Second Maximum Salary | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is Second Maximum Salary. Start with the requirements and the two tables on the right.

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Problem

Afiniti's workforce analytics team needs to identify employees whose salary is the second-highest distinct salary across the company. Write a PostgreSQL query that returns each matching employee with their department when available.

Requirements

Rank distinct salary levels from highest to lowest, excluding NULL salaries.
Return every employee tied at the second-highest salary, not just one employee.
Preserve employees even when their department is missing or unmatched by using a LEFT JOIN.
Order the results by salary descending and employee ID ascending.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's full name
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual employee salary
department_id	INT	References departments.department_id

departments

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