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 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 12 10
Rank change year-on-year -13 -2 -4
Permanent jobs citing SQL 6,235 4,887 8,318
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 5.28% 9.89% 11.45%
As % of the Programming Languages category 33.87% 38.45% 36.73%
Number of salaries quoted 4,455 3,322 4,732
10th Percentile £35,000 £30,500 £35,000
25th Percentile £43,750 £39,125 £42,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £57,500 £55,000 £59,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% -6.78% -1.67%
75th Percentile £77,500 £74,258 £78,750
90th Percentile £95,000 £90,000 £100,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £52,845 £47,500 £50,000
% change year-on-year +11.25% -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 18,408 12,709 22,645
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 15.59% 25.71% 31.16%
Number of salaries quoted 13,012 8,137 13,582
10th Percentile £39,016 £32,750 £37,500
25th Percentile £49,000 £46,000 £47,500
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £65,000 £62,500 £63,000
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -0.79% -3.08%
75th Percentile £83,813 £83,750 £85,000
90th Percentile £100,000 £110,000 £108,750
UK excluding London median annual salary £60,000 £55,000 £55,000
% change year-on-year +9.09% - -

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 October 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 October 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 -12 5,603 £57,500 +0.88% 6,564
UK excluding London -10 4,062 £52,845 +11.25% 2,840
Work from Home -1 2,374 £57,500 +4.55% 2,706
London -9 1,878 £77,000 +6.21% 4,116
North of England +7 1,223 £54,250 +8.50% 795
South East -11 881 £55,000 +15.79% 666
Midlands -12 770 £51,356 +8.12% 447
North West +8 624 £52,500 +5.00% 463
South West -14 473 £52,500 +15.97% 245
West Midlands -13 407 £55,000 +10.00% 280
Yorkshire +8 377 £50,321 -8.51% 222
East Midlands -12 363 £47,500 +18.75% 167
East of England 0 320 £52,500 +23.53% 228
Wales +14 251 £56,000 +1.82% 84
North East 0 222 £58,750 +23.68% 116
Scotland -32 108 £50,000 +5.26% 260
Northern Ireland -55 40 £45,000 -24.37% 147
Isle of Man +1 4 £35,000 -

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
1 170 (2.73%) Apache Airflow
1 170 (2.73%) Apache Spark
1 170 (2.73%) SharePoint
2 147 (2.36%) Apache
3 96 (1.54%) Confluence
4 92 (1.48%) IIS
5 71 (1.14%) Microsoft Exchange
6 29 (0.47%) SAS
7 28 (0.45%) Jupyter
7 28 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
8 25 (0.40%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 16 (0.26%) WordPress
10 13 (0.21%) nginx
11 12 (0.19%) CMS
11 12 (0.19%) Palantir Foundry
11 12 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 9 (0.14%) WebSphere
13 8 (0.13%) OpenEdge
13 8 (0.13%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 629 (10.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 125 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 33 (0.53%) MS Visio
4 29 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 25 (0.40%) Chatbot
6 24 (0.38%) Spreadsheet
7 7 (0.11%) Notion
8 3 (0.048%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.048%) SPSS
9 2 (0.032%) Photoshop
9 2 (0.032%) SOLIDWORKS
Business Applications
1 53 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
