Highest Paid Employee Per Department

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Medium

Description

You are given a table of employees. Each employee has a name, a department, a salary, and a hire date. Write a SQL query to find the highest-paid employee(s) in each department. If multiple employees share the same maximum salary in a department, return all of them. Return the result ordered by department, then name. Table: Employees

Column Name	Type	Description
id	INT	Primary key
name	VARCHAR	Employee name
department	VARCHAR	Department name
salary	INT	Annual salary
hire_date	DATE	Date employee was hired

Database Schema (Inferred)

Employees

Column Name	Example Value
id	1
name	Alice
department	Engineering
salary	90000
hire_date	2020-01-15

Example

Employees

id	name	department	salary	hire_date
1	Alice	Engineering	90000	2020-01-15
2	Bob	Engineering	85000	2019-03-10
3	Carol	Marketing	70000	2021-06-01
4	Dave	Marketing	72000	2020-09-20
5	Eve	HR	60000	2022-02-28

Output

department	name	salary
Engineering	Alice	90000
HR	Eve	60000
Marketing	Dave	72000

Explanation:

For each department, find the employee(s) whose salary equals the maximum salary in that department.

Approach hint

Start with a simple approach, explain the trade-off, then move toward a cleaner or more scalable solution.

Common mistake

Skipping assumptions, edge cases, or trade-offs can make an otherwise good answer feel incomplete.