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

6 months to
4 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 16 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,354 3,524 4,056
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.77% 11.53% 10.70%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.14% 35.41% 34.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,293 2,395 2,964
10th Percentile £326 £350 £363
25th Percentile £408 £420 £425
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 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 52 62
10th Percentile £23.05 £25.26 £21.34
25th Percentile £32.19 £31.06 £27.02
Median hourly rate £50.00 £42.00 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% -7.57% -4.84%
75th Percentile £57.50 £61.69 £57.92
90th Percentile £63.75 £65.90 £73.29
UK median hourly rate £49.36 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +23.40% -11.11% -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 9,824 9,951 11,732
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.53% 32.55% 30.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,528 6,460 8,509
10th Percentile £345 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £549 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.57% -0.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £669
90th Percentile £738 £780 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 314 256 398
10th Percentile £31.25 £26.25 £32.22
25th Percentile £50.00 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £61.92
Median % change year-on-year - +4.97% -1.71%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £82.50 £78.23
UK median hourly rate £64.00 £63.00 £60.21
% change year-on-year +1.59% +4.63% -3.66%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,042 £515 -6.36% 841
North of England -10 327 £430 -9.95% 471
South East -8 325 £475 -9.52% 712
Midlands 0 316 £500 +11.11% 361
West Midlands +1 230 £515 +6.40% 224
North West 0 201 £420 -6.67% 276
South West -2 157 £475 -5.00% 190
Yorkshire -25 112 £475 -5.00% 146
East Midlands -5 83 £450 +16.13% 135
East of England -1 77 £550 +10.00% 202
North East -13 16 £500 +5.26% 55
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 (4.59%) Apache Airflow
2 145 (4.32%) Apache Spark
3 112 (3.34%) Confluence
4 95 (2.83%) Apache
5 84 (2.50%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.91%) SAS
7 40 (1.19%) WebLogic
8 22 (0.66%) IIS
8 22 (0.66%) Oracle Workflow
9 20 (0.60%) nginx
10 19 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
11 18 (0.54%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.42%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.39%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.39%) Tomcat
13 13 (0.39%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.33%) CMS
14 11 (0.33%) JBoss
15 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 243 (7.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 68 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 36 (1.07%) MS Visio
5 12 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
8 8 (0.24%) Maya
9 6 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
10 5 (0.15%) NUKE
11 4 (0.12%) Trello
12 3 (0.089%) Adobe Captivate
13 2 (0.060%) Notion
13 2 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.060%) SPSS
14 1 (0.030%) GNU Octave
14 1 (0.030%) Stata
14 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 35 (1.04%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.83%) Oracle Payables
3 25 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
4 23 (0.69%) Oracle EBS R12
5 22 (0.66%) Oracle Assets
6 21 (0.63%) Aladdin
7 20 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
7 20 (0.60%) Endur
8 18 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
9 17 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
10 15 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
11 14 (0.42%) Maximo
11 14 (0.42%) NetSuite
11 14 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
12 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.33%) Oracle BPM
14 9 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
14 9 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
14 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
15 8 (0.24%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,043 (31.10%) Azure
2 774 (23.08%) AWS
3 618 (18.43%) Power Platform
4 279 (8.32%) GCP
5 261 (7.78%) Azure DevOps
6 237 (7.07%) Snowflake
7 233 (6.95%) GitHub
8 207 (6.17%) Serverless
