SQL Contract Job Trends in the South East

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > South East

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South East 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 23 15 16
Rank change year-on-year -8 +1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 315 385 422
As % of all contract jobs in the South East 7.20% 10.34% 8.42%
As % of the Programming Languages category 32.98% 37.89% 36.60%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 241 314
10th Percentile £205 £350 £350
25th Percentile £350 £419 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £513 £536
Median % change year-on-year -7.32% -4.43% +7.25%
75th Percentile £573 £638 £625
90th Percentile £625 £663 £671
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 4 12
10th Percentile - - £33.34
25th Percentile £52.50 £13.25 £44.84
Median hourly rate £55.00 £38.62 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.40% -22.76% +170.27%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.62 £54.94
90th Percentile - - £58.24
England median hourly rate £48.72 £49.00 £45.88
% change year-on-year -0.57% +6.80% +1.96%

All Programming Languages
South East

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 South East.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 955 1,016 1,153
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East 21.84% 27.29% 23.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 677 646 812
10th Percentile £253 £316 £325
25th Percentile £380 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £575 £624 £615
90th Percentile £638 £663 £675
England median daily rate £513 £543 £550
% change year-on-year -5.53% -1.36% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 40 35 56
10th Percentile £40.00 £27.00 £43.55
25th Percentile £46.25 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £55.00 £56.75 £57.41
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% -1.16% -4.32%
75th Percentile £57.50 £64.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £61.73 £70.00 £76.53
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 South East

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South East.

SQL job vacancy trend in the South East

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the South East

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the South East over the 6 months to 20 December 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the South East

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the South East

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South East citing SQL

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the South East

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the South East 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
Thames Valley -14 140 £480 -16.52% 100
Berkshire -20 87 £500 -16.67% 39
Hampshire +3 70 £515 +7.01% 52
Surrey +3 64 £493 -2.72% 39
Buckinghamshire +4 43 £475 +11.11% 32
West Sussex -9 22 £210 -58.00% 13
Oxfordshire -11 10 £425 +39.34% 30
Kent -5 7 £363 -29.27% 22
East Sussex -2 6 £600 +26.32% 13
Middlesex - 6 - - 16
SQL
England

