Third Highest Salary Query | Dataford Interview Questions

Amazon's Business Analytics team is reviewing compensation levels across active employees. Write a PostgreSQL query that finds the third-highest distinct salary using a self-join on the employees table.

Requirements

Consider only employees where is_active is TRUE.
Return the third-highest distinct non-null salary, so employees with the same salary share one ranking.
Return one column named third_highest_salary and one row. Return no rows if fewer than three distinct active salaries exist.
Use a self-join and aggregation rather than a window function.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's name
job_title	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's role
team	VARCHAR(50)	Amazon business team
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual base salary
is_active	BOOLEAN	Whether the employee is currently active

Your question is Third Highest Salary Query. Start with the requirements and the one table in the Question tab.

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Problem

Requirements

Consider only employees where is_active is TRUE.
Return the third-highest distinct non-null salary, so employees with the same salary share one ranking.
Return one column named third_highest_salary and one row. Return no rows if fewer than three distinct active salaries exist.
Use a self-join and aggregation rather than a window function.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's name
job_title	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's role
team	VARCHAR(50)	Amazon business team
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual base salary
is_active	BOOLEAN	Whether the employee is currently active

Your question is Third Highest Salary Query. Start with the requirements and the one table in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.