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

6 months to
7 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,384 3,226 3,796
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.88% 12.14% 10.21%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.06% 36.16% 33.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,930 2,303 2,809
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.37%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £645
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 64 55
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.14 £23.25
25th Percentile £31.86 £31.00 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% +1.55% -15.00%
75th Percentile £69.72 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.70 £67.05 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £42.82 £42.50
% change year-on-year +4.52% +0.74% -17.07%

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 11,829 8,921 11,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.66% 33.57% 30.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,700 6,151 8,217
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £726 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £512 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.14% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 500 219 479
10th Percentile £34.91 £28.18 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.55 £80.00 £76.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -

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 7 July 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 7 July 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 7 July 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 -5 2,354 £525 -0.94% 930
North of England -3 572 £465 -2.11% 379
Midlands +3 559 £460 +8.24% 245
West Midlands +5 461 £459 +2.00% 113
South East -8 451 £483 -3.50% 464
North West -1 302 £475 +1.06% 218
South West -5 232 £500 +12.68% 155
Yorkshire -7 232 £481 +1.32% 108
East of England -15 106 £491 +0.77% 116
East Midlands -2 94 £525 +38.16% 132
North East -18 50 £419 -9.70% 58
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
1 211 (4.81%) Apache Spark
2 181 (4.13%) Apache Airflow
3 174 (3.97%) Confluence
4 144 (3.28%) Apache
5 95 (2.17%) SAS
6 51 (1.16%) SharePoint
7 36 (0.82%) WebLogic
8 35 (0.80%) IIS
9 33 (0.75%) Oracle Workflow
10 24 (0.55%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.46%) CMS
13 19 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
14 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
15 17 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
16 16 (0.36%) nginx
17 15 (0.34%) Appian
18 13 (0.30%) Tuxedo
19 11 (0.25%) Camunda
20 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 283 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.91%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.068%) Notion
9 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.023%) InDesign
10 1 (0.023%) Mingle
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 39 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
3 27 (0.62%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
7 18 (0.41%) NEC Housing
8 17 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
9 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.23%) Finacle
13 9 (0.21%) Elite 3E
13 9 (0.21%) Fidessa
13 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
14 8 (0.18%) Summit
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,408 (32.12%) Azure
2 1,057 (24.11%) AWS
3 825 (18.82%) Power Platform
4 405 (9.24%) Azure DevOps
5 359 (8.19%) GCP
6 317 (7.23%) Azure Data Factory
7 313 (7.14%) GitHub
8 278 (6.34%) Serverless
9 270 (6.16%) Snowflake
10 246 (5.61%) Amazon S3
11 228 (5.20%) dbt
12 206 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
14 163 (3.72%) GitHub Actions
15 81 (1.85%) Entra ID
16 79 (1.80%) SaaS
17 78 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 77 (1.76%) Power Automate
19 73 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
20 68 (1.55%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (1.00%) DNS
2 39 (0.89%) Firewall
3 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 20 (0.46%) Internet
4 20 (0.46%) Network Security
4 20 (0.46%) SSL
5 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 18 (0.41%) VPN
7 13 (0.30%) WAN
8 10 (0.23%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.21%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.16%) SAN
11 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) LAN
12 6 (0.14%) Reverse Proxy
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 760 (17.34%) Power BI
2 577 (13.16%) Data Warehouse
3 566 (12.91%) SQL Server
4 297 (6.77%) Tableau
5 289 (6.59%) Relational Database
6 277 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
7 273 (6.23%) Data Lake
8 221 (5.04%) NoSQL
9 203 (4.63%) Metadata
10 175 (3.99%) Oracle Database
11 173 (3.95%) Azure SQL Database
12 147 (3.35%) BigQuery
12 147 (3.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 134 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 130 (2.97%) Delta Lake
15 104 (2.37%) Big Data
15 104 (2.37%) MySQL
16 100 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
17 98 (2.24%) Oracle Reports
18 90 (2.05%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 462 (10.54%) Git
2 343 (7.82%) JIRA
3 237 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 190 (4.33%) GitLab
5 70 (1.60%) JUnit
6 53 (1.21%) Postman
7 51 (1.16%) Maven
8 50 (1.14%) Selenium
9 48 (1.09%) Mockito
10 45 (1.03%) Gradle
11 33 (0.75%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.71%) Cucumber
13 30 (0.68%) Bitbucket
13 30 (0.68%) MLflow
13 30 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
15 27 (0.62%) ERwin
15 27 (0.62%) JMeter
16 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
16 26 (0.59%) Zephyr
General
1 1,161 (26.48%) Finance
2 1,133 (25.84%) Social Skills
3 843 (19.23%) Analytical Skills
4 419 (9.56%) Banking
5 381 (8.69%) Public Sector
6 126 (2.87%) Marketing
7 123 (2.81%) Front Office
8 102 (2.33%) Investment Banking
9 100 (2.28%) Retail
10 90 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 54 (1.23%) Legal
12 54 (1.23%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.19%) Financial Institution
14 50 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
15 37 (0.84%) Publishing
16 36 (0.82%) Back Office
17 34 (0.78%) Telecoms
18 28 (0.64%) Billing
Job Titles
