SQL Contracts in the UK excluding London

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK > UK excluding London

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the UK excluding London requiring SQL skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SQL over the 6 months leading up to 30 April 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Apr 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 13 20 14
Rank change year-on-year +7 -6 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 1,302 1,478 2,409
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 10.22% 7.11% 10.01%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.87% 30.32% 34.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 889 1,014 1,773
10th Percentile £320 £304 £321
25th Percentile £400 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% -2.56% +7.14%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £638 £650
UK median daily rate £500 £538 £538
% change year-on-year -6.98% - +2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 36 38 60
10th Percentile £18.35 £22.34 £18.25
25th Percentile £25.63 £24.62 £22.48
Median hourly rate £33.51 £42.50 £42.05
Median % change year-on-year -21.15% +1.08% +29.37%
75th Percentile £65.62 £57.50 £64.88
90th Percentile £79.72 £61.16 £75.98
UK median hourly rate £42.66 £42.50 £50.00
% change year-on-year +0.37% -15.00% +40.85%

All Programming Languages
UK excluding London

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 UK excluding London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 3,630 4,875 6,992
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London 28.50% 23.45% 29.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,396 3,286 4,998
10th Percentile £325 £316 £338
25th Percentile £402 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +3.09%
75th Percentile £575 £585 £594
90th Percentile £650 £651 £676
UK median daily rate £525 £525 £550
% change year-on-year - -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 186 396 346
10th Percentile £22.35 £37.56 £23.61
25th Percentile £41.75 £50.56 £50.00
Median hourly rate £63.87 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.20% - +26.21%
75th Percentile £68.75 £70.00 £69.31
90th Percentile £85.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £62.50 £60.50 £60.70
% change year-on-year +3.31% -0.33% +21.40%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the UK excluding London

Job postings citing SQL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the UK excluding London.

Job vacancy trend for SQL in the UK excluding London

SQL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SQL in the UK excluding London.

Daily rate trend for SQL in the UK excluding London

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the UK excluding London

SQL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the UK excluding London

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SQL in the UK excluding London.

Hourly rate trend for SQL in the UK excluding London

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the UK excluding London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the UK excluding London over the 6 months to 30 April 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the UK excluding London

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the UK excluding London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the UK excluding London region over the 6 months to 30 April 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 of England +4 315 £475 - 602
South East +11 299 £500 +5.26% 427
Scotland +2 238 £450 -5.26% 132
Midlands +5 197 £460 +8.12% 427
North West +1 180 £475 - 353
West Midlands +8 156 £463 +8.82% 266
South West +15 147 £494 -8.14% 198
Yorkshire +10 110 £475 +5.56% 184
East of England +18 77 £468 +3.89% 147
East Midlands -7 40 £423 +5.63% 155
Northern Ireland +1 34 £410 -0.61% 46
North East -7 25 £455 -4.21% 66
Wales -11 17 £425 -5.56% 36
SQL
UK

