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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,007 2,979 3,654
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.94% 12.24% 9.82%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.49% 36.26% 33.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,763 2,117 2,689
10th Percentile £350 £358 £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 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 55 58
10th Percentile £30.23 £20.44 £22.71
25th Percentile £36.00 £29.54 £26.05
Median hourly rate £51.25 £44.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.16% +4.71% -15.00%
75th Percentile £75.01 £65.31 £54.03
90th Percentile £83.30 £80.23 £62.11
UK median hourly rate £55.00 £42.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +28.93% +0.37% -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 10,982 8,215 10,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.24% 33.76% 29.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,290 5,683 7,932
10th Percentile £355 £363 £350
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £610 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 532 214 439
10th Percentile £42.63 £25.25 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £37.65 £48.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -0.33%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 2,265 £513 -6.82% 659
Midlands +6 525 £468 +1.74% 240
North of England -11 480 £450 -5.26% 331
West Midlands +6 417 £461 -0.27% 142
South East -19 321 £500 - 459
North West -2 264 £450 -5.26% 192
South West -7 207 £475 -3.80% 123
Yorkshire -14 192 £465 -2.11% 97
East Midlands +7 105 £525 +24.26% 98
East of England -18 92 £500 +6.95% 96
North East -8 35 £475 +4.40% 44
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
1 232 (5.79%) Apache Spark
2 154 (3.84%) Apache Airflow
3 137 (3.42%) Apache
4 131 (3.27%) Confluence
5 86 (2.15%) SAS
6 79 (1.97%) SharePoint
7 40 (1.00%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.85%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 22 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.35%) HCL Notes
13 14 (0.35%) nginx
14 13 (0.32%) Appian
14 13 (0.32%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.32%) Mendix
15 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 12 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.27%) CMS
Applications
1 276 (6.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.42%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.12%) 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 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.62%) Aladdin
3 24 (0.60%) NEC Housing
4 21 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
4 21 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
5 19 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 17 (0.42%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.42%) Oracle General Ledger
7 12 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
8 11 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 11 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
10 9 (0.22%) Maximo
10 9 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
11 8 (0.20%) Endur
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,370 (34.19%) Azure
2 955 (23.83%) AWS
3 785 (19.59%) Power Platform
4 408 (10.18%) Azure DevOps
5 347 (8.66%) Azure Data Factory
6 323 (8.06%) GCP
7 295 (7.36%) GitHub
8 262 (6.54%) Serverless
9 234 (5.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 228 (5.69%) Snowflake
11 226 (5.64%) Amazon S3
12 173 (4.32%) dbt
13 153 (3.82%) AWS Lambda
13 153 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
14 87 (2.17%) Power Automate
15 76 (1.90%) SaaS
16 72 (1.80%) Entra ID
17 71 (1.77%) Azure Functions
18 70 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (1.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.15%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 18 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.40%) HTTP
5 16 (0.40%) Internet
6 15 (0.37%) WAN
7 13 (0.32%) SNMP
8 12 (0.30%) LAN
9 11 (0.27%) SSL
9 11 (0.27%) VPN
10 10 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.22%) DHCP
12 7 (0.17%) Wireshark
13 6 (0.15%) 3GPP
13 6 (0.15%) IPsec
13 6 (0.15%) VLAN
14 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
14 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
14 5 (0.12%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 717 (17.89%) Power BI
2 514 (12.83%) Data Warehouse
3 503 (12.55%) SQL Server
4 279 (6.96%) Tableau
5 265 (6.61%) Data Lake
6 256 (6.39%) PostgreSQL
7 248 (6.19%) Relational Database
8 246 (6.14%) NoSQL
9 209 (5.22%) Metadata
10 204 (5.09%) Azure SQL Database
11 147 (3.67%) Oracle Database
12 146 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 119 (2.97%) BigQuery
14 117 (2.92%) Amazon Redshift
15 116 (2.89%) Delta Lake
16 114 (2.85%) MySQL
17 111 (2.77%) Big Data
18 102 (2.55%) Oracle Reports
19 97 (2.42%) Amazon RDS
20 94 (2.35%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 430 (10.73%) Git
2 320 (7.99%) JIRA
3 208 (5.19%) Jenkins
4 164 (4.09%) GitLab
5 60 (1.50%) Selenium
6 52 (1.30%) JUnit
7 47 (1.17%) Postman
8 41 (1.02%) Maven
9 38 (0.95%) Cucumber
10 36 (0.90%) MLflow
11 35 (0.87%) Mockito
12 30 (0.75%) Bitbucket
13 29 (0.72%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.70%) SonarQube
15 27 (0.67%) Gradle
16 26 (0.65%) Oracle APEX
17 24 (0.60%) ERwin
17 24 (0.60%) JMeter
18 22 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
18 22 (0.55%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,100 (27.45%) Finance
2 1,086 (27.10%) Social Skills
3 749 (18.69%) Analytical Skills
4 382 (9.53%) Banking
5 336 (8.39%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.52%) Front Office
7 95 (2.37%) Investment Banking
8 94 (2.35%) Marketing
9 87 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 58 (1.45%) Retail
12 55 (1.37%) Legal
13 53 (1.32%) Financial Institution
14 38 (0.95%) Telecoms
15 36 (0.90%) Publishing
16 35 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
17 34 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
18 31 (0.77%) Law
18 31 (0.77%) Local Government
19 28 (0.70%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 868 (21.66%) Developer
