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

6 months to
19 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,245 3,071 3,770
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.85% 12.35% 9.99%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.94% 36.42% 32.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,861 2,214 2,774
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -1.38%
75th Percentile £599 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £765 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 62 58
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.05 £22.71
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.50 £30.00
Median hourly rate £48.75 £41.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.03% -1.98% -15.00%
75th Percentile £75.01 £53.75 £53.29
90th Percentile £83.75 £77.10 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +23.46% -4.71% -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 11,493 8,433 11,471
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.66% 33.91% 30.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,513 5,862 8,192
10th Percentile £360 £356 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £520 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.96% -3.35% -3.93%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £507 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -0.59% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 520 197 495
10th Percentile £36.25 £28.11 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £49.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.55 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -

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 19 June 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 19 June 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 19 June 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 2,298 £525 -1.87% 582
North of England -6 541 £460 -3.16% 344
Midlands +3 539 £463 +3.93% 200
West Midlands +5 441 £459 +1.32% 107
South East -12 424 £475 -5.00% 429
North West -3 287 £463 -2.37% 215
South West -2 231 £500 +5.26% 118
Yorkshire -12 214 £475 - 83
East of England -14 106 £495 +1.54% 102
East Midlands +1 94 £525 +38.16% 93
North East -12 52 £425 -8.36% 51
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
1 218 (5.14%) Apache Spark
2 175 (4.12%) Apache Airflow
3 160 (3.77%) Confluence
4 141 (3.32%) Apache
5 91 (2.14%) SAS
6 55 (1.30%) SharePoint
7 31 (0.73%) IIS
7 31 (0.73%) Oracle Workflow
7 31 (0.73%) WebLogic
8 24 (0.57%) Tomcat
9 22 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 19 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
11 17 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
11 17 (0.40%) WebSphere
12 16 (0.38%) Appian
12 16 (0.38%) CMS
13 14 (0.33%) nginx
14 13 (0.31%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.28%) Camunda
16 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 274 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 31 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 3 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.047%) Acrobat
9 2 (0.047%) Notion
9 2 (0.047%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.024%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.024%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.024%) InDesign
10 1 (0.024%) Mingle
10 1 (0.024%) Trello
10 1 (0.024%) Weka
Business Applications
1 33 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
1 33 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.59%) Aladdin
3 22 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
4 21 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
5 20 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.42%) NEC Housing
7 16 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
8 15 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.26%) Findur
9 11 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 10 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 10 (0.24%) Siebel CRM
11 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
11 9 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.19%) Endur
12 8 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
12 8 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,377 (32.44%) Azure
2 1,042 (24.55%) AWS
3 815 (19.20%) Power Platform
4 397 (9.35%) Azure DevOps
5 343 (8.08%) GCP
6 324 (7.63%) Azure Data Factory
7 307 (7.23%) GitHub
8 282 (6.64%) Serverless
9 251 (5.91%) Amazon S3
9 251 (5.91%) Snowflake
10 209 (4.92%) dbt
11 205 (4.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 178 (4.19%) AWS Lambda
13 162 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
