SQL Job Trends

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and salary benchmarking for jobs requiring SQL skills. It covers permanent job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 9 10
Rank change year-on-year -15 +1 -3
Permanent jobs citing SQL 4,641 6,349 10,188
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 7.06% 12.70% 13.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.76% 37.15% 36.77%
Number of salaries quoted 3,130 3,539 8,316
10th Percentile £32,125 £32,950 £33,750
25th Percentile £40,000 £43,750 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £60,000 £57,500
Median % change year-on-year -4.17% +4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £75,000 £77,500 £73,750
90th Percentile £92,500 £96,250 £91,934
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £52,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year -9.52% +5.00% -4.76%

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 permanent job vacancies requiring coding skills.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 12,292 17,090 27,704
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 18.71% 34.18% 37.28%
Number of salaries quoted 8,837 10,021 22,871
10th Percentile £33,750 £37,750 £36,250
25th Percentile £46,250 £48,750 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +8.33% -7.69%
75th Percentile £83,250 £85,000 £80,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £57,500 £55,000
% change year-on-year -4.35% +4.55% -

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SQL job vacancy trend in the UK

SQL
Salary Trend

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SQL.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SQL

SQL
Salary Histogram

Salary distribution for jobs citing SQL over the 6 months to 10 February 2026.

Salary histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 18 Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the UK over the 6 months to 10 February 2026. 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -18 4,083 £57,500 -4.17% 1,811
UK excluding London -19 2,896 £47,500 -9.52% 1,574
Work from Home -4 1,665 £55,000 -8.33% 998
London -3 1,507 £72,500 -3.33% 646
North of England -20 740 £50,000 - 364
South East -9 736 £50,000 -9.74% 529
Midlands -15 637 £45,000 -10.00% 272
West Midlands -16 373 £45,000 -14.29% 176
Yorkshire -4 337 £44,500 -1.11% 106
North West -23 327 £55,000 +10.00% 220
Scotland -6 277 £45,000 +1.12% 113
South West -17 265 £45,000 -18.18% 152
East Midlands +2 262 £41,000 -18.00% 96
East of England -36 171 £43,500 -34.30% 116
North East -12 76 £47,500 -13.64% 41
Wales -6 62 £41,500 -19.02% 37
Northern Ireland -21 24 £50,000 -9.09% 14
Channel Islands -1 1 £90,000 -

