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 25 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 15 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,887 4,044 4,854
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.86% 11.14% 10.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 33.93% 34.77% 34.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,637 2,717 3,489
10th Percentile £325 £344 £350
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 £626 £650
90th Percentile £713 £731 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £500
% change year-on-year -0.42% -4.60% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 58 66
10th Percentile £22.83 £19.59 £21.31
25th Percentile £29.25 £25.51 £26.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £39.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.79% -11.67% -
75th Percentile £57.50 £53.75 £56.20
90th Percentile £64.05 £65.00 £74.33
UK excluding London median hourly rate £55.00 £30.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +83.33% -33.33% +28.57%

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 11,456 11,631 14,256
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 32.00% 32.03% 30.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,559 7,427 10,147
10th Percentile £350 £350 £360
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £621 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £756 £753
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 339 298 437
10th Percentile £29.87 £22.00 £32.19
25th Percentile £48.75 £40.19 £47.50
Median hourly rate £63.50 £62.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +1.20% +4.58% -
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.25 £75.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 25 November 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 25 November 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 25 November 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 -5 3,368 £500 -4.76% 2,381
London -2 2,040 £525 -4.55% 844
UK excluding London -6 1,467 £475 -0.42% 2,078
Work from Home -5 1,224 £504 +0.75% 1,206
South East -3 332 £475 -9.52% 741
North of England -9 327 £437 -9.90% 391
Midlands -2 318 £500 +11.11% 387
West Midlands +4 228 £515 +8.19% 240
Scotland -4 198 £463 +2.78% 130
North West -3 190 £425 -5.56% 212
South West 0 153 £475 -3.80% 198
Yorkshire -23 123 £458 -9.45% 129
East Midlands -7 87 £450 +12.50% 143
East of England +9 84 £550 +37.50% 172
Wales +3 44 £485 -3.00% 67
Northern Ireland 0 35 £400 -23.81% 26
North East -11 16 £500 +5.26% 52

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
1 166 (4.27%) Apache Airflow
2 156 (4.01%) Apache Spark
3 121 (3.11%) Confluence
4 108 (2.78%) Apache
5 88 (2.26%) SharePoint
6 62 (1.60%) SAS
7 48 (1.23%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.59%) IIS
9 23 (0.59%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 22 (0.57%) nginx
11 21 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
12 20 (0.51%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.46%) CMS
13 18 (0.46%) Skype for Business
13 18 (0.46%) WebSphere
14 17 (0.44%) JBoss
15 14 (0.36%) Jupyter
16 13 (0.33%) Mattermost
17 10 (0.26%) Oracle Service Bus
Applications
1 288 (7.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 77 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 33 (0.85%) MS Visio
5 12 (0.31%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 11 (0.28%) Chatbot
6 11 (0.28%) Maya
7 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.18%) NUKE
9 4 (0.10%) Adobe Captivate
10 3 (0.077%) Trello
11 2 (0.051%) Maple
11 2 (0.051%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.051%) SPSS
12 1 (0.026%) Adobe Illustrator
12 1 (0.026%) InDesign
12 1 (0.026%) Photoshop
12 1 (0.026%) Stata
12 1 (0.026%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.75%) Oracle EBS R12
3 29 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
4 25 (0.64%) Oracle Assets
4 25 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
5 24 (0.62%) Aladdin
6 23 (0.59%) Oracle BPM
7 20 (0.51%) Endur
8 19 (0.49%) Oracle Receivables
9 17 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
10 15 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
10 15 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
11 14 (0.36%) Maximo
12 13 (0.33%) NetSuite
12 13 (0.33%) Oracle Financials
13 10 (0.26%) SAP ERP
14 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
14 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
14 9 (0.23%) Oracle E-Business Tax
Cloud Services
1 1,210 (31.13%) Azure
2 883 (22.72%) AWS
