SQL Contracts

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies 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 12 14 12
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,526 4,260 7,066
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.06% 9.77% 11.84%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.47% 33.14% 33.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,462 3,063 5,111
10th Percentile £355 £356 £369
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% - +2.38%
75th Percentile £620 £638 £650
90th Percentile £750 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -0.63% -2.56% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 63 93
10th Percentile £22.53 £22.64 £20.70
25th Percentile £30.06 £26.12 £31.69
Median hourly rate £42.66 £42.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +0.37% -15.00% +40.85%
75th Percentile £65.46 £55.81 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.10 £62.96 £84.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £33.51 £42.50 £42.05
% change year-on-year -21.15% +1.08% +29.37%

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 9,942 12,854 20,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.01% 29.49% 35.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,743 9,130 15,092
10th Percentile £360 £350 £400
25th Percentile £419 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £769 £760 £780
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £489 £500
% change year-on-year -2.86% -2.20% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 485 471
10th Percentile £22.49 £31.25 £26.25
25th Percentile £33.91 £46.25 £50.00
Median hourly rate £62.50 £60.50 £60.70
Median % change year-on-year +3.31% -0.33% +21.40%
75th Percentile £68.00 £70.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £78.75 £77.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.87 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.20% - +26.21%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SQL as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SQL in the UK

SQL
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SQL.

Daily rate trend for SQL in the UK

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram

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

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SQL.

Hourly rate trend for SQL in the UK

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram

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

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 17 Contract 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 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
England 0 2,979 £515 -6.36% 4,066
London -3 1,839 £550 -4.35% 2,234
Work from Home -2 1,310 £520 -0.95% 2,239
UK excluding London +7 1,302 £472 -0.63% 1,994
North of England +4 315 £475 - 607
South East +11 299 £500 +5.26% 426
Scotland +2 238 £450 -5.26% 135
Midlands +5 197 £460 +8.12% 430
North West +1 180 £475 - 355
West Midlands +8 156 £463 +8.82% 267
South West +15 147 £494 -8.14% 201
Yorkshire +10 110 £475 +5.56% 185
East of England +18 77 £468 +3.89% 147
East Midlands -7 40 £423 +5.63% 157
Northern Ireland +1 34 £410 -0.61% 46
North East -7 25 £455 -4.21% 68
Wales -11 17 £425 -5.56% 36