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
1 117 (2.52%) Apache Spark
2 110 (2.37%) Apache Airflow
3 106 (2.28%) SharePoint
4 88 (1.90%) Confluence
5 72 (1.55%) Apache
6 58 (1.25%) IIS
7 51 (1.10%) Microsoft Exchange
8 39 (0.84%) SAS
9 30 (0.65%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 17 (0.37%) WebSphere
11 16 (0.34%) JBoss
12 14 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.28%) Appian
14 11 (0.24%) CMS
15 9 (0.19%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.17%) Oracle Workflow
17 6 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.13%) Umbraco
18 5 (0.11%) Jupyter
18 5 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 973 (20.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 93 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 29 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (0.54%) MS Visio
6 15 (0.32%) Oracle Smart View
7 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 6 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.13%) Siemens NX
7 6 (0.13%) Trello
8 3 (0.065%) CATIA
8 3 (0.065%) SOLIDWORKS
8 3 (0.065%) Windchill
9 2 (0.043%) SPSS
10 1 (0.022%) EngageOne
10 1 (0.022%) Notion
Business Applications
1 62 (1.34%) Oracle ERP
2 56 (1.21%) Dynamics CRM
3 50 (1.08%) Oracle Receivables
4 43 (0.93%) Oracle Payables
5 34 (0.73%) Oracle Assets
6 31 (0.67%) Oracle Financials
7 28 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
8 20 (0.43%) NetSuite
8 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
9 16 (0.34%) Dynamics NAV
9 16 (0.34%) Shopify
10 14 (0.30%) Hyperion Planning
10 14 (0.30%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.24%) Visualfiles
12 10 (0.22%) Endur
12 10 (0.22%) SAP Business One
13 9 (0.19%) Magento
13 9 (0.19%) SAP CO
14 8 (0.17%) Unit4 Business World
15 7 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,944 (41.89%) Azure
2 1,411 (30.40%) Power Platform
3 645 (13.90%) AWS
4 476 (10.26%) Azure AI
5 396 (8.53%) Azure DevOps
6 318 (6.85%) SaaS
7 268 (5.77%) Azure Data Factory
8 261 (5.62%) GitHub
9 227 (4.89%) Snowflake
10 217 (4.68%) GCP
11 177 (3.81%) Serverless
12 176 (3.79%) Microsoft 365
13 159 (3.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 148 (3.19%) Entra ID
15 138 (2.97%) dbt
16 129 (2.78%) Power Automate
17 113 (2.43%) Amazon S3
18 97 (2.09%) AWS Lambda
19 93 (2.00%) Dynamics 365
20 85 (1.83%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 73 (1.57%) VPN
2 58 (1.25%) Firewall
3 56 (1.21%) DNS
4 43 (0.93%) Remote Desktop
5 39 (0.84%) TCP/IP
6 37 (0.80%) WAN
7 30 (0.65%) Broadband
7 30 (0.65%) DHCP
8 21 (0.45%) SAN
9 20 (0.43%) Network Security
10 19 (0.41%) VoIP
11 17 (0.37%) LAN
12 14 (0.30%) Intranet
13 13 (0.28%) Wi-Fi
14 12 (0.26%) Internet
14 12 (0.26%) SSL
14 12 (0.26%) WinSCP
15 11 (0.24%) SD-WAN
16 10 (0.22%) HTTP
16 10 (0.22%) Modbus
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,322 (28.49%) Power BI
2 875 (18.85%) Tableau
3 683 (14.72%) SQL Server
4 419 (9.03%) Data Warehouse
5 255 (5.49%) NoSQL
6 234 (5.04%) Azure SQL Database
7 220 (4.74%) Relational Database
8 200 (4.31%) Data Mining
9 187 (4.03%) Data Lake
10 178 (3.84%) MySQL
11 172 (3.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 157 (3.38%) PostgreSQL
13 152 (3.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 122 (2.63%) MongoDB
15 107 (2.31%) Metadata
16 104 (2.24%) Amazon Redshift
17 89 (1.92%) Big Data
18 88 (1.90%) Power Query
19 79 (1.70%) BigQuery
20 68 (1.47%) Looker
Development Applications
1 297 (6.40%) Git
2 239 (5.15%) JIRA
3 113 (2.43%) Jenkins
4 85 (1.83%) Selenium
5 75 (1.62%) Postman
6 72 (1.55%) Oracle Forms
7 58 (1.25%) GitLab
8 44 (0.95%) SoapUI
