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

6 months to
21 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 27 17 22
Rank change year-on-year -10 +5 -9
Contract jobs citing SQL 329 331 348
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.16% 8.41% 7.19%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.42% 34.02% 29.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 241 212 257
10th Percentile £313 £336 £317
25th Percentile £363 £411 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £486 £500
Median % change year-on-year -9.89% -2.90% -
75th Percentile £511 £554 £590
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 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 £40.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +25.00% -11.11% -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 1,347 973 1,197
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.32% 24.73% 24.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 946 617 886
10th Percentile £315 £325 £325
25th Percentile £375 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £453 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.63% -5.00% -4.76%
75th Percentile £539 £563 £586
90th Percentile £638 £638 £650
England median daily rate £513 £540 £550
% change year-on-year -5.09% -1.82% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 26 52
10th Percentile £36.59 £33.63 £30.75
25th Percentile £49.75 £37.55 -
Median hourly rate £66.50 £46.18 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.00% - +16.07%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £50.06
90th Percentile £80.78 £92.07 £66.13
England median hourly rate £63.50 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year -2.31% +4.00% -

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 0 189 £425 -5.56% 365
Yorkshire -24 125 £475 -7.09% 178
North East -7 17 £500 +1.01% 70
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 (8.81%) Apache Airflow
2 16 (4.86%) Confluence
3 12 (3.65%) Apache
4 11 (3.34%) Apache Spark
5 10 (3.04%) SharePoint
6 7 (2.13%) WebSphere
7 6 (1.82%) SAS
8 5 (1.52%) Apache Pig
9 4 (1.22%) Tomcat
10 2 (0.61%) CICS
10 2 (0.61%) IIS
10 2 (0.61%) JBoss
10 2 (0.61%) Mule
10 2 (0.61%) Mule ESB
10 2 (0.61%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.30%) Anypoint
11 1 (0.30%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.30%) OpenStack
11 1 (0.30%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 36 (10.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 6 (1.82%) Chatbot
3 6 (1.82%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.61%) Maple
4 2 (0.61%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.61%) SPSS
5 1 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.30%) Stata
Business Applications
1 9 (2.74%) Advent Geneva
2 3 (0.91%) Maximo
3 2 (0.61%) Kondor
4 1 (0.30%) Dynamics CRM
4 1 (0.30%) Finacle
4 1 (0.30%) IBM Planning Analytics
4 1 (0.30%) Magento
4 1 (0.30%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 96 (29.18%) Azure
2 95 (28.88%) AWS
3 84 (25.53%) Power Platform
4 41 (12.46%) GCP
5 30 (9.12%) GitHub
6 27 (8.21%) Serverless
7 18 (5.47%) Snowflake
8 15 (4.56%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (4.26%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (4.26%) dbt
10 13 (3.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (3.34%) Azure Data Factory
11 11 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
12 10 (3.04%) Amazon S3
13 8 (2.43%) PaaS
14 6 (1.82%) Amazon EC2
14 6 (1.82%) Amazon ECS
14 6 (1.82%) Azure Functions
14 6 (1.82%) Prefect
15 5 (1.52%) Amazon Bedrock
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 84 (25.53%) Power BI
2 47 (14.29%) SQL Server
3 41 (12.46%) NoSQL
4 31 (9.42%) Data Warehouse
4 31 (9.42%) Relational Database
5 24 (7.29%) Data Lake
6 23 (6.99%) MySQL
6 23 (6.99%) PostgreSQL
7 22 (6.69%) Power Query
7 22 (6.69%) Tableau
8 18 (5.47%) MongoDB
9 16 (4.86%) BigQuery
10 15 (4.56%) DB2
11 14 (4.26%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 12 (3.65%) Azure SQL Database
12 12 (3.65%) Delta Lake
13 10 (3.04%) Redis
14 9 (2.74%) Amazon Redshift
14 9 (2.74%) Hadoop
14 9 (2.74%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 51 (15.50%) Git
2 39 (11.85%) JIRA
3 30 (9.12%) GitLab
3 30 (9.12%) Jenkins
4 13 (3.95%) JUnit
5 12 (3.65%) Cucumber
6 8 (2.43%) Mockito
7 6 (1.82%) Mocha
7 6 (1.82%) Sonatype Nexus
8 5 (1.52%) Maven
8 5 (1.52%) Selenium
9 4 (1.22%) Bitbucket
9 4 (1.22%) Liquibase
9 4 (1.22%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.91%) Postman
11 2 (0.61%) Artifactory
11 2 (0.61%) Gradle
11 2 (0.61%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.61%) REST Assured
11 2 (0.61%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 102 (31.00%) Social Skills
2 91 (27.66%) Finance
3 67 (20.36%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (15.50%) Banking
5 35 (10.64%) Public Sector
6 13 (3.95%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (3.34%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.13%) Financial Institution
8 7 (2.13%) Organisational Skills