2 809 (20.19%) Data Engineer
3 590 (14.72%) Analyst
4 502 (12.53%) Senior
5 277 (6.91%) Lead
6 249 (6.21%) Data Analyst
7 226 (5.64%) Architect
8 191 (4.77%) Business Analyst
9 179 (4.47%) Consultant
10 148 (3.69%) Java Developer
11 137 (3.42%) Senior Data Engineer
12 127 (3.17%) Senior Developer
13 121 (3.02%) DBA
14 115 (2.87%) Azure Engineer
15 113 (2.82%) Software Engineer
16 104 (2.60%) C# Developer
17 88 (2.20%) Data Scientist
18 86 (2.15%) Python Developer
19 85 (2.12%) Data Architect
20 84 (2.10%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 347 (8.66%) .NET
2 313 (7.81%) REST
3 246 (6.14%) PySpark
4 245 (6.11%) Kafka
5 190 (4.74%) React
6 188 (4.69%) Spring
7 179 (4.47%) Spring Boot
8 170 (4.24%) RESTful
9 137 (3.42%) XML
10 135 (3.37%) HTML
11 122 (3.04%) JSON
12 121 (3.02%) Pandas
13 117 (2.92%) CSS
14 104 (2.60%) AngularJS
15 90 (2.25%) Middleware
16 87 (2.17%) SOAP
17 84 (2.10%) .NET Framework
18 78 (1.95%) Node.js
19 71 (1.77%) Web Services
20 68 (1.70%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 259 (6.46%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.59%) Data Structures
3 138 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (3.17%) Product Ownership
5 100 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
6 90 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 74 (1.85%) Derivative
8 70 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 69 (1.72%) Onboarding
10 65 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 54 (1.35%) Equities
11 54 (1.35%) Fixed Income
12 48 (1.20%) Algorithms
12 48 (1.20%) Clustering
13 47 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
14 45 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
15 41 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 39 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
17 38 (0.95%) NHS
17 38 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 283 (7.06%) Linux
2 243 (6.06%) Windows
3 200 (4.99%) Unix
4 78 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.62%) AIX
6 18 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.17%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.15%) Solaris
11 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.050%) CentOS
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.050%) VMS
14 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,082 (27.00%) CI/CD
2 1,033 (25.78%) Analytics
3 1,021 (25.48%) Agile
4 997 (24.88%) Data Modelling
5 956 (23.86%) ETL
6 932 (23.26%) Business Intelligence
7 909 (22.69%) DevOps
8 822 (20.51%) Problem-Solving
9 733 (18.29%) Data Pipeline
10 640 (15.97%) Data Engineering
11 504 (12.58%) AI
12 498 (12.43%) Migration
13 495 (12.35%) Validation
14 487 (12.15%) Data Governance
15 387 (9.66%) Decision-Making
16 385 (9.61%) Test Automation
17 377 (9.41%) Data Analysis
18 361 (9.01%) Performance Tuning
19 348 (8.68%) Microservices
20 336 (8.39%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,521 (37.96%) Python
2 544 (13.58%) Java
3 436 (10.88%) C#
4 310 (7.74%) JavaScript
5 304 (7.59%) PL/SQL
6 192 (4.79%) T-SQL
7 176 (4.39%) PowerShell
8 133 (3.32%) TypeScript
9 122 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 122 (3.04%) Shell Script
10 118 (2.94%) R
11 90 (2.25%) Scala
12 77 (1.92%) Bash
13 59 (1.47%) C++
14 56 (1.40%) VBA
15 44 (1.10%) Bicep
16 43 (1.07%) Perl
17 29 (0.72%) VB
18 27 (0.67%) Go
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 851 (21.24%) Security Cleared
2 695 (17.34%) SC Cleared
3 321 (8.01%) Degree
4 111 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.77%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.30%) DV Cleared
7 52 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 47 (1.17%) ISTQB
9 39 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
10 28 (0.70%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.42%) PhD
12 15 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
13 14 (0.35%) CBAP
14 11 (0.27%) CISSP
14 11 (0.27%) DBS Check
14 11 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMP
16 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 720 (17.97%) Data Quality
2 309 (7.71%) QA
3 183 (4.57%) GDPR
4 41 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 35 (0.87%) SLA
6 33 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.70%) PMO
8 23 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.47%) NIST
9 19 (0.47%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 16 (0.40%) MiFID
11 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.35%) IFRS
13 13 (0.32%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.30%) HL7
15 10 (0.25%) GRC
15 10 (0.25%) SEPA
16 9 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 458 (11.43%) Docker
2 92 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 23 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
5 20 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (0.42%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.25%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.12%) XenApp
10 5 (0.12%) 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
1 398 (9.93%) Kubernetes
2 334 (8.34%) Terraform
3 105 (2.62%) Grafana
4 66 (1.65%) Ansible
5 63 (1.57%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.90%) Oracle RMAN
7 25 (0.62%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.45%) Kibana
10 17 (0.42%) SCCM
11 15 (0.37%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.35%) Control-M
13 12 (0.30%) Nagios
13 12 (0.30%) Netcool
13 12 (0.30%) Tivoli
13 12 (0.30%) ZABBIX
14 11 (0.27%) OpenView
14 11 (0.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 9 (0.22%) Kiali
16 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 662 (16.52%) Oracle
2 650 (16.22%) Microsoft
3 480 (11.98%) Databricks
4 157 (3.92%) Google
5 135 (3.37%) Informatica
6 122 (3.04%) ServiceNow
7 106 (2.65%) SAP
8 101 (2.52%) Talend
9 82 (2.05%) Splunk
10 67 (1.67%) IBM
11 61 (1.52%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 50 (1.25%) Denodo
14 41 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 36 (0.90%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.85%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.82%) MuleSoft
17 33 (0.82%) VMware
18 30 (0.75%) HP
19 28 (0.70%) Sage