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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,845 3,013 3,789
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.44% 12.19% 9.99%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.93% 35.96% 34.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,647 2,095 2,744
10th Percentile £350 £355 £353
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -5.91% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £707 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 53 58 62
10th Percentile £18.70 £21.72 £21.65
25th Percentile £34.01 £29.30 £25.91
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -19.05%
75th Percentile £70.00 £65.46 £53.44
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.71 £61.61
UK median hourly rate £48.11 £47.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +1.28% +11.76% -20.93%

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 10,701 8,379 10,979
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.06% 33.91% 28.94%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,119 5,614 7,914
10th Percentile £352 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.42% -6.43%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £766
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 459 215 454
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £40.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £67.50
90th Percentile £77.10 £85.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.76%

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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 2,279 £513 -6.82% 858
Midlands +4 470 £475 +3.26% 254
North of England -12 421 £450 -7.41% 410
West Midlands +6 374 £468 -3.45% 150
South East -19 292 £493 -1.50% 510
North West 0 241 £447 -5.89% 230
South West -4 200 £475 -7.32% 152
Yorkshire -21 158 £475 -6.86% 124
East Midlands -8 94 £537 +38.58% 104
East of England -25 76 £500 +6.95% 103
North East -3 31 £475 +5.56% 62
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
1 219 (5.70%) Apache Spark
2 153 (3.98%) Apache Airflow
3 131 (3.41%) Apache
4 121 (3.15%) Confluence
5 79 (2.05%) SharePoint
6 75 (1.95%) SAS
7 52 (1.35%) WebLogic
8 28 (0.73%) IIS
9 24 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
10 21 (0.55%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.49%) Jupyter
12 17 (0.44%) CMS
13 16 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.39%) Tuxedo
15 13 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 13 (0.34%) WebSphere
16 12 (0.31%) Appian
16 12 (0.31%) HCL Notes
16 12 (0.31%) JBoss
16 12 (0.31%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 266 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.27%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 14 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.078%) Notion
9 3 (0.078%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) InDesign
10 1 (0.026%) Mingle
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
10 1 (0.026%) Weka
Business Applications
1 29 (0.75%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 24 (0.62%) Oracle EBS
4 22 (0.57%) Oracle Receivables
5 20 (0.52%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.52%) Oracle General Ledger
6 19 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
7 17 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
9 15 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
10 14 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
11 13 (0.34%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.23%) Endur
14 8 (0.21%) Maximo
14 8 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
14 8 (0.21%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,344 (34.95%) Azure
2 948 (24.66%) AWS
3 738 (19.19%) Power Platform
4 395 (10.27%) Azure DevOps
5 322 (8.37%) GCP
6 317 (8.24%) Azure Data Factory
7 308 (8.01%) GitHub
8 277 (7.20%) Serverless
9 259 (6.74%) Snowflake
10 207 (5.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 204 (5.31%) Amazon S3
12 159 (4.14%) dbt
13 158 (4.11%) GitHub Actions
14 142 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (2.50%) SaaS
16 89 (2.31%) Azure Functions
17 84 (2.18%) Power Automate
18 77 (2.00%) Entra ID
19 71 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
20 69 (1.79%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.35%) Firewall
2 42 (1.09%) DNS
3 22 (0.57%) Network Security
4 21 (0.55%) HTTP
5 20 (0.52%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.39%) Internet
