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

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,674 3,069 3,841
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.38% 12.02% 10.12%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.07% 35.77% 34.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,540 2,093 2,782
10th Percentile £350 £352 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £658
90th Percentile £705 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £505 £538
% change year-on-year -0.99% -6.05% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 56 63
10th Percentile £18.48 £20.87 £21.66
25th Percentile £28.93 £29.07 £25.77
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -16.26%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.15 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.60 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £47.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +1.06% +10.59% -17.87%

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 10,477 8,581 11,074
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.59% 33.61% 29.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,996 5,638 7,960
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.95% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £663
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -5.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 212 476
10th Percentile £41.49 £25.25 £35.25
25th Percentile £55.00 £41.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -7.69%
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% -5.51%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 2,181 £510 -7.27% 858
Midlands 0 440 £483 +3.87% 364
North of England -6 399 £450 -7.55% 512
West Midlands +3 350 £475 -2.96% 201
South East -21 276 £500 - 799
North West 0 225 £425 -10.53% 268
South West -5 190 £475 -7.77% 246
Yorkshire -22 153 £500 -2.44% 172
East Midlands -10 89 £537 +39.03% 161
East of England -20 81 £550 +17.65% 234
North East -3 29 £475 +2.70% 77
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
1 196 (5.33%) Apache Spark
2 151 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 116 (3.16%) Confluence
4 113 (3.08%) Apache
5 82 (2.23%) SharePoint
6 80 (2.18%) SAS
7 52 (1.42%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.71%) IIS
9 23 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.52%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.46%) CMS
13 16 (0.44%) Jupyter
14 15 (0.41%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
15 14 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.33%) Appian
16 12 (0.33%) JBoss
17 11 (0.30%) HCL Notes
17 11 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 233 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.91%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.31%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.082%) Notion
8 3 (0.082%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.082%) Trello
9 1 (0.027%) InDesign
9 1 (0.027%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 1 (0.027%) SPSS
9 1 (0.027%) Weka
Business Applications
1 26 (0.71%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 21 (0.57%) Oracle EBS
3 21 (0.57%) Oracle Receivables
4 20 (0.54%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
5 19 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
6 15 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
6 15 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
6 15 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
8 13 (0.35%) Endur
8 13 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
9 11 (0.30%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
10 10 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 8 (0.22%) Maximo
11 8 (0.22%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,266 (34.46%) Azure
2 914 (24.88%) AWS
3 694 (18.89%) Power Platform
4 363 (9.88%) Azure DevOps
5 312 (8.49%) GCP
6 292 (7.95%) Azure Data Factory
7 271 (7.38%) GitHub
8 265 (7.21%) Serverless
9 254 (6.91%) Snowflake
10 196 (5.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 191 (5.20%) Amazon S3
12 150 (4.08%) dbt
13 139 (3.78%) GitHub Actions
14 135 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (2.56%) SaaS
16 84 (2.29%) Azure Functions
17 80 (2.18%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
