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

6 months to
17 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,486 3,293 3,496
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.82% 11.85% 10.55%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.43% 36.25% 33.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,027 2,326 2,621
10th Percentile £356 £338 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 68 41
10th Percentile £23.15 £23.32 £25.99
25th Percentile £29.96 £30.78 £30.37
Median hourly rate £45.00 £41.65 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.04% +0.37% -8.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £53.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £62.88 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £40.58
% change year-on-year +14.56% -4.27% -11.56%

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 11,986 9,084 10,582
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.23% 32.68% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,779 6,220 7,551
10th Percentile £363 £345 £358
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £653
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £515 £503 £534
% change year-on-year +2.49% -5.81% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 494 248 349
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.07 £30.00
25th Percentile £53.13 £40.00 £50.75
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £83.42 £79.34
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +8.33%

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 17 August 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 August 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 August 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 -6 2,450 £525 -0.94% 2,042
North of England -2 587 £475 +1.28% 529
Midlands 0 529 £459 +2.00% 274
South East -9 479 £490 -2.00% 511
West Midlands +3 429 £459 +1.25% 151
North West -1 299 £500 +6.61% 292
Yorkshire +1 249 £475 - 145
South West -5 222 £500 +17.65% 209
East of England +1 120 £480 -4.00% 128
East Midlands -4 96 £464 +20.45% 123
North East -18 50 £413 -11.05% 101
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
1 208 (4.64%) Apache Airflow
2 195 (4.35%) Apache Spark
3 175 (3.90%) Confluence
4 152 (3.39%) Apache
5 94 (2.10%) SAS
6 73 (1.63%) SharePoint
7 37 (0.82%) Oracle Workflow
8 32 (0.71%) WebLogic
9 30 (0.67%) IIS
10 24 (0.53%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
12 20 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
13 17 (0.38%) CMS
13 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
14 15 (0.33%) nginx
15 14 (0.31%) Tomcat
16 12 (0.27%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 8 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
19 7 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 291 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 52 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (0.76%) MS Visio
3 34 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
4 24 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
7 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.089%) Notion
7 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.022%) InDesign
9 1 (0.022%) Mingle
9 1 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.022%) Weka
9 1 (0.022%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 43 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
6 22 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 14 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.22%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
14 7 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 1,421 (31.68%) Azure
2 1,059 (23.61%) AWS
3 861 (19.19%) Power Platform
4 412 (9.18%) Azure DevOps
5 387 (8.63%) GCP
6 325 (7.24%) GitHub
7 318 (7.09%) Azure Data Factory
8 308 (6.87%) Snowflake
9 270 (6.02%) Serverless
10 257 (5.73%) dbt
11 220 (4.90%) Amazon S3
12 199 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 174 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
14 164 (3.66%) GitHub Actions
15 92 (2.05%) Power Automate
16 89 (1.98%) Entra ID
17 87 (1.94%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 86 (1.92%) SaaS
19 81 (1.81%) PowerApps
20 65 (1.45%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.34%) DNS
2 47 (1.05%) Firewall
3 28 (0.62%) Network Security
