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

6 months to
13 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 13 10 6
Rank change year-on-year -3 -4 +4
Permanent jobs citing SQL 4,687 7,749 8,249
As % of all permanent jobs in the UK 8.90% 11.46% 15.75%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.21% 36.31% 38.37%
Number of salaries quoted 3,399 4,337 6,671
10th Percentile £30,000 £35,000 £36,250
25th Percentile £38,750 £42,500 £45,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £55,000 £60,000 £60,000
Median % change year-on-year -8.33% - +0.84%
75th Percentile £73,750 £78,750 £77,500
90th Percentile £88,750 £100,000 £92,500
UK excluding London median annual salary £47,500 £50,000 £52,500
% change year-on-year -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 11,955 21,341 21,498
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the UK 22.71% 31.57% 41.05%
Number of salaries quoted 8,541 12,628 17,628
10th Percentile £32,500 £37,500 £39,281
25th Percentile £45,000 £47,500 £48,068
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £62,500 £65,000 £65,000
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% - -
75th Percentile £82,500 £85,000 £85,000
90th Percentile £108,750 £109,125 £105,000
UK excluding London median annual salary £55,000 £55,000 £55,000

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 13 November 2025.

Salary histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 19 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 13 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
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
England -2 4,133 £55,000 -8.33% 4,205
UK excluding London -5 2,846 £47,500 -5.00% 2,572
Work from Home -1 1,772 £55,000 -7.27% 2,059
London -3 1,565 £72,500 -3.33% 2,123
North of England -13 732 £50,000 - 628
South East -8 716 £47,500 -5.00% 764
Midlands +2 631 £45,000 - 509
North West -13 368 £50,000 - 378
West Midlands -1 336 £47,500 -5.00% 314
East Midlands +8 291 £40,000 -5.88% 191
Yorkshire -10 287 £49,500 +4.21% 188
Scotland -8 268 £45,000 +5.88% 151
South West -17 240 £45,000 -18.18% 220
East of England -11 213 £43,085 -13.83% 210
North East -17 77 £47,750 +16.46% 64
Wales -14 47 £52,500 +5.00% 80
Northern Ireland -23 16 £45,250 -10.05% 46
Isle of Man +7 1 - -
Channel Islands +3 1 £87,500 +59.09%

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
1 177 (3.78%) Apache Spark
2 114 (2.43%) SharePoint
3 97 (2.07%) Confluence
4 84 (1.79%) Apache Airflow
5 79 (1.69%) IIS
6 69 (1.47%) Apache
7 67 (1.43%) Microsoft Exchange
8 37 (0.79%) SAS
9 18 (0.38%) CMS
9 18 (0.38%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 14 (0.30%) nginx
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Workflow
12 9 (0.19%) ArcGIS
13 8 (0.17%) Headless CMS
14 7 (0.15%) Umbraco
15 6 (0.13%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.13%) WebSphere
16 5 (0.11%) BizTalk Server
16 5 (0.11%) JBoss
16 5 (0.11%) Jupyter
Applications
1 541 (11.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 110 (2.35%) Microsoft Office
3 29 (0.62%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
5 20 (0.43%) MS Visio
6 8 (0.17%) Mozilla Thunderbird
6 8 (0.17%) Oracle Smart View
7 6 (0.13%) AutoCAD
7 6 (0.13%) Siemens NX
7 6 (0.13%) Trello
8 3 (0.064%) CATIA
8 3 (0.064%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.064%) SOLIDWORKS
8 3 (0.064%) Windchill
9 2 (0.043%) Chatbot
