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 21 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 15 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,392 3,477 4,181
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.11% 11.19% 10.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.45% 34.58% 34.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,340 2,380 3,055
10th Percentile £331 £350 £363
25th Percentile £409 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £612 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 46 63
10th Percentile £23.00 £25.26 £21.31
25th Percentile £31.56 £30.13 £26.52
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -2.17%
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.56 £57.37
90th Percentile £63.75 £65.00 £77.40
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £39.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +28.21% -13.33% -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 9,846 10,054 12,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.24% 32.37% 31.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,556 6,541 8,873
10th Percentile £350 £355 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £449
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 £775
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 307 253 416
10th Percentile £31.25 £26.25 £32.32
25th Percentile £50.00 £43.50 £47.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% +4.00% -
75th Percentile £67.92 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £75.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year - +3.31% +0.83%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,043 £525 -4.55% 1,999
South East -2 340 £475 -9.52% 786
North of England -10 329 £438 -9.89% 609
Midlands -3 328 £500 +11.11% 479
West Midlands +4 234 £515 +8.19% 309
North West 0 189 £425 -5.56% 364
South West +3 154 £475 -1.30% 242
Yorkshire -24 125 £475 -7.09% 178
East Midlands -5 91 £450 +12.50% 166
East of England +10 83 £550 +46.67% 213
North East -7 17 £500 +1.01% 70
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 (4.54%) Apache Airflow
2 135 (3.98%) Apache Spark
3 112 (3.30%) Confluence
4 98 (2.89%) Apache
5 76 (2.24%) SharePoint
6 60 (1.77%) SAS
7 34 (1.00%) WebLogic
8 25 (0.74%) IIS
9 24 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
10 21 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
10 21 (0.62%) nginx
11 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
12 16 (0.47%) WebSphere
13 15 (0.44%) Jupyter
14 14 (0.41%) Mattermost
15 13 (0.38%) Tomcat
16 12 (0.35%) CMS
16 12 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 11 (0.32%) JBoss
17 11 (0.32%) MQSeries
Applications
1 251 (7.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (1.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.91%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.41%) Maya
6 12 (0.35%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 11 (0.32%) Chatbot
8 9 (0.27%) NUKE
9 8 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
10 7 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
11 5 (0.15%) Adobe Captivate
12 3 (0.088%) Trello
13 2 (0.059%) Maple
13 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
13 2 (0.059%) SPSS
14 1 (0.029%) Adobe Illustrator
14 1 (0.029%) InDesign
14 1 (0.029%) Photoshop
14 1 (0.029%) Stata
14 1 (0.029%) Weka
Business Applications
1 36 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.83%) Oracle Payables
3 27 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.80%) Oracle EBS R12
4 25 (0.74%) Oracle Assets
4 25 (0.74%) Oracle General Ledger
5 21 (0.62%) Aladdin
6 20 (0.59%) Endur
7 18 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
8 17 (0.50%) Maximo
8 17 (0.50%) Oracle BPM
8 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
10 13 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
10 13 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
11 9 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
11 9 (0.27%) NetSuite
11 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 9 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 8 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,041 (30.69%) Azure
2 779 (22.97%) AWS
3 624 (18.40%) Power Platform
4 288 (8.49%) GCP
5 267 (7.87%) Azure DevOps
6 231 (6.81%) Snowflake
7 225 (6.63%) GitHub
8 201 (5.93%) Serverless
9 178 (5.25%) Azure Data Factory
