Write an SQL query that returns the top two highest‑paid employees from each department.

Use the ROW_NUMBER() window function to rank employees within each department by salary in descending order, then filter for the first two rows per department:

SELECT emp_name,
       department,
       salary
FROM   (
        SELECT emp_name,
               department,
               salary,
               ROW_NUMBER() OVER (PARTITION BY department
                                  ORDER BY salary DESC) AS rn
        FROM   Employees
       ) AS ranked
WHERE  rn <= 2;

This query has a time complexity of O(n log n) due to the sorting required for the window function, but it is efficient for typical relational databases. It handles ties by arbitrarily ordering rows with the same salary; if you need deterministic results, add a secondary order column such as emp_id.