SQL Contract Job Trends in England

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,439 3,203 3,495
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.73% 11.77% 10.73%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.35% 35.95% 33.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,258 2,568
10th Percentile £358 £333 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 79 37
10th Percentile £23.00 £29.00 £25.99
25th Percentile £28.50 £33.91 £31.25
Median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +20.48% +3.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £62.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.58
% change year-on-year -11.00% +23.22% -9.83%

All Programming Languages
England

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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 11,885 8,910 10,484
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.04% 32.74% 32.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,698 6,070 7,343
10th Percentile £363 £347 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.24% -6.64% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £520 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 262 307
10th Percentile £29.67 £31.25 £32.34
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.31 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £80.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

SQL job vacancy trend in England

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in England over the 6 months to 4 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in England

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in England over the 6 months to 4 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in England

SQL
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the England region over the 6 months to 4 September 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -6 2,495 £525 - 3,271
North of England -1 588 £475 +5.56% 595
South East -9 456 £495 -1.00% 635
Midlands -4 454 £469 +4.22% 356
West Midlands -4 355 £469 -6.20% 201
North West 0 297 £479 +3.01% 362
Yorkshire +3 251 £475 +5.44% 146
South West -4 226 £513 +20.59% 303
East of England -7 119 £495 -1.49% 187
East Midlands -6 96 £464 +19.68% 154
North East -12 49 £413 -11.29% 90
SQL
UK

