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 12 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,445 3,207 3,606
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.61% 11.49% 11.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.89% 35.23% 34.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,996 2,210 2,511
10th Percentile £355 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £745
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -1.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £24.14 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.68 £32.85 £30.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.40% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £37.75
% change year-on-year -11.00% +32.45% -16.11%

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 12,049 9,103 10,468
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.05% 32.62% 32.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,789 6,092 6,941
10th Percentile £363 £345 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £543
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -5.53% -1.36%
75th Percentile £638 £630 £650
90th Percentile £738 £749 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +3.75% -3.62% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 519 265 289
10th Percentile £22.33 £31.25 £30.00
25th Percentile £49.50 £42.25 £47.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.04% -13.08% +4.00%
75th Percentile £71.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.40 £78.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%

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 12 October 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 12 October 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 12 October 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 -7 2,522 £525 - 2,268
North of England +1 595 £475 +5.56% 561
South East -12 442 £475 -4.04% 434
Midlands -4 437 £469 -3.89% 292
West Midlands -1 349 £469 -7.50% 197
North West +4 302 £500 +15.61% 313
Yorkshire +9 240 £475 - 156
South West 0 234 £538 +13.16% 170
East of England -6 117 £505 +0.70% 148
East Midlands -6 86 £450 +9.76% 95
North East -1 63 £406 -9.72% 96
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
1 233 (5.24%) Apache Airflow
2 204 (4.59%) Apache Spark
3 203 (4.57%) Confluence
4 160 (3.60%) Apache
5 86 (1.93%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.44%) SAS
7 33 (0.74%) WebLogic
8 27 (0.61%) IIS
8 27 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 27 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
9 26 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
10 24 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
11 19 (0.43%) Camunda
11 19 (0.43%) CMS
12 15 (0.34%) nginx
12 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
13 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
14 10 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 258 (5.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
4 24 (0.54%) MS Visio
5 20 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 43 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.61%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
8 15 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle Financials
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
11 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.18%) Finacle
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
12 8 (0.18%) Summit
13 7 (0.16%) Maximo
13 7 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
Cloud Services
1 1,356 (30.51%) Azure
2 1,080 (24.30%) AWS
3 848 (19.08%) Power Platform
4 457 (10.28%) GCP
5 361 (8.12%) Snowflake
6 359 (8.08%) Azure DevOps
7 315 (7.09%) GitHub
8 288 (6.48%) Azure Data Factory
8 288 (6.48%) dbt
9 263 (5.92%) Serverless
10 231 (5.20%) Amazon S3
11 177 (3.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 163 (3.67%) AWS Lambda
13 143 (3.22%) GitHub Actions
14 105 (2.36%) Entra ID
15 102 (2.29%) SaaS
16 97 (2.18%) Power Automate
17 92 (2.07%) PowerApps
18 91 (2.05%) Azure Databricks
19 74 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 67 (1.51%) DNS
2 41 (0.92%) Firewall
3 29 (0.65%) Network Security
4 27 (0.61%) SSL
5 26 (0.58%) HTTP
6 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.47%) VPN
7 20 (0.45%) Broadband
7 20 (0.45%) Internet
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 12 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
9 12 (0.27%) SSH
10 11 (0.25%) SNMP
11 10 (0.22%) SAN
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 9 (0.20%) Multicast
13 7 (0.16%) 5G
14 6 (0.13%) 4G
14 6 (0.13%) MQTT
14 6 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 776 (17.46%) Power BI
2 596 (13.41%) Data Warehouse
3 578 (13.00%) SQL Server
4 283 (6.37%) Relational Database
5 267 (6.01%) PostgreSQL
6 257 (5.78%) Data Lake
7 246 (5.53%) Tableau
8 232 (5.22%) Metadata
9 215 (4.84%) NoSQL
10 201 (4.52%) Oracle Database
11 198 (4.45%) BigQuery
12 156 (3.51%) Azure SQL Database
13 134 (3.01%) Delta Lake
14 128 (2.88%) Amazon Redshift
15 121 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 112 (2.52%) MySQL
17 100 (2.25%) Big Data
18 99 (2.23%) Amazon Athena
19 95 (2.14%) Power Query
20 92 (2.07%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 592 (13.32%) Git
2 370 (8.32%) JIRA
3 240 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 227 (5.11%) GitLab
5 93 (2.09%) Selenium
6 78 (1.75%) JUnit
7 76 (1.71%) Maven
8 75 (1.69%) Gradle
9 61 (1.37%) Postman
10 47 (1.06%) Mockito
11 41 (0.92%) Bitbucket
12 40 (0.90%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.70%) Zephyr
14 28 (0.63%) REST Assured
15 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.56%) Cucumber
16 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.49%) Cypress.io
17 22 (0.49%) JMeter
General
1 1,257 (28.28%) Social Skills
2 1,197 (26.93%) Finance
3 940 (21.15%) Analytical Skills
4 553 (12.44%) Banking
5 401 (9.02%) Public Sector
6 144 (3.24%) Marketing
7 139 (3.13%) Retail
8 131 (2.95%) Front Office
9 126 (2.83%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 81 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 74 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
13 56 (1.26%) Financial Institution
14 49 (1.10%) Legal
