RDBMS Contract Job Trends

Relational Database Management System (RDBMS)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring RDBMS skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 555 435 438
Rank change year-on-year -120 +3 +23
Contract jobs citing RDBMS 113 125 124
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.21% 0.38% 0.32%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 1.39% 2.08% 1.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 71 90 91
10th Percentile £381 £337 £341
25th Percentile £445 £401 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £450 £520
Median % change year-on-year +22.22% -13.46% -9.57%
75th Percentile £663 £575 £575
90th Percentile £725 £750 £675
UK excluding London median daily rate £486 £445 £424
% change year-on-year +9.21% +4.95% -10.74%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
10th Percentile - £27.21 -
25th Percentile £41.25 £36.23 -
Median hourly rate £42.50 £52.50 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year -19.05% +29.63% -44.62%
75th Percentile £43.75 £53.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - £21.40 £40.50
% change year-on-year - -47.16% -39.15%

All Database & BI Skills
UK

RDBMS falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 8,147 6,013 7,066
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 15.33% 18.16% 18.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,407 4,064 5,009
10th Percentile £355 £344 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £508 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.48% -3.33% -3.67%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £700 £750 £800
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 257 91 101
10th Percentile £16.42 £19.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £24.25 £23.50 £20.75
Median hourly rate £39.50 £35.00 £35.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.86% -1.41% -35.45%
75th Percentile £60.75 £64.38 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.20 £78.70 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £38.25 £31.64 £30.00
% change year-on-year +20.89% +5.47% -42.86%

RDBMS
Job Vacancy Trend

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing RDBMS relative to all contract IT jobs advertised.

RDBMS job vacancy trend in the UK

RDBMS
Daily Rate Trend

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RDBMS.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RDBMS

RDBMS
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing RDBMS over the 6 months to 3 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for RDBMS in the UK

RDBMS
Hourly Rate Trend

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RDBMS.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing RDBMS

RDBMS
Top 16 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing RDBMS within the UK over the 6 months to 3 August 2026. 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
England -111 99 £558 +23.89% 23
UK excluding London -110 60 £486 +9.21% 11
London -58 45 £613 -5.77% 12
North of England -63 34 £621 +49.64% 2
Work from Home -63 32 £565 +25.56% 13
North West -45 28 £621 +50.55% 1
Midlands -40 10 £478 -3.24% 5
West Midlands -53 9 £475 +5.56% 3
South West -38 6 £565 +2.73% 1
Yorkshire -46 5 £528 -8.17% 1
South East -72 4 £294 -37.49% 2
North East - 4 - -
Scotland -24 3 £475 +5.56% 1
Wales - 2 £475 -
Northern Ireland +3 1 - -
East Midlands -15 1 £540 +0.56% 2