9 38 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.82%) TeamCity
10 37 (0.80%) Visual Studio
11 32 (0.69%) Team Foundation Server
12 31 (0.67%) WebDriver
13 30 (0.65%) MLflow
14 26 (0.56%) Bitbucket
15 22 (0.47%) Octopus Deploy
16 19 (0.41%) JUnit
17 18 (0.39%) ERwin
17 18 (0.39%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
18 16 (0.34%) Maven
General
1 1,839 (39.63%) Social Skills
2 1,433 (30.88%) Finance
3 1,010 (21.76%) Analytical Skills
4 205 (4.42%) Marketing
5 187 (4.03%) Law
6 174 (3.75%) Retail
7 164 (3.53%) Manufacturing
8 153 (3.30%) Banking
9 140 (3.02%) Public Sector
10 117 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 107 (2.31%) Legal
12 79 (1.70%) Organisational Skills
13 71 (1.53%) Front Office
14 60 (1.29%) Advertising
15 57 (1.23%) Documentation Skills
16 42 (0.90%) Telecoms
17 38 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
18 37 (0.80%) Financial Institution
19 34 (0.73%) Back Office
19 34 (0.73%) Games
Job Titles
1 1,409 (30.36%) Analyst
2 876 (18.88%) Developer
3 818 (17.63%) Data Analyst
4 746 (16.07%) Senior
5 500 (10.77%) Junior
6 487 (10.49%) Data Engineer
7 465 (10.02%) Junior Analyst
8 443 (9.55%) Junior Data Analyst
9 280 (6.03%) Lead
10 252 (5.43%) Support Analyst
11 248 (5.34%) Applications Support
12 186 (4.01%) Software Engineer
13 181 (3.90%) Senior Developer
14 166 (3.58%) Support Engineer
15 154 (3.32%) Trainee
16 153 (3.30%) Senior Data Engineer
17 144 (3.10%) Applications Support Analyst
18 141 (3.04%) Trainee Analyst
18 141 (3.04%) Trainee Data Analyst
19 132 (2.84%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 569 (12.26%) .NET
2 303 (6.53%) REST
3 291 (6.27%) React
4 276 (5.95%) HTML
5 226 (4.87%) CSS
6 204 (4.40%) RESTful
7 179 (3.86%) SOAP
8 164 (3.53%) .NET Core
9 158 (3.40%) JSON
10 141 (3.04%) .NET Framework
10 141 (3.04%) ASP.NET
11 140 (3.02%) XML
12 131 (2.82%) AngularJS
13 123 (2.65%) Node.js
14 121 (2.61%) Kafka
15 108 (2.33%) PySpark
16 89 (1.92%) OAuth
17 84 (1.81%) Entity Framework
17 84 (1.81%) Web Services
18 75 (1.62%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 181 (3.90%) Cloud Native
2 169 (3.64%) Onboarding
3 156 (3.36%) Self-Motivation
4 145 (3.12%) Data Structures
5 125 (2.69%) Product Ownership
6 117 (2.52%) Management Information System
7 110 (2.37%) Analytical Mindset
8 100 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
9 94 (2.03%) Legacy Systems
10 92 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
11 69 (1.49%) Distributed Systems
12 60 (1.29%) Low-Code
13 56 (1.21%) Algorithms
14 46 (0.99%) Virtual Team
15 42 (0.90%) Driving Licence
16 40 (0.86%) FMCG
16 40 (0.86%) Hybrid Cloud
17 37 (0.80%) Hedge funds
18 32 (0.69%) Cyber Threat
19 29 (0.62%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 317 (6.83%) Windows
2 239 (5.15%) Linux
3 131 (2.82%) Windows Server
4 66 (1.42%) Unix
5 37 (0.80%) VMS
6 36 (0.78%) Mac OS
7 25 (0.54%) Windows 10
8 16 (0.34%) Apple iOS
9 15 (0.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 14 (0.30%) Android
11 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.17%) Windows 7
13 6 (0.13%) AIX
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.086%) Solaris
16 3 (0.065%) Debian
16 3 (0.065%) Ubuntu
16 3 (0.065%) Windows Server 2016
17 2 (0.043%) OpenVMS
17 2 (0.043%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,505 (32.43%) Business Intelligence
2 1,097 (23.64%) Problem-Solving
3 1,042 (22.45%) AI
4 1,025 (22.09%) Analytics
5 1,024 (22.06%) Agile
6 755 (16.27%) CI/CD
7 736 (15.86%) DevOps
8 709 (15.28%) ETL
9 669 (14.41%) Data Modelling
10 547 (11.79%) Continuous Improvement
11 534 (11.51%) Data Analysis
