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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -6 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,033 3,010 3,650
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.70% 12.55% 10.02%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.66% 37.05% 33.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,752 2,154 2,700
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -8.64% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £767 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £534
% change year-on-year - -6.37% -0.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 55 54
10th Percentile £26.50 £24.10 £23.13
25th Percentile £34.26 £30.75 £28.41
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.82 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -2.14% -12.12%
75th Percentile £70.99 £64.50 £56.66
90th Percentile £82.40 £80.23 £62.07
UK median hourly rate £52.49 £39.67 £43.75
% change year-on-year +32.31% -9.32% -12.50%

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 11,002 8,125 10,977
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.47% 33.87% 30.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,234 5,652 7,983
10th Percentile £355 £360 £350
25th Percentile £416 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.59% -4.55% -2.54%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £651
90th Percentile £721 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £526
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.62% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 530 190 453
10th Percentile £39.15 £28.16 £37.51
25th Percentile £54.66 £36.06 £49.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.09
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -

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 24 May 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 24 May 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 24 May 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 -1 2,261 £520 -2.80% 842
Midlands +2 518 £469 +4.92% 203
North of England -9 486 £463 -2.63% 430
West Midlands +4 413 £460 - 107
South East -18 363 £500 +2.56% 459
North West -2 258 £460 -3.16% 247
South West -5 205 £475 -1.30% 138
Yorkshire -14 200 £475 - 131
East Midlands -1 101 £525 +35.05% 96
East of England -19 96 £495 +0.25% 111
North East -13 40 £450 -2.44% 59
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
1 228 (5.65%) Apache Spark
2 160 (3.97%) Apache Airflow
3 139 (3.45%) Apache
4 138 (3.42%) Confluence
5 81 (2.01%) SAS
6 63 (1.56%) SharePoint
7 38 (0.94%) WebLogic
8 32 (0.79%) IIS
9 27 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
10 23 (0.57%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.40%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.37%) Appian
13 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.35%) CMS
15 13 (0.32%) HCL Notes
15 13 (0.32%) Mendix
15 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
16 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 12 (0.30%) WebSphere
Applications
1 266 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.17%) MS Visio
3 45 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
8 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.12%) Notion
9 3 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.074%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (1.02%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 28 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.52%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
5 19 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.35%) NetSuite
8 14 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
8 14 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.22%) Endur
12 8 (0.20%) Findur
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,354 (33.57%) Azure
2 972 (24.10%) AWS
3 780 (19.34%) Power Platform
4 400 (9.92%) Azure DevOps
5 345 (8.55%) Azure Data Factory
6 327 (8.11%) GCP
7 304 (7.54%) GitHub
8 250 (6.20%) Serverless
9 230 (5.70%) Snowflake
10 228 (5.65%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 227 (5.63%) Amazon S3
12 182 (4.51%) dbt
13 157 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
14 150 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.98%) Power Automate
16 71 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 71 (1.76%) Entra ID
16 71 (1.76%) SaaS
17 67 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
17 67 (1.66%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.14%) Firewall