RDBMS
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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 11 (9.73%) Confluence
2 9 (7.96%) Apache Spark
3 7 (6.19%) Apache
4 6 (5.31%) Apache Airflow
4 6 (5.31%) Tuxedo
5 4 (3.54%) IIS
6 2 (1.77%) Appian
6 2 (1.77%) Oracle Workflow
7 1 (0.88%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.88%) Tomcat
Applications
1 11 (9.73%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (2.65%) Microsoft Excel
3 1 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 10 (8.85%) Finacle
2 4 (3.54%) Summit
3 2 (1.77%) Oracle Cash Management
3 2 (1.77%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (1.77%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (1.77%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (1.77%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.88%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 43 (38.05%) AWS
2 16 (14.16%) GCP
3 15 (13.27%) OCI
4 14 (12.39%) GitHub
5 13 (11.50%) Azure
6 7 (6.19%) dbt
6 7 (6.19%) GitHub Copilot
6 7 (6.19%) Power Platform
7 6 (5.31%) Cloud Functions
8 5 (4.42%) Serverless
9 4 (3.54%) Amazon S3
9 4 (3.54%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (3.54%) Apigee
9 4 (3.54%) Cloud Run
9 4 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
9 4 (3.54%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 4 (3.54%) IaaS
9 4 (3.54%) Kong
9 4 (3.54%) Snowflake
10 3 (2.65%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.77%) Internet
1 2 (1.77%) Intranet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (100.00%) Relational Database
2 41 (36.28%) Oracle Database
3 33 (29.20%) PostgreSQL
4 31 (27.43%) SQL Server
5 28 (24.78%) MongoDB
6 24 (21.24%) NoSQL
7 16 (14.16%) Oracle Exadata
8 13 (11.50%) MySQL
9 8 (7.08%) Data Warehouse
10 7 (6.19%) Big Data
10 7 (6.19%) BigQuery
10 7 (6.19%) Ingres
10 7 (6.19%) Metadata
10 7 (6.19%) Oracle Reports
10 7 (6.19%) Power BI
11 5 (4.42%) Apache Cassandra
11 5 (4.42%) Parquet
12 4 (3.54%) Apache Hive
12 4 (3.54%) Hadoop
12 4 (3.54%) Redis
Development Applications
1 33 (29.20%) Git
2 23 (20.35%) GitLab
3 11 (9.73%) Jenkins
3 11 (9.73%) JIRA
4 7 (6.19%) Oracle Forms
4 7 (6.19%) Team Foundation Server
5 5 (4.42%) Liquibase
6 4 (3.54%) Claude Code
6 4 (3.54%) ER Studio
6 4 (3.54%) Gradle
6 4 (3.54%) Maven
6 4 (3.54%) Snyk
7 2 (1.77%) Artifactory
7 2 (1.77%) Bitbucket
7 2 (1.77%) ERwin
7 2 (1.77%) JDeveloper
7 2 (1.77%) JMeter
7 2 (1.77%) Postman
7 2 (1.77%) TeamCity
8 1 (0.88%) Selenium
General
1 40 (35.40%) Finance
2 32 (28.32%) Analytical Skills
3 29 (25.66%) Social Skills
4 23 (20.35%) Public Sector
5 20 (17.70%) Banking
6 14 (12.39%) Front Office
7 10 (8.85%) Back Office
8 5 (4.42%) Military
9 4 (3.54%) Investment Banking
10 2 (1.77%) Financial Institution
10 2 (1.77%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.88%) Retail
11 1 (0.88%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 34 (30.09%) Senior
2 31 (27.43%) Developer
3 15 (13.27%) DBA
4 13 (11.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 12 (10.62%) Data Engineer
6 10 (8.85%) Applications Support
6 10 (8.85%) Senior Developer
6 10 (8.85%) Systems Support
7 9 (7.96%) Java Developer
7 9 (7.96%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 8 (7.08%) PostgreSQL DBA
9 6 (5.31%) Analyst
9 6 (5.31%) Lead
9 6 (5.31%) Python Developer
10 5 (4.42%) Administrator
10 5 (4.42%) Backend Developer
10 5 (4.42%) Database Specialist
10 5 (4.42%) SQL Developer
11 4 (3.54%) Oracle Infrastructure Engineer
11 4 (3.54%) Senior Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (22.12%) Kafka
2 19 (16.81%) XML
3 18 (15.93%) Oracle GoldenGate