12 528 (11.38%) Mentoring
13 524 (11.29%) Decision-Making
14 507 (10.92%) Data Engineering
15 502 (10.82%) Data Pipeline
16 387 (8.34%) Software Engineering
17 383 (8.25%) Visualisation
18 368 (7.93%) Data Governance
19 358 (7.71%) Computer Science
20 352 (7.58%) ERP
Programming Languages
1 1,981 (42.68%) Python
2 616 (13.27%) C#
3 423 (9.11%) Java
4 402 (8.66%) JavaScript
5 292 (6.29%) PowerShell
6 230 (4.96%) T-SQL
7 178 (3.84%) PL/SQL
8 157 (3.38%) TypeScript
9 135 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 98 (2.11%) Bash
11 95 (2.05%) PHP
12 93 (2.00%) C++
13 82 (1.77%) R
14 74 (1.59%) VBA
15 65 (1.40%) Shell Script
16 63 (1.36%) Scala
17 39 (0.84%) Kusto Query Language
18 37 (0.80%) C
19 36 (0.78%) Go
20 29 (0.62%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 649 (13.98%) Degree
2 487 (10.49%) Azure Certification
3 221 (4.76%) Security Cleared
4 187 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 146 (3.15%) SC Cleared
6 83 (1.79%) Master's Degree
7 59 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
8 58 (1.25%) DV Cleared
9 55 (1.19%) ISTQB
10 42 (0.90%) ACCA
11 39 (0.84%) CIMA
12 37 (0.80%) DBS Check
13 33 (0.71%) AWS Certification
14 28 (0.60%) HND
15 26 (0.56%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 19 (0.41%) HNC
16 19 (0.41%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 19 (0.41%) Numerate Degree
17 18 (0.39%) CISSP
17 18 (0.39%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 422 (9.09%) Data Quality
2 235 (5.06%) QA
3 101 (2.18%) GDPR
3 101 (2.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 94 (2.03%) Accessibility
5 50 (1.08%) SLA
6 48 (1.03%) NIST
7 33 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
8 27 (0.58%) NCSC
9 18 (0.39%) HL7
10 16 (0.34%) SOC 2
11 12 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 11 (0.24%) Cyber Essentials
13 9 (0.19%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.15%) COREP
15 6 (0.13%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
16 5 (0.11%) HIPAA
17 4 (0.086%) EMIR
18 3 (0.065%) IFRS
18 3 (0.065%) SEPA
System Software
1 300 (6.46%) Docker
2 217 (4.68%) Active Directory
3 52 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (0.60%) Hyper-V
6 11 (0.24%) Virtual Servers
7 6 (0.13%) vSphere
8 5 (0.11%) Firmware
9 4 (0.086%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.086%) Oracle RAC
9 4 (0.086%) Virtual Desktop
9 4 (0.086%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.043%) Terminal Server
10 2 (0.043%) Terminal Services
10 2 (0.043%) VMware NSX
11 1 (0.022%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 1 (0.022%) HDFS
11 1 (0.022%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 262 (5.65%) Terraform
2 228 (4.91%) Kubernetes
3 47 (1.01%) Single Sign-On
4 41 (0.88%) Grafana
4 41 (0.88%) Microsoft Intune
5 40 (0.86%) Ansible
6 21 (0.45%) Prometheus
7 13 (0.28%) Kibana
7 13 (0.28%) SCCM
8 7 (0.15%) SCOM
8 7 (0.15%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.15%) WSUS
9 6 (0.13%) Control-M
9 6 (0.13%) Nagios
10 5 (0.11%) ZABBIX
11 4 (0.086%) Puppet
12 3 (0.065%) logstash
12 3 (0.065%) Netcool
12 3 (0.065%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 3 (0.065%) Rancher
Vendors
1 1,534 (33.05%) Microsoft
2 392 (8.45%) Oracle
3 328 (7.07%) Databricks
4 155 (3.34%) SAP
5 108 (2.33%) Google
6 88 (1.90%) Salesforce
7 81 (1.75%) Informatica
8 67 (1.44%) VMware
9 51 (1.10%) ServiceNow
9 51 (1.10%) Talend
10 45 (0.97%) Blue Prism
10 45 (0.97%) OpenAI
11 39 (0.84%) Palantir
12 36 (0.78%) IBM
13 33 (0.71%) Sage
14 29 (0.62%) MuleSoft
15 26 (0.56%) Siemens
16 24 (0.52%) Foundry
16 24 (0.52%) HubSpot
17 22 (0.47%) Okta