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England 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
1 222 (5.00%) Apache Airflow
2 190 (4.28%) Apache Spark
3 182 (4.10%) Confluence
4 150 (3.38%) Apache
5 83 (1.87%) SharePoint
6 72 (1.62%) SAS
7 35 (0.79%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.68%) IIS
9 28 (0.63%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.56%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 22 (0.50%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) CMS
13 18 (0.41%) Camunda
13 18 (0.41%) nginx
14 16 (0.36%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.23%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 7 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 281 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
4 26 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 24 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.068%) Windchill
10 2 (0.045%) Mingle
11 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.023%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 45 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 39 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
3 27 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 26 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.50%) Aladdin
6 22 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
9 14 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
10 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle FAH
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
12 9 (0.20%) Summit
13 8 (0.18%) Findur
13 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,401 (31.56%) Azure
2 1,059 (23.86%) AWS
3 850 (19.15%) Power Platform
4 405 (9.12%) Azure DevOps
5 397 (8.94%) GCP
6 323 (7.28%) Snowflake
7 322 (7.25%) GitHub
8 312 (7.03%) Azure Data Factory
9 278 (6.26%) Serverless
10 272 (6.13%) dbt
11 220 (4.96%) Amazon S3
12 197 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (4.01%) AWS Lambda
14 158 (3.56%) GitHub Actions
15 97 (2.19%) SaaS
16 96 (2.16%) Power Automate
17 88 (1.98%) Azure Databricks
18 87 (1.96%) PowerApps
19 84 (1.89%) Entra ID
20 82 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.35%) DNS
2 46 (1.04%) Firewall
3 26 (0.59%) HTTP
3 26 (0.59%) SSL
4 24 (0.54%) Network Security
5 20 (0.45%) VPN
6 19 (0.43%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) TCP/IP
7 18 (0.41%) SNMP
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 15 (0.34%) Broadband
10 11 (0.25%) SSH
11 8 (0.18%) Multicast
11 8 (0.18%) RTP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
12 7 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 781 (17.59%) Power BI
2 621 (13.99%) Data Warehouse
3 571 (12.86%) SQL Server
4 290 (6.53%) Relational Database
5 268 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
6 263 (5.92%) Data Lake
7 261 (5.88%) Tableau
8 238 (5.36%) Metadata
9 219 (4.93%) NoSQL
10 200 (4.51%) Oracle Database
11 171 (3.85%) BigQuery
12 164 (3.69%) Azure SQL Database
13 138 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
14 134 (3.02%) Delta Lake
15 125 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 112 (2.52%) MySQL
17 97 (2.19%) Big Data
18 96 (2.16%) Amazon Athena
19 87 (1.96%) MongoDB
20 86 (1.94%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 528 (11.89%) Git
2 348 (7.84%) JIRA
3 246 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 204 (4.60%) GitLab
5 87 (1.96%) Selenium
6 78 (1.76%) JUnit
7 71 (1.60%) Gradle
8 63 (1.42%) Maven
9 57 (1.28%) Postman
10 51 (1.15%) Mockito
11 45 (1.01%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.83%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
14 34 (0.77%) JMeter
15 30 (0.68%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
17 27 (0.61%) Liquibase
17 27 (0.61%) MLflow
18 24 (0.54%) ERwin
19 23 (0.52%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,232 (27.75%) Social Skills
2 1,157 (26.06%) Finance
3 941 (21.20%) Analytical Skills
4 491 (11.06%) Banking
5 391 (8.81%) Public Sector
6 150 (3.38%) Marketing
7 132 (2.97%) Front Office
8 126 (2.84%) Retail
9 116 (2.61%) Investment Banking
10 90 (2.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 80 (1.80%) Documentation Skills
12 66 (1.49%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
14 51 (1.15%) Financial Institution
15 45 (1.01%) Legal
16 40 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Local Government
18 37 (0.83%) Back Office
18 37 (0.83%) Telecoms
19 35 (0.79%) Law
Job Titles
1 930 (20.95%) Developer
2 854 (19.24%) Data Engineer
3 660 (14.87%) Analyst
4 630 (14.19%) Senior
5 308 (6.94%) Lead
6 272 (6.13%) Data Analyst
7 229 (5.16%) Architect
8 209 (4.71%) Consultant
9 193 (4.35%) Business Analyst
10 187 (4.21%) Senior Data Engineer
11 180 (4.05%) DBA
12 158 (3.56%) Java Developer
13 153 (3.45%) Senior Developer
14 120 (2.70%) Software Engineer
15 109 (2.46%) SQL DBA
16 102 (2.30%) SQL Developer
17 101 (2.28%) Azure Engineer
18 100 (2.25%) Data Architect
19 98 (2.21%) Full-Stack Developer
20 96 (2.16%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 390 (8.79%) REST
2 384 (8.65%) .NET
3 362 (8.15%) Terraform
4 311 (7.01%) PySpark
5 296 (6.67%) Kafka
6 222 (5.00%) Spring
7 217 (4.89%) React
8 207 (4.66%) Spring Boot
9 177 (3.99%) HTML
10 171 (3.85%) RESTful
11 169 (3.81%) JSON
12 155 (3.49%) CSS
13 151 (3.40%) XML
