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 17 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,566 3,039 3,863
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.40% 11.85% 10.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.72% 35.43% 34.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,457 2,033 2,804
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £716 £746 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 52 64
10th Percentile £21.01 £25.26 £21.67
25th Percentile £31.88 £34.12 £26.53
Median hourly rate £50.00 £55.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.50% +30.00% -15.42%
75th Percentile £58.61 £65.62 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.60 £79.72 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -5.21% +24.12% -16.26%

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 10,272 8,578 11,114
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.95% 33.46% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,836 5,533 7,991
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £663
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £533
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.50% -5.24%
Number of hourly rates quoted 433 201 477
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £36.27
25th Percentile £52.50 £42.50 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +4.13% -6.92%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.40 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.14
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.92% -7.48%

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 17 February 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 17 February 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 17 February 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 2,162 £512 -6.95% 671
North of England -4 382 £450 -5.26% 351
Midlands -6 373 £500 +7.07% 313
West Midlands 0 287 £495 -0.50% 198
South East -17 281 £475 -5.00% 585
North West +6 218 £425 -7.36% 214
South West -3 183 £475 -5.00% 145
Yorkshire -18 144 £500 - 100
East Midlands -12 86 £525 +35.48% 115
East of England -17 80 £550 +14.88% 127
North East -6 25 £475 -1.04% 39
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
1 184 (5.16%) Apache Spark
2 139 (3.90%) Apache Airflow
3 108 (3.03%) Apache
4 107 (3.00%) Confluence
5 84 (2.36%) SharePoint
6 59 (1.65%) SAS
7 48 (1.35%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.73%) IIS
9 23 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.53%) Skype for Business
11 18 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.48%) CMS
13 16 (0.45%) Jupyter
13 16 (0.45%) Tomcat
14 14 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.36%) Mattermost
15 13 (0.36%) nginx
16 12 (0.34%) Appian
16 12 (0.34%) JBoss
16 12 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 233 (6.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (2.10%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (1.21%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.34%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 4 (0.11%) Trello
8 3 (0.084%) Notion
8 3 (0.084%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.056%) Maya
9 2 (0.056%) NUKE
10 1 (0.028%) SPSS
10 1 (0.028%) Weka
Business Applications
1 26 (0.73%) Oracle Payables
2 25 (0.70%) Aladdin
3 22 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
4 21 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
5 20 (0.56%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
6 19 (0.53%) Remedy ITSM
7 16 (0.45%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.36%) Endur
9 13 (0.36%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
9 13 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
12 10 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 9 (0.25%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.25%) Maximo
14 8 (0.22%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,204 (33.76%) Azure
2 868 (24.34%) AWS
3 674 (18.90%) Power Platform
4 339 (9.51%) Azure DevOps
5 305 (8.55%) GCP
6 278 (7.80%) Azure Data Factory
7 259 (7.26%) GitHub
8 256 (7.18%) Serverless
9 247 (6.93%) Snowflake
10 190 (5.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 186 (5.22%) Amazon S3
12 143 (4.01%) dbt
13 133 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