SQL
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities 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
1 144 (4.08%) Apache Spark
2 138 (3.91%) Confluence
3 122 (3.46%) Apache
4 113 (3.20%) Apache Airflow
5 76 (2.16%) SharePoint
6 55 (1.56%) SAS
7 34 (0.96%) IIS
8 28 (0.79%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 27 (0.77%) Tomcat
10 25 (0.71%) WebSphere
11 22 (0.62%) WebLogic
12 21 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
13 20 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
14 14 (0.40%) Skype for Business
15 13 (0.37%) JBoss
16 12 (0.34%) BizTalk Server
16 12 (0.34%) Jupyter
16 12 (0.34%) nginx
16 12 (0.34%) Oracle Coherence
17 8 (0.23%) GemFire
Applications
1 244 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 21 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (0.43%) Oracle Smart View
6 7 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
8 5 (0.14%) InfoPath
9 4 (0.11%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.085%) Maya
10 3 (0.085%) NUKE
10 3 (0.085%) Trello
11 2 (0.057%) Notepad++
12 1 (0.028%) Adobe Captivate
12 1 (0.028%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.028%) CATIA
12 1 (0.028%) FileZilla
12 1 (0.028%) Simulink
12 1 (0.028%) Sketch
Business Applications
1 54 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 53 (1.50%) Oracle EBS
3 47 (1.33%) Aladdin
4 27 (0.77%) Oracle Payables
5 25 (0.71%) Endur
5 25 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
6 22 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
7 20 (0.57%) Oracle EBS R12
8 19 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
10 14 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
10 14 (0.40%) thinkFolio
11 13 (0.37%) Kondor
11 13 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
12 10 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
13 9 (0.26%) Oracle E-Business Tax
13 9 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
14 8 (0.23%) FLEXCUBE
15 6 (0.17%) NEC Housing
15 6 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 904 (25.64%) Azure
2 739 (20.96%) AWS
3 594 (16.85%) Power Platform
4 205 (5.81%) GCP
5 189 (5.36%) Azure DevOps
6 187 (5.30%) Snowflake
7 175 (4.96%) Serverless
8 157 (4.45%) Azure Data Factory
9 138 (3.91%) Amazon S3
10 137 (3.89%) GitHub
11 128 (3.63%) dbt
12 126 (3.57%) PowerApps
13 111 (3.15%) AWS Lambda
14 101 (2.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 99 (2.81%) SaaS
16 93 (2.64%) Power Automate
17 80 (2.27%) Dynamics 365
18 67 (1.90%) Cloud Computing
19 58 (1.64%) PaaS
20 57 (1.62%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 39 (1.11%) Firewall
2 37 (1.05%) DNS
3 36 (1.02%) HTTP
4 22 (0.62%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.57%) Skype
6 19 (0.54%) VPN
7 16 (0.45%) DHCP
8 15 (0.43%) Network Security
9 14 (0.40%) Internet
10 13 (0.37%) SSL
11 11 (0.31%) Unified Communications
12 9 (0.26%) SSH
12 9 (0.26%) WAN
13 7 (0.20%) LAN
13 7 (0.20%) Wireshark
14 6 (0.17%) Remote Desktop
14 6 (0.17%) SAN
14 6 (0.17%) Wireless
15 5 (0.14%) Cisco ISE
15 5 (0.14%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 513 (14.55%) Power BI
2 403 (11.43%) Data Warehouse
3 383 (10.86%) SQL Server
4 322 (9.13%) PostgreSQL
5 312 (8.85%) Relational Database
6 248 (7.03%) Tableau
7 245 (6.95%) NoSQL
8 194 (5.50%) Oracle Database
9 189 (5.36%) MongoDB
10 146 (4.14%) Data Lake
11 129 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
12 121 (3.43%) Big Data
13 103 (2.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 100 (2.84%) MySQL
15 89 (2.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 82 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
16 82 (2.33%) DB2
17 81 (2.30%) Amazon Redshift
18 79 (2.24%) Hadoop
19 75 (2.13%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 318 (9.02%) Git
2 291 (8.25%) JIRA
3 183 (5.19%) Jenkins
4 130 (3.69%) JUnit
5 97 (2.75%) GitLab
6 53 (1.50%) Mockito
7 52 (1.47%) Maven
8 44 (1.25%) Cucumber
9 39 (1.11%) Gradle
10 38 (1.08%) Bitbucket
10 38 (1.08%) Liquibase
10 38 (1.08%) Selenium
11 37 (1.05%) ERwin
11 37 (1.05%) Subversion
12 36 (1.02%) Visual Studio
13 34 (0.96%) Oracle Forms
14 30 (0.85%) Postman
15 28 (0.79%) SonarQube
16 19 (0.54%) Jasmine
16 19 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,020 (28.93%) Social Skills
2 909 (25.78%) Finance
3 633 (17.95%) Analytical Skills
4 429 (12.17%) Banking
5 337 (9.56%) Public Sector
6 186 (5.28%) Front Office
7 172 (4.88%) Investment Banking
8 116 (3.29%) Marketing
9 76 (2.16%) Retail
10 65 (1.84%) Back Office
10 65 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
11 60 (1.70%) Manufacturing
11 60 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
11 60 (1.70%) Telecoms
12 57 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 53 (1.50%) Legal
14 45 (1.28%) Financial Institution
15 38 (1.08%) Documentation Skills
16 36 (1.02%) Electronics
17 31 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,048 (29.72%) Developer
2 581 (16.48%) Analyst
3 481 (13.64%) Data Engineer
4 423 (12.00%) Senior
5 229 (6.49%) Data Analyst
6 226 (6.41%) Java Developer
7 211 (5.98%) Lead
8 189 (5.36%) Architect
9 160 (4.54%) Business Analyst
10 132 (3.74%) Consultant
11 131 (3.72%) Senior Developer
12 109 (3.09%) Software Engineer
13 103 (2.92%) .NET Developer
14 102 (2.89%) SQL Developer
15 98 (2.78%) C# Developer
15 98 (2.78%) Python Developer
16 94 (2.67%) Data Scientist
17 91 (2.58%) DBA
18 84 (2.38%) Data Architect
19 83 (2.35%) Oracle Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (10.32%) .NET
2 262 (7.43%) Kafka
3 219 (6.21%) Spring
4 201 (5.70%) React
5 170 (4.82%) REST
6 163 (4.62%) Spring Boot
7 160 (4.54%) HTML
8 153 (4.34%) PySpark
9 141 (4.00%) CSS
10 131 (3.72%) RESTful
11 118 (3.35%) XML
12 116 (3.29%) Web Services
13 111 (3.15%) SOAP
