SQL Contract Job Trends in England

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,386 3,507 4,228
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.20% 11.23% 10.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.63% 34.67% 33.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,342 2,406 3,085
10th Percentile £331 £350 £363
25th Percentile £408 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -3.23% -1.36%
75th Percentile £609 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 47 63
10th Percentile £23.26 £25.26 £21.06
25th Percentile £32.50 £30.25 £26.02
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -9.09%
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.38 £56.16
90th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £77.40
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £39.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +26.58% -12.22% -2.17%

All Programming Languages
England

SQL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 9,778 10,114 12,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.34% 32.39% 31.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,518 6,605 9,042
10th Percentile £350 £355 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.09% -1.82% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £675
90th Percentile £738 £775 £780
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 302 250 419
10th Percentile £31.25 £27.00 £32.24
25th Percentile £47.00 £43.75 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.75 £64.00 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.95% +3.23% -0.80%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £76.13 £75.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £61.50 £60.11
% change year-on-year +1.63% +2.32% +0.18%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

SQL job vacancy trend in England

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in England over the 6 months to 14 November 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in England

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in England over the 6 months to 14 November 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in England

SQL
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the England region over the 6 months to 14 November 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -2 2,033 £525 -4.55% 2,002
South East -1 348 £475 -9.52% 741
North of England -10 322 £445 -8.44% 589
Midlands -1 318 £500 +11.11% 490
West Midlands 0 220 £515 +8.42% 302
North West 0 182 £425 -5.56% 358
South West +2 153 £475 -5.00% 216
Yorkshire -25 125 £475 -6.31% 171
East of England +12 96 £503 +29.68% 204
East Midlands -4 94 £442 +10.56% 182
North East -8 17 £500 +0.50% 62
SQL
UK