SQL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the UK excluding London 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 74 (5.68%) Confluence
2 34 (2.61%) Apache
2 34 (2.61%) Apache Spark
3 28 (2.15%) Apache Airflow
4 27 (2.07%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 27 (2.07%) SharePoint
5 23 (1.77%) SAS
6 17 (1.31%) IIS
7 15 (1.15%) Microsoft Exchange
7 15 (1.15%) Tomcat
8 14 (1.08%) WebSphere
9 13 (1.00%) WebLogic
10 11 (0.84%) Skype for Business
11 9 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
12 5 (0.38%) BizTalk Server
12 5 (0.38%) JBoss
12 5 (0.38%) Mattermost
13 4 (0.31%) Anypoint
13 4 (0.31%) Mule ESB
13 4 (0.31%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 89 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 31 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.77%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 6 (0.46%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.38%) InfoPath
7 3 (0.23%) Maya
7 3 (0.23%) NUKE
8 1 (0.077%) Adobe Captivate
8 1 (0.077%) Adobe XD
8 1 (0.077%) CATIA
8 1 (0.077%) Simulink
8 1 (0.077%) Sketch
8 1 (0.077%) Trello
Business Applications
1 19 (1.46%) Oracle EBS
2 12 (0.92%) Kondor
3 10 (0.77%) SAP S/4HANA
4 8 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
5 5 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
5 5 (0.38%) SAP ERP
6 4 (0.31%) Oracle HRMS
6 4 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 4 (0.31%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 3 (0.23%) NetSuite
7 3 (0.23%) Oracle Applications
7 3 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
7 3 (0.23%) SAP EWM
7 3 (0.23%) SAP GTS
8 2 (0.15%) Maximo
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle EBS R12
8 2 (0.15%) Oracle Payroll
9 1 (0.077%) Misys Midas
9 1 (0.077%) Oracle General Ledger
9 1 (0.077%) Oracle iProcurement
Cloud Services
1 316 (24.27%) Azure
2 242 (18.59%) AWS
3 219 (16.82%) Power Platform
4 87 (6.68%) GCP
5 65 (4.99%) Azure Data Factory
6 60 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
6 60 (4.61%) Snowflake
7 54 (4.15%) Serverless
8 49 (3.76%) Amazon S3
9 44 (3.38%) PowerApps
10 40 (3.07%) GitHub
11 37 (2.84%) SaaS
12 36 (2.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 34 (2.61%) AWS Lambda
14 31 (2.38%) Microsoft 365
15 27 (2.07%) PaaS
16 24 (1.84%) Cloud Computing
16 24 (1.84%) Entra ID
16 24 (1.84%) OCI
17 22 (1.69%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 30 (2.30%) DNS
2 17 (1.31%) Skype
3 13 (1.00%) Firewall
4 12 (0.92%) DHCP
5 11 (0.84%) HTTP
5 11 (0.84%) Unified Communications
6 10 (0.77%) TCP/IP
7 9 (0.69%) VPN
8 7 (0.54%) Network Security
8 7 (0.54%) SSL
9 6 (0.46%) WAN
10 5 (0.38%) LAN
10 5 (0.38%) Softphone
10 5 (0.38%) WebEx
11 4 (0.31%) Fibre Channel
11 4 (0.31%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.31%) iSCSI
11 4 (0.31%) Wireless
12 3 (0.23%) Remote Desktop
12 3 (0.23%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 186 (14.29%) Power BI
2 145 (11.14%) Data Warehouse
3 143 (10.98%) SQL Server
4 135 (10.37%) Relational Database
5 130 (9.98%) PostgreSQL
6 91 (6.99%) MongoDB
7 89 (6.84%) Oracle Database
8 82 (6.30%) NoSQL
9 80 (6.14%) Tableau
10 55 (4.22%) Data Lake
11 53 (4.07%) DB2
12 51 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
13 49 (3.76%) MySQL
14 43 (3.30%) Big Data
15 39 (3.00%) RDBMS
16 37 (2.84%) Metadata
17 34 (2.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
18 29 (2.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
19 28 (2.15%) Amazon Redshift
20 25 (1.92%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 141 (10.83%) Git
2 126 (9.68%) JIRA
