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 18 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,368 3,353 3,952
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.78% 11.57% 10.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.59% 35.52% 34.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,302 2,271 2,903
10th Percentile £329 £350 £363
25th Percentile £410 £415 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £538
% change year-on-year -3.85% -3.26% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 49 60
10th Percentile £21.66 £25.26 £21.31
25th Percentile £29.49 £35.00 £31.18
Median hourly rate £47.11 £47.50 £45.88
Median % change year-on-year -0.82% +3.53% +1.96%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.50 £56.81
90th Percentile £63.75 £66.00 £73.79
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £41.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +8.43% -9.55% +2.69%

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 9,736 9,439 11,464
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.16% 32.58% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,448 6,150 8,338
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £543 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £669
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 231 388
10th Percentile £33.00 £26.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £51.13 £44.75 £47.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -0.79%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

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 18 December 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 18 December 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 18 December 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 2,057 £513 -6.82% 763
North of England -8 332 £438 -7.79% 424
Midlands -2 324 £505 +12.22% 303
South East -8 318 £475 -7.32% 621
West Midlands +1 238 £515 +6.40% 178
North West -2 195 £425 -5.56% 240
South West -2 154 £475 -5.00% 169
Yorkshire -24 124 £468 -6.40% 137
East Midlands -7 84 £450 +14.29% 125
East of England -7 75 £550 +4.76% 166
North East -11 15 £525 +10.53% 57
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
1 154 (4.57%) Apache Airflow
2 149 (4.42%) Apache Spark
3 105 (3.12%) Confluence
4 95 (2.82%) Apache
5 88 (2.61%) SharePoint
6 61 (1.81%) SAS
7 48 (1.43%) WebLogic
8 22 (0.65%) IIS
9 21 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.59%) nginx
11 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
12 17 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
13 14 (0.42%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 13 (0.39%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
15 12 (0.36%) CMS
15 12 (0.36%) Tomcat
16 11 (0.33%) WebSphere
17 10 (0.30%) HCL Notes
17 10 (0.30%) JBoss
Applications
1 237 (7.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 32 (0.95%) MS Visio
5 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
5 11 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 11 (0.33%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 6 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.15%) Trello
8 4 (0.12%) Maya
9 3 (0.089%) Notion
9 3 (0.089%) NUKE
10 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.059%) SPSS
11 1 (0.030%) Adobe Captivate
11 1 (0.030%) GNU Octave
11 1 (0.030%) Stata
11 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 40 (1.19%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.89%) Oracle Payables
3 27 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
4 24 (0.71%) Oracle EBS R12
5 22 (0.65%) Aladdin
5 22 (0.65%) Oracle Assets
6 21 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
7 20 (0.59%) Oracle Receivables
8 18 (0.53%) Endur
9 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
10 16 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
11 15 (0.45%) NetSuite
11 15 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
12 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.33%) Maximo
14 10 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
15 9 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
15 9 (0.27%) NEC Housing
15 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
16 8 (0.24%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,072 (31.83%) Azure
2 776 (23.04%) AWS
3 629 (18.68%) Power Platform
4 293 (8.70%) GCP
5 277 (8.22%) Azure DevOps
6 244 (7.24%) GitHub
7 235 (6.98%) Snowflake
8 219 (6.50%) Serverless
9 196 (5.82%) Azure Data Factory
10 164 (4.87%) Amazon S3