14 109 (3.09%) JSON
15 104 (2.95%) .NET Framework
15 104 (2.95%) AngularJS
16 88 (2.50%) Node.js
17 64 (1.82%) .NET Core
18 61 (1.73%) Swagger
19 57 (1.62%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 151 (4.28%) Data Structures
2 125 (3.55%) Derivative
3 100 (2.84%) Product Ownership
4 90 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 85 (2.41%) Fixed Income
6 84 (2.38%) Equities
7 82 (2.33%) Management Information System
8 77 (2.18%) Algorithms
9 74 (2.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 74 (2.10%) Onboarding
10 73 (2.07%) Hedge funds
11 57 (1.62%) Cloud Native
12 52 (1.47%) Enterprise Software
13 51 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
14 49 (1.39%) Linux Command Line
15 48 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
16 47 (1.33%) Replication
17 43 (1.22%) Reference Data
18 40 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
19 38 (1.08%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 355 (10.07%) Linux
2 270 (7.66%) Windows
3 193 (5.47%) Unix
4 104 (2.95%) Windows Server
5 51 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.54%) Windows 10
7 14 (0.40%) Windows Server 2012
8 13 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
9 12 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
10 11 (0.31%) AIX
10 11 (0.31%) Solaris
11 9 (0.26%) VMS
12 7 (0.20%) CentOS
13 6 (0.17%) Android
14 5 (0.14%) Ubuntu
15 4 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 2 (0.057%) Apple iOS
16 2 (0.057%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.057%) SUSE
16 2 (0.057%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 913 (25.89%) Agile
2 859 (24.36%) Problem-Solving
3 657 (18.63%) Business Intelligence
4 597 (16.93%) Data Modelling
5 596 (16.90%) DevOps
6 590 (16.73%) Analytics
7 555 (15.74%) ETL
8 537 (15.23%) CI/CD
9 455 (12.90%) Migration
10 382 (10.83%) Data Analysis
11 374 (10.61%) Visualisation
12 344 (9.76%) Data Pipeline
13 304 (8.62%) Microservices
14 287 (8.14%) Software Engineering
15 267 (7.57%) Data Engineering
16 264 (7.49%) Test Automation
17 255 (7.23%) Data Science
18 240 (6.81%) Decision-Making
19 237 (6.72%) Data Visualisation
20 227 (6.44%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,234 (35.00%) Python
2 595 (16.87%) Java
3 421 (11.94%) C#
4 366 (10.38%) PL/SQL
5 346 (9.81%) JavaScript
6 175 (4.96%) PowerShell
7 157 (4.45%) TypeScript
8 107 (3.03%) R
8 107 (3.03%) T-SQL
9 92 (2.61%) Bash
10 87 (2.47%) Shell Script
11 69 (1.96%) VBA
12 64 (1.82%) Scala
13 59 (1.67%) Perl
14 57 (1.62%) C++
15 54 (1.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 45 (1.28%) VB
17 34 (0.96%) PHP
18 25 (0.71%) Ruby
19 24 (0.68%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 567 (16.08%) Security Cleared
2 467 (13.24%) SC Cleared
3 324 (9.19%) Degree
4 106 (3.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 63 (1.79%) DV Cleared
6 39 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 34 (0.96%) AWS Certification
8 32 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
9 25 (0.71%) Master's Degree
10 23 (0.65%) Azure Certification
11 22 (0.62%) Cisco Certification
11 22 (0.62%) ISTQB
12 17 (0.48%) Numerate Degree
12 17 (0.48%) PhD
13 16 (0.45%) AWS Certified Developer
14 11 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
14 11 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
15 10 (0.28%) ISEB
15 10 (0.28%) MCSE
16 9 (0.26%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 290 (8.22%) Data Quality
2 171 (4.85%) QA
3 101 (2.86%) GDPR
4 70 (1.99%) Accessibility
5 41 (1.16%) SLA
6 21 (0.60%) Disclosure Scotland
6 21 (0.60%) MiFID
7 18 (0.51%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
9 15 (0.43%) Basel III
9 15 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 13 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 12 (0.34%) EMIR
12 11 (0.31%) HL7
13 9 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.20%) Cyber Essentials
14 7 (0.20%) Dodd-Frank
15 6 (0.17%) Basel II
15 6 (0.17%) IFRS
16 5 (0.14%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 310 (8.79%) Docker
2 128 (3.63%) Active Directory
3 41 (1.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
5 17 (0.48%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.28%) Oracle RAC
7 8 (0.23%) GridGain
7 8 (0.23%) HDFS
7 8 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (0.23%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 6 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
8 6 (0.17%) vSphere
9 5 (0.14%) iptables
9 5 (0.14%) Postfix
10 4 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
10 4 (0.11%) NFS
10 4 (0.11%) Platform Symphony
11 3 (0.085%) KVM
11 3 (0.085%) RACF
Systems Management
1 294 (8.34%) Kubernetes
2 195 (5.53%) Terraform
3 74 (2.10%) Ansible
4 49 (1.39%) Grafana
5 24 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.43%) SCCM
6 15 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
7 13 (0.37%) Kibana
7 13 (0.37%) WSUS
8 12 (0.34%) SCOM
9 10 (0.28%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 10 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 9 (0.26%) Puppet
11 8 (0.23%) Control-M
11 8 (0.23%) Data Guard
11 8 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.23%) VxRail
11 8 (0.23%) ZABBIX
12 7 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
13 6 (0.17%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 640 (18.15%) Oracle
2 507 (14.38%) Microsoft
3 245 (6.95%) Databricks
4 138 (3.91%) SAP
5 113 (3.20%) Google
6 69 (1.96%) Sybase
7 66 (1.87%) Salesforce
8 58 (1.64%) IBM
9 56 (1.59%) VMware
10 50 (1.42%) Informatica
11 49 (1.39%) Cisco
11 49 (1.39%) Splunk
12 47 (1.33%) ServiceNow
13 36 (1.02%) BISAM
14 35 (0.99%) Red Hat
15 29 (0.82%) Adobe
16 28 (0.79%) MuleSoft
16 28 (0.79%) Talend
17 24 (0.68%) Citrix
18 23 (0.65%) OpenLink