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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,410 3,279 3,694
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.86% 12.09% 10.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.01% 36.47% 32.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,964 2,336 2,781
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £423
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £599 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 63 49
10th Percentile £26.50 £22.85 £24.00
25th Percentile £33.75 £29.66 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £40.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -4.71% -14.26%
75th Percentile £63.75 £51.88 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.55 £65.70 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £39.67 £42.00
% change year-on-year +13.43% -5.54% -15.64%

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 11,916 8,990 11,351
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.63% 33.13% 30.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,755 6,198 8,153
10th Percentile £362 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
75th Percentile £617 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £511 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.14% -3.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 501 234 461
10th Percentile £34.01 £28.25 £35.64
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.74 £50.00
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 £82.25 £82.07 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 2,362 £525 - 832
North of England -3 586 £463 -2.63% 560
Midlands +2 551 £460 +5.02% 364
South East -10 455 £475 -5.00% 619
West Midlands +4 452 £459 +2.00% 167
North West 0 313 £475 +0.53% 294
Yorkshire -9 235 £475 - 189
South West -4 233 £500 +12.68% 235
East of England -13 111 £488 -1.27% 278
East Midlands -1 95 £525 +35.05% 196
North East -15 52 £425 -8.11% 82
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 (4.72%) Apache Spark
2 187 (4.24%) Apache Airflow
3 177 (4.01%) Confluence
4 147 (3.33%) Apache
5 94 (2.13%) SAS
6 54 (1.22%) SharePoint
7 39 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
8 36 (0.82%) IIS
9 35 (0.79%) WebLogic
10 24 (0.54%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.50%) CMS
11 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
13 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
14 16 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
15 14 (0.32%) Appian
16 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 284 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 30 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 9 (0.20%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
7 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.068%) Notion
8 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.023%) InDesign
10 1 (0.023%) Mingle
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 41 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.63%) Aladdin
4 25 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 24 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
5 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
7 18 (0.41%) NEC Housing
7 18 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 17 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Summit
14 7 (0.16%) Fidessa
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 1,401 (31.77%) Azure
2 1,052 (23.85%) AWS
3 831 (18.84%) Power Platform
4 403 (9.14%) Azure DevOps
5 373 (8.46%) GCP
6 315 (7.14%) GitHub
7 314 (7.12%) Azure Data Factory
8 281 (6.37%) Snowflake
9 275 (6.24%) Serverless
10 245 (5.56%) Amazon S3
11 240 (5.44%) dbt
12 200 (4.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.67%) GitHub Actions
15 81 (1.84%) Entra ID
16 79 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 78 (1.77%) Power Automate
18 77 (1.75%) SaaS
19 71 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
20 68 (1.54%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (1.00%) DNS
2 40 (0.91%) Firewall
3 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 20 (0.45%) Internet
4 20 (0.45%) Network Security
4 20 (0.45%) SSL
5 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 18 (0.41%) VPN
7 12 (0.27%) WAN
8 11 (0.25%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.20%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
10 8 (0.18%) SAN
10 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 6 (0.14%) BGP
11 6 (0.14%) DHCP
11 6 (0.14%) LAN
11 6 (0.14%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 767 (17.39%) Power BI
2 595 (13.49%) Data Warehouse
3 575 (13.04%) SQL Server
4 294 (6.67%) Tableau
5 288 (6.53%) Relational Database
6 284 (6.44%) PostgreSQL
7 272 (6.17%) Data Lake
8 213 (4.83%) NoSQL
9 210 (4.76%) Metadata
10 179 (4.06%) Oracle Database
11 174 (3.95%) Azure SQL Database
12 156 (3.54%) BigQuery
13 150 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 137 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
15 123 (2.79%) Delta Lake
16 106 (2.40%) Big Data
17 103 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
18 102 (2.31%) MySQL
19 100 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
20 91 (2.06%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 476 (10.79%) Git
2 344 (7.80%) JIRA
3 236 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 182 (4.13%) GitLab
5 67 (1.52%) JUnit
6 56 (1.27%) Maven
7 53 (1.20%) Gradle
7 53 (1.20%) Postman
8 50 (1.13%) Selenium
9 46 (1.04%) Mockito
10 36 (0.82%) Oracle Forms
11 33 (0.75%) SonarQube
12 32 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.70%) Bitbucket
14 29 (0.66%) Cucumber
15 28 (0.63%) Team Foundation Server
16 27 (0.61%) JMeter
16 27 (0.61%) MLflow
17 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) Zephyr
General
1 1,147 (26.01%) Finance
2 1,130 (25.62%) Social Skills
3 861 (19.52%) Analytical Skills
4 417 (9.46%) Banking
5 388 (8.80%) Public Sector
6 133 (3.02%) Marketing
7 122 (2.77%) Front Office
8 102 (2.31%) Retail
9 98 (2.22%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 55 (1.25%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (1.18%) Legal
15 51 (1.16%) Financial Institution
16 42 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