3 72 (5.53%) JUnit
4 62 (4.76%) Jenkins
5 55 (4.22%) GitLab
6 29 (2.23%) Maven
7 27 (2.07%) Cucumber
8 25 (1.92%) Visual Studio
9 24 (1.84%) Mockito
10 23 (1.77%) ERwin
11 22 (1.69%) Selenium
12 20 (1.54%) Subversion
13 19 (1.46%) Oracle Forms
14 18 (1.38%) Bitbucket
15 17 (1.31%) Postman
16 13 (1.00%) Gradle
16 13 (1.00%) Oracle APEX
16 13 (1.00%) SonarQube
17 11 (0.84%) Liquibase
17 11 (0.84%) Toad
General
1 413 (31.72%) Social Skills
2 260 (19.97%) Finance
3 215 (16.51%) Analytical Skills
4 138 (10.60%) Public Sector
5 93 (7.14%) Banking
6 41 (3.15%) Marketing
7 36 (2.76%) Manufacturing
8 34 (2.61%) Front Office
9 29 (2.23%) Telecoms
10 26 (2.00%) Investment Banking
11 21 (1.61%) Legal
11 21 (1.61%) Retail
12 19 (1.46%) Documentation Skills
12 19 (1.46%) Electronics
13 18 (1.38%) Law
13 18 (1.38%) Presentation Skills
14 17 (1.31%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 14 (1.08%) Automotive
16 10 (0.77%) Back Office
16 10 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 369 (28.34%) Developer
2 188 (14.44%) Analyst
3 161 (12.37%) Data Engineer
4 158 (12.14%) Senior
5 110 (8.45%) Java Developer
6 72 (5.53%) Data Analyst
7 63 (4.84%) Architect
8 62 (4.76%) Lead
9 53 (4.07%) Software Engineer
10 49 (3.76%) Senior Developer
11 44 (3.38%) Consultant
12 40 (3.07%) Oracle Developer
13 37 (2.84%) SQL Developer
14 34 (2.61%) Business Analyst
15 32 (2.46%) Applications Support
15 32 (2.46%) DBA
16 30 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
17 26 (2.00%) Support Engineer
18 24 (1.84%) Data Architect
18 24 (1.84%) Data Modeller
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 98 (7.53%) Spring
2 97 (7.45%) .NET
3 88 (6.76%) Kafka
4 68 (5.22%) REST
5 66 (5.07%) Spring Boot
6 59 (4.53%) HTML
7 53 (4.07%) React
7 53 (4.07%) RESTful
7 53 (4.07%) Web Services
8 51 (3.92%) CSS
8 51 (3.92%) PySpark
9 49 (3.76%) SOAP
10 44 (3.38%) AngularJS
11 43 (3.30%) JSON
12 36 (2.76%) XML
13 32 (2.46%) JMS
14 26 (2.00%) Node.js
15 24 (1.84%) .NET Core
15 24 (1.84%) Middleware
16 23 (1.77%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 71 (5.45%) Data Structures
2 51 (3.92%) Product Ownership
3 50 (3.84%) Management Information System
4 43 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
5 34 (2.61%) Linux Command Line
6 33 (2.53%) Equities
7 28 (2.15%) Algorithms
7 28 (2.15%) Onboarding
8 22 (1.69%) Cloud Native
9 20 (1.54%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.54%) Replication
10 19 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
11 17 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.31%) Derivative
12 15 (1.15%) Equity Derivative
13 14 (1.08%) PKI
14 12 (0.92%) SCADA
14 12 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
15 10 (0.77%) Clustering
16 9 (0.69%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 192 (14.75%) Linux
2 127 (9.75%) Windows
3 83 (6.37%) Unix
4 60 (4.61%) Windows Server
5 25 (1.92%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (1.15%) Windows 10
7 13 (1.00%) Windows Server 2012
8 11 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.61%) AIX
10 7 (0.54%) Solaris
11 5 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
12 4 (0.31%) Windows 7
13 2 (0.15%) CentOS
13 2 (0.15%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.077%) Android
14 1 (0.077%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.077%) Mac OS
14 1 (0.077%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.077%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 363 (27.88%) Problem-Solving
2 354 (27.19%) Agile
3 234 (17.97%) Business Intelligence
4 218 (16.74%) Data Modelling
4 218 (16.74%) DevOps
