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

6 months to
20 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,627 3,081 3,840
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.41% 11.87% 10.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.89% 35.63% 34.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,500 2,075 2,788
10th Percentile £350 £351 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £594 £625 £655
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 52 63
10th Percentile £21.01 £25.26 £21.66
25th Percentile £34.63 £34.12 £26.29
Median hourly rate £50.00 £55.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.50% +30.00% -15.00%
75th Percentile £64.25 £65.62 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.72 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £53.50 £52.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year +1.42% +24.12% -15.42%

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 10,395 8,648 11,038
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.84% 33.33% 29.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,913 5,614 7,938
10th Percentile £351 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £615 £650 £657
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -5.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 438 202 471
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £36.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £42.63 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.14
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +4.76% -7.48%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 20 February 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 20 February 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 20 February 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 0 2,180 £510 -7.27% 912
Midlands -2 405 £496 +7.22% 307
North of England -3 390 £450 -5.26% 391
West Midlands -1 319 £488 -0.51% 188
South East -19 277 £478 -4.50% 603
North West +3 222 £424 -7.49% 232
South West +1 187 £475 -5.94% 148
Yorkshire -23 147 £500 - 116
East Midlands -10 86 £525 +35.92% 118
East of England -19 78 £550 +17.02% 128
North East -8 26 £475 -1.04% 46
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
1 190 (5.24%) Apache Spark
2 145 (4.00%) Apache Airflow
3 114 (3.14%) Apache
4 106 (2.92%) Confluence
5 80 (2.21%) SharePoint
6 73 (2.01%) SAS
7 52 (1.43%) WebLogic
8 25 (0.69%) IIS
9 22 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
10 18 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.47%) CMS
11 17 (0.47%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.44%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
13 15 (0.41%) Skype for Business
14 13 (0.36%) nginx
15 12 (0.33%) Appian
15 12 (0.33%) JBoss
15 12 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.30%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 229 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (1.19%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 4 (0.11%) Trello
8 3 (0.083%) Notion
8 3 (0.083%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.055%) Maya
9 2 (0.055%) NUKE
10 1 (0.028%) SPSS
10 1 (0.028%) Weka
Business Applications
1 25 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 21 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
4 20 (0.55%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
5 19 (0.52%) Oracle EBS
6 15 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
8 13 (0.36%) Endur
8 13 (0.36%) NetSuite
8 13 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
8 13 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
9 11 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
9 11 (0.30%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.25%) Advent Geneva
11 9 (0.25%) Maximo
12 8 (0.22%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,230 (33.91%) Azure
2 897 (24.73%) AWS
3 683 (18.83%) Power Platform
4 345 (9.51%) Azure DevOps
5 317 (8.74%) GCP
6 282 (7.78%) Azure Data Factory
7 269 (7.42%) GitHub
8 263 (7.25%) Serverless
9 248 (6.84%) Snowflake
10 193 (5.32%) Amazon S3
11 189 (5.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 149 (4.11%) dbt
13 140 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
14 135 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
15 100 (2.76%) SaaS
16 81 (2.23%) Azure Functions
17 80 (2.21%) Power Automate
18 65 (1.79%) PowerApps
