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

6 months to
1 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 16 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,288 3,514 4,136
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.80% 11.49% 10.68%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.23% 35.38% 34.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,255 2,390 3,021
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £408 £419 £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 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 52 62
10th Percentile £24.87 £25.26 £21.34
25th Percentile £32.50 £31.06 £27.02
Median hourly rate £50.00 £42.00 £45.44
Median % change year-on-year +19.05% -7.57% -1.22%
75th Percentile £57.50 £61.69 £57.92
90th Percentile £64.05 £65.90 £73.29
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -1.10%

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 9,607 9,932 12,003
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.54% 32.46% 30.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,397 6,446 8,721
10th Percentile £345 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.96% -0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £656 £670
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 301 260 402
10th Percentile £31.25 £26.25 £32.32
25th Percentile £50.00 £44.87 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £61.92
Median % change year-on-year - +4.97% -0.93%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £80.50 £78.68
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.18
% change year-on-year +3.17% +4.69% -1.63%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,001 £520 -5.45% 731
North of England -12 321 £430 -11.34% 445
South East -8 320 £475 -9.52% 659
Midlands -1 306 £506 +12.33% 364
West Midlands -1 222 £515 +7.97% 228
North West -1 194 £425 -5.56% 248
South West -2 154 £475 -5.00% 179
Yorkshire -26 113 £470 -6.05% 146
East Midlands -4 81 £450 +16.13% 135
East of England +2 77 £550 +25.71% 182
North East -11 16 £500 +5.26% 59
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 (4.68%) Apache Airflow
2 143 (4.35%) Apache Spark
3 108 (3.28%) Confluence
4 93 (2.83%) Apache
5 77 (2.34%) SharePoint
6 62 (1.89%) SAS
7 33 (1.00%) WebLogic
8 22 (0.67%) IIS
9 20 (0.61%) nginx
9 20 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
11 18 (0.55%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.43%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.40%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.40%) Tomcat
13 13 (0.40%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.33%) CMS
14 11 (0.33%) JBoss
14 11 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 235 (7.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 34 (1.03%) 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 (0.091%) Adobe Captivate
13 2 (0.061%) Maple
13 2 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.061%) SPSS
14 1 (0.030%) GNU Octave
14 1 (0.030%) Stata
14 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 33 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
3 25 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
4 23 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
5 22 (0.67%) Oracle EBS R12
6 21 (0.64%) Aladdin
7 20 (0.61%) Endur
8 19 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
9 18 (0.55%) Oracle Receivables
10 17 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
11 14 (0.43%) Maximo
11 14 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
12 13 (0.40%) NetSuite
12 13 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
13 11 (0.33%) Oracle BPM
13 11 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
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 1,026 (31.20%) Azure
2 766 (23.30%) AWS
3 592 (18.00%) Power Platform
4 277 (8.42%) GCP
5 256 (7.79%) Azure DevOps
6 234 (7.12%) Snowflake
7 230 (7.00%) GitHub
8 201 (6.11%) Serverless
9 178 (5.41%) Azure Data Factory
10 162 (4.93%) Amazon S3
11 134 (4.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 130 (3.95%) dbt
13 114 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
