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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 13 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 13 13 11
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,242 3,594 4,700
As % of all contract jobs advertised in England 11.68% 10.91% 10.93%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.69% 33.67% 33.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,269 2,611 3,409
10th Percentile £327 £350 £363
25th Percentile £404 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £540 £545
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -0.92% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £650
90th Percentile £750 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 40 76
10th Percentile £29.00 £25.99 £21.31
25th Percentile £33.21 £30.38 £27.02
Median hourly rate £50.00 £41.50 £42.66
Median % change year-on-year +20.48% -2.72% +21.89%
75th Percentile £57.50 £54.69 £70.06
90th Percentile £58.50 £60.00 £78.97
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year +25.00% -12.82% +31.09%

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 9,085 10,675 13,976
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.74% 32.41% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,156 7,381 10,139
10th Percentile £345 £353 £374
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £790
UK median daily rate £501 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.67% -4.55% -1.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 262 308 416
10th Percentile £31.25 £31.03 £32.31
25th Percentile £41.76 £50.94 £48.32
Median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £63.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.38% +3.17% +10.80%
75th Percentile £67.88 £70.00 £71.92
90th Percentile £79.88 £80.00 £84.36
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% +4.00% +12.66%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Job postings citing SQL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in England.

Job vacancy trend for SQL 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 13 September 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 1,930 £525 -7.73% 1,590
South East +9 365 £500 -4.76% 1,096
North of England -7 318 £450 -5.26% 608
Midlands +4 295 £450 +5.88% 366
West Midlands +6 209 £500 +11.11% 210
North West +2 181 £445 -1.11% 357
South West +5 133 £425 -20.93% 212
Yorkshire -16 119 £456 -8.75% 188
East of England +21 88 £503 +11.67% 190
East Midlands -3 81 £395 -1.31% 152
North East -3 20 £465 -4.12% 71
SQL
UK

SQL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 124 (3.82%) Apache Airflow
2 118 (3.64%) Confluence
3 115 (3.55%) Apache Spark
4 82 (2.53%) Apache
5 60 (1.85%) SharePoint
6 56 (1.73%) SAS
7 40 (1.23%) Oracle Workflow
8 32 (0.99%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.93%) Skype for Business
10 23 (0.71%) IIS
11 22 (0.68%) Mattermost
11 22 (0.68%) Tomcat
12 21 (0.65%) nginx
12 21 (0.65%) WebSphere
13 20 (0.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 19 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
15 15 (0.46%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 11 (0.34%) JBoss
17 9 (0.28%) Oracle Application Server
18 8 (0.25%) Mule
Applications
1 242 (7.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.85%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (0.96%) MS Visio
4 25 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.59%) Maya
6 13 (0.40%) NUKE
7 12 (0.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 8 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
9 7 (0.22%) Chatbot
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Captivate
10 6 (0.19%) Microsoft Project
11 3 (0.093%) Trello
12 2 (0.062%) Maple
12 2 (0.062%) SPSS
12 2 (0.062%) Stata
13 1 (0.031%) Adobe Illustrator
13 1 (0.031%) InDesign
13 1 (0.031%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.031%) Revit
Business Applications
1 65 (2.00%) Oracle EBS
2 46 (1.42%) Oracle EBS R12
3 45 (1.39%) Aladdin
4 42 (1.30%) Oracle Assets
5 38 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
6 35 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
7 32 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
7 32 (0.99%) Endur
8 23 (0.71%) Oracle BPM
9 22 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
10 20 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 19 (0.59%) Oracle Financials
12 18 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
12 18 (0.56%) thinkFolio
13 15 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
14 13 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
15 11 (0.34%) FLEXCUBE
16 9 (0.28%) Maximo
16 9 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
