SQL Contract Job Trends in the North of England

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 14 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 25 18 23
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 -10
Contract jobs citing SQL 331 301 313
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.15% 8.32% 6.68%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.55% 33.22% 26.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 235 192 231
10th Percentile £313 £336 £319
25th Percentile £365 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.89% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £588
90th Percentile £624 £638 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 9
10th Percentile £28.09 £26.25 £18.62
25th Percentile £36.00 £30.00 £21.31
Median hourly rate £64.50 £38.00 £26.78
Median % change year-on-year +69.74% +41.90% -40.06%
75th Percentile £74.26 £48.13 £45.88
90th Percentile £78.60 £65.00 -
England median hourly rate £49.36 £42.50 £45.88
% change year-on-year +16.14% -7.37% +0.84%

All Programming Languages
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 1,348 906 1,181
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.10% 25.03% 25.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 931 585 872
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £383 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £538 £563 £575
90th Percentile £626 £650 £650
England median daily rate £513 £545 £550
% change year-on-year -5.96% -0.91% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 27 51
10th Percentile £40.25 £34.10 £37.55
25th Percentile £52.50 £43.84 -
Median hourly rate £61.00 £49.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +24.49% +6.11% +11.28%
75th Percentile £73.20 £81.75 £50.13
90th Percentile £74.26 £97.99 £66.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.97% +1.99% -0.79%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

SQL job vacancy trend in the North of England

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the North of England

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 14 December 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the North of England

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 14 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
North West -1 201 £425 -5.56% 292
Yorkshire -25 119 £475 -5.00% 196
North East -17 13 £550 +15.79% 64
SQL
England