10 166 (4.89%) Amazon S3
11 136 (4.01%) dbt
12 135 (3.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 108 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
14 104 (3.07%) AWS Lambda
15 75 (2.21%) Power Automate
16 72 (2.12%) SaaS
17 71 (2.09%) Dynamics 365
18 70 (2.06%) Azure Functions
19 69 (2.03%) PowerApps
20 60 (1.77%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 51 (1.50%) Firewall
2 43 (1.27%) HTTP
3 42 (1.24%) DNS
4 25 (0.74%) Skype
5 20 (0.59%) DHCP
5 20 (0.59%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.56%) Internet
7 17 (0.50%) iSCSI
7 17 (0.50%) SSH
8 16 (0.47%) Fibre Channel
9 15 (0.44%) VPN
10 13 (0.38%) SMTP
11 12 (0.35%) IMAP
11 12 (0.35%) Network Security
11 12 (0.35%) OpenLDAP
11 12 (0.35%) Unified Communications
12 11 (0.32%) SAN
13 10 (0.29%) FTP
14 9 (0.27%) 2G
14 9 (0.27%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 565 (16.66%) Power BI
2 382 (11.26%) SQL Server
3 352 (10.38%) Data Warehouse
4 260 (7.67%) Relational Database
5 254 (7.49%) PostgreSQL
6 232 (6.84%) NoSQL
7 210 (6.19%) Tableau
8 165 (4.86%) Data Lake
9 153 (4.51%) Oracle Database
10 141 (4.16%) Azure SQL Database
11 114 (3.36%) BigQuery
12 111 (3.27%) Big Data
13 103 (3.04%) MongoDB
14 99 (2.92%) Metadata
15 93 (2.74%) MySQL
16 81 (2.39%) Amazon RDS
17 80 (2.36%) Amazon Redshift
18 73 (2.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 72 (2.12%) Power Query
20 66 (1.95%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 375 (11.06%) Git
2 298 (8.79%) JIRA
3 194 (5.72%) Jenkins
4 102 (3.01%) GitLab
5 84 (2.48%) JUnit
6 53 (1.56%) Selenium
7 43 (1.27%) Oracle APEX
8 42 (1.24%) Maven
9 39 (1.15%) Bitbucket
9 39 (1.15%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.03%) SonarQube
11 33 (0.97%) Mockito
12 29 (0.85%) Postman
13 28 (0.83%) ERwin
14 23 (0.68%) Gradle
15 21 (0.62%) Eclipse
16 20 (0.59%) Oracle Forms
17 19 (0.56%) SpecFlow
18 17 (0.50%) Cypress.io
19 15 (0.44%) SoapUI
General
1 1,100 (32.43%) Social Skills
2 979 (28.86%) Finance
3 653 (19.25%) Analytical Skills
4 384 (11.32%) Banking
5 258 (7.61%) Public Sector
6 136 (4.01%) Investment Banking
7 106 (3.13%) Front Office
8 94 (2.77%) Marketing
9 87 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
10 59 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
12 53 (1.56%) Retail
13 50 (1.47%) Financial Institution
14 48 (1.42%) Manufacturing
15 42 (1.24%) Telecoms
16 40 (1.18%) Back Office
17 34 (1.00%) Local Government
18 31 (0.91%) Legal
19 30 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
20 29 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 955 (28.15%) Developer
2 587 (17.31%) Analyst
3 442 (13.03%) Senior
4 433 (12.77%) Data Engineer
5 240 (7.08%) Data Analyst
6 200 (5.90%) Business Analyst
7 189 (5.57%) Lead
8 169 (4.98%) Senior Developer
9 152 (4.48%) Architect
10 151 (4.45%) Consultant
11 143 (4.22%) Java Developer
12 103 (3.04%) Software Engineer
13 91 (2.68%) Python Developer
14 87 (2.56%) Full-Stack Developer
15 86 (2.54%) Azure Engineer
16 81 (2.39%) .NET Developer
17 80 (2.36%) Data Scientist
18 78 (2.30%) C# Developer
19 75 (2.21%) SQL Developer
20 68 (2.00%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (9.11%) .NET
2 245 (7.22%) REST
3 198 (5.84%) Kafka
4 171 (5.04%) HTML
5 163 (4.81%) React
6 162 (4.78%) RESTful
7 153 (4.51%) CSS
8 149 (4.39%) Spring
9 146 (4.30%) XML
10 139 (4.10%) PySpark
11 114 (3.36%) Spring Boot
12 111 (3.27%) Node.js
13 110 (3.24%) SOAP
14 108 (3.18%) JSON
15 106 (3.13%) AngularJS
16 87 (2.56%) Web Services
17 86 (2.54%) .NET Framework
18 75 (2.21%) Pandas
19 57 (1.68%) Middleware
20 54 (1.59%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 164 (4.83%) Cloud Native
2 105 (3.10%) Data Structures
3 100 (2.95%) Product Ownership
4 84 (2.48%) Legacy Systems
5 83 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
6 76 (2.24%) Derivative
7 73 (2.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 71 (2.09%) Algorithms
9 66 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
10 59 (1.74%) Fixed Income
10 59 (1.74%) Management Information System
11 57 (1.68%) Equities
12 50 (1.47%) Replication
13 49 (1.44%) Onboarding
14 46 (1.36%) Distributed Systems
14 46 (1.36%) Market Risk
15 43 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
16 38 (1.12%) Virtual Team
17 36 (1.06%) Self-Motivation
18 32 (0.94%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 317 (9.35%) Linux
