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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 552 488 543
Rank change year-on-year -64 +55 +198
Contract jobs citing Spark SQL 34 27 42
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.091% 0.086% 0.097%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 0.55% 0.47% 0.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 23 17 28
10th Percentile £376 £339 £471
25th Percentile £450 £363 £497
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £500 £543
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% -7.83% -9.58%
75th Percentile £594 £756 £575
90th Percentile £623 £843 £615
UK excluding London median daily rate £538 £455 -
% change year-on-year +18.13% - -

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 6,229 5,725 7,125
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.71% 18.30% 16.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,298 3,767 5,044
10th Percentile £333 £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 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 100 79 162
10th Percentile £18.25 £19.78 £16.01
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £21.64
Median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.29% -22.22% -20.86%
75th Percentile £74.37 £64.61 £63.56
90th Percentile £84.10 £67.55 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £49.36 £28.65 £42.50
% change year-on-year +72.29% -32.59% -22.73%

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 20 January 2026.

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 20 January 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 -51 30 £550 +10.00% 4
London -18 26 £550 +10.00%
Work from Home 0 11 £500 +23.84% 3
UK excluding London -57 6 £538 +18.13% 6
North of England -59 3 £600 -31.43% 1
Northern Ireland - 2 £463 -
North East - 2 £550 - 1
Midlands -41 1 £600 +60.00%
Yorkshire -57 1 £600 -31.43%
East Midlands - 1 £600 -

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 10 (29.41%) Apache Spark
2 3 (8.82%) Apache
3 1 (2.94%) Apache Synapse
Cloud Services
1 29 (85.29%) Azure
2 24 (70.59%) Power Platform
3 17 (50.00%) Microsoft Purview
4 14 (41.18%) Azure Data Factory
5 11 (32.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 10 (29.41%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (14.71%) Azure Key Vault
8 3 (8.82%) Serverless
9 2 (5.88%) Cloud Computing
10 1 (2.94%) AWS
10 1 (2.94%) Azure Stack
10 1 (2.94%) dbt
10 1 (2.94%) GCP
10 1 (2.94%) GitHub
10 1 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 20 (58.82%) Power BI
2 18 (52.94%) Data Lake
3 14 (41.18%) Delta Lake
4 11 (32.35%) Relational Database
5 10 (29.41%) Metadata
6 6 (17.65%) Data Warehouse
7 5 (14.71%) Azure SQL Database
7 5 (14.71%) SQL Server
7 5 (14.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 5 (14.71%) Tableau
8 4 (11.76%) PostgreSQL
9 3 (8.82%) NoSQL
10 2 (5.88%) Apache Hive
10 2 (5.88%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (5.88%) Big Data
10 2 (5.88%) Data Vault
10 2 (5.88%) Impala
10 2 (5.88%) Sqoop
11 1 (2.94%) Parquet
11 1 (2.94%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 16 (47.06%) Git
2 7 (20.59%) GitLab
3 3 (8.82%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.94%) Gradle
4 1 (2.94%) JIRA
General
1 16 (47.06%) Finance
1 16 (47.06%) Social Skills
2 5 (14.71%) Public Sector
3 4 (11.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 3 (8.82%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (5.88%) Banking
6 1 (2.94%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 14 (41.18%) Data Engineer
2 9 (26.47%) Architect
2 9 (26.47%) Data Architect
3 8 (23.53%) Azure Data Engineer
3 8 (23.53%) Azure Engineer
4 7 (20.59%) Developer
4 7 (20.59%) Senior
5 5 (14.71%) Senior Data Engineer
6 4 (11.76%) Azure Architect
6 4 (11.76%) Azure Data Architect
7 3 (8.82%) Analyst
7 3 (8.82%) Data Analyst
8 2 (5.88%) Data Visualisation Analyst
8 2 (5.88%) Lead
8 2 (5.88%) Lead Data Engineer
8 2 (5.88%) Senior Analyst
8 2 (5.88%) Senior Data Analyst
8 2 (5.88%) Tableau Analyst
9 1 (2.94%) Business Intelligence Lead
9 1 (2.94%) Data Analytics Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (76.47%) PySpark
2 7 (20.59%) Spark Streaming
3 6 (17.65%) Kafka
4 5 (14.71%) YAML
5 2 (5.88%) JSON
6 1 (2.94%) CSS
6 1 (2.94%) HTML
6 1 (2.94%) REST
6 1 (2.94%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 10 (29.41%) Distributed Computing
2 4 (11.76%) Low-Code
3 2 (5.88%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.94%) Data Structures
4 1 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
Processes & Methodologies
1 22 (64.71%) Business Intelligence
2 21 (61.76%) DevOps
3 20 (58.82%) Data Engineering
4 19 (55.88%) Analytics
4 19 (55.88%) CI/CD
5 18 (52.94%) Agile
5 18 (52.94%) Data Governance
5 18 (52.94%) Data Pipeline
6 16 (47.06%) ETL
7 13 (38.24%) Data Architecture
8 12 (35.29%) Data Modelling
9 11 (32.35%) Data Cleansing
10 10 (29.41%) Performance Tuning
11 9 (26.47%) Dimensional Modelling
12 8 (23.53%) Deployment Automation
12 8 (23.53%) Metadata Management
12 8 (23.53%) RBAC
12 8 (23.53%) Validation
13 7 (20.59%) Data Science
13 7 (20.59%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 31 (91.18%) Python
2 30 (88.24%) SQL
3 11 (32.35%) Java
4 6 (17.65%) JavaScript
4 6 (17.65%) R
5 5 (14.71%) PowerShell
5 5 (14.71%) Scala
5 5 (14.71%) T-SQL
6 4 (11.76%) Bicep
7 1 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 10 (29.41%) Azure Certification
2 6 (17.65%) SC Cleared
2 6 (17.65%) Security Cleared
3 5 (14.71%) Microsoft Certification
4 1 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (2.94%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (38.24%) Data Quality
2 7 (20.59%) GDPR
2 7 (20.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
3 2 (5.88%) Accessibility
4 1 (2.94%) QA
4 1 (2.94%) WCAG
System Software
1 10 (29.41%) Docker
2 2 (5.88%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 10 (29.41%) Kubernetes
2 5 (14.71%) Terraform
Vendors
1 19 (55.88%) Databricks
2 18 (52.94%) Microsoft
3 1 (2.94%) Foundry
3 1 (2.94%) Palantir