9 182 (5.43%) Azure Data Factory
10 163 (4.86%) Amazon S3
11 138 (4.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 132 (3.94%) dbt
13 116 (3.46%) GitHub Actions
14 103 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (2.39%) Power Automate
16 75 (2.24%) PowerApps
17 74 (2.21%) Azure Functions
18 71 (2.12%) SaaS
19 65 (1.94%) Dynamics 365
20 62 (1.85%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.55%) Firewall
2 45 (1.34%) HTTP
3 43 (1.28%) DNS
4 24 (0.72%) Skype
5 21 (0.63%) DHCP
6 18 (0.54%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.51%) SSH
8 16 (0.48%) Internet
9 15 (0.45%) iSCSI
9 15 (0.45%) Network Security
9 15 (0.45%) VPN
10 14 (0.42%) Fibre Channel
11 13 (0.39%) SMTP
12 12 (0.36%) IMAP
12 12 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
12 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
13 11 (0.33%) SAN
14 10 (0.30%) FTP
15 9 (0.27%) 2G
15 9 (0.27%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 560 (16.70%) Power BI
2 359 (10.70%) SQL Server
3 351 (10.47%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (7.51%) Relational Database
5 247 (7.36%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (7.04%) NoSQL
7 215 (6.41%) Tableau
8 165 (4.92%) Data Lake
9 157 (4.68%) Oracle Database
10 147 (4.38%) Azure SQL Database
11 113 (3.37%) Big Data
11 113 (3.37%) BigQuery
12 105 (3.13%) Metadata
13 104 (3.10%) MongoDB
14 88 (2.62%) MySQL
15 80 (2.39%) Amazon Redshift
16 76 (2.27%) Amazon RDS
17 73 (2.18%) Power Query
18 72 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 65 (1.94%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 375 (11.18%) Git
2 297 (8.86%) JIRA
3 190 (5.66%) Jenkins
4 105 (3.13%) GitLab
5 81 (2.42%) JUnit
6 57 (1.70%) Selenium
7 43 (1.28%) Oracle APEX
8 41 (1.22%) Bitbucket
9 40 (1.19%) Cucumber
10 38 (1.13%) Maven
11 31 (0.92%) Mockito
11 31 (0.92%) Postman
12 30 (0.89%) SonarQube
13 23 (0.69%) ERwin
13 23 (0.69%) Gradle
14 21 (0.63%) Eclipse
14 21 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
14 21 (0.63%) SpecFlow
15 17 (0.51%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.51%) SoapUI
General
1 1,074 (32.02%) Social Skills
2 954 (28.44%) Finance
3 619 (18.46%) Analytical Skills
4 379 (11.30%) Banking
5 253 (7.54%) Public Sector
6 127 (3.79%) Investment Banking
7 97 (2.89%) Front Office
8 88 (2.62%) Marketing
9 81 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
10 56 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (1.52%) Retail
12 49 (1.46%) Financial Institution
12 49 (1.46%) Presentation Skills
13 42 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 37 (1.10%) Back Office
14 37 (1.10%) Telecoms
15 32 (0.95%) Legal
15 32 (0.95%) Local Government
16 30 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
16 30 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 920 (27.43%) Developer
2 577 (17.20%) Analyst
3 444 (13.24%) Data Engineer
4 439 (13.09%) Senior
5 233 (6.95%) Data Analyst
6 197 (5.87%) Business Analyst
7 184 (5.49%) Lead
8 157 (4.68%) Senior Developer
9 145 (4.32%) Architect
10 144 (4.29%) Java Developer
11 134 (4.00%) Consultant
12 104 (3.10%) Software Engineer
13 90 (2.68%) Azure Engineer
14 88 (2.62%) Data Scientist
15 86 (2.56%) Full-Stack Developer
16 82 (2.44%) Python Developer
17 75 (2.24%) .NET Developer
18 74 (2.21%) C# Developer
19 73 (2.18%) SQL Developer
20 69 (2.06%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 302 (9.00%) .NET
2 247 (7.36%) REST
3 205 (6.11%) Kafka
4 168 (5.01%) React
5 153 (4.56%) RESTful
6 151 (4.50%) PySpark
7 147 (4.38%) Spring
8 146 (4.35%) HTML
9 143 (4.26%) XML
10 132 (3.94%) CSS
11 115 (3.43%) Spring Boot
12 110 (3.28%) Node.js
13 109 (3.25%) AngularJS
14 107 (3.19%) JSON
15 101 (3.01%) SOAP
16 78 (2.33%) .NET Framework
17 75 (2.24%) Pandas
18 72 (2.15%) Web Services
19 61 (1.82%) Middleware
20 53 (1.58%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 169 (5.04%) Cloud Native
2 105 (3.13%) Data Structures
3 101 (3.01%) Product Ownership
4 87 (2.59%) Data Protection Act
5 81 (2.42%) Legacy Systems
6 71 (2.12%) Analytical Mindset
7 70 (2.09%) Derivative
8 67 (2.00%) Algorithms
9 63 (1.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 59 (1.76%) Fixed Income
11 55 (1.64%) Management Information System
12 54 (1.61%) Equities
13 47 (1.40%) Replication
14 46 (1.37%) Onboarding
15 44 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
15 44 (1.31%) Greenfield Project
16 38 (1.13%) Virtual Team