3 682 (17.55%) Power Platform
4 318 (8.18%) GCP
5 307 (7.90%) Azure DevOps
6 266 (6.84%) GitHub
6 266 (6.84%) Snowflake
7 230 (5.92%) Serverless
8 219 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
9 185 (4.76%) Amazon S3
10 167 (4.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 150 (3.86%) dbt
12 127 (3.27%) GitHub Actions
13 117 (3.01%) AWS Lambda
14 88 (2.26%) Dynamics 365
15 82 (2.11%) Power Automate
16 81 (2.08%) Azure Functions
17 75 (1.93%) PowerApps
17 75 (1.93%) SaaS
18 65 (1.67%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 59 (1.52%) Firewall
2 55 (1.41%) HTTP
3 45 (1.16%) DNS
4 26 (0.67%) TCP/IP
5 24 (0.62%) Skype
6 20 (0.51%) DHCP
7 19 (0.49%) VPN
8 17 (0.44%) SSH
9 16 (0.41%) Internet
9 16 (0.41%) iSCSI
10 15 (0.39%) Fibre Channel
10 15 (0.39%) Network Security
11 13 (0.33%) SMTP
11 13 (0.33%) SSL
12 12 (0.31%) IMAP
12 12 (0.31%) OpenLDAP
12 12 (0.31%) Unified Communications
13 11 (0.28%) FTP
13 11 (0.28%) SAN
14 9 (0.23%) 2G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (15.74%) Power BI
2 429 (11.04%) SQL Server
3 419 (10.78%) Data Warehouse
4 323 (8.31%) Relational Database
5 312 (8.03%) PostgreSQL
6 263 (6.77%) NoSQL
7 239 (6.15%) Tableau
8 203 (5.22%) Data Lake
9 181 (4.66%) Azure SQL Database
10 178 (4.58%) Oracle Database
11 130 (3.34%) BigQuery
12 124 (3.19%) Big Data
13 123 (3.16%) MongoDB
14 122 (3.14%) Metadata
15 102 (2.62%) MySQL
16 89 (2.29%) Amazon Redshift
17 83 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
18 78 (2.01%) DB2
19 77 (1.98%) Power Query
20 76 (1.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 410 (10.55%) Git
2 318 (8.18%) JIRA
3 210 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 117 (3.01%) GitLab
5 107 (2.75%) JUnit
6 64 (1.65%) Selenium
7 47 (1.21%) Oracle APEX
8 44 (1.13%) Bitbucket
9 43 (1.11%) Cucumber
10 42 (1.08%) Maven
11 37 (0.95%) Mockito
11 37 (0.95%) Postman
12 34 (0.87%) ERwin
13 33 (0.85%) SonarQube
14 26 (0.67%) Gradle
15 25 (0.64%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.57%) Eclipse
16 22 (0.57%) Oracle Forms
17 21 (0.54%) SpecFlow
17 21 (0.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,249 (32.13%) Social Skills
2 1,094 (28.15%) Finance
3 744 (19.14%) Analytical Skills
4 421 (10.83%) Banking
5 293 (7.54%) Public Sector
6 160 (4.12%) Investment Banking
7 130 (3.34%) Front Office
8 101 (2.60%) Documentation Skills
9 99 (2.55%) Marketing
10 61 (1.57%) Retail
11 60 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 60 (1.54%) Manufacturing
12 56 (1.44%) Presentation Skills
13 52 (1.34%) Financial Institution
14 45 (1.16%) Telecoms
15 39 (1.00%) Back Office
15 39 (1.00%) Local Government
16 33 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
16 33 (0.85%) Legal
17 30 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 1,105 (28.43%) Developer
2 666 (17.13%) Analyst
3 507 (13.04%) Data Engineer
4 489 (12.58%) Senior
5 295 (7.59%) Data Analyst
6 215 (5.53%) Business Analyst
7 211 (5.43%) Lead
8 199 (5.12%) Java Developer
9 177 (4.55%) Consultant
9 177 (4.55%) Senior Developer
10 162 (4.17%) Architect
11 115 (2.96%) Software Engineer
12 113 (2.91%) SQL Developer
13 106 (2.73%) Azure Engineer
14 100 (2.57%) Full-Stack Developer
15 97 (2.50%) Python Developer
16 89 (2.29%) .NET Developer
17 88 (2.26%) Data Scientist
18 86 (2.21%) C# Developer
19 75 (1.93%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (8.98%) .NET
2 290 (7.46%) REST
3 238 (6.12%) Kafka
4 201 (5.17%) Spring
5 198 (5.09%) React
6 182 (4.68%) RESTful
7 178 (4.58%) HTML
8 172 (4.43%) PySpark
9 166 (4.27%) XML
10 159 (4.09%) CSS
11 144 (3.70%) JSON
12 135 (3.47%) Spring Boot
13 134 (3.45%) SOAP
14 121 (3.11%) AngularJS
15 118 (3.04%) Node.js
16 102 (2.62%) Web Services
17 97 (2.50%) .NET Framework
18 96 (2.47%) Pandas
19 68 (1.75%) Middleware
20 65 (1.67%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 176 (4.53%) Cloud Native
2 139 (3.58%) Data Structures
3 108 (2.78%) Product Ownership
4 102 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
5 97 (2.50%) Data Protection Act
6 78 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
6 78 (2.01%) Derivative
6 78 (2.01%) Equities
7 76 (1.96%) Algorithms
8 72 (1.85%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 72 (1.85%) Management Information System
9 62 (1.60%) Onboarding
10 60 (1.54%) Fixed Income
10 60 (1.54%) Virtual Team
11 54 (1.39%) Replication
12 51 (1.31%) Distributed Systems
13 46 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
13 46 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
14 42 (1.08%) Market Risk
