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

6 months to
6 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 16 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,367 3,518 4,099
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.82% 11.51% 10.69%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.41% 35.35% 34.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,302 2,392 2,999
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £409 £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 £523 £535
% change year-on-year -4.40% -2.24% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 52 62
10th Percentile £22.83 £25.26 £21.34
25th Percentile £31.18 £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 9,785 9,951 11,866
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 31.45% 32.55% 30.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,510 6,469 8,619
10th Percentile £345 £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 £651 £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 313 257 401
10th Percentile £31.25 £26.25 £32.32
25th Percentile £50.00 £45.00 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.36
Median % change year-on-year - +4.24% -1.02%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £63.75 £63.00 £60.50
% change year-on-year +1.19% +4.13% -3.20%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,049 £515 -6.36% 687
North of England -10 328 £436 -8.69% 417
South East -8 324 £475 -9.52% 642
Midlands -1 321 £500 +11.11% 303
West Midlands 0 236 £515 +7.18% 187
North West -1 201 £425 -5.56% 234
South West -1 157 £475 -5.00% 156
Yorkshire -27 113 £475 -5.00% 141
East Midlands -6 83 £450 +14.29% 116
East of England +3 78 £550 +4.76% 160
North East -7 16 £500 +5.26% 48
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
1 152 (4.51%) Apache Airflow
2 144 (4.28%) Apache Spark
3 114 (3.39%) Confluence
4 94 (2.79%) Apache
5 83 (2.47%) SharePoint
6 63 (1.87%) SAS
7 43 (1.28%) WebLogic
8 24 (0.71%) IIS
9 22 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.56%) nginx
11 18 (0.53%) 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
15 10 (0.30%) JBoss
16 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 247 (7.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.05%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.16%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 38 (1.13%) MS Visio
5 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
5 11 (0.33%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 9 (0.27%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.24%) Maya
8 6 (0.18%) Spreadsheet
9 5 (0.15%) NUKE
10 4 (0.12%) Trello
11 3 (0.089%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.089%) Notion
12 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.059%) SPSS
13 1 (0.030%) GNU Octave
13 1 (0.030%) Stata
13 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 36 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.86%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.77%) Oracle General Ledger
4 24 (0.71%) Oracle EBS R12
5 23 (0.68%) Oracle Assets
6 21 (0.62%) Aladdin
7 20 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
7 20 (0.59%) Endur
8 18 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
9 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
10 15 (0.45%) NetSuite
10 15 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
10 15 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
11 14 (0.42%) Maximo
12 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
13 11 (0.33%) Oracle BPM
14 10 (0.30%) Oracle E-Business Tax
15 9 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
15 9 (0.27%) NEC Housing
15 9 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,043 (30.98%) Azure
2 768 (22.81%) AWS
3 618 (18.35%) Power Platform
4 278 (8.26%) GCP
5 264 (7.84%) Azure DevOps
6 236 (7.01%) Snowflake
7 233 (6.92%) GitHub
8 208 (6.18%) Serverless
9 186 (5.52%) Azure Data Factory
10 161 (4.78%) Amazon S3
11 138 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 131 (3.89%) dbt
13 117 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
14 103 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
15 79 (2.35%) Power Automate