2 246 (7.25%) Windows
3 198 (5.84%) Unix
4 74 (2.18%) 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 11 (0.32%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.29%) Apple iOS
12 8 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
13 6 (0.18%) CentOS
14 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.12%) AIX
15 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.059%) Solaris
17 1 (0.029%) MVS
17 1 (0.029%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,000 (29.48%) Agile
2 783 (23.08%) Problem-Solving
3 741 (21.85%) Business Intelligence
4 731 (21.55%) Analytics
5 722 (21.29%) CI/CD
6 698 (20.58%) DevOps
7 655 (19.31%) Data Modelling
8 583 (17.19%) ETL
9 442 (13.03%) Data Pipeline
10 379 (11.17%) Migration
11 363 (10.70%) Visualisation
12 348 (10.26%) Data Engineering
13 322 (9.49%) Scrum
14 316 (9.32%) Data Governance
15 313 (9.23%) Data Analysis
16 292 (8.61%) Validation
17 285 (8.40%) Decision-Making
18 282 (8.31%) Test Automation
19 278 (8.20%) Microservices
20 272 (8.02%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (37.74%) Python
2 547 (16.13%) Java
3 376 (11.08%) C#
4 324 (9.55%) JavaScript
5 249 (7.34%) PL/SQL
6 164 (4.83%) PowerShell
7 126 (3.71%) TypeScript
8 109 (3.21%) C++
9 102 (3.01%) T-SQL
10 100 (2.95%) R
11 96 (2.83%) VBA
12 82 (2.42%) Scala
13 81 (2.39%) Shell Script
14 76 (2.24%) Bash
15 73 (2.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 70 (2.06%) VB
17 46 (1.36%) Go
18 38 (1.12%) Perl
19 31 (0.91%) Bicep
20 30 (0.88%) PHP
Qualifications
1 506 (14.92%) Security Cleared
2 384 (11.32%) SC Cleared
3 322 (9.49%) Degree
4 117 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 68 (2.00%) DV Cleared
6 61 (1.80%) AWS Certification
7 57 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 55 (1.62%) Azure Certification
9 51 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (1.24%) BPSS Clearance
11 27 (0.80%) MCSE
12 26 (0.77%) ISTQB
13 25 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
14 20 (0.59%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 13 (0.38%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
17 12 (0.35%) CBAP
18 11 (0.32%) OCP
19 9 (0.27%) ISEB
19 9 (0.27%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 417 (12.29%) Data Quality
2 234 (6.90%) QA
3 100 (2.95%) GDPR
4 65 (1.92%) Accessibility
5 32 (0.94%) MiFID
6 26 (0.77%) SLA
7 24 (0.71%) EMIR
8 19 (0.56%) WCAG
9 16 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.44%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.44%) SEPA
11 13 (0.38%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 12 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
13 10 (0.29%) PSD2
14 9 (0.27%) Basel III
14 9 (0.27%) PMO
15 8 (0.24%) HL7
15 8 (0.24%) IFRS
15 8 (0.24%) NIST
System Software
1 336 (9.91%) Docker
2 93 (2.74%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.59%) NFS
5 17 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.47%) Postfix
7 15 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
8 14 (0.41%) vSphere
9 12 (0.35%) Dovecot
9 12 (0.35%) Oracle RAC
9 12 (0.35%) Squid
10 10 (0.29%) DFS Replication
10 10 (0.29%) zsh
11 6 (0.18%) HDFS
11 6 (0.18%) Hyper-V
12 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.088%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 318 (9.38%) Kubernetes
2 224 (6.60%) Terraform
3 72 (2.12%) Grafana
4 65 (1.92%) Ansible
5 58 (1.71%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.71%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 17 (0.50%) Kibana
8 17 (0.50%) Puppet
9 16 (0.47%) Control-M
10 14 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
10 14 (0.41%) Progress Chef
10 14 (0.41%) SCCM
11 13 (0.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 13 (0.38%) Proxmox
12 12 (0.35%) ITRS Geneos
12 12 (0.35%) Nessus
12 12 (0.35%) WSUS
13 11 (0.32%) Data Guard
14 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 598 (17.63%) Oracle
2 591 (17.42%) Microsoft
3 286 (8.43%) Databricks
4 131 (3.86%) Google
5 114 (3.36%) Splunk
6 95 (2.80%) SAP
7 59 (1.74%) Talend
7 59 (1.74%) VMware
8 57 (1.68%) ServiceNow
9 55 (1.62%) Salesforce
10 54 (1.59%) IBM
11 42 (1.24%) Informatica
12 40 (1.18%) Dynatrace
13 39 (1.15%) Citrix
14 36 (1.06%) Denodo
15 32 (0.94%) Cisco
16 30 (0.88%) Bloomberg
16 30 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 27 (0.80%) Adobe
17 27 (0.80%) Sybase