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 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 12 14 12
Rank change year-on-year +2 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,535 4,251 7,067
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 12.08% 9.76% 11.84%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.47% 33.09% 33.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,467 3,060 5,113
10th Percentile £355 £356 £369
25th Percentile £413 £425 £430
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £538
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% - +2.38%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £750 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £472 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -0.74% -2.56% +7.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 62 93
10th Percentile £22.48 £22.88 £20.70
25th Percentile £30.00 £26.63 £31.69
Median hourly rate £42.50 £42.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year - -15.00% +40.85%
75th Percentile £65.62 £56.66 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.19 £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 9,965 12,846 20,898
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 34.04% 29.49% 35.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,755 9,122 15,089
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 £768 £762 £777
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 245 487 471
10th Percentile £22.49 £31.70 £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 £64.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.40% - +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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 2,989 £516 -6.14% 10,372
London -3 1,846 £550 -4.35% 3,958
UK excluding London +6 1,307 £472 -0.74% 7,619
Work from Home -2 1,306 £518 -1.43% 5,068
North of England +2 313 £475 - 1,742
South East +11 302 £500 +5.26% 2,134
Scotland +3 241 £450 -5.26% 361
Midlands +5 197 £460 +8.12% 1,480
North West +2 179 £475 - 866
West Midlands +7 155 £463 +8.82% 819
South West +13 148 £500 -6.98% 824
Yorkshire +10 109 £475 +2.70% 671
East of England +17 78 £459 +1.94% 1,033
East Midlands -6 41 £423 +5.63% 569
Northern Ireland +1 33 £410 -0.61% 126
North East -6 25 £455 -4.21% 214
Wales -13 17 £425 -5.56% 188

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
1 143 (4.05%) Apache Spark
2 139 (3.93%) Confluence
3 121 (3.42%) Apache
4 113 (3.20%) Apache Airflow
5 76 (2.15%) SharePoint
6 56 (1.58%) SAS
7 34 (0.96%) IIS
8 27 (0.76%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 27 (0.76%) Tomcat
9 25 (0.71%) WebSphere
10 22 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
10 22 (0.62%) WebLogic
11 21 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.42%) Skype for Business
13 13 (0.37%) JBoss
14 12 (0.34%) BizTalk Server
14 12 (0.34%) Jupyter
14 12 (0.34%) nginx
14 12 (0.34%) Oracle Coherence
15 8 (0.23%) GemFire
Applications
1 242 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.47%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 20 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (0.42%) 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 48 (1.36%) Aladdin
4 27 (0.76%) Oracle Payables
5 25 (0.71%) Endur
5 25 (0.71%) Oracle General Ledger
6 22 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
7 21 (0.59%) Oracle EBS R12
8 18 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
10 14 (0.40%) thinkFolio
11 13 (0.37%) Kondor
11 13 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
11 13 (0.37%) Oracle Cash Management
12 10 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
13 9 (0.25%) FLEXCUBE
13 9 (0.25%) Oracle E-Business Tax
13 9 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
14 6 (0.17%) Oracle BPM
14 6 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 902 (25.52%) Azure
2 736 (20.82%) AWS
3 597 (16.89%) Power Platform
4 206 (5.83%) GCP
5 190 (5.37%) Azure DevOps
6 188 (5.32%) Snowflake
7 174 (4.92%) Serverless
8 158 (4.47%) Azure Data Factory
9 137 (3.88%) Amazon S3
9 137 (3.88%) GitHub
10 128 (3.62%) dbt
11 126 (3.56%) PowerApps
12 110 (3.11%) AWS Lambda
13 102 (2.89%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 99 (2.80%) SaaS
15 93 (2.63%) Power Automate
16 79 (2.23%) Dynamics 365
