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 20 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 17 22
Rank change year-on-year -10 +5 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 332 294 311
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.01% 8.22% 6.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.36% 32.81% 26.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 234 190 230
10th Percentile £313 £335 £319
25th Percentile £368 £401 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -7.84% -5.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £588
90th Percentile £625 £638 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 10
10th Percentile £28.09 £26.25 £19.03
25th Percentile £36.00 £28.75 £21.31
Median hourly rate £64.50 £40.00 £33.55
Median % change year-on-year +61.25% +19.22% -24.90%
75th Percentile £74.26 £53.75 £45.35
90th Percentile £78.60 £65.00 £45.88
England median hourly rate £48.72 £49.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -0.57% +6.80% +1.96%

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 1,363 896 1,172
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.77% 25.04% 25.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 940 583 865
10th Percentile £325 £350 £325
25th Percentile £385 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -2.56% -7.14%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £575
90th Percentile £638 £650 £650
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 35 25 52
10th Percentile £40.50 £33.75 £37.63
25th Percentile £51.88 £46.18 £46.11
Median hourly rate £61.00 £52.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +16.19% +13.69% +7.17%
75th Percentile £72.13 £86.00 £50.06
90th Percentile £74.26 £98.66 £66.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -1.96%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -1 194 £423 -6.11% 168
Yorkshire -26 125 £468 -6.40% 105
North East -13 15 £525 +10.53% 42
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 (8.43%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (3.01%) Apache Spark
3 9 (2.71%) Apache
3 9 (2.71%) SharePoint
4 8 (2.41%) Confluence
5 6 (1.81%) SAS
6 5 (1.51%) Apache Pig
6 5 (1.51%) WebSphere
7 4 (1.20%) Tomcat
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%) IIS
9 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
9 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 29 (8.73%) 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 (2.71%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.60%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.30%) Finacle
3 1 (0.30%) Magento
3 1 (0.30%) Maximo
3 1 (0.30%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 114 (34.34%) Azure
2 109 (32.83%) AWS
3 78 (23.49%) Power Platform
4 51 (15.36%) GCP
5 30 (9.04%) Serverless
6 28 (8.43%) GitHub
7 18 (5.42%) Snowflake
8 16 (4.82%) GitHub Actions
9 15 (4.52%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (4.52%) Azure Data Factory
9 15 (4.52%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (4.52%) dbt
10 14 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 10 (3.01%) SaaS
12 9 (2.71%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (2.71%) Amazon S3
12 9 (2.71%) AWS CloudFormation
13 7 (2.11%) Amazon ECS
13 7 (2.11%) Azure Functions
14 6 (1.81%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.31%) Firewall
2 5 (1.51%) TCP/IP
3 4 (1.20%) DNS
3 4 (1.20%) SAN
4 3 (0.90%) HTTP
4 3 (0.90%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.30%) Cisco Nexus
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 77 (23.19%) Power BI
2 43 (12.95%) SQL Server
3 38 (11.45%) NoSQL
4 27 (8.13%) Data Warehouse
4 27 (8.13%) Relational Database
5 26 (7.83%) Data Lake
5 26 (7.83%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (6.93%) MySQL
7 20 (6.02%) Tableau
8 18 (5.42%) Power Query
9 17 (5.12%) MongoDB
10 15 (4.52%) BigQuery
11 14 (4.22%) Azure SQL Database
11 14 (4.22%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 13 (3.92%) DB2
13 12 (3.61%) Delta Lake
13 12 (3.61%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (3.01%) Redis
15 9 (2.71%) Hadoop
16 7 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 42 (12.65%) Git
2 37 (11.14%) JIRA
3 36 (10.84%) GitLab
4 33 (9.94%) Jenkins
5 13 (3.92%) Cucumber
6 12 (3.61%) Selenium
7 10 (3.01%) Postman
7 10 (3.01%) REST Assured
8 7 (2.11%) Mockito
9 6 (1.81%) JUnit
9 6 (1.81%) Mocha
9 6 (1.81%) TestRail
10 4 (1.20%) Liquibase
10 4 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
11 3 (0.90%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.90%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.90%) Jaeger
11 3 (0.90%) Maven
12 2 (0.60%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.60%) Gradle
General
1 104 (31.33%) Social Skills
2 91 (27.41%) Finance
3 66 (19.88%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (16.27%) Banking
5 32 (9.64%) Public Sector
6 13 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.31%) Presentation Skills
8 8 (2.41%) Financial Institution
9 7 (2.11%) Local Government