19 63 (1.74%) AWS CloudFormation
20 59 (1.63%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.38%) Firewall
2 39 (1.08%) DNS
3 25 (0.69%) HTTP
4 19 (0.52%) Network Security
5 18 (0.50%) Skype
6 17 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 14 (0.39%) Internet
8 13 (0.36%) DHCP
9 12 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.33%) VPN
10 11 (0.30%) Unified Communications
11 10 (0.28%) 5G
12 9 (0.25%) 2G
12 9 (0.25%) LAN
12 9 (0.25%) WAN
13 8 (0.22%) SMS
14 7 (0.19%) 4G
14 7 (0.19%) Multicast
14 7 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
15 6 (0.17%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 620 (17.09%) Power BI
2 416 (11.47%) SQL Server
3 412 (11.36%) Data Warehouse
4 260 (7.17%) Relational Database
5 248 (6.84%) NoSQL
5 248 (6.84%) PostgreSQL
6 229 (6.31%) Tableau
7 227 (6.26%) Data Lake
8 179 (4.94%) Azure SQL Database
9 159 (4.38%) Metadata
10 149 (4.11%) Oracle Database
11 128 (3.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 115 (3.17%) BigQuery
13 112 (3.09%) Big Data
14 108 (2.98%) MySQL
15 100 (2.76%) MongoDB
16 94 (2.59%) Delta Lake
17 91 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
18 86 (2.37%) Amazon Redshift
19 74 (2.04%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 404 (11.14%) Git
2 284 (7.83%) JIRA
3 183 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 135 (3.72%) GitLab
5 59 (1.63%) JUnit
6 55 (1.52%) Selenium
7 43 (1.19%) Oracle APEX
8 40 (1.10%) Postman
9 34 (0.94%) Cucumber
10 29 (0.80%) MLflow
11 27 (0.74%) Maven
11 27 (0.74%) REST Assured
12 26 (0.72%) Bitbucket
13 25 (0.69%) ERwin
14 24 (0.66%) Mockito
15 22 (0.61%) Visual Studio
16 21 (0.58%) Cypress.io
16 21 (0.58%) SpecFlow
17 18 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
18 17 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,111 (30.63%) Social Skills
2 1,020 (28.12%) Finance
3 657 (18.11%) Analytical Skills
4 381 (10.50%) Banking
5 306 (8.44%) Public Sector
6 107 (2.95%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.65%) Documentation Skills
8 93 (2.56%) Front Office
9 86 (2.37%) Marketing
10 62 (1.71%) Retail
11 61 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (1.54%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 36 (0.99%) Legal
15 35 (0.96%) Publishing
16 34 (0.94%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.91%) Manufacturing
17 33 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
18 30 (0.83%) Law
19 28 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 892 (24.59%) Developer
2 623 (17.18%) Data Engineer
3 564 (15.55%) Analyst
4 481 (13.26%) Senior
5 253 (6.98%) Lead
6 234 (6.45%) Data Analyst
7 196 (5.40%) Business Analyst
8 182 (5.02%) Architect
9 149 (4.11%) Senior Developer
10 135 (3.72%) Java Developer
11 120 (3.31%) Consultant
12 112 (3.09%) Azure Engineer
13 107 (2.95%) Software Engineer
14 95 (2.62%) Senior Data Engineer
15 92 (2.54%) Data Scientist
16 88 (2.43%) Python Developer
17 83 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
18 82 (2.26%) C# Developer
19 74 (2.04%) Azure Data Engineer
20 71 (1.96%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 323 (8.91%) .NET
2 286 (7.89%) REST
3 238 (6.56%) Kafka
4 216 (5.96%) PySpark
5 171 (4.71%) React
6 167 (4.60%) RESTful
7 155 (4.27%) Spring
8 139 (3.83%) Spring Boot
9 136 (3.75%) HTML
10 132 (3.64%) XML
11 120 (3.31%) CSS
12 105 (2.89%) JSON
13 99 (2.73%) Pandas
14 96 (2.65%) AngularJS
15 93 (2.56%) Node.js
16 85 (2.34%) SOAP
17 78 (2.15%) .NET Framework
18 75 (2.07%) Middleware
19 72 (1.99%) Web Services
20 68 (1.87%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 223 (6.15%) Cloud Native
2 119 (3.28%) Data Structures
3 107 (2.95%) Legacy Systems
4 102 (2.81%) Product Ownership
5 82 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 80 (2.21%) Data Protection Act
7 72 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
8 67 (1.85%) Derivative
9 65 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
10 62 (1.71%) Algorithms
11 58 (1.60%) Equities
12 53 (1.46%) Fixed Income
13 51 (1.41%) Onboarding
14 49 (1.35%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 41 (1.13%) Replication
16 36 (0.99%) Market Risk
17 35 (0.96%) Clustering
17 35 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
18 32 (0.88%) Credit Risk
18 32 (0.88%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 298 (8.22%) Linux
2 209 (5.76%) Windows
