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 8 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,452 3,245 3,625
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.62% 11.60% 11.23%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.90% 35.34% 34.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,998 2,238 2,536
10th Percentile £353 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £407 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.90 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.52 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -12.82%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -20.44%

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 12,064 9,182 10,529
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.08% 32.81% 32.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,809 6,144 7,012
10th Percentile £363 £345 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £636 £633 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 518 266 298
10th Percentile £23.00 £31.25 £30.35
25th Percentile £50.19 £42.25 £47.69
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% -
75th Percentile £70.88 £67.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.75 £79.42
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 -7 2,532 £525 - 3,981
North of England +1 597 £475 +5.56% 888
South East -16 442 £475 -3.06% 906
Midlands -6 431 £470 -4.50% 508
West Midlands -5 339 £470 -6.65% 322
North West +4 302 £500 +14.35% 519
Yorkshire +8 240 £475 - 244
South West 0 234 £538 +16.22% 279
East of England -11 113 £503 +0.20% 262
East Midlands -5 90 £463 +12.80% 186
North East -3 65 £406 -9.72% 132
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
1 236 (5.30%) Apache Airflow
2 201 (4.51%) Confluence
3 200 (4.49%) Apache Spark
4 156 (3.50%) Apache
5 85 (1.91%) SharePoint
6 59 (1.33%) SAS
7 34 (0.76%) WebLogic
8 28 (0.63%) IIS
8 28 (0.63%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
10 26 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.54%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) Camunda
12 19 (0.43%) CMS
13 15 (0.34%) nginx
13 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
14 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
14 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
15 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 35 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 19 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.022%) Notepad++
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.61%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
5 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
7 15 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
9 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Financials
9 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.20%) Finacle
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
11 8 (0.18%) Summit
12 7 (0.16%) Actimize
12 7 (0.16%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,364 (30.64%) Azure
2 1,083 (24.33%) AWS
3 852 (19.14%) Power Platform
4 458 (10.29%) GCP
5 367 (8.24%) Azure DevOps
6 362 (8.13%) Snowflake
7 316 (7.10%) GitHub
8 294 (6.60%) dbt
9 289 (6.49%) Azure Data Factory
10 261 (5.86%) Serverless
11 234 (5.26%) Amazon S3
12 180 (4.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 162 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (3.23%) GitHub Actions
15 103 (2.31%) Entra ID
16 102 (2.29%) SaaS
17 96 (2.16%) Power Automate
18 92 (2.07%) PowerApps
19 90 (2.02%) Azure Databricks
20 75 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 65 (1.46%) DNS
2 41 (0.92%) Firewall
3 29 (0.65%) Network Security
4 27 (0.61%) HTTP
4 27 (0.61%) SSL
5 21 (0.47%) Internet
5 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 21 (0.47%) VPN
6 20 (0.45%) Broadband
7 16 (0.36%) DHCP
8 12 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
8 12 (0.27%) SSH
9 11 (0.25%) SNMP
10 10 (0.22%) SAN
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 7 (0.16%) 5G
13 7 (0.16%) RTP
13 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
14 6 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 780 (17.52%) Power BI
2 598 (13.43%) Data Warehouse
3 578 (12.98%) SQL Server
4 282 (6.33%) Relational Database
5 266 (5.97%) PostgreSQL
6 255 (5.73%) Data Lake
7 248 (5.57%) Tableau
8 233 (5.23%) Metadata
9 217 (4.87%) NoSQL
10 202 (4.54%) BigQuery
11 199 (4.47%) Oracle Database
12 158 (3.55%) Azure SQL Database
13 133 (2.99%) Delta Lake
14 132 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
15 120 (2.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 112 (2.52%) MySQL
17 100 (2.25%) Amazon Athena
17 100 (2.25%) Big Data
18 94 (2.11%) Power Query
19 90 (2.02%) Looker
Development Applications
1 590 (13.25%) Git
2 367 (8.24%) JIRA
3 238 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 225 (5.05%) GitLab
5 91 (2.04%) Selenium
6 77 (1.73%) JUnit
6 77 (1.73%) Maven
7 75 (1.68%) Gradle
8 59 (1.33%) Postman
9 47 (1.06%) Mockito
10 40 (0.90%) Bitbucket
11 39 (0.88%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.67%) Zephyr
14 28 (0.63%) REST Assured
15 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 23 (0.52%) Artifactory
17 23 (0.52%) Cucumber
18 22 (0.49%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,253 (28.14%) Social Skills
2 1,203 (27.02%) Finance
3 944 (21.20%) Analytical Skills
4 548 (12.31%) Banking
5 406 (9.12%) Public Sector
6 145 (3.26%) Marketing
7 137 (3.08%) Retail
8 129 (2.90%) Front Office
9 125 (2.81%) Investment Banking
10 89 (2.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 82 (1.84%) Manufacturing
12 75 (1.68%) Documentation Skills
13 56 (1.26%) Financial Institution
14 50 (1.12%) Legal
15 46 (1.03%) Presentation Skills
16 45 (1.01%) Back Office
17 44 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
18 41 (0.92%) Local Government
19 40 (0.90%) Military
20 37 (0.83%) Law
Job Titles
1 943 (21.18%) Developer
2 841 (18.89%) Data Engineer
3 658 (14.78%) Senior
4 657 (14.76%) Analyst
5 313 (7.03%) Lead
6 268 (6.02%) Data Analyst
