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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -2 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,692 3,087 3,834
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.39% 12.02% 10.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.03% 35.77% 34.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,554 2,095 2,778
10th Percentile £350 £350 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £631 £658
90th Percentile £704 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £503 £538
% change year-on-year -0.50% -6.51% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 57 62
10th Percentile £18.48 £21.30 £21.65
25th Percentile £28.93 £29.07 £25.91
Median hourly rate £45.25 £52.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.81% +23.53% -15.42%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.31 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £47.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +2.57% +11.76% -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 10,541 8,631 11,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.67% 33.61% 29.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,042 5,651 7,952
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £663
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -5.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 446 212 469
10th Percentile £41.76 £25.25 £35.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £41.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.51%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.76%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 2,193 £510 -7.27% 651
Midlands 0 442 £483 +5.00% 256
North of England -7 399 £450 -5.76% 367
West Midlands +3 352 £475 -2.86% 165
South East -19 278 £500 - 531
North West 0 224 £425 -10.29% 210
South West -4 191 £475 -7.77% 137
Yorkshire -22 154 £488 -4.88% 112
East Midlands -9 89 £537 +39.48% 91
East of England -16 82 £550 +17.33% 105
North East -4 29 £475 +2.70% 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
1 196 (5.31%) Apache Spark
2 151 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
3 117 (3.17%) Confluence
4 114 (3.09%) Apache
5 84 (2.28%) SharePoint
6 80 (2.17%) SAS
7 53 (1.44%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.70%) IIS
9 24 (0.65%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.51%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.46%) CMS
13 16 (0.43%) Jupyter
14 15 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
14 15 (0.41%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
16 12 (0.33%) Appian
16 12 (0.33%) JBoss
16 12 (0.33%) nginx
16 12 (0.33%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 233 (6.31%) Microsoft Excel
2 71 (1.92%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.30%) Spreadsheet
7 9 (0.24%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.081%) Notion
8 3 (0.081%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.081%) Trello
9 2 (0.054%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.027%) InDesign
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
10 1 (0.027%) Weka
Business Applications
1 26 (0.70%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.65%) Oracle Payables
3 21 (0.57%) Oracle Receivables
4 20 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.54%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.54%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.54%) Oracle General Ledger
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
6 14 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
7 13 (0.35%) Endur
7 13 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
8 11 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
8 11 (0.30%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 10 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
9 10 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 8 (0.22%) Maximo
10 8 (0.22%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,273 (34.48%) Azure
2 917 (24.84%) AWS
3 697 (18.88%) Power Platform
4 364 (9.86%) Azure DevOps
5 313 (8.48%) GCP
6 292 (7.91%) Azure Data Factory
7 271 (7.34%) GitHub
8 265 (7.18%) Serverless
9 254 (6.88%) Snowflake
10 196 (5.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 192 (5.20%) Amazon S3
12 150 (4.06%) dbt
13 140 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
14 135 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (2.55%) SaaS
