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

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,334 3,493 4,179
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.02% 11.22% 10.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.40% 34.72% 34.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,293 2,379 3,055
10th Percentile £329 £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 £613 £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 69 51 63
10th Percentile £21.90 £25.26 £21.38
25th Percentile £31.25 £30.25 £28.39
Median hourly rate £50.00 £41.16 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.49% -8.54% -1.10%
75th Percentile £57.50 £59.38 £57.37
90th Percentile £63.95 £65.00 £74.73
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £39.75 £45.00
% change year-on-year +25.79% -11.67% -

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 9,692 10,060 12,195
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.03% 32.31% 31.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,447 6,509 8,856
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £446
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 £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.76% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 303 268 413
10th Percentile £31.25 £26.25 £32.71
25th Percentile £50.00 £45.89 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year - +7.44% -3.20%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £78.25 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £63.50 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +0.79% +5.00% -

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 2,015 £525 -4.55% 763
South East -6 329 £475 -9.52% 692
North of England -11 324 £436 -10.10% 400
Midlands 0 317 £500 +11.11% 387
West Midlands +3 228 £515 +8.19% 247
North West -2 188 £425 -5.56% 221
South West +2 153 £475 -2.56% 206
Yorkshire -23 122 £465 -7.97% 130
East Midlands -6 86 £450 +12.50% 136
East of England +11 83 £550 +37.50% 175
North East -12 16 £500 +5.26% 52
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
1 151 (4.53%) Apache Airflow
2 135 (4.05%) Apache Spark
3 111 (3.33%) Confluence
4 95 (2.85%) Apache
5 77 (2.31%) SharePoint
6 60 (1.80%) SAS
7 34 (1.02%) WebLogic
8 23 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
9 21 (0.63%) IIS
9 21 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.60%) nginx
11 18 (0.54%) Skype for Business
12 14 (0.42%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
13 13 (0.39%) Tomcat
13 13 (0.39%) WebSphere
14 12 (0.36%) CMS
15 11 (0.33%) JBoss
15 11 (0.33%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 247 (7.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (1.14%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.93%) MS Visio
5 12 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.33%) Maya
7 8 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
8 7 (0.21%) NUKE
8 7 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
9 4 (0.12%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.090%) Trello
11 2 (0.060%) Maple
11 2 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.060%) SPSS
12 1 (0.030%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.030%) InDesign
12 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.030%) Revit
12 1 (0.030%) Stata
Business Applications
1 36 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.84%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.78%) Oracle EBS R12
4 25 (0.75%) Oracle General Ledger
5 24 (0.72%) Oracle Assets
6 21 (0.63%) Aladdin
7 20 (0.60%) Endur
8 18 (0.54%) Oracle Receivables
9 17 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
10 14 (0.42%) Maximo
10 14 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
11 13 (0.39%) Oracle BPM
11 13 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
11 13 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
12 9 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
12 9 (0.27%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
13 8 (0.24%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.24%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,031 (30.92%) Azure
2 766 (22.98%) AWS
3 618 (18.54%) Power Platform
4 282 (8.46%) GCP
5 266 (7.98%) Azure DevOps
6 230 (6.90%) Snowflake
7 225 (6.75%) GitHub
8 200 (6.00%) Serverless
9 180 (5.40%) Azure Data Factory
10 161 (4.83%) Amazon S3
11 133 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 132 (3.96%) dbt
