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 13 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,206 3,575 4,404
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.49% 11.18% 10.80%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.23% 34.41% 33.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,209 2,485 3,224
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £408 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.54% -2.73% -
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 45 60
10th Percentile £24.14 £25.26 £21.28
25th Percentile £32.85 £30.00 £27.02
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% +0.36%
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.75 £62.44
90th Percentile - £60.00 £78.08
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £37.75 £45.00
% change year-on-year +32.45% -16.11% +0.36%

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 9,101 10,388 13,051
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.61% 32.49% 32.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,093 6,876 9,501
10th Percentile £346 £351 £364
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 £630 £650 £675
90th Percentile £750 £788 £788
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.76% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 264 289 413
10th Percentile £31.25 £30.00 £34.40
25th Percentile £42.25 £47.00 £48.31
Median hourly rate £56.25 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.46% +4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £82.00
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -15.38% +4.00% +4.45%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 -1 1,919 £525 -4.55% 1,197
South East +3 348 £490 -6.67% 873
North of England -7 309 £450 -7.22% 545
Midlands 0 303 £488 +14.82% 311
West Midlands +4 208 £507 +12.67% 184
North West -3 171 £433 -3.78% 324
South West +8 128 £475 -5.00% 226
Yorkshire -20 123 £475 -5.09% 158
East of England +17 93 £502 +33.73% 173
East Midlands -6 90 £410 +2.50% 125
North East -3 17 £450 -9.55% 67
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
1 143 (4.46%) Apache Airflow
2 118 (3.68%) Apache Spark
3 111 (3.46%) Confluence
4 81 (2.53%) Apache
5 52 (1.62%) SharePoint
6 43 (1.34%) SAS
7 40 (1.25%) Oracle Workflow
8 34 (1.06%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.94%) Skype for Business
10 22 (0.69%) IIS
10 22 (0.69%) Mattermost
11 21 (0.66%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 20 (0.62%) WebSphere
13 18 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
14 16 (0.50%) nginx
15 15 (0.47%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 15 (0.47%) Tomcat
16 13 (0.41%) JBoss
17 11 (0.34%) Oracle Application Server
18 10 (0.31%) MQSeries
Applications
1 226 (7.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 29 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 18 (0.56%) Maya
6 12 (0.37%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 12 (0.37%) NUKE
7 10 (0.31%) Chatbot
8 8 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
9 7 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
10 6 (0.19%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.094%) Trello
12 2 (0.062%) Maple
12 2 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
12 2 (0.062%) SPSS
12 2 (0.062%) Stata
13 1 (0.031%) Adobe Illustrator
13 1 (0.031%) InDesign
13 1 (0.031%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.031%) Revit
Business Applications
1 67 (2.09%) Oracle EBS
2 45 (1.40%) Oracle EBS R12
3 42 (1.31%) Oracle Assets
4 36 (1.12%) Oracle Payables
5 34 (1.06%) Oracle General Ledger
6 32 (1.00%) Aladdin
7 29 (0.90%) Endur
8 27 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
9 22 (0.69%) Oracle BPM
10 21 (0.66%) Oracle ERP
11 20 (0.62%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 17 (0.53%) Oracle Financials
12 17 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
12 17 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
13 12 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
14 11 (0.34%) Maximo
14 11 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 9 (0.28%) FLEXCUBE
15 9 (0.28%) thinkFolio
16 8 (0.25%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 948 (29.57%) Azure
2 700 (21.83%) AWS
3 567 (17.69%) Power Platform
4 272 (8.48%) GCP
5 213 (6.64%) Azure DevOps
6 194 (6.05%) Snowflake
7 188 (5.86%) GitHub
8 168 (5.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 159 (4.96%) Serverless
10 132 (4.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 131 (4.09%) dbt