14 103 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
15 72 (2.19%) Power Automate
16 70 (2.13%) SaaS
17 69 (2.10%) Azure Functions
18 66 (2.01%) PowerApps
19 63 (1.92%) Dynamics 365
20 60 (1.82%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.52%) Firewall
2 45 (1.37%) HTTP
3 42 (1.28%) DNS
4 24 (0.73%) Skype
5 20 (0.61%) DHCP
6 18 (0.55%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.52%) SSH
8 16 (0.49%) Internet
9 15 (0.46%) iSCSI
9 15 (0.46%) VPN
10 14 (0.43%) Fibre Channel
10 14 (0.43%) Network Security
11 13 (0.40%) 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
1 535 (16.27%) Power BI
2 356 (10.83%) SQL Server
3 344 (10.46%) Data Warehouse
4 249 (7.57%) Relational Database
5 245 (7.45%) PostgreSQL
6 231 (7.03%) NoSQL
7 204 (6.20%) Tableau
8 159 (4.84%) Data Lake
9 151 (4.59%) Oracle Database
10 144 (4.38%) Azure SQL Database
11 113 (3.44%) Big Data
12 110 (3.35%) BigQuery
13 103 (3.13%) Metadata
14 99 (3.01%) MongoDB
15 86 (2.62%) MySQL
16 79 (2.40%) Amazon Redshift
17 76 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
18 70 (2.13%) Power Query
19 69 (2.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
20 66 (2.01%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 368 (11.19%) Git
2 293 (8.91%) JIRA
3 187 (5.69%) Jenkins
4 103 (3.13%) GitLab
5 80 (2.43%) JUnit
6 56 (1.70%) Selenium
7 43 (1.31%) Oracle APEX
8 40 (1.22%) Bitbucket
8 40 (1.22%) Cucumber
9 38 (1.16%) Maven
10 30 (0.91%) Mockito
10 30 (0.91%) SonarQube
11 29 (0.88%) Postman
12 23 (0.70%) ERwin
12 23 (0.70%) Gradle
13 21 (0.64%) Eclipse
13 21 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
13 21 (0.64%) SpecFlow
14 17 (0.52%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.52%) SoapUI
General
1 1,049 (31.90%) Social Skills
2 933 (28.38%) Finance
3 612 (18.61%) Analytical Skills
4 367 (11.16%) Banking
5 250 (7.60%) Public Sector
6 126 (3.83%) Investment Banking
7 97 (2.95%) Front Office
8 88 (2.68%) Marketing
9 79 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
10 56 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (1.55%) Retail
12 49 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
13 45 (1.37%) Financial Institution
14 41 (1.25%) Manufacturing
15 38 (1.16%) Telecoms
16 37 (1.13%) Back Office
17 32 (0.97%) Legal
18 31 (0.94%) Local Government
19 30 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
20 28 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 905 (27.52%) Developer
2 562 (17.09%) Analyst
3 438 (13.32%) Data Engineer
4 431 (13.11%) Senior
5 223 (6.78%) Data Analyst
6 191 (5.81%) Business Analyst
7 183 (5.57%) Lead
8 156 (4.74%) Senior Developer
9 142 (4.32%) Architect
10 141 (4.29%) Java Developer
11 133 (4.05%) Consultant
12 103 (3.13%) Software Engineer
13 90 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
14 87 (2.65%) Full-Stack Developer
15 83 (2.52%) Data Scientist
15 83 (2.52%) Python Developer
16 75 (2.28%) .NET Developer
17 73 (2.22%) C# Developer
18 71 (2.16%) SQL Developer
19 69 (2.10%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (9.06%) .NET
2 242 (7.36%) REST
3 200 (6.08%) Kafka
4 164 (4.99%) React
5 153 (4.65%) RESTful
6 150 (4.56%) PySpark
7 145 (4.41%) HTML
7 145 (4.41%) Spring
8 142 (4.32%) XML
9 131 (3.98%) CSS
10 113 (3.44%) Spring Boot
11 108 (3.28%) Node.js
12 107 (3.25%) AngularJS
13 106 (3.22%) JSON
14 101 (3.07%) SOAP
15 78 (2.37%) .NET Framework
16 73 (2.22%) Pandas
17 72 (2.19%) Web Services
18 59 (1.79%) Middleware
19 51 (1.55%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 164 (4.99%) Cloud Native
2 100 (3.04%) Data Structures
2 100 (3.04%) Product Ownership
3 86 (2.62%) Data Protection Act
4 78 (2.37%) Legacy Systems
5 71 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
6 69 (2.10%) Derivative
7 66 (2.01%) Algorithms
8 63 (1.92%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 57 (1.73%) Fixed Income
10 54 (1.64%) Management Information System
11 52 (1.58%) Equities
12 47 (1.43%) Replication
13 46 (1.40%) Onboarding
14 44 (1.34%) Greenfield Project
15 43 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
16 38 (1.16%) Virtual Team
17 36 (1.09%) Market Risk
17 36 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
