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

6 months to
2 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,492 3,286 3,623
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.65% 11.74% 11.15%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.12% 35.64% 34.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,022 2,276 2,551
10th Percentile £350 £328 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.90 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.60 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.20% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.90 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -18.89%

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 12,100 9,219 10,608
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.00% 32.94% 32.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,827 6,192 7,110
10th Percentile £363 £350 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £545
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 511 264 300
10th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £30.45
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £48.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.04% -12.31% -
75th Percentile £71.00 £67.31 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £75.88 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 October 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 October 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 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
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
London -5 2,529 £525 - 4,289
North of England 0 609 £475 +5.56% 945
Midlands -5 453 £469 -1.26% 550
South East -16 444 £475 -5.00% 928
West Midlands -4 355 £469 -6.20% 342
North West +3 303 £501 +12.22% 562
Yorkshire +8 252 £475 -0.11% 267
South West +1 238 £525 +16.67% 350
East of England -10 112 £495 -1.49% 269
East Midlands -5 96 £463 +12.80% 206
North East -1 64 £406 -14.47% 125
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
1 237 (5.28%) Apache Airflow
2 200 (4.45%) Confluence
3 199 (4.43%) Apache Spark
4 155 (3.45%) Apache
5 86 (1.91%) SharePoint
6 65 (1.45%) SAS
7 33 (0.73%) WebLogic
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
9 28 (0.62%) Jupyter
10 27 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
11 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.45%) CMS
14 18 (0.40%) Camunda
15 15 (0.33%) nginx
15 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
16 11 (0.24%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 259 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 20 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.089%) Notion
9 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
10 3 (0.067%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
3 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 25 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
7 11 (0.24%) Siebel CRM
8 10 (0.22%) Finacle
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
8 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
9 9 (0.20%) Maximo
9 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
9 9 (0.20%) Summit
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,382 (30.77%) Azure
2 1,095 (24.38%) AWS
3 859 (19.12%) Power Platform
4 455 (10.13%) GCP
5 368 (8.19%) Azure DevOps
6 365 (8.13%) Snowflake
7 312 (6.95%) GitHub
8 297 (6.61%) dbt
9 295 (6.57%) Azure Data Factory
10 264 (5.88%) Serverless
11 240 (5.34%) Amazon S3
12 187 (4.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 169 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (3.25%) GitHub Actions
15 102 (2.27%) SaaS
16 100 (2.23%) Power Automate
17 98 (2.18%) Entra ID
18 92 (2.05%) PowerApps
19 88 (1.96%) Azure Databricks
20 78 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 64 (1.42%) DNS
2 41 (0.91%) Firewall
3 28 (0.62%) HTTP
3 28 (0.62%) Network Security
4 27 (0.60%) SSL
5 22 (0.49%) Internet
6 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.47%) VPN
7 20 (0.45%) Broadband
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 13 (0.29%) SNMP
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 11 (0.24%) Reverse Proxy
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
13 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.16%) 5G
14 7 (0.16%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 787 (17.52%) Power BI
2 609 (13.56%) Data Warehouse
3 579 (12.89%) SQL Server
4 291 (6.48%) Relational Database
5 280 (6.23%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (5.74%) Data Lake
7 251 (5.59%) Tableau
8 234 (5.21%) Metadata
9 214 (4.76%) NoSQL
10 200 (4.45%) BigQuery
11 198 (4.41%) Oracle Database
12 153 (3.41%) Azure SQL Database
13 134 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
14 130 (2.89%) Delta Lake
15 123 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 113 (2.52%) MySQL
17 102 (2.27%) Amazon Athena
18 100 (2.23%) Big Data
19 92 (2.05%) Power Query
20 88 (1.96%) Looker
Development Applications
1 591 (13.16%) Git
2 367 (8.17%) JIRA
3 243 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 229 (5.10%) GitLab
5 96 (2.14%) Selenium
6 81 (1.80%) JUnit
7 79 (1.76%) Maven
8 77 (1.71%) Gradle
9 64 (1.42%) Postman
10 49 (1.09%) Mockito
11 41 (0.91%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.89%) Bitbucket
13 33 (0.73%) Zephyr
14 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.62%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
17 25 (0.56%) JMeter
17 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.51%) Cucumber
18 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,254 (27.92%) Social Skills
2 1,198 (26.67%) Finance
3 937 (20.86%) Analytical Skills
4 539 (12.00%) Banking
5 402 (8.95%) Public Sector
6 146 (3.25%) Marketing
7 137 (3.05%) Retail
8 128 (2.85%) Front Office
9 122 (2.72%) Investment Banking
10 89 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 81 (1.80%) Manufacturing
12 77 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
13 53 (1.18%) Legal
14 51 (1.14%) Financial Institution
15 47 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
16 46 (1.02%) Back Office