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South East 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 10 (3.17%) Apache Spark
1 10 (3.17%) SharePoint
2 7 (2.22%) Confluence
2 7 (2.22%) Mattermost
2 7 (2.22%) Skype for Business
3 6 (1.90%) Apache
3 6 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
3 6 (1.90%) WebLogic
4 3 (0.95%) NetWeaver
4 3 (0.95%) Tomcat
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
5 2 (0.63%) WebSphere
5 2 (0.63%) WordPress
6 1 (0.32%) ArcGIS
6 1 (0.32%) Gunicorn
6 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.32%) nginx
6 1 (0.32%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 11 (3.49%) Microsoft Excel
1 11 (3.49%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.95%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 7 (2.22%) Remedy ITSM
2 5 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (1.27%) SAP ERP
4 3 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.95%) Maximo
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle Assets
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle BRM
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle Receivables
4 3 (0.95%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 3 (0.95%) SAP MDG
4 3 (0.95%) SAP MDG-F
4 3 (0.95%) SAP MDG-M
4 3 (0.95%) SAP MDG-S
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle EBS
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle EBS R12
5 2 (0.63%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.63%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 90 (28.57%) Azure
2 47 (14.92%) AWS
2 47 (14.92%) Power Platform
3 29 (9.21%) Azure DevOps
4 28 (8.89%) GCP
5 13 (4.13%) Azure Data Factory
6 12 (3.81%) GitHub
7 11 (3.49%) Amazon S3
7 11 (3.49%) Azure AKS
7 11 (3.49%) Serverless
7 11 (3.49%) Tricentis Tosca
8 10 (3.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 10 (3.17%) Dynamics 365
9 9 (2.86%) Snowflake
10 8 (2.54%) Amazon EKS
10 8 (2.54%) dbt
10 8 (2.54%) OpenShift
11 7 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
11 7 (2.22%) IaaS
11 7 (2.22%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.86%) Fibre Channel
1 9 (2.86%) iSCSI
2 7 (2.22%) Skype
3 6 (1.90%) DNS
4 5 (1.59%) DHCP
4 5 (1.59%) TCP/IP
5 4 (1.27%) Firewall
5 4 (1.27%) VoIP
6 3 (0.95%) Broadband
6 3 (0.95%) GPRS
6 3 (0.95%) GSM
6 3 (0.95%) SSL
7 2 (0.63%) 2G
7 2 (0.63%) 5G
7 2 (0.63%) LTE
7 2 (0.63%) Mobile Backhaul
7 2 (0.63%) VLAN
7 2 (0.63%) VSAN
8 1 (0.32%) Network Security
8 1 (0.32%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (13.65%) SQL Server
2 41 (13.02%) Power BI
3 35 (11.11%) Relational Database
4 30 (9.52%) Oracle Database
5 24 (7.62%) Tableau
6 23 (7.30%) Data Warehouse
7 18 (5.71%) MySQL
8 17 (5.40%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (4.76%) Data Lake
10 14 (4.44%) Big Data
10 14 (4.44%) NoSQL
11 13 (4.13%) PostgreSQL
12 8 (2.54%) Oracle Reports
13 7 (2.22%) Hadoop
14 6 (1.90%) RDBMS
15 5 (1.59%) Amazon RDS
15 5 (1.59%) BigQuery
15 5 (1.59%) MongoDB
16 4 (1.27%) Amazon Athena
16 4 (1.27%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 37 (11.75%) JIRA
2 22 (6.98%) Git
3 20 (6.35%) Jenkins
4 12 (3.81%) GitLab
5 9 (2.86%) Bitbucket
6 7 (2.22%) Selenium
7 5 (1.59%) Gradle
7 5 (1.59%) Maven
8 4 (1.27%) Cucumber
8 4 (1.27%) JUnit
8 4 (1.27%) Toad
9 3 (0.95%) REST Assured
9 3 (0.95%) Storybook
10 2 (0.63%) JMeter
10 2 (0.63%) Oracle APEX
10 2 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
10 2 (0.63%) Poetry
10 2 (0.63%) SoapUI
10 2 (0.63%) SonarQube
10 2 (0.63%) WebDriver
General
1 88 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 62 (19.68%) Finance
3 58 (18.41%) Analytical Skills
4 21 (6.67%) Public Sector
5 11 (3.49%) Banking
5 11 (3.49%) Marketing
6 10 (3.17%) Telecoms
7 9 (2.86%) Retail
8 8 (2.54%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.22%) Military
10 6 (1.90%) Billing
11 5 (1.59%) Automotive
11 5 (1.59%) Electronics
11 5 (1.59%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.27%) Organisational Skills
13 3 (0.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 2 (0.63%) General Ledger
14 2 (0.63%) Investment Banking
14 2 (0.63%) Legal
15 1 (0.32%) Aviation
Job Titles
1 66 (20.95%) Developer
2 41 (13.02%) Analyst
3 26 (8.25%) Senior
4 24 (7.62%) Architect
5 21 (6.67%) Applications Support
6 16 (5.08%) Data Analyst
6 16 (5.08%) Data Engineer
6 16 (5.08%) Lead
7 12 (3.81%) ERP Support
7 12 (3.81%) Technical Support
8 10 (3.17%) Administrator
8 10 (3.17%) Data Scientist
8 10 (3.17%) DBA
8 10 (3.17%) Oracle DBA
9 9 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
9 9 (2.86%) Full-Stack Developer
9 9 (2.86%) Infrastructure Architect
9 9 (2.86%) Oracle Developer