4 24 (0.53%) VPN
5 23 (0.51%) SSL
6 21 (0.47%) SNMP
7 20 (0.45%) HTTP
7 20 (0.45%) Internet
8 19 (0.42%) TCP/IP
9 13 (0.29%) DHCP
10 12 (0.27%) WAN
11 11 (0.25%) Broadband
12 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
13 9 (0.20%) SAN
13 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
14 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
15 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
15 7 (0.16%) LAN
15 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 793 (17.68%) Power BI
2 633 (14.11%) Data Warehouse
3 574 (12.80%) SQL Server
4 283 (6.31%) Relational Database
5 274 (6.11%) Tableau
6 272 (6.06%) PostgreSQL
7 264 (5.88%) Data Lake
8 226 (5.04%) Metadata
9 223 (4.97%) NoSQL
10 188 (4.19%) Oracle Database
11 177 (3.95%) Azure SQL Database
12 165 (3.68%) BigQuery
13 141 (3.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 140 (3.12%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.72%) Delta Lake
16 106 (2.36%) MySQL
17 99 (2.21%) Big Data
17 99 (2.21%) Oracle Reports
18 93 (2.07%) Amazon Athena
19 92 (2.05%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 519 (11.57%) Git
2 350 (7.80%) JIRA
3 264 (5.88%) Jenkins
4 202 (4.50%) GitLab
5 75 (1.67%) JUnit
6 65 (1.45%) Selenium
7 63 (1.40%) Postman
8 61 (1.36%) Maven
9 60 (1.34%) Gradle
10 48 (1.07%) Mockito
11 41 (0.91%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.80%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.78%) Zephyr
14 33 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
15 32 (0.71%) JMeter
16 31 (0.69%) Visual Studio
17 28 (0.62%) TeamCity
18 27 (0.60%) ERwin
18 27 (0.60%) Liquibase
19 24 (0.53%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,190 (26.53%) Social Skills
2 1,140 (25.41%) Finance
3 906 (20.20%) Analytical Skills
4 453 (10.10%) Banking
5 398 (8.87%) Public Sector
6 140 (3.12%) Marketing
7 129 (2.88%) Front Office
8 117 (2.61%) Retail
9 104 (2.32%) Investment Banking
10 88 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 80 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
12 71 (1.58%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.16%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.14%) Legal
14 51 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
15 44 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
16 38 (0.85%) Telecoms
17 36 (0.80%) Back Office
18 35 (0.78%) Law
19 33 (0.74%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 949 (21.15%) Developer
2 884 (19.71%) Data Engineer
3 633 (14.11%) Analyst
4 608 (13.55%) Senior
5 311 (6.93%) Lead
6 265 (5.91%) Data Analyst
7 231 (5.15%) Architect
8 227 (5.06%) Consultant
9 187 (4.17%) DBA
10 184 (4.10%) Business Analyst
11 172 (3.83%) Senior Data Engineer
12 167 (3.72%) Java Developer
13 150 (3.34%) Senior Developer
14 130 (2.90%) Software Engineer
15 118 (2.63%) SQL DBA
16 109 (2.43%) SQL Developer
17 100 (2.23%) Azure Engineer
18 98 (2.18%) Full-Stack Developer
19 95 (2.12%) Data Architect
20 94 (2.10%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 384 (8.56%) REST
2 380 (8.47%) .NET
3 290 (6.46%) PySpark
4 280 (6.24%) Kafka
5 225 (5.02%) Spring
6 204 (4.55%) Spring Boot
7 201 (4.48%) React
8 183 (4.08%) RESTful
9 167 (3.72%) JSON
10 163 (3.63%) HTML
11 160 (3.57%) XML
12 133 (2.96%) CSS
13 128 (2.85%) AngularJS
14 106 (2.36%) Web Services
15 99 (2.21%) SOAP
16 98 (2.18%) Pandas
17 97 (2.16%) Middleware
18 88 (1.96%) .NET Framework
19 74 (1.65%) Node.js
20 69 (1.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 295 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 199 (4.44%) Data Structures
3 171 (3.81%) Product Ownership
4 150 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
5 131 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
6 99 (2.21%) Onboarding
7 97 (2.16%) Enterprise Software
8 88 (1.96%) Management Information System
9 78 (1.74%) Self-Motivation
10 77 (1.72%) Derivative
11 68 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
12 63 (1.40%) Replication
13 61 (1.36%) Clustering
13 61 (1.36%) Data Protection Act
14 53 (1.18%) Algorithms
14 53 (1.18%) Reference Data
15 51 (1.14%) Fixed Income
16 50 (1.11%) AI Agents
17 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 312 (6.95%) Linux
2 279 (6.22%) Windows
3 212 (4.73%) Unix
4 104 (2.32%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 20 (0.45%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.16%) VMS
