5th Highest Salary SQL | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is 5th Highest Salary SQL. Start with the requirements and the two tables on the right.

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Problem

Finacle HR reporting needs to identify employees receiving the fifth-highest salary among currently active employees. Write a PostgreSQL query that returns every employee tied at that salary and includes the employee's department name.

Requirements

Consider only employees whose employment_status is ACTIVE and whose salary is not NULL.
Rank distinct salary levels from highest to lowest using a window function.
Return all employees whose salary has rank 5, including ties.
Use a LEFT JOIN so an otherwise qualifying employee is retained even if the department reference is missing. Sort the output by employee_id.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	Department identifier
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual employee salary
employment_status	VARCHAR(20)	Current employment status

departments

Column	Type	Description
department_idPK	INT	Unique department identifier
department_name	VARCHAR(100)	Department display name