14 130 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
15 98 (2.75%) SaaS
16 79 (2.22%) Azure Functions
17 77 (2.16%) Power Automate
18 65 (1.82%) PowerApps
19 60 (1.68%) AWS CloudFormation
20 59 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.32%) Firewall
2 36 (1.01%) DNS
3 25 (0.70%) HTTP
4 22 (0.62%) Skype
5 18 (0.50%) Network Security
6 16 (0.45%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.42%) Internet
8 13 (0.36%) DHCP
9 12 (0.34%) SSL
9 12 (0.34%) Unified Communications
10 10 (0.28%) 5G
10 10 (0.28%) VPN
11 9 (0.25%) 2G
11 9 (0.25%) LAN
11 9 (0.25%) WAN
12 8 (0.22%) SMS
13 7 (0.20%) 4G
13 7 (0.20%) Multicast
13 7 (0.20%) Radio Access Network
14 6 (0.17%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 612 (17.16%) Power BI
2 404 (11.33%) SQL Server
3 396 (11.10%) Data Warehouse
4 253 (7.09%) Relational Database
5 246 (6.90%) PostgreSQL
6 245 (6.87%) NoSQL
7 227 (6.37%) Tableau
8 226 (6.34%) Data Lake
9 179 (5.02%) Azure SQL Database
10 155 (4.35%) Metadata
11 150 (4.21%) Oracle Database
12 121 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 114 (3.20%) BigQuery
14 108 (3.03%) Big Data
15 105 (2.94%) MySQL
16 100 (2.80%) MongoDB
17 87 (2.44%) Delta Lake
18 85 (2.38%) Amazon Redshift
19 82 (2.30%) Amazon RDS
20 72 (2.02%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 387 (10.85%) Git
2 282 (7.91%) JIRA
3 166 (4.66%) Jenkins
4 129 (3.62%) GitLab
5 55 (1.54%) JUnit
5 55 (1.54%) Selenium
6 43 (1.21%) Oracle APEX
7 39 (1.09%) Postman
8 35 (0.98%) Cucumber
9 28 (0.79%) MLflow
9 28 (0.79%) REST Assured
10 26 (0.73%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.73%) Maven
11 23 (0.64%) ERwin
12 22 (0.62%) Mockito
12 22 (0.62%) Visual Studio
13 21 (0.59%) Cypress.io
13 21 (0.59%) SpecFlow
14 17 (0.48%) Eclipse
14 17 (0.48%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,107 (31.04%) Social Skills
2 1,025 (28.74%) Finance
3 649 (18.20%) Analytical Skills
4 387 (10.85%) Banking
5 290 (8.13%) Public Sector
6 110 (3.08%) Investment Banking
7 97 (2.72%) Front Office
8 93 (2.61%) Documentation Skills
9 84 (2.36%) Marketing
10 62 (1.74%) Retail
11 58 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (1.57%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (0.98%) Legal
14 35 (0.98%) Publishing
15 34 (0.95%) Telecoms
16 33 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
17 30 (0.84%) Law
17 30 (0.84%) Manufacturing
18 29 (0.81%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 882 (24.73%) Developer
2 583 (16.35%) Data Engineer
3 573 (16.07%) Analyst
4 473 (13.26%) Senior
5 248 (6.95%) Lead
6 232 (6.51%) Data Analyst
7 201 (5.64%) Business Analyst
8 180 (5.05%) Architect
9 145 (4.07%) Senior Developer
10 126 (3.53%) Java Developer
11 118 (3.31%) Consultant
12 113 (3.17%) Azure Engineer
13 104 (2.92%) Software Engineer
14 93 (2.61%) Data Scientist
15 92 (2.58%) Senior Data Engineer
16 87 (2.44%) Python Developer
17 84 (2.36%) C# Developer
18 82 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
19 74 (2.08%) Azure Data Engineer
20 70 (1.96%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 324 (9.09%) .NET
2 285 (7.99%) REST
3 230 (6.45%) Kafka
4 213 (5.97%) PySpark
5 170 (4.77%) React
6 162 (4.54%) RESTful
7 150 (4.21%) Spring
8 134 (3.76%) HTML
9 133 (3.73%) Spring Boot
9 133 (3.73%) XML
10 116 (3.25%) CSS
11 105 (2.94%) JSON
12 100 (2.80%) Pandas
13 95 (2.66%) AngularJS
14 91 (2.55%) Node.js
15 84 (2.36%) SOAP
16 78 (2.19%) .NET Framework
17 72 (2.02%) Middleware
18 70 (1.96%) Web Services
19 69 (1.93%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 213 (5.97%) Cloud Native
2 113 (3.17%) Data Structures
3 102 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 101 (2.83%) Legacy Systems
5 80 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
5 80 (2.24%) Management Information System
6 73 (2.05%) Analytical Mindset
7 66 (1.85%) Derivative
8 63 (1.77%) Algorithms
8 63 (1.77%) Distributed Systems
9 56 (1.57%) Equities
10 52 (1.46%) Fixed Income
11 49 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 49 (1.37%) Onboarding
12 39 (1.09%) Replication
13 37 (1.04%) Market Risk
14 35 (0.98%) Clustering
14 35 (0.98%) Enterprise Software
15 33 (0.93%) Credit Risk
15 33 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 294 (8.24%) Linux
2 209 (5.86%) Windows
3 184 (5.16%) Unix