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 151 (4.46%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (4.08%) Apache Spark
3 113 (3.34%) Confluence
4 96 (2.84%) Apache
5 62 (1.83%) SharePoint
6 53 (1.57%) SAS
7 37 (1.09%) WebLogic
8 25 (0.74%) Oracle Workflow
9 24 (0.71%) IIS
10 21 (0.62%) nginx
10 21 (0.62%) Skype for Business
11 19 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.47%) Mattermost
12 16 (0.47%) WebSphere
13 15 (0.44%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 13 (0.38%) Tomcat
15 12 (0.35%) CMS
15 12 (0.35%) JBoss
16 11 (0.32%) MQSeries
Applications
1 248 (7.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 61 (1.80%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 29 (0.86%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.47%) Maya
6 12 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 11 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.30%) NUKE
9 8 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
10 7 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
11 6 (0.18%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.089%) Trello
13 2 (0.059%) Maple
13 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.059%) SPSS
14 1 (0.030%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.030%) InDesign
14 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.030%) Revit
14 1 (0.030%) Stata
Business Applications
1 41 (1.21%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 29 (0.86%) Oracle Payables
3 28 (0.83%) Oracle Assets
3 28 (0.83%) Oracle EBS R12
4 26 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
5 23 (0.68%) Aladdin
6 21 (0.62%) Endur
7 18 (0.53%) Oracle BPM
7 18 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
8 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
9 16 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
10 15 (0.44%) Maximo
11 14 (0.41%) SAP S/4HANA
12 13 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
13 10 (0.30%) Oracle E-Business Tax
13 10 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 8 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.24%) SAP HR
14 8 (0.24%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,033 (30.51%) Azure
2 776 (22.92%) AWS
3 621 (18.34%) Power Platform
4 287 (8.48%) GCP
5 259 (7.65%) Azure DevOps
6 228 (6.73%) GitHub
7 227 (6.70%) Snowflake
8 197 (5.82%) Serverless
9 181 (5.35%) Azure Data Factory
10 162 (4.78%) Amazon S3
11 137 (4.05%) dbt
12 134 (3.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 107 (3.16%) GitHub Actions
14 100 (2.95%) AWS Lambda
15 77 (2.27%) SaaS
16 75 (2.22%) Power Automate
17 70 (2.07%) Azure Functions
18 68 (2.01%) PowerApps
19 67 (1.98%) Dynamics 365
20 59 (1.74%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 51 (1.51%) Firewall
2 43 (1.27%) HTTP
3 39 (1.15%) DNS
4 27 (0.80%) Skype
5 19 (0.56%) Internet
5 19 (0.56%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.50%) DHCP
6 17 (0.50%) iSCSI
6 17 (0.50%) SSH
7 16 (0.47%) Fibre Channel
8 14 (0.41%) Unified Communications
8 14 (0.41%) VPN
9 13 (0.38%) SMTP
10 12 (0.35%) IMAP
10 12 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
11 11 (0.32%) SAN
12 10 (0.30%) FTP
12 10 (0.30%) SSL
13 9 (0.27%) 2G
13 9 (0.27%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 565 (16.69%) Power BI
2 384 (11.34%) SQL Server
3 355 (10.48%) Data Warehouse
4 262 (7.74%) Relational Database
5 261 (7.71%) PostgreSQL
6 233 (6.88%) NoSQL
7 219 (6.47%) Tableau
8 171 (5.05%) Data Lake
9 154 (4.55%) Oracle Database
10 136 (4.02%) Azure SQL Database
11 115 (3.40%) BigQuery
12 111 (3.28%) Big Data
13 105 (3.10%) MongoDB
14 96 (2.84%) MySQL
15 95 (2.81%) Metadata
16 79 (2.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 78 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
17 78 (2.30%) Amazon Redshift
18 70 (2.07%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 67 (1.98%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 371 (10.96%) Git
2 288 (8.51%) JIRA
3 188 (5.55%) Jenkins
4 103 (3.04%) GitLab
5 86 (2.54%) JUnit
6 51 (1.51%) Selenium
7 43 (1.27%) Oracle APEX
8 42 (1.24%) Maven
9 40 (1.18%) Cucumber
10 38 (1.12%) SonarQube
11 37 (1.09%) Bitbucket
12 34 (1.00%) Mockito
13 30 (0.89%) Postman
14 28 (0.83%) ERwin
15 22 (0.65%) Gradle
16 21 (0.62%) Eclipse
17 20 (0.59%) SpecFlow
18 19 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
19 17 (0.50%) Cypress.io
19 17 (0.50%) ER Studio
General
1 1,107 (32.69%) Social Skills
2 960 (28.35%) Finance
3 643 (18.99%) Analytical Skills
4 378 (11.16%) Banking
5 253 (7.47%) Public Sector
6 136 (4.02%) Investment Banking
7 108 (3.19%) Front Office
8 96 (2.84%) Marketing
9 85 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
10 58 (1.71%) Retail
11 54 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
12 47 (1.39%) Financial Institution
12 47 (1.39%) Manufacturing
13 46 (1.36%) Telecoms
14 36 (1.06%) Back Office
15 33 (0.97%) Pharmaceutical
16 32 (0.95%) Local Government
17 31 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
18 30 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 965 (28.50%) Developer
2 594 (17.54%) Analyst
3 453 (13.38%) Senior
4 419 (12.37%) Data Engineer
5 259 (7.65%) Data Analyst
6 193 (5.70%) Lead
7 192 (5.67%) Business Analyst
8 174 (5.14%) Senior Developer
9 151 (4.46%) Architect
9 151 (4.46%) Consultant
10 148 (4.37%) Java Developer
11 103 (3.04%) Software Engineer
12 92 (2.72%) Python Developer
13 89 (2.63%) Azure Engineer
14 88 (2.60%) Full-Stack Developer
15 83 (2.45%) .NET Developer
16 81 (2.39%) C# Developer
16 81 (2.39%) Data Scientist
17 78 (2.30%) SQL Developer
18 67 (1.98%) AWS Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 308 (9.10%) .NET
2 242 (7.15%) REST
3 204 (6.02%) Kafka
4 177 (5.23%) HTML
5 165 (4.87%) React
6 164 (4.84%) RESTful
7 158 (4.67%) CSS
8 154 (4.55%) Spring
