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 14 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,371 3,115 3,784
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.65% 11.63% 10.49%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.62% 35.56% 34.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 2,092 2,734
10th Percentile £338 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £413 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £658
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 48 63
10th Percentile £21.19 £25.26 £21.83
25th Percentile £30.47 £35.00 £30.04
Median hourly rate £49.36 £52.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% +16.67% -9.55%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.15 £53.94
90th Percentile £72.98 £78.03 £64.53
UK median hourly rate £45.25 £52.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -13.81% +16.67% -10.00%

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 9,737 8,761 10,869
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.77% 32.71% 30.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,485 5,636 7,867
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £507 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.43% -4.55% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 366 209 396
10th Percentile £39.80 £25.26 £35.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £47.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £79.38
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%

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 14 January 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 14 January 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 14 January 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 -1 2,065 £510 -7.27% 681
North of England -7 346 £443 -6.84% 405
Midlands -4 324 £515 +11.96% 282
South East -13 299 £475 -5.71% 764
West Midlands 0 235 £515 +5.10% 138
North West +2 197 £415 -8.79% 200
South West -5 157 £475 -5.00% 220
Yorkshire -24 133 £472 -5.70% 144
East Midlands -7 89 £500 +27.39% 142
East of England -3 76 £575 +9.52% 234
North East -13 18 £488 +0.52% 67
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
1 156 (4.63%) Apache Spark
2 132 (3.92%) Apache Airflow
3 107 (3.17%) Confluence
4 94 (2.79%) SharePoint
5 93 (2.76%) Apache
6 61 (1.81%) SAS
7 48 (1.42%) WebLogic
8 24 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
9 20 (0.59%) IIS
10 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
11 18 (0.53%) nginx
12 15 (0.44%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
13 13 (0.39%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
14 12 (0.36%) CMS
14 12 (0.36%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.36%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 9 (0.27%) JBoss
Applications
1 231 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.19%) MS Visio
4 36 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.089%) Notion
11 2 (0.059%) Maya
11 2 (0.059%) NUKE
11 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.059%) SPSS
12 1 (0.030%) Stata
12 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 31 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
1 31 (0.92%) Oracle Payables
2 29 (0.86%) Oracle General Ledger
3 24 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 22 (0.65%) Oracle Receivables
5 21 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
6 20 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
6 20 (0.59%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.44%) Endur
8 15 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
9 14 (0.42%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.27%) Maximo
12 9 (0.27%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,105 (32.78%) Azure
2 798 (23.67%) AWS
3 640 (18.99%) Power Platform
4 295 (8.75%) Azure DevOps
5 281 (8.34%) GCP
6 247 (7.33%) GitHub
7 230 (6.82%) Azure Data Factory
8 228 (6.76%) Serverless
9 226 (6.70%) Snowflake
10 173 (5.13%) Amazon S3
11 163 (4.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 124 (3.68%) dbt
13 123 (3.65%) GitHub Actions
14 111 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
15 85 (2.52%) SaaS
16 81 (2.40%) Azure Functions
17 77 (2.28%) Power Automate
18 71 (2.11%) PowerApps
19 56 (1.66%) Azure Logic Apps
19 56 (1.66%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.69%) Firewall
2 42 (1.25%) DNS
3 38 (1.13%) HTTP
4 25 (0.74%) Skype