4 63 (1.77%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.28%) Android
8 10 (0.28%) VMS
9 9 (0.25%) AIX
9 9 (0.25%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.084%) CentOS
13 3 (0.084%) zOS
14 2 (0.056%) Solaris
14 2 (0.056%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.028%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 958 (26.86%) Agile
2 883 (24.76%) Analytics
3 876 (24.57%) CI/CD
4 821 (23.02%) Problem-Solving
5 803 (22.52%) Business Intelligence
6 779 (21.85%) DevOps
7 777 (21.79%) Data Modelling
8 732 (20.53%) ETL
9 533 (14.95%) Data Pipeline
10 497 (13.94%) Data Engineering
11 408 (11.44%) Migration
12 388 (10.88%) Data Governance
13 385 (10.80%) AI
14 374 (10.49%) Validation
15 361 (10.12%) Data Analysis
16 344 (9.65%) Visualisation
17 335 (9.39%) Data Science
18 314 (8.81%) Stakeholder Management
19 312 (8.75%) Decision-Making
20 307 (8.61%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,339 (37.55%) Python
2 532 (14.92%) Java
3 383 (10.74%) C#
4 306 (8.58%) JavaScript
5 267 (7.49%) PL/SQL
6 149 (4.18%) PowerShell
7 136 (3.81%) TypeScript
8 116 (3.25%) T-SQL
9 102 (2.86%) Shell Script
10 101 (2.83%) R
11 92 (2.58%) Scala
12 84 (2.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 79 (2.22%) C++
14 70 (1.96%) VBA
15 57 (1.60%) VB
16 54 (1.51%) Bash
17 47 (1.32%) Perl
18 43 (1.21%) Go
19 42 (1.18%) Bicep
20 27 (0.76%) PHP
Qualifications
1 607 (17.02%) Security Cleared
2 472 (13.24%) SC Cleared
3 343 (9.62%) Degree
4 114 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (2.16%) Azure Certification
6 76 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 56 (1.57%) DV Cleared
9 53 (1.49%) AWS Certification
10 45 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 39 (1.09%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
13 20 (0.56%) Oracle Certification
14 19 (0.53%) CBAP
14 19 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
15 12 (0.34%) MCSE
16 11 (0.31%) CCNA
16 11 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.28%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 567 (15.90%) Data Quality
2 260 (7.29%) QA
3 143 (4.01%) GDPR
4 56 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.70%) SLA
7 20 (0.56%) MiFID
7 20 (0.56%) PMO
8 18 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
9 17 (0.48%) SEPA
10 16 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 15 (0.42%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.39%) EMIR
12 14 (0.39%) HIPAA
12 14 (0.39%) PSD2
13 13 (0.36%) PCI DSS
14 12 (0.34%) IFRS
14 12 (0.34%) WCAG
15 11 (0.31%) NIST
16 8 (0.22%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 411 (11.53%) Docker
2 100 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 26 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
4 17 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
5 11 (0.31%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.17%) zsh
8 5 (0.14%) HDFS
8 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.14%) Postfix
8 5 (0.14%) RACF
8 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.14%) XenApp
8 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) DFS Replication
9 4 (0.11%) Dovecot
9 4 (0.11%) KVM
9 4 (0.11%) Squid
9 4 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 369 (10.35%) Kubernetes
2 272 (7.63%) Terraform
3 76 (2.13%) Grafana
4 63 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 54 (1.51%) Ansible
6 23 (0.64%) SCOM
7 21 (0.59%) HP SiteScope
7 21 (0.59%) SCCM
8 20 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.48%) Control-M
9 17 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
9 17 (0.48%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.45%) Data Guard
11 14 (0.39%) Kibana
11 14 (0.39%) Puppet
12 12 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.31%) WSUS
14 8 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
14 8 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 592 (16.60%) Oracle
2 590 (16.55%) Microsoft
3 421 (11.81%) Databricks
4 148 (4.15%) Google
5 93 (2.61%) SAP
6 86 (2.41%) Splunk
7 79 (2.22%) ServiceNow
8 66 (1.85%) Informatica
9 64 (1.79%) Salesforce
10 61 (1.71%) Talend
11 49 (1.37%) IBM
12 47 (1.32%) OpenAI
13 44 (1.23%) Citrix
14 35 (0.98%) MuleSoft
15 31 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 31 (0.87%) VMware
16 26 (0.73%) Foundry
17 25 (0.70%) Denodo
18 23 (0.64%) Dynatrace
18 23 (0.64%) Remedy