18 66 (1.80%) PowerApps
19 65 (1.77%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.25%) Firewall
2 40 (1.09%) DNS
3 23 (0.63%) HTTP
4 18 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.44%) Network Security
6 14 (0.38%) Skype
7 13 (0.35%) Internet
7 13 (0.35%) SSL
7 13 (0.35%) VPN
8 12 (0.33%) DHCP
9 11 (0.30%) 5G
9 11 (0.30%) WAN
10 10 (0.27%) LAN
11 9 (0.24%) 2G
12 8 (0.22%) 4G
12 8 (0.22%) Radio Access Network
12 8 (0.22%) SMS
12 8 (0.22%) Unified Communications
13 6 (0.16%) Multicast
14 5 (0.14%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 633 (17.23%) Power BI
2 434 (11.81%) Data Warehouse
3 417 (11.35%) SQL Server
4 254 (6.91%) NoSQL
5 252 (6.86%) Relational Database
6 248 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
7 229 (6.23%) Data Lake
8 221 (6.02%) Tableau
9 184 (5.01%) Azure SQL Database
10 166 (4.52%) Metadata
11 141 (3.84%) Oracle Database
12 134 (3.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 115 (3.13%) BigQuery
14 109 (2.97%) Big Data
15 105 (2.86%) MySQL
16 98 (2.67%) MongoDB
17 96 (2.61%) Delta Lake
18 93 (2.53%) Amazon RDS
19 92 (2.50%) Amazon Redshift
20 82 (2.23%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 426 (11.59%) Git
2 303 (8.25%) JIRA
3 197 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 146 (3.97%) GitLab
5 61 (1.66%) JUnit
6 58 (1.58%) Selenium
7 45 (1.22%) Postman
8 42 (1.14%) Oracle APEX
9 36 (0.98%) Cucumber
10 33 (0.90%) Maven
11 29 (0.79%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.79%) MLflow
11 29 (0.79%) REST Assured
12 25 (0.68%) Mockito
13 24 (0.65%) ERwin
14 22 (0.60%) SpecFlow
14 22 (0.60%) Visual Studio
15 21 (0.57%) Cypress.io
16 18 (0.49%) SonarQube
16 18 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,109 (30.19%) Social Skills
2 1,026 (27.93%) Finance
3 661 (17.99%) Analytical Skills
4 389 (10.59%) Banking
5 322 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 99 (2.69%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.61%) Front Office
8 94 (2.56%) Documentation Skills
9 86 (2.34%) Marketing
10 61 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 61 (1.66%) Retail
11 58 (1.58%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.09%) Legal
13 36 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
13 36 (0.98%) Publishing
14 34 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
15 33 (0.90%) Telecoms
16 31 (0.84%) Manufacturing
17 30 (0.82%) Law
18 29 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 886 (24.12%) Developer
2 649 (17.66%) Data Engineer
3 557 (15.16%) Analyst
4 479 (13.04%) Senior
5 264 (7.19%) Lead
6 230 (6.26%) Data Analyst
7 196 (5.33%) Business Analyst
8 190 (5.17%) Architect
9 144 (3.92%) Senior Developer
10 134 (3.65%) Java Developer
11 133 (3.62%) Consultant
12 113 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
13 111 (3.02%) Software Engineer
14 99 (2.69%) Senior Data Engineer
15 91 (2.48%) C# Developer
16 89 (2.42%) Data Scientist
17 87 (2.37%) Python Developer
18 85 (2.31%) Full-Stack Developer
19 75 (2.04%) Azure Data Engineer
20 74 (2.01%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (8.85%) .NET
2 289 (7.87%) REST
3 233 (6.34%) Kafka
4 217 (5.91%) PySpark
5 175 (4.76%) React
6 170 (4.63%) RESTful
7 156 (4.25%) Spring
8 143 (3.89%) Spring Boot
9 141 (3.84%) XML
10 139 (3.78%) HTML
11 111 (3.02%) CSS
12 109 (2.97%) AngularJS
12 109 (2.97%) JSON
13 100 (2.72%) Pandas
14 92 (2.50%) Node.js
15 84 (2.29%) SOAP
16 80 (2.18%) .NET Framework
17 78 (2.12%) Middleware
18 69 (1.88%) Web Services
19 68 (1.85%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 232 (6.31%) Cloud Native
2 118 (3.21%) Data Structures
3 117 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
4 103 (2.80%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.15%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.01%) Data Protection Act
7 71 (1.93%) Analytical Mindset
8 69 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
9 66 (1.80%) Derivative
10 60 (1.63%) Algorithms
11 58 (1.58%) Equities
12 53 (1.44%) Fixed Income
13 52 (1.42%) Onboarding
14 47 (1.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 40 (1.09%) Clustering
15 40 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
15 40 (1.09%) Replication
16 34 (0.93%) Market Risk
17 33 (0.90%) Credit Risk
18 31 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 279 (7.59%) Linux