16 75 (2.23%) Azure Functions
17 74 (2.20%) PowerApps
18 72 (2.14%) SaaS
19 63 (1.87%) Azure Monitor
19 63 (1.87%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.54%) Firewall
2 45 (1.34%) HTTP
3 44 (1.31%) DNS
4 24 (0.71%) Skype
5 21 (0.62%) DHCP
6 18 (0.53%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.50%) Internet
7 17 (0.50%) SSH
8 15 (0.45%) iSCSI
8 15 (0.45%) Network Security
8 15 (0.45%) VPN
9 14 (0.42%) Fibre Channel
10 12 (0.36%) SMTP
10 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
11 11 (0.33%) IMAP
11 11 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
11 11 (0.33%) SAN
12 10 (0.30%) FTP
13 9 (0.27%) 2G
13 9 (0.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 562 (16.69%) Power BI
2 359 (10.66%) SQL Server
3 346 (10.28%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (7.48%) Relational Database
5 248 (7.37%) PostgreSQL
6 235 (6.98%) NoSQL
7 216 (6.42%) Tableau
8 161 (4.78%) Data Lake
9 157 (4.66%) Oracle Database
10 147 (4.37%) Azure SQL Database
11 113 (3.36%) Big Data
12 112 (3.33%) BigQuery
13 107 (3.18%) Metadata
13 107 (3.18%) MongoDB
14 90 (2.67%) MySQL
15 77 (2.29%) Amazon Redshift
16 74 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
16 74 (2.20%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 72 (2.14%) Power Query
18 63 (1.87%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 377 (11.20%) Git
2 302 (8.97%) JIRA
3 190 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 106 (3.15%) GitLab
5 80 (2.38%) JUnit
6 56 (1.66%) Selenium
7 43 (1.28%) Oracle APEX
8 41 (1.22%) Bitbucket
9 40 (1.19%) Cucumber
10 35 (1.04%) Maven
11 32 (0.95%) Postman
12 30 (0.89%) Mockito
13 29 (0.86%) SonarQube
14 23 (0.68%) ERwin
15 22 (0.65%) Gradle
16 21 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
16 21 (0.62%) SpecFlow
17 20 (0.59%) Eclipse
18 18 (0.53%) SoapUI
19 17 (0.50%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,075 (31.93%) Social Skills
2 959 (28.48%) Finance
3 618 (18.35%) Analytical Skills
4 380 (11.29%) Banking
5 254 (7.54%) Public Sector
6 127 (3.77%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.85%) Front Office
8 86 (2.55%) Marketing
9 80 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
10 58 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 53 (1.57%) Retail
12 50 (1.49%) Financial Institution
12 50 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
13 42 (1.25%) Manufacturing
14 37 (1.10%) Back Office
14 37 (1.10%) Telecoms
15 32 (0.95%) Legal
16 31 (0.92%) Local Government
17 30 (0.89%) Influencing Skills
17 30 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 914 (27.15%) Developer
2 583 (17.32%) Analyst
3 448 (13.31%) Data Engineer
4 438 (13.01%) Senior
5 235 (6.98%) Data Analyst
6 201 (5.97%) Business Analyst
7 187 (5.55%) Lead
8 155 (4.60%) Senior Developer
9 146 (4.34%) Architect
10 141 (4.19%) Java Developer
11 134 (3.98%) Consultant
12 104 (3.09%) Software Engineer
13 90 (2.67%) Azure Engineer
14 89 (2.64%) Data Scientist
15 87 (2.58%) Full-Stack Developer
16 83 (2.47%) Python Developer
17 76 (2.26%) .NET Developer
17 76 (2.26%) C# Developer
18 70 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
18 70 (2.08%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (9.00%) .NET
2 245 (7.28%) REST
3 206 (6.12%) Kafka
4 168 (4.99%) React
5 153 (4.54%) RESTful
6 152 (4.51%) PySpark
7 148 (4.40%) Spring
8 144 (4.28%) HTML
8 144 (4.28%) XML
9 129 (3.83%) CSS
10 118 (3.50%) Spring Boot
11 111 (3.30%) Node.js
12 108 (3.21%) AngularJS
13 105 (3.12%) JSON
14 100 (2.97%) SOAP
15 80 (2.38%) .NET Framework
16 75 (2.23%) Pandas
17 70 (2.08%) Web Services
18 61 (1.81%) Middleware
19 53 (1.57%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 168 (4.99%) Cloud Native
2 104 (3.09%) Data Structures
3 100 (2.97%) Product Ownership
4 87 (2.58%) Data Protection Act
5 80 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
6 73 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
7 69 (2.05%) Derivative
8 66 (1.96%) Algorithms
9 62 (1.84%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 59 (1.75%) Fixed Income
11 55 (1.63%) Management Information System
12 53 (1.57%) Equities
13 48 (1.43%) Replication
14 46 (1.37%) Onboarding