18 33 (1.00%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 307 (9.34%) Linux
2 239 (7.27%) Windows
3 192 (5.84%) Unix
4 73 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 23 (0.70%) VMS
5 23 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
6 16 (0.49%) Android
7 14 (0.43%) Ubuntu
8 13 (0.40%) 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 (0.061%) Solaris
17 1 (0.030%) OpenVMS
17 1 (0.030%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 972 (29.56%) Agile
2 756 (22.99%) Problem-Solving
3 718 (21.84%) Analytics
4 709 (21.56%) CI/CD
5 701 (21.32%) Business Intelligence
6 675 (20.53%) DevOps
7 642 (19.53%) Data Modelling
8 571 (17.37%) ETL
9 455 (13.84%) Data Pipeline
10 376 (11.44%) Migration
11 353 (10.74%) Data Engineering
12 336 (10.22%) Visualisation
13 325 (9.88%) Data Governance
14 306 (9.31%) Scrum
15 291 (8.85%) Validation
16 287 (8.73%) Data Analysis
17 279 (8.49%) AI
17 279 (8.49%) Test Automation
18 276 (8.39%) Data Science
19 275 (8.36%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,256 (38.20%) Python
2 521 (15.85%) Java
3 358 (10.89%) C#
4 308 (9.37%) JavaScript
5 244 (7.42%) PL/SQL
6 154 (4.68%) PowerShell
7 128 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 101 (3.07%) R
9 97 (2.95%) T-SQL
10 94 (2.86%) C++
11 87 (2.65%) VBA
12 86 (2.62%) Scala
13 79 (2.40%) Shell Script
14 73 (2.22%) Bash
15 69 (2.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 68 (2.07%) VB
17 47 (1.43%) Go
18 39 (1.19%) Perl
19 34 (1.03%) PHP
20 31 (0.94%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 496 (15.09%) Security Cleared
2 371 (11.28%) SC Cleared
3 308 (9.37%) Degree
4 112 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (1.98%) DV Cleared
6 57 (1.73%) AWS Certification
7 56 (1.70%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.52%) Azure Certification
9 40 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 38 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
11 31 (0.94%) ISTQB
12 23 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
12 23 (0.70%) MCSE
13 22 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
14 15 (0.46%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.40%) CBAP
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
1 422 (12.83%) Data Quality
2 233 (7.09%) QA
3 103 (3.13%) GDPR
4 61 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.76%) MiFID
6 21 (0.64%) EMIR
6 21 (0.64%) SLA
7 18 (0.55%) WCAG
8 17 (0.52%) SEPA
9 15 (0.46%) ISO 20022
9 15 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 14 (0.43%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 12 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 11 (0.33%) PSD2
14 9 (0.27%) PMO
15 7 (0.21%) HL7
15 7 (0.21%) IFRS
16 4 (0.12%) Basel III
16 4 (0.12%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 339 (10.31%) Docker
2 92 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.55%) NFS
5 15 (0.46%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.40%) Postfix
7 12 (0.36%) Dovecot
7 12 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
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
1 317 (9.64%) Kubernetes
2 224 (6.81%) Terraform
3 67 (2.04%) Grafana
4 64 (1.95%) Ansible
5 54 (1.64%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.70%) SCOM
7 21 (0.64%) HP SiteScope
8 19 (0.58%) SCCM
9 17 (0.52%) Kibana
9 17 (0.52%) Puppet
10 15 (0.46%) Control-M
10 15 (0.46%) Progress Chef
11 13 (0.40%) ITRS Geneos
11 13 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
11 13 (0.40%) Proxmox
12 12 (0.36%) Nessus
12 12 (0.36%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 12 (0.36%) WSUS
13 11 (0.33%) Data Guard
14 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 573 (17.43%) Oracle
2 552 (16.79%) Microsoft
3 306 (9.31%) Databricks
4 132 (4.01%) Google
5 110 (3.35%) Splunk
6 90 (2.74%) SAP
7 60 (1.82%) Talend
8 59 (1.79%) ServiceNow
9 58 (1.76%) Salesforce
10 57 (1.73%) VMware
11 47 (1.43%) IBM
12 42 (1.28%) Informatica
13 40 (1.22%) Dynatrace
14 39 (1.19%) Citrix
15 35 (1.06%) Denodo
16 30 (0.91%) Bloomberg
16 30 (0.91%) Cisco
16 30 (0.91%) OpenAI
17 28 (0.85%) AppDynamics
18 27 (0.82%) Foundry