Third Highest Salary in Postgres | Dataford Interview Questions

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Problem

Tredence's people analytics team needs to identify employees earning the third-highest salary among current employees. Write a PostgreSQL query that preserves employees whose department reference is missing.

Requirements

Consider only employees whose employment_status is Active and whose salary is not NULL.
Rank distinct salary values from highest to lowest using a PostgreSQL window function.
Return every employee tied at the third-highest salary, along with their department name.
Use a LEFT JOIN so an employee with an unmatched department remains in the result.

Schema

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's full name
department_id	INT	Referenced department identifier
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual employee salary
employment_status	VARCHAR(20)	Employment status such as Active or Inactive

departments

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