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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,484 3,284 3,527
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.85% 11.89% 10.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.39% 36.17% 33.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,011 2,334 2,652
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
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 86 58 42
10th Percentile £23.38 £21.59 £24.20
25th Percentile £30.91 £29.07 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £37.25 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.81% -10.24% -9.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £40.58
% change year-on-year +14.56% -4.27% -14.57%

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 11,994 9,079 10,605
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.34% 32.86% 31.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,765 6,252 7,601
10th Percentile £363 £345 £356
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 £656
90th Percentile £738 £763 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £530
% change year-on-year +2.35% -5.52% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 501 230 361
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.06 £30.00
25th Percentile £53.25 £40.00 £51.25
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 £80.00 £84.55 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,435 £525 - 1,467
North of England -3 587 £463 -1.39% 446
Midlands 0 539 £459 +4.02% 257
South East -9 476 £495 -1.00% 497
West Midlands +4 441 £459 +1.66% 143
North West -3 311 £475 +1.28% 240
Yorkshire -6 238 £460 -3.16% 142
South West -6 225 £500 +17.65% 183
East of England -4 119 £475 -5.00% 125
East Midlands -3 94 £465 +22.37% 114
North East -16 49 £413 -10.57% 73
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
1 202 (4.50%) Apache Airflow
2 196 (4.37%) Apache Spark
3 185 (4.13%) Confluence
4 149 (3.32%) Apache
5 97 (2.16%) SAS
6 64 (1.43%) SharePoint
7 39 (0.87%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.71%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
13 18 (0.40%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.40%) WebSphere
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
15 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.25%) Camunda
17 8 (0.18%) Appian
17 8 (0.18%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 297 (6.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.87%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.62%) Aladdin
4 27 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
5 26 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
6 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.33%) NEC Housing
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%) Finacle
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Fidessa
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
Cloud Services
1 1,415 (31.56%) Azure
2 1,055 (23.53%) AWS
3 864 (19.27%) Power Platform
4 409 (9.12%) Azure DevOps
5 396 (8.83%) GCP
6 319 (7.11%) Azure Data Factory
7 318 (7.09%) GitHub
8 301 (6.71%) Snowflake
9 269 (6.00%) Serverless
10 259 (5.78%) dbt
11 227 (5.06%) Amazon S3
12 202 (4.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
14 160 (3.57%) GitHub Actions
15 91 (2.03%) Entra ID
16 88 (1.96%) Power Automate
17 83 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 81 (1.81%) SaaS
19 78 (1.74%) PowerApps
20 70 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 56 (1.25%) DNS
2 44 (0.98%) Firewall
3 23 (0.51%) Network Security
3 23 (0.51%) SSL
3 23 (0.51%) VPN
4 21 (0.47%) HTTP
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 18 (0.40%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.27%) WAN
8 11 (0.25%) DHCP
9 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Broadband
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%) 5G
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 797 (17.77%) Power BI
2 627 (13.98%) Data Warehouse
3 572 (12.76%) SQL Server
4 287 (6.40%) Tableau
5 275 (6.13%) Relational Database
6 266 (5.93%) PostgreSQL
7 263 (5.87%) Data Lake
8 227 (5.06%) NoSQL
9 222 (4.95%) Metadata
10 183 (4.08%) Oracle Database
11 175 (3.90%) Azure SQL Database
12 164 (3.66%) BigQuery
13 152 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 136 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
15 125 (2.79%) Delta Lake
16 106 (2.36%) Oracle Reports
17 100 (2.23%) Big Data
18 96 (2.14%) MySQL
19 94 (2.10%) Snowflake Schema
20 90 (2.01%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 513 (11.44%) Git
2 350 (7.81%) JIRA
3 255 (5.69%) Jenkins
4 198 (4.42%) GitLab
5 72 (1.61%) JUnit
6 61 (1.36%) Maven
7 57 (1.27%) Gradle
8 53 (1.18%) Postman
9 51 (1.14%) Selenium
10 49 (1.09%) Mockito
11 37 (0.83%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.80%) Bitbucket
13 33 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
14 30 (0.67%) Zephyr
15 29 (0.65%) ERwin
16 28 (0.62%) Liquibase
16 28 (0.62%) Visual Studio
17 27 (0.60%) TeamCity
18 26 (0.58%) MLflow
19 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,181 (26.34%) Social Skills
2 1,152 (25.69%) Finance
3 909 (20.27%) Analytical Skills
4 435 (9.70%) Banking
5 404 (9.01%) Public Sector
6 140 (3.12%) Marketing
7 127 (2.83%) Front Office
8 115 (2.56%) Retail
9 101 (2.25%) Investment Banking
10 85 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
11 79 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 69 (1.54%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.20%) Financial Institution
14 53 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
15 48 (1.07%) Legal
16 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
17 42 (0.94%) Telecoms
18 39 (0.87%) Publishing
19 38 (0.85%) Back Office
20 31 (0.69%) Law
Job Titles
1 954 (21.28%) Developer
2 895 (19.96%) Data Engineer
3 648 (14.45%) Analyst
4 595 (13.27%) Senior
5 303 (6.76%) Lead
6 272 (6.07%) Data Analyst