14 81 (1.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 77 (1.81%) Entra ID
16 76 (1.79%) Power Automate
17 73 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
18 70 (1.65%) SaaS
19 65 (1.53%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.13%) DNS
2 41 (0.97%) Firewall
3 21 (0.49%) SNMP
4 19 (0.45%) HTTP
4 19 (0.45%) Network Security
5 17 (0.40%) Internet
5 17 (0.40%) VPN
5 17 (0.40%) WAN
6 15 (0.35%) SSL
7 12 (0.28%) TCP/IP
8 11 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.21%) LAN
9 9 (0.21%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.19%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.16%) SAN
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) IPsec
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 751 (17.69%) Power BI
2 552 (13.00%) Data Warehouse
3 529 (12.46%) SQL Server
4 288 (6.78%) Data Lake
5 284 (6.69%) Tableau
6 276 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
6 276 (6.50%) Relational Database
7 224 (5.28%) NoSQL
8 206 (4.85%) Metadata
9 186 (4.38%) Azure SQL Database
10 161 (3.79%) Oracle Database
11 150 (3.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 138 (3.25%) BigQuery
13 130 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 121 (2.85%) Delta Lake
15 107 (2.52%) Big Data
16 104 (2.45%) MySQL
17 100 (2.36%) Oracle Reports
18 93 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 91 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 457 (10.77%) Git
2 333 (7.84%) JIRA
3 222 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 194 (4.57%) GitLab
5 66 (1.55%) JUnit
6 51 (1.20%) Maven
7 50 (1.18%) Postman
8 48 (1.13%) Mockito
9 47 (1.11%) Selenium
10 45 (1.06%) Gradle
11 33 (0.78%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.75%) Cucumber
13 30 (0.71%) MLflow
14 27 (0.64%) ERwin
14 27 (0.64%) Visual Studio
15 26 (0.61%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.61%) Liquibase
16 25 (0.59%) JMeter
16 25 (0.59%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.59%) Zephyr
General
1 1,133 (26.69%) Finance
2 1,086 (25.58%) Social Skills
3 798 (18.80%) Analytical Skills
4 400 (9.42%) Banking
5 367 (8.65%) Public Sector
6 118 (2.78%) Front Office
7 113 (2.66%) Marketing
8 101 (2.38%) Investment Banking
9 88 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
10 84 (1.98%) Retail
11 70 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 49 (1.15%) Financial Institution
12 49 (1.15%) Legal
13 43 (1.01%) Publishing
14 42 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
15 40 (0.94%) Manufacturing
16 34 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
17 33 (0.78%) Telecoms
18 30 (0.71%) Back Office
19 27 (0.64%) Law
Job Titles
1 884 (20.82%) Data Engineer
1 884 (20.82%) Developer
2 599 (14.11%) Analyst
3 549 (12.93%) Senior
4 289 (6.81%) Lead
5 268 (6.31%) Data Analyst
6 231 (5.44%) Architect
7 199 (4.69%) Consultant
8 172 (4.05%) Java Developer
9 170 (4.00%) Business Analyst
10 165 (3.89%) Senior Data Engineer
11 142 (3.35%) DBA
12 134 (3.16%) Software Engineer
13 129 (3.04%) Senior Developer
14 105 (2.47%) Azure Engineer
15 101 (2.38%) C# Developer
16 96 (2.26%) SQL Developer
17 86 (2.03%) Python Developer
17 86 (2.03%) SQL DBA
18 80 (1.88%) Business Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (8.13%) .NET
2 334 (7.87%) REST
3 259 (6.10%) Kafka
4 257 (6.05%) PySpark
5 220 (5.18%) Spring
6 210 (4.95%) Spring Boot
7 201 (4.73%) React
8 186 (4.38%) RESTful
9 148 (3.49%) JSON
10 142 (3.35%) XML
11 140 (3.30%) HTML
12 126 (2.97%) CSS
13 115 (2.71%) Pandas
14 111 (2.61%) AngularJS
15 104 (2.45%) SOAP
16 93 (2.19%) Middleware
16 93 (2.19%) Web Services
17 84 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 76 (1.79%) OAuth
19 69 (1.63%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 275 (6.48%) Cloud Native
2 163 (3.84%) Data Structures
3 154 (3.63%) Legacy Systems
4 134 (3.16%) Product Ownership
5 127 (2.99%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (1.98%) Management Information System
7 81 (1.91%) Derivative
7 81 (1.91%) Onboarding
8 67 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
8 67 (1.58%) Data Protection Act
9 61 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
10 59 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
11 57 (1.34%) Clustering
12 50 (1.18%) Equities
12 50 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
13 48 (1.13%) Algorithms
14 47 (1.11%) Fixed Income
15 42 (0.99%) Replication
16 41 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 41 (0.97%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 283 (6.67%) Linux
2 253 (5.96%) Windows
3 204 (4.81%) Unix
4 89 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.57%) AIX