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 28 (8.46%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (3.02%) Apache
3 9 (2.72%) Apache Spark
3 9 (2.72%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.42%) Confluence
5 6 (1.81%) SAS
5 6 (1.81%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.51%) Apache Pig
7 4 (1.21%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.60%) IIS
8 2 (0.60%) JBoss
8 2 (0.60%) Mule
8 2 (0.60%) Mule ESB
8 2 (0.60%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
9 1 (0.30%) CICS
9 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (8.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.81%) Chatbot
3 6 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.60%) SPSS
5 1 (0.30%) Stata
Business Applications
1 9 (2.72%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.60%) Maximo
3 1 (0.30%) Finacle
3 1 (0.30%) Magento
3 1 (0.30%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 105 (31.72%) Azure
2 104 (31.42%) AWS
3 76 (22.96%) Power Platform
4 45 (13.60%) GCP
5 30 (9.06%) GitHub
6 27 (8.16%) Serverless
7 18 (5.44%) Snowflake
8 15 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (4.23%) dbt
10 13 (3.93%) Azure Data Factory
10 13 (3.93%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (3.93%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 12 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (3.02%) SaaS
13 9 (2.72%) Amazon S3
14 7 (2.11%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.11%) Amazon EKS
15 6 (1.81%) Azure Functions
15 6 (1.81%) PaaS
15 6 (1.81%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.11%) Firewall
2 4 (1.21%) SAN
3 3 (0.91%) HTTP
3 3 (0.91%) HTTPS
4 2 (0.60%) TCP/IP
5 1 (0.30%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.30%) DNS
5 1 (0.30%) FCoE
5 1 (0.30%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.30%) Internet
5 1 (0.30%) IP Telephony
5 1 (0.30%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.30%) LAN
5 1 (0.30%) Multicast
5 1 (0.30%) NAS
5 1 (0.30%) SSL
5 1 (0.30%) VoIP
5 1 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (22.66%) Power BI
2 44 (13.29%) SQL Server
3 38 (11.48%) NoSQL
4 27 (8.16%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (8.16%) Relational Database
5 24 (7.25%) Data Lake
6 23 (6.95%) MySQL
6 23 (6.95%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (5.74%) Tableau
8 18 (5.44%) Power Query
9 15 (4.53%) BigQuery
10 14 (4.23%) DB2
10 14 (4.23%) MongoDB
11 13 (3.93%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 12 (3.63%) Azure SQL Database
12 12 (3.63%) Snowflake Schema
13 10 (3.02%) Delta Lake
13 10 (3.02%) Redis
14 9 (2.72%) Hadoop
15 8 (2.42%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 44 (13.29%) Git
2 38 (11.48%) JIRA
3 35 (10.57%) GitLab
3 35 (10.57%) Jenkins
4 17 (5.14%) Cucumber
5 12 (3.63%) JUnit
6 10 (3.02%) Postman
6 10 (3.02%) Selenium
7 8 (2.42%) REST Assured
8 7 (2.11%) Mockito
8 7 (2.11%) TestRail
9 6 (1.81%) Mocha
10 4 (1.21%) Liquibase
10 4 (1.21%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.91%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.91%) Maven
12 2 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.60%) Gradle
12 2 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
12 2 (0.60%) SonarQube
General
1 99 (29.91%) Social Skills
2 86 (25.98%) Finance
3 68 (20.54%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (15.71%) Banking
5 31 (9.37%) Public Sector
6 13 (3.93%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.32%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.11%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.11%) Marketing
9 6 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (1.51%) Local Government
10 5 (1.51%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.21%) Billing
11 4 (1.21%) Wholesale Banking
12 3 (0.91%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.91%) Law
12 3 (0.91%) Legal
12 3 (0.91%) Military
13 2 (0.60%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 100 (30.21%) Developer
2 58 (17.52%) Analyst
3 53 (16.01%) Data Engineer
4 43 (12.99%) Senior
5 35 (10.57%) Data Analyst
6 28 (8.46%) Java Developer
7 20 (6.04%) Software Engineer
8 19 (5.74%) Lead
9 14 (4.23%) Senior Developer
10 13 (3.93%) AWS Engineer
10 13 (3.93%) Data Scientist
11 11 (3.32%) Architect
11 11 (3.32%) DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.02%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 9 (2.72%) Azure Engineer
13 9 (2.72%) Business Analyst
13 9 (2.72%) Test Engineer
14 8 (2.42%) AWS DevOps
14 8 (2.42%) Full-Stack Developer
14 8 (2.42%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (13.90%) REST
2 40 (12.08%) .NET
3 34 (10.27%) Spring
3 34 (10.27%) Spring Boot
4 28 (8.46%) Kafka
5 26 (7.85%) React
6 19 (5.74%) RESTful
7 17 (5.14%) PySpark
8 16 (4.83%) Node.js
9 15 (4.53%) HTML
10 14 (4.23%) XML
11 13 (3.93%) CSS
11 13 (3.93%) JMS
12 11 (3.32%) Middleware
13 10 (3.02%) Jest
14 9 (2.72%) AngularJS
14 9 (2.72%) JSON
15 8 (2.42%) Express.js
15 8 (2.42%) Hibernate
15 8 (2.42%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.67%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.44%) Data Protection Act
3 12 (3.63%) Data Structures
4 11 (3.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 10 (3.02%) Clustering
5 10 (3.02%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.02%) Product Ownership
6 9 (2.72%) Algorithms
6 9 (2.72%) Data Centre
7 8 (2.42%) Virtual Team
8 7 (2.11%) Mainframe
8 7 (2.11%) NHS
9 6 (1.81%) Legacy Systems
9 6 (1.81%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.51%) Distributed Computing
10 5 (1.51%) Legacy Applications
10 5 (1.51%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
11 4 (1.21%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.34%) Linux
2 13 (3.93%) Windows
3 8 (2.42%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.51%) Unix
5 3 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.30%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.30%) MVS
7 1 (0.30%) Solaris
7 1 (0.30%) VMS
7 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 102 (30.82%) Agile
2 90 (27.19%) CI/CD
3 82 (24.77%) Business Intelligence
4 75 (22.66%) DevOps
4 75 (22.66%) Problem-Solving
5 74 (22.36%) Analytics
6 67 (20.24%) Data Modelling
7 52 (15.71%) ETL
8 51 (15.41%) Microservices
9 43 (12.99%) Visualisation
10 42 (12.69%) Data Pipeline
11 41 (12.39%) Data Governance
12 40 (12.08%) Actionable Insight
13 39 (11.78%) Data Engineering
13 39 (11.78%) Stakeholder Management
14 38 (11.48%) Containerisation
15 35 (10.57%) Data Analysis
15 35 (10.57%) Test Automation
16 33 (9.97%) Decision-Making
17 32 (9.67%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 116 (35.05%) Python
2 72 (21.75%) Java
3 27 (8.16%) JavaScript
4 23 (6.95%) C#
5 15 (4.53%) PL/SQL
6 12 (3.63%) Scala
6 12 (3.63%) VBA
7 11 (3.32%) T-SQL
7 11 (3.32%) TypeScript
8 10 (3.02%) PHP
9 8 (2.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 6 (1.81%) R
11 5 (1.51%) Bash
11 5 (1.51%) Bicep
11 5 (1.51%) Go
12 3 (0.91%) Delphi
13 2 (0.60%) Groovy
13 2 (0.60%) Rust
14 1 (0.30%) LookML
14 1 (0.30%) SAS Macro
Qualifications
1 36 (10.88%) Degree
2 26 (7.85%) Security Cleared
3 18 (5.44%) Computer Science Degree
4 14 (4.23%) SC Cleared
5 9 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (2.42%) Master's Degree
7 5 (1.51%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.21%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.91%) CEH
9 3 (0.91%) GIAC
9 3 (0.91%) GWAPT
9 3 (0.91%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.91%) MCP
10 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.60%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.60%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.60%) Postgraduate
11 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.30%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (12.69%) Data Quality
2 36 (10.88%) QA
3 11 (3.32%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.32%) ISO 20022
3 11 (3.32%) PSD2
3 11 (3.32%) SEPA
4 7 (2.11%) WCAG
5 4 (1.21%) GDPR
6 3 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.91%) PMO
7 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.30%) HL7
7 1 (0.30%) PERC
7 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.30%) SLA
System Software
1 51 (15.41%) Docker
2 5 (1.51%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.30%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.30%) KVM
4 1 (0.30%) NFS
4 1 (0.30%) SRDF
4 1 (0.30%) Veritas Cluster Server
4 1 (0.30%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.30%) vSphere
4 1 (0.30%) Xen
Systems Management
1 40 (12.08%) Kubernetes
2 31 (9.37%) Terraform
3 11 (3.32%) Prometheus
4 10 (3.02%) Grafana
5 9 (2.72%) Ansible
6 4 (1.21%) SCCM
6 4 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
7 2 (0.60%) Control-M
7 2 (0.60%) Kiali
8 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle Identity Manager
8 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.30%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.30%) Puppet
Vendors
1 62 (18.73%) Microsoft
2 39 (11.78%) Oracle
3 28 (8.46%) Databricks
4 19 (5.74%) Google
5 18 (5.44%) Splunk
6 12 (3.63%) ServiceNow
7 9 (2.72%) Advent
7 9 (2.72%) IBM
8 7 (2.11%) F5
9 6 (1.81%) Citrix
9 6 (1.81%) Informatica
9 6 (1.81%) VMware
10 5 (1.51%) Salesforce
10 5 (1.51%) SAP
11 4 (1.21%) Cognos
11 4 (1.21%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.21%) MuleSoft
11 4 (1.21%) Talend
12 3 (0.91%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.91%) Imperva