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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 21 16 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 311 359 421
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England 7.94% 8.75% 8.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.62% 35.02% 32.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 241 305
10th Percentile £313 £350 £363
25th Percentile £363 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £525 £554 £625
90th Percentile £600 £610 £650
England median daily rate £500 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -7.83% -1.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 6 12
10th Percentile £24.13 £28.75 £21.31
25th Percentile £26.11 £32.44 £22.14
Median hourly rate £30.31 £38.00 £28.60
Median % change year-on-year -20.24% +32.87% +48.61%
75th Percentile £33.61 £42.50 £43.80
90th Percentile £35.04 £53.75 £45.88
England median hourly rate £50.00 £41.50 £42.66
% change year-on-year +20.48% -2.72% +21.89%

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 1,126 1,025 1,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.76% 24.97% 25.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 798 701 916
10th Percentile £313 £350 £353
25th Percentile £376 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% -2.50% -3.85%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £613
90th Percentile £607 £638 £675
England median daily rate £513 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.82% - -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 27 45
10th Percentile £29.28 £35.85 £26.91
25th Percentile £40.00 £37.55 £45.88
Median hourly rate £66.50 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.00% - +3.36%
75th Percentile £80.88 £63.75 £50.25
90th Percentile £89.38 £76.37 £70.25
England median hourly rate £55.00 £65.00 £64.00
% change year-on-year -15.38% +1.56% +12.28%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Job postings citing SQL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Job vacancy trend for SQL 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 15 September 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 +2 177 £443 -1.67% 388
Yorkshire -17 116 £469 -6.25% 200
North East -3 20 £465 -4.12% 73
SQL
England

SQL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 20 (6.43%) Confluence
2 19 (6.11%) Apache Airflow
3 13 (4.18%) Apache
4 11 (3.54%) Tomcat
4 11 (3.54%) WebSphere
5 9 (2.89%) SharePoint
6 8 (2.57%) Apache Spark
6 8 (2.57%) Mattermost
6 8 (2.57%) Skype for Business
7 6 (1.93%) JBoss
7 6 (1.93%) WebLogic
8 4 (1.29%) Apache Pig
8 4 (1.29%) SAS
9 3 (0.96%) CICS
9 3 (0.96%) nginx
9 3 (0.96%) OpenEdge
10 2 (0.64%) IIS
10 2 (0.64%) Mule
10 2 (0.64%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.32%) Anypoint
Applications
1 29 (9.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 4 (1.29%) Chatbot
4 3 (0.96%) MS Visio
5 2 (0.64%) Maple
5 2 (0.64%) Microsoft Office
6 1 (0.32%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.32%) SPSS
6 1 (0.32%) Stata
Business Applications
1 4 (1.29%) Kondor
2 2 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.64%) Maximo
3 1 (0.32%) Advent Geneva
3 1 (0.32%) Finacle
3 1 (0.32%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.32%) Magento
3 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 92 (29.58%) AWS
2 88 (28.30%) Azure
3 72 (23.15%) Power Platform
4 49 (15.76%) GCP
5 20 (6.43%) GitHub
6 19 (6.11%) Serverless
7 16 (5.14%) Snowflake
8 15 (4.82%) dbt
9 12 (3.86%) Azure DevOps
10 11 (3.54%) Azure Data Factory
11 10 (3.22%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (2.89%) Amazon S3
13 8 (2.57%) PaaS
14 7 (2.25%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 6 (1.93%) Amazon EC2
15 6 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
