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 2 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 463 420 423
Rank change year-on-year -43 +3 +27
Contract jobs citing RDBMS 119 146 183
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 0.33% 0.41% 0.40%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 1.89% 2.28% 2.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 94 100 137
10th Percentile £325 £390 £363
25th Percentile £403 £455 £409
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £528 £518
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% +2.03% -5.91%
75th Percentile £588 £550 £663
90th Percentile £737 £588 £734
UK excluding London median daily rate £447 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.89% -5.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 0 2
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £76.25
Median hourly rate - - £77.50
75th Percentile - - £78.75
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate - - -

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 6,292 6,399 7,661
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.49% 17.93% 16.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,317 4,223 5,369
10th Percentile £330 £345 £350
25th Percentile £410 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £535
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% -0.93% -2.73%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -4.04% -1.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 86 144
10th Percentile £23.10 £18.25 £16.62
25th Percentile £29.25 £22.92 £21.57
Median hourly rate £48.72 £33.75 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +44.36% -26.92% -7.44%
75th Percentile £69.25 £55.25 £65.00
90th Percentile £84.30 £65.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £27.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +100.00% -40.45% +13.38%

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 2 December 2025.

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 15 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 2 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
England -50 101 £525 -1.87% 57
UK excluding London -47 57 £447 -5.89% 56
London -3 52 £550 +1.38% 29
Work from Home -4 40 £550 +6.02% 77
North of England -33 25 £425 -4.49% 8
North West -15 17 £402 -9.66% 6
South East -1 9 £446 -6.11% 26
Scotland +6 8 £350 -25.53% 1
Yorkshire -27 8 £550 - 2
East of England -10 5 £450 - 6
South West -14 5 £550 - 5
Midlands -36 3 £451 -11.74% 6
West Midlands -36 2 £500 -5.48% 4
Wales - 2 £495 - 5
East Midlands -15 1 £402 +12.92% 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 6 (5.04%) Apache Airflow
2 4 (3.36%) JBoss
2 4 (3.36%) SharePoint
3 3 (2.52%) Apache Spark
4 2 (1.68%) Apache
5 1 (0.84%) nginx
5 1 (0.84%) OpenEdge
5 1 (0.84%) SAS
Applications
1 6 (5.04%) Microsoft Excel
1 6 (5.04%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (4.20%) Chatbot
3 4 (3.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 1 (0.84%) Oracle Applications
1 1 (0.84%) SAP ERP
1 1 (0.84%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 60 (50.42%) AWS
2 24 (20.17%) Azure
2 24 (20.17%) Serverless
3 21 (17.65%) Amazon S3
4 19 (15.97%) AWS Lambda
5 17 (14.29%) Snowflake
6 15 (12.61%) GitHub
7 13 (10.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 13 (10.92%) Amazon EC2
7 13 (10.92%) GCP
8 12 (10.08%) Amazon ECS
8 12 (10.08%) Amazon SQS
9 11 (9.24%) AWS Fargate
10 10 (8.40%) OpenShift
11 8 (6.72%) Amazon EMR
11 8 (6.72%) AWS CloudFormation
12 7 (5.88%) Amazon EventBridge
13 6 (5.04%) Datadog
14 5 (4.20%) Amazon Kinesis
14 5 (4.20%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 5 (4.20%) AMQP
2 4 (3.36%) Internet
3 2 (1.68%) Firewall
3 2 (1.68%) MPLS
3 2 (1.68%) WAN
4 1 (0.84%) Asterisk PBX
4 1 (0.84%) HTTP
4 1 (0.84%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 119 (100.00%) Relational Database
2 43 (36.13%) NoSQL
3 42 (35.29%) PostgreSQL
4 31 (26.05%) Data Warehouse
5 25 (21.01%) MySQL
6 21 (17.65%) SQL Server
7 18 (15.13%) MongoDB
8 13 (10.92%) DynamoDB
8 13 (10.92%) Oracle Database
9 12 (10.08%) Amazon RDS
9 12 (10.08%) Big Data
10 8 (6.72%) Amazon Aurora
10 8 (6.72%) BigQuery
11 7 (5.88%) Data Lake
12 6 (5.04%) Metadata
12 6 (5.04%) Redis
13 5 (4.20%) Amazon Redshift
13 5 (4.20%) DB2
13 5 (4.20%) Elasticsearch
13 5 (4.20%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 27 (22.69%) Git
2 23 (19.33%) Jenkins
3 15 (12.61%) Maven
4 10 (8.40%) JUnit
5 9 (7.56%) JIRA
5 9 (7.56%) SonarQube
6 8 (6.72%) Gradle
6 8 (6.72%) TeamCity
7 6 (5.04%) PyCharm
8 5 (4.20%) ER Studio
8 5 (4.20%) ERwin
8 5 (4.20%) SonarLint
8 5 (4.20%) Team Foundation Server
9 4 (3.36%) Bitbucket