5 17 (0.50%) Network Security
5 17 (0.50%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.44%) Internet
7 14 (0.42%) DHCP
7 14 (0.42%) SSH
8 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
9 10 (0.30%) SMTP
9 10 (0.30%) VPN
10 9 (0.27%) 2G
10 9 (0.27%) FTP
10 9 (0.27%) IMAP
10 9 (0.27%) LAN
10 9 (0.27%) Multicast
10 9 (0.27%) OpenLDAP
10 9 (0.27%) SSL
10 9 (0.27%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 580 (17.21%) Power BI
2 371 (11.01%) SQL Server
3 352 (10.44%) Data Warehouse
4 249 (7.39%) Relational Database
5 248 (7.36%) PostgreSQL
6 240 (7.12%) NoSQL
7 206 (6.11%) Tableau
8 195 (5.78%) Data Lake
9 168 (4.98%) Azure SQL Database
10 161 (4.78%) Oracle Database
11 125 (3.71%) Metadata
12 113 (3.35%) Big Data
13 104 (3.09%) MySQL
14 99 (2.94%) MongoDB
15 98 (2.91%) BigQuery
16 96 (2.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 81 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
18 76 (2.25%) Amazon Redshift
19 65 (1.93%) Oracle Reports
20 64 (1.90%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 376 (11.15%) Git
2 295 (8.75%) JIRA
3 183 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 122 (3.62%) GitLab
5 58 (1.72%) JUnit
5 58 (1.72%) Selenium
6 46 (1.36%) Oracle APEX
7 36 (1.07%) Postman
8 34 (1.01%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.98%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.68%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.65%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.65%) Maven
11 22 (0.65%) SpecFlow
12 21 (0.62%) ERwin
12 21 (0.62%) Mockito
12 21 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
13 20 (0.59%) MLflow
14 19 (0.56%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.53%) SonarQube
General
1 1,057 (31.36%) Social Skills
2 968 (28.72%) Finance
3 586 (17.38%) Analytical Skills
4 389 (11.54%) Banking
5 270 (8.01%) Public Sector
6 117 (3.47%) Investment Banking
7 92 (2.73%) Front Office
8 85 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 84 (2.49%) Marketing
10 58 (1.72%) Retail
11 52 (1.54%) Financial Institution
12 50 (1.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 43 (1.28%) Presentation Skills
14 38 (1.13%) Legal
15 34 (1.01%) Manufacturing
16 29 (0.86%) Back Office
16 29 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
17 27 (0.80%) General Ledger
17 27 (0.80%) Publishing
17 27 (0.80%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 873 (25.90%) Developer
2 546 (16.20%) Analyst
3 488 (14.48%) Data Engineer
4 431 (12.79%) Senior
5 222 (6.59%) Data Analyst
6 203 (6.02%) Lead
7 192 (5.70%) Business Analyst
8 149 (4.42%) Architect
9 140 (4.15%) Senior Developer
10 127 (3.77%) Consultant
11 122 (3.62%) Java Developer
12 112 (3.32%) Software Engineer
13 99 (2.94%) Azure Engineer
14 81 (2.40%) Python Developer
15 80 (2.37%) C# Developer
16 79 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
17 78 (2.31%) Data Scientist
18 73 (2.17%) Senior Data Engineer
19 71 (2.11%) Azure Data Engineer
20 68 (2.02%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 322 (9.55%) .NET
2 273 (8.10%) REST
3 214 (6.35%) Kafka
4 186 (5.52%) PySpark
5 156 (4.63%) React
6 145 (4.30%) RESTful
7 140 (4.15%) Spring
8 137 (4.06%) HTML
9 133 (3.95%) XML
10 120 (3.56%) CSS
11 115 (3.41%) Spring Boot
12 103 (3.06%) JSON
13 101 (3.00%) Node.js
14 94 (2.79%) AngularJS
15 77 (2.28%) SOAP
16 75 (2.22%) .NET Framework
17 71 (2.11%) Pandas
18 70 (2.08%) Middleware
19 57 (1.69%) Web Services
20 53 (1.57%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 196 (5.81%) Cloud Native
2 98 (2.91%) Data Structures
3 92 (2.73%) Legacy Systems
3 92 (2.73%) Product Ownership
4 80 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
5 73 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
6 72 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 60 (1.78%) Algorithms
7 60 (1.78%) Derivative
8 55 (1.63%) Distributed Systems
8 55 (1.63%) Onboarding
9 53 (1.57%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 51 (1.51%) Equities
11 47 (1.39%) Fixed Income
12 42 (1.25%) Replication
13 39 (1.16%) Market Risk
14 37 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
14 37 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (1.01%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 31 (0.92%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 316 (9.37%) Linux
2 242 (7.18%) Windows
3 195 (5.78%) Unix
4 63 (1.87%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.47%) VMS