9 7 (2.11%) Marketing
10 6 (1.81%) Law
10 6 (1.81%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.51%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.20%) Billing
12 4 (1.20%) Wholesale Banking
13 3 (0.90%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.90%) Legal
13 3 (0.90%) Military
14 2 (0.60%) Retail
14 2 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 96 (28.92%) Developer
2 58 (17.47%) Analyst
3 53 (15.96%) Data Engineer
4 46 (13.86%) Senior
5 35 (10.54%) Data Analyst
6 21 (6.33%) Java Developer
6 21 (6.33%) Lead
7 20 (6.02%) Software Engineer
8 15 (4.52%) Senior Developer
9 13 (3.92%) AWS Engineer
9 13 (3.92%) Data Scientist
10 11 (3.31%) Architect
10 11 (3.31%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (3.01%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (3.01%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 9 (2.71%) Business Analyst
12 9 (2.71%) DBA
12 9 (2.71%) Test Engineer
13 8 (2.41%) Full-Stack Developer
13 8 (2.41%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (12.95%) REST
2 40 (12.05%) .NET
3 28 (8.43%) Spring Boot
4 27 (8.13%) Spring
5 26 (7.83%) Kafka
6 19 (5.72%) React
7 18 (5.42%) PySpark
8 16 (4.82%) HTML
8 16 (4.82%) Node.js
9 14 (4.22%) CSS
10 13 (3.92%) JMS
10 13 (3.92%) RESTful
10 13 (3.92%) XML
11 12 (3.61%) Middleware
12 10 (3.01%) Jest
12 10 (3.01%) JSON
13 9 (2.71%) AngularJS
13 9 (2.71%) LDAP
14 8 (2.41%) Express.js
14 8 (2.41%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.64%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.42%) Data Protection Act
3 11 (3.31%) Data Structures
3 11 (3.31%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (3.31%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 10 (3.01%) Clustering
5 9 (2.71%) Algorithms
5 9 (2.71%) Data Centre
5 9 (2.71%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.41%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.11%) Distributed Computing
7 7 (2.11%) Mainframe
7 7 (2.11%) NHS
8 6 (1.81%) Onboarding
8 6 (1.81%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.51%) Legacy Applications
9 5 (1.51%) Legacy Systems
9 5 (1.51%) Management Information System
9 5 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.20%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 25 (7.53%) Linux
2 15 (4.52%) Windows
3 8 (2.41%) Unix
4 7 (2.11%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.90%) 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 97 (29.22%) Agile
2 96 (28.92%) CI/CD
3 83 (25.00%) Business Intelligence
4 80 (24.10%) DevOps
5 75 (22.59%) Analytics
6 73 (21.99%) Problem-Solving
7 68 (20.48%) Data Modelling
8 54 (16.27%) ETL
9 45 (13.55%) Microservices
10 43 (12.95%) Containerisation
10 43 (12.95%) Data Pipeline
10 43 (12.95%) Visualisation
11 41 (12.35%) Data Governance
12 40 (12.05%) Actionable Insight
13 39 (11.75%) Data Engineering
13 39 (11.75%) Stakeholder Management
14 36 (10.84%) Test Automation
15 34 (10.24%) Data Analysis
16 32 (9.64%) Data Science
16 32 (9.64%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 116 (34.94%) Python
2 71 (21.39%) Java
3 28 (8.43%) JavaScript
4 24 (7.23%) C#
5 17 (5.12%) PL/SQL
6 12 (3.61%) Scala
6 12 (3.61%) TypeScript
6 12 (3.61%) VBA
7 11 (3.31%) PHP
8 10 (3.01%) T-SQL
9 8 (2.41%) Bash
9 8 (2.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (2.41%) Go
10 6 (1.81%) Bicep
10 6 (1.81%) R
10 6 (1.81%) Shell Script
11 4 (1.20%) PowerShell
12 3 (0.90%) Delphi
12 3 (0.90%) ProC
12 3 (0.90%) Rust
Qualifications
1 37 (11.14%) Degree
2 26 (7.83%) Security Cleared
3 18 (5.42%) Computer Science Degree
4 13 (3.92%) SC Cleared
5 8 (2.41%) Master's Degree
6 6 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
7 5 (1.51%) AWS Certification
8 4 (1.20%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.90%) CEH
9 3 (0.90%) GIAC
9 3 (0.90%) GWAPT
9 3 (0.90%) ISTQB
9 3 (0.90%) 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%) CBAP
11 1 (0.30%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (12.95%) Data Quality
2 28 (8.43%) QA
3 11 (3.31%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.31%) ISO 20022
3 11 (3.31%) PSD2
3 11 (3.31%) SEPA
4 7 (2.11%) WCAG
5 4 (1.20%) GDPR
5 4 (1.20%) SLA
6 3 (0.90%) Actionable Recommendations
6 3 (0.90%) PMO
7 1 (0.30%) HIPAA
7 1 (0.30%) HL7
7 1 (0.30%) PERC
7 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 55 (16.57%) 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 44 (13.25%) Kubernetes
2 36 (10.84%) Terraform
3 14 (4.22%) Grafana
3 14 (4.22%) Prometheus
4 12 (3.61%) Ansible
5 4 (1.20%) SCCM
5 4 (1.20%) Single Sign-On
6 3 (0.90%) Kiali
7 2 (0.60%) Control-M
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 59 (17.77%) Microsoft
2 44 (13.25%) Oracle
3 29 (8.73%) Databricks
4 22 (6.63%) Splunk
5 19 (5.72%) Google
6 17 (5.12%) ServiceNow
7 9 (2.71%) Advent
8 8 (2.41%) IBM
9 7 (2.11%) F5
10 6 (1.81%) Citrix
10 6 (1.81%) Dynatrace
10 6 (1.81%) Informatica
10 6 (1.81%) VMware
11 5 (1.51%) Salesforce
12 4 (1.20%) AppDynamics
12 4 (1.20%) Cognos
12 4 (1.20%) MuleSoft
12 4 (1.20%) SAP
12 4 (1.20%) Talend
13 3 (0.90%) Red Hat