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

6 months to
25 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,473 3,291 3,608
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.91% 12.01% 10.39%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.38% 36.42% 33.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,339 2,729
10th Percentile £353 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £752 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 58 42
10th Percentile £24.53 £21.59 £24.20
25th Percentile £31.86 £29.37 £30.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £39.00 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -7.14% -8.70%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.90 £38.85 £41.50
% change year-on-year +18.16% -6.40% -14.19%

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 11,966 9,037 10,858
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.51% 32.98% 31.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,772 6,230 7,823
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £548
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -5.94% -0.45%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £651
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 227 392
10th Percentile £34.01 £29.07 £33.16
25th Percentile £53.53 £38.38 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.00 £83.58 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.38 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.30% -13.27% +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 25 July 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 25 July 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 25 July 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 2,406 £525 - 780
North of England -3 585 £463 -2.63% 319
Midlands +1 548 £459 +8.00% 183
South East -12 463 £475 -5.00% 377
West Midlands +4 449 £458 +1.78% 103
North West -6 311 £475 +1.71% 167
South West -7 235 £500 +14.29% 144
Yorkshire -8 235 £463 -2.63% 94
East of England -6 122 £484 -3.25% 77
East Midlands -3 95 £500 +28.62% 80
North East -18 52 £425 -8.11% 66
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
1 210 (4.69%) Apache Spark
2 190 (4.25%) Apache Airflow
3 180 (4.02%) Confluence
4 156 (3.49%) Apache
5 91 (2.03%) SAS
6 57 (1.27%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.89%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 24 (0.54%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
11 21 (0.47%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.40%) CMS
12 18 (0.40%) WebSphere
13 17 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
15 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.25%) Camunda
17 10 (0.22%) Appian
18 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 291 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.87%) MS Visio
3 39 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 28 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.25%) 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
8 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.022%) InDesign
9 1 (0.022%) Mingle
9 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
2 31 (0.69%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 22 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 17 (0.38%) NEC Housing
9 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.22%) Fidessa
12 10 (0.22%) Finacle
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,415 (31.63%) Azure
2 1,062 (23.74%) AWS
3 846 (18.91%) Power Platform
4 401 (8.96%) Azure DevOps
5 393 (8.79%) GCP
6 322 (7.20%) Azure Data Factory
7 313 (7.00%) GitHub
8 290 (6.48%) Snowflake
9 276 (6.17%) Serverless
10 255 (5.70%) dbt
11 246 (5.50%) Amazon S3
12 205 (4.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 179 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
14 161 (3.60%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.99%) Entra ID
16 83 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 82 (1.83%) Power Automate
18 80 (1.79%) SaaS
19 71 (1.59%) PowerApps
20 70 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.03%) DNS
2 40 (0.89%) Firewall
3 23 (0.51%) SSL
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
4 21 (0.47%) VPN
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.42%) HTTP
6 19 (0.42%) Network Security
7 14 (0.31%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) DHCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 782 (17.48%) Power BI
2 616 (13.77%) Data Warehouse
3 580 (12.97%) SQL Server
4 299 (6.68%) Tableau
5 283 (6.33%) Relational Database
6 276 (6.17%) Data Lake
7 272 (6.08%) PostgreSQL
8 225 (5.03%) Metadata
9 223 (4.99%) NoSQL
10 186 (4.16%) Oracle Database
11 174 (3.89%) Azure SQL Database
12 163 (3.64%) BigQuery
13 156 (3.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 139 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
15 124 (2.77%) Delta Lake
16 105 (2.35%) Big Data
17 102 (2.28%) Oracle Reports
18 98 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 97 (2.17%) MySQL
20 90 (2.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 493 (11.02%) Git
2 347 (7.76%) JIRA
3 239 (5.34%) Jenkins
4 182 (4.07%) GitLab
5 70 (1.56%) JUnit
6 61 (1.36%) Maven
7 54 (1.21%) Gradle
8 52 (1.16%) Postman
9 50 (1.12%) Selenium
10 47 (1.05%) Mockito
11 34 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
11 34 (0.76%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.74%) Bitbucket
13 31 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 30 (0.67%) ERwin
15 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
16 27 (0.60%) TeamCity
17 26 (0.58%) Cucumber
17 26 (0.58%) Liquibase
General
1 1,160 (25.93%) Social Skills
2 1,150 (25.71%) Finance
3 894 (19.99%) Analytical Skills
4 421 (9.41%) Banking
5 407 (9.10%) Public Sector
6 135 (3.02%) Marketing
7 125 (2.79%) Front Office
8 101 (2.26%) Retail
9 96 (2.15%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
11 76 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.34%) Manufacturing
13 55 (1.23%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (1.16%) Financial Institution