9 144 (4.25%) XML
10 139 (4.11%) PySpark
11 114 (3.37%) Spring Boot
12 113 (3.34%) SOAP
13 112 (3.31%) Node.js
14 109 (3.22%) AngularJS
15 105 (3.10%) JSON
16 89 (2.63%) Web Services
17 88 (2.60%) .NET Framework
18 75 (2.22%) Pandas
19 55 (1.62%) Middleware
20 54 (1.59%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 155 (4.58%) Cloud Native
2 104 (3.07%) Data Structures
3 102 (3.01%) Product Ownership
4 82 (2.42%) Data Protection Act
5 80 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
6 76 (2.24%) Derivative
7 75 (2.22%) Algorithms
8 71 (2.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 67 (1.98%) Analytical Mindset
10 59 (1.74%) Management Information System
11 57 (1.68%) Fixed Income
12 55 (1.62%) Equities
13 51 (1.51%) Replication
14 49 (1.45%) Market Risk
14 49 (1.45%) Onboarding
15 47 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
16 43 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
17 40 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
18 39 (1.15%) Virtual Team
19 30 (0.89%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 318 (9.39%) Linux
2 241 (7.12%) Windows
3 198 (5.85%) Unix
4 70 (2.07%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
6 23 (0.68%) VMS
7 16 (0.47%) Android
8 14 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.41%) Ubuntu
9 12 (0.35%) Amazon Linux
10 10 (0.30%) Apple iOS
10 10 (0.30%) Windows 10
11 8 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.18%) CentOS
13 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.12%) AIX
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.059%) Solaris
16 1 (0.030%) MVS
16 1 (0.030%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 992 (29.30%) Agile
2 769 (22.71%) Problem-Solving
3 744 (21.97%) Business Intelligence
4 718 (21.20%) Analytics
5 706 (20.85%) CI/CD
6 684 (20.20%) DevOps
7 651 (19.23%) Data Modelling
8 565 (16.69%) ETL
9 436 (12.88%) Data Pipeline
10 370 (10.93%) Migration
11 367 (10.84%) Visualisation
12 339 (10.01%) Data Engineering
13 326 (9.63%) Data Analysis
14 325 (9.60%) Scrum
15 309 (9.13%) Data Governance
16 289 (8.54%) Validation
17 276 (8.15%) Microservices
17 276 (8.15%) Test Automation
18 274 (8.09%) Decision-Making
19 269 (7.94%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 1,285 (37.95%) Python
2 554 (16.36%) Java
3 370 (10.93%) C#
4 330 (9.75%) JavaScript
5 246 (7.27%) PL/SQL
6 162 (4.78%) PowerShell
7 126 (3.72%) TypeScript
8 108 (3.19%) C++
9 100 (2.95%) R
10 96 (2.84%) T-SQL
10 96 (2.84%) VBA
11 84 (2.48%) Scala
12 82 (2.42%) Shell Script
13 75 (2.22%) Bash
14 72 (2.13%) VB
15 71 (2.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 42 (1.24%) Go
17 36 (1.06%) Perl
18 30 (0.89%) Bicep
18 30 (0.89%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 494 (14.59%) Security Cleared
2 375 (11.08%) SC Cleared
3 325 (9.60%) Degree
4 114 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (1.89%) DV Cleared
6 61 (1.80%) AWS Certification
7 57 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 57 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.48%) Microsoft Certification
9 41 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
10 27 (0.80%) ISTQB
10 27 (0.80%) ITIL Certification
10 27 (0.80%) MCSE
11 18 (0.53%) Oracle Certification
12 15 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 13 (0.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 12 (0.35%) CBAP
15 11 (0.32%) OCP
16 10 (0.30%) PhD
17 9 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 414 (12.23%) Data Quality
2 224 (6.62%) QA
3 98 (2.89%) GDPR
4 67 (1.98%) Accessibility
5 33 (0.97%) MiFID
6 28 (0.83%) SLA
7 24 (0.71%) EMIR
8 18 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 18 (0.53%) WCAG
9 16 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 13 (0.38%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.38%) ISO 20022
10 13 (0.38%) SEPA
11 11 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
11 11 (0.32%) NIST
12 10 (0.30%) Basel III
13 9 (0.27%) HL7
13 9 (0.27%) IFRS
14 8 (0.24%) COBIT
14 8 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 328 (9.69%) Docker
2 92 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.59%) NFS
5 17 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.47%) Postfix
7 14 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (0.41%) vSphere
8 12 (0.35%) Dovecot
8 12 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
8 12 (0.35%) Squid
9 10 (0.30%) DFS Replication
9 10 (0.30%) zsh
10 6 (0.18%) HDFS
10 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
11 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
12 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
12 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
13 3 (0.089%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 303 (8.95%) Kubernetes
2 216 (6.38%) Terraform
3 68 (2.01%) Grafana
4 59 (1.74%) Ansible
5 54 (1.59%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.77%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 18 (0.53%) Control-M
9 16 (0.47%) Kibana
9 16 (0.47%) Puppet
10 14 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
11 13 (0.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 13 (0.38%) Proxmox
11 13 (0.38%) SCCM
12 12 (0.35%) Nessus
13 11 (0.32%) Data Guard
13 11 (0.32%) ITRS Geneos
13 11 (0.32%) Progress Chef
13 11 (0.32%) WSUS
14 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 595 (17.57%) Oracle
2 583 (17.22%) Microsoft
3 283 (8.36%) Databricks
4 133 (3.93%) Google
5 114 (3.37%) Splunk
6 94 (2.78%) SAP
7 57 (1.68%) ServiceNow
7 57 (1.68%) VMware
8 56 (1.65%) Talend
9 52 (1.54%) IBM
10 51 (1.51%) Salesforce
11 47 (1.39%) Informatica
12 40 (1.18%) Dynatrace
13 37 (1.09%) Citrix
14 34 (1.00%) Cisco
15 32 (0.95%) Red Hat
16 31 (0.92%) Denodo
17 28 (0.83%) Adobe
17 28 (0.83%) Sybase
18 26 (0.77%) OpenAI