17 67 (1.90%) Cloud Computing
18 58 (1.64%) PaaS
19 57 (1.61%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 40 (1.13%) Firewall
2 38 (1.07%) DNS
3 35 (0.99%) HTTP
4 22 (0.62%) TCP/IP
5 21 (0.59%) Skype
6 19 (0.54%) VPN
7 17 (0.48%) DHCP
8 15 (0.42%) Network Security
9 14 (0.40%) Internet
10 13 (0.37%) SSL
11 11 (0.31%) Unified Communications
12 9 (0.25%) SSH
12 9 (0.25%) 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
1 516 (14.60%) Power BI
2 403 (11.40%) Data Warehouse
3 382 (10.81%) SQL Server
4 322 (9.11%) PostgreSQL
5 313 (8.85%) Relational Database
6 248 (7.02%) Tableau
7 243 (6.87%) NoSQL
8 194 (5.49%) Oracle Database
9 188 (5.32%) MongoDB
10 147 (4.16%) Data Lake
11 128 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
12 121 (3.42%) Big Data
13 105 (2.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 100 (2.83%) MySQL
15 90 (2.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 82 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
16 82 (2.32%) DB2
17 81 (2.29%) Amazon Redshift
18 80 (2.26%) Hadoop
19 75 (2.12%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 318 (9.00%) Git
2 293 (8.29%) JIRA
3 183 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 130 (3.68%) JUnit
5 97 (2.74%) GitLab
6 53 (1.50%) Mockito
7 52 (1.47%) Maven
8 43 (1.22%) Cucumber
9 39 (1.10%) Gradle
9 39 (1.10%) Selenium
10 38 (1.07%) Bitbucket
10 38 (1.07%) Liquibase
11 37 (1.05%) ERwin
11 37 (1.05%) Subversion
11 37 (1.05%) Visual Studio
12 34 (0.96%) Oracle Forms
13 29 (0.82%) Postman
14 27 (0.76%) SonarQube
15 19 (0.54%) Jasmine
15 19 (0.54%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,022 (28.91%) Social Skills
2 912 (25.80%) Finance
3 635 (17.96%) Analytical Skills
4 433 (12.25%) Banking
5 333 (9.42%) Public Sector
6 191 (5.40%) Front Office
7 174 (4.92%) Investment Banking
8 115 (3.25%) Marketing
9 75 (2.12%) Retail
10 66 (1.87%) Back Office
11 65 (1.84%) Presentation Skills
12 60 (1.70%) Manufacturing
12 60 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
12 60 (1.70%) Telecoms
13 57 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 53 (1.50%) Legal
15 45 (1.27%) Financial Institution
16 38 (1.07%) Documentation Skills
17 36 (1.02%) Electronics
18 31 (0.88%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,055 (29.84%) Developer
2 581 (16.44%) Analyst
3 483 (13.66%) Data Engineer
4 421 (11.91%) Senior
5 230 (6.51%) Java Developer
6 227 (6.42%) Data Analyst
7 213 (6.03%) Lead
8 192 (5.43%) Architect
9 163 (4.61%) Business Analyst
10 131 (3.71%) Senior Developer
11 129 (3.65%) Consultant
12 107 (3.03%) Software Engineer
13 103 (2.91%) SQL Developer
14 102 (2.89%) .NET Developer
15 98 (2.77%) C# Developer
15 98 (2.77%) Python Developer
16 93 (2.63%) Data Scientist
17 92 (2.60%) DBA
18 84 (2.38%) Data Architect
19 83 (2.35%) Oracle Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (10.27%) .NET
2 261 (7.38%) Kafka
3 221 (6.25%) Spring
4 201 (5.69%) React
5 174 (4.92%) REST
6 164 (4.64%) Spring Boot
7 161 (4.55%) HTML
8 154 (4.36%) PySpark
9 142 (4.02%) CSS
10 131 (3.71%) RESTful
11 117 (3.31%) XML
12 115 (3.25%) Web Services
13 113 (3.20%) SOAP
14 108 (3.06%) JSON
15 106 (3.00%) AngularJS
16 104 (2.94%) .NET Framework
17 90 (2.55%) Node.js
18 65 (1.84%) .NET Core
19 61 (1.73%) Swagger
20 57 (1.61%) ASP.NET
Miscellaneous
1 155 (4.38%) Data Structures
2 127 (3.59%) Derivative
3 100 (2.83%) Product Ownership
4 90 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 87 (2.46%) Fixed Income
6 85 (2.40%) Equities
7 81 (2.29%) Management Information System
8 76 (2.15%) Algorithms
9 75 (2.12%) Onboarding
10 74 (2.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 74 (2.09%) Hedge funds
11 57 (1.61%) Cloud Native
12 53 (1.50%) Distributed Systems
13 51 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
14 50 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
15 48 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
15 48 (1.36%) Replication
16 43 (1.22%) Reference Data
17 41 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
18 38 (1.07%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 362 (10.24%) Linux
2 272 (7.69%) Windows
3 192 (5.43%) Unix
4 107 (3.03%) Windows Server
5 50 (1.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.57%) Windows 10