13 110 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
14 102 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
15 75 (2.25%) Power Automate
16 73 (2.19%) SaaS
17 70 (2.10%) Azure Functions
17 70 (2.10%) Dynamics 365
18 69 (2.07%) PowerApps
19 61 (1.83%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.50%) Firewall
2 43 (1.29%) HTTP
3 42 (1.26%) DNS
4 24 (0.72%) Skype
5 20 (0.60%) DHCP
5 20 (0.60%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.51%) SSH
7 16 (0.48%) Internet
7 16 (0.48%) iSCSI
8 15 (0.45%) Fibre Channel
8 15 (0.45%) VPN
9 13 (0.39%) Network Security
9 13 (0.39%) SMTP
10 12 (0.36%) IMAP
10 12 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
11 11 (0.33%) SAN
11 11 (0.33%) Unified Communications
12 10 (0.30%) FTP
13 9 (0.27%) 2G
13 9 (0.27%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 558 (16.74%) Power BI
2 370 (11.10%) SQL Server
3 348 (10.44%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (7.56%) PostgreSQL
5 251 (7.53%) Relational Database
6 227 (6.81%) NoSQL
7 205 (6.15%) Tableau
8 165 (4.95%) Data Lake
9 151 (4.53%) Oracle Database
10 144 (4.32%) Azure SQL Database
11 113 (3.39%) BigQuery
12 108 (3.24%) Big Data
13 100 (3.00%) Metadata
13 100 (3.00%) MongoDB
14 90 (2.70%) MySQL
15 77 (2.31%) Amazon Redshift
16 76 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
17 71 (2.13%) Power Query
17 71 (2.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 64 (1.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 369 (11.07%) Git
2 292 (8.76%) JIRA
3 186 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 101 (3.03%) GitLab
5 83 (2.49%) JUnit
6 53 (1.59%) Selenium
7 43 (1.29%) Oracle APEX
8 41 (1.23%) Maven
9 40 (1.20%) Bitbucket
10 39 (1.17%) Cucumber
11 33 (0.99%) Mockito
12 32 (0.96%) SonarQube
13 29 (0.87%) Postman
14 28 (0.84%) ERwin
15 24 (0.72%) Gradle
16 21 (0.63%) Eclipse
17 20 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
18 18 (0.54%) SpecFlow
19 17 (0.51%) Cypress.io
20 15 (0.45%) SoapUI
General
1 1,075 (32.24%) Social Skills
2 963 (28.88%) Finance
3 633 (18.99%) Analytical Skills
4 372 (11.16%) Banking
5 255 (7.65%) Public Sector
6 132 (3.96%) Investment Banking
7 104 (3.12%) Front Office
8 94 (2.82%) Marketing
9 87 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
10 57 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (1.62%) Retail
12 51 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
13 47 (1.41%) Financial Institution
14 46 (1.38%) Manufacturing
15 40 (1.20%) Telecoms
16 38 (1.14%) Back Office
17 34 (1.02%) Local Government
18 31 (0.93%) Legal
19 30 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
20 27 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 940 (28.19%) Developer
2 572 (17.16%) Analyst
3 432 (12.96%) Senior
4 428 (12.84%) Data Engineer
5 231 (6.93%) Data Analyst
6 194 (5.82%) Business Analyst
7 187 (5.61%) Lead
8 167 (5.01%) Senior Developer
9 147 (4.41%) Consultant
10 145 (4.35%) Architect
11 144 (4.32%) Java Developer
12 103 (3.09%) Software Engineer
13 87 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
13 87 (2.61%) Full-Stack Developer
13 87 (2.61%) Python Developer
14 81 (2.43%) .NET Developer
15 80 (2.40%) Data Scientist
16 77 (2.31%) C# Developer
17 74 (2.22%) SQL Developer
18 67 (2.01%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 310 (9.30%) .NET
2 240 (7.20%) REST
3 194 (5.82%) Kafka
4 165 (4.95%) HTML
5 162 (4.86%) React
6 157 (4.71%) RESTful
7 148 (4.44%) Spring
8 147 (4.41%) CSS
9 141 (4.23%) PySpark
9 141 (4.23%) XML
10 113 (3.39%) Spring Boot
11 108 (3.24%) JSON
12 106 (3.18%) Node.js
13 105 (3.15%) AngularJS
14 103 (3.09%) SOAP
15 84 (2.52%) .NET Framework
16 79 (2.37%) Web Services
17 73 (2.19%) Pandas
18 56 (1.68%) Middleware
19 55 (1.65%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 162 (4.86%) Cloud Native
2 102 (3.06%) Data Structures
3 97 (2.91%) Product Ownership
4 84 (2.52%) Data Protection Act
5 83 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
6 73 (2.19%) Derivative
7 69 (2.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 67 (2.01%) Algorithms
9 66 (1.98%) Analytical Mindset
10 60 (1.80%) Management Information System
11 58 (1.74%) Fixed Income
12 55 (1.65%) Equities
13 50 (1.50%) Replication
14 49 (1.47%) Onboarding
15 45 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
16 43 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
17 42 (1.26%) Market Risk
18 38 (1.14%) Virtual Team
19 35 (1.05%) Self-Motivation
