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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,450 3,239 3,549
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.76% 11.83% 10.73%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.44% 36.08% 33.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,003 2,283 2,604
10th Percentile £358 £335 £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 83 82 39
10th Percentile £23.00 £29.00 £25.99
25th Percentile £28.50 £32.85 £32.59
Median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +17.65% +6.25%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £55.63
90th Percentile £81.20 £63.63 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £41.33
% change year-on-year -11.00% +20.98% -8.16%

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 11,887 8,978 10,640
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.07% 32.78% 32.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,699 6,113 7,455
10th Percentile £363 £348 £355
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -6.55% -
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 493 266 315
10th Percentile £29.96 £30.61 £31.98
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £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 £78.60 £79.38 £79.67
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 2 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 2 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 2 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 2,483 £525 - 3,230
North of England -1 593 £475 +2.70% 610
South East -9 466 £490 -2.00% 658
Midlands -4 465 £469 +4.22% 333
West Midlands -3 362 £469 -1.26% 180
North West 0 301 £478 +2.80% 363
Yorkshire +4 251 £475 +5.56% 153
South West -2 227 £513 +20.59% 305
East of England -5 118 £495 -1.49% 186
East Midlands -5 100 £465 +20.00% 152
North East -18 50 £413 -11.29% 98
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
1 216 (4.85%) Apache Airflow
2 190 (4.27%) Apache Spark
3 180 (4.04%) Confluence
4 153 (3.44%) Apache
5 80 (1.80%) SharePoint
6 73 (1.64%) SAS
7 35 (0.79%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.67%) IIS
9 27 (0.61%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.56%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 22 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
12 18 (0.40%) CMS
12 18 (0.40%) nginx
13 17 (0.38%) Camunda
13 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.25%) Tomcat
15 10 (0.22%) ArcGIS
16 8 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 280 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 27 (0.61%) MS Visio
5 25 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) 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 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Windchill
10 2 (0.045%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 46 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
9 10 (0.22%) Finacle
10 8 (0.18%) Findur
10 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle FAH
10 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
10 8 (0.18%) Summit
11 7 (0.16%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,408 (31.64%) Azure
2 1,062 (23.87%) AWS
3 853 (19.17%) Power Platform
4 411 (9.24%) Azure DevOps
5 392 (8.81%) GCP
6 324 (7.28%) Snowflake
7 322 (7.24%) GitHub
8 309 (6.94%) Azure Data Factory
9 279 (6.27%) Serverless
10 268 (6.02%) dbt
11 222 (4.99%) Amazon S3
12 193 (4.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
14 157 (3.53%) GitHub Actions
15 99 (2.22%) Power Automate
16 96 (2.16%) SaaS
17 89 (2.00%) PowerApps
18 88 (1.98%) Azure Databricks
19 81 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 80 (1.80%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 62 (1.39%) DNS
2 46 (1.03%) Firewall
3 26 (0.58%) HTTP
3 26 (0.58%) SSL
4 24 (0.54%) Network Security
5 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 20 (0.45%) SNMP
6 20 (0.45%) VPN
7 18 (0.40%) DHCP
8 15 (0.34%) Broadband
9 11 (0.25%) SSH
10 10 (0.22%) WAN
11 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.18%) Multicast
12 8 (0.18%) RTP
12 8 (0.18%) SAN
12 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 784 (17.62%) Power BI
2 623 (14.00%) Data Warehouse
3 573 (12.88%) SQL Server
4 292 (6.56%) Relational Database
5 269 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
6 266 (5.98%) Tableau
7 260 (5.84%) Data Lake
8 234 (5.26%) Metadata
9 218 (4.90%) NoSQL
10 200 (4.49%) Oracle Database
11 168 (3.78%) BigQuery
12 163 (3.66%) Azure SQL Database
13 141 (3.17%) Amazon Redshift
14 133 (2.99%) Delta Lake
15 129 (2.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 113 (2.54%) MySQL
17 99 (2.22%) Big Data
18 96 (2.16%) Amazon Athena
19 88 (1.98%) Snowflake Schema
20 86 (1.93%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 524 (11.78%) Git
2 344 (7.73%) JIRA
3 251 (5.64%) Jenkins
4 206 (4.63%) GitLab
5 85 (1.91%) Selenium
6 77 (1.73%) JUnit
7 69 (1.55%) Gradle
8 62 (1.39%) Maven
9 58 (1.30%) Postman
10 50 (1.12%) Mockito
11 42 (0.94%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.83%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
14 34 (0.76%) JMeter
15 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
16 28 (0.63%) MLflow
16 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
17 27 (0.61%) Liquibase
18 24 (0.54%) ERwin
19 23 (0.52%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,230 (27.64%) Social Skills
2 1,156 (25.98%) Finance
3 941 (21.15%) Analytical Skills
4 483 (10.85%) Banking
5 388 (8.72%) Public Sector
6 149 (3.35%) Marketing
7 133 (2.99%) Front Office
8 123 (2.76%) Retail
9 118 (2.65%) Investment Banking
10 90 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 78 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
12 66 (1.48%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.17%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 44 (0.99%) Legal
16 40 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
17 39 (0.88%) Local Government
17 39 (0.88%) Telecoms
18 37 (0.83%) Back Office