11 144 (4.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 131 (3.89%) dbt
13 126 (3.74%) GitHub Actions
14 109 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
15 83 (2.46%) SaaS
16 80 (2.38%) Power Automate
17 78 (2.32%) Azure Functions
18 74 (2.20%) PowerApps
19 60 (1.78%) Azure Monitor
20 59 (1.75%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.60%) Firewall
2 46 (1.37%) DNS
3 44 (1.31%) HTTP
4 25 (0.74%) Skype
5 20 (0.59%) DHCP
5 20 (0.59%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.50%) Internet
6 17 (0.50%) SSH
7 16 (0.48%) Network Security
8 13 (0.39%) iSCSI
8 13 (0.39%) VPN
9 12 (0.36%) Fibre Channel
9 12 (0.36%) SMTP
9 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
10 11 (0.33%) IMAP
10 11 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
10 11 (0.33%) SAN
11 10 (0.30%) FTP
12 9 (0.27%) 2G
12 9 (0.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 566 (16.81%) Power BI
2 363 (10.78%) SQL Server
3 351 (10.42%) Data Warehouse
4 257 (7.63%) Relational Database
5 250 (7.42%) PostgreSQL
6 226 (6.71%) NoSQL
7 218 (6.47%) Tableau
8 167 (4.96%) Data Lake
9 161 (4.78%) Oracle Database
10 155 (4.60%) Azure SQL Database
11 114 (3.38%) Big Data
12 106 (3.15%) Metadata
13 105 (3.12%) BigQuery
14 99 (2.94%) MongoDB
15 93 (2.76%) MySQL
16 77 (2.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 76 (2.26%) Amazon RDS
17 76 (2.26%) Amazon Redshift
18 69 (2.05%) Oracle Reports
19 65 (1.93%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 376 (11.16%) Git
2 295 (8.76%) JIRA
3 189 (5.61%) Jenkins
4 112 (3.33%) GitLab
5 66 (1.96%) JUnit
6 63 (1.87%) Selenium
7 45 (1.34%) Oracle APEX
8 39 (1.16%) Postman
9 38 (1.13%) Cucumber
10 37 (1.10%) Bitbucket
11 27 (0.80%) Maven
12 24 (0.71%) Mockito
12 24 (0.71%) Oracle Forms
12 24 (0.71%) SonarQube
13 23 (0.68%) REST Assured
14 22 (0.65%) SpecFlow
15 21 (0.62%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.62%) ERwin
16 19 (0.56%) Gradle
17 18 (0.53%) SoapUI
General
1 1,090 (32.36%) Social Skills
2 970 (28.80%) Finance
3 612 (18.17%) Analytical Skills
4 379 (11.25%) Banking
5 259 (7.69%) Public Sector
6 121 (3.59%) Investment Banking
7 95 (2.82%) Front Office
8 87 (2.58%) Marketing
9 83 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
10 56 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 53 (1.57%) Retail
12 52 (1.54%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.51%) Presentation Skills
14 40 (1.19%) Manufacturing
15 38 (1.13%) Back Office
16 34 (1.01%) Legal
17 32 (0.95%) Local Government
17 32 (0.95%) Telecoms
18 31 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
19 27 (0.80%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 898 (26.66%) Developer
2 565 (16.78%) Analyst
3 451 (13.39%) Data Engineer
4 439 (13.03%) Senior
5 225 (6.68%) Data Analyst
6 200 (5.94%) Business Analyst
7 194 (5.76%) Lead
8 150 (4.45%) Senior Developer
9 149 (4.42%) Architect
10 131 (3.89%) Consultant
11 126 (3.74%) Java Developer
12 102 (3.03%) Software Engineer
13 88 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
13 88 (2.61%) Data Scientist
14 85 (2.52%) Full-Stack Developer
15 84 (2.49%) Python Developer
16 77 (2.29%) .NET Developer
17 75 (2.23%) C# Developer
18 69 (2.05%) Senior Data Engineer
19 66 (1.96%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (9.38%) .NET
2 253 (7.51%) REST
3 204 (6.06%) Kafka
4 168 (4.99%) PySpark
5 160 (4.75%) React
6 148 (4.39%) RESTful
7 142 (4.22%) HTML
8 140 (4.16%) XML
9 134 (3.98%) Spring
10 125 (3.71%) CSS
11 110 (3.27%) AngularJS
12 107 (3.18%) JSON
12 107 (3.18%) Node.js
13 104 (3.09%) Spring Boot
14 94 (2.79%) SOAP
15 75 (2.23%) Pandas
16 74 (2.20%) .NET Framework
17 66 (1.96%) Web Services
18 64 (1.90%) Middleware
19 54 (1.60%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 180 (5.34%) Cloud Native
2 102 (3.03%) Data Structures
3 98 (2.91%) Product Ownership
4 84 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
5 80 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (2.23%) Analytical Mindset
7 65 (1.93%) Derivative
8 63 (1.87%) Algorithms
9 59 (1.75%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 57 (1.69%) Fixed Income
11 56 (1.66%) Equities
12 55 (1.63%) Management Information System
13 48 (1.43%) Replication
14 47 (1.40%) Distributed Systems
15 45 (1.34%) Onboarding
16 40 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
17 38 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 37 (1.10%) Market Risk
19 33 (0.98%) SWIFT Messaging Network
20 32 (0.95%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 322 (9.56%) Linux