15 38 (0.98%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 395 (10.16%) Linux
2 286 (7.36%) Windows
3 222 (5.71%) Unix
4 79 (2.03%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.72%) VMS
6 25 (0.64%) Windows Server 2019
7 19 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 16 (0.41%) Android
9 14 (0.36%) Ubuntu
10 12 (0.31%) Amazon Linux
11 11 (0.28%) Windows 10
12 10 (0.26%) Apple iOS
13 9 (0.23%) Windows Server 2016
14 6 (0.15%) CentOS
14 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.10%) AIX
15 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
16 3 (0.077%) Solaris
17 2 (0.051%) Oracle Linux
18 1 (0.026%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,139 (29.30%) Agile
2 902 (23.21%) Problem-Solving
3 823 (21.17%) Analytics
4 819 (21.07%) CI/CD
5 815 (20.97%) Business Intelligence
6 792 (20.38%) DevOps
7 785 (20.20%) Data Modelling
8 666 (17.13%) ETL
9 508 (13.07%) Data Pipeline
10 451 (11.60%) Migration
11 408 (10.50%) Visualisation
12 389 (10.01%) Data Engineering
13 373 (9.60%) Data Governance
14 367 (9.44%) Data Analysis
15 351 (9.03%) Validation
16 339 (8.72%) Scrum
17 316 (8.13%) Microservices
18 312 (8.03%) Test Automation
19 311 (8.00%) AI
19 311 (8.00%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,455 (37.43%) Python
2 631 (16.23%) Java
3 428 (11.01%) C#
4 353 (9.08%) JavaScript
5 286 (7.36%) PL/SQL
6 183 (4.71%) PowerShell
7 156 (4.01%) TypeScript
8 116 (2.98%) T-SQL
9 109 (2.80%) R
9 109 (2.80%) Shell Script
10 108 (2.78%) C++
11 94 (2.42%) VBA
12 86 (2.21%) Scala
13 85 (2.19%) Bash
14 78 (2.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 72 (1.85%) VB
16 46 (1.18%) Go
17 40 (1.03%) Perl
17 40 (1.03%) PHP
18 38 (0.98%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 554 (14.25%) Security Cleared
2 418 (10.75%) SC Cleared
3 356 (9.16%) Degree
4 131 (3.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 67 (1.72%) Azure Certification
5 67 (1.72%) DV Cleared
5 67 (1.72%) Master's Degree
6 63 (1.62%) AWS Certification
7 55 (1.41%) Microsoft Certification
8 47 (1.21%) BPSS Clearance
9 32 (0.82%) ISTQB
9 32 (0.82%) ITIL Certification
10 26 (0.67%) MCSE
11 22 (0.57%) Oracle Certification
12 19 (0.49%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.31%) CBAP
13 12 (0.31%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
14 11 (0.28%) OCA
14 11 (0.28%) OCP
15 10 (0.26%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 493 (12.68%) Data Quality
2 254 (6.53%) QA
3 121 (3.11%) GDPR
4 79 (2.03%) Accessibility
5 33 (0.85%) MiFID
6 28 (0.72%) SLA
7 25 (0.64%) EMIR
8 23 (0.59%) WCAG
9 21 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 20 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 17 (0.44%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.39%) SEPA
13 14 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 13 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
15 10 (0.26%) PSD2
16 9 (0.23%) HL7
16 9 (0.23%) PMO
17 8 (0.21%) Basel III
17 8 (0.21%) IFRS
17 8 (0.21%) NIST
System Software
1 389 (10.01%) Docker
2 102 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 43 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.57%) Virtual Machines
5 19 (0.49%) NFS
6 17 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
8 15 (0.39%) Postfix
9 13 (0.33%) vSphere
10 12 (0.31%) Dovecot
10 12 (0.31%) Squid
11 10 (0.26%) DFS Replication
12 9 (0.23%) zsh
13 8 (0.21%) Hyper-V
14 6 (0.15%) HDFS
15 5 (0.13%) Microsoft Virtual Server
15 5 (0.13%) NDS
15 5 (0.13%) NetIQ eDirectory
15 5 (0.13%) Virtual Servers
16 4 (0.10%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 359 (9.24%) Kubernetes
2 251 (6.46%) Terraform
3 84 (2.16%) Grafana
4 67 (1.72%) Ansible
5 65 (1.67%) Prometheus
6 25 (0.64%) SCOM
7 21 (0.54%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.51%) Kibana
9 18 (0.46%) Puppet
10 16 (0.41%) Control-M
10 16 (0.41%) Data Guard
10 16 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 16 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
11 15 (0.39%) SCCM
12 14 (0.36%) Progress Chef
13 13 (0.33%) Nessus
13 13 (0.33%) Proxmox
13 13 (0.33%) WSUS
14 12 (0.31%) ITRS Geneos
15 10 (0.26%) logstash
Vendors
1 683 (17.57%) Oracle
2 656 (16.88%) Microsoft
3 349 (8.98%) Databricks
4 141 (3.63%) Google
5 115 (2.96%) Splunk
6 107 (2.75%) SAP
7 76 (1.96%) ServiceNow
8 66 (1.70%) Salesforce
9 64 (1.65%) VMware
10 63 (1.62%) Talend
11 53 (1.36%) IBM
12 46 (1.18%) Informatica
13 42 (1.08%) Dynatrace
14 41 (1.05%) Sybase
15 40 (1.03%) Citrix
16 35 (0.90%) Denodo
17 34 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 33 (0.85%) Bloomberg
18 33 (0.85%) Cisco
19 31 (0.80%) OpenAI