7 218 (4.90%) Architect
8 206 (4.63%) Senior Data Engineer
9 198 (4.45%) Business Analyst
10 175 (3.93%) Consultant
11 169 (3.80%) DBA
12 153 (3.44%) Java Developer
13 148 (3.32%) Senior Developer
14 113 (2.54%) Software Engineer
15 109 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
16 104 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
17 101 (2.27%) Python Developer
18 99 (2.22%) SQL DBA
19 95 (2.13%) Data Architect
20 93 (2.09%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 432 (9.70%) REST
2 398 (8.94%) Terraform
3 383 (8.60%) .NET
4 307 (6.90%) PySpark
5 305 (6.85%) Kafka
6 226 (5.08%) Spring
7 216 (4.85%) Spring Boot
8 212 (4.76%) React
9 178 (4.00%) HTML
10 168 (3.77%) JSON
11 160 (3.59%) RESTful
12 147 (3.30%) CSS
13 143 (3.21%) XML
14 110 (2.47%) AngularJS
15 106 (2.38%) SOAP
16 102 (2.29%) Web Services
17 92 (2.07%) Middleware
18 87 (1.95%) OAuth
19 86 (1.93%) Pandas
20 83 (1.86%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 289 (6.49%) Cloud Native
2 223 (5.01%) Data Structures
3 217 (4.87%) Product Ownership
4 141 (3.17%) Legacy Systems
5 136 (3.05%) Enterprise Software
6 124 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
6 124 (2.79%) Onboarding
7 101 (2.27%) Management Information System
8 91 (2.04%) AI Agents
9 80 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
10 73 (1.64%) Derivative
11 72 (1.62%) Replication
12 64 (1.44%) Reference Data
13 62 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
14 61 (1.37%) Analytical Mindset
15 59 (1.33%) Algorithms
16 57 (1.28%) Clustering
17 49 (1.10%) Data Centre
18 47 (1.06%) Greenfield Project
19 45 (1.01%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.17%) Linux
2 271 (6.09%) Windows
3 202 (4.54%) Unix
4 112 (2.52%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.52%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.20%) AIX
8 9 (0.20%) VMS
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 7 (0.16%) Android
10 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
11 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.090%) zOS
12 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.045%) Amazon Linux
13 2 (0.045%) CentOS
13 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,236 (27.76%) CI/CD
2 1,218 (27.36%) Agile
3 1,156 (25.97%) Data Modelling
4 1,131 (25.40%) Analytics
5 970 (21.79%) Business Intelligence
6 966 (21.70%) ETL
7 884 (19.86%) Problem-Solving
8 860 (19.32%) Data Pipeline
9 849 (19.07%) DevOps
10 804 (18.06%) AI
11 802 (18.01%) Data Engineering
12 714 (16.04%) Validation
13 679 (15.25%) Stakeholder Management
14 645 (14.49%) Migration
15 551 (12.38%) Test Automation
16 539 (12.11%) Continuous Improvement
17 519 (11.66%) Data Analysis
18 500 (11.23%) Decision-Making
19 494 (11.10%) Data Governance
20 409 (9.19%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,597 (35.87%) Python
2 554 (12.44%) Java
3 409 (9.19%) C#
4 382 (8.58%) JavaScript
5 322 (7.23%) PL/SQL
6 232 (5.21%) PowerShell
7 209 (4.69%) T-SQL
8 198 (4.45%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.12%) Shell Script
10 134 (3.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 114 (2.56%) Bash
12 72 (1.62%) Scala
13 65 (1.46%) R
14 36 (0.81%) C++
15 34 (0.76%) Bicep
16 33 (0.74%) VBA
17 30 (0.67%) Kotlin
18 28 (0.63%) Go
19 27 (0.61%) C
20 25 (0.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 956 (21.47%) Security Cleared
2 742 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 339 (7.61%) Degree
4 135 (3.03%) DV Cleared
5 125 (2.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 115 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 74 (1.66%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.90%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.45%) CISSP
13 18 (0.40%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.34%) ACCA
15 15 (0.34%) CIMA
16 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 13 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 913 (20.51%) Data Quality
2 358 (8.04%) QA
3 109 (2.45%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.03%) SLA
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 24 (0.54%) NIST
8 23 (0.52%) IFRS
9 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 20 (0.45%) ISO 20022
11 17 (0.38%) MiFID
12 15 (0.34%) COBIT
13 14 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 12 (0.27%) Basel III
15 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
16 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.18%) SEPA
16 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
17 7 (0.16%) GRC
17 7 (0.16%) PMO
System Software
1 413 (9.28%) Docker
2 118 (2.65%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
4 34 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
6 16 (0.36%) vCloud
6 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
8 5 (0.11%) Postfix
9 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 4 (0.090%) KVM
10 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
10 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
10 2 (0.045%) Squid
11 1 (0.022%) GPFS
11 1 (0.022%) HDFS
11 1 (0.022%) Lustre
11 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 374 (8.40%) Kubernetes
2 97 (2.18%) Ansible
3 86 (1.93%) Grafana
4 52 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 41 (0.92%) Control-M
6 39 (0.88%) SCOM
7 38 (0.85%) Kibana
8 32 (0.72%) Data Guard
9 27 (0.61%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.22%) Argo
15 9 (0.20%) Istio
16 8 (0.18%) Podman
16 8 (0.18%) Puppet
16 8 (0.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 775 (17.41%) Microsoft
2 736 (16.53%) Oracle
3 590 (13.25%) Databricks
4 217 (4.87%) Google
5 127 (2.85%) Informatica
6 119 (2.67%) SAP
7 101 (2.27%) IBM
8 97 (2.18%) Talend
9 86 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 74 (1.66%) Splunk
11 66 (1.48%) VMware
12 60 (1.35%) Salesforce
13 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
13 39 (0.88%) Denodo
13 39 (0.88%) Foundry
13 39 (0.88%) OpenAI
14 36 (0.81%) UiPath
15 35 (0.79%) Murex
16 32 (0.72%) Alteryx
17 30 (0.67%) Adobe