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

6 months to
28 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 15 21
Rank change year-on-year -12 +6 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 328 343 331
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.09% 8.73% 7.00%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.46% 34.75% 28.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 240 213 245
10th Percentile £313 £336 £310
25th Percentile £363 £405 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £436 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -10.10% -3.00% +1.01%
75th Percentile £500 £550 £588
90th Percentile £638 £623 £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 £50.00 £41.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year +20.48% -7.78% -2.17%

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 1,341 987 1,162
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.98% 25.13% 24.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 944 619 865
10th Percentile £315 £330 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £538 £558 £583
90th Percentile £638 £642 £650
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 30 50
10th Percentile £36.00 £35.53 £36.47
25th Percentile £49.25 £42.67 -
Median hourly rate £66.50 £49.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +35.71% +6.11% +14.63%
75th Percentile £74.26 £74.56 £50.19
90th Percentile £81.50 £100.00 £67.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £61.84
% change year-on-year - +5.11% -1.06%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 0 196 £425 -5.56% 230
Yorkshire -29 118 £465 -7.09% 129
North East -10 16 £500 +5.26% 54
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 (8.84%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.96%) Confluence
3 10 (3.05%) Apache
3 10 (3.05%) Apache Spark
4 9 (2.74%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.83%) SAS
5 6 (1.83%) WebSphere
6 5 (1.52%) Apache Pig
7 4 (1.22%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.61%) CICS
8 2 (0.61%) JBoss
8 2 (0.61%) Mule
8 2 (0.61%) Mule ESB
8 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
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 35 (10.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.83%) Chatbot
3 6 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.61%) Maple
4 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.61%) SPSS
5 1 (0.30%) Stata
Business Applications
1 9 (2.74%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.61%) Maximo
3 1 (0.30%) Finacle
3 1 (0.30%) IBM Planning Analytics
3 1 (0.30%) Magento
3 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 101 (30.79%) AWS
2 93 (28.35%) Azure
3 81 (24.70%) Power Platform
4 43 (13.11%) GCP
5 30 (9.15%) GitHub
6 28 (8.54%) Serverless
7 20 (6.10%) Snowflake
8 16 (4.88%) AWS Lambda
9 15 (4.57%) dbt
10 13 (3.96%) Azure DevOps
11 12 (3.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 12 (3.66%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (3.35%) Amazon S3
13 10 (3.05%) Azure Data Factory
14 8 (2.44%) PaaS
15 7 (2.13%) Amazon EC2
15 7 (2.13%) Amazon ECS
16 6 (1.83%) Amazon EKS
16 6 (1.83%) Azure Functions
16 6 (1.83%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.52%) Firewall
2 4 (1.22%) SAN
3 3 (0.91%) HTTP
3 3 (0.91%) HTTPS
4 1 (0.30%) Cisco Nexus
4 1 (0.30%) FCoE
4 1 (0.30%) Fibre Channel
4 1 (0.30%) IP Telephony
4 1 (0.30%) iSCSI
4 1 (0.30%) LAN
4 1 (0.30%) Multicast
4 1 (0.30%) NAS
4 1 (0.30%) TCP/IP
4 1 (0.30%) VoIP
4 1 (0.30%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (24.70%) Power BI
2 43 (13.11%) SQL Server
3 38 (11.59%) NoSQL
4 29 (8.84%) Data Warehouse
5 26 (7.93%) Relational Database
6 23 (7.01%) Data Lake
6 23 (7.01%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (7.01%) Tableau
7 21 (6.40%) Power Query
8 19 (5.79%) MySQL
9 17 (5.18%) BigQuery
10 15 (4.57%) MongoDB
11 14 (4.27%) DB2
11 14 (4.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 12 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
13 11 (3.35%) Delta Lake
13 11 (3.35%) Snowflake Schema
14 10 (3.05%) Looker
14 10 (3.05%) Redis
15 9 (2.74%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 48 (14.63%) Git
2 37 (11.28%) JIRA
3 30 (9.15%) GitLab
3 30 (9.15%) Jenkins
4 13 (3.96%) JUnit
5 12 (3.66%) Cucumber
6 8 (2.44%) Mockito
7 6 (1.83%) Mocha
8 5 (1.52%) Maven
8 5 (1.52%) Selenium
8 5 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.22%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.22%) Liquibase
10 3 (0.91%) Postman
10 3 (0.91%) SonarQube
11 2 (0.61%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.61%) Gradle
11 2 (0.61%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.61%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.61%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 101 (30.79%) Social Skills
2 88 (26.83%) Finance
3 70 (21.34%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (15.85%) Banking
5 33 (10.06%) Public Sector
6 13 (3.96%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (3.05%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.13%) Marketing
9 6 (1.83%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (1.52%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.52%) Local Government
10 5 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.22%) Billing
11 4 (1.22%) Wholesale Banking
12 3 (0.91%) Military
12 3 (0.91%) Retail
13 2 (0.61%) Law