7 233 (5.20%) Architect
8 223 (4.97%) Consultant
9 193 (4.30%) Business Analyst
10 177 (3.95%) DBA
11 173 (3.86%) Senior Data Engineer
12 170 (3.79%) Java Developer
13 150 (3.35%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.88%) Software Engineer
15 119 (2.65%) SQL DBA
16 112 (2.50%) SQL Developer
17 103 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
18 97 (2.16%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.07%) Full-Stack Developer
20 92 (2.05%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (8.36%) REST
2 370 (8.25%) .NET
3 279 (6.22%) PySpark
4 265 (5.91%) Kafka
5 225 (5.02%) Spring
6 202 (4.50%) Spring Boot
7 201 (4.48%) React
8 181 (4.04%) RESTful
9 166 (3.70%) JSON
10 153 (3.41%) XML
11 148 (3.30%) HTML
12 131 (2.92%) AngularJS
13 127 (2.83%) CSS
14 110 (2.45%) Pandas
15 99 (2.21%) Web Services
16 98 (2.19%) SOAP
17 93 (2.07%) Middleware
18 90 (2.01%) .NET Framework
19 74 (1.65%) Node.js
20 70 (1.56%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 295 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 204 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 169 (3.77%) Product Ownership
4 153 (3.41%) Legacy Systems
5 131 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
6 97 (2.16%) Onboarding
7 92 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
8 81 (1.81%) Derivative
9 80 (1.78%) Management Information System
10 77 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
11 71 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
12 66 (1.47%) Clustering
13 64 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (1.32%) Replication
15 53 (1.18%) Algorithms
16 52 (1.16%) Fixed Income
17 49 (1.09%) Reference Data
18 48 (1.07%) Equities
18 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
19 46 (1.03%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 300 (6.69%) Linux
2 279 (6.22%) Windows
3 202 (4.50%) Unix
4 107 (2.39%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 15 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
11 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.16%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
15 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,190 (26.54%) CI/CD
2 1,158 (25.83%) Analytics
3 1,156 (25.78%) Agile
4 1,145 (25.54%) Data Modelling
5 1,035 (23.08%) ETL
6 1,026 (22.88%) Business Intelligence
7 909 (20.27%) DevOps
8 875 (19.51%) Data Pipeline
9 872 (19.45%) Problem-Solving
10 758 (16.90%) Data Engineering
11 654 (14.59%) AI
12 626 (13.96%) Migration
13 600 (13.38%) Validation
14 492 (10.97%) Data Governance
15 490 (10.93%) Stakeholder Management
16 473 (10.55%) Decision-Making
17 462 (10.30%) Test Automation
18 460 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
19 436 (9.72%) Data Analysis
20 390 (8.70%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,592 (35.50%) Python
2 548 (12.22%) Java
3 438 (9.77%) C#
4 357 (7.96%) PL/SQL
5 328 (7.31%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.37%) T-SQL
7 239 (5.33%) PowerShell
8 163 (3.64%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 129 (2.88%) Shell Script
11 101 (2.25%) Bash
12 87 (1.94%) R
13 67 (1.49%) Scala
14 44 (0.98%) C++
15 43 (0.96%) VBA
16 40 (0.89%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) C
18 27 (0.60%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 993 (22.15%) Security Cleared
2 795 (17.73%) SC Cleared
3 318 (7.09%) Degree
4 111 (2.48%) Computer Science Degree
5 102 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 99 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
7 70 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 51 (1.14%) ISTQB
9 44 (0.98%) Master's Degree
10 42 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.42%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) PhD
15 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
15 12 (0.27%) ISEB
15 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.22%) CISM
17 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 9 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 833 (18.58%) Data Quality
2 333 (7.43%) QA
3 156 (3.48%) GDPR
4 47 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 43 (0.96%) SLA
6 23 (0.51%) NIST
6 23 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.47%) PMO
8 19 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.33%) MiFID
11 14 (0.31%) IFRS
11 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.29%) COBIT
12 13 (0.29%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 9 (0.20%) HL7
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 450 (10.04%) Docker
2 124 (2.77%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.29%) vCloud
9 9 (0.20%) Postfix
10 8 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.16%) KVM
12 4 (0.089%) HDFS
13 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) Lustre
14 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.022%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 390 (8.70%) Kubernetes
2 346 (7.72%) Terraform
3 89 (1.98%) Grafana
4 88 (1.96%) Ansible
5 45 (1.00%) Prometheus
6 43 (0.96%) Oracle RMAN
7 39 (0.87%) Data Guard
8 30 (0.67%) Control-M
9 27 (0.60%) SCOM
10 18 (0.40%) Kibana
11 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.33%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Clustering
17 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
18 9 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 764 (17.04%) Oracle
2 720 (16.06%) Microsoft
3 521 (11.62%) Databricks
4 174 (3.88%) Google
5 153 (3.41%) Informatica
6 124 (2.77%) Talend
7 122 (2.72%) SAP
7 122 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 81 (1.81%) Splunk
9 79 (1.76%) IBM
10 66 (1.47%) Denodo
11 63 (1.40%) VMware
12 57 (1.27%) Salesforce
13 40 (0.89%) BMC
13 40 (0.89%) Citrix
14 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
14 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
15 34 (0.76%) Murex
16 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
17 31 (0.69%) Adobe