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 29 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,998 2,979 3,630
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.93% 12.26% 9.82%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.44% 36.31% 33.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,757 2,117 2,669
10th Percentile £350 £357 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 55 58
10th Percentile £29.73 £20.44 £22.71
25th Percentile £35.75 £29.54 £26.05
Median hourly rate £50.00 £44.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.36% +4.71% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.84 £65.31 £54.03
90th Percentile £83.45 £80.23 £62.11
UK median hourly rate £54.75 £42.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +28.35% +0.37% -15.00%

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 10,970 8,204 10,824
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.26% 33.76% 29.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,285 5,667 7,862
10th Percentile £355 £363 £350
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £610 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 531 214 434
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.25 £35.51
25th Percentile £55.00 £37.65 £47.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.07
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.05% -1.04%

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 0 2,263 £513 -6.82% 650
Midlands +4 522 £468 +1.79% 229
North of England -10 477 £450 -5.26% 316
West Midlands +7 413 £460 -0.81% 138
South East -18 320 £500 - 457
North West 0 263 £450 -5.26% 187
South West -7 208 £475 -5.00% 122
Yorkshire -17 192 £460 -3.16% 87
East Midlands +6 106 £525 +24.26% 91
East of England -19 91 £500 +6.95% 106
North East -7 33 £475 +4.40% 44
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
1 229 (5.73%) Apache Spark
2 155 (3.88%) Apache Airflow
3 133 (3.33%) Apache
4 132 (3.30%) Confluence
5 86 (2.15%) SAS
6 80 (2.00%) SharePoint
7 41 (1.03%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.85%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.35%) HCL Notes
13 14 (0.35%) nginx
14 13 (0.33%) Appian
14 13 (0.33%) CMS
14 13 (0.33%) Mendix
15 12 (0.30%) Jupyter
15 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 12 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 278 (6.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.13%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.63%) Aladdin
3 24 (0.60%) NEC Housing
4 22 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
5 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
5 21 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 19 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 19 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
7 17 (0.43%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
8 12 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 11 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
11 9 (0.23%) Maximo
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Endur
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,375 (34.39%) Azure
2 957 (23.94%) AWS
3 786 (19.66%) Power Platform
4 413 (10.33%) Azure DevOps
5 350 (8.75%) Azure Data Factory
6 323 (8.08%) GCP
7 302 (7.55%) GitHub
8 265 (6.63%) Serverless
9 234 (5.85%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 226 (5.65%) Amazon S3
10 226 (5.65%) Snowflake
11 173 (4.33%) dbt
12 156 (3.90%) GitHub Actions
13 154 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
14 89 (2.23%) Power Automate
15 75 (1.88%) SaaS
16 73 (1.83%) Azure Functions
17 72 (1.80%) Entra ID
18 71 (1.78%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.15%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 18 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.40%) Internet
6 15 (0.38%) HTTP
6 15 (0.38%) WAN
7 12 (0.30%) LAN
8 11 (0.28%) SNMP
8 11 (0.28%) SSL
8 11 (0.28%) VPN
9 9 (0.23%) DHCP
9 9 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
10 7 (0.18%) Wireshark
11 6 (0.15%) 3GPP
11 6 (0.15%) IPsec
11 6 (0.15%) VLAN
12 5 (0.13%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
12 5 (0.13%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (17.91%) Power BI
2 514 (12.86%) Data Warehouse
3 500 (12.51%) SQL Server
4 278 (6.95%) Tableau
5 262 (6.55%) Data Lake
6 257 (6.43%) PostgreSQL
7 248 (6.20%) NoSQL
8 245 (6.13%) Relational Database
9 208 (5.20%) Metadata
10 206 (5.15%) Azure SQL Database
11 146 (3.65%) Oracle Database
11 146 (3.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 120 (3.00%) BigQuery
13 119 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
14 116 (2.90%) Delta Lake
15 114 (2.85%) MySQL
16 110 (2.75%) Big Data
17 101 (2.53%) Oracle Reports
18 98 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
19 94 (2.35%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 430 (10.76%) Git
2 323 (8.08%) JIRA
3 210 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 164 (4.10%) GitLab
5 61 (1.53%) Selenium
6 54 (1.35%) JUnit
7 48 (1.20%) Postman
8 41 (1.03%) Maven
9 38 (0.95%) Cucumber
10 36 (0.90%) MLflow
11 35 (0.88%) Mockito
12 30 (0.75%) Bitbucket
13 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.70%) Oracle APEX
14 28 (0.70%) SonarQube
15 24 (0.60%) ERwin
15 24 (0.60%) Gradle
15 24 (0.60%) JMeter
16 22 (0.55%) SpecFlow
16 22 (0.55%) TeamCity
General
1 1,093 (27.34%) Finance
2 1,090 (27.26%) Social Skills
3 746 (18.66%) Analytical Skills
4 381 (9.53%) Banking
5 339 (8.48%) Public Sector
6 100 (2.50%) Front Office
7 94 (2.35%) Investment Banking
7 94 (2.35%) Marketing
8 87 (2.18%) Documentation Skills
9 62 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 58 (1.45%) Retail
11 55 (1.38%) Legal
12 52 (1.30%) Financial Institution
13 38 (0.95%) Telecoms
14 34 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
14 34 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
14 34 (0.85%) Publishing
15 31 (0.78%) Law
15 31 (0.78%) Local Government
16 28 (0.70%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 870 (21.76%) Developer