10 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.16%) zOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.067%) Android
13 3 (0.067%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,215 (27.08%) CI/CD
2 1,177 (26.24%) Agile
3 1,144 (25.50%) Analytics
4 1,142 (25.46%) Data Modelling
5 1,031 (22.98%) ETL
6 1,009 (22.49%) Business Intelligence
7 916 (20.42%) DevOps
8 880 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
9 877 (19.55%) Data Pipeline
10 758 (16.90%) Data Engineering
11 664 (14.80%) AI
12 635 (14.16%) Migration
13 623 (13.89%) Validation
14 510 (11.37%) Stakeholder Management
15 498 (11.10%) Data Governance
16 492 (10.97%) Test Automation
17 470 (10.48%) Continuous Improvement
18 467 (10.41%) Decision-Making
19 438 (9.76%) Data Analysis
20 375 (8.36%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,592 (35.49%) Python
2 553 (12.33%) Java
3 435 (9.70%) C#
4 354 (7.89%) PL/SQL
5 348 (7.76%) JavaScript
6 246 (5.48%) PowerShell
7 234 (5.22%) T-SQL
8 172 (3.83%) TypeScript
9 142 (3.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.85%) Shell Script
11 102 (2.27%) Bash
12 79 (1.76%) R
13 66 (1.47%) Scala
14 44 (0.98%) C++
15 43 (0.96%) VBA
16 36 (0.80%) Bicep
17 27 (0.60%) C
18 26 (0.58%) VB
19 22 (0.49%) Go
20 21 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,000 (22.29%) Security Cleared
2 807 (17.99%) SC Cleared
3 320 (7.13%) Degree
4 113 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 105 (2.34%) DV Cleared
6 93 (2.07%) BPSS Clearance
7 70 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 64 (1.43%) ISTQB
9 44 (0.98%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.96%) Master's Degree
11 37 (0.82%) AWS Certification
12 20 (0.45%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 17 (0.38%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
15 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 13 (0.29%) FFIEC
17 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
17 12 (0.27%) PhD
18 10 (0.22%) ACCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 834 (18.59%) Data Quality
2 359 (8.00%) QA
3 152 (3.39%) GDPR
4 49 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 41 (0.91%) SLA
6 27 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 25 (0.56%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 20 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
10 17 (0.38%) IFRS
10 17 (0.38%) ISO 20022
11 16 (0.36%) PMO
12 14 (0.31%) MiFID
12 14 (0.31%) Solvency II
13 13 (0.29%) COBIT
13 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 9 (0.20%) HL7
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 452 (10.08%) Docker
2 128 (2.85%) Active Directory
3 47 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.33%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) vCloud
9 12 (0.27%) Hyper-V
10 11 (0.25%) Virtual Desktop
11 8 (0.18%) Postfix
12 6 (0.13%) KVM
13 3 (0.067%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 3 (0.067%) HDFS
14 2 (0.045%) GridGain
15 1 (0.022%) GPFS
15 1 (0.022%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.022%) RACF
15 1 (0.022%) Varnish
15 1 (0.022%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 389 (8.67%) Kubernetes
2 366 (8.16%) Terraform
3 90 (2.01%) Ansible
3 90 (2.01%) Grafana
4 44 (0.98%) Oracle RMAN
4 44 (0.98%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.89%) Data Guard
6 38 (0.85%) Control-M
7 29 (0.65%) SCOM
8 17 (0.38%) Kibana
8 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
9 16 (0.36%) Nagios
9 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
10 15 (0.33%) Tivoli
11 14 (0.31%) Netcool
12 13 (0.29%) OpenView
12 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
14 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
14 11 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 767 (17.10%) Oracle
2 746 (16.63%) Microsoft
3 524 (11.68%) Databricks
4 173 (3.86%) Google
5 157 (3.50%) Informatica
6 127 (2.83%) SAP
7 124 (2.76%) Talend
8 111 (2.47%) ServiceNow
9 85 (1.89%) IBM
10 82 (1.83%) Splunk
11 67 (1.49%) Denodo
12 64 (1.43%) VMware
13 55 (1.23%) Salesforce
14 39 (0.87%) BMC
15 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Citrix
15 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.74%) Adobe
16 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
16 33 (0.74%) Murex