Top 3 Highest-Paid Query | Dataford Interview Questions

Business Context

Josh Technology's workforce dashboard needs to show the three highest-paid active employees and their departments.

Write a PostgreSQL query that returns exactly the top three active employees by annual salary.

Join employees to departments and display the department name.
Exclude employees whose status is not Active or whose salary is NULL.
Rank employees by salary descending, using employee_id ascending as the deterministic tie-breaker, then return the first three.
Return employee ID, employee name, department name, and annual salary in descending salary order.

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Unique employee identifier
full_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee's full name
department_id	INT	References departments.department_id
annual_salary	DECIMAL(12,2)	Annual salary in USD
employment_status	VARCHAR(20)	Employee's current employment status

departments

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

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