2 50 (0.80%) NetSuite
3 47 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
4 32 (0.51%) Elite 3E
5 24 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
6 22 (0.35%) SAP Business One
7 21 (0.34%) Oracle Applications
8 17 (0.27%) Infor M3
8 17 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
9 16 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
10 15 (0.24%) Oracle Cash Management
10 15 (0.24%) Oracle Retail
10 15 (0.24%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 15 (0.24%) Sage X3
10 15 (0.24%) Shopify
11 14 (0.22%) IBM Planning Analytics
11 14 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
11 14 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
12 13 (0.21%) Fidessa
13 12 (0.19%) FLEXCUBE
Cloud Services
1 2,445 (39.21%) Azure
2 1,404 (22.52%) Power Platform
3 1,185 (19.01%) AWS
4 538 (8.63%) Azure DevOps
5 440 (7.06%) SaaS
6 422 (6.77%) GCP
7 388 (6.22%) GitHub
8 339 (5.44%) Azure AI
8 339 (5.44%) Microsoft 365
9 291 (4.67%) Azure Data Factory
10 281 (4.51%) Serverless
11 271 (4.35%) Snowflake
12 222 (3.56%) dbt
13 193 (3.10%) Amazon S3
14 174 (2.79%) Power Automate
15 164 (2.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
16 163 (2.61%) PowerApps
17 162 (2.60%) GitHub Copilot
18 159 (2.55%) Entra ID
19 155 (2.49%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 134 (2.15%) Firewall
2 121 (1.94%) DNS
3 108 (1.73%) Internet
4 96 (1.54%) TCP/IP
5 94 (1.51%) VPN
6 46 (0.74%) DHCP
7 39 (0.63%) VLAN
8 31 (0.50%) Broadband
9 29 (0.47%) HTTP
10 26 (0.42%) WAN
11 24 (0.38%) BGP
12 22 (0.35%) SMS
13 21 (0.34%) LAN
13 21 (0.34%) Network Security
14 17 (0.27%) SAN
15 16 (0.26%) RTP
16 15 (0.24%) 3GPP
16 15 (0.24%) Packet Switching
16 15 (0.24%) SGSN
16 15 (0.24%) SMPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,293 (20.74%) Power BI
2 807 (12.94%) SQL Server
3 739 (11.85%) Azure SQL Database
4 541 (8.68%) Data Warehouse
5 502 (8.05%) Tableau
6 478 (7.67%) MongoDB
7 332 (5.32%) NoSQL
8 268 (4.30%) Relational Database
9 251 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
10 250 (4.01%) Data Lake
11 191 (3.06%) MySQL
12 179 (2.87%) Metadata
13 177 (2.84%) Elasticsearch
14 164 (2.63%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 151 (2.42%) BigQuery
16 128 (2.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 109 (1.75%) Power Query
18 108 (1.73%) Looker
19 105 (1.68%) DynamoDB
20 103 (1.65%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 515 (8.26%) Git
2 219 (3.51%) JIRA
3 143 (2.29%) GitLab
4 91 (1.46%) Jenkins
5 58 (0.93%) Cucumber
6 40 (0.64%) Postman
6 40 (0.64%) Visual Studio
7 38 (0.61%) Claude Code
8 32 (0.51%) Selenium
9 31 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.45%) JUnit
11 23 (0.37%) JMeter
11 23 (0.37%) Maven
11 23 (0.37%) Oracle Forms
11 23 (0.37%) TeamCity
12 22 (0.35%) Mockito
13 19 (0.30%) Vite
14 18 (0.29%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.26%) MLflow
16 14 (0.22%) Octopus Deploy
General
1 1,966 (31.53%) Social Skills
2 1,762 (28.26%) Finance
3 1,226 (19.66%) Analytical Skills
4 408 (6.54%) Marketing
5 326 (5.23%) Retail
6 287 (4.60%) Law
7 282 (4.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 276 (4.43%) Public Sector
9 258 (4.14%) Legal
10 226 (3.62%) Banking
11 216 (3.46%) Manufacturing
12 107 (1.72%) Advertising
13 105 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