7 16 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
8 14 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
9 13 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
10 12 (0.34%) Solaris
11 11 (0.31%) AIX
12 8 (0.23%) VMS
13 7 (0.20%) CentOS
14 6 (0.17%) Android
15 5 (0.14%) Ubuntu
16 4 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 3 (0.085%) Oracle Linux
18 2 (0.057%) Apple iOS
18 2 (0.057%) SUSE
18 2 (0.057%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 920 (26.03%) Agile
2 863 (24.41%) Problem-Solving
3 663 (18.76%) Business Intelligence
4 599 (16.94%) Data Modelling
5 597 (16.89%) DevOps
6 592 (16.75%) Analytics
7 556 (15.73%) ETL
8 538 (15.22%) CI/CD
9 457 (12.93%) Migration
10 382 (10.81%) Data Analysis
11 374 (10.58%) Visualisation
12 347 (9.82%) Data Pipeline
13 306 (8.66%) Microservices
14 291 (8.23%) Software Engineering
15 268 (7.58%) Data Engineering
16 266 (7.52%) Test Automation
17 254 (7.19%) Data Science
18 240 (6.79%) Decision-Making
19 238 (6.73%) Data Visualisation
20 227 (6.42%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 1,237 (34.99%) Python
2 599 (16.94%) Java
3 424 (11.99%) C#
4 366 (10.35%) PL/SQL
5 348 (9.84%) JavaScript
6 176 (4.98%) PowerShell
7 157 (4.44%) TypeScript
8 107 (3.03%) T-SQL
9 106 (3.00%) R
10 92 (2.60%) Bash
11 86 (2.43%) Shell Script
12 69 (1.95%) VBA
13 66 (1.87%) Scala
14 60 (1.70%) Perl
15 58 (1.64%) C++
16 53 (1.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 45 (1.27%) VB
18 33 (0.93%) PHP
19 26 (0.74%) Go
20 25 (0.71%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 570 (16.12%) Security Cleared
2 468 (13.24%) SC Cleared
3 324 (9.17%) Degree
4 105 (2.97%) Computer Science Degree
5 65 (1.84%) DV Cleared
6 41 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
7 34 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
8 32 (0.91%) AWS 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 18 (0.51%) PhD
13 17 (0.48%) Numerate Degree
14 16 (0.45%) AWS Certified Developer
15 12 (0.34%) MCSE
16 11 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 11 (0.31%) ITIL Certification
17 10 (0.28%) ISEB
18 9 (0.25%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 291 (8.23%) Data Quality
2 171 (4.84%) QA
3 100 (2.83%) GDPR
4 72 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 42 (1.19%) SLA
6 21 (0.59%) Disclosure Scotland
6 21 (0.59%) MiFID
7 18 (0.51%) PCI DSS
8 16 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
9 15 (0.42%) Basel III
9 15 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 13 (0.37%) HIPAA
11 12 (0.34%) EMIR
12 11 (0.31%) HL7
13 9 (0.25%) 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 (8.77%) Docker
2 128 (3.62%) Active Directory
3 42 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.51%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
7 9 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.23%) GridGain
8 8 (0.23%) HDFS
8 8 (0.23%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (0.20%) vSphere
10 6 (0.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 6 (0.17%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.14%) iptables
11 5 (0.14%) NFS
11 5 (0.14%) Postfix
12 4 (0.11%) Microsoft App-V
12 4 (0.11%) Platform Symphony
13 3 (0.085%) KVM
13 3 (0.085%) RACF
Systems Management
1 290 (8.20%) Kubernetes
2 193 (5.46%) Terraform
3 73 (2.07%) Ansible
4 49 (1.39%) Grafana
5 24 (0.68%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.42%) SCCM
6 15 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
7 13 (0.37%) Kibana
7 13 (0.37%) WSUS
8 12 (0.34%) SCOM
9 10 (0.28%) Progress Chef
10 9 (0.25%) Data Guard
10 9 (0.25%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 8 (0.23%) Control-M
11 8 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 8 (0.23%) Puppet
11 8 (0.23%) VxRail
11 8 (0.23%) ZABBIX
12 6 (0.17%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 641 (18.13%) Oracle
2 508 (14.37%) Microsoft
3 246 (6.96%) Databricks
4 138 (3.90%) SAP
5 111 (3.14%) Google
6 69 (1.95%) Sybase
7 66 (1.87%) Salesforce
8 58 (1.64%) IBM
8 58 (1.64%) VMware
9 50 (1.41%) Informatica
9 50 (1.41%) Splunk
10 49 (1.39%) Cisco
10 49 (1.39%) ServiceNow
11 37 (1.05%) BISAM
12 36 (1.02%) Red Hat
13 29 (0.82%) Adobe
14 28 (0.79%) MuleSoft
14 28 (0.79%) Talend
15 24 (0.68%) Citrix
16 23 (0.65%) OpenLink