SQL Contract Job Trends

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 14 13 11
Rank change year-on-year -1 -2 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,770 4,127 5,104
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.32% 11.01% 10.63%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.58% 34.41% 33.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,541 2,836 3,669
10th Percentile £325 £345 £356
25th Percentile £406 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £500
% change year-on-year - -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 51 65
10th Percentile £22.82 £19.59 £21.27
25th Percentile £30.96 £26.12 £26.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £39.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.21% -13.33% -
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.75 £61.75
90th Percentile - £60.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.33
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.60% +19.48%

All Programming Languages
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 10,903 11,995 15,257
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.74% 32.01% 31.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,132 7,840 10,885
10th Percentile £345 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £442
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £734 £770 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -2.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 304 320 447
10th Percentile £29.00 £25.26 £33.48
25th Percentile £41.25 £41.25 £48.31
Median hourly rate £55.50 £65.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.62% +4.00% +4.17%
75th Percentile £67.25 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.13 £75.00 £79.70
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year - - +3.73%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SQL job vacancy trend in the UK

SQL
Daily Rate Trend

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

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

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL over the 6 months to 17 October 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend

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

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

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL over the 6 months to 17 October 2025.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

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 over the 6 months to 17 October 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 -1 3,249 £500 -6.54% 3,346
London -1 1,940 £525 -4.55% 1,484
UK excluding London -3 1,466 £475 - 2,755
Work from Home -6 1,197 £500 - 1,791
South East +5 357 £480 -8.57% 1,200
North of England -9 311 £450 -7.22% 612
Midlands -1 304 £482 +13.29% 342
Scotland -2 209 £470 +4.44% 139
West Midlands +1 208 £504 +11.89% 209
North West -4 170 £430 -4.34% 369
South West +10 132 £475 -5.00% 233
Yorkshire -21 124 £475 -5.09% 165
East of England +18 95 £501 +29.16% 175
East Midlands -5 91 £410 +2.50% 129
Wales +2 43 £465 -2.11% 64
Northern Ireland +4 38 £525 - 38
North East -2 20 £500 +0.50% 85

