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 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 27 17 20
Rank change year-on-year -10 +3 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 318 341 364
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.01% 8.49% 7.53%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.16% 34.58% 30.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 232 221 269
10th Percentile £313 £341 £329
25th Percentile £363 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% -2.80% +1.01%
75th Percentile £528 £550 £600
90th Percentile £636 £622 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 8 10
10th Percentile £28.09 £26.25 £19.03
25th Percentile £36.00 £30.00 £21.31
Median hourly rate £64.50 £38.00 £28.39
Median % change year-on-year +69.74% +33.85% -28.74%
75th Percentile £74.26 £48.13 £45.19
90th Percentile £78.60 £65.00 £45.88
England median hourly rate £50.00 £40.58 £45.00
% change year-on-year +23.22% -9.83% -

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 1,316 986 1,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.99% 24.55% 25.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 914 632 889
10th Percentile £315 £325 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.32% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £540 £561 £587
90th Percentile £638 £625 £650
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 27 54
10th Percentile £36.00 £33.88 £32.26
25th Percentile £49.25 £37.52 -
Median hourly rate £66.50 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.00% - -12.04%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £50.19
90th Percentile £86.00 £81.50 £65.88
England median hourly rate £62.50 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -0.53%

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 7 November 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 7 November 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 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
North West -4 178 £425 -5.56% 500
Yorkshire -24 125 £481 -5.08% 206
North East -7 17 £500 +0.50% 103
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 29 (9.12%) Apache Airflow
2 17 (5.35%) Confluence
3 12 (3.77%) Apache Spark
4 11 (3.46%) Apache
5 7 (2.20%) SharePoint
5 7 (2.20%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.57%) Apache Pig
7 4 (1.26%) Tomcat
8 3 (0.94%) CICS
8 3 (0.94%) Mattermost
8 3 (0.94%) SAS
8 3 (0.94%) Skype for Business
9 2 (0.63%) IIS
9 2 (0.63%) JBoss
9 2 (0.63%) Mule
9 2 (0.63%) Mule ESB
9 2 (0.63%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.31%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.31%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.31%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 33 (10.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.89%) Chatbot
4 5 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.63%) Maple
5 2 (0.63%) MS Visio
6 1 (0.31%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.31%) SPSS
6 1 (0.31%) Stata
Business Applications
1 4 (1.26%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.63%) Kondor
2 2 (0.63%) Maximo
3 1 (0.31%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.31%) Finacle
3 1 (0.31%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.31%) Magento
3 1 (0.31%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.31%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 97 (30.50%) Azure
2 95 (29.87%) AWS
3 75 (23.58%) Power Platform
4 42 (13.21%) GCP
5 29 (9.12%) GitHub
6 27 (8.49%) Serverless
7 18 (5.66%) Snowflake
8 15 (4.72%) AWS Lambda
8 15 (4.72%) dbt
9 14 (4.40%) Azure DevOps
10 13 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 12 (3.77%) Azure Data Factory
12 10 (3.14%) Amazon S3
12 10 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (2.52%) PaaS
14 6 (1.89%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (1.89%) Azure Functions
14 6 (1.89%) Prefect
14 6 (1.89%) SaaS
