K-th Highest Salary Query | Dataford Interview Questions

CLARA analytics needs to identify employees at a specific compensation tier for internal workforce analysis. Write a PostgreSQL query to return every employee earning the third-highest distinct salary, where k = 3.

Requirements

Rank distinct non-null salaries from highest to lowest using a window function.
Return all employees tied at the requested rank, not just one employee.
Include the employee's department when available, preserving employees whose department reference is missing.
Return results in ascending employee_id order. The query should make it clear how to replace 3 with another value of k.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	Referenced department identifier
salary	NUMERIC(10,2)	Annual employee salary

departments

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

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