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

6 months to
7 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,361 3,511 4,238
As % of all contract jobs in England 11.30% 11.23% 10.67%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.85% 34.66% 33.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,308 2,411 3,088
10th Percentile £325 £350 £363
25th Percentile £406 £413 £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 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 46 60
10th Percentile £23.19 £25.26 £20.98
25th Percentile £32.50 £30.69 £26.65
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.58 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +23.22% -9.83% -
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.75 £57.63
90th Percentile £63.00 £65.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -

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 9,643 10,129 12,530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 32.42% 32.40% 31.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,436 6,627 9,109
10th Percentile £345 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £675
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 284 250 410
10th Percentile £31.05 £27.68 £34.06
25th Percentile £45.00 £46.18 £47.50
Median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -0.53%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.13 £75.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £62.50 £61.00
% change year-on-year - +2.46% -0.81%

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 7 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 7 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 7 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 2,009 £525 -4.55% 3,328
South East +1 355 £475 -9.52% 2,753
Midlands -1 319 £492 +9.33% 540
North of England -10 318 £450 -7.41% 870
West Midlands 0 216 £515 +8.32% 332
North West -4 178 £425 -5.56% 559
South West +2 151 £475 -5.00% 282
Yorkshire -24 125 £481 -5.08% 211
East Midlands -3 98 £430 +7.50% 198
East of England +14 96 £503 +25.63% 282
North East -7 17 £500 +0.50% 106
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
1 148 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
2 131 (3.90%) Apache Spark
3 115 (3.42%) Confluence
4 91 (2.71%) Apache
5 60 (1.79%) SharePoint
6 53 (1.58%) SAS
7 41 (1.22%) WebLogic
8 29 (0.86%) Oracle Workflow
9 22 (0.65%) IIS
9 22 (0.65%) Skype for Business
10 20 (0.60%) nginx
11 19 (0.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.51%) Mattermost
12 17 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
12 17 (0.51%) WebSphere
13 14 (0.42%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.39%) CMS
14 13 (0.39%) JBoss
14 13 (0.39%) Tomcat
15 11 (0.33%) MQSeries
Applications
1 245 (7.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.79%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.83%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.48%) Maya
6 12 (0.36%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 10 (0.30%) NUKE
8 9 (0.27%) Chatbot
9 7 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
9 7 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
10 6 (0.18%) Adobe Captivate
11 3 (0.089%) Trello
12 2 (0.060%) Maple
12 2 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
13 1 (0.030%) GNU Octave
13 1 (0.030%) Photoshop
13 1 (0.030%) Revit
13 1 (0.030%) SPSS
13 1 (0.030%) Stata
13 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 49 (1.46%) Oracle EBS
2 35 (1.04%) Oracle EBS R12
3 34 (1.01%) Oracle Assets
4 30 (0.89%) Oracle Payables
5 29 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
6 27 (0.80%) Oracle General Ledger
7 26 (0.77%) Aladdin
8 23 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
9 22 (0.65%) Endur
10 20 (0.60%) Oracle BPM
11 17 (0.51%) Oracle Receivables
11 17 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
12 14 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
13 13 (0.39%) Maximo
14 12 (0.36%) Oracle E-Business Tax
14 12 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
15 11 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
16 9 (0.27%) SAP HR
17 8 (0.24%) SAP ERP
17 8 (0.24%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,022 (30.41%) Azure
2 767 (22.82%) AWS
3 614 (18.27%) Power Platform
4 287 (8.54%) GCP
5 257 (7.65%) Azure DevOps
6 224 (6.66%) GitHub
7 220 (6.55%) Snowflake
8 191 (5.68%) Serverless
9 183 (5.44%) Azure Data Factory