2 252 (7.48%) Windows
3 199 (5.91%) Unix
4 74 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.62%) VMS
5 21 (0.62%) Windows Server 2019
6 15 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.39%) Android
9 11 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
9 11 (0.33%) Windows 10
10 9 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
11 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.18%) AIX
13 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.12%) CentOS
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
15 2 (0.059%) Solaris
15 2 (0.059%) zOS
16 1 (0.030%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 979 (29.07%) Agile
2 776 (23.04%) Problem-Solving
3 750 (22.27%) Analytics
4 743 (22.06%) CI/CD
5 738 (21.91%) Business Intelligence
6 705 (20.93%) DevOps
7 669 (19.86%) Data Modelling
8 589 (17.49%) ETL
9 458 (13.60%) Data Pipeline
10 384 (11.40%) Migration
11 381 (11.31%) Data Engineering
12 342 (10.15%) Data Governance
13 339 (10.07%) Visualisation
14 312 (9.26%) Validation
15 300 (8.91%) Test Automation
16 295 (8.76%) AI
17 294 (8.73%) Data Analysis
18 290 (8.61%) Scrum
19 285 (8.46%) Data Science
20 280 (8.31%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,275 (37.86%) Python
2 517 (15.35%) Java
3 370 (10.99%) C#
4 320 (9.50%) JavaScript
5 257 (7.63%) PL/SQL
6 150 (4.45%) PowerShell
7 133 (3.95%) TypeScript
8 106 (3.15%) R
9 92 (2.73%) T-SQL
10 91 (2.70%) Scala
11 89 (2.64%) C++
11 89 (2.64%) Shell Script
12 87 (2.58%) VBA
13 71 (2.11%) Bash
14 69 (2.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 66 (1.96%) VB
16 46 (1.37%) Go
17 41 (1.22%) PHP
18 39 (1.16%) Perl
19 37 (1.10%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 529 (15.71%) Security Cleared
2 390 (11.58%) SC Cleared
3 319 (9.47%) Degree
4 119 (3.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 63 (1.87%) DV Cleared
6 58 (1.72%) AWS Certification
6 58 (1.72%) Azure Certification
6 58 (1.72%) Master's Degree
7 42 (1.25%) BPSS Clearance
8 40 (1.19%) Microsoft Certification
9 34 (1.01%) ISTQB
10 25 (0.74%) Oracle Certification
11 23 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
12 20 (0.59%) MCSE
13 18 (0.53%) CBAP
14 17 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.36%) OCP
16 11 (0.33%) ISEB
16 11 (0.33%) OCA
17 10 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (13.30%) Data Quality
2 240 (7.13%) QA
3 121 (3.59%) GDPR
4 61 (1.81%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.74%) MiFID
6 22 (0.65%) SLA
7 19 (0.56%) EMIR
8 18 (0.53%) WCAG
9 17 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (0.48%) SEPA
11 15 (0.45%) HIPAA
12 14 (0.42%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 11 (0.33%) PSD2
15 10 (0.30%) PMO
16 8 (0.24%) IFRS
17 7 (0.21%) Basel III
17 7 (0.21%) HL7
18 6 (0.18%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 357 (10.60%) Docker
2 98 (2.91%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
6 14 (0.42%) NFS
7 13 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.33%) Dovecot
8 11 (0.33%) Postfix
8 11 (0.33%) Squid
8 11 (0.33%) vSphere
9 10 (0.30%) DFS Replication
10 8 (0.24%) zsh
11 7 (0.21%) Hyper-V
12 6 (0.18%) HDFS
13 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
13 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
14 4 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
14 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 337 (10.01%) Kubernetes
2 234 (6.95%) Terraform
3 69 (2.05%) Grafana
4 65 (1.93%) Ansible
5 56 (1.66%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.71%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
7 21 (0.62%) SCCM
8 19 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
8 19 (0.56%) Puppet
9 17 (0.50%) Kibana
10 16 (0.48%) Control-M
10 16 (0.48%) Progress Chef
11 15 (0.45%) Data Guard
11 15 (0.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 13 (0.39%) Proxmox
12 13 (0.39%) WSUS
13 12 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
14 11 (0.33%) Nessus
15 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 596 (17.70%) Oracle
2 562 (16.69%) Microsoft
3 326 (9.68%) Databricks
4 132 (3.92%) Google
5 111 (3.30%) Splunk
6 88 (2.61%) SAP
7 66 (1.96%) Salesforce
7 66 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 59 (1.75%) Talend
9 58 (1.72%) VMware
10 47 (1.40%) IBM
10 47 (1.40%) Informatica
11 44 (1.31%) Dynatrace
12 40 (1.19%) Citrix
13 35 (1.04%) Denodo
14 33 (0.98%) OpenAI
15 29 (0.86%) AppDynamics
15 29 (0.86%) Bloomberg
15 29 (0.86%) Cisco
16 28 (0.83%) MuleSoft