3 190 (5.24%) Unix
4 65 (1.79%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (0.30%) AIX
7 11 (0.30%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.28%) Android
8 10 (0.28%) VMS
9 8 (0.22%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.083%) CentOS
13 3 (0.083%) zOS
14 2 (0.055%) Solaris
14 2 (0.055%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.028%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 979 (26.99%) Agile
2 914 (25.20%) Analytics
3 900 (24.81%) CI/CD
4 830 (22.88%) Problem-Solving
5 826 (22.77%) Business Intelligence
6 812 (22.39%) Data Modelling
7 802 (22.11%) DevOps
8 763 (21.04%) ETL
9 560 (15.44%) Data Pipeline
10 517 (14.25%) Data Engineering
11 411 (11.33%) Migration
12 405 (11.17%) Data Governance
13 395 (10.89%) AI
14 376 (10.37%) Validation
15 358 (9.87%) Data Analysis
16 349 (9.62%) Visualisation
17 344 (9.48%) Data Science
18 317 (8.74%) Decision-Making
19 316 (8.71%) Microservices
20 315 (8.68%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,370 (37.77%) Python
2 539 (14.86%) Java
3 382 (10.53%) C#
4 311 (8.57%) JavaScript
5 271 (7.47%) PL/SQL
6 146 (4.03%) PowerShell
7 134 (3.69%) TypeScript
8 120 (3.31%) T-SQL
9 104 (2.87%) Shell Script
10 103 (2.84%) R
11 92 (2.54%) Scala
12 88 (2.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 77 (2.12%) C++
14 66 (1.82%) VBA
15 63 (1.74%) Bash
16 52 (1.43%) VB
17 46 (1.27%) Perl
18 44 (1.21%) Go
19 41 (1.13%) Bicep
20 28 (0.77%) PHP
Qualifications
1 648 (17.87%) Security Cleared
2 507 (13.98%) SC Cleared
3 339 (9.35%) Degree
4 112 (3.09%) Computer Science Degree
5 76 (2.10%) Azure Certification
5 76 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 61 (1.68%) Master's Degree
7 57 (1.57%) DV Cleared
8 54 (1.49%) AWS Certification
9 46 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
10 39 (1.08%) ISTQB
11 20 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 19 (0.52%) CBAP
12 19 (0.52%) Oracle Certification
13 16 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
14 12 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.33%) MCSE
15 11 (0.30%) CCNA
15 11 (0.30%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.28%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 590 (16.27%) Data Quality
2 257 (7.09%) QA
3 146 (4.03%) GDPR
4 56 (1.54%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 26 (0.72%) SLA
7 20 (0.55%) MiFID
7 20 (0.55%) PMO
8 18 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
9 16 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 16 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 14 (0.39%) PCI DSS
11 13 (0.36%) EMIR
11 13 (0.36%) SEPA
12 12 (0.33%) IFRS
12 12 (0.33%) NIST
12 12 (0.33%) WCAG
13 11 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.28%) PSD2
15 9 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 428 (11.80%) Docker
2 94 (2.59%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
4 17 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.36%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.17%) KVM
7 6 (0.17%) Postfix
7 6 (0.17%) zsh
8 5 (0.14%) HDFS
8 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.14%) RACF
8 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.14%) XenApp
8 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) DFS Replication
9 4 (0.11%) Dovecot
9 4 (0.11%) Squid
9 4 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 382 (10.53%) Kubernetes
2 278 (7.66%) Terraform
3 80 (2.21%) Grafana
4 65 (1.79%) Prometheus
5 56 (1.54%) Ansible
6 21 (0.58%) SCCM
6 21 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
8 17 (0.47%) Control-M
8 17 (0.47%) Data Guard
8 17 (0.47%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.44%) SCOM
10 14 (0.39%) HP SiteScope
10 14 (0.39%) Kibana
10 14 (0.39%) Puppet
11 12 (0.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 11 (0.30%) WSUS
13 8 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
13 8 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 603 (16.63%) Oracle
2 585 (16.13%) Microsoft
3 432 (11.91%) Databricks
4 153 (4.22%) Google
5 98 (2.70%) SAP
6 85 (2.34%) ServiceNow
7 81 (2.23%) Talend
8 80 (2.21%) Informatica
9 79 (2.18%) Splunk
10 65 (1.79%) Salesforce
11 51 (1.41%) IBM
12 47 (1.30%) OpenAI
13 45 (1.24%) Citrix
14 40 (1.10%) MuleSoft
15 32 (0.88%) Bloomberg
15 32 (0.88%) VMware
16 31 (0.85%) Denodo
17 26 (0.72%) Foundry
18 23 (0.63%) Dynatrace
18 23 (0.63%) Palantir