15 44 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
16 43 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
17 37 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 36 (1.07%) Market Risk
19 34 (1.01%) Virtual Team
20 33 (0.98%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 311 (9.24%) Linux
2 253 (7.51%) Windows
3 203 (6.03%) Unix
4 78 (2.32%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
6 22 (0.65%) VMS
7 16 (0.48%) Android
8 14 (0.42%) Ubuntu
9 13 (0.39%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 11 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
10 11 (0.33%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.30%) Apple iOS
12 9 (0.27%) 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 (0.059%) Solaris
16 2 (0.059%) zOS
17 1 (0.030%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 990 (29.40%) Agile
2 767 (22.78%) Problem-Solving
3 742 (22.04%) Analytics
4 728 (21.62%) Business Intelligence
5 722 (21.44%) CI/CD
6 689 (20.46%) DevOps
7 662 (19.66%) Data Modelling
8 583 (17.32%) ETL
9 462 (13.72%) Data Pipeline
10 381 (11.32%) Migration
11 365 (10.84%) Data Engineering
12 344 (10.22%) Visualisation
13 337 (10.01%) Data Governance
14 302 (8.97%) Validation
15 300 (8.91%) Scrum
16 294 (8.73%) Data Analysis
17 290 (8.61%) AI
18 284 (8.43%) Microservices
19 283 (8.41%) Test Automation
20 282 (8.38%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,284 (38.13%) Python
2 530 (15.74%) Java
3 371 (11.02%) C#
4 313 (9.30%) JavaScript
5 251 (7.45%) PL/SQL
6 155 (4.60%) PowerShell
7 131 (3.89%) TypeScript
8 109 (3.24%) R
9 98 (2.91%) T-SQL
10 94 (2.79%) C++
11 90 (2.67%) Scala
12 88 (2.61%) VBA
13 78 (2.32%) Shell Script
14 76 (2.26%) Bash
15 74 (2.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 68 (2.02%) VB
17 47 (1.40%) Go
18 42 (1.25%) Perl
19 34 (1.01%) PHP
20 32 (0.95%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 515 (15.30%) Security Cleared
2 383 (11.38%) SC Cleared
3 314 (9.33%) Degree
4 115 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (1.99%) DV Cleared
6 58 (1.72%) AWS Certification
7 57 (1.69%) Master's Degree
8 51 (1.51%) Azure Certification
9 42 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
10 39 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
11 32 (0.95%) ISTQB
12 23 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
12 23 (0.68%) MCSE
12 23 (0.68%) Oracle Certification
13 19 (0.56%) CBAP
14 15 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 11 (0.33%) OCA
15 11 (0.33%) OCP
15 11 (0.33%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 10 (0.30%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 438 (13.01%) Data Quality
2 240 (7.13%) QA
3 111 (3.30%) GDPR
4 61 (1.81%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.77%) MiFID
6 20 (0.59%) EMIR
6 20 (0.59%) SLA
7 18 (0.53%) WCAG
8 17 (0.50%) 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%) IFRS
15 7 (0.21%) HL7
16 6 (0.18%) Basel III
17 4 (0.12%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 342 (10.16%) Docker
2 95 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.53%) NFS
5 15 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
5 15 (0.45%) Virtual Machines
5 15 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
6 13 (0.39%) vSphere
7 11 (0.33%) Dovecot
7 11 (0.33%) Postfix
7 11 (0.33%) Squid
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
1 326 (9.68%) Kubernetes
2 226 (6.71%) Terraform
3 66 (1.96%) Grafana
4 64 (1.90%) Ansible
5 53 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.71%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.59%) SCCM
9 17 (0.50%) Kibana
9 17 (0.50%) 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
14 11 (0.33%) Nessus
15 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 590 (17.52%) Oracle
2 566 (16.81%) Microsoft
3 318 (9.44%) Databricks
4 136 (4.04%) Google
5 111 (3.30%) Splunk
6 92 (2.73%) SAP
7 62 (1.84%) Salesforce
8 61 (1.81%) ServiceNow
9 60 (1.78%) Talend
10 59 (1.75%) VMware
11 49 (1.46%) IBM
12 46 (1.37%) Informatica
13 42 (1.25%) Citrix
14 41 (1.22%) Dynatrace
15 35 (1.04%) Denodo
16 32 (0.95%) Cisco
16 32 (0.95%) OpenAI
17 30 (0.89%) Bloomberg
18 28 (0.83%) AppDynamics
19 26 (0.77%) Red Hat