13 2 (0.61%) Legal
13 2 (0.61%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.61%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 100 (30.49%) Developer
2 60 (18.29%) Analyst
3 49 (14.94%) Data Engineer
4 38 (11.59%) Senior
5 36 (10.98%) Data Analyst
6 29 (8.84%) Java Developer
7 21 (6.40%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.27%) Lead
8 14 (4.27%) Senior Developer
9 13 (3.96%) AWS Engineer
9 13 (3.96%) Data Scientist
10 12 (3.66%) Architect
10 12 (3.66%) Business Analyst
11 11 (3.35%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 11 (3.35%) DevOps Engineer
12 9 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
12 9 (2.74%) Power BI Developer
13 8 (2.44%) AWS DevOps
13 8 (2.44%) AWS DevOps Engineer
13 8 (2.44%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (12.20%) REST
2 34 (10.37%) Spring
3 33 (10.06%) Spring Boot
4 32 (9.76%) .NET
5 25 (7.62%) React
6 24 (7.32%) Kafka
7 21 (6.40%) RESTful
8 19 (5.79%) Node.js
9 16 (4.88%) PySpark
10 15 (4.57%) HTML
10 15 (4.57%) JMS
11 14 (4.27%) CSS
12 12 (3.66%) XML
13 11 (3.35%) Jest
14 10 (3.05%) Web Services
15 9 (2.74%) SOAP
16 8 (2.44%) Express.js
16 8 (2.44%) JSON
16 8 (2.44%) Middleware
16 8 (2.44%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 32 (9.76%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.49%) Data Protection Act
3 12 (3.66%) Data Structures
4 11 (3.35%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 10 (3.05%) Clustering
5 10 (3.05%) Data Centre
6 9 (2.74%) Algorithms
6 9 (2.74%) Product Ownership
6 9 (2.74%) Virtual Team
7 8 (2.44%) Distributed Systems
8 7 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
8 7 (2.13%) Mainframe
9 6 (1.83%) NHS
9 6 (1.83%) Public Cloud
10 5 (1.52%) Distributed Computing
10 5 (1.52%) Onboarding
10 5 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
11 4 (1.22%) AI Agents
11 4 (1.22%) Legacy Applications
11 4 (1.22%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 21 (6.40%) Linux
2 12 (3.66%) Windows
3 7 (2.13%) Windows Server
4 5 (1.52%) Unix
5 3 (0.91%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.30%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.30%) Mac OS X
6 1 (0.30%) MVS
6 1 (0.30%) Solaris
6 1 (0.30%) VMS
6 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.30%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (31.40%) Agile
2 89 (27.13%) Business Intelligence
3 85 (25.91%) CI/CD
4 78 (23.78%) Analytics
5 76 (23.17%) Problem-Solving
6 70 (21.34%) Data Modelling
6 70 (21.34%) DevOps
7 48 (14.63%) Data Governance
7 48 (14.63%) ETL
7 48 (14.63%) Microservices
8 46 (14.02%) Visualisation
9 42 (12.80%) Data Engineering
10 41 (12.50%) Actionable Insight
10 41 (12.50%) Data Pipeline
10 41 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
11 38 (11.59%) Data Analysis
12 37 (11.28%) Containerisation
12 37 (11.28%) Decision-Making
13 36 (10.98%) Data Visualisation
14 34 (10.37%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 113 (34.45%) Python
2 62 (18.90%) Java
3 22 (6.71%) JavaScript
4 19 (5.79%) C#
5 14 (4.27%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.96%) Scala
6 13 (3.96%) T-SQL
6 13 (3.96%) VBA
7 11 (3.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (3.05%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.83%) R
10 5 (1.52%) Bash
10 5 (1.52%) Bicep
10 5 (1.52%) Go
11 4 (1.22%) PHP
12 3 (0.91%) Delphi
13 2 (0.61%) PowerShell
14 1 (0.30%) JCL
14 1 (0.30%) LookML
14 1 (0.30%) VB
Qualifications
1 34 (10.37%) Degree
2 29 (8.84%) Security Cleared
3 19 (5.79%) Computer Science Degree
4 18 (5.49%) SC Cleared
5 8 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.44%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.52%) AWS Certification
7 4 (1.22%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.91%) CBAP
8 3 (0.91%) CEH
8 3 (0.91%) GIAC
8 3 (0.91%) GWAPT
8 3 (0.91%) MCP
9 2 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.61%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.61%) ISTQB
9 2 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.61%) Postgraduate
10 1 (0.30%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (12.80%) Data Quality
2 28 (8.54%) QA
3 11 (3.35%) Accessibility
3 11 (3.35%) ISO 20022
3 11 (3.35%) PSD2
3 11 (3.35%) SEPA
4 7 (2.13%) WCAG
5 3 (0.91%) Actionable Recommendations
5 3 (0.91%) PMO
6 2 (0.61%) COBIT
6 2 (0.61%) GDPR
7 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.30%) SLA
System Software
1 50 (15.24%) Docker
2 4 (1.22%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.61%) 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%) Xen
Systems Management
1 39 (11.89%) Kubernetes
2 33 (10.06%) Terraform
3 9 (2.74%) Ansible
4 8 (2.44%) Grafana
4 8 (2.44%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.91%) SCCM
5 3 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
6 2 (0.61%) Control-M
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle Identity Manager
7 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.30%) Progress Chef
7 1 (0.30%) Puppet
Vendors
1 64 (19.51%) Microsoft
2 37 (11.28%) Oracle
3 29 (8.84%) Databricks
4 23 (7.01%) Google
5 16 (4.88%) Splunk
6 9 (2.74%) Advent
6 9 (2.74%) IBM
6 9 (2.74%) ServiceNow
7 7 (2.13%) F5
8 6 (1.83%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.83%) SAP
9 5 (1.52%) Citrix
9 5 (1.52%) Cognos
9 5 (1.52%) Informatica
9 5 (1.52%) MuleSoft
9 5 (1.52%) VMware
10 4 (1.22%) Talend
11 3 (0.91%) HP
11 3 (0.91%) Imperva
11 3 (0.91%) Red Hat