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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,988 3,004 3,648
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.12% 12.27% 9.80%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.43% 36.29% 33.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,756 2,127 2,681
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £766 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £529
% change year-on-year - -5.48% -1.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 56 60
10th Percentile £26.50 £20.87 £22.52
25th Percentile £35.25 £29.77 £25.99
Median hourly rate £52.49 £49.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +6.04% +16.47% -14.63%
75th Percentile £74.47 £65.71 £53.75
90th Percentile £83.45 £79.72 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +22.22% +5.88% -15.00%

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 10,947 8,278 10,827
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.77% 33.80% 29.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,295 5,717 7,879
10th Percentile £353 £363 £350
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -5.53%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 517 208 429
10th Percentile £42.28 £25.25 £35.40
25th Percentile £55.81 £37.96 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +1.87% -1.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -1.54%

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 18 April 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 18 April 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 18 April 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 -4.65% 844
Midlands +6 521 £465 +1.09% 294
North of England -10 463 £450 -5.26% 420
West Midlands +7 416 £460 -3.16% 163
South East -18 310 £500 - 486
North West -3 259 £450 -5.26% 243
South West -7 215 £475 -5.00% 163
Yorkshire -15 185 £465 -4.62% 126
East Midlands -1 103 £525 +34.27% 131
East of England -18 89 £505 +10.08% 130
North East -8 30 £475 +4.40% 56
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
1 229 (5.74%) Apache Spark
2 160 (4.01%) Apache Airflow
3 142 (3.56%) Apache
4 122 (3.06%) Confluence
5 89 (2.23%) SAS
6 82 (2.06%) SharePoint
7 47 (1.18%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.78%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 20 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.38%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
12 14 (0.35%) nginx
12 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
13 13 (0.33%) Appian
13 13 (0.33%) CMS
14 12 (0.30%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 274 (6.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (1.25%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.075%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (1.03%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.73%) Aladdin
3 22 (0.55%) NEC Housing
4 21 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 17 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
6 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
7 16 (0.40%) NetSuite
8 15 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 10 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Endur
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,371 (34.38%) Azure
2 973 (24.40%) AWS
3 776 (19.46%) Power Platform
4 417 (10.46%) Azure DevOps
5 344 (8.63%) Azure Data Factory
6 318 (7.97%) GCP
7 299 (7.50%) GitHub
8 275 (6.90%) Serverless
9 238 (5.97%) Amazon S3
10 235 (5.89%) Snowflake
11 232 (5.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 179 (4.49%) dbt
13 162 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
14 156 (3.91%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (2.23%) Power Automate
16 82 (2.06%) SaaS
17 77 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
18 76 (1.91%) Azure Functions
19 72 (1.81%) Entra ID
20 71 (1.78%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.18%) Firewall
2 35 (0.88%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) HTTP
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 17 (0.43%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.38%) Internet
6 14 (0.35%) WAN
7 11 (0.28%) LAN
7 11 (0.28%) SNMP
8 10 (0.25%) SSL
8 10 (0.25%) VPN
9 8 (0.20%) DHCP
10 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.15%) IPsec
11 6 (0.15%) VLAN
11 6 (0.15%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.13%) 3GPP
12 5 (0.13%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
12 5 (0.13%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 707 (17.73%) Power BI
2 513 (12.86%) Data Warehouse
3 492 (12.34%) SQL Server
4 277 (6.95%) Tableau
5 265 (6.64%) NoSQL
6 264 (6.62%) PostgreSQL
7 253 (6.34%) Data Lake
8 250 (6.27%) Relational Database
9 214 (5.37%) Azure SQL Database
10 209 (5.24%) Metadata
11 145 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 143 (3.59%) Oracle Database
13 122 (3.06%) MySQL
14 121 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
15 120 (3.01%) BigQuery
16 114 (2.86%) Delta Lake
17 106 (2.66%) Big Data
18 101 (2.53%) MongoDB
19 100 (2.51%) Oracle Reports
20 99 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 442 (11.08%) Git
2 327 (8.20%) JIRA
3 219 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 163 (4.09%) GitLab
5 62 (1.55%) Selenium
6 61 (1.53%) JUnit
7 51 (1.28%) Postman
8 41 (1.03%) Maven
9 40 (1.00%) Oracle APEX
10 37 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
11 35 (0.88%) Mockito
12 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.68%) Bitbucket
13 27 (0.68%) SonarQube
14 25 (0.63%) ERwin
14 25 (0.63%) JMeter
15 23 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
15 23 (0.58%) SpecFlow
16 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,101 (27.61%) Social Skills
2 1,083 (27.16%) Finance
3 743 (18.63%) Analytical Skills
4 381 (9.55%) Banking
5 343 (8.60%) Public Sector
6 102 (2.56%) Front Office
7 99 (2.48%) Investment Banking
8 91 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
8 91 (2.28%) Marketing
9 63 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.40%) Retail
11 55 (1.38%) Legal
12 53 (1.33%) Financial Institution
13 39 (0.98%) Telecoms
14 35 (0.88%) Publishing
15 34 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
16 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.80%) Law
