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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,798 3,122 3,849
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.43% 12.15% 10.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.51% 35.91% 34.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,615 2,143 2,784
10th Percentile £350 £356 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £630 £655
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £505 £535
% change year-on-year -0.99% -5.61% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 59 64
10th Percentile £18.48 £18.63 £21.67
25th Percentile £28.93 £27.70 £26.14
Median hourly rate £45.00 £46.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.23% +9.41% -17.87%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.20 £62.60
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +5.56% +5.88% -20.93%

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 10,695 8,693 11,126
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.37% 33.82% 29.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,133 5,730 8,010
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -6.09%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £661
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 221 473
10th Percentile £41.83 £25.25 £35.10
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £77.15 £85.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 2,251 £510 -7.27% 835
Midlands 0 467 £481 +4.57% 278
North of England -10 414 £450 -9.09% 405
West Midlands +4 370 £472 -3.08% 173
South East -17 289 £500 - 539
North West 0 235 £425 -10.53% 226
South West -5 195 £475 -8.65% 160
Yorkshire -25 157 £500 -4.08% 129
East Midlands -8 96 £531 +37.48% 105
East of England -21 77 £500 +6.95% 117
North East -2 31 £475 +2.98% 55
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
1 204 (5.37%) Apache Spark
2 156 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 121 (3.19%) Apache
4 117 (3.08%) Confluence
5 80 (2.11%) SharePoint
6 78 (2.05%) SAS
7 52 (1.37%) WebLogic
8 27 (0.71%) IIS
9 24 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.53%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.47%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.47%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.45%) CMS
13 15 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.39%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.32%) Appian
15 12 (0.32%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.32%) JBoss
15 12 (0.32%) WebSphere
Applications
1 245 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (1.32%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.079%) Notion
9 3 (0.079%) Trello
10 1 (0.026%) InDesign
10 1 (0.026%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
10 1 (0.026%) Weka
Business Applications
1 30 (0.79%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 21 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
3 21 (0.55%) Oracle Receivables
4 20 (0.53%) NEC Housing
5 18 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
7 16 (0.42%) Oracle Assets
8 15 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.34%) NetSuite
10 11 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
10 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
11 10 (0.26%) Advent Geneva
11 10 (0.26%) Endur
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 8 (0.21%) Maximo
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 1,310 (34.49%) Azure
2 937 (24.67%) AWS
3 722 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 375 (9.87%) Azure DevOps
5 320 (8.43%) GCP
6 305 (8.03%) Azure Data Factory
7 287 (7.56%) GitHub
8 270 (7.11%) Serverless
9 266 (7.00%) Snowflake
10 203 (5.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 197 (5.19%) Amazon S3
12 158 (4.16%) dbt
13 150 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
14 137 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
15 95 (2.50%) SaaS
16 87 (2.29%) Azure Functions
17 84 (2.21%) Power Automate
18 72 (1.90%) Entra ID
19 69 (1.82%) PowerApps
20 68 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.32%) Firewall
2 42 (1.11%) DNS
3 23 (0.61%) HTTP
4 21 (0.55%) Network Security
5 20 (0.53%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.39%) Internet
7 14 (0.37%) VPN
8 13 (0.34%) 5G
8 13 (0.34%) DHCP
8 13 (0.34%) SSL
8 13 (0.34%) WAN
9 12 (0.32%) LAN