15 45 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
16 44 (0.99%) Back Office
16 44 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
17 41 (0.92%) Local Government
18 40 (0.90%) Military
19 38 (0.85%) Law
Job Titles
1 943 (21.21%) Developer
2 838 (18.85%) Data Engineer
3 658 (14.80%) Senior
4 657 (14.78%) Analyst
5 313 (7.04%) Lead
6 273 (6.14%) Data Analyst
7 219 (4.93%) Architect
8 205 (4.61%) Senior Data Engineer
9 196 (4.41%) Business Analyst
10 172 (3.87%) Consultant
11 170 (3.82%) DBA
12 151 (3.40%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.35%) Senior Developer
14 111 (2.50%) Software Engineer
15 103 (2.32%) Azure Engineer
16 100 (2.25%) Full-Stack Developer
16 100 (2.25%) Python Developer
17 97 (2.18%) SQL DBA
18 94 (2.11%) Data Architect
19 93 (2.09%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 431 (9.70%) REST
2 398 (8.95%) Terraform
3 384 (8.64%) .NET
4 312 (7.02%) PySpark
5 306 (6.88%) Kafka
6 222 (4.99%) Spring
7 213 (4.79%) Spring Boot
8 212 (4.77%) React
9 178 (4.00%) HTML
10 168 (3.78%) JSON
11 162 (3.64%) RESTful
12 145 (3.26%) CSS
13 143 (3.22%) XML
14 107 (2.41%) AngularJS
14 107 (2.41%) SOAP
15 103 (2.32%) Web Services
16 91 (2.05%) Middleware
17 87 (1.96%) OAuth
18 83 (1.87%) Pandas
19 82 (1.84%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 292 (6.57%) Cloud Native
2 224 (5.04%) Data Structures
3 218 (4.90%) Product Ownership
4 143 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
5 138 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
6 122 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
6 122 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 102 (2.29%) Management Information System
8 93 (2.09%) AI Agents
9 81 (1.82%) Self-Motivation
10 74 (1.66%) Replication
11 70 (1.57%) Derivative
12 66 (1.48%) Reference Data
13 63 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
15 58 (1.30%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.24%) Clustering
17 49 (1.10%) Data Centre
18 45 (1.01%) Fixed Income
19 43 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 316 (7.11%) Linux
2 265 (5.96%) Windows
3 201 (4.52%) Unix
4 112 (2.52%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.52%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.22%) VMS
8 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) AIX
10 7 (0.16%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.090%) OpenVMS
13 4 (0.090%) zOS
14 2 (0.045%) Amazon Linux
14 2 (0.045%) CentOS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,236 (27.81%) CI/CD
2 1,217 (27.38%) Agile
3 1,161 (26.12%) Data Modelling
4 1,124 (25.29%) Analytics
5 971 (21.84%) ETL
6 961 (21.62%) Business Intelligence
7 881 (19.82%) Problem-Solving
8 863 (19.42%) Data Pipeline
9 841 (18.92%) DevOps
10 807 (18.16%) AI
10 807 (18.16%) Data Engineering
11 721 (16.22%) Validation
12 686 (15.43%) Stakeholder Management
13 653 (14.69%) Migration
14 559 (12.58%) Test Automation
15 540 (12.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 517 (11.63%) Data Analysis
17 507 (11.41%) Data Governance
18 497 (11.18%) Decision-Making
19 410 (9.22%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,597 (35.93%) Python
2 553 (12.44%) Java
3 408 (9.18%) C#
4 383 (8.62%) JavaScript
5 316 (7.11%) PL/SQL
6 232 (5.22%) PowerShell
7 205 (4.61%) T-SQL
8 196 (4.41%) TypeScript
9 137 (3.08%) Shell Script
10 136 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 113 (2.54%) Bash
12 71 (1.60%) Scala
13 64 (1.44%) R
14 36 (0.81%) Bicep
15 35 (0.79%) C++
16 33 (0.74%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.72%) VBA
18 29 (0.65%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
20 24 (0.54%) VB
Qualifications
1 954 (21.46%) Security Cleared
2 740 (16.65%) SC Cleared
3 337 (7.58%) Degree
4 140 (3.15%) DV Cleared
5 124 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 114 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 75 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 58 (1.30%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 44 (0.99%) AWS Certification
11 41 (0.92%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.45%) CISSP
12 20 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 18 (0.40%) ISEB
14 15 (0.34%) ACCA
14 15 (0.34%) CIMA
14 15 (0.34%) DBS Check
15 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
16 13 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 913 (20.54%) Data Quality
2 359 (8.08%) QA
3 112 (2.52%) GDPR
4 46 (1.03%) Accessibility
4 46 (1.03%) SLA
5 30 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
6 24 (0.54%) NIST
7 23 (0.52%) IFRS
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 20 (0.45%) ISO 20022
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 15 (0.34%) COBIT
12 14 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 12 (0.27%) Basel III
14 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) SEPA
16 8 (0.18%) GRC
16 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.18%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 413 (9.29%) Docker
2 118 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.74%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.27%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.11%) Postfix
11 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 3 (0.067%) KVM
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 376 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 95 (2.14%) Ansible
3 86 (1.93%) Grafana
4 52 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 41 (0.92%) Control-M
6 39 (0.88%) SCOM
7 38 (0.85%) Kibana
8 32 (0.72%) Data Guard
9 27 (0.61%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
14 11 (0.25%) Progress Chef
15 10 (0.22%) Argo
16 9 (0.20%) Istio
17 8 (0.18%) Podman
17 8 (0.18%) Puppet
17 8 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 782 (17.59%) Microsoft
2 744 (16.74%) Oracle
3 593 (13.34%) Databricks
4 221 (4.97%) Google
5 128 (2.88%) Informatica
6 117 (2.63%) SAP
7 101 (2.27%) IBM
8 100 (2.25%) Talend
9 86 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 74 (1.66%) Splunk
11 65 (1.46%) VMware
12 61 (1.37%) Salesforce
13 41 (0.92%) Foundry
14 40 (0.90%) Denodo
14 40 (0.90%) OpenAI
15 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
16 38 (0.85%) UiPath
17 35 (0.79%) Murex
18 32 (0.72%) Alteryx
19 31 (0.70%) Dynatrace