9 2 (0.043%) Notion
9 2 (0.043%) SPSS
10 1 (0.021%) Adobe Illustrator
10 1 (0.021%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 86 (1.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.83%) NetSuite
2 39 (0.83%) Oracle ERP
3 35 (0.75%) Oracle Receivables
3 35 (0.75%) Unit4 Business World
4 29 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.43%) Oracle Assets
5 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.38%) Shopify
7 17 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
7 17 (0.36%) SAP Business One
8 14 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
8 14 (0.30%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.28%) Dynamics GP
10 12 (0.26%) Sprinklr
11 11 (0.23%) Sage 200
11 11 (0.23%) Sage CRM
12 10 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
12 10 (0.21%) Visualfiles
13 9 (0.19%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,655 (35.31%) Azure
2 1,136 (24.24%) Power Platform
3 826 (17.62%) AWS
4 353 (7.53%) SaaS
5 345 (7.36%) Azure DevOps
6 259 (5.53%) GCP
7 230 (4.91%) GitHub
8 229 (4.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 228 (4.86%) Snowflake
10 204 (4.35%) Microsoft 365
11 176 (3.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 160 (3.41%) Serverless
13 131 (2.79%) Entra ID
14 123 (2.62%) Power Automate
15 109 (2.33%) Amazon S3
16 108 (2.30%) PowerApps
17 107 (2.28%) Dynamics 365
18 100 (2.13%) dbt
19 76 (1.62%) AWS Lambda
20 67 (1.43%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 89 (1.90%) Firewall
2 72 (1.54%) DNS
3 60 (1.28%) VPN
4 52 (1.11%) WAN
5 46 (0.98%) Remote Desktop
6 42 (0.90%) LAN
7 40 (0.85%) TCP/IP
8 38 (0.81%) DHCP
9 31 (0.66%) Network Security
10 30 (0.64%) VoIP
11 27 (0.58%) SAN
12 22 (0.47%) VLAN
12 22 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
13 21 (0.45%) HTTP
14 20 (0.43%) FTP
15 18 (0.38%) SSL
16 16 (0.34%) SSH
17 13 (0.28%) SD-WAN
18 11 (0.23%) SMTP
19 10 (0.21%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 1,023 (21.83%) Power BI
2 777 (16.58%) SQL Server
3 455 (9.71%) Data Warehouse
4 408 (8.70%) Tableau
5 321 (6.85%) NoSQL
6 276 (5.89%) Relational Database
7 228 (4.86%) MySQL
8 226 (4.82%) Azure SQL Database
9 192 (4.10%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 190 (4.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 180 (3.84%) Data Lake
12 178 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
13 147 (3.14%) MongoDB
14 133 (2.84%) Data Mining
15 124 (2.65%) Big Data
16 106 (2.26%) Metadata
17 95 (2.03%) Amazon Redshift
17 95 (2.03%) Power Query
18 85 (1.81%) BigQuery
19 77 (1.64%) Looker
Development Applications
1 303 (6.46%) Git
2 255 (5.44%) JIRA
3 113 (2.41%) Jenkins
4 71 (1.51%) Selenium
5 59 (1.26%) Postman
6 50 (1.07%) GitLab
7 46 (0.98%) Octopus Deploy
8 45 (0.96%) Oracle Forms
9 40 (0.85%) Visual Studio
10 36 (0.77%) TeamCity
11 33 (0.70%) Bitbucket
12 30 (0.64%) MLflow
12 30 (0.64%) SoapUI
13 26 (0.55%) Cucumber
14 23 (0.49%) Maven
14 23 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
15 21 (0.45%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
16 20 (0.43%) Cypress.io
16 20 (0.43%) ER Studio
16 20 (0.43%) WebDriver
General
1 1,681 (35.87%) Social Skills
2 1,463 (31.21%) Finance
3 1,017 (21.70%) Analytical Skills
4 408 (8.70%) Law
5 328 (7.00%) Retail
6 320 (6.83%) Marketing
7 259 (5.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 220 (4.69%) Banking
9 206 (4.40%) Manufacturing