15 6 (1.93%) Azure Functions
15 6 (1.93%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (1.93%) SaaS
16 5 (1.61%) Cloud Computing
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.57%) Skype
1 8 (2.57%) Softphone
1 8 (2.57%) Unified Communications
1 8 (2.57%) WebEx
2 4 (1.29%) Firewall
2 4 (1.29%) SAN
3 3 (0.96%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.64%) HTTP
4 2 (0.64%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.32%) Cisco Nexus
5 1 (0.32%) DNS
5 1 (0.32%) FCoE
5 1 (0.32%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (0.32%) IP Telephony
5 1 (0.32%) iSCSI
5 1 (0.32%) LAN
5 1 (0.32%) NAS
5 1 (0.32%) SSL
5 1 (0.32%) VoIP
5 1 (0.32%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (22.51%) Power BI
2 51 (16.40%) SQL Server
3 40 (12.86%) NoSQL
3 40 (12.86%) PostgreSQL
4 32 (10.29%) Relational Database
5 30 (9.65%) MongoDB
6 29 (9.32%) Data Warehouse
7 23 (7.40%) Tableau
8 22 (7.07%) MySQL
9 18 (5.79%) BigQuery
9 18 (5.79%) Data Lake
10 15 (4.82%) Power Query
11 14 (4.50%) Azure SQL Database
12 12 (3.86%) Amazon Redshift
13 11 (3.54%) DB2
13 11 (3.54%) Delta Lake
14 9 (2.89%) Hadoop
15 8 (2.57%) Looker
15 8 (2.57%) RDBMS
15 8 (2.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 57 (18.33%) Git
2 47 (15.11%) Jenkins
3 45 (14.47%) JIRA
4 30 (9.65%) GitLab
5 22 (7.07%) JUnit
6 17 (5.47%) Mockito
7 13 (4.18%) Cucumber
8 11 (3.54%) Gradle
8 11 (3.54%) Liquibase
8 11 (3.54%) Maven
8 11 (3.54%) Sonatype Nexus
9 10 (3.22%) SonarQube
10 9 (2.89%) Bitbucket
11 7 (2.25%) Artifactory
12 5 (1.61%) Selenium
13 4 (1.29%) CircleCI
13 4 (1.29%) gulp
14 3 (0.96%) Eclipse
14 3 (0.96%) REST Assured
14 3 (0.96%) Subversion
General
1 88 (28.30%) Social Skills
2 82 (26.37%) Finance
3 48 (15.43%) Analytical Skills
4 43 (13.83%) Banking
5 42 (13.50%) Public Sector
6 15 (4.82%) Marketing
7 10 (3.22%) Manufacturing
7 10 (3.22%) Telecoms
8 9 (2.89%) Electronics
9 8 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (2.25%) Retail
11 5 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
11 5 (1.61%) Local Government
12 4 (1.29%) Financial Institution
13 3 (0.96%) Back Office
13 3 (0.96%) Billing
13 3 (0.96%) Legal
14 2 (0.64%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.64%) Military
14 2 (0.64%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 91 (29.26%) Developer
2 55 (17.68%) Analyst
3 37 (11.90%) Data Engineer
4 32 (10.29%) Java Developer
5 28 (9.00%) Senior
6 26 (8.36%) Data Analyst
7 19 (6.11%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.50%) Architect
8 14 (4.50%) Data Scientist
9 12 (3.86%) Business Analyst
10 11 (3.54%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (3.54%) Full-Stack Developer
10 11 (3.54%) Lead
11 10 (3.22%) Senior Developer
11 10 (3.22%) SQL Developer
12 9 (2.89%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 9 (2.89%) Consultant
12 9 (2.89%) Operations Engineer
12 9 (2.89%) Power BI Developer
12 9 (2.89%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (15.11%) Spring
1 47 (15.11%) Spring Boot
2 40 (12.86%) Kafka
3 35 (11.25%) React
4 29 (9.32%) REST
5 27 (8.68%) RESTful
6 23 (7.40%) .NET
7 22 (7.07%) Node.js
8 18 (5.79%) Web Services
9 17 (5.47%) PySpark
10 16 (5.14%) SOAP
11 14 (4.50%) HTML
12 13 (4.18%) CSS
13 12 (3.86%) JMS
14 11 (3.54%) AngularJS
14 11 (3.54%) Hibernate
14 11 (3.54%) OpenAPI
14 11 (3.54%) Swagger
15 9 (2.89%) XML
16 8 (2.57%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.72%) Cloud Native
2 15 (4.82%) Data Protection Act
3 14 (4.50%) Product Ownership
4 10 (3.22%) Management Information System
5 9 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.57%) Data Structures
6 8 (2.57%) Private Cloud
7 7 (2.25%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.25%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 6 (1.93%) Algorithms
8 6 (1.93%) Data Centre