19 34 (0.76%) Law
Job Titles
1 940 (21.12%) Developer
2 850 (19.10%) Data Engineer
3 659 (14.81%) Analyst
4 623 (14.00%) Senior
5 308 (6.92%) Lead
6 274 (6.16%) Data Analyst
7 230 (5.17%) Architect
8 214 (4.81%) Consultant
9 192 (4.31%) Business Analyst
10 183 (4.11%) Senior Data Engineer
11 182 (4.09%) DBA
12 157 (3.53%) Java Developer
13 152 (3.42%) Senior Developer
14 123 (2.76%) Software Engineer
15 111 (2.49%) SQL DBA
16 104 (2.34%) SQL Developer
17 101 (2.27%) Azure Engineer
17 101 (2.27%) Full-Stack Developer
18 100 (2.25%) Data Architect
19 96 (2.16%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 394 (8.85%) REST
2 390 (8.76%) .NET
3 361 (8.11%) Terraform
4 313 (7.03%) PySpark
5 294 (6.61%) Kafka
6 223 (5.01%) Spring
7 219 (4.92%) React
8 207 (4.65%) Spring Boot
9 176 (3.96%) HTML
10 174 (3.91%) RESTful
11 170 (3.82%) JSON
12 154 (3.46%) CSS
13 153 (3.44%) XML
14 111 (2.49%) AngularJS
15 102 (2.29%) Web Services
16 100 (2.25%) Pandas
17 97 (2.18%) Middleware
18 94 (2.11%) SOAP
19 87 (1.96%) .NET Framework
20 77 (1.73%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 287 (6.45%) Cloud Native
2 212 (4.76%) Data Structures
3 187 (4.20%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
5 126 (2.83%) Distributed Systems
6 107 (2.40%) Onboarding
7 106 (2.38%) Enterprise Software
8 92 (2.07%) Management Information System
9 76 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 75 (1.69%) Derivative
11 66 (1.48%) AI Agents
11 66 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
12 65 (1.46%) Replication
13 58 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 56 (1.26%) Clustering
14 56 (1.26%) Reference Data
15 53 (1.19%) Algorithms
16 52 (1.17%) Fixed Income
17 46 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
18 43 (0.97%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 316 (7.10%) Linux
2 273 (6.13%) Windows
3 210 (4.72%) Unix
4 106 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 22 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.40%) Solaris
7 17 (0.38%) AIX
8 10 (0.22%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
11 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) zOS
14 4 (0.090%) Android
14 4 (0.090%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,226 (27.55%) CI/CD
2 1,167 (26.22%) Agile
3 1,125 (25.28%) Data Modelling
4 1,108 (24.90%) Analytics
5 988 (22.20%) ETL
6 985 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
7 890 (20.00%) DevOps
8 875 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
9 861 (19.35%) Data Pipeline
10 761 (17.10%) Data Engineering
11 706 (15.87%) AI
12 650 (14.61%) Validation
13 628 (14.11%) Migration
14 573 (12.88%) Stakeholder Management
15 490 (11.01%) Data Governance
16 486 (10.92%) Test Automation
17 477 (10.72%) Continuous Improvement
18 468 (10.52%) Decision-Making
19 466 (10.47%) Data Analysis
20 376 (8.45%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,612 (36.22%) Python
2 555 (12.47%) Java
3 424 (9.53%) C#
4 359 (8.07%) JavaScript
5 348 (7.82%) PL/SQL
6 246 (5.53%) PowerShell
7 219 (4.92%) T-SQL
8 186 (4.18%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 137 (3.08%) Shell Script
11 99 (2.22%) Bash
12 84 (1.89%) R
13 66 (1.48%) Scala
14 43 (0.97%) C++
15 37 (0.83%) VBA
16 32 (0.72%) Bicep
17 26 (0.58%) VB
18 25 (0.56%) C
19 23 (0.52%) Go
19 23 (0.52%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 945 (21.24%) Security Cleared
2 750 (16.85%) SC Cleared
3 333 (7.48%) Degree
4 123 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 118 (2.65%) DV Cleared
6 106 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
7 70 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 56 (1.26%) ISTQB
9 46 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (0.94%) Master's Degree
11 39 (0.88%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.31%) ACCA
15 14 (0.31%) CIMA
16 13 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
17 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
17 12 (0.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 852 (19.15%) Data Quality
2 358 (8.04%) QA
3 137 (3.08%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 45 (1.01%) SLA
6 26 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 24 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
9 20 (0.45%) IFRS
9 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 19 (0.43%) NIST
11 16 (0.36%) MiFID
12 13 (0.29%) PMO
13 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.27%) Solvency II
14 11 (0.25%) COBIT
15 9 (0.20%) GRC
16 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.18%) WCAG
17 7 (0.16%) Basel III
System Software
1 437 (9.82%) Docker
2 117 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.94%) 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 (0.067%) 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 (0.022%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.022%) RACF
13 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 363 (8.16%) Kubernetes
2 92 (2.07%) Ansible
3 83 (1.87%) Grafana
4 46 (1.03%) Prometheus
5 42 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
6 40 (0.90%) Control-M
7 39 (0.88%) Data Guard
7 39 (0.88%) SCOM
8 22 (0.49%) Kibana
9 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.34%) Nagios
10 15 (0.34%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.31%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.29%) Netcool
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (0.27%) OpenView
13 12 (0.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
15 10 (0.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 757 (17.01%) Microsoft
2 756 (16.99%) Oracle
3 556 (12.49%) Databricks
4 174 (3.91%) Google
5 137 (3.08%) Informatica
6 121 (2.72%) SAP
7 102 (2.29%) Talend
8 96 (2.16%) ServiceNow
9 90 (2.02%) IBM
10 80 (1.80%) Splunk
11 70 (1.57%) VMware
12 59 (1.33%) Salesforce
13 52 (1.17%) Denodo
14 41 (0.92%) Bloomberg
15 39 (0.88%) BMC
16 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.79%) Alteryx
17 35 (0.79%) Murex
18 34 (0.76%) Foundry
19 33 (0.74%) Citrix