16 84 (2.28%) Azure Functions
17 80 (2.17%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
18 66 (1.79%) PowerApps
19 65 (1.76%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.27%) Firewall
2 42 (1.14%) DNS
3 24 (0.65%) HTTP
4 18 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.43%) Network Security
6 15 (0.41%) Skype
7 13 (0.35%) DHCP
7 13 (0.35%) Internet
7 13 (0.35%) SSL
7 13 (0.35%) VPN
8 11 (0.30%) 5G
8 11 (0.30%) WAN
9 10 (0.27%) LAN
10 9 (0.24%) 2G
10 9 (0.24%) Unified Communications
11 8 (0.22%) 4G
11 8 (0.22%) Radio Access Network
11 8 (0.22%) SMS
12 6 (0.16%) Multicast
13 5 (0.14%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 635 (17.20%) Power BI
2 434 (11.76%) Data Warehouse
3 423 (11.46%) SQL Server
4 255 (6.91%) NoSQL
5 253 (6.85%) Relational Database
6 249 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
7 229 (6.20%) Data Lake
8 222 (6.01%) Tableau
9 183 (4.96%) Azure SQL Database
10 166 (4.50%) Metadata
11 142 (3.85%) Oracle Database
12 135 (3.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 115 (3.11%) BigQuery
14 109 (2.95%) Big Data
15 106 (2.87%) MySQL
16 98 (2.65%) MongoDB
17 95 (2.57%) Delta Lake
18 94 (2.55%) Amazon RDS
19 92 (2.49%) Amazon Redshift
20 80 (2.17%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 425 (11.51%) Git
2 304 (8.23%) JIRA
3 198 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 146 (3.95%) GitLab
5 61 (1.65%) JUnit
6 58 (1.57%) Selenium
7 45 (1.22%) Postman
8 43 (1.16%) Oracle APEX
9 36 (0.98%) Cucumber
10 33 (0.89%) Maven
11 29 (0.79%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.79%) MLflow
11 29 (0.79%) REST Assured
12 25 (0.68%) Mockito
13 24 (0.65%) ERwin
14 23 (0.62%) SpecFlow
15 22 (0.60%) Visual Studio
16 21 (0.57%) Cypress.io
17 18 (0.49%) SonarQube
17 18 (0.49%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,116 (30.23%) Social Skills
2 1,029 (27.87%) Finance
3 664 (17.98%) Analytical Skills
4 389 (10.54%) Banking
5 325 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 99 (2.68%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.60%) Front Office
8 95 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 86 (2.33%) Marketing
10 62 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 61 (1.65%) Retail
12 58 (1.57%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.08%) Legal
14 37 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
15 36 (0.98%) Publishing
16 34 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
17 33 (0.89%) Telecoms
18 31 (0.84%) Law
18 31 (0.84%) Manufacturing
19 29 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 891 (24.13%) Developer
2 651 (17.63%) Data Engineer
3 558 (15.11%) Analyst
4 479 (12.97%) Senior
5 266 (7.20%) Lead
6 231 (6.26%) Data Analyst
7 196 (5.31%) Business Analyst
8 192 (5.20%) Architect
9 143 (3.87%) Senior Developer
10 133 (3.60%) Java Developer
11 131 (3.55%) Consultant
12 113 (3.06%) Azure Engineer
13 111 (3.01%) Software Engineer
14 99 (2.68%) Senior Data Engineer
15 92 (2.49%) C# Developer
16 89 (2.41%) Data Scientist
17 87 (2.36%) Python Developer
18 85 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
19 75 (2.03%) Azure Data Engineer
20 74 (2.00%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 328 (8.88%) .NET
2 292 (7.91%) REST
3 233 (6.31%) Kafka
4 218 (5.90%) PySpark
5 175 (4.74%) React
6 169 (4.58%) RESTful
7 155 (4.20%) Spring
8 142 (3.85%) Spring Boot
9 140 (3.79%) HTML
9 140 (3.79%) XML
10 112 (3.03%) CSS
11 110 (2.98%) JSON
12 109 (2.95%) AngularJS
13 100 (2.71%) Pandas
14 92 (2.49%) Node.js
15 87 (2.36%) SOAP
16 80 (2.17%) .NET Framework
17 79 (2.14%) Middleware
18 71 (1.92%) Web Services
19 68 (1.84%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 233 (6.31%) Cloud Native
2 119 (3.22%) Data Structures
3 118 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
4 103 (2.79%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.14%) Management Information System
6 74 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
7 72 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
8 69 (1.87%) Distributed Systems
9 66 (1.79%) Derivative
10 60 (1.63%) Algorithms
11 58 (1.57%) Equities
12 53 (1.44%) Fixed Income
13 52 (1.41%) Onboarding
14 47 (1.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 42 (1.14%) Replication
16 41 (1.11%) Clustering
17 40 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
18 34 (0.92%) Market Risk
19 33 (0.89%) Credit Risk
20 31 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 282 (7.64%) Linux
