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Filter out NULL salaries, compute DENSE_RANK() OVER (ORDER BY salary DESC), then select rank 3. DENSE_RANK treats equal salaries as the same rank. PostgreSQL, MySQL 8+, and Oracle support this window-function approach; if you instead mean the third row, use ROW_NUMBER with a deterministic tie-breaker.

WHERE filters source rows before window calculations are available. Put the window expression in a common table expression or derived table, then filter its rank in the outer query. This also makes the ranking input set explicit.