18 31 (0.78%) Local Government
19 30 (0.75%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 873 (21.89%) Developer
2 803 (20.14%) Data Engineer
3 592 (14.84%) Analyst
4 500 (12.54%) Senior
5 276 (6.92%) Lead
6 250 (6.27%) Data Analyst
7 220 (5.52%) Architect
8 197 (4.94%) Business Analyst
9 179 (4.49%) Consultant
10 153 (3.84%) Java Developer
11 138 (3.46%) Senior Developer
12 125 (3.13%) Senior Data Engineer
13 119 (2.98%) Azure Engineer
14 116 (2.91%) DBA
15 111 (2.78%) Software Engineer
16 102 (2.56%) C# Developer
17 89 (2.23%) Python Developer
18 86 (2.16%) Data Architect
18 86 (2.16%) Full-Stack Developer
19 84 (2.11%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (8.68%) .NET
2 309 (7.75%) REST
3 251 (6.29%) Kafka
4 248 (6.22%) PySpark
5 196 (4.91%) React
6 186 (4.66%) RESTful
6 186 (4.66%) Spring
7 172 (4.31%) Spring Boot
8 146 (3.66%) XML
9 144 (3.61%) HTML
10 126 (3.16%) JSON
11 124 (3.11%) CSS
12 121 (3.03%) Pandas
13 116 (2.91%) AngularJS
14 89 (2.23%) Node.js
15 87 (2.18%) Middleware
16 81 (2.03%) SOAP
17 80 (2.01%) .NET Framework
18 76 (1.91%) Web Services
19 73 (1.83%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 253 (6.34%) Cloud Native
2 137 (3.44%) Data Structures
3 131 (3.28%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (3.11%) Product Ownership
5 94 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
6 87 (2.18%) Management Information System
7 72 (1.81%) Derivative
8 69 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
9 65 (1.63%) Onboarding
10 61 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
11 58 (1.45%) Equities
12 57 (1.43%) Fixed Income
13 49 (1.23%) Clustering
14 48 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 45 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
16 44 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
17 43 (1.08%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 37 (0.93%) NHS
19 36 (0.90%) Replication
20 34 (0.85%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 278 (6.97%) Linux
2 237 (5.94%) Windows
3 197 (4.94%) Unix
4 75 (1.88%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.18%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Solaris
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.10%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.050%) CentOS
15 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.025%) VME
16 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,087 (27.26%) CI/CD
2 1,054 (26.43%) Agile
3 1,030 (25.83%) Analytics
4 990 (24.82%) Data Modelling
5 950 (23.82%) ETL
6 938 (23.52%) Business Intelligence
7 924 (23.17%) DevOps
8 837 (20.99%) Problem-Solving
9 712 (17.85%) Data Pipeline
10 637 (15.97%) Data Engineering
11 493 (12.36%) Migration
12 491 (12.31%) AI
13 485 (12.16%) Data Governance
14 481 (12.06%) Validation
15 386 (9.68%) Test Automation
16 372 (9.33%) Data Analysis
16 372 (9.33%) Decision-Making
17 360 (9.03%) Performance Tuning
18 350 (8.78%) Microservices
19 339 (8.50%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,504 (37.71%) Python
2 545 (13.67%) Java
3 427 (10.71%) C#
4 325 (8.15%) JavaScript
5 311 (7.80%) PL/SQL
6 187 (4.69%) T-SQL
7 167 (4.19%) PowerShell
8 140 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 117 (2.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 114 (2.86%) R
10 114 (2.86%) Shell Script
11 100 (2.51%) Scala
12 72 (1.81%) Bash
13 61 (1.53%) C++
14 60 (1.50%) VBA
15 44 (1.10%) Bicep
16 43 (1.08%) Perl
17 28 (0.70%) Go
18 25 (0.63%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 844 (21.16%) Security Cleared
2 689 (17.28%) SC Cleared
3 320 (8.02%) Degree
4 113 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 86 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 68 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.30%) ISTQB
7 52 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 48 (1.20%) DV Cleared
9 40 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (0.80%) AWS Certification
11 16 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
11 16 (0.40%) PhD
12 13 (0.33%) CBAP
13 10 (0.25%) PMP
14 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
15 8 (0.20%) CISSP
15 8 (0.20%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 714 (17.90%) Data Quality
2 308 (7.72%) QA
3 179 (4.49%) GDPR
4 50 (1.25%) Accessibility
5 33 (0.83%) SLA
6 29 (0.73%) PMO
6 29 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 17 (0.43%) NIST
8 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
9 15 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
10 14 (0.35%) MiFID
11 13 (0.33%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.33%) IFRS
12 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.28%) HL7
14 10 (0.25%) SEPA
14 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
14 10 (0.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 464 (11.63%) Docker
2 93 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 33 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 15 (0.38%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.23%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.13%) XenApp
10 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 403 (10.11%) Kubernetes
2 331 (8.30%) Terraform
3 100 (2.51%) Grafana
4 63 (1.58%) Ansible
5 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 33 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
7 22 (0.55%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.38%) Kibana
9 15 (0.38%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
10 14 (0.35%) Control-M
11 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
12 10 (0.25%) Nagios
12 10 (0.25%) Netcool
12 10 (0.25%) OpenView
12 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
12 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 9 (0.23%) Kiali
13 9 (0.23%) Puppet
Vendors
1 665 (16.68%) Oracle
2 651 (16.32%) Microsoft
3 490 (12.29%) Databricks
4 159 (3.99%) Google
5 124 (3.11%) Informatica
6 122 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 108 (2.71%) Talend
8 103 (2.58%) SAP
9 82 (2.06%) Splunk
10 61 (1.53%) IBM
10 61 (1.53%) Salesforce
11 54 (1.35%) Denodo
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 44 (1.10%) OpenAI
14 33 (0.83%) MuleSoft
15 31 (0.78%) Bloomberg
15 31 (0.78%) Dynatrace
15 31 (0.78%) VMware
16 28 (0.70%) HP
17 27 (0.68%) Atlassian