15 50 (1.12%) Legal
16 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
17 39 (0.87%) Back Office
17 39 (0.87%) Publishing
17 39 (0.87%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 955 (21.35%) Developer
2 890 (19.90%) Data Engineer
3 637 (14.24%) Analyst
4 598 (13.37%) Senior
5 313 (7.00%) Lead
6 282 (6.30%) Data Analyst
7 234 (5.23%) Architect
8 214 (4.78%) Consultant
9 178 (3.98%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.93%) Java Developer
11 174 (3.89%) Senior Data Engineer
12 170 (3.80%) DBA
13 151 (3.38%) Senior Developer
14 130 (2.91%) Software Engineer
15 116 (2.59%) SQL Developer
16 113 (2.53%) SQL DBA
17 109 (2.44%) Azure Engineer
18 101 (2.26%) C# Developer
19 94 (2.10%) Data Architect
20 93 (2.08%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (8.20%) .NET
2 364 (8.14%) REST
3 275 (6.15%) PySpark
4 272 (6.08%) Kafka
5 228 (5.10%) Spring
6 207 (4.63%) Spring Boot
7 201 (4.49%) React
8 184 (4.11%) RESTful
9 170 (3.80%) JSON
10 161 (3.60%) XML
11 144 (3.22%) HTML
12 127 (2.84%) AngularJS
12 127 (2.84%) CSS
13 114 (2.55%) Pandas
14 104 (2.33%) Web Services
15 103 (2.30%) SOAP
16 94 (2.10%) .NET Framework
17 93 (2.08%) Middleware
18 73 (1.63%) Node.js
18 73 (1.63%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 293 (6.55%) Cloud Native
2 202 (4.52%) Data Structures
3 162 (3.62%) Product Ownership
4 159 (3.55%) Legacy Systems
5 140 (3.13%) Distributed Systems
6 91 (2.03%) Onboarding
7 86 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
8 80 (1.79%) Derivative
8 80 (1.79%) Management Information System
9 73 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
10 72 (1.61%) Self-Motivation
11 69 (1.54%) Clustering
12 63 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.34%) Replication
14 54 (1.21%) Algorithms
14 54 (1.21%) Fixed Income
15 50 (1.12%) Equities
15 50 (1.12%) Greenfield Project
16 49 (1.10%) Reference Data
17 43 (0.96%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 302 (6.75%) Linux
2 277 (6.19%) Windows
3 206 (4.61%) Unix
4 105 (2.35%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.36%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
8 8 (0.18%) zOS
9 7 (0.16%) Android
9 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.13%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.089%) VMS
13 3 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,186 (26.51%) CI/CD
2 1,164 (26.02%) Analytics
3 1,138 (25.44%) Agile
4 1,124 (25.13%) Data Modelling
5 1,038 (23.21%) ETL
6 1,006 (22.49%) Business Intelligence
7 897 (20.05%) DevOps
8 869 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
9 866 (19.36%) Data Pipeline
10 760 (16.99%) Data Engineering
11 640 (14.31%) AI
12 616 (13.77%) Migration
13 591 (13.21%) Validation
14 492 (11.00%) Data Governance
15 462 (10.33%) Decision-Making
16 460 (10.28%) Test Automation
17 454 (10.15%) Continuous Improvement
18 443 (9.90%) Stakeholder Management
19 431 (9.64%) Data Analysis
20 392 (8.76%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,595 (35.66%) Python
2 564 (12.61%) Java
3 444 (9.93%) C#
4 352 (7.87%) PL/SQL
5 314 (7.02%) JavaScript
6 242 (5.41%) PowerShell
7 241 (5.39%) T-SQL
8 169 (3.78%) TypeScript
9 135 (3.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.86%) Shell Script
11 94 (2.10%) R
12 92 (2.06%) Bash
13 69 (1.54%) Scala
14 47 (1.05%) C++
15 44 (0.98%) VBA
16 39 (0.87%) Bicep
17 33 (0.74%) C
18 31 (0.69%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Go
20 20 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 963 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 767 (17.15%) SC Cleared
3 319 (7.13%) Degree
4 102 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
4 102 (2.28%) DV Cleared
5 99 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 68 (1.52%) Azure Certification
7 50 (1.12%) Master's Degree
8 49 (1.10%) ISTQB
9 38 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
10 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 17 (0.38%) PhD
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 12 (0.27%) ISEB
14 11 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
15 10 (0.22%) CISM
15 10 (0.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 8 (0.18%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 825 (18.44%) Data Quality
2 332 (7.42%) QA
3 165 (3.69%) GDPR
4 48 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.94%) SLA
6 23 (0.51%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (0.40%) NIST
8 18 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) IFRS
11 14 (0.31%) MiFID
12 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.22%) HL7
14 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
16 8 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 445 (9.95%) Docker
2 112 (2.50%) Active Directory
3 43 (0.96%) Virtual Machines
4 37 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
5 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.29%) vCloud
10 10 (0.22%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 7 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.089%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
16 1 (0.022%) Varnish
16 1 (0.022%) vSphere
16 1 (0.022%) XenApp
16 1 (0.022%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 378 (8.45%) Kubernetes
2 353 (7.89%) Terraform
3 92 (2.06%) Grafana
4 81 (1.81%) Ansible
5 48 (1.07%) Prometheus
6 40 (0.89%) Oracle RMAN
7 36 (0.80%) Data Guard
8 27 (0.60%) Control-M
9 23 (0.51%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.42%) Kibana
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 768 (17.17%) Oracle
2 709 (15.85%) Microsoft
3 514 (11.49%) Databricks
4 177 (3.96%) Google
5 159 (3.55%) Informatica
6 124 (2.77%) Talend
7 123 (2.75%) ServiceNow
8 120 (2.68%) SAP
9 82 (1.83%) Splunk
10 78 (1.74%) IBM
11 60 (1.34%) Denodo
12 56 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 55 (1.23%) VMware
14 42 (0.94%) Citrix
15 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 39 (0.87%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.78%) BMC
17 32 (0.72%) Alteryx
17 32 (0.72%) Murex
18 30 (0.67%) Adobe