12 130 (4.05%) Amazon S3
13 88 (2.74%) GitHub Actions
14 78 (2.43%) AWS Lambda
15 73 (2.28%) SaaS
16 62 (1.93%) Dynamics 365
17 58 (1.81%) Power Automate
17 58 (1.81%) PowerApps
18 55 (1.72%) Azure Functions
19 54 (1.68%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.72%) Firewall
2 41 (1.28%) DNS
3 40 (1.25%) HTTP
4 33 (1.03%) Skype
5 22 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.62%) DHCP
6 20 (0.62%) Unified Communications
7 19 (0.59%) iSCSI
8 18 (0.56%) Fibre Channel
9 17 (0.53%) Internet
9 17 (0.53%) SSH
10 13 (0.41%) SMTP
10 13 (0.41%) VPN
11 12 (0.37%) IMAP
11 12 (0.37%) OpenLDAP
12 10 (0.31%) FTP
12 10 (0.31%) SAN
12 10 (0.31%) SSL
13 9 (0.28%) Softphone
13 9 (0.28%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 515 (16.06%) Power BI
2 378 (11.79%) SQL Server
3 329 (10.26%) Data Warehouse
4 248 (7.74%) PostgreSQL
5 232 (7.24%) Relational Database
6 210 (6.55%) NoSQL
7 205 (6.39%) Tableau
8 163 (5.08%) Data Lake
9 160 (4.99%) Oracle Database
10 128 (3.99%) Azure SQL Database
11 121 (3.77%) BigQuery
12 115 (3.59%) Big Data
13 97 (3.03%) MongoDB
14 81 (2.53%) Metadata
15 78 (2.43%) MySQL
16 72 (2.25%) Hadoop
17 71 (2.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 68 (2.12%) Amazon Redshift
19 66 (2.06%) Delta Lake
20 64 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 315 (9.83%) Git
2 265 (8.27%) JIRA
3 169 (5.27%) Jenkins
4 85 (2.65%) GitLab
5 77 (2.40%) JUnit
6 48 (1.50%) Maven
7 43 (1.34%) Cucumber
8 42 (1.31%) Selenium
9 41 (1.28%) SonarQube
10 37 (1.15%) Mockito
11 33 (1.03%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.87%) ERwin
13 24 (0.75%) Postman
14 23 (0.72%) Gradle
15 18 (0.56%) Eclipse
15 18 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
15 18 (0.56%) Sonatype Nexus
15 18 (0.56%) SpecFlow
15 18 (0.56%) Visual Studio
16 17 (0.53%) ER Studio
General
1 1,030 (32.13%) Social Skills
2 936 (29.20%) Finance
3 599 (18.68%) Analytical Skills
4 372 (11.60%) Banking
5 237 (7.39%) Public Sector
6 131 (4.09%) Investment Banking
7 119 (3.71%) Front Office
8 97 (3.03%) Marketing
9 69 (2.15%) Documentation Skills
10 65 (2.03%) Retail
11 56 (1.75%) Presentation Skills
12 52 (1.62%) Manufacturing
13 51 (1.59%) Financial Institution
14 49 (1.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 49 (1.53%) Telecoms
15 40 (1.25%) General Ledger
16 38 (1.19%) Back Office
17 31 (0.97%) Automotive
17 31 (0.97%) Local Government
18 29 (0.90%) Military
Job Titles
1 851 (26.54%) Developer
2 603 (18.81%) Analyst
3 418 (13.04%) Senior
4 377 (11.76%) Data Engineer
5 244 (7.61%) Data Analyst
6 203 (6.33%) Business Analyst
7 175 (5.46%) Lead
8 159 (4.96%) Architect
9 148 (4.62%) Consultant
10 139 (4.34%) Java Developer
11 135 (4.21%) Senior Developer
12 92 (2.87%) Azure Engineer
12 92 (2.87%) Software Engineer
13 90 (2.81%) .NET Developer
13 90 (2.81%) Data Scientist
14 78 (2.43%) SQL Developer
15 77 (2.40%) C# Developer
16 74 (2.31%) Python Developer
17 73 (2.28%) Full-Stack Developer
18 70 (2.18%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 290 (9.05%) .NET
2 202 (6.30%) REST
3 190 (5.93%) Kafka
4 169 (5.27%) HTML
5 152 (4.74%) React
6 144 (4.49%) CSS
6 144 (4.49%) Spring
7 130 (4.05%) RESTful
8 122 (3.81%) PySpark
9 121 (3.77%) XML
10 113 (3.52%) SOAP
11 110 (3.43%) Spring Boot
12 98 (3.06%) AngularJS
13 96 (2.99%) JSON
13 96 (2.99%) Web Services
14 95 (2.96%) Node.js
15 77 (2.40%) .NET Framework
16 60 (1.87%) .NET Core
17 58 (1.81%) Middleware
18 57 (1.78%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 139 (4.34%) Cloud Native
2 105 (3.28%) Data Structures
3 93 (2.90%) Derivative
3 93 (2.90%) Product Ownership
4 82 (2.56%) Data Protection Act
5 80 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
6 75 (2.34%) Algorithms
7 65 (2.03%) Fixed Income
8 63 (1.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 62 (1.93%) Management Information System
10 56 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
10 56 (1.75%) Onboarding
11 52 (1.62%) Equities
12 51 (1.59%) Market Risk
12 51 (1.59%) Replication
13 50 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
14 49 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
15 37 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
15 37 (1.15%) Virtual Team
16 30 (0.94%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 311 (9.70%) Linux
2 228 (7.11%) Windows
3 181 (5.65%) Unix
4 66 (2.06%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.87%) VMS
6 26 (0.81%) Windows Server 2019
7 15 (0.47%) Android
8 14 (0.44%) Ubuntu
9 12 (0.37%) Amazon Linux