SQL
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
1 150 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
2 126 (3.34%) Apache Spark
3 118 (3.13%) Confluence
4 90 (2.39%) Apache
5 63 (1.67%) SharePoint
6 48 (1.27%) WebLogic
7 44 (1.17%) SAS
8 42 (1.11%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.85%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 29 (0.77%) Skype for Business
11 26 (0.69%) IIS
12 22 (0.58%) Mattermost
12 22 (0.58%) WebSphere
13 20 (0.53%) Tomcat
14 19 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
15 18 (0.48%) JBoss
15 18 (0.48%) nginx
16 17 (0.45%) CMS
17 15 (0.40%) Oracle Self-Service HR
18 12 (0.32%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 264 (7.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (1.94%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.88%) MS Visio
5 18 (0.48%) Maya
6 12 (0.32%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 12 (0.32%) NUKE
7 9 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
8 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
9 6 (0.16%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.080%) Oracle Smart View
10 3 (0.080%) Trello
11 2 (0.053%) Maple
11 2 (0.053%) SPSS
11 2 (0.053%) Stata
12 1 (0.027%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.027%) InDesign
12 1 (0.027%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.027%) Weka
Business Applications
1 74 (1.96%) Oracle EBS
2 47 (1.25%) Oracle EBS R12
3 46 (1.22%) Oracle Assets
4 41 (1.09%) Oracle Payables
5 38 (1.01%) Oracle General Ledger
6 36 (0.95%) Aladdin
7 33 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
8 32 (0.85%) Oracle BPM
9 27 (0.72%) Endur
10 24 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
11 20 (0.53%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 18 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Financials
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
13 17 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
14 11 (0.29%) Maximo
14 11 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 11 (0.29%) SAP ERP
15 10 (0.27%) NetSuite
16 9 (0.24%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,131 (30.00%) Azure
2 814 (21.59%) AWS
3 640 (16.98%) Power Platform
4 323 (8.57%) GCP
5 263 (6.98%) Azure DevOps
6 226 (5.99%) Snowflake
7 222 (5.89%) GitHub
8 196 (5.20%) Azure Data Factory
9 185 (4.91%) Serverless
10 159 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 149 (3.95%) dbt
12 145 (3.85%) Amazon S3
13 100 (2.65%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (2.31%) AWS Lambda
15 82 (2.18%) Dynamics 365
16 80 (2.12%) SaaS
17 67 (1.78%) Power Automate
18 65 (1.72%) Azure Functions
18 65 (1.72%) PowerApps
19 57 (1.51%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 63 (1.67%) Firewall
2 47 (1.25%) HTTP
3 45 (1.19%) DNS
4 33 (0.88%) Skype
5 26 (0.69%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.53%) DHCP
6 20 (0.53%) Unified Communications
7 19 (0.50%) Internet
7 19 (0.50%) iSCSI
8 18 (0.48%) Fibre Channel
9 17 (0.45%) SSH
9 17 (0.45%) VPN
10 15 (0.40%) SSL
11 13 (0.34%) SMTP
12 12 (0.32%) IMAP
12 12 (0.32%) OpenLDAP
13 11 (0.29%) SAN
14 10 (0.27%) FTP
15 9 (0.24%) Softphone
15 9 (0.24%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 577 (15.31%) Power BI
2 427 (11.33%) SQL Server
3 404 (10.72%) Data Warehouse
4 312 (8.28%) Relational Database
5 302 (8.01%) PostgreSQL
6 254 (6.74%) NoSQL
7 239 (6.34%) Tableau
8 194 (5.15%) Data Lake
9 186 (4.93%) Oracle Database
10 153 (4.06%) Azure SQL Database
11 139 (3.69%) BigQuery
12 130 (3.45%) MongoDB
13 120 (3.18%) Big Data
14 95 (2.52%) Metadata
15 92 (2.44%) MySQL
16 85 (2.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 79 (2.10%) DB2
18 78 (2.07%) Oracle Reports
19 74 (1.96%) Amazon Redshift
20 70 (1.86%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 355 (9.42%) Git
2 287 (7.61%) JIRA
3 198 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 106 (2.81%) JUnit
5 97 (2.57%) GitLab
6 53 (1.41%) Selenium
7 48 (1.27%) Maven
8 47 (1.25%) Cucumber
9 41 (1.09%) SonarQube
10 40 (1.06%) Mockito
11 37 (0.98%) Bitbucket
12 31 (0.82%) ERwin
12 31 (0.82%) Postman
13 27 (0.72%) Gradle
14 23 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.58%) ER Studio
16 21 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
16 21 (0.56%) SpecFlow
17 19 (0.50%) Eclipse
18 17 (0.45%) SoapUI
General
1 1,215 (32.23%) Social Skills
2 1,074 (28.49%) Finance
3 706 (18.73%) Analytical Skills
4 436 (11.56%) Banking
5 274 (7.27%) Public Sector
6 163 (4.32%) Investment Banking
7 151 (4.01%) Front Office
8 100 (2.65%) Marketing
9 79 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
10 71 (1.88%) Retail
11 65 (1.72%) Presentation Skills
12 64 (1.70%) Manufacturing
13 56 (1.49%) Financial Institution
13 56 (1.49%) Telecoms
14 54 (1.43%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 44 (1.17%) General Ledger
16 37 (0.98%) Local Government
17 36 (0.95%) Back Office
18 31 (0.82%) Automotive
18 31 (0.82%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,045 (27.72%) Developer
2 683 (18.12%) Analyst
3 470 (12.47%) Senior
4 455 (12.07%) Data Engineer
5 303 (8.04%) Data Analyst
6 218 (5.78%) Business Analyst
7 211 (5.60%) Java Developer
8 204 (5.41%) Lead
9 187 (4.96%) Consultant
10 179 (4.75%) Architect
11 153 (4.06%) Senior Developer
12 126 (3.34%) SQL Developer
13 106 (2.81%) Azure Engineer
14 100 (2.65%) Software Engineer
15 99 (2.63%) .NET Developer
16 93 (2.47%) Data Scientist
17 89 (2.36%) Python Developer
18 87 (2.31%) Full-Stack Developer
19 86 (2.28%) C# Developer
20 78 (2.07%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (8.89%) .NET
2 254 (6.74%) REST
3 251 (6.66%) Kafka
4 208 (5.52%) Spring
5 192 (5.09%) React
6 187 (4.96%) HTML
7 161 (4.27%) CSS