17 38 (0.86%) Publishing
18 35 (0.79%) Telecoms
19 29 (0.66%) Law
Job Titles
1 948 (21.50%) Developer
2 879 (19.93%) Data Engineer
3 634 (14.38%) Analyst
4 574 (13.02%) Senior
5 307 (6.96%) Lead
6 273 (6.19%) Data Analyst
7 238 (5.40%) Architect
8 205 (4.65%) Consultant
9 183 (4.15%) Business Analyst
10 175 (3.97%) Java Developer
11 172 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
12 161 (3.65%) DBA
13 137 (3.11%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.88%) Software Engineer
15 111 (2.52%) SQL Developer
16 108 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
17 106 (2.40%) SQL DBA
18 102 (2.31%) C# Developer
19 88 (2.00%) Data Architect
20 86 (1.95%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (8.32%) .NET
2 350 (7.94%) REST
3 263 (5.96%) Kafka
4 261 (5.92%) PySpark
5 224 (5.08%) Spring
6 207 (4.69%) Spring Boot
7 204 (4.63%) React
8 182 (4.13%) RESTful
9 160 (3.63%) JSON
10 157 (3.56%) XML
11 141 (3.20%) HTML
12 123 (2.79%) CSS
13 121 (2.74%) AngularJS
14 116 (2.63%) Pandas
15 103 (2.34%) SOAP
16 100 (2.27%) Web Services
17 92 (2.09%) Middleware
18 89 (2.02%) .NET Framework
19 72 (1.63%) Node.js
20 66 (1.50%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 292 (6.62%) Cloud Native
2 184 (4.17%) Data Structures
3 154 (3.49%) Legacy Systems
4 146 (3.31%) Product Ownership
5 129 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
6 83 (1.88%) Derivative
6 83 (1.88%) Onboarding
7 76 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
8 73 (1.66%) Management Information System
9 71 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
10 70 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
11 66 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
12 62 (1.41%) Clustering
13 56 (1.27%) Replication
14 55 (1.25%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.18%) Fixed Income
16 51 (1.16%) Equities
17 49 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
18 39 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 39 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 292 (6.62%) Linux
2 268 (6.08%) Windows
3 208 (4.72%) Unix
4 101 (2.29%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
6 23 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.091%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.091%) VMS
14 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,179 (26.73%) CI/CD
2 1,135 (25.74%) Analytics
3 1,122 (25.44%) Agile
4 1,081 (24.51%) Data Modelling
5 1,021 (23.15%) ETL
6 984 (22.31%) Business Intelligence
7 894 (20.27%) DevOps
8 861 (19.52%) Problem-Solving
9 845 (19.16%) Data Pipeline
10 732 (16.60%) Data Engineering
11 635 (14.40%) AI
12 593 (13.45%) Migration
13 571 (12.95%) Validation
14 466 (10.57%) Data Governance
15 455 (10.32%) Test Automation
16 450 (10.20%) Decision-Making
17 441 (10.00%) Continuous Improvement
18 428 (9.71%) Data Analysis
19 422 (9.57%) Stakeholder Management
20 395 (8.96%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,586 (35.96%) Python
2 557 (12.63%) Java
3 442 (10.02%) C#
4 342 (7.76%) PL/SQL
5 307 (6.96%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.46%) T-SQL
7 233 (5.28%) PowerShell
8 165 (3.74%) TypeScript
9 132 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 118 (2.68%) Shell Script
11 96 (2.18%) R
12 87 (1.97%) Bash
13 75 (1.70%) Scala
14 50 (1.13%) C++
15 44 (1.00%) VBA
16 34 (0.77%) Bicep
16 34 (0.77%) C
17 33 (0.75%) VB
18 24 (0.54%) Go
19 22 (0.50%) Perl
Qualifications
1 932 (21.13%) Security Cleared
2 746 (16.92%) SC Cleared
3 327 (7.41%) Degree
4 103 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
4 103 (2.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 100 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 63 (1.43%) Azure Certification
7 48 (1.09%) Master's Degree
8 46 (1.04%) ISTQB
9 37 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (0.68%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
11 17 (0.39%) PhD
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 9 (0.20%) ACCA
14 9 (0.20%) CIMA
14 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
15 8 (0.18%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 785 (17.80%) Data Quality
2 335 (7.60%) QA
3 169 (3.83%) GDPR
4 47 (1.07%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (0.50%) PMO
7 20 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 18 (0.41%) NIST
9 16 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
9 16 (0.36%) IFRS
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
10 14 (0.32%) MiFID
11 13 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 13 (0.29%) ISO 20022
12 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 10 (0.23%) HL7
14 9 (0.20%) GMP
14 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 441 (10.00%) Docker
2 101 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
4 32 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
5 31 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.29%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.091%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
16 1 (0.023%) GPFS
16 1 (0.023%) Microsoft App-V
16 1 (0.023%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 1 (0.023%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 372 (8.44%) Kubernetes
2 349 (7.91%) Terraform
3 96 (2.18%) Grafana
4 80 (1.81%) Ansible
5 50 (1.13%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 25 (0.57%) Control-M
9 20 (0.45%) Kibana
9 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
10 19 (0.43%) SCOM
11 16 (0.36%) Nagios
11 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
13 14 (0.32%) Netcool
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 9 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
16 8 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 769 (17.44%) Oracle
2 685 (15.53%) Microsoft
3 500 (11.34%) Databricks
4 174 (3.95%) Google
5 153 (3.47%) Informatica
6 122 (2.77%) ServiceNow
7 121 (2.74%) Talend
8 112 (2.54%) SAP
9 82 (1.86%) Splunk
10 75 (1.70%) IBM
11 61 (1.38%) Denodo
12 50 (1.13%) Salesforce
13 48 (1.09%) VMware
14 43 (0.98%) Citrix
15 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
16 37 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.79%) Murex
18 33 (0.75%) Alteryx
19 30 (0.68%) BMC
20 28 (0.63%) Adobe