5 16 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 14 (0.42%) Windows 10
7 12 (0.36%) Android
7 12 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
9 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.15%) AIX
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.12%) CentOS
11 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.089%) zOS
13 1 (0.030%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.030%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 944 (28.00%) Agile
2 786 (23.32%) CI/CD
3 781 (23.17%) Analytics
4 767 (22.75%) Problem-Solving
5 762 (22.60%) Business Intelligence
6 738 (21.89%) DevOps
7 703 (20.85%) Data Modelling
8 629 (18.66%) ETL
9 481 (14.27%) Data Pipeline
10 397 (11.78%) Data Engineering
11 363 (10.77%) Migration
12 349 (10.35%) Data Governance
13 338 (10.03%) Validation
14 331 (9.82%) Visualisation
15 324 (9.61%) AI
16 311 (9.23%) Data Analysis
17 298 (8.84%) Microservices
17 298 (8.84%) Test Automation
18 284 (8.42%) Data Science
19 275 (8.16%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,235 (36.64%) Python
2 516 (15.31%) Java
3 375 (11.12%) C#
4 314 (9.31%) JavaScript
5 270 (8.01%) PL/SQL
6 145 (4.30%) PowerShell
7 132 (3.92%) TypeScript
8 107 (3.17%) R
9 99 (2.94%) T-SQL
10 89 (2.64%) C++
11 88 (2.61%) Scala
12 86 (2.55%) Shell Script
13 77 (2.28%) VBA
14 72 (2.14%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 64 (1.90%) VB
16 56 (1.66%) Bash
17 47 (1.39%) Perl
18 42 (1.25%) Go
19 41 (1.22%) PHP
20 39 (1.16%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 561 (16.64%) Security Cleared
2 422 (12.52%) SC Cleared
3 323 (9.58%) Degree
4 120 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 70 (2.08%) Azure Certification
6 60 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 57 (1.69%) AWS Certification
8 56 (1.66%) Master's Degree
9 46 (1.36%) BPSS Clearance
10 43 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 24 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
13 23 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 19 (0.56%) CBAP
15 16 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 14 (0.42%) MCSE
17 12 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
17 12 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 11 (0.33%) OCA
18 11 (0.33%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 486 (14.42%) Data Quality
2 237 (7.03%) QA
3 126 (3.74%) GDPR
4 62 (1.84%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 23 (0.68%) SLA
7 21 (0.62%) MiFID
8 18 (0.53%) SEPA
8 18 (0.53%) WCAG
9 17 (0.50%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.44%) EMIR
10 15 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 13 (0.39%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.39%) PSD2
12 11 (0.33%) IFRS
12 11 (0.33%) PMO
13 9 (0.27%) NIST
13 9 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.21%) GAAP
System Software
1 394 (11.69%) Docker
2 95 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 30 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.27%) DFS Replication
6 9 (0.27%) Dovecot
6 9 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 9 (0.27%) Postfix
6 9 (0.27%) Squid
7 8 (0.24%) HDFS
7 8 (0.24%) zsh
8 7 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 5 (0.15%) NFS
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) vSphere
11 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
11 4 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 361 (10.71%) Kubernetes
2 233 (6.91%) Terraform
3 70 (2.08%) Grafana
4 61 (1.81%) Ansible
5 55 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.71%) SCCM
6 24 (0.71%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 19 (0.56%) Data Guard
9 19 (0.56%) Puppet
10 16 (0.47%) Control-M
10 16 (0.47%) Kibana
10 16 (0.47%) Progress Chef
11 14 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.36%) Proxmox
13 11 (0.33%) ITRS Geneos
13 11 (0.33%) WSUS
14 9 (0.27%) Nessus
Vendors
1 596 (17.68%) Oracle
2 567 (16.82%) Microsoft
3 354 (10.50%) Databricks
4 135 (4.00%) Google
5 103 (3.06%) Splunk
6 94 (2.79%) SAP
7 71 (2.11%) Salesforce
8 70 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 53 (1.57%) Talend
10 47 (1.39%) Informatica
11 43 (1.28%) Dynatrace
11 43 (1.28%) IBM
12 42 (1.25%) OpenAI
12 42 (1.25%) VMware
13 41 (1.22%) Citrix
14 36 (1.07%) Denodo
15 35 (1.04%) MuleSoft
16 30 (0.89%) AppDynamics
17 29 (0.86%) Cisco
18 26 (0.77%) Adobe