15 5 (1.57%) Amazon Bedrock
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.57%) Firewall
2 4 (1.26%) SAN
3 3 (0.94%) HTTP
3 3 (0.94%) HTTPS
3 3 (0.94%) Skype
3 3 (0.94%) Softphone
3 3 (0.94%) Unified Communications
3 3 (0.94%) WebEx
4 1 (0.31%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (0.31%) FCoE
4 1 (0.31%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.31%) IP Telephony
4 1 (0.31%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.31%) LAN
4 1 (0.31%) Multicast
4 1 (0.31%) NAS
4 1 (0.31%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.31%) VoIP
4 1 (0.31%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (23.58%) Power BI
2 43 (13.52%) NoSQL
3 42 (13.21%) SQL Server
4 30 (9.43%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (9.12%) Relational Database
6 25 (7.86%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (7.55%) Data Lake
8 22 (6.92%) Tableau
9 20 (6.29%) MongoDB
9 20 (6.29%) MySQL
10 19 (5.97%) Power Query
11 17 (5.35%) BigQuery
12 12 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
12 12 (3.77%) Delta Lake
13 11 (3.46%) DB2
14 10 (3.14%) Hadoop
14 10 (3.14%) Redis
15 9 (2.83%) Amazon Redshift
15 9 (2.83%) Snowflake Schema
16 8 (2.52%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 54 (16.98%) Git
2 38 (11.95%) JIRA
3 33 (10.38%) Jenkins
4 32 (10.06%) GitLab
5 13 (4.09%) Cucumber
5 13 (4.09%) JUnit
6 8 (2.52%) Mockito
7 7 (2.20%) Maven
7 7 (2.20%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (1.89%) Mocha
8 6 (1.89%) Selenium
8 6 (1.89%) SonarQube
9 4 (1.26%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.26%) Liquibase
10 3 (0.94%) Artifactory
10 3 (0.94%) Eclipse
10 3 (0.94%) IntelliJ
10 3 (0.94%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.63%) Gradle
11 2 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
General
1 97 (30.50%) Social Skills
2 78 (24.53%) Finance
3 55 (17.30%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (13.52%) Banking
5 34 (10.69%) Public Sector
6 11 (3.46%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.20%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.20%) Local Government
9 6 (1.89%) Marketing
9 6 (1.89%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (1.89%) Retail
10 4 (1.26%) Billing
10 4 (1.26%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.26%) Wholesale Banking
11 2 (0.63%) Back Office
11 2 (0.63%) Law
11 2 (0.63%) Legal
11 2 (0.63%) Retail Banking
11 2 (0.63%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 94 (29.56%) Developer
2 57 (17.92%) Analyst
3 48 (15.09%) Data Engineer
4 39 (12.26%) Senior
5 33 (10.38%) Data Analyst
6 29 (9.12%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.66%) Software Engineer
8 16 (5.03%) Lead
9 15 (4.72%) Senior Developer
10 14 (4.40%) Data Scientist
11 13 (4.09%) Architect
11 13 (4.09%) AWS Engineer
12 12 (3.77%) Business Analyst
13 11 (3.46%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (3.14%) Business Intelligence Developer
15 9 (2.83%) Full-Stack Developer
16 8 (2.52%) AWS Developer
16 8 (2.52%) AWS DevOps
16 8 (2.52%) Azure Engineer
16 8 (2.52%) Power BI Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 34 (10.69%) Spring
2 33 (10.38%) REST
3 32 (10.06%) Spring Boot
4 27 (8.49%) .NET
5 26 (8.18%) React
5 26 (8.18%) RESTful
6 25 (7.86%) Kafka
7 23 (7.23%) Node.js
8 18 (5.66%) HTML
9 17 (5.35%) CSS
9 17 (5.35%) PySpark
10 12 (3.77%) JMS
10 12 (3.77%) Web Services
11 11 (3.46%) Jest
12 10 (3.14%) SOAP
12 10 (3.14%) XML
13 8 (2.52%) Express.js
13 8 (2.52%) Middleware
14 7 (2.20%) AngularJS
14 7 (2.20%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 28 (8.81%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.03%) Data Protection Act
3 12 (3.77%) Data Structures
3 12 (3.77%) Product Ownership
4 9 (2.83%) Algorithms
4 9 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (2.83%) NHS
5 8 (2.52%) Clustering
5 8 (2.52%) Data Centre
5 8 (2.52%) Mainframe