14 96 (1.54%) Organisational Skills
15 83 (1.33%) Influencing Skills
16 75 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
17 73 (1.17%) Financial Institution
18 67 (1.07%) Games
19 62 (0.99%) Back Office
20 54 (0.87%) Billing
Job Titles
1 1,498 (24.03%) Developer
2 1,145 (18.36%) Senior
3 1,132 (18.16%) Analyst
4 783 (12.56%) Data Engineer
5 539 (8.64%) .NET Developer
6 523 (8.39%) Lead
7 477 (7.65%) Data Analyst
8 272 (4.36%) Software Engineer
9 251 (4.03%) Senior Developer
10 247 (3.96%) Support Analyst
11 240 (3.85%) Junior
12 218 (3.50%) Architect
13 208 (3.34%) Consultant
14 205 (3.29%) Senior Data Engineer
15 204 (3.27%) Applications Support
15 204 (3.27%) SQL Developer
16 182 (2.92%) Junior Analyst
17 173 (2.77%) Azure Engineer
18 170 (2.73%) Junior Data Analyst
19 152 (2.44%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1,041 (16.70%) .NET
2 551 (8.84%) ASP.NET
3 511 (8.20%) .NET Core
4 492 (7.89%) ASP.NET Core
5 447 (7.17%) React
6 402 (6.45%) HTML
7 384 (6.16%) CSS
8 357 (5.73%) Terraform
9 339 (5.44%) REST
10 325 (5.21%) Node.js
11 322 (5.16%) RESTful
12 274 (4.39%) AngularJS
12 274 (4.39%) PySpark
13 215 (3.45%) Vue
14 208 (3.34%) Entity Framework
15 197 (3.16%) Kafka
16 183 (2.94%) ASP.NET Web API
17 180 (2.89%) Blazor
18 164 (2.63%) XML
19 140 (2.25%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 374 (6.00%) Cloud Native
2 303 (4.86%) Onboarding
3 236 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
4 228 (3.66%) Distributed Systems
5 210 (3.37%) Product Ownership
6 166 (2.66%) Management Information System
7 161 (2.58%) Data Structures
8 134 (2.15%) Greenfield Project
9 120 (1.92%) Self-Motivation
10 91 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
11 90 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
12 84 (1.35%) AI Agents
12 84 (1.35%) Replication
13 72 (1.15%) Driving Licence
14 71 (1.14%) Public Cloud
15 65 (1.04%) Clustering
16 63 (1.01%) Mobile App
17 52 (0.83%) e-Learning
18 49 (0.79%) Credit Risk
19 46 (0.74%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 341 (5.47%) Windows
2 333 (5.34%) Linux
3 184 (2.95%) Windows Server
4 80 (1.28%) Unix
5 31 (0.50%) Android
5 31 (0.50%) VMS
6 27 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 20 (0.32%) Apple iOS
8 15 (0.24%) Solaris
9 14 (0.22%) AIX
9 14 (0.22%) Mac OS
10 12 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
11 11 (0.18%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.18%) Windows 10
12 10 (0.16%) Oracle Linux
12 10 (0.16%) Rocky
13 8 (0.13%) CentOS
14 7 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
15 5 (0.080%) zOS
16 3 (0.048%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,641 (26.32%) Business Intelligence
2 1,549 (24.84%) AI
3 1,543 (24.75%) Problem-Solving
4 1,527 (24.49%) Analytics
5 1,503 (24.11%) Agile
6 1,299 (20.83%) CI/CD
7 986 (15.81%) DevOps
8 976 (15.65%) Data Modelling
9 928 (14.88%) Continuous Improvement
10 876 (14.05%) Decision-Making
11 848 (13.60%) Mentoring
12 810 (12.99%) Data Engineering
13 793 (12.72%) Data Pipeline
14 758 (12.16%) ETL
15 733 (11.76%) Full-Stack Development
16 700 (11.23%) Machine Learning
17 645 (10.34%) Stakeholder Management
18 634 (10.17%) Software Engineering
19 590 (9.46%) Data Analysis
20 507 (8.13%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 2,184 (35.03%) Python
2 1,199 (19.23%) C#
3 715 (11.47%) JavaScript
4 531 (8.52%) Java