4 218 (16.74%) ETL
5 212 (16.28%) Migration
6 210 (16.13%) CI/CD
7 177 (13.59%) Analytics
8 127 (9.75%) Software Engineering
9 119 (9.14%) Data Migration
9 119 (9.14%) Microservices
10 116 (8.91%) Visualisation
11 114 (8.76%) Data Pipeline
12 111 (8.53%) Test Automation
13 105 (8.06%) Data Analysis
14 93 (7.14%) Performance Tuning
15 90 (6.91%) Validation
16 88 (6.76%) Decision-Making
17 86 (6.61%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 363 (27.88%) Python
2 226 (17.36%) Java
3 171 (13.13%) PL/SQL
4 116 (8.91%) JavaScript
5 101 (7.76%) C#
6 90 (6.91%) PowerShell
7 54 (4.15%) Bash
8 44 (3.38%) Shell Script
9 40 (3.07%) Perl
10 33 (2.53%) R
11 32 (2.46%) TypeScript
12 29 (2.23%) T-SQL
13 24 (1.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 19 (1.46%) C++
15 18 (1.38%) PHP
16 16 (1.23%) Delphi
17 10 (0.77%) C
17 10 (0.77%) Scala
17 10 (0.77%) VBA
18 9 (0.69%) ProC
Qualifications
1 234 (17.97%) Security Cleared
2 168 (12.90%) SC Cleared
3 115 (8.83%) Degree
4 47 (3.61%) DV Cleared
5 30 (2.30%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (1.69%) Microsoft Certification
7 20 (1.54%) Cisco Certification
8 15 (1.15%) ISTQB
9 14 (1.08%) AWS Certification
9 14 (1.08%) BPSS Clearance
10 12 (0.92%) Azure Certification
11 9 (0.69%) ISEB
11 9 (0.69%) MCSE
12 7 (0.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 6 (0.46%) ITIL Certification
13 6 (0.46%) Numerate Degree
14 5 (0.38%) CISSP
15 4 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 4 (0.31%) Tableau Certification
15 4 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (7.91%) Data Quality
2 56 (4.30%) QA
3 46 (3.53%) GDPR
4 27 (2.07%) SLA
5 19 (1.46%) Disclosure Scotland
6 16 (1.23%) Accessibility
7 8 (0.61%) Basel III
7 8 (0.61%) HIPAA
8 6 (0.46%) HL7
8 6 (0.46%) MiFID
8 6 (0.46%) PCI DSS
9 5 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
10 4 (0.31%) IFRS
10 4 (0.31%) IFRS 9
10 4 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 3 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.15%) GMP
12 2 (0.15%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.15%) NCSC
System Software
1 113 (8.68%) Docker
2 94 (7.22%) Active Directory
3 23 (1.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (1.08%) Virtual Machines
5 12 (0.92%) Hyper-V
6 6 (0.46%) Microsoft Virtual Server
6 6 (0.46%) Virtual Servers
7 5 (0.38%) Postfix
7 5 (0.38%) vSphere
8 4 (0.31%) Microsoft App-V
8 4 (0.31%) NFS
8 4 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.15%) Firmware
10 2 (0.15%) GPFS
10 2 (0.15%) HDFS
11 1 (0.077%) Apache Flume
11 1 (0.077%) VirtualBox
11 1 (0.077%) Xen
Systems Management
1 86 (6.61%) Kubernetes
2 58 (4.45%) Terraform
3 23 (1.77%) Grafana
4 13 (1.00%) Ansible
4 13 (1.00%) Prometheus
4 13 (1.00%) WSUS
5 12 (0.92%) SCOM
6 10 (0.77%) SCCM
7 9 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.54%) Progress Chef
9 5 (0.38%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 4 (0.31%) CloudHub
10 4 (0.31%) Data Guard
10 4 (0.31%) Failover Clustering
10 4 (0.31%) Microsoft Clustering
10 4 (0.31%) Oracle Flashback
11 3 (0.23%) Kibana
11 3 (0.23%) Puppet
11 3 (0.23%) vCenter Server
11 3 (0.23%) WMI
Vendors
1 252 (19.35%) Oracle
2 229 (17.59%) Microsoft
3 86 (6.61%) Databricks
4 59 (4.53%) SAP
5 49 (3.76%) Google
6 48 (3.69%) Sybase
7 31 (2.38%) Cisco
8 27 (2.07%) VMware
9 22 (1.69%) Splunk
10 19 (1.46%) Adobe
11 18 (1.38%) IBM
12 16 (1.23%) Informatica
12 16 (1.23%) ServiceNow
13 14 (1.08%) Atlassian
13 14 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 12 (0.92%) Alteryx
15 11 (0.84%) Red Hat
15 11 (0.84%) Teradata
16 10 (0.77%) Talend
16 10 (0.77%) Virgin Media