10 155 (4.61%) Amazon S3
11 136 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 136 (4.05%) dbt
12 106 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
13 97 (2.89%) AWS Lambda
14 82 (2.44%) SaaS
15 73 (2.17%) Power Automate
16 68 (2.02%) Azure Functions
17 67 (1.99%) Dynamics 365
17 67 (1.99%) PowerApps
18 58 (1.73%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.55%) Firewall
2 43 (1.28%) HTTP
3 38 (1.13%) DNS
4 27 (0.80%) Skype
5 19 (0.57%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.54%) Internet
6 18 (0.54%) iSCSI
7 17 (0.51%) Fibre Channel
7 17 (0.51%) SSH
8 16 (0.48%) DHCP
9 15 (0.45%) Unified Communications
10 14 (0.42%) VPN
11 13 (0.39%) SMTP
11 13 (0.39%) SSL
12 12 (0.36%) IMAP
12 12 (0.36%) OpenLDAP
13 11 (0.33%) SAN
14 10 (0.30%) FTP
15 9 (0.27%) 2G
15 9 (0.27%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 560 (16.66%) Power BI
2 373 (11.10%) SQL Server
3 357 (10.62%) Data Warehouse
4 258 (7.68%) PostgreSQL
5 257 (7.65%) Relational Database
6 230 (6.84%) NoSQL
7 220 (6.55%) Tableau
8 173 (5.15%) Data Lake
9 160 (4.76%) Oracle Database
10 138 (4.11%) Azure SQL Database
11 122 (3.63%) BigQuery
12 115 (3.42%) Big Data
13 102 (3.03%) MongoDB
14 91 (2.71%) MySQL
15 90 (2.68%) Metadata
16 78 (2.32%) Amazon Redshift
16 78 (2.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 73 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
18 67 (1.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
19 66 (1.96%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 368 (10.95%) Git
2 285 (8.48%) JIRA
3 193 (5.74%) Jenkins
4 100 (2.98%) GitLab
5 84 (2.50%) JUnit
6 51 (1.52%) Selenium
7 43 (1.28%) Maven
8 41 (1.22%) Cucumber
9 38 (1.13%) SonarQube
10 37 (1.10%) Bitbucket
11 36 (1.07%) Oracle APEX
12 34 (1.01%) Mockito
13 29 (0.86%) Postman
14 28 (0.83%) ERwin
15 22 (0.65%) Eclipse
15 22 (0.65%) Gradle
16 20 (0.60%) SpecFlow
17 18 (0.54%) Oracle Forms
18 17 (0.51%) ER Studio
19 16 (0.48%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,082 (32.19%) Social Skills
2 953 (28.35%) Finance
3 637 (18.95%) Analytical Skills
4 383 (11.40%) Banking
5 254 (7.56%) Public Sector
6 136 (4.05%) Investment Banking
7 107 (3.18%) Front Office
8 98 (2.92%) Marketing
9 81 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
10 58 (1.73%) Retail
11 56 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.58%) Presentation Skills
13 52 (1.55%) Telecoms
14 51 (1.52%) Manufacturing
15 46 (1.37%) Financial Institution
16 36 (1.07%) Back Office
17 34 (1.01%) Local Government
18 32 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
19 31 (0.92%) General Ledger
20 30 (0.89%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 935 (27.82%) Developer
2 603 (17.94%) Analyst
3 447 (13.30%) Senior
4 417 (12.41%) Data Engineer
5 255 (7.59%) Data Analyst
6 196 (5.83%) Business Analyst
7 191 (5.68%) Lead
8 170 (5.06%) Senior Developer
9 155 (4.61%) Architect
10 152 (4.52%) Consultant
11 151 (4.49%) Java Developer
12 101 (3.01%) Software Engineer
13 91 (2.71%) Azure Engineer
14 88 (2.62%) Full-Stack Developer
14 88 (2.62%) Python Developer
15 82 (2.44%) .NET Developer
16 81 (2.41%) C# Developer
16 81 (2.41%) Data Scientist
17 78 (2.32%) SQL Developer
18 70 (2.08%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 301 (8.96%) .NET
2 237 (7.05%) REST
3 199 (5.92%) Kafka
4 183 (5.44%) HTML
5 171 (5.09%) React
6 163 (4.85%) RESTful
7 161 (4.79%) CSS
8 154 (4.58%) Spring
9 139 (4.14%) XML
10 137 (4.08%) PySpark
11 114 (3.39%) Spring Boot
12 110 (3.27%) AngularJS
12 110 (3.27%) SOAP
13 109 (3.24%) Node.js
14 106 (3.15%) JSON
15 92 (2.74%) Web Services
16 84 (2.50%) .NET Framework
17 72 (2.14%) Pandas
18 57 (1.70%) .NET Core
19 54 (1.61%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 151 (4.49%) Cloud Native
2 103 (3.06%) Product Ownership
3 101 (3.01%) Data Structures
4 80 (2.38%) Data Protection Act
5 79 (2.35%) Derivative
6 75 (2.23%) Legacy Systems
7 74 (2.20%) Algorithms
8 70 (2.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 65 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
10 60 (1.79%) Fixed Income
11 56 (1.67%) Equities
11 56 (1.67%) Management Information System
12 53 (1.58%) Onboarding
12 53 (1.58%) Replication
13 49 (1.46%) Market Risk
14 45 (1.34%) Distributed Systems
15 43 (1.28%) Greenfield Project
16 41 (1.22%) Virtual Team
17 38 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
18 30 (0.89%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 316 (9.40%) Linux