8 159 (4.22%) RESTful
9 152 (4.03%) SOAP
10 148 (3.93%) PySpark
10 148 (3.93%) XML
11 134 (3.55%) Spring Boot
12 123 (3.26%) JSON
13 120 (3.18%) Web Services
14 110 (2.92%) AngularJS
15 105 (2.79%) Node.js
16 92 (2.44%) .NET Framework
17 79 (2.10%) Pandas
18 72 (1.91%) .NET Core
19 70 (1.86%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 158 (4.19%) Cloud Native
2 148 (3.93%) Data Structures
3 105 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 100 (2.65%) Legacy Systems
5 98 (2.60%) Derivative
6 94 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
7 84 (2.23%) Algorithms
8 81 (2.15%) Equities
9 76 (2.02%) Management Information System
10 73 (1.94%) Onboarding
11 69 (1.83%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 66 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
13 65 (1.72%) Fixed Income
14 61 (1.62%) Virtual Team
15 59 (1.56%) Replication
16 58 (1.54%) Distributed Systems
17 55 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
18 54 (1.43%) Market Risk
19 49 (1.30%) Self-Motivation
20 39 (1.03%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 408 (10.82%) Linux
2 265 (7.03%) Windows
3 214 (5.68%) Unix
4 74 (1.96%) Windows Server
5 33 (0.88%) VMS
6 26 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
7 15 (0.40%) Android
8 14 (0.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 14 (0.37%) Ubuntu
9 12 (0.32%) Amazon Linux
10 11 (0.29%) Windows 10
11 10 (0.27%) Apple iOS
11 10 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
12 6 (0.16%) AIX
12 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.13%) Solaris
14 4 (0.11%) CentOS
14 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 3 (0.080%) Mac OS X
16 2 (0.053%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,056 (28.01%) Agile
2 856 (22.71%) Problem-Solving
3 784 (20.80%) Business Intelligence
4 751 (19.92%) Analytics
5 725 (19.23%) Data Modelling
6 715 (18.97%) DevOps
7 713 (18.91%) CI/CD
8 619 (16.42%) ETL
9 444 (11.78%) Data Pipeline
10 424 (11.25%) Migration
11 404 (10.72%) Visualisation
12 355 (9.42%) Data Engineering
13 354 (9.39%) Data Analysis
14 324 (8.59%) Data Governance
15 316 (8.38%) Scrum
16 302 (8.01%) Validation
17 289 (7.67%) Software Engineering
18 285 (7.56%) Microservices
19 284 (7.53%) Data Science
19 284 (7.53%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,453 (38.54%) Python
2 619 (16.42%) Java
3 410 (10.88%) C#
4 327 (8.67%) JavaScript
5 260 (6.90%) PL/SQL
6 194 (5.15%) PowerShell
7 121 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 112 (2.97%) C++
9 111 (2.94%) R
9 111 (2.94%) Shell Script
10 102 (2.71%) T-SQL
11 88 (2.33%) Bash
12 85 (2.25%) VBA
13 80 (2.12%) Scala
14 79 (2.10%) VB
15 75 (1.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (1.19%) Perl
17 44 (1.17%) Go
18 39 (1.03%) Bicep
19 33 (0.88%) PHP
Qualifications
1 462 (12.25%) Security Cleared
2 359 (9.52%) Degree
3 337 (8.94%) SC Cleared
4 127 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 72 (1.91%) Master's Degree
6 69 (1.83%) Azure Certification
7 65 (1.72%) DV Cleared
8 60 (1.59%) AWS Certification
9 56 (1.49%) Microsoft Certification
10 45 (1.19%) BPSS Clearance
11 39 (1.03%) ITIL Certification
12 27 (0.72%) MCSE
13 22 (0.58%) ISTQB
14 16 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) PhD
15 15 (0.40%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
16 14 (0.37%) CBAP
17 12 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 11 (0.29%) OCP
18 11 (0.29%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 437 (11.59%) Data Quality
2 225 (5.97%) QA
3 117 (3.10%) GDPR
4 71 (1.88%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.22%) SLA
6 42 (1.11%) MiFID
7 31 (0.82%) EMIR
8 25 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 23 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 20 (0.53%) WCAG
11 19 (0.50%) Basel III
12 15 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.40%) IFRS
12 15 (0.40%) SEPA
13 13 (0.34%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.34%) NIST
14 12 (0.32%) HL7
14 12 (0.32%) IFRS 9
15 11 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
16 10 (0.27%) COBIT
System Software
1 322 (8.54%) Docker
2 103 (2.73%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.58%) NFS
4 22 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
5 21 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 20 (0.53%) VMware ESXi
7 18 (0.48%) Postfix
7 18 (0.48%) vSphere
8 12 (0.32%) Dovecot
8 12 (0.32%) Squid
9 10 (0.27%) DFS Replication
9 10 (0.27%) zsh
10 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
11 6 (0.16%) HDFS
12 5 (0.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 5 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
13 4 (0.11%) NDS
13 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.11%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 299 (7.93%) Kubernetes
2 238 (6.31%) Terraform
3 83 (2.20%) Grafana
4 61 (1.62%) Prometheus
5 59 (1.56%) Ansible
6 31 (0.82%) SCOM
7 21 (0.56%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
9 18 (0.48%) Control-M
9 18 (0.48%) Kibana
10 17 (0.45%) Data Guard
11 16 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 15 (0.40%) SCCM
13 13 (0.34%) ITRS Geneos
13 13 (0.34%) Proxmox
13 13 (0.34%) Puppet
14 12 (0.32%) Nessus
15 10 (0.27%) logstash
15 10 (0.27%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 671 (17.80%) Oracle
2 629 (16.68%) Microsoft
3 321 (8.51%) Databricks
4 149 (3.95%) Google
5 125 (3.32%) Splunk
6 122 (3.24%) SAP
7 73 (1.94%) VMware
8 68 (1.80%) ServiceNow
9 55 (1.46%) IBM
10 53 (1.41%) Informatica
11 51 (1.35%) Salesforce
12 49 (1.30%) Cisco
13 48 (1.27%) Sybase
14 43 (1.14%) Dynatrace
15 41 (1.09%) Talend
16 40 (1.06%) Red Hat
17 30 (0.80%) Citrix
18 29 (0.77%) Adobe
19 27 (0.72%) NetApp
20 26 (0.69%) Bloomberg