8 6 (1.93%) Distributed Computing
8 6 (1.93%) NHS
9 5 (1.61%) Derivative
9 5 (1.61%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 4 (1.29%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.29%) Clustering
10 4 (1.29%) Distributed Systems
10 4 (1.29%) Low-Code
10 4 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 34 (10.93%) Linux
2 13 (4.18%) Unix
3 10 (3.22%) Windows
4 7 (2.25%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.32%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.32%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.32%) MVS
6 1 (0.32%) Solaris
6 1 (0.32%) VMS
6 1 (0.32%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 96 (30.87%) Agile
2 86 (27.65%) CI/CD
3 79 (25.40%) Business Intelligence
4 73 (23.47%) DevOps
5 60 (19.29%) Microservices
5 60 (19.29%) Problem-Solving
6 56 (18.01%) Analytics
7 53 (17.04%) Data Modelling
8 50 (16.08%) Migration
9 44 (14.15%) Visualisation
10 43 (13.83%) Containerisation
11 40 (12.86%) ETL
12 36 (11.58%) Data Engineering
13 32 (10.29%) Data Pipeline
14 31 (9.97%) Data Science
14 31 (9.97%) Data Visualisation
14 31 (9.97%) TDD
15 30 (9.65%) Software Engineering
16 29 (9.32%) Data Governance
16 29 (9.32%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 103 (33.12%) Python
2 79 (25.40%) Java
3 28 (9.00%) JavaScript
4 17 (5.47%) C#
5 15 (4.82%) PowerShell
5 15 (4.82%) TypeScript
6 14 (4.50%) Bash
6 14 (4.50%) PL/SQL
7 13 (4.18%) Scala
8 10 (3.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (2.57%) T-SQL
10 7 (2.25%) R
10 7 (2.25%) VBA
11 3 (0.96%) ANSI SQL
11 3 (0.96%) Bicep
12 2 (0.64%) C++
12 2 (0.64%) COBOL
12 2 (0.64%) Go
12 2 (0.64%) Groovy
12 2 (0.64%) PHP
Qualifications
1 43 (13.83%) Security Cleared
2 38 (12.22%) SC Cleared
3 24 (7.72%) Degree
4 10 (3.22%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (2.57%) ITIL Certification
6 6 (1.93%) Master's Degree
7 5 (1.61%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.61%) BPSS Clearance
8 4 (1.29%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
9 3 (0.96%) CBAP
9 3 (0.96%) MCP
10 2 (0.64%) CEH
10 2 (0.64%) GIAC
10 2 (0.64%) GWAPT
10 2 (0.64%) Postgraduate
10 2 (0.64%) SnowPro
11 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Developer
11 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 29 (9.32%) Data Quality
2 23 (7.40%) QA
3 6 (1.93%) ISO 20022
3 6 (1.93%) PSD2
3 6 (1.93%) SEPA
4 3 (0.96%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.96%) Basel III
4 3 (0.96%) MiFID
5 2 (0.64%) COBIT
5 2 (0.64%) GDPR
6 1 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.32%) COSHH
6 1 (0.32%) PMO
6 1 (0.32%) SLA
System Software
1 43 (13.83%) Docker
2 11 (3.54%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.32%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.32%) KVM
3 1 (0.32%) NFS
3 1 (0.32%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.32%) SRDF
3 1 (0.32%) Veritas Cluster Server
3 1 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.32%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.32%) Xen
Systems Management
1 37 (11.90%) Terraform
2 33 (10.61%) Kubernetes
3 8 (2.57%) Ansible
3 8 (2.57%) SCOM
4 6 (1.93%) Control-M
4 6 (1.93%) Grafana
5 5 (1.61%) Progress Chef
5 5 (1.61%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.96%) Kibana
7 2 (0.64%) Istio
7 2 (0.64%) Kiali
8 1 (0.32%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.32%) Puppet
8 1 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 66 (21.22%) Microsoft
2 43 (13.83%) Oracle
3 28 (9.00%) Google
4 27 (8.68%) Databricks
5 21 (6.75%) Splunk
6 15 (4.82%) SAP
7 11 (3.54%) Red Hat
8 10 (3.22%) Cisco
9 8 (2.57%) AppDynamics
10 7 (2.25%) IBM
11 6 (1.93%) F5
12 5 (1.61%) Cognos
12 5 (1.61%) Informatica
12 5 (1.61%) Talend
13 4 (1.29%) Salesforce
13 4 (1.29%) Siebel
13 4 (1.29%) Sybase
13 4 (1.29%) VMware
14 3 (0.96%) Citrix
14 3 (0.96%) HP