9 4 (3.36%) Cucumber
9 4 (3.36%) GitLab
9 4 (3.36%) Octopus Deploy
9 4 (3.36%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (3.36%) Toad
10 3 (2.52%) Bitbucket Server
General
1 41 (34.45%) Social Skills
2 31 (26.05%) Finance
3 20 (16.81%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (8.40%) Public Sector
5 9 (7.56%) Banking
6 7 (5.88%) Front Office
7 4 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (1.68%) Legal
9 1 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
9 1 (0.84%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 41 (34.45%) Developer
2 17 (14.29%) Architect
3 16 (13.45%) Java Developer
4 15 (12.61%) Senior
5 13 (10.92%) DBA
6 11 (9.24%) Senior Developer
7 10 (8.40%) Data Engineer
8 9 (7.56%) AWS Developer
9 7 (5.88%) Data Architect
9 7 (5.88%) Lead
9 7 (5.88%) Senior Java Developer
10 6 (5.04%) Oracle Developer
11 5 (4.20%) Administrator
11 5 (4.20%) Artificial Intelligence Engineer
11 5 (4.20%) Java Architect
11 5 (4.20%) Java Technical Architect
11 5 (4.20%) PostgreSQL DBA
11 5 (4.20%) Python Developer
11 5 (4.20%) Support Engineer
11 5 (4.20%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (21.85%) Spring Boot
2 19 (15.97%) Spring
3 18 (15.13%) Kafka
4 14 (11.76%) JSON
4 14 (11.76%) RESTful
5 12 (10.08%) REST
5 12 (10.08%) XML
6 11 (9.24%) NumPy
6 11 (9.24%) Pandas
6 11 (9.24%) React
7 9 (7.56%) GraphQL
8 8 (6.72%) PySpark
9 6 (5.04%) J2EE
9 6 (5.04%) TensorFlow
10 5 (4.20%) Dropwizard
10 5 (4.20%) JWT
10 5 (4.20%) Micronaut
11 4 (3.36%) Celery
11 4 (3.36%) Elastic Stack
12 3 (2.52%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 12 (10.08%) Data Centre
2 9 (7.56%) Clustering
3 7 (5.88%) Algorithms
3 7 (5.88%) Data Structures
4 6 (5.04%) Cloud Native
5 5 (4.20%) N-Tier
5 5 (4.20%) Product Ownership
5 5 (4.20%) Replication
6 4 (3.36%) Online Banking
7 2 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.68%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.68%) Management Information System
7 2 (1.68%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.68%) Pricing Data
7 2 (1.68%) Public Cloud
7 2 (1.68%) Reinsurance
7 2 (1.68%) Video on Demand
8 1 (0.84%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
8 1 (0.84%) Distributed Systems
Operating Systems
1 17 (14.29%) Linux
2 11 (9.24%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 9 (7.56%) Unix
3 9 (7.56%) Windows
4 6 (5.04%) CentOS
5 1 (0.84%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (31.93%) Problem-Solving
2 35 (29.41%) Agile
2 35 (29.41%) CI/CD
3 34 (28.57%) Data Modelling
4 32 (26.89%) Microservices
5 27 (22.69%) DevOps
5 27 (22.69%) ETL
6 26 (21.85%) Migration
7 23 (19.33%) Data Engineering
8 19 (15.97%) Containerisation
9 17 (14.29%) SDLC
10 16 (13.45%) Data Migration
11 15 (12.61%) Data Governance
11 15 (12.61%) Data Security
11 15 (12.61%) Stakeholder Management
12 14 (11.76%) Analytics
12 14 (11.76%) Test Automation
13 13 (10.92%) Clean Code
13 13 (10.92%) Data Pipeline
14 12 (10.08%) Database Security
Programming Languages
1 63 (52.94%) SQL
2 55 (46.22%) Python
3 39 (32.77%) Java
4 15 (12.61%) PL/SQL
5 11 (9.24%) TypeScript
6 10 (8.40%) JavaScript
6 10 (8.40%) Perl
7 5 (4.20%) PowerShell
8 4 (3.36%) Delphi
8 4 (3.36%) PHP
8 4 (3.36%) T-SQL
9 3 (2.52%) Bash
10 2 (1.68%) C
10 2 (1.68%) C#
10 2 (1.68%) Shell Script
11 1 (0.84%) C++
11 1 (0.84%) Kotlin
11 1 (0.84%) R
11 1 (0.84%) Scala
Qualifications
1 16 (13.45%) Security Cleared
2 13 (10.92%) Degree
3 5 (4.20%) AWS Certification
3 5 (4.20%) DV Cleared
3 5 (4.20%) SC Cleared
4 4 (3.36%) Computer Science Degree
5 3 (2.52%) Azure Certification
5 3 (2.52%) OCP
5 3 (2.52%) Oracle Certification
6 2 (1.68%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.84%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.84%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (14.29%) Data Quality
2 8 (6.72%) QA
3 4 (3.36%) GDPR
4 2 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 29 (24.37%) Docker
2 6 (5.04%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.84%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 20 (16.81%) Kubernetes
2 13 (10.92%) Terraform
3 5 (4.20%) Ansible
3 5 (4.20%) Grafana
4 4 (3.36%) Kibana
4 4 (3.36%) Progress Chef
5 2 (1.68%) Consul
5 2 (1.68%) Data Guard
5 2 (1.68%) Failover Clustering
Vendors
1 44 (36.97%) Oracle
2 13 (10.92%) Microsoft
3 6 (5.04%) Cloudera
3 6 (5.04%) Red Hat
4 5 (4.20%) Gigya
4 5 (4.20%) Sybase
5 4 (3.36%) AppDynamics
5 4 (3.36%) CA Agile Central
5 4 (3.36%) Databricks
5 4 (3.36%) DevExpress
5 4 (3.36%) ServiceNow
5 4 (3.36%) Splunk
5 4 (3.36%) StreamSets
6 3 (2.52%) SAP
6 3 (2.52%) VMware
7 2 (1.68%) Citrix
7 2 (1.68%) IBM
7 2 (1.68%) Veeam
7 2 (1.68%) Zerto
8 1 (0.84%) Delphix