14 110 (2.48%) AngularJS
15 101 (2.28%) Web Services
16 99 (2.23%) Pandas
17 96 (2.16%) Middleware
18 94 (2.12%) SOAP
19 85 (1.91%) .NET Framework
20 79 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 286 (6.44%) Cloud Native
2 213 (4.80%) Data Structures
3 185 (4.17%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
5 127 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 109 (2.46%) Onboarding
7 107 (2.41%) Enterprise Software
8 96 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 76 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 74 (1.67%) Derivative
11 68 (1.53%) AI Agents
12 65 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
12 65 (1.46%) Replication
13 58 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
14 56 (1.26%) Clustering
15 55 (1.24%) Reference Data
16 52 (1.17%) Algorithms
17 50 (1.13%) Fixed Income
18 46 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
19 43 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 316 (7.12%) Linux
2 272 (6.13%) Windows
3 212 (4.78%) Unix
4 107 (2.41%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.41%) Solaris
7 15 (0.34%) AIX
8 10 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
11 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) zOS
14 4 (0.090%) Android
14 4 (0.090%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.068%) OpenVMS
15 3 (0.068%) Oracle Linux
16 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,220 (27.48%) CI/CD
2 1,162 (26.18%) Agile
3 1,120 (25.23%) Data Modelling
4 1,108 (24.96%) Analytics
5 981 (22.10%) Business Intelligence
6 978 (22.03%) ETL
7 883 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
8 882 (19.87%) DevOps
9 869 (19.58%) Data Pipeline
10 764 (17.21%) Data Engineering
11 716 (16.13%) AI
12 647 (14.58%) Validation
13 632 (14.24%) Migration
14 581 (13.09%) Stakeholder Management
15 494 (11.13%) Data Governance
16 487 (10.97%) Test Automation
17 478 (10.77%) Continuous Improvement
18 472 (10.63%) Data Analysis
19 468 (10.54%) Decision-Making
20 372 (8.38%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,615 (36.38%) Python
2 551 (12.41%) Java
3 416 (9.37%) C#
4 354 (7.97%) JavaScript
5 348 (7.84%) PL/SQL
6 240 (5.41%) PowerShell
7 219 (4.93%) T-SQL
8 183 (4.12%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 138 (3.11%) Shell Script
11 101 (2.28%) Bash
12 84 (1.89%) R
13 66 (1.49%) Scala
14 43 (0.97%) C++
15 36 (0.81%) VBA
16 31 (0.70%) Bicep
17 25 (0.56%) C
17 25 (0.56%) VB
18 24 (0.54%) Kotlin
19 22 (0.50%) Go
Qualifications
1 943 (21.24%) Security Cleared
2 747 (16.83%) SC Cleared
3 329 (7.41%) Degree
4 120 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
4 120 (2.70%) DV Cleared
5 105 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (1.58%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.26%) ISTQB
8 46 (1.04%) Microsoft Certification
9 41 (0.92%) Master's Degree
10 39 (0.88%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.41%) CISSP
12 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 14 (0.32%) ACCA
14 14 (0.32%) CIMA
15 13 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
16 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
16 12 (0.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 862 (19.42%) Data Quality
2 361 (8.13%) QA
3 134 (3.02%) GDPR
4 46 (1.04%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.99%) SLA
6 24 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
6 24 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 20 (0.45%) IFRS
8 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.43%) NIST
10 16 (0.36%) MiFID
11 13 (0.29%) PMO
12 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
12 12 (0.27%) Solvency II
13 11 (0.25%) COBIT
14 9 (0.20%) GRC
15 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.18%) WCAG
16 7 (0.16%) HL7
System Software
1 433 (9.75%) Docker
2 117 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
6 19 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (0.16%) Postfix
10 4 (0.090%) KVM
11 3 (0.068%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.045%) GridGain
12 2 (0.045%) Squid
13 1 (0.023%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.023%) RACF
13 1 (0.023%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 360 (8.11%) Kubernetes
2 91 (2.05%) Ansible
3 81 (1.82%) Grafana
4 46 (1.04%) Prometheus
5 42 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
6 41 (0.92%) Control-M
7 39 (0.88%) Data Guard
7 39 (0.88%) SCOM
8 22 (0.50%) Kibana
9 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 13 (0.29%) Nagios
10 13 (0.29%) ZABBIX
11 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
11 12 (0.27%) Tivoli
12 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.25%) Netcool
12 11 (0.25%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.23%) OpenView
13 10 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
13 10 (0.23%) Tivoli Monitoring
Vendors
1 756 (17.03%) Oracle
2 755 (17.01%) Microsoft
3 560 (12.62%) Databricks
4 179 (4.03%) Google
5 135 (3.04%) Informatica
6 120 (2.70%) SAP
7 101 (2.28%) Talend
8 94 (2.12%) ServiceNow
9 89 (2.00%) IBM
10 78 (1.76%) Splunk
11 70 (1.58%) VMware
12 59 (1.33%) Salesforce
13 50 (1.13%) Denodo
14 41 (0.92%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
16 37 (0.83%) BMC
17 34 (0.77%) Alteryx
17 34 (0.77%) Murex
18 33 (0.74%) Citrix
18 33 (0.74%) Foundry