2 214 (5.80%) Windows
3 188 (5.09%) Unix
4 68 (1.84%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.30%) AIX
8 11 (0.30%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.22%) Android
9 8 (0.22%) VMS
10 6 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.14%) zOS
12 4 (0.11%) Solaris
12 4 (0.11%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.081%) CentOS
14 2 (0.054%) Amazon Linux
15 1 (0.027%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,006 (27.25%) Agile
2 951 (25.76%) CI/CD
3 943 (25.54%) Analytics
4 851 (23.05%) Data Modelling
5 849 (23.00%) Business Intelligence
6 847 (22.94%) DevOps
7 838 (22.70%) Problem-Solving
8 814 (22.05%) ETL
9 592 (16.03%) Data Pipeline
10 534 (14.46%) Data Engineering
11 431 (11.67%) Migration
12 425 (11.51%) Data Governance
13 416 (11.27%) AI
14 387 (10.48%) Validation
15 358 (9.70%) Data Analysis
16 345 (9.34%) Data Science
17 343 (9.29%) Test Automation
18 339 (9.18%) Visualisation
19 328 (8.88%) Decision-Making
20 322 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,393 (37.73%) Python
2 540 (14.63%) Java
3 399 (10.81%) C#
4 320 (8.67%) JavaScript
5 279 (7.56%) PL/SQL
6 149 (4.04%) PowerShell
7 137 (3.71%) TypeScript
8 132 (3.58%) T-SQL
9 102 (2.76%) Shell Script
10 101 (2.74%) R
11 93 (2.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 93 (2.52%) Scala
12 73 (1.98%) C++
13 65 (1.76%) VBA
14 63 (1.71%) Bash
15 46 (1.25%) VB
16 45 (1.22%) Perl
17 43 (1.16%) Bicep
17 43 (1.16%) Go
18 27 (0.73%) PHP
Qualifications
1 712 (19.28%) Security Cleared
2 565 (15.30%) SC Cleared
3 331 (8.97%) Degree
4 106 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 74 (2.00%) Azure Certification
7 57 (1.54%) Master's Degree
8 55 (1.49%) DV Cleared
9 51 (1.38%) AWS Certification
10 48 (1.30%) ISTQB
11 45 (1.22%) Microsoft Certification
12 21 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 19 (0.51%) Oracle Certification
14 17 (0.46%) CBAP
15 14 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
16 12 (0.33%) MCSE
17 11 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
17 11 (0.30%) PhD
18 10 (0.27%) ISEB
18 10 (0.27%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 622 (16.85%) Data Quality
2 274 (7.42%) QA
3 151 (4.09%) GDPR
4 58 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.68%) SLA
7 23 (0.62%) PMO
8 20 (0.54%) MiFID
9 19 (0.51%) HIPAA
10 17 (0.46%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 17 (0.46%) NIST
11 16 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.38%) PCI DSS
13 13 (0.35%) IFRS
13 13 (0.35%) SEPA
14 12 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 12 (0.33%) EMIR
14 12 (0.33%) WCAG
15 11 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 438 (11.86%) Docker
2 99 (2.68%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (0.49%) VMware Infrastructure
5 17 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.22%) HDFS
7 8 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.16%) KVM
8 6 (0.16%) Postfix
9 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 5 (0.14%) RACF
9 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
9 5 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.14%) XenApp
9 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) vSphere
10 4 (0.11%) zsh
11 3 (0.081%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 392 (10.62%) Kubernetes
2 289 (7.83%) Terraform
3 85 (2.30%) Grafana
4 65 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 63 (1.71%) Ansible
6 21 (0.57%) SCCM
7 20 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
8 19 (0.51%) Oracle RMAN
9 17 (0.46%) Control-M
9 17 (0.46%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.43%) Data Guard
11 14 (0.38%) Kibana
11 14 (0.38%) Puppet
12 12 (0.33%) SCOM
13 11 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.30%) WSUS
14 10 (0.27%) HP SiteScope
15 8 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 8 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
15 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 624 (16.90%) Oracle
2 597 (16.17%) Microsoft
3 446 (12.08%) Databricks
4 151 (4.09%) Google
5 96 (2.60%) SAP
5 96 (2.60%) ServiceNow
6 92 (2.49%) Talend
7 91 (2.46%) Informatica
8 78 (2.11%) Splunk
9 66 (1.79%) Salesforce
10 53 (1.44%) IBM
11 47 (1.27%) OpenAI
12 46 (1.25%) Citrix
13 40 (1.08%) Denodo
13 40 (1.08%) MuleSoft
14 34 (0.92%) VMware
15 33 (0.89%) Bloomberg
16 26 (0.70%) Foundry
17 23 (0.62%) Dynatrace
17 23 (0.62%) Palantir