1 925 (21.10%) Developer
2 888 (20.26%) Data Engineer
3 633 (14.44%) Analyst
4 572 (13.05%) Senior
5 305 (6.96%) Lead
6 270 (6.16%) Data Analyst
7 241 (5.50%) Architect
8 205 (4.68%) Consultant
9 186 (4.24%) Business Analyst
10 175 (3.99%) Java Developer
11 173 (3.95%) Senior Data Engineer
12 154 (3.51%) DBA
13 135 (3.08%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.92%) Software Engineer
15 108 (2.46%) Azure Engineer
16 106 (2.42%) SQL Developer
17 105 (2.40%) C# Developer
18 101 (2.30%) SQL DBA
19 89 (2.03%) Python Developer
20 86 (1.96%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (8.30%) .NET
2 344 (7.85%) REST
3 266 (6.07%) Kafka
4 261 (5.95%) PySpark
5 224 (5.11%) Spring
6 208 (4.74%) Spring Boot
7 202 (4.61%) React
8 184 (4.20%) RESTful
9 155 (3.54%) JSON
10 149 (3.40%) XML
11 139 (3.17%) HTML
12 122 (2.78%) CSS
13 120 (2.74%) AngularJS
14 114 (2.60%) Pandas
15 103 (2.35%) SOAP
16 101 (2.30%) Web Services
17 97 (2.21%) Middleware
18 90 (2.05%) .NET Framework
19 69 (1.57%) Node.js
20 68 (1.55%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 285 (6.50%) Cloud Native
2 176 (4.01%) Data Structures
3 153 (3.49%) Legacy Systems
4 144 (3.28%) Product Ownership
5 126 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
6 83 (1.89%) Derivative
7 79 (1.80%) Onboarding
8 73 (1.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 73 (1.67%) Management Information System
9 72 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
10 67 (1.53%) Self-Motivation
11 64 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 60 (1.37%) Clustering
13 54 (1.23%) Algorithms
13 54 (1.23%) Equities
14 51 (1.16%) Fixed Income
14 51 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
15 50 (1.14%) Replication
16 41 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 39 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 292 (6.66%) Linux
2 271 (6.18%) Windows
3 210 (4.79%) Unix
4 100 (2.28%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.55%) AIX
6 21 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 13 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.14%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.091%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.091%) VMS
13 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.046%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,192 (27.19%) CI/CD
2 1,132 (25.82%) Analytics
3 1,114 (25.41%) Agile
4 1,059 (24.16%) Data Modelling
5 1,014 (23.13%) ETL
6 967 (22.06%) Business Intelligence
7 897 (20.46%) DevOps
8 864 (19.71%) Problem-Solving
9 835 (19.05%) Data Pipeline
10 727 (16.58%) Data Engineering
11 639 (14.58%) AI
12 582 (13.28%) Migration
13 567 (12.93%) Validation
14 458 (10.45%) Data Governance
14 458 (10.45%) Test Automation
15 453 (10.33%) Decision-Making
16 438 (9.99%) Data Analysis
17 425 (9.69%) Continuous Improvement
18 414 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
19 386 (8.80%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,591 (36.29%) Python
2 549 (12.52%) Java
3 446 (10.17%) C#
4 330 (7.53%) PL/SQL
5 304 (6.93%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.50%) T-SQL
7 228 (5.20%) PowerShell
8 163 (3.72%) TypeScript
9 136 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 113 (2.58%) Shell Script
11 97 (2.21%) R
12 84 (1.92%) Bash
13 76 (1.73%) Scala
14 53 (1.21%) C++
15 43 (0.98%) VBA
16 37 (0.84%) Bicep
17 35 (0.80%) C
18 32 (0.73%) VB
19 24 (0.55%) Go
20 21 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 920 (20.99%) Security Cleared
2 740 (16.88%) SC Cleared
3 338 (7.71%) Degree
4 108 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 102 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 94 (2.14%) DV Cleared
7 65 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.12%) Master's Degree
9 47 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.71%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.39%) PhD
13 15 (0.34%) CISSP
14 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 10 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
15 9 (0.21%) ACCA
15 9 (0.21%) CIMA
15 9 (0.21%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 8 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 777 (17.72%) Data Quality
2 333 (7.60%) QA
3 171 (3.90%) GDPR
4 46 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.96%) SLA
6 24 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.48%) PMO
7 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 19 (0.43%) NIST
9 17 (0.39%) IFRS
9 17 (0.39%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) MiFID
11 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
12 13 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
12 13 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 13 (0.30%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) HL7
15 9 (0.21%) GRC
15 9 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 449 (10.24%) Docker
2 102 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 28 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.30%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.21%) Postfix
12 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.091%) HDFS
15 2 (0.046%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.046%) GridGain
15 2 (0.046%) XenApp
15 2 (0.046%) XenDesktop
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 378 (8.62%) Kubernetes
2 356 (8.12%) Terraform
3 98 (2.24%) Grafana
4 81 (1.85%) Ansible
5 52 (1.19%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.82%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.68%) Data Guard
8 22 (0.50%) Kibana
9 21 (0.48%) Control-M
10 20 (0.46%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.43%) SCOM
12 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Nagios
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.30%) OpenView
15 13 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.21%) Progress Chef
17 8 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 754 (17.20%) Oracle
2 680 (15.51%) Microsoft
3 506 (11.54%) Databricks
4 168 (3.83%) Google
5 156 (3.56%) Informatica
6 125 (2.85%) Talend
7 124 (2.83%) ServiceNow
8 108 (2.46%) SAP
9 83 (1.89%) Splunk
10 71 (1.62%) IBM
11 62 (1.41%) Denodo
12 51 (1.16%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.07%) VMware
14 45 (1.03%) Citrix
15 41 (0.94%) Bloomberg
16 40 (0.91%) Dynatrace
17 37 (0.84%) Murex
18 31 (0.71%) Alteryx
19 29 (0.66%) BMC
19 29 (0.66%) OpenAI