17 8 (0.25%) Oracle HRMS
Cloud Services
1 906 (27.95%) Azure
2 645 (19.90%) AWS
3 595 (18.35%) Power Platform
4 248 (7.65%) GCP
5 193 (5.95%) Azure DevOps
6 171 (5.27%) Snowflake
7 169 (5.21%) Azure Data Factory
8 150 (4.63%) GitHub
9 128 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 128 (3.95%) dbt
10 125 (3.86%) Serverless
11 119 (3.67%) Amazon S3
12 73 (2.25%) PowerApps
13 69 (2.13%) SaaS
14 68 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
15 65 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
16 61 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
17 59 (1.82%) Power Automate
18 53 (1.63%) PaaS
19 48 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.63%) Firewall
2 40 (1.23%) DNS
3 38 (1.17%) HTTP
4 35 (1.08%) Skype
5 24 (0.74%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.65%) iSCSI
7 20 (0.62%) Fibre Channel
7 20 (0.62%) Unified Communications
8 19 (0.59%) DHCP
8 19 (0.59%) SSH
9 18 (0.56%) Internet
10 13 (0.40%) SMTP
11 12 (0.37%) IMAP
11 12 (0.37%) OpenLDAP
12 11 (0.34%) VPN
13 10 (0.31%) FTP
13 10 (0.31%) SAN
14 9 (0.28%) Softphone
14 9 (0.28%) SSL
14 9 (0.28%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 533 (16.44%) Power BI
2 386 (11.91%) SQL Server
3 344 (10.61%) Data Warehouse
4 254 (7.83%) PostgreSQL
5 242 (7.46%) Relational Database
6 210 (6.48%) NoSQL
6 210 (6.48%) Tableau
7 164 (5.06%) Data Lake
8 157 (4.84%) Oracle Database
9 130 (4.01%) Azure SQL Database
10 107 (3.30%) BigQuery
11 102 (3.15%) Big Data
11 102 (3.15%) MongoDB
12 78 (2.41%) MySQL
13 77 (2.38%) Metadata
14 76 (2.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 71 (2.19%) SQL Server Reporting Services
16 69 (2.13%) Amazon Redshift
16 69 (2.13%) Hadoop
17 64 (1.97%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 296 (9.13%) Git
2 279 (8.61%) JIRA
3 195 (6.01%) Jenkins
4 92 (2.84%) JUnit
5 87 (2.68%) GitLab
6 61 (1.88%) Mockito
7 59 (1.82%) Maven
8 43 (1.33%) Cucumber
8 43 (1.33%) SonarQube
9 41 (1.26%) Gradle
10 38 (1.17%) Bitbucket
10 38 (1.17%) Selenium
11 30 (0.93%) Liquibase
12 27 (0.83%) ERwin
12 27 (0.83%) Postman
13 20 (0.62%) Sonatype Nexus
14 19 (0.59%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.52%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.46%) SoapUI
General
1 1,036 (31.96%) Social Skills
2 980 (30.23%) Finance
3 606 (18.69%) Analytical Skills
4 391 (12.06%) Banking
5 250 (7.71%) Public Sector
6 141 (4.35%) Investment Banking
7 127 (3.92%) Front Office
8 118 (3.64%) Marketing
9 70 (2.16%) Manufacturing
9 70 (2.16%) Telecoms
10 65 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
11 62 (1.91%) Retail
12 55 (1.70%) Presentation Skills
13 48 (1.48%) Back Office
13 48 (1.48%) Financial Institution
13 48 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 41 (1.26%) General Ledger
15 37 (1.14%) Local Government
16 34 (1.05%) Electronics
17 33 (1.02%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 868 (26.77%) Developer
2 658 (20.30%) Analyst
3 414 (12.77%) Senior
4 366 (11.29%) Data Engineer
5 273 (8.42%) Data Analyst
6 221 (6.82%) Business Analyst
7 162 (5.00%) Architect
8 159 (4.90%) Lead
9 157 (4.84%) Java Developer
10 148 (4.57%) Consultant
11 136 (4.19%) Senior Developer
12 95 (2.93%) Azure Engineer
13 93 (2.87%) .NET Developer
14 89 (2.75%) SQL Developer
15 87 (2.68%) Data Scientist
15 87 (2.68%) Software Engineer
16 86 (2.65%) C# Developer
17 77 (2.38%) Python Developer
18 76 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
19 72 (2.22%) Applications Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 293 (9.04%) .NET
2 213 (6.57%) Kafka
3 184 (5.68%) React
4 174 (5.37%) REST
5 172 (5.31%) Spring
6 168 (5.18%) HTML
7 146 (4.50%) Spring Boot
8 143 (4.41%) CSS
9 122 (3.76%) RESTful
10 114 (3.52%) SOAP
11 112 (3.45%) PySpark
11 112 (3.45%) Web Services
11 112 (3.45%) XML
12 103 (3.18%) AngularJS
13 96 (2.96%) Node.js
14 87 (2.68%) JSON
15 81 (2.50%) .NET Framework
16 59 (1.82%) .NET Core
17 58 (1.79%) Swagger
18 56 (1.73%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 103 (3.18%) Data Structures
2 100 (3.08%) Cloud Native
3 97 (2.99%) Derivative
4 94 (2.90%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (2.44%) Management Information System
6 73 (2.25%) Algorithms
6 73 (2.25%) Data Protection Act
7 69 (2.13%) Fixed Income
7 69 (2.13%) Onboarding
8 62 (1.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 55 (1.70%) Market Risk
10 47 (1.45%) Equities
10 47 (1.45%) Replication
11 46 (1.42%) Distributed Systems
12 45 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
13 44 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
14 41 (1.26%) Hedge funds
15 38 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 37 (1.14%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 295 (9.10%) Linux