10 169 (3.61%) Public Sector
11 136 (2.90%) Legal
12 108 (2.30%) Front Office
13 104 (2.22%) Organisational Skills
14 84 (1.79%) Advertising
15 69 (1.47%) Documentation Skills
16 62 (1.32%) Presentation Skills
17 54 (1.15%) Back Office
18 45 (0.96%) Investment Banking
19 42 (0.90%) Telecoms
20 38 (0.81%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 1,118 (23.85%) Analyst
2 973 (20.76%) Developer
3 760 (16.22%) Senior
4 470 (10.03%) Data Engineer
5 337 (7.19%) Data Analyst
6 325 (6.93%) Lead
7 318 (6.78%) Support Analyst
8 278 (5.93%) Software Engineer
9 269 (5.74%) Applications Support
10 184 (3.93%) Senior Developer
11 176 (3.76%) Senior Data Engineer
12 167 (3.56%) Support Engineer
13 153 (3.26%) Applications Support Analyst
14 145 (3.09%) Senior Analyst
15 138 (2.94%) Architect
16 133 (2.84%) Full-Stack Developer
17 131 (2.79%) .NET Developer
18 126 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
18 126 (2.69%) Consultant
19 115 (2.45%) 2nd Line Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 616 (13.14%) .NET
2 355 (7.57%) HTML
3 302 (6.44%) React
4 293 (6.25%) REST
5 255 (5.44%) CSS
6 214 (4.57%) RESTful
7 196 (4.18%) Kafka
8 188 (4.01%) AngularJS
9 185 (3.95%) ASP.NET
10 164 (3.50%) JSON
11 157 (3.35%) .NET Framework
12 152 (3.24%) XML
13 132 (2.82%) SOAP
14 130 (2.77%) PySpark
15 129 (2.75%) Node.js
16 128 (2.73%) .NET Core
17 125 (2.67%) Spring
18 102 (2.18%) Entity Framework
19 95 (2.03%) Web Services
20 92 (1.96%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 227 (4.84%) Onboarding
2 225 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 206 (4.40%) Self-Motivation
4 174 (3.71%) Product Ownership
5 156 (3.33%) Data Structures
6 149 (3.18%) Management Information System
7 125 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 106 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
9 102 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
10 100 (2.13%) Algorithms
11 99 (2.11%) Legacy Systems
12 85 (1.81%) Distributed Systems
13 64 (1.37%) Virtual Team
14 59 (1.26%) Linux Command Line
15 58 (1.24%) Driving Licence
16 50 (1.07%) Hybrid Cloud
17 49 (1.05%) Client/Server
17 49 (1.05%) Derivative
18 47 (1.00%) FMCG
19 46 (0.98%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 370 (7.89%) Windows
2 238 (5.08%) Linux
3 137 (2.92%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.41%) Unix
5 34 (0.73%) VMS
6 32 (0.68%) Mac OS
7 19 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 17 (0.36%) Ubuntu
8 17 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
9 15 (0.32%) Windows 7
10 11 (0.23%) Android
10 11 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
11 10 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 9 (0.19%) Apple iOS
13 8 (0.17%) Amazon Linux
13 8 (0.17%) Debian
14 5 (0.11%) AIX
15 3 (0.064%) Solaris
15 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2016
16 2 (0.043%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,351 (28.82%) Problem-Solving
2 1,192 (25.43%) Business Intelligence
3 1,183 (25.24%) Agile
4 1,002 (21.38%) Analytics
5 808 (17.24%) CI/CD
6 770 (16.43%) DevOps
7 686 (14.64%) AI
8 680 (14.51%) ETL
9 615 (13.12%) Decision-Making
10 614 (13.10%) Continuous Improvement
11 596 (12.72%) Data Modelling
12 557 (11.88%) Mentoring
13 539 (11.50%) Data Analysis
14 512 (10.92%) Visualisation
15 497 (10.60%) Data Engineering
16 495 (10.56%) Software Engineering
17 463 (9.88%) Data Pipeline