10 11 (0.29%) Skype
11 10 (0.26%) 4G
12 9 (0.24%) 2G
12 9 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
13 8 (0.21%) SMS
14 6 (0.16%) SAN
14 6 (0.16%) VLAN
14 6 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 658 (17.32%) Power BI
2 461 (12.14%) Data Warehouse
3 443 (11.66%) SQL Server
4 265 (6.98%) NoSQL
5 258 (6.79%) Relational Database
6 250 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
7 234 (6.16%) Data Lake
7 234 (6.16%) Tableau
8 195 (5.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 173 (4.56%) Metadata
10 144 (3.79%) Oracle Database
11 140 (3.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 121 (3.19%) BigQuery
13 113 (2.98%) Big Data
14 109 (2.87%) MySQL
15 102 (2.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 100 (2.63%) MongoDB
17 96 (2.53%) Delta Lake
18 95 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
19 83 (2.19%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 439 (11.56%) Git
2 305 (8.03%) JIRA
3 208 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 154 (4.05%) GitLab
5 63 (1.66%) JUnit
6 58 (1.53%) Selenium
7 47 (1.24%) Postman
8 43 (1.13%) Oracle APEX
9 37 (0.97%) Cucumber
10 33 (0.87%) Maven
11 30 (0.79%) MLflow
12 29 (0.76%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.76%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.71%) Mockito
14 23 (0.61%) ERwin
14 23 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.58%) Cypress.io
16 20 (0.53%) SpecFlow
17 18 (0.47%) SonarQube
17 18 (0.47%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,129 (29.73%) Social Skills
2 1,059 (27.88%) Finance
3 666 (17.54%) Analytical Skills
4 398 (10.48%) Banking
5 331 (8.72%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.66%) Front Office
6 101 (2.66%) Investment Banking
7 95 (2.50%) Documentation Skills
8 88 (2.32%) Marketing
9 62 (1.63%) Retail
10 60 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 58 (1.53%) Financial Institution
12 45 (1.18%) Legal
13 36 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
13 36 (0.95%) Publishing
14 35 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 32 (0.84%) Influencing Skills
15 32 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 31 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 30 (0.79%) Law
Job Titles
1 918 (24.17%) Developer
2 678 (17.85%) Data Engineer
3 558 (14.69%) Analyst
4 488 (12.85%) Senior
5 272 (7.16%) Lead
6 231 (6.08%) Data Analyst
7 199 (5.24%) Architect
8 197 (5.19%) Business Analyst
9 148 (3.90%) Senior Developer
10 145 (3.82%) Consultant
11 138 (3.63%) Java Developer
12 117 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
13 111 (2.92%) Software Engineer
14 102 (2.69%) Senior Data Engineer
15 98 (2.58%) C# Developer
16 89 (2.34%) Python Developer
17 88 (2.32%) Data Scientist
18 85 (2.24%) Full-Stack Developer
19 82 (2.16%) DBA
20 80 (2.11%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 341 (8.98%) .NET
2 306 (8.06%) REST
3 240 (6.32%) Kafka
4 227 (5.98%) PySpark
5 182 (4.79%) React
6 178 (4.69%) RESTful
7 162 (4.27%) Spring
8 146 (3.84%) Spring Boot
9 143 (3.77%) HTML
10 141 (3.71%) XML
11 115 (3.03%) CSS
12 111 (2.92%) JSON
13 110 (2.90%) AngularJS
14 106 (2.79%) Pandas
15 101 (2.66%) Node.js
16 86 (2.26%) SOAP
17 85 (2.24%) .NET Framework
18 80 (2.11%) Middleware
19 71 (1.87%) Web Services
20 68 (1.79%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 242 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 124 (3.26%) Data Structures
3 118 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
4 108 (2.84%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.08%) Management Information System
6 76 (2.00%) Data Protection Act
7 72 (1.90%) Analytical Mindset
7 72 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
8 71 (1.87%) Derivative
9 61 (1.61%) Equities
10 60 (1.58%) Algorithms
11 58 (1.53%) Onboarding
12 55 (1.45%) Fixed Income
13 47 (1.24%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 44 (1.16%) Clustering
15 40 (1.05%) Enterprise Software
16 39 (1.03%) Replication
17 35 (0.92%) Market Risk
17 35 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
18 31 (0.82%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 286 (7.53%) Linux
2 230 (6.06%) Windows
3 187 (4.92%) Unix
4 74 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.37%) AIX
7 14 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.29%) Windows 10
9 8 (0.21%) Android
