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

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,470 3,276 3,558
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.86% 11.90% 10.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.34% 36.28% 33.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,998 2,336 2,675
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £419
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 88 57 42
10th Percentile £23.53 £21.18 £24.20
25th Percentile £29.96 £29.07 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £37.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.40% -9.64% -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 £41.16
% change year-on-year +14.56% -5.61% -13.36%

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 11,972 9,029 10,682
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.41% 32.81% 31.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,774 6,240 7,683
10th Percentile £363 £350 £354
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.46% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £651
90th Percentile £738 £768 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 493 228 370
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.07 £31.16
25th Percentile £53.53 £40.00 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.24% -8.46% +5.94%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.16 £83.42 £78.08
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +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 31 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 31 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 31 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 2,423 £525 - 938
North of England -2 593 £463 -2.63% 369
Midlands +1 532 £459 +8.00% 205
South East -11 471 £483 -3.50% 413
West Midlands +4 437 £459 +2.00% 119
North West -4 314 £475 +1.28% 199
Yorkshire -7 240 £463 -2.63% 107
South West -4 226 £500 +15.94% 143
East of England -4 117 £478 -4.50% 103
East Midlands -4 91 £481 +24.13% 86
North East -17 51 £419 -9.46% 71
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
1 201 (4.50%) Apache Spark
2 198 (4.43%) Apache Airflow
3 184 (4.12%) Confluence
4 157 (3.51%) Apache
5 93 (2.08%) SAS
6 60 (1.34%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.89%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 19 (0.43%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
14 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 9 (0.20%) Appian
19 8 (0.18%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 293 (6.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 53 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.89%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.85%) 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 43 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.63%) Aladdin
4 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
5 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
6 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.36%) NEC Housing
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.22%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
12 9 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,411 (31.57%) Azure
2 1,056 (23.62%) AWS
3 850 (19.02%) Power Platform
4 405 (9.06%) Azure DevOps
5 394 (8.81%) GCP
6 320 (7.16%) Azure Data Factory
7 319 (7.14%) GitHub
8 299 (6.69%) Snowflake
9 273 (6.11%) Serverless
10 260 (5.82%) dbt
11 234 (5.23%) Amazon S3
12 204 (4.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.91%) AWS Lambda
14 164 (3.67%) GitHub Actions
15 90 (2.01%) Entra ID
16 86 (1.92%) Power Automate
17 85 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 81 (1.81%) SaaS
19 77 (1.72%) PowerApps
20 69 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.12%) DNS
2 42 (0.94%) Firewall
3 23 (0.51%) SSL
3 23 (0.51%) VPN
4 21 (0.47%) Network Security
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
7 15 (0.34%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Broadband
10 9 (0.20%) DHCP
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 784 (17.54%) Power BI
2 627 (14.03%) Data Warehouse
3 569 (12.73%) SQL Server
4 293 (6.55%) Tableau
5 279 (6.24%) Relational Database
6 270 (6.04%) PostgreSQL
7 269 (6.02%) Data Lake
8 225 (5.03%) NoSQL
9 222 (4.97%) Metadata
10 183 (4.09%) Oracle Database
11 175 (3.91%) Azure SQL Database
12 167 (3.74%) BigQuery
13 152 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 136 (3.04%) Amazon Redshift
15 121 (2.71%) Delta Lake
16 105 (2.35%) Oracle Reports
17 102 (2.28%) Big Data
18 98 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 95 (2.13%) MySQL
20 88 (1.97%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 500 (11.19%) Git
2 345 (7.72%) JIRA
3 247 (5.53%) Jenkins
4 188 (4.21%) GitLab
5 72 (1.61%) JUnit
6 60 (1.34%) Maven
7 55 (1.23%) Gradle
8 52 (1.16%) Postman
9 49 (1.10%) Mockito
10 48 (1.07%) Selenium
11 35 (0.78%) Bitbucket
11 35 (0.78%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
13 30 (0.67%) ERwin
14 28 (0.63%) Liquibase
14 28 (0.63%) TeamCity
14 28 (0.63%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
15 26 (0.58%) JMeter
15 26 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,163 (26.02%) Social Skills
2 1,148 (25.68%) Finance
3 894 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
4 429 (9.60%) Banking
5 404 (9.04%) Public Sector
6 137 (3.06%) Marketing
7 127 (2.84%) Front Office
8 111 (2.48%) Retail
9 101 (2.26%) Investment Banking
10 85 (1.90%) Documentation Skills
11 73 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 65 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.16%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
14 49 (1.10%) Legal
15 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