17 37 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 36 (1.07%) Market Risk
19 33 (0.98%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 312 (9.30%) Linux
2 247 (7.36%) Windows
3 200 (5.96%) Unix
4 75 (2.24%) Windows Server
5 23 (0.69%) VMS
5 23 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
6 16 (0.48%) Android
7 14 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 12 (0.36%) Amazon Linux
10 11 (0.33%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.30%) Apple iOS
12 8 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.18%) AIX
13 6 (0.18%) CentOS
14 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.060%) Solaris
17 1 (0.030%) OpenVMS
17 1 (0.030%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 986 (29.40%) Agile
2 771 (22.99%) Problem-Solving
3 740 (22.06%) Analytics
4 725 (21.62%) Business Intelligence
5 719 (21.44%) CI/CD
6 684 (20.39%) DevOps
7 659 (19.65%) Data Modelling
8 585 (17.44%) ETL
9 461 (13.74%) Data Pipeline
10 381 (11.36%) Migration
11 359 (10.70%) Data Engineering
12 343 (10.23%) Visualisation
13 333 (9.93%) Data Governance
14 305 (9.09%) Scrum
15 299 (8.91%) Validation
16 292 (8.71%) Data Analysis
17 287 (8.56%) AI
18 283 (8.44%) Data Science
19 282 (8.41%) Decision-Making
19 282 (8.41%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (38.16%) Python
2 528 (15.74%) Java
3 367 (10.94%) C#
4 313 (9.33%) JavaScript
5 248 (7.39%) PL/SQL
6 156 (4.65%) PowerShell
7 131 (3.91%) TypeScript
8 109 (3.25%) R
9 97 (2.89%) T-SQL
10 94 (2.80%) C++
11 89 (2.65%) VBA
12 87 (2.59%) Scala
13 79 (2.36%) Shell Script
14 74 (2.21%) Bash
14 74 (2.21%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 68 (2.03%) VB
16 47 (1.40%) Go
17 41 (1.22%) Perl
18 34 (1.01%) PHP
19 32 (0.95%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 505 (15.06%) Security Cleared
2 376 (11.21%) SC Cleared
3 312 (9.30%) Degree
4 114 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
5 66 (1.97%) DV Cleared
6 58 (1.73%) AWS Certification
7 57 (1.70%) Master's Degree
8 52 (1.55%) Azure Certification
9 43 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
10 38 (1.13%) BPSS Clearance
11 32 (0.95%) ISTQB
12 23 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
12 23 (0.69%) MCSE
13 22 (0.66%) Oracle Certification
14 17 (0.51%) CBAP
15 15 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 11 (0.33%) OCP
16 11 (0.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 10 (0.30%) ISEB
17 10 (0.30%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 432 (12.88%) Data Quality
2 239 (7.13%) QA
3 109 (3.25%) GDPR
4 60 (1.79%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.78%) MiFID
6 20 (0.60%) EMIR
6 20 (0.60%) SLA
7 18 (0.54%) WCAG
8 17 (0.51%) SEPA
9 15 (0.45%) HIPAA
9 15 (0.45%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 13 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 12 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 11 (0.33%) PSD2
13 9 (0.27%) PMO
14 8 (0.24%) HL7
15 7 (0.21%) IFRS
16 6 (0.18%) Basel III
17 4 (0.12%) DICOM
System Software
1 344 (10.26%) Docker
2 94 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.54%) NFS
5 15 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
5 15 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.39%) Postfix
7 12 (0.36%) Dovecot
7 12 (0.36%) Squid
7 12 (0.36%) vSphere
8 10 (0.30%) DFS Replication
9 8 (0.24%) zsh
10 7 (0.21%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.18%) HDFS
12 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 324 (9.66%) Kubernetes
2 226 (6.74%) Terraform
3 67 (2.00%) Grafana
4 64 (1.91%) Ansible
5 55 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.72%) SCOM
7 21 (0.63%) HP SiteScope
8 19 (0.57%) SCCM
9 17 (0.51%) Kibana
9 17 (0.51%) Puppet
10 16 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.45%) Control-M
11 15 (0.45%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 15 (0.45%) Progress Chef
12 13 (0.39%) ITRS Geneos
12 13 (0.39%) Proxmox
12 13 (0.39%) WSUS
13 12 (0.36%) Data Guard
13 12 (0.36%) Nessus
14 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 584 (17.41%) Oracle
2 568 (16.94%) Microsoft
3 312 (9.30%) Databricks
4 136 (4.05%) Google
5 110 (3.28%) Splunk
6 92 (2.74%) SAP
7 61 (1.82%) Salesforce
7 61 (1.82%) ServiceNow
8 60 (1.79%) Talend
9 58 (1.73%) VMware
10 48 (1.43%) IBM
11 46 (1.37%) Informatica
12 41 (1.22%) Dynatrace
13 39 (1.16%) Citrix
14 35 (1.04%) Denodo
15 32 (0.95%) OpenAI
16 31 (0.92%) Cisco
17 30 (0.89%) Bloomberg
18 28 (0.83%) AppDynamics
19 27 (0.81%) Foundry