6 15 (0.39%) VPN
6 15 (0.39%) WAN
7 13 (0.34%) 5G
7 13 (0.34%) DHCP
7 13 (0.34%) SSL
8 12 (0.31%) LAN
9 10 (0.26%) 4G
10 9 (0.23%) 2G
10 9 (0.23%) Radio Access Network
11 8 (0.21%) SMS
12 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 6 (0.16%) Multicast
13 6 (0.16%) Skype
13 6 (0.16%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 672 (17.48%) Power BI
2 468 (12.17%) Data Warehouse
3 453 (11.78%) SQL Server
4 266 (6.92%) NoSQL
5 256 (6.66%) Relational Database
6 254 (6.61%) PostgreSQL
7 242 (6.29%) Tableau
8 239 (6.22%) Data Lake
9 204 (5.31%) Azure SQL Database
10 187 (4.86%) Metadata
11 144 (3.75%) Oracle Database
12 140 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 121 (3.15%) BigQuery
14 119 (3.09%) Big Data
15 112 (2.91%) MySQL
16 105 (2.73%) Amazon Redshift
16 105 (2.73%) Delta Lake
17 102 (2.65%) MongoDB
18 96 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
19 80 (2.08%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 438 (11.39%) Git
2 305 (7.93%) JIRA
3 207 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 157 (4.08%) GitLab
5 63 (1.64%) JUnit
6 62 (1.61%) Selenium
7 46 (1.20%) Postman
8 41 (1.07%) Oracle APEX
9 38 (0.99%) Cucumber
10 34 (0.88%) MLflow
11 32 (0.83%) Maven
12 28 (0.73%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.73%) REST Assured
13 26 (0.68%) Mockito
14 24 (0.62%) Cypress.io
14 24 (0.62%) ERwin
14 24 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.57%) SpecFlow
16 20 (0.52%) JMeter
17 19 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,120 (29.13%) Social Skills
2 1,052 (27.36%) Finance
3 695 (18.08%) Analytical Skills
4 395 (10.27%) Banking
5 341 (8.87%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.70%) Investment Banking
7 103 (2.68%) Front Office
8 97 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 81 (2.11%) Marketing
10 61 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 61 (1.59%) Retail
11 54 (1.40%) Legal
12 53 (1.38%) Financial Institution
13 39 (1.01%) Publishing
14 37 (0.96%) Telecoms
15 36 (0.94%) Presentation Skills
16 35 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
17 32 (0.83%) Law
18 31 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
18 31 (0.81%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 910 (23.67%) Developer
2 703 (18.28%) Data Engineer
3 553 (14.38%) Analyst
4 489 (12.72%) Senior
5 276 (7.18%) Lead
6 231 (6.01%) Data Analyst
7 206 (5.36%) Architect
8 200 (5.20%) Business Analyst
9 160 (4.16%) Consultant
10 144 (3.75%) Senior Developer
11 137 (3.56%) Java Developer
12 117 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
13 107 (2.78%) Software Engineer
14 104 (2.70%) Senior Data Engineer
15 99 (2.57%) C# Developer
16 96 (2.50%) DBA
17 89 (2.31%) Python Developer
18 88 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
19 87 (2.26%) Data Scientist
20 78 (2.03%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (8.82%) .NET
2 310 (8.06%) REST
3 250 (6.50%) Kafka
4 238 (6.19%) PySpark
5 183 (4.76%) React
6 176 (4.58%) RESTful
7 165 (4.29%) Spring
8 154 (4.01%) XML
9 143 (3.72%) Spring Boot
10 138 (3.59%) HTML
11 115 (2.99%) Pandas
12 113 (2.94%) CSS
13 112 (2.91%) AngularJS
13 112 (2.91%) JSON
14 99 (2.57%) Node.js
15 84 (2.18%) .NET Framework
16 80 (2.08%) SOAP
17 79 (2.05%) Middleware
18 73 (1.90%) NumPy
18 73 (1.90%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 263 (6.84%) Cloud Native
2 128 (3.33%) Data Structures
3 125 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
4 108 (2.81%) Product Ownership
5 83 (2.16%) Management Information System
6 77 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
7 73 (1.90%) Data Protection Act
7 73 (1.90%) Derivative
8 68 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
9 64 (1.66%) Equities
10 59 (1.53%) Algorithms
11 58 (1.51%) Fixed Income
12 54 (1.40%) Onboarding
13 48 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 42 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
15 41 (1.07%) Clustering
16 40 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
17 39 (1.01%) Replication
18 36 (0.94%) Market Risk
19 30 (0.78%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 281 (7.31%) Linux
2 227 (5.90%) Windows
3 186 (4.84%) Unix
4 74 (1.92%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.39%) AIX
7 14 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 13 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.31%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.16%) Android
