%) Parquet
8 1 (4.55%) Sqoop
Development Applications
1 5 (22.73%) Git
2 2 (9.09%) GitLab
2 2 (9.09%) Jenkins
3 1 (4.55%) Gradle
General
1 14 (63.64%) Social Skills
2 10 (45.45%) Finance
3 7 (31.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
3 7 (31.82%) Public Sector
4 3 (13.64%) Analytical Skills
5 1 (4.55%) Banking
5 1 (4.55%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 8 (36.36%) Data Engineer
2 7 (31.82%) Architect
2 7 (31.82%) Data Architect
3 5 (22.73%) Azure Data Engineer
3 5 (22.73%) Azure Engineer
3 5 (22.73%) Senior
4 4 (18.18%) Developer
4 4 (18.18%) Senior Data Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Analyst
5 2 (9.09%) Data Analyst
5 2 (9.09%) Lead
6 1 (4.55%) Data Visualisation Analyst
6 1 (4.55%) Lead Data Engineer
6 1 (4.55%) Lead Developer
6 1 (4.55%) Senior Analyst
6 1 (4.55%) Senior Data Analyst
6 1 (4.55%) SQL Developer
6 1 (4.55%) Tableau Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (86.36%) PySpark
2 4 (18.18%) YAML
3 2 (9.09%) CSS
3 2 (9.09%) HTML
3 2 (9.09%) Kafka
3 2 (9.09%) Spark Streaming
4 1 (4.55%) JSON
Miscellaneous
1 7 (31.82%) Low-Code
2 4 (18.18%) Distributed Computing
3 2 (9.09%) Product Ownership
4 1 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (4.55%) Virtual Team
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (54.55%) Data Governance
2 11 (50.00%) Data Pipeline
3 10 (45.45%) Agile
3 10 (45.45%) Data Modelling
3 10 (45.45%) DevOps
3 10 (45.45%) Metadata Management
3 10 (45.45%) Problem-Solving
4 9 (40.91%) CI/CD
4 9 (40.91%) Data Architecture
4 9 (40.91%) Data Engineering
4 9 (40.91%) ETL
5 7 (31.82%) Analytics
5 7 (31.82%) Data Cleansing
5 7 (31.82%) Strategic Planning
5 7 (31.82%) Strategic Thinking
6 6 (27.27%) Business Intelligence
7 5 (22.73%) Data Science
7 5 (22.73%) Data Transformation
7 5 (22.73%) Performance Tuning
8 4 (18.18%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 20 (90.91%) Python
2 15 (68.18%) SQL
3 9 (40.91%) Java
4 6 (27.27%) JavaScript
5 4 (18.18%) R
5 4 (18.18%) Scala
6 1 (4.55%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 6 (27.27%) SC Cleared
1 6 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 2 (9.09%) Azure Certification
3 1 (4.55%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 8 (36.36%) Data Quality
2 2 (9.09%) GDPR
2 2 (9.09%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 1 (4.55%) Accessibility
3 1 (4.55%) QA
System Software
1 4 (18.18%) Docker
2 1 (4.55%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 5 (22.73%) Kubernetes
2 3 (13.64%) Terraform
Vendors
1 9 (40.91%) Databricks
1 9 (40.91%) Microsoft
2 2 (9.09%) Foundry
2 2 (9.09%) Palantir