16 39 (0.87%) Publishing
17 37 (0.83%) Back Office
17 37 (0.83%) Telecoms
18 32 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 949 (21.23%) Developer
2 895 (20.02%) Data Engineer
3 642 (14.36%) Analyst
4 600 (13.42%) Senior
5 313 (7.00%) Lead
6 273 (6.11%) Data Analyst
7 235 (5.26%) Architect
8 223 (4.99%) Consultant
9 184 (4.12%) Business Analyst
10 177 (3.96%) Senior Data Engineer
11 175 (3.91%) Java Developer
12 170 (3.80%) DBA
13 149 (3.33%) Senior Developer
14 130 (2.91%) Software Engineer
15 113 (2.53%) SQL Developer
16 112 (2.51%) SQL DBA
17 108 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
18 97 (2.17%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.08%) Data Architect
19 93 (2.08%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 369 (8.26%) REST
2 364 (8.14%) .NET
3 281 (6.29%) PySpark
4 272 (6.09%) Kafka
5 227 (5.08%) Spring
6 206 (4.61%) Spring Boot
7 198 (4.43%) React
8 181 (4.05%) RESTful
9 169 (3.78%) JSON
10 156 (3.49%) XML
11 147 (3.29%) HTML
12 127 (2.84%) AngularJS
13 126 (2.82%) CSS
14 109 (2.44%) Pandas
15 102 (2.28%) Web Services
16 99 (2.21%) SOAP
17 94 (2.10%) Middleware
18 92 (2.06%) .NET Framework
19 74 (1.66%) Node.js
20 73 (1.63%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 294 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 201 (4.50%) Data Structures
3 163 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 157 (3.51%) Legacy Systems
5 136 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
6 93 (2.08%) Onboarding
7 88 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
8 80 (1.79%) Derivative
8 80 (1.79%) Management Information System
9 75 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
10 71 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
11 68 (1.52%) Clustering
12 62 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
13 58 (1.30%) Replication
14 54 (1.21%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.19%) Fixed Income
16 50 (1.12%) Equities
17 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
18 47 (1.05%) Reference Data
19 43 (0.96%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 293 (6.55%) Linux
2 277 (6.20%) Windows
3 199 (4.45%) Unix
4 105 (2.35%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) zOS
11 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.13%) VMS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,201 (26.87%) CI/CD
2 1,170 (26.17%) Analytics
3 1,148 (25.68%) Agile
4 1,138 (25.46%) Data Modelling
5 1,031 (23.06%) ETL
6 1,011 (22.62%) Business Intelligence
7 901 (20.16%) DevOps
8 876 (19.60%) Data Pipeline
9 860 (19.24%) Problem-Solving
10 764 (17.09%) Data Engineering
11 654 (14.63%) AI
12 613 (13.71%) Migration
13 596 (13.33%) Validation
14 492 (11.01%) Data Governance
15 471 (10.54%) Decision-Making
16 465 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
17 463 (10.36%) Stakeholder Management
18 462 (10.34%) Test Automation
19 431 (9.64%) Data Analysis
20 393 (8.79%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,601 (35.82%) Python
2 562 (12.57%) Java
3 439 (9.82%) C#
4 357 (7.99%) PL/SQL
5 322 (7.20%) JavaScript
6 240 (5.37%) T-SQL
7 236 (5.28%) PowerShell
8 166 (3.71%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.86%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.08%) R
12 92 (2.06%) Bash
13 68 (1.52%) Scala
14 46 (1.03%) C++
15 44 (0.98%) VBA
16 39 (0.87%) Bicep
17 32 (0.72%) C
18 30 (0.67%) VB
19 22 (0.49%) Go
19 22 (0.49%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 970 (21.70%) Security Cleared
2 775 (17.34%) SC Cleared
3 317 (7.09%) Degree
4 105 (2.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (2.26%) DV Cleared
6 100 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 66 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.10%) ISTQB
9 48 (1.07%) Master's Degree
10 39 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.36%) CISSP
13 16 (0.36%) PhD
14 12 (0.27%) ISEB
14 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
15 11 (0.25%) FFIEC
16 10 (0.22%) CISM
16 10 (0.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 834 (18.66%) Data Quality
2 328 (7.34%) QA
3 154 (3.45%) GDPR
4 49 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.94%) SLA
6 22 (0.49%) NIST
6 22 (0.49%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.34%) MiFID
12 14 (0.31%) IFRS
13 12 (0.27%) COBIT
13 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
15 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
16 9 (0.20%) WCAG
17 8 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 447 (10.00%) Docker
2 118 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 42 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.92%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.81%) 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
12 4 (0.089%) RACF
13 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
14 1 (0.022%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) XenApp
14 1 (0.022%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 385 (8.61%) Kubernetes
2 355 (7.94%) Terraform
3 92 (2.06%) Grafana
4 84 (1.88%) Ansible
5 47 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 38 (0.85%) Data Guard
8 29 (0.65%) Control-M
9 25 (0.56%) SCOM
10 21 (0.47%) Kibana
11 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
16 9 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 766 (17.14%) Oracle
2 710 (15.88%) Microsoft
3 519 (11.61%) Databricks
4 173 (3.87%) Google
5 157 (3.51%) Informatica
6 125 (2.80%) Talend
7 123 (2.75%) SAP
8 122 (2.73%) ServiceNow
9 81 (1.81%) Splunk
10 77 (1.72%) IBM
11 63 (1.41%) Denodo
12 58 (1.30%) VMware
13 57 (1.28%) Salesforce
14 40 (0.89%) Citrix
15 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 37 (0.83%) BMC
17 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
18 31 (0.69%) Adobe
18 31 (0.69%) Murex