SQL Top-N Per Department | Dataford Interview Questions

Your question is SQL Top-N Per Department. Start with the requirements and the two tables on the right.

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Problem

Hexaware Technologies needs a compensation report showing the three highest-paid employees within each department. Write a PostgreSQL query that ranks employees independently inside their departments.

Requirements

Join employees to departments and return the department name, employee name, salary, and rank.
Return no more than the top three employees per department, ordered by salary descending.
Exclude employees without a salary or department assignment, and use employee_id to make salary ties deterministic.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	Department assigned to the employee
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual employee salary

departments

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