20 32 (0.96%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 310 (9.30%) Linux
2 243 (7.29%) Windows
3 195 (5.85%) Unix
4 71 (2.13%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.72%) Windows Server 2019
6 23 (0.69%) VMS
7 16 (0.48%) Android
8 14 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.42%) Ubuntu
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%) CentOS
14 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.12%) AIX
15 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
16 2 (0.060%) Solaris
17 1 (0.030%) MVS
17 1 (0.030%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 986 (29.57%) Agile
2 761 (22.83%) Problem-Solving
3 730 (21.90%) Business Intelligence
4 720 (21.60%) Analytics
5 708 (21.24%) CI/CD
6 686 (20.58%) DevOps
7 649 (19.47%) Data Modelling
8 575 (17.25%) ETL
9 442 (13.26%) Data Pipeline
10 379 (11.37%) Migration
11 347 (10.41%) Visualisation
12 345 (10.35%) Data Engineering
13 313 (9.39%) Data Governance
13 313 (9.39%) Scrum
14 307 (9.21%) Data Analysis
15 286 (8.58%) Validation
16 281 (8.43%) Decision-Making
17 277 (8.31%) Test Automation
18 272 (8.16%) Microservices
19 271 (8.13%) AI
Programming Languages
1 1,247 (37.40%) Python
2 528 (15.84%) Java
3 375 (11.25%) C#
4 316 (9.48%) JavaScript
5 246 (7.38%) PL/SQL
6 161 (4.83%) PowerShell
7 126 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 104 (3.12%) C++
9 100 (3.00%) T-SQL
10 98 (2.94%) R
11 93 (2.79%) VBA
12 81 (2.43%) Scala
13 78 (2.34%) Shell Script
14 74 (2.22%) Bash
15 71 (2.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 69 (2.07%) VB
17 45 (1.35%) Go
18 37 (1.11%) Perl
19 34 (1.02%) PHP
20 31 (0.93%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 496 (14.88%) Security Cleared
2 375 (11.25%) SC Cleared
3 312 (9.36%) Degree
4 114 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 66 (1.98%) DV Cleared
6 57 (1.71%) AWS Certification
7 56 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 55 (1.65%) Azure Certification
9 50 (1.50%) Microsoft Certification
10 39 (1.17%) BPSS Clearance
11 26 (0.78%) ISTQB
11 26 (0.78%) MCSE
12 24 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
13 20 (0.60%) Oracle Certification
14 14 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.36%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 11 (0.33%) CBAP
16 11 (0.33%) OCP
17 9 (0.27%) ISEB
17 9 (0.27%) OCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 411 (12.33%) Data Quality
2 223 (6.69%) QA
3 98 (2.94%) GDPR
4 64 (1.92%) Accessibility
5 29 (0.87%) MiFID
6 24 (0.72%) EMIR
6 24 (0.72%) SLA
7 18 (0.54%) WCAG
8 15 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 15 (0.45%) SEPA
9 14 (0.42%) ISO 20022
10 13 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
10 13 (0.39%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.39%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 10 (0.30%) PSD2
12 9 (0.27%) PMO
13 7 (0.21%) HL7
14 6 (0.18%) IFRS
14 6 (0.18%) NIST
15 5 (0.15%) COBIT
System Software
1 334 (10.02%) Docker
2 89 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 40 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.57%) NFS
5 16 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
6 15 (0.45%) Postfix
7 13 (0.39%) vSphere
8 12 (0.36%) Dovecot
8 12 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
8 12 (0.36%) Squid
9 10 (0.30%) DFS Replication
10 9 (0.27%) 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 (0.090%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 315 (9.45%) Kubernetes
2 223 (6.69%) Terraform
3 70 (2.10%) Grafana
4 64 (1.92%) Ansible
5 57 (1.71%) Prometheus
6 23 (0.69%) SCOM
7 21 (0.63%) HP SiteScope
8 17 (0.51%) Kibana
8 17 (0.51%) Puppet
9 15 (0.45%) Control-M
10 14 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
10 14 (0.42%) Progress Chef
10 14 (0.42%) SCCM
11 13 (0.39%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 13 (0.39%) Proxmox
12 12 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
12 12 (0.36%) Nessus
12 12 (0.36%) WSUS
13 11 (0.33%) Data Guard
14 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 587 (17.61%) Oracle
2 581 (17.43%) Microsoft
3 288 (8.64%) Databricks
4 131 (3.93%) Google
5 112 (3.36%) Splunk
6 93 (2.79%) SAP
7 59 (1.77%) Talend
8 58 (1.74%) VMware
9 56 (1.68%) Salesforce
9 56 (1.68%) ServiceNow
10 46 (1.38%) IBM
11 41 (1.23%) Informatica
12 40 (1.20%) Dynatrace
13 38 (1.14%) Citrix
14 35 (1.05%) Denodo
15 31 (0.93%) Cisco
16 30 (0.90%) Bloomberg
17 28 (0.84%) Red Hat
18 27 (0.81%) AppDynamics
18 27 (0.81%) Foundry