6 18 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.33%) Solaris
9 9 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.19%) zOS
11 7 (0.16%) Android
11 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.094%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.094%) VMS
13 3 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.047%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.047%) HPUX
14 2 (0.047%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,172 (27.61%) CI/CD
2 1,074 (25.30%) Analytics
3 1,055 (24.85%) Agile
4 1,039 (24.48%) Data Modelling
5 1,000 (23.56%) ETL
6 951 (22.40%) Business Intelligence
7 885 (20.85%) DevOps
8 841 (19.81%) Problem-Solving
9 805 (18.96%) Data Pipeline
10 697 (16.42%) Data Engineering
11 605 (14.25%) AI
12 564 (13.29%) Migration
13 547 (12.89%) Validation
14 445 (10.48%) Data Governance
15 438 (10.32%) Test Automation
16 429 (10.11%) Decision-Making
17 416 (9.80%) Data Analysis
18 398 (9.38%) Continuous Improvement
19 392 (9.23%) Stakeholder Management
20 381 (8.98%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,554 (36.61%) Python
2 545 (12.84%) Java
3 440 (10.37%) C#
4 313 (7.37%) PL/SQL
5 306 (7.21%) JavaScript
6 228 (5.37%) T-SQL
7 216 (5.09%) PowerShell
8 155 (3.65%) TypeScript
9 132 (3.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 109 (2.57%) Shell Script
11 99 (2.33%) R
12 82 (1.93%) Bash
13 72 (1.70%) Scala
14 56 (1.32%) C++
15 43 (1.01%) VBA
16 36 (0.85%) Bicep
17 33 (0.78%) C
17 33 (0.78%) VB
18 28 (0.66%) Perl
19 23 (0.54%) Go
Qualifications
1 901 (21.22%) Security Cleared
2 732 (17.24%) SC Cleared
3 323 (7.61%) Degree
4 104 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 96 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 86 (2.03%) DV Cleared
7 67 (1.58%) Azure Certification
8 51 (1.20%) ISTQB
8 51 (1.20%) Master's Degree
9 41 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (0.75%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.40%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.38%) PhD
13 14 (0.33%) CISSP
14 13 (0.31%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.24%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.21%) CISM
16 9 (0.21%) PMI Certification
17 8 (0.19%) PMP
18 7 (0.16%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 766 (18.04%) Data Quality
2 317 (7.47%) QA
3 170 (4.00%) GDPR
4 42 (0.99%) Accessibility
5 41 (0.97%) SLA
6 28 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 28 (0.66%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 26 (0.61%) NIST
8 23 (0.54%) PMO
9 17 (0.40%) IFRS
10 16 (0.38%) PCI DSS
11 15 (0.35%) Solvency II
12 14 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 14 (0.33%) HIPAA
12 14 (0.33%) MiFID
13 13 (0.31%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.24%) HL7
14 10 (0.24%) NCSC
15 9 (0.21%) GRC
System Software
1 465 (10.95%) Docker
2 93 (2.19%) Active Directory
3 39 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 23 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.38%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 11 (0.26%) vCloud
9 10 (0.24%) KVM
10 9 (0.21%) Postfix
11 8 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.14%) RACF
13 5 (0.12%) HDFS
14 4 (0.094%) XenApp
14 4 (0.094%) XenDesktop
15 2 (0.047%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.047%) GridGain
16 1 (0.024%) GPFS
16 1 (0.024%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 376 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 353 (8.32%) Terraform
3 102 (2.40%) Grafana
4 73 (1.72%) Ansible
5 57 (1.34%) Prometheus
6 34 (0.80%) Oracle RMAN
7 25 (0.59%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.54%) Control-M
9 21 (0.49%) Kibana
10 20 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
11 18 (0.42%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.38%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.35%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.33%) Nagios
14 14 (0.33%) Netcool
15 13 (0.31%) OpenView
15 13 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 12 (0.28%) SCOM
17 8 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
17 8 (0.19%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 719 (16.94%) Oracle
2 659 (15.52%) Microsoft
3 489 (11.52%) Databricks
4 164 (3.86%) Google
5 155 (3.65%) Informatica
6 123 (2.90%) ServiceNow
7 122 (2.87%) Talend
8 108 (2.54%) SAP
9 84 (1.98%) Splunk
10 68 (1.60%) IBM
11 63 (1.48%) Denodo
12 47 (1.11%) Salesforce
13 45 (1.06%) VMware
14 44 (1.04%) Citrix
15 36 (0.85%) Bloomberg
15 36 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.78%) Murex
16 33 (0.78%) OpenAI
17 28 (0.66%) BMC
17 28 (0.66%) SolarWinds