Top Paid Per Department | Dataford Interview Questions

DaDa's HR analytics team wants a department-level compensation report. Write a SQL query to find the top 3 highest-paid employees in each department.

Requirements

Return each employee's department, employee name, and salary.
Rank employees within each department by salary from highest to lowest.
Include only the top 3 employees per department.
Break salary ties by employee_id in ascending order so the result is deterministic.

departments

Column	Type	Description
department_idPK	INT	Primary key for the department
department_name	VARCHAR(100)	Department name

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Primary key for the employee
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	Foreign key to departments.department_id
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual salary

Your question is Top Paid Per Department. Start with the requirements and the two tables 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.

DaDa's HR analytics team wants a department-level compensation report. Write a SQL query to find the top 3 highest-paid employees in each department.

Return each employee's department, employee name, and salary.
Rank employees within each department by salary from highest to lowest.
Include only the top 3 employees per department.
Break salary ties by employee_id in ascending order so the result is deterministic.

departments

Column	Type	Description
department_idPK	INT	Primary key for the department
department_name	VARCHAR(100)	Department name

employees

Column	Type	Description
employee_idPK	INT	Primary key for the employee
employee_name	VARCHAR(100)	Employee full name
department_id	INT	Foreign key to departments.department_id
salary	NUMERIC(12,2)	Annual salary

Your question is Top Paid Per Department. Start with the requirements and the two tables 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.