9 12 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 11 (0.34%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
12 9 (0.28%) Apple iOS
13 6 (0.19%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.16%) AIX
14 5 (0.16%) Solaris
15 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.094%) CentOS
16 3 (0.094%) Mac OS X
17 2 (0.062%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 889 (27.73%) Agile
2 705 (21.99%) Problem-Solving
3 692 (21.58%) Business Intelligence
4 645 (20.12%) Analytics
5 607 (18.93%) CI/CD
6 594 (18.53%) DevOps
7 590 (18.40%) Data Modelling
8 524 (16.34%) ETL
9 383 (11.95%) Data Pipeline
10 359 (11.20%) Migration
11 338 (10.54%) Visualisation
12 311 (9.70%) Data Engineering
13 292 (9.11%) Data Analysis
14 288 (8.98%) Scrum
15 278 (8.67%) Data Governance
16 257 (8.02%) Data Science
17 256 (7.99%) Decision-Making
18 249 (7.77%) Validation
19 246 (7.67%) Microservices
20 243 (7.58%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,224 (38.18%) Python
2 500 (15.60%) Java
3 353 (11.01%) C#
4 285 (8.89%) JavaScript
5 223 (6.96%) PL/SQL
6 180 (5.61%) PowerShell
7 107 (3.34%) C++
8 98 (3.06%) R
9 95 (2.96%) TypeScript
10 87 (2.71%) T-SQL
11 83 (2.59%) VBA
12 80 (2.50%) Bash
13 79 (2.46%) Scala
14 75 (2.34%) VB
15 68 (2.12%) Shell Script
16 64 (2.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 42 (1.31%) Go
18 37 (1.15%) Perl
19 30 (0.94%) Bicep
19 30 (0.94%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 415 (12.94%) Security Cleared
2 313 (9.76%) Degree
3 301 (9.39%) SC Cleared
4 106 (3.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 64 (2.00%) DV Cleared
6 59 (1.84%) Master's Degree
7 58 (1.81%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.68%) AWS Certification
9 51 (1.59%) Microsoft Certification
10 37 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
11 33 (1.03%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.84%) MCSE
13 15 (0.47%) ISTQB
13 15 (0.47%) Oracle Certification
13 15 (0.47%) PhD
13 15 (0.47%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 12 (0.37%) CBAP
15 11 (0.34%) OCP
16 10 (0.31%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
16 10 (0.31%) VCP5
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 372 (11.60%) Data Quality
2 194 (6.05%) QA
3 99 (3.09%) GDPR
4 52 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 41 (1.28%) SLA
6 36 (1.12%) MiFID
7 29 (0.90%) EMIR
8 19 (0.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 19 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.53%) Basel III
10 15 (0.47%) SEPA
11 14 (0.44%) IFRS
12 13 (0.41%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.41%) WCAG
13 12 (0.37%) HIPAA
14 11 (0.34%) IFRS 9
14 11 (0.34%) NIST
15 10 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.31%) Basel II
16 9 (0.28%) HL7
System Software
1 264 (8.23%) Docker
2 90 (2.81%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.37%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.69%) NFS
5 21 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
5 21 (0.66%) VMware ESXi
6 18 (0.56%) Postfix
6 18 (0.56%) vSphere
7 13 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
8 12 (0.37%) Dovecot
8 12 (0.37%) Squid
9 10 (0.31%) DFS Replication
9 10 (0.31%) zsh
10 8 (0.25%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.19%) HDFS
12 5 (0.16%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 5 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.12%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
14 3 (0.094%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 254 (7.92%) Kubernetes
2 208 (6.49%) Terraform
3 65 (2.03%) Grafana
4 54 (1.68%) Ansible
5 49 (1.53%) Prometheus
6 31 (0.97%) SCOM
7 21 (0.66%) HP SiteScope
8 19 (0.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 18 (0.56%) Control-M
10 15 (0.47%) Kibana
10 15 (0.47%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 15 (0.47%) SCCM
11 14 (0.44%) Data Guard
12 13 (0.41%) ITRS Geneos
12 13 (0.41%) Proxmox
13 12 (0.37%) Nessus
13 12 (0.37%) Puppet
14 9 (0.28%) vCenter Server
15 8 (0.25%) Progress Chef
15 8 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 577 (18.00%) Oracle
2 555 (17.31%) Microsoft
3 263 (8.20%) Databricks
4 136 (4.24%) Google
5 123 (3.84%) Splunk
6 107 (3.34%) SAP
7 67 (2.09%) VMware
8 50 (1.56%) Informatica
9 49 (1.53%) Cisco
9 49 (1.53%) ServiceNow
10 48 (1.50%) IBM
11 42 (1.31%) Salesforce
12 40 (1.25%) Dynatrace
13 37 (1.15%) Red Hat
14 36 (1.12%) Talend
15 29 (0.90%) Citrix
16 28 (0.87%) Adobe
17 26 (0.81%) Sybase
18 24 (0.75%) AppDynamics
18 24 (0.75%) Veeam