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Home/Questions/SQL/Write a PySpark job to find the top 3 employees of each department, where Age < 30 and Salary > department average salary.

Write a PySpark job to find the top 3 employees of each department, where Age < 30 and Salary > department average salary.

SQLmedium0.3 min read

Reviewed by Aditya Kumar Β· Last reviewed 2026-03-24

from pyspark.sql import Window from pyspark.sql.functions import avg, col, row_number df = spark.table("employees").filter("age < 30") dept_avg = df.groupBy("dept_id").agg(avg("salary").alias("dept_avg_sal")) df2 = df.join(dept_avg, "dept_id").filter(col("salary") >...

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Frequency
Low
Asked at 1 company
Category
487
questions in SQL
Difficulty Split
130E|271M|86H
in this category
Total Bank
1,863
across 7 categories
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Key Concepts Tested
joinpartitionsparksqlwindow
Expert Answer
53 words

from pyspark.sql import Window
from pyspark.sql.functions import avg, col, row_number
df = spark.table("employees").filter("age < 30")
dept_avg = df.groupBy("dept_id").agg(avg("salary").alias("dept_avg_sal"))
df2 = df.join(dept_avg, "dept_id").filter(col("salary") > col("dept_avg_sal"))
window = Window.partitionBy("dept_id").orderBy(col("salary").desc())
df2.withColumn("rn", row_number().over(window)).filter("rn <= 3").select("dept_id", "employee_id", "salary", "age").show() Why: Filter early; compute dept avg once; window for top-N. Scalability: Broadcast dept_avg if small; ensure even partition distribution.

⚑
Pro Tip

Red Flag: Computing department average in UDF per row. Pro-Move: 'Join to pre-aggregated dept_avg; broadcast if <100 rows.'

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