9 9 (2.86%) Support Analyst
10 8 (2.54%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (7.94%) .NET
2 19 (6.03%) REST
3 17 (5.40%) React
4 16 (5.08%) RESTful
5 13 (4.13%) scikit-learn
6 12 (3.81%) Oracle Fusion
6 12 (3.81%) SOAP
7 11 (3.49%) Pandas
7 11 (3.49%) PySpark
7 11 (3.49%) Spring
8 10 (3.17%) ADO
8 10 (3.17%) NumPy
8 10 (3.17%) Spring Boot
9 9 (2.86%) PyTorch
9 9 (2.86%) Web Services
10 8 (2.54%) AngularJS
10 8 (2.54%) Middleware
10 8 (2.54%) Oracle GoldenGate
11 7 (2.22%) HTML
11 7 (2.22%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (3.49%) Product Ownership
2 9 (2.86%) Algorithms
3 8 (2.54%) Cloud Native
3 8 (2.54%) Private Cloud
4 7 (2.22%) Analytical Mindset
4 7 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
4 7 (2.22%) Synthetic Data
5 5 (1.59%) Replication
6 4 (1.27%) Onboarding
7 3 (0.95%) Clustering
7 3 (0.95%) Data Centre
7 3 (0.95%) Data Structures
7 3 (0.95%) Distributed Computing
7 3 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
7 3 (0.95%) IoT
7 3 (0.95%) IPTV
7 3 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (0.95%) Smart Meter
8 2 (0.63%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 46 (14.60%) Windows
2 43 (13.65%) Linux
3 26 (8.25%) Unix
4 17 (5.40%) Windows Server
5 10 (3.17%) Windows Server 2019
6 3 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.32%) OpenVMS
7 1 (0.32%) VMS
7 1 (0.32%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (27.62%) Agile
2 76 (24.13%) Problem-Solving
3 66 (20.95%) CI/CD
3 66 (20.95%) DevOps
4 51 (16.19%) Business Intelligence
5 43 (13.65%) Data Modelling
6 41 (13.02%) ERP
6 41 (13.02%) Validation
7 38 (12.06%) Analytics
8 35 (11.11%) Migration
9 34 (10.79%) Scrum
10 32 (10.16%) Data Integration
11 30 (9.52%) ITIL
11 30 (9.52%) Test Automation
11 30 (9.52%) Workflow
12 28 (8.89%) Acceptance Criteria
13 26 (8.25%) Actionable Insight
13 26 (8.25%) High Availability
13 26 (8.25%) Software Engineering
14 25 (7.94%) ETL
Programming Languages
1 102 (32.38%) Python
2 49 (15.56%) Java
3 38 (12.06%) JavaScript
4 31 (9.84%) PL/SQL
5 28 (8.89%) PowerShell
6 27 (8.57%) C#
7 19 (6.03%) VB
8 14 (4.44%) Perl
9 13 (4.13%) R
10 11 (3.49%) Shell Script
11 7 (2.22%) Bash
12 5 (1.59%) TypeScript
13 4 (1.27%) X++
14 3 (0.95%) ABAP
14 3 (0.95%) Go
14 3 (0.95%) Jython
14 3 (0.95%) T-SQL
15 1 (0.32%) Fortran
15 1 (0.32%) ProC
15 1 (0.32%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 61 (19.37%) Security Cleared
2 34 (10.79%) SC Cleared
3 31 (9.84%) Degree
4 19 (6.03%) DV Cleared
5 18 (5.71%) Computer Science Degree
6 14 (4.44%) Microsoft Certification
6 14 (4.44%) Oracle Certification
7 10 (3.17%) MCSE
8 9 (2.86%) Master's Degree
9 8 (2.54%) AWS Certification
9 8 (2.54%) Azure Certification
10 7 (2.22%) ITIL Certification
10 7 (2.22%) OCA
10 7 (2.22%) OCP
11 5 (1.59%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 5 (1.59%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
12 4 (1.27%) ISTQB
12 4 (1.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 4 (1.27%) VCP5
12 4 (1.27%) VCP6
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 31 (9.84%) QA
2 24 (7.62%) Data Quality
2 24 (7.62%) GDPR
3 4 (1.27%) SLA
4 2 (0.63%) GRC
4 2 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.32%) Accessibility
5 1 (0.32%) ISO/IEC 17025
5 1 (0.32%) JSP 440
System Software
1 19 (6.03%) Active Directory
2 17 (5.40%) Docker
3 15 (4.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (3.17%) NFS
5 9 (2.86%) VMware ESXi
5 9 (2.86%) vSphere
6 6 (1.90%) Oracle RAC
7 5 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (1.27%) Virtual Desktop
9 2 (0.63%) Hyper-V
9 2 (0.63%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.32%) NDS
10 1 (0.32%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 30 (9.52%) Kubernetes
2 18 (5.71%) Ansible
3 16 (5.08%) Terraform
4 12 (3.81%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 9 (2.86%) Oracle RMAN
6 8 (2.54%) SCOM
7 7 (2.22%) Data Guard
7 7 (2.22%) HP SiteScope
8 3 (0.95%) Proxmox
8 3 (0.95%) Rundeck
8 3 (0.95%) Salt
9 2 (0.63%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
9 2 (0.63%) systemd
9 2 (0.63%) WSUS
10 1 (0.32%) Foglight
10 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.32%) Norton AntiVirus
10 1 (0.32%) Puppet
10 1 (0.32%) SCCM
10 1 (0.32%) WhatsUp Gold
Vendors
1 81 (25.71%) Oracle
2 72 (22.86%) Microsoft
3 20 (6.35%) SAP
4 18 (5.71%) VMware
5 17 (5.40%) Splunk
6 16 (5.08%) Databricks
7 12 (3.81%) Google
7 12 (3.81%) Red Hat
8 10 (3.17%) NetApp
9 9 (2.86%) Cisco
9 9 (2.86%) Informatica
9 9 (2.86%) Veeam
10 7 (2.22%) Remedy
11 6 (1.90%) IFS
11 6 (1.90%) Salesforce
12 3 (0.95%) Adobe
12 3 (0.95%) Sage
12 3 (0.95%) webMethods
13 2 (0.63%) HP
13 2 (0.63%) JDA