2 43 (1.07%) DNS
3 20 (0.50%) SNMP
4 17 (0.42%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.40%) HTTP
5 16 (0.40%) Internet
5 16 (0.40%) Network Security
6 15 (0.37%) WAN
7 13 (0.32%) SSL
8 12 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (0.27%) LAN
9 11 (0.27%) VPN
10 8 (0.20%) Wireshark
11 7 (0.17%) 3GPP
12 6 (0.15%) DHCP
12 6 (0.15%) IPsec
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
13 5 (0.12%) RTP
13 5 (0.12%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 714 (17.70%) Power BI
2 518 (12.84%) Data Warehouse
3 508 (12.60%) SQL Server
4 283 (7.02%) Tableau
5 280 (6.94%) Data Lake
6 259 (6.42%) PostgreSQL
7 249 (6.17%) Relational Database
8 235 (5.83%) NoSQL
9 212 (5.26%) Metadata
10 193 (4.79%) Azure SQL Database
11 154 (3.82%) Oracle Database
12 147 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 134 (3.32%) BigQuery
14 124 (3.07%) Delta Lake
15 111 (2.75%) Big Data
16 110 (2.73%) Amazon Redshift
17 105 (2.60%) MySQL
18 101 (2.50%) Oracle Reports
19 92 (2.28%) Amazon RDS
20 91 (2.26%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 419 (10.39%) Git
2 313 (7.76%) JIRA
3 213 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 178 (4.41%) GitLab
5 59 (1.46%) JUnit
6 57 (1.41%) Selenium
7 50 (1.24%) Postman
8 47 (1.17%) Maven
9 44 (1.09%) Mockito
10 40 (0.99%) Cucumber
11 36 (0.89%) Gradle
12 34 (0.84%) MLflow
12 34 (0.84%) SonarQube
13 29 (0.72%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.69%) ERwin
15 24 (0.60%) JMeter
15 24 (0.60%) Visual Studio
16 23 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 22 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.55%) TeamCity
General
1 1,072 (26.58%) Finance
2 1,043 (25.86%) Social Skills
3 743 (18.42%) Analytical Skills
4 382 (9.47%) Banking
5 335 (8.31%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.58%) Front Office
7 99 (2.45%) Marketing
8 98 (2.43%) Investment Banking
9 83 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
10 63 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 62 (1.54%) Retail
12 54 (1.34%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.29%) Legal
14 40 (0.99%) Publishing
15 35 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
15 35 (0.87%) Telecoms
16 32 (0.79%) Law
16 32 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 32 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 25 (0.62%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 840 (20.83%) Data Engineer
2 836 (20.73%) Developer
3 580 (14.38%) Analyst
4 517 (12.82%) Senior
5 279 (6.92%) Lead
6 255 (6.32%) Data Analyst
7 225 (5.58%) Architect
8 178 (4.41%) Business Analyst
9 176 (4.36%) Consultant
10 162 (4.02%) Java Developer
11 149 (3.69%) Senior Data Engineer
12 127 (3.15%) DBA
13 125 (3.10%) Senior Developer
14 122 (3.03%) Software Engineer
15 114 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
16 99 (2.45%) C# Developer
17 87 (2.16%) Data Scientist
17 87 (2.16%) Python Developer
18 86 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 86 (2.13%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 346 (8.58%) .NET
2 323 (8.01%) REST
3 258 (6.40%) Kafka
3 258 (6.40%) PySpark
4 201 (4.98%) Spring
5 193 (4.79%) React
6 192 (4.76%) Spring Boot
7 174 (4.31%) RESTful
8 145 (3.60%) HTML
9 132 (3.27%) JSON
10 131 (3.25%) XML
11 121 (3.00%) CSS
12 120 (2.98%) Pandas
13 107 (2.65%) AngularJS
14 94 (2.33%) SOAP
15 90 (2.23%) Middleware
16 82 (2.03%) .NET Framework
17 80 (1.98%) Web Services
18 73 (1.81%) OAuth
19 72 (1.79%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 256 (6.35%) Cloud Native
2 146 (3.62%) Data Structures
3 130 (3.22%) Legacy Systems
4 125 (3.10%) Product Ownership
5 110 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (2.11%) Management Information System
7 77 (1.91%) Derivative
8 74 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 69 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
10 65 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
11 53 (1.31%) Clustering
12 52 (1.29%) Equities
13 51 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 51 (1.26%) Fixed Income
14 49 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
14 49 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
15 46 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 40 (0.99%) Low-Code
16 40 (0.99%) Replication
17 38 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 292 (7.24%) Linux
2 251 (6.22%) Windows
3 197 (4.88%) Unix
4 86 (2.13%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.62%) AIX