2 210 (5.72%) Windows
3 186 (5.06%) Unix
4 67 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.30%) AIX
8 11 (0.30%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.22%) Android
10 7 (0.19%) VMS
11 6 (0.16%) Apple iOS
12 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.14%) zOS
13 4 (0.11%) Solaris
13 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.082%) CentOS
14 3 (0.082%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.027%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.027%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,002 (27.27%) Agile
2 949 (25.83%) CI/CD
3 941 (25.61%) Analytics
4 851 (23.16%) Data Modelling
5 848 (23.08%) Business Intelligence
6 843 (22.95%) DevOps
7 835 (22.73%) Problem-Solving
8 811 (22.07%) ETL
9 590 (16.06%) Data Pipeline
10 532 (14.48%) Data Engineering
11 428 (11.65%) Migration
12 426 (11.59%) Data Governance
13 414 (11.27%) AI
14 384 (10.45%) Validation
15 358 (9.74%) Data Analysis
16 344 (9.36%) Data Science
17 342 (9.31%) Test Automation
18 336 (9.15%) Visualisation
19 326 (8.87%) Decision-Making
20 321 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,385 (37.70%) Python
2 536 (14.59%) Java
3 397 (10.81%) C#
4 315 (8.57%) JavaScript
5 278 (7.57%) PL/SQL
6 146 (3.97%) PowerShell
7 136 (3.70%) TypeScript
8 134 (3.65%) T-SQL
9 102 (2.78%) Shell Script
10 101 (2.75%) R
11 94 (2.56%) Scala
12 93 (2.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 73 (1.99%) C++
14 64 (1.74%) VBA
15 63 (1.71%) Bash
16 44 (1.20%) Perl
16 44 (1.20%) VB
17 43 (1.17%) Bicep
18 42 (1.14%) Go
19 27 (0.73%) PHP
Qualifications
1 706 (19.22%) Security Cleared
2 560 (15.24%) SC Cleared
3 328 (8.93%) Degree
4 105 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 73 (1.99%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.52%) Master's Degree
8 54 (1.47%) DV Cleared
9 50 (1.36%) AWS Certification
10 48 (1.31%) ISTQB
11 44 (1.20%) Microsoft Certification
12 21 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 19 (0.52%) Oracle Certification
14 17 (0.46%) CBAP
15 13 (0.35%) ITIL Certification
16 11 (0.30%) MCSE
16 11 (0.30%) PhD
17 10 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
17 10 (0.27%) ISEB
17 10 (0.27%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 621 (16.90%) Data Quality
2 270 (7.35%) QA
3 151 (4.11%) GDPR
4 58 (1.58%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.68%) SLA
7 23 (0.63%) PMO
8 20 (0.54%) MiFID
9 19 (0.52%) HIPAA
10 17 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 17 (0.46%) NIST
11 16 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.38%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.35%) IFRS
13 13 (0.35%) SEPA
14 12 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 12 (0.33%) EMIR
14 12 (0.33%) WCAG
15 11 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 438 (11.92%) Docker
2 98 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 27 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
4 17 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.22%) HDFS
6 8 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.16%) KVM
8 5 (0.14%) Postfix
8 5 (0.14%) RACF
8 5 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.14%) XenApp
8 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.11%) vSphere
9 4 (0.11%) zsh
10 3 (0.082%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 392 (10.67%) Kubernetes
2 288 (7.84%) Terraform
3 84 (2.29%) Grafana
4 64 (1.74%) Prometheus
5 63 (1.71%) Ansible
6 20 (0.54%) SCCM
6 20 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
8 17 (0.46%) Control-M
8 17 (0.46%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.44%) Data Guard
10 14 (0.38%) Kibana
10 14 (0.38%) Puppet
11 12 (0.33%) SCOM
12 11 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.27%) HP SiteScope
13 10 (0.27%) WSUS
14 8 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
14 8 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 621 (16.90%) Oracle
2 593 (16.14%) Microsoft
3 446 (12.14%) Databricks
4 151 (4.11%) Google
5 95 (2.59%) ServiceNow
6 94 (2.56%) SAP
7 92 (2.50%) Talend
8 91 (2.48%) Informatica
9 76 (2.07%) Splunk
10 66 (1.80%) Salesforce
11 53 (1.44%) IBM
12 47 (1.28%) OpenAI
13 46 (1.25%) Citrix
14 40 (1.09%) Denodo
14 40 (1.09%) MuleSoft
15 33 (0.90%) Bloomberg
15 33 (0.90%) VMware
16 25 (0.68%) Foundry
17 23 (0.63%) NEC
18 22 (0.60%) Adobe