4 16 (14.16%) JSON
5 11 (9.73%) Spring
5 11 (9.73%) Spring Boot
6 10 (8.85%) ODBC
7 9 (7.96%) .NET
7 9 (7.96%) Apache Avro
7 9 (7.96%) React
7 9 (7.96%) REST
8 7 (6.19%) Web Services
9 6 (5.31%) ADO
9 6 (5.31%) Apache Beam
9 6 (5.31%) COM
10 5 (4.42%) OAuth
11 4 (3.54%) JDBC
11 4 (3.54%) Middleware
11 4 (3.54%) RESTful
11 4 (3.54%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 13 (11.50%) Public Cloud
2 10 (8.85%) Analytical Mindset
2 10 (8.85%) SWIFT Messaging Network
3 8 (7.08%) Data Structures
3 8 (7.08%) Derivative
3 8 (7.08%) Replication
4 7 (6.19%) Low-Code
5 6 (5.31%) Algorithms
5 6 (5.31%) Cloud Native
5 6 (5.31%) Product Ownership
6 4 (3.54%) Credit Risk
6 4 (3.54%) Fixed Income
6 4 (3.54%) Market Risk
7 2 (1.77%) Cloud Security Posture
7 2 (1.77%) Clustering
7 2 (1.77%) Equity Derivative
7 2 (1.77%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.77%) PKI
7 2 (1.77%) Reference Data
7 2 (1.77%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 31 (27.43%) Linux
2 19 (16.81%) AIX
3 16 (14.16%) Windows
4 13 (11.50%) Unix
5 4 (3.54%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.88%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 37 (32.74%) DevOps
2 36 (31.86%) Agile
3 32 (28.32%) CI/CD
4 27 (23.89%) Performance Tuning
5 25 (22.12%) Infrastructure as Code
5 25 (22.12%) Migration
6 23 (20.35%) Problem-Solving
7 20 (17.70%) Data Migration
8 19 (16.81%) User Acceptance Testing
9 18 (15.93%) Validation
10 14 (12.39%) ETL
11 13 (11.50%) Infrastructure Engineering
12 12 (10.62%) Continuous Improvement
12 12 (10.62%) Data Pipeline
12 12 (10.62%) Stakeholder Management
13 11 (9.73%) Data Modelling
14 10 (8.85%) AI
14 10 (8.85%) Disaster Recovery
14 10 (8.85%) Risk Management
14 10 (8.85%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 65 (57.52%) SQL
2 27 (23.89%) Python
3 26 (23.01%) Java
4 12 (10.62%) C#
4 12 (10.62%) PL/SQL
5 7 (6.19%) PowerShell
5 7 (6.19%) VB
5 7 (6.19%) VB6
6 5 (4.42%) JavaScript
6 5 (4.42%) Scala
7 4 (3.54%) C
7 4 (3.54%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 4 (3.54%) TypeScript
8 3 (2.65%) Bash
8 3 (2.65%) Perl
8 3 (2.65%) R
9 2 (1.77%) Shell Script
9 2 (1.77%) T-SQL
10 1 (0.88%) MUMPS
Qualifications
1 26 (23.01%) Security Cleared
2 20 (17.70%) SC Cleared
3 8 (7.08%) Degree
4 2 (1.77%) Azure Certification
4 2 (1.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 2 (1.77%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (13.27%) QA
2 9 (7.96%) GDPR
3 7 (6.19%) Data Quality
4 3 (2.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (1.77%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 2 (1.77%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.77%) NIST
6 1 (0.88%) ISO 22301
6 1 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 18 (15.93%) Oracle RAC
2 9 (7.96%) Docker
3 4 (3.54%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 30 (26.55%) Terraform
2 21 (18.58%) Ansible
3 16 (14.16%) Data Guard
3 16 (14.16%) Oracle RMAN
4 10 (8.85%) Kubernetes
5 7 (6.19%) Prometheus
6 6 (5.31%) Grafana
7 4 (3.54%) Argo
8 1 (0.88%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.88%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.88%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 72 (63.72%) Oracle
2 12 (10.62%) Microsoft
3 7 (6.19%) Google
4 6 (5.31%) Actian
5 4 (3.54%) BeyondTrust
5 4 (3.54%) Bomgar
5 4 (3.54%) VMware
6 3 (2.65%) Alteryx
6 3 (2.65%) SAP
6 3 (2.65%) Sybase
7 2 (1.77%) CyberArk
7 2 (1.77%) Databricks
7 2 (1.77%) Dynatrace
7 2 (1.77%) Guidewire
7 2 (1.77%) Salesforce
7 2 (1.77%) Sitecore
7 2 (1.77%) Solace
7 2 (1.77%) Sparx
8 1 (0.88%) Cloudera
8 1 (0.88%) Splunk