5 392 (6.29%) TypeScript
6 300 (4.81%) PowerShell
7 200 (3.21%) T-SQL
8 173 (2.77%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 157 (2.52%) C++
10 146 (2.34%) PHP
11 145 (2.33%) PL/SQL
12 111 (1.78%) R
13 108 (1.73%) Bash
14 93 (1.49%) Scala
15 70 (1.12%) Shell Script
16 68 (1.09%) Bicep
17 66 (1.06%) VBA
18 51 (0.82%) Go
19 37 (0.59%) Kotlin
20 33 (0.53%) C
Qualifications
1 667 (10.70%) Degree
2 329 (5.28%) Security Cleared
3 293 (4.70%) Azure Certification
4 237 (3.80%) SC Cleared
5 175 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
6 96 (1.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 82 (1.32%) AWS Certification
8 67 (1.07%) DBS Check
9 62 (0.99%) Master's Degree
10 55 (0.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 51 (0.82%) DV Cleared
12 43 (0.69%) ACCA
13 42 (0.67%) CIMA
14 33 (0.53%) Numerate Degree
15 30 (0.48%) BPSS Clearance
16 23 (0.37%) PhD
17 20 (0.32%) CISSP
17 20 (0.32%) SnowPro
18 19 (0.30%) ISTQB
19 14 (0.22%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 939 (15.06%) Data Quality
2 380 (6.09%) QA
3 209 (3.35%) GDPR
4 125 (2.00%) Accessibility
5 80 (1.28%) Actionable Recommendations
6 63 (1.01%) SLA
7 59 (0.95%) PCI DSS
8 55 (0.88%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 23 (0.37%) SOC 2
10 16 (0.26%) Cyber Essentials
10 16 (0.26%) NIST
11 13 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
12 10 (0.16%) EU AI Act
13 9 (0.14%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 9 (0.14%) PMO
14 7 (0.11%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 7 (0.11%) Software Quality Assurance
15 6 (0.096%) ISO 8583
16 5 (0.080%) HL7
16 5 (0.080%) TickIT
System Software
1 535 (8.58%) Docker
2 227 (3.64%) Active Directory
3 78 (1.25%) Hyper-V
4 74 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
5 35 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
6 20 (0.32%) vSphere
7 16 (0.26%) Virtual Desktop
8 14 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
9 8 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 6 (0.096%) Virtual Servers
11 5 (0.080%) Firmware
12 2 (0.032%) IAG
12 2 (0.032%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.032%) XenDesktop
13 1 (0.016%) BitLocker
13 1 (0.016%) GPFS
13 1 (0.016%) MetaFrame
13 1 (0.016%) Oracle Clusterware
13 1 (0.016%) QEMU
13 1 (0.016%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 415 (6.66%) Kubernetes
2 87 (1.40%) Grafana
3 53 (0.85%) Microsoft Intune
4 51 (0.82%) Ansible
5 37 (0.59%) Prometheus
6 25 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
7 17 (0.27%) Nagios
8 16 (0.26%) Oracle RMAN
9 15 (0.24%) Data Guard
10 13 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
11 11 (0.18%) Kibana
12 9 (0.14%) Failover Clustering
13 7 (0.11%) Argo
13 7 (0.11%) EnCase
13 7 (0.11%) FTK
13 7 (0.11%) Proxmox
13 7 (0.11%) Puppet
14 6 (0.096%) Cilium
14 6 (0.096%) Hadoop YARN
15 5 (0.080%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,996 (32.01%) Microsoft
2 487 (7.81%) Databricks
3 350 (5.61%) Oracle
4 346 (5.55%) Google
5 133 (2.13%) SAP
6 107 (1.72%) Salesforce
7 89 (1.43%) VMware
8 82 (1.32%) OpenAI
9 72 (1.15%) Informatica
10 66 (1.06%) Sage
11 62 (0.99%) IBM
12 61 (0.98%) Facebook
13 52 (0.83%) ServiceNow
14 34 (0.55%) Aderant
15 33 (0.53%) Cisco
15 33 (0.53%) Intapp
16 32 (0.51%) Splunk
17 29 (0.47%) Foundry
17 29 (0.47%) Infor
17 29 (0.47%) JD Edwards