6 19 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.20%) Solaris
9 8 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.17%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.17%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.074%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.074%) VMS
12 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.050%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,105 (27.40%) CI/CD
2 1,020 (25.29%) Analytics
3 1,010 (25.04%) Data Modelling
4 983 (24.37%) Agile
5 982 (24.35%) ETL
6 913 (22.64%) Business Intelligence
7 885 (21.94%) DevOps
8 798 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
9 748 (18.55%) Data Pipeline
10 662 (16.41%) Data Engineering
11 533 (13.22%) AI
12 510 (12.65%) Migration
13 500 (12.40%) Validation
14 475 (11.78%) Data Governance
15 411 (10.19%) Test Automation
16 402 (9.97%) Decision-Making
17 380 (9.42%) Data Analysis
18 367 (9.10%) Performance Tuning
19 365 (9.05%) Microservices
20 351 (8.70%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,520 (37.69%) Python
2 547 (13.56%) Java
3 438 (10.86%) C#
4 310 (7.69%) JavaScript
5 288 (7.14%) PL/SQL
6 206 (5.11%) T-SQL
7 194 (4.81%) PowerShell
8 132 (3.27%) TypeScript
9 125 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 112 (2.78%) R
11 109 (2.70%) Shell Script
12 85 (2.11%) Scala
13 80 (1.98%) Bash
14 59 (1.46%) C++
15 43 (1.07%) VBA
16 40 (0.99%) Bicep
17 36 (0.89%) Perl
18 29 (0.72%) VB
19 24 (0.60%) C
19 24 (0.60%) Go
Qualifications
1 844 (20.93%) Security Cleared
2 676 (16.76%) SC Cleared
3 326 (8.08%) Degree
4 106 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 89 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.76%) Azure Certification
6 71 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 50 (1.24%) Master's Degree
8 48 (1.19%) ISTQB
9 36 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (0.57%) AWS Certification
11 16 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.40%) PhD
12 14 (0.35%) CBAP
13 12 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
14 11 (0.27%) CISSP
14 11 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMP
16 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 740 (18.35%) Data Quality
2 308 (7.64%) QA
3 179 (4.44%) GDPR
4 41 (1.02%) SLA
5 38 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 32 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 26 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.60%) PMO
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%) IFRS
13 12 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.30%) HL7
13 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.27%) Solvency II
15 10 (0.25%) GRC
16 8 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 459 (11.38%) Docker
2 94 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 28 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 26 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.25%) KVM
9 9 (0.22%) Postfix
9 9 (0.22%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.20%) vCloud
10 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.15%) HDFS
11 6 (0.15%) RACF
12 4 (0.099%) XenApp
12 4 (0.099%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.074%) Oracle Clusterware
14 2 (0.050%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.050%) GridGain
14 2 (0.050%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 384 (9.52%) Kubernetes
2 322 (7.98%) Terraform
3 106 (2.63%) Grafana
4 66 (1.64%) Ansible
5 62 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 40 (0.99%) Oracle RMAN
7 29 (0.72%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.45%) Kibana
10 15 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.37%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.35%) Control-M
11 14 (0.35%) Nagios
11 14 (0.35%) Netcool
11 14 (0.35%) SCCM
11 14 (0.35%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.32%) OpenView
12 13 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 10 (0.25%) SCOM
14 9 (0.22%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 656 (16.27%) Oracle
2 629 (15.60%) Microsoft
3 496 (12.30%) Databricks
4 158 (3.92%) Google
5 139 (3.45%) Informatica
6 132 (3.27%) ServiceNow
7 107 (2.65%) Talend
8 104 (2.58%) SAP
9 86 (2.13%) Splunk
10 63 (1.56%) IBM
11 54 (1.34%) Denodo
12 50 (1.24%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.17%) Citrix
14 43 (1.07%) VMware
15 36 (0.89%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.84%) OpenAI
17 31 (0.77%) Bloomberg
17 31 (0.77%) HP
17 31 (0.77%) MuleSoft
18 29 (0.72%) BMC