2 806 (20.16%) Data Engineer
3 588 (14.71%) Analyst
4 496 (12.41%) Senior
5 277 (6.93%) Lead
6 249 (6.23%) Data Analyst
7 224 (5.60%) Architect
8 191 (4.78%) Business Analyst
9 179 (4.48%) Consultant
10 149 (3.73%) Java Developer
11 134 (3.35%) Senior Data Engineer
12 126 (3.15%) Senior Developer
13 121 (3.03%) DBA
14 116 (2.90%) Azure Engineer
15 112 (2.80%) Software Engineer
16 106 (2.65%) C# Developer
17 87 (2.18%) Data Scientist
18 85 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 85 (2.13%) Python Developer
19 84 (2.10%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (8.80%) .NET
2 310 (7.75%) REST
3 244 (6.10%) PySpark
4 243 (6.08%) Kafka
5 196 (4.90%) React
6 187 (4.68%) Spring
7 179 (4.48%) Spring Boot
8 176 (4.40%) RESTful
9 139 (3.48%) HTML
10 138 (3.45%) XML
11 122 (3.05%) JSON
12 121 (3.03%) CSS
13 120 (3.00%) Pandas
14 111 (2.78%) AngularJS
15 90 (2.25%) Middleware
16 86 (2.15%) .NET Framework
16 86 (2.15%) SOAP
17 79 (1.98%) Node.js
18 72 (1.80%) Web Services
19 69 (1.73%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 257 (6.43%) Cloud Native
2 142 (3.55%) Data Structures
3 138 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 128 (3.20%) Product Ownership
5 98 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
6 86 (2.15%) Management Information System
7 73 (1.83%) Derivative
8 68 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
8 68 (1.70%) Onboarding
9 62 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
10 54 (1.35%) Fixed Income
11 53 (1.33%) Equities
12 48 (1.20%) Clustering
12 48 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
13 46 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
14 45 (1.13%) Algorithms
15 41 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 39 (0.98%) Greenfield Project
17 38 (0.95%) NHS
17 38 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 281 (7.03%) Linux
2 240 (6.00%) Windows
3 199 (4.98%) Unix
4 77 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 23 (0.58%) AIX
6 18 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 7 (0.18%) zOS
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.050%) CentOS
12 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.050%) VMS
13 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,088 (27.21%) CI/CD
2 1,033 (25.84%) Analytics
3 1,029 (25.74%) Agile
4 991 (24.79%) Data Modelling
5 951 (23.79%) ETL
6 931 (23.29%) Business Intelligence
7 913 (22.84%) DevOps
8 819 (20.49%) Problem-Solving
9 730 (18.26%) Data Pipeline
10 640 (16.01%) Data Engineering
11 506 (12.66%) AI
12 492 (12.31%) Migration
13 487 (12.18%) Validation
14 486 (12.16%) Data Governance
15 389 (9.73%) Decision-Making
16 380 (9.50%) Test Automation
17 372 (9.30%) Data Analysis
18 362 (9.05%) Performance Tuning
19 348 (8.70%) Microservices
20 334 (8.35%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,516 (37.92%) Python
2 540 (13.51%) Java
3 438 (10.96%) C#
4 313 (7.83%) JavaScript
5 305 (7.63%) PL/SQL
6 192 (4.80%) T-SQL
7 174 (4.35%) PowerShell
8 132 (3.30%) TypeScript
9 122 (3.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 121 (3.03%) Shell Script
11 117 (2.93%) R
12 91 (2.28%) Scala
13 74 (1.85%) Bash
14 58 (1.45%) C++
15 57 (1.43%) VBA
16 45 (1.13%) Bicep
17 42 (1.05%) Perl
18 29 (0.73%) VB
19 27 (0.68%) Go
20 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 849 (21.24%) Security Cleared
2 694 (17.36%) SC Cleared
3 318 (7.95%) Degree
4 110 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.78%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 50 (1.25%) DV Cleared
9 48 (1.20%) ISTQB
10 40 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 28 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.43%) PhD
13 15 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
14 14 (0.35%) CBAP
15 12 (0.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 11 (0.28%) CISSP
16 11 (0.28%) DBS Check
17 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.25%) PMP
18 9 (0.23%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 719 (17.98%) Data Quality
2 308 (7.70%) QA
3 182 (4.55%) GDPR
4 42 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 35 (0.88%) SLA
6 32 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.70%) PMO
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.48%) NIST
10 18 (0.45%) PCI DSS
11 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.38%) MiFID
13 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.33%) IFRS
15 12 (0.30%) HL7
15 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.25%) GRC
16 10 (0.25%) SEPA
17 9 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 457 (11.43%) Docker
2 93 (2.33%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
4 23 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
5 20 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (0.43%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.25%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.13%) XenApp
10 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 397 (9.93%) Kubernetes
2 335 (8.38%) Terraform
3 106 (2.65%) Grafana
4 65 (1.63%) Ansible
5 64 (1.60%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.90%) Oracle RMAN
7 25 (0.63%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.45%) Kibana
10 16 (0.40%) SCCM
11 15 (0.38%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.35%) Control-M
13 10 (0.25%) Nagios
13 10 (0.25%) Netcool
13 10 (0.25%) OpenView
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 10 (0.25%) ZABBIX
14 9 (0.23%) Kiali
15 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 663 (16.58%) Oracle
2 649 (16.23%) Microsoft
3 482 (12.06%) Databricks
4 157 (3.93%) Google
5 134 (3.35%) Informatica
6 122 (3.05%) ServiceNow
7 108 (2.70%) SAP
8 101 (2.53%) Talend
9 80 (2.00%) Splunk
10 65 (1.63%) IBM
11 61 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 50 (1.25%) Denodo
14 42 (1.05%) OpenAI
15 36 (0.90%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.85%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.83%) MuleSoft
17 33 (0.83%) VMware
18 29 (0.73%) HP
19 28 (0.70%) Sage