10 7 (0.18%) VMS
11 6 (0.16%) Apple iOS
12 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.13%) zOS
13 4 (0.11%) Solaris
13 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.079%) CentOS
14 3 (0.079%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.026%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.026%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,020 (26.86%) Agile
2 998 (26.28%) CI/CD
3 986 (25.96%) Analytics
4 889 (23.41%) Data Modelling
5 884 (23.28%) Business Intelligence
6 868 (22.85%) DevOps
7 855 (22.51%) ETL
8 847 (22.30%) Problem-Solving
9 620 (16.32%) Data Pipeline
10 560 (14.74%) Data Engineering
11 445 (11.72%) Migration
12 440 (11.59%) Data Governance
13 429 (11.30%) AI
14 405 (10.66%) Validation
15 369 (9.72%) Data Analysis
16 359 (9.45%) Test Automation
17 344 (9.06%) Data Science
18 340 (8.95%) Visualisation
19 337 (8.87%) Continuous Improvement
20 336 (8.85%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,416 (37.28%) Python
2 540 (14.22%) Java
3 413 (10.87%) C#
4 322 (8.48%) JavaScript
5 282 (7.42%) PL/SQL
6 159 (4.19%) PowerShell
7 149 (3.92%) T-SQL
8 145 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 103 (2.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 102 (2.69%) Shell Script
11 97 (2.55%) R
12 95 (2.50%) Scala
13 73 (1.92%) C++
14 65 (1.71%) VBA
15 63 (1.66%) Bash
16 47 (1.24%) Bicep
17 46 (1.21%) Perl
18 44 (1.16%) VB
19 41 (1.08%) Go
20 28 (0.74%) PHP
Qualifications
1 742 (19.54%) Security Cleared
2 587 (15.46%) SC Cleared
3 336 (8.85%) Degree
4 110 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 75 (1.97%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.47%) Master's Degree
8 54 (1.42%) DV Cleared
9 48 (1.26%) ISTQB
10 47 (1.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 46 (1.21%) AWS Certification
12 21 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) CBAP
15 12 (0.32%) PhD
16 10 (0.26%) ISEB
16 10 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
16 10 (0.26%) MCSE
16 10 (0.26%) PMP
17 9 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 640 (16.85%) Data Quality
2 275 (7.24%) QA
3 160 (4.21%) GDPR
4 61 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 28 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 27 (0.71%) SLA
7 23 (0.61%) PMO
8 20 (0.53%) MiFID
9 17 (0.45%) HIPAA
9 17 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.45%) NIST
10 15 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 14 (0.37%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.34%) IFRS
12 13 (0.34%) SEPA
12 13 (0.34%) WCAG
13 12 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 12 (0.32%) EMIR
14 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 452 (11.90%) Docker
2 105 (2.76%) Active Directory
3 29 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.39%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.21%) HDFS
7 8 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.16%) KVM
9 5 (0.13%) Postfix
9 5 (0.13%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) vSphere
11 3 (0.079%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 3 (0.079%) Oracle Clusterware
11 3 (0.079%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.053%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 409 (10.77%) Kubernetes
2 305 (8.03%) Terraform
3 86 (2.26%) Grafana
4 64 (1.69%) Ansible
4 64 (1.69%) Prometheus
5 21 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
6 19 (0.50%) SCCM
7 18 (0.47%) Oracle RMAN
8 17 (0.45%) Control-M
8 17 (0.45%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.37%) Data Guard
9 14 (0.37%) Kibana
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
10 9 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 9 (0.24%) WSUS
11 8 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 8 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
11 8 (0.21%) ITRS Geneos
11 8 (0.21%) Kiali
11 8 (0.21%) SCOM
Vendors
1 628 (16.54%) Oracle
2 615 (16.19%) Microsoft
3 457 (12.03%) Databricks
4 159 (4.19%) Google
5 101 (2.66%) ServiceNow
6 97 (2.55%) SAP
7 96 (2.53%) Talend
8 95 (2.50%) Informatica
9 73 (1.92%) Splunk
10 64 (1.69%) Salesforce
11 57 (1.50%) IBM
12 49 (1.29%) Citrix
13 46 (1.21%) OpenAI
14 43 (1.13%) Denodo
15 40 (1.05%) MuleSoft
16 34 (0.90%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.84%) VMware
18 26 (0.68%) Foundry
19 23 (0.61%) NEC
19 23 (0.61%) Palantir