10 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.13%) zOS
12 4 (0.10%) Solaris
12 4 (0.10%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.078%) CentOS
13 3 (0.078%) VMS
14 2 (0.052%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.052%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.026%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,035 (26.92%) Agile
2 1,028 (26.74%) CI/CD
3 1,003 (26.09%) Analytics
4 913 (23.75%) Data Modelling
5 893 (23.22%) DevOps
6 886 (23.04%) Business Intelligence
7 871 (22.65%) ETL
8 840 (21.85%) Problem-Solving
9 636 (16.54%) Data Pipeline
10 591 (15.37%) Data Engineering
11 470 (12.22%) Migration
12 453 (11.78%) Data Governance
13 449 (11.68%) AI
14 414 (10.77%) Validation
15 379 (9.86%) Data Analysis
16 362 (9.41%) Test Automation
17 347 (9.02%) Data Science
18 344 (8.95%) Visualisation
19 342 (8.89%) Decision-Making
20 329 (8.56%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,446 (37.61%) Python
2 543 (14.12%) Java
3 412 (10.72%) C#
4 322 (8.37%) JavaScript
5 269 (7.00%) PL/SQL
6 158 (4.11%) T-SQL
7 153 (3.98%) PowerShell
8 145 (3.77%) TypeScript
9 108 (2.81%) Shell Script
10 105 (2.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 101 (2.63%) Scala
12 100 (2.60%) R
13 68 (1.77%) Bash
13 68 (1.77%) C++
14 63 (1.64%) VBA
15 49 (1.27%) Bicep
16 45 (1.17%) Perl
17 42 (1.09%) VB
18 38 (0.99%) Go
19 28 (0.73%) PHP
Qualifications
1 761 (19.79%) Security Cleared
2 601 (15.63%) SC Cleared
3 333 (8.66%) Degree
4 111 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (1.87%) Azure Certification
7 58 (1.51%) Master's Degree
8 53 (1.38%) DV Cleared
9 51 (1.33%) ISTQB
10 45 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
11 43 (1.12%) AWS Certification
12 21 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 17 (0.44%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) CBAP
15 13 (0.34%) PhD
16 10 (0.26%) ISEB
16 10 (0.26%) PMP
17 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
18 8 (0.21%) CFA
18 8 (0.21%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 666 (17.32%) Data Quality
2 283 (7.36%) QA
3 165 (4.29%) GDPR
4 62 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 28 (0.73%) SLA
6 27 (0.70%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 25 (0.65%) PMO
8 21 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 20 (0.52%) MiFID
10 17 (0.44%) NIST
11 16 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.42%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.39%) PCI DSS
13 14 (0.36%) WCAG
14 13 (0.34%) SEPA
15 12 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 12 (0.31%) IFRS
16 11 (0.29%) EMIR
16 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 451 (11.73%) Docker
2 101 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 31 (0.81%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (0.31%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.21%) HDFS
7 8 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.16%) KVM
9 5 (0.13%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.10%) Postfix
11 3 (0.078%) Oracle Clusterware
11 3 (0.078%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.052%) NDS
12 2 (0.052%) NetIQ eDirectory
12 2 (0.052%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.052%) vSphere
12 2 (0.052%) zsh
Systems Management
1 411 (10.69%) Kubernetes
2 307 (7.98%) Terraform
3 85 (2.21%) Grafana
4 63 (1.64%) Ansible
5 62 (1.61%) Prometheus
6 22 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
6 22 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.49%) SCCM
8 17 (0.44%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.36%) Data Guard
9 14 (0.36%) Puppet
10 13 (0.34%) Control-M
10 13 (0.34%) Kibana
11 9 (0.23%) HP Quality Center
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 8 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 8 (0.21%) Kiali
12 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.21%) WSUS
13 7 (0.18%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 627 (16.31%) Microsoft
2 619 (16.10%) Oracle
3 470 (12.22%) Databricks
4 164 (4.27%) Google
5 106 (2.76%) ServiceNow
6 104 (2.70%) Informatica
7 99 (2.57%) SAP
8 95 (2.47%) Talend
9 67 (1.74%) Splunk
10 62 (1.61%) Salesforce
11 57 (1.48%) IBM
12 50 (1.30%) Citrix
13 47 (1.22%) OpenAI
14 41 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 39 (1.01%) Denodo
16 35 (0.91%) Bloomberg
17 30 (0.78%) VMware
18 28 (0.73%) Foundry
19 25 (0.65%) Dynatrace
19 25 (0.65%) Palantir