5 8 (2.52%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 7 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
6 7 (2.20%) Management Information System
7 6 (1.89%) Derivative
7 6 (1.89%) Public Cloud
7 6 (1.89%) Virtual Team
8 5 (1.57%) Distributed Computing
8 5 (1.57%) Onboarding
9 4 (1.26%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.26%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 23 (7.23%) Linux
2 9 (2.83%) Unix
2 9 (2.83%) Windows
3 7 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.31%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.31%) Mac OS X
5 1 (0.31%) MVS
5 1 (0.31%) Solaris
5 1 (0.31%) VMS
5 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
5 1 (0.31%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 97 (30.50%) Agile
2 87 (27.36%) CI/CD
3 82 (25.79%) Business Intelligence
4 71 (22.33%) Analytics
5 70 (22.01%) DevOps
6 69 (21.70%) Problem-Solving
7 63 (19.81%) Data Modelling
8 49 (15.41%) ETL
8 49 (15.41%) Microservices
9 45 (14.15%) Data Pipeline
10 44 (13.84%) Data Engineering
10 44 (13.84%) Visualisation
11 40 (12.58%) Data Governance
12 36 (11.32%) Decision-Making
13 35 (11.01%) Actionable Insight
13 35 (11.01%) Data Visualisation
14 34 (10.69%) Data Science
14 34 (10.69%) Machine Learning
14 34 (10.69%) Stakeholder Management
15 33 (10.38%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 110 (34.59%) Python
2 66 (20.75%) Java
3 27 (8.49%) JavaScript
4 19 (5.97%) C#
5 15 (4.72%) Scala
6 14 (4.40%) PL/SQL
7 11 (3.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 11 (3.46%) T-SQL
8 10 (3.14%) VBA
9 9 (2.83%) TypeScript
10 6 (1.89%) R
11 5 (1.57%) Bash
12 4 (1.26%) Bicep
12 4 (1.26%) Go
12 4 (1.26%) PowerShell
13 3 (0.94%) ANSI SQL
14 2 (0.63%) COBOL
14 2 (0.63%) JCL
14 2 (0.63%) Shell Script
15 1 (0.31%) PHP
Qualifications
1 30 (9.43%) Security Cleared
2 29 (9.12%) Degree
3 22 (6.92%) SC Cleared
4 15 (4.72%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
5 7 (2.20%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.57%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.57%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.57%) ITIL Certification
7 3 (0.94%) CBAP
7 3 (0.94%) CEH
7 3 (0.94%) GIAC
7 3 (0.94%) GWAPT
7 3 (0.94%) MCP
8 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.63%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (0.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.63%) Postgraduate
9 1 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.31%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (12.26%) Data Quality
2 26 (8.18%) QA
3 11 (3.46%) Accessibility
4 8 (2.52%) ISO 20022
4 8 (2.52%) PSD2
4 8 (2.52%) SEPA
5 7 (2.20%) WCAG
6 2 (0.63%) Basel III
6 2 (0.63%) COBIT
6 2 (0.63%) GDPR
6 2 (0.63%) MiFID
7 1 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.31%) COSHH
7 1 (0.31%) PMO
7 1 (0.31%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 42 (13.21%) Docker
2 7 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.31%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.31%) KVM
3 1 (0.31%) NFS
3 1 (0.31%) SRDF
3 1 (0.31%) Veritas Cluster Server
3 1 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.31%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.31%) Xen
Systems Management
1 33 (10.38%) Kubernetes
2 32 (10.06%) Terraform
3 8 (2.52%) Ansible
4 7 (2.20%) Grafana
4 7 (2.20%) Prometheus
5 4 (1.26%) Control-M
6 3 (0.94%) SCOM
7 2 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
8 1 (0.31%) Oracle Identity Manager
8 1 (0.31%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.31%) Progress Chef
8 1 (0.31%) Puppet
Vendors
1 65 (20.44%) Microsoft
2 38 (11.95%) Oracle
3 30 (9.43%) Databricks
4 21 (6.60%) Google
5 17 (5.35%) Splunk
6 8 (2.52%) IBM
7 7 (2.20%) F5
8 6 (1.89%) Red Hat
8 6 (1.89%) SAP
9 5 (1.57%) Citrix
9 5 (1.57%) Cognos
9 5 (1.57%) Informatica
9 5 (1.57%) VMware
10 4 (1.26%) Advent
10 4 (1.26%) Cisco
10 4 (1.26%) Salesforce
10 4 (1.26%) Talend
11 3 (0.94%) HP
11 3 (0.94%) Imperva
11 3 (0.94%) Veracode