2 245 (7.56%) Windows
3 173 (5.34%) Unix
4 76 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
6 26 (0.80%) VMS
7 17 (0.52%) Android
7 17 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 13 (0.40%) Windows 10
9 12 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
9 12 (0.37%) Ubuntu
10 11 (0.34%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.28%) Windows Server 2012
11 9 (0.28%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.15%) AIX
12 5 (0.15%) Solaris
13 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.093%) CentOS
14 3 (0.093%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.062%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 926 (28.56%) Agile
2 721 (22.24%) Business Intelligence
3 698 (21.53%) Problem-Solving
4 612 (18.88%) Analytics
5 597 (18.41%) Data Modelling
6 584 (18.01%) CI/CD
7 580 (17.89%) DevOps
8 511 (15.76%) ETL
9 358 (11.04%) Visualisation
10 356 (10.98%) Migration
11 355 (10.95%) Data Pipeline
12 314 (9.69%) Data Analysis
13 283 (8.73%) Scrum
14 278 (8.57%) Data Engineering
15 267 (8.24%) Microservices
16 257 (7.93%) Data Governance
17 255 (7.87%) Decision-Making
18 246 (7.59%) Validation
19 239 (7.37%) Data Science
20 237 (7.31%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,163 (35.87%) Python
2 524 (16.16%) Java
3 355 (10.95%) C#
4 299 (9.22%) JavaScript
5 227 (7.00%) PL/SQL
6 182 (5.61%) PowerShell
7 112 (3.45%) TypeScript
8 103 (3.18%) R
9 91 (2.81%) C++
10 89 (2.75%) T-SQL
11 85 (2.62%) VBA
12 83 (2.56%) Bash
13 73 (2.25%) Scala
14 64 (1.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 64 (1.97%) Shell Script
15 63 (1.94%) VB
16 41 (1.26%) Perl
17 35 (1.08%) Go
18 30 (0.93%) Groovy
19 26 (0.80%) PHP
Qualifications
1 433 (13.36%) Security Cleared
2 323 (9.96%) SC Cleared
3 311 (9.59%) Degree
4 101 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 61 (1.88%) DV Cleared
6 52 (1.60%) Microsoft Certification
7 51 (1.57%) Master's Degree
8 48 (1.48%) Azure Certification
9 40 (1.23%) BPSS Clearance
10 38 (1.17%) AWS Certification
11 33 (1.02%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.83%) MCSE
13 19 (0.59%) PhD
14 15 (0.46%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
15 12 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
15 12 (0.37%) VCP5
15 12 (0.37%) VCP6
16 10 (0.31%) ISTQB
16 10 (0.31%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 9 (0.28%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 334 (10.30%) Data Quality
2 183 (5.64%) QA
3 110 (3.39%) GDPR
4 53 (1.63%) Accessibility
5 48 (1.48%) SLA
6 33 (1.02%) MiFID
7 27 (0.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 26 (0.80%) EMIR
9 20 (0.62%) Basel III
9 20 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (0.49%) IFRS
11 12 (0.37%) Basel II
11 12 (0.37%) IFRS 9
11 12 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.37%) SEPA
12 11 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.31%) HL7
13 10 (0.31%) NIST
14 9 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 246 (7.59%) Docker
2 97 (2.99%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.48%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (0.74%) NFS
5 23 (0.71%) VMware ESXi
6 21 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.65%) vSphere
7 18 (0.56%) Postfix
8 15 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (0.37%) Dovecot
9 12 (0.37%) Squid
10 11 (0.34%) Hyper-V
11 10 (0.31%) DFS Replication
12 8 (0.25%) zsh
13 4 (0.12%) HDFS
13 4 (0.12%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 4 (0.12%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.093%) VMware NSX
14 3 (0.093%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 230 (7.09%) Kubernetes
2 199 (6.14%) Terraform
3 61 (1.88%) Grafana
4 50 (1.54%) Ansible
5 46 (1.42%) Prometheus
6 33 (1.02%) SCOM
7 21 (0.65%) HP SiteScope
8 18 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
9 17 (0.52%) Control-M
10 16 (0.49%) Kibana
10 16 (0.49%) SCCM
11 14 (0.43%) Data Guard
11 14 (0.43%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 13 (0.40%) Proxmox
13 12 (0.37%) Nessus
14 11 (0.34%) vCenter Server
15 10 (0.31%) ITRS Geneos
15 10 (0.31%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.28%) WSUS
17 7 (0.22%) Istio
Vendors
1 574 (17.71%) Oracle
2 564 (17.40%) Microsoft
3 235 (7.25%) Databricks
4 131 (4.04%) Google
5 124 (3.82%) SAP
5 124 (3.82%) Splunk
6 67 (2.07%) VMware
7 54 (1.67%) Cisco
7 54 (1.67%) ServiceNow
8 46 (1.42%) IBM
8 46 (1.42%) Informatica
9 39 (1.20%) Dynatrace
10 38 (1.17%) Red Hat
11 37 (1.14%) Salesforce
12 35 (1.08%) Talend
13 32 (0.99%) Adobe
14 31 (0.96%) AppDynamics
14 31 (0.96%) Citrix
15 27 (0.83%) BISAM
15 27 (0.83%) Charles River