2 236 (7.02%) Windows
3 196 (5.83%) Unix
4 70 (2.08%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.74%) Windows Server 2019
6 24 (0.71%) 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 10 (0.30%) Apple iOS
11 9 (0.27%) Windows 10
12 8 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.15%) CentOS
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
14 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
15 3 (0.089%) Solaris
16 1 (0.030%) AIX
16 1 (0.030%) MVS
16 1 (0.030%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 978 (29.10%) Agile
2 763 (22.70%) Problem-Solving
3 737 (21.93%) Business Intelligence
4 707 (21.04%) Analytics
5 696 (20.71%) CI/CD
6 667 (19.85%) DevOps
7 649 (19.31%) Data Modelling
8 559 (16.63%) ETL
9 427 (12.70%) Data Pipeline
10 366 (10.89%) Migration
11 361 (10.74%) Visualisation
12 338 (10.06%) Data Engineering
13 320 (9.52%) Data Analysis
13 320 (9.52%) Scrum
14 302 (8.99%) Data Governance
15 280 (8.33%) Validation
16 279 (8.30%) Microservices
17 277 (8.24%) Decision-Making
18 267 (7.94%) Test Automation
19 261 (7.77%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,280 (38.08%) Python
2 543 (16.16%) Java
3 369 (10.98%) C#
4 328 (9.76%) JavaScript
5 235 (6.99%) PL/SQL
6 175 (5.21%) PowerShell
7 121 (3.60%) TypeScript
8 107 (3.18%) C++
9 98 (2.92%) R
10 94 (2.80%) T-SQL
11 93 (2.77%) VBA
12 85 (2.53%) Scala
13 78 (2.32%) Shell Script
14 77 (2.29%) Bash
15 73 (2.17%) VB
16 69 (2.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 41 (1.22%) Go
18 36 (1.07%) Perl
19 32 (0.95%) Bicep
20 30 (0.89%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 473 (14.07%) Security Cleared
2 352 (10.47%) SC Cleared
3 320 (9.52%) Degree
4 115 (3.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (1.93%) DV Cleared
6 59 (1.76%) AWS Certification
7 56 (1.67%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.67%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 41 (1.22%) BPSS Clearance
10 29 (0.86%) ITIL Certification
11 26 (0.77%) MCSE
12 25 (0.74%) ISTQB
13 17 (0.51%) Oracle Certification
14 14 (0.42%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.39%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 12 (0.36%) CBAP
17 11 (0.33%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
17 11 (0.33%) OCP
18 9 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 416 (12.38%) Data Quality
2 219 (6.52%) QA
3 101 (3.01%) GDPR
4 65 (1.93%) Accessibility
5 34 (1.01%) SLA
6 33 (0.98%) MiFID
7 25 (0.74%) EMIR
8 18 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 18 (0.54%) WCAG
9 17 (0.51%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 13 (0.39%) HIPAA
10 13 (0.39%) ISO 20022
11 12 (0.36%) SEPA
12 11 (0.33%) Basel III
12 11 (0.33%) IFRS
12 11 (0.33%) NIST
13 10 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
14 9 (0.27%) HL7
15 8 (0.24%) COBIT
15 8 (0.24%) PSD2
System Software
1 321 (9.55%) Docker
2 91 (2.71%) Active Directory
3 39 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.62%) NFS
5 18 (0.54%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.48%) Postfix
7 15 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
7 15 (0.45%) vSphere
8 13 (0.39%) Virtual Machines
9 12 (0.36%) Dovecot
9 12 (0.36%) Squid
10 10 (0.30%) DFS Replication
10 10 (0.30%) 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 (0.089%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 300 (8.93%) Kubernetes
2 218 (6.49%) Terraform
3 66 (1.96%) Grafana
4 60 (1.79%) Ansible
5 53 (1.58%) Prometheus
6 26 (0.77%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 18 (0.54%) Control-M
9 17 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
10 16 (0.48%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 16 (0.48%) Puppet
11 15 (0.45%) Kibana
11 15 (0.45%) SCCM
12 13 (0.39%) Proxmox
13 12 (0.36%) Nessus
14 11 (0.33%) Data Guard
14 11 (0.33%) ITRS Geneos
15 10 (0.30%) Progress Chef
15 10 (0.30%) WSUS
16 9 (0.27%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 601 (17.88%) Oracle
2 582 (17.32%) Microsoft
3 287 (8.54%) Databricks
4 140 (4.17%) Google
5 113 (3.36%) Splunk
6 104 (3.09%) SAP
7 58 (1.73%) VMware
8 54 (1.61%) ServiceNow
9 50 (1.49%) Talend
10 48 (1.43%) IBM
10 48 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 45 (1.34%) Informatica
12 39 (1.16%) Dynatrace
13 37 (1.10%) Cisco
14 35 (1.04%) Red Hat
15 31 (0.92%) Citrix
15 31 (0.92%) Denodo
16 28 (0.83%) Adobe
16 28 (0.83%) Sybase
17 25 (0.74%) Bloomberg