9 6 (1.82%) Local Government
9 6 (1.82%) Marketing
10 5 (1.52%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.22%) Billing
11 4 (1.22%) Retail
11 4 (1.22%) Wholesale Banking
12 3 (0.91%) Military
13 2 (0.61%) Back Office
13 2 (0.61%) Law
13 2 (0.61%) Legal
13 2 (0.61%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 102 (31.00%) Developer
2 61 (18.54%) Analyst
3 47 (14.29%) Data Engineer
4 39 (11.85%) Senior
5 36 (10.94%) Data Analyst
6 28 (8.51%) Java Developer
7 18 (5.47%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.26%) Business Analyst
8 14 (4.26%) Senior Developer
9 13 (3.95%) Architect
9 13 (3.95%) AWS Engineer
9 13 (3.95%) Data Scientist
9 13 (3.95%) Lead
10 12 (3.65%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 11 (3.34%) DevOps Engineer
12 10 (3.04%) Power BI Developer
13 9 (2.74%) DBA
13 9 (2.74%) Full-Stack Developer
14 8 (2.43%) Azure Engineer
14 8 (2.43%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (11.55%) REST
2 35 (10.64%) Spring
3 33 (10.03%) Spring Boot
4 30 (9.12%) .NET
5 25 (7.60%) Kafka
5 25 (7.60%) React
6 24 (7.29%) RESTful
7 21 (6.38%) Node.js
8 17 (5.17%) HTML
9 16 (4.86%) CSS
9 16 (4.86%) PySpark
10 14 (4.26%) JMS
11 13 (3.95%) XML
12 12 (3.65%) SOAP
12 12 (3.65%) Web Services
13 11 (3.34%) Jest
14 8 (2.43%) Express.js
14 8 (2.43%) JSON
14 8 (2.43%) Middleware
14 8 (2.43%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 30 (9.12%) Cloud Native
2 19 (5.78%) Data Protection Act
3 13 (3.95%) Data Structures
4 10 (3.04%) Data Centre
4 10 (3.04%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 9 (2.74%) Algorithms
5 9 (2.74%) Product Ownership
6 8 (2.43%) Clustering
6 8 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.43%) Virtual Team
7 7 (2.13%) Legacy Systems
7 7 (2.13%) Mainframe
8 6 (1.82%) NHS
8 6 (1.82%) Public Cloud
9 5 (1.52%) Derivative
9 5 (1.52%) Distributed Computing
9 5 (1.52%) Onboarding
9 5 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (1.22%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.22%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 20 (6.08%) Linux
2 9 (2.74%) Windows
3 8 (2.43%) Unix
4 7 (2.13%) Windows Server
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 (31.31%) Agile
2 91 (27.66%) Business Intelligence
3 86 (26.14%) CI/CD
4 76 (23.10%) Problem-Solving
5 75 (22.80%) Analytics
6 69 (20.97%) Data Modelling
6 69 (20.97%) DevOps
7 49 (14.89%) Microservices
8 48 (14.59%) ETL
8 48 (14.59%) Visualisation
9 45 (13.68%) Data Governance
10 44 (13.37%) Data Pipeline
11 43 (13.07%) Data Engineering
12 41 (12.46%) Stakeholder Management
13 39 (11.85%) Actionable Insight
14 38 (11.55%) Decision-Making
15 36 (10.94%) Data Visualisation
16 35 (10.64%) Data Analysis
17 34 (10.33%) Containerisation
17 34 (10.33%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 113 (34.35%) Python
2 64 (19.45%) Java
3 25 (7.60%) JavaScript
4 18 (5.47%) C#
5 14 (4.26%) PL/SQL
5 14 (4.26%) Scala
6 13 (3.95%) T-SQL
6 13 (3.95%) VBA
7 12 (3.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 9 (2.74%) TypeScript
9 6 (1.82%) R
10 5 (1.52%) Bash
10 5 (1.52%) Bicep
11 4 (1.22%) Go
12 2 (0.61%) PowerShell
13 1 (0.30%) COBOL
13 1 (0.30%) Groovy
13 1 (0.30%) Korn
13 1 (0.30%) SAS Macro
13 1 (0.30%) VB
Qualifications
1 33 (10.03%) Degree
2 30 (9.12%) Security Cleared
3 20 (6.08%) SC Cleared
4 19 (5.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 8 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.43%) Master's Degree
6 5 (1.52%) AWS Certification
6 5 (1.52%) Azure Certification
7 3 (0.91%) CBAP
7 3 (0.91%) CEH
7 3 (0.91%) GIAC
7 3 (0.91%) GWAPT
7 3 (0.91%) MCP
8 2 (0.61%) AWS Certified Developer
8 2 (0.61%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
8 2 (0.61%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.61%) Microsoft Certification
8 2 (0.61%) Postgraduate
9 1 (0.30%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.30%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 39 (11.85%) Data Quality
2 27 (8.21%) QA
3 11 (3.34%) Accessibility
4 10 (3.04%) ISO 20022
4 10 (3.04%) PSD2
4 10 (3.04%) SEPA
5 7 (2.13%) WCAG
6 3 (0.91%) PMO
7 2 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.61%) Basel III
7 2 (0.61%) COBIT
7 2 (0.61%) GDPR
7 2 (0.61%) MiFID
8 1 (0.30%) COSHH
8 1 (0.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 44 (13.37%) 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 37 (11.25%) Kubernetes
2 32 (9.73%) Terraform
3 9 (2.74%) Ansible
4 7 (2.13%) Grafana
4 7 (2.13%) Prometheus
5 3 (0.91%) Control-M
5 3 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (0.30%) Oracle Identity Manager
6 1 (0.30%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.30%) Progress Chef
6 1 (0.30%) Puppet
Vendors
1 72 (21.88%) Microsoft
2 38 (11.55%) Oracle
3 30 (9.12%) Databricks
4 21 (6.38%) Google
5 16 (4.86%) Splunk
6 9 (2.74%) Advent
6 9 (2.74%) IBM
7 7 (2.13%) F5
8 6 (1.82%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.82%) 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%) ServiceNow
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