18 434 (9.26%) ERP
19 416 (8.88%) Machine Learning
20 409 (8.73%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,719 (36.68%) Python
2 777 (16.58%) C#
3 551 (11.76%) JavaScript
4 541 (11.54%) Java
5 266 (5.68%) PowerShell
6 245 (5.23%) T-SQL
7 235 (5.01%) TypeScript
8 182 (3.88%) PL/SQL
9 158 (3.37%) PHP
10 152 (3.24%) R
11 142 (3.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 129 (2.75%) C++
13 85 (1.81%) VBA
14 78 (1.66%) C
15 63 (1.34%) Bash
16 59 (1.26%) Ruby
17 57 (1.22%) Scala
18 56 (1.19%) Rust
19 55 (1.17%) Shell Script
20 50 (1.07%) MATLAB
Qualifications
1 850 (18.14%) Degree
2 253 (5.40%) Computer Science Degree
3 242 (5.16%) Security Cleared
4 175 (3.73%) SC Cleared
5 102 (2.18%) Master's Degree
6 91 (1.94%) Azure Certification
7 85 (1.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 78 (1.66%) AWS Certification
9 59 (1.26%) ISTQB
10 48 (1.02%) DV Cleared
11 47 (1.00%) ACCA
12 44 (0.94%) CIMA
13 39 (0.83%) DBS Check
14 29 (0.62%) PhD
15 26 (0.55%) Numerate Degree
16 25 (0.53%) HND
17 24 (0.51%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 24 (0.51%) BPSS Clearance
18 21 (0.45%) MCP
18 21 (0.45%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 354 (7.55%) Data Quality
2 279 (5.95%) QA
3 141 (3.01%) GDPR
4 97 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 87 (1.86%) SLA
6 61 (1.30%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 32 (0.68%) NIST
8 20 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
9 19 (0.41%) HL7
10 15 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
11 12 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 11 (0.23%) HIPAA
12 11 (0.23%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.23%) Software Quality Assurance
13 10 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 5 (0.11%) COBIT
14 5 (0.11%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
14 5 (0.11%) ISO 9001
14 5 (0.11%) ITGC
14 5 (0.11%) NCSC
System Software
1 346 (7.38%) Docker
2 204 (4.35%) Active Directory
3 88 (1.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (1.05%) Hyper-V
5 25 (0.53%) Virtual Machines
6 10 (0.21%) Firmware
7 9 (0.19%) HDFS
7 9 (0.19%) Postfix
7 9 (0.19%) VMware ESXi
8 8 (0.17%) DFS Replication
8 8 (0.17%) Dovecot
8 8 (0.17%) Squid
9 7 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 6 (0.13%) vSphere
11 5 (0.11%) Kamailio
11 5 (0.11%) zsh
12 4 (0.085%) Terminal Server
12 4 (0.085%) XenApp
13 3 (0.064%) Apache Flume
14 2 (0.043%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 298 (6.36%) Kubernetes
2 272 (5.80%) Terraform
3 65 (1.39%) Grafana
4 56 (1.19%) Microsoft Intune
5 42 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
7 37 (0.79%) Ansible
8 26 (0.55%) Kubeflow
9 23 (0.49%) SCCM
10 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
11 10 (0.21%) Kibana
11 10 (0.21%) Proxmox
12 8 (0.17%) Nessus
13 7 (0.15%) Puppet
14 6 (0.13%) logstash
14 6 (0.13%) Mesos
14 6 (0.13%) SCOM
14 6 (0.13%) ZABBIX
15 5 (0.11%) CASB
15 5 (0.11%) WSUS
Vendors
1 1,222 (26.07%) Microsoft
2 416 (8.88%) Databricks
3 406 (8.66%) Oracle
4 171 (3.65%) SAP
5 151 (3.22%) Google
6 103 (2.20%) Salesforce
7 95 (2.03%) VMware
8 53 (1.13%) Informatica
9 52 (1.11%) Blue Prism
9 52 (1.11%) Sage
10 47 (1.00%) ServiceNow
11 40 (0.85%) Alteryx
11 40 (0.85%) Talend
12 36 (0.77%) Guidewire
12 36 (0.77%) Splunk
13 31 (0.66%) Cisco
13 31 (0.66%) OpenAI
14 28 (0.60%) IBM
14 28 (0.60%) Siemens
15 26 (0.55%) HubSpot