17 45 (1.00%) Local Government
18 42 (0.93%) Influencing Skills
19 39 (0.87%) Military
20 37 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 953 (21.22%) Developer
2 858 (19.10%) Data Engineer
3 663 (14.76%) Senior
4 656 (14.60%) Analyst
5 314 (6.99%) Lead
6 267 (5.94%) Data Analyst
7 217 (4.83%) Architect
8 212 (4.72%) Senior Data Engineer
9 197 (4.39%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.92%) Consultant
11 170 (3.78%) DBA
12 159 (3.54%) Java Developer
13 150 (3.34%) Senior Developer
14 112 (2.49%) Software Engineer
15 106 (2.36%) Azure Engineer
16 105 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
17 103 (2.29%) Python Developer
18 102 (2.27%) SQL DBA
19 96 (2.14%) Data Architect
19 96 (2.14%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 426 (9.48%) REST
2 395 (8.79%) Terraform
3 385 (8.57%) .NET
4 306 (6.81%) PySpark
5 301 (6.70%) Kafka
6 225 (5.01%) Spring
7 215 (4.79%) Spring Boot
8 212 (4.72%) React
9 177 (3.94%) HTML
10 167 (3.72%) RESTful
11 166 (3.70%) JSON
12 149 (3.32%) CSS
13 143 (3.18%) XML
14 111 (2.47%) AngularJS
15 109 (2.43%) SOAP
16 105 (2.34%) Web Services
17 93 (2.07%) Middleware
18 90 (2.00%) Pandas
19 85 (1.89%) OAuth
20 84 (1.87%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.41%) Cloud Native
2 220 (4.90%) Data Structures
3 215 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.16%) Legacy Systems
5 128 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
6 124 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
6 124 (2.76%) Onboarding
7 97 (2.16%) Management Information System
8 87 (1.94%) AI Agents
9 80 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
10 74 (1.65%) Derivative
11 70 (1.56%) Replication
12 62 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
13 61 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (1.31%) Reference Data
15 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
16 56 (1.25%) Clustering
17 50 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
18 49 (1.09%) Data Centre
19 46 (1.02%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 322 (7.17%) Linux
2 272 (6.06%) Windows
3 210 (4.67%) Unix
4 112 (2.49%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.22%) AIX
9 9 (0.20%) VMS
9 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.089%) zOS
14 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 3 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.045%) Amazon Linux
15 2 (0.045%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,246 (27.74%) CI/CD
2 1,220 (27.16%) Agile
3 1,145 (25.49%) Data Modelling
4 1,142 (25.42%) Analytics
5 980 (21.82%) Business Intelligence
5 980 (21.82%) ETL
6 894 (19.90%) Problem-Solving
7 865 (19.26%) Data Pipeline
8 857 (19.08%) DevOps
9 794 (17.68%) Data Engineering
10 784 (17.45%) AI
11 706 (15.72%) Validation
12 668 (14.87%) Stakeholder Management
13 660 (14.69%) Migration
14 540 (12.02%) Test Automation
15 537 (11.95%) Continuous Improvement
16 506 (11.26%) Data Analysis
17 504 (11.22%) Decision-Making
18 491 (10.93%) Data Governance
19 397 (8.84%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,613 (35.91%) Python
2 557 (12.40%) Java
3 413 (9.19%) C#
4 377 (8.39%) JavaScript
5 323 (7.19%) PL/SQL
6 235 (5.23%) PowerShell
7 214 (4.76%) T-SQL
8 197 (4.39%) TypeScript
9 143 (3.18%) Shell Script
10 134 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 109 (2.43%) Bash
12 75 (1.67%) Scala
13 67 (1.49%) R
14 35 (0.78%) C++
15 34 (0.76%) VBA
16 31 (0.69%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.60%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
19 26 (0.58%) VB
Qualifications
1 967 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 757 (16.85%) SC Cleared
3 339 (7.55%) Degree
4 131 (2.92%) DV Cleared
5 121 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 115 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 71 (1.58%) Azure Certification
8 56 (1.25%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
10 40 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 40 (0.89%) Master's Degree
11 19 (0.42%) CISSP
12 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.33%) ACCA
14 15 (0.33%) CIMA
14 15 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
16 13 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 906 (20.17%) Data Quality
2 366 (8.15%) QA
3 114 (2.54%) GDPR
4 48 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 45 (1.00%) SLA
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 23 (0.51%) IFRS
7 23 (0.51%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.38%) MiFID
10 15 (0.33%) COBIT
10 15 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 12 (0.27%) Basel III
12 9 (0.20%) PCI DSS
13 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.18%) PMO
13 8 (0.18%) SEPA
13 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
14 7 (0.16%) GRC
System Software
1 427 (9.51%) Docker
2 115 (2.56%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.13%) Postfix
11 5 (0.11%) KVM
12 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 376 (8.37%) Kubernetes
2 95 (2.11%) Ansible
3 85 (1.89%) Grafana
4 52 (1.16%) Prometheus
5 39 (0.87%) Control-M
5 39 (0.87%) SCOM
6 38 (0.85%) Kibana
7 34 (0.76%) Data Guard
8 30 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
9 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
11 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
11 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
11 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 10 (0.22%) Argo
12 10 (0.22%) Progress Chef
13 9 (0.20%) Istio
13 9 (0.20%) Tivoli
14 8 (0.18%) Nagios
14 8 (0.18%) Netcool
Vendors
1 772 (17.19%) Microsoft
2 746 (16.61%) Oracle
3 591 (13.16%) Databricks
4 212 (4.72%) Google
5 130 (2.89%) Informatica
6 121 (2.69%) SAP
7 102 (2.27%) IBM
8 94 (2.09%) Talend
9 82 (1.83%) ServiceNow
10 79 (1.76%) Splunk
11 65 (1.45%) VMware
12 61 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 45 (1.00%) Denodo
14 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Foundry
16 37 (0.82%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.80%) UiPath
18 34 (0.76%) Murex
19 33 (0.73%) Adobe
19 33 (0.73%) Alteryx