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

6 months to
11 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,778 3,005 3,809
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.41% 12.17% 10.00%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.71% 35.92% 34.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,596 2,094 2,752
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.08% -5.23% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £509 £533
% change year-on-year -1.72% -4.46% -1.39%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 56 63
10th Percentile £18.48 £20.87 £21.66
25th Percentile £32.76 £29.07 £26.02
Median hourly rate £45.25 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.50% +17.65% -19.05%
75th Percentile £70.38 £65.15 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.72 £62.72
UK median hourly rate £48.72 £47.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +2.57% +11.76% -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 10,579 8,366 11,035
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.14% 33.89% 28.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,052 5,596 7,932
10th Percentile £351 £358 £350
25th Percentile £414 £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 £660
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.70%
Number of hourly rates quoted 451 215 470
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £40.25 £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 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £75.15
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -5.51%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,229 £513 -6.82% 619
Midlands +2 472 £475 +1.71% 310
North of England -8 409 £450 -8.54% 436
West Midlands +6 374 £469 -4.29% 177
South East -19 286 £485 -3.00% 591
North West +2 236 £442 -6.89% 239
South West +1 200 £475 -9.52% 192
Yorkshire -27 152 £475 -8.87% 146
East Midlands -8 96 £537 +39.03% 127
East of England -21 75 £500 +6.95% 171
North East -2 30 £475 +5.56% 57
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
1 209 (5.53%) Apache Spark
2 147 (3.89%) Apache Airflow
3 125 (3.31%) Apache
4 115 (3.04%) Confluence
5 78 (2.06%) SAS
5 78 (2.06%) SharePoint
6 52 (1.38%) WebLogic
7 28 (0.74%) IIS
8 24 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
9 21 (0.56%) Tomcat
10 18 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 16 (0.42%) CMS
11 16 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.40%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.34%) WebSphere
14 12 (0.32%) Appian
14 12 (0.32%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.32%) JBoss
15 11 (0.29%) Mendix
Applications
1 257 (6.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.59%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.93%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.19%) 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%) Mingle
10 1 (0.026%) SPSS
10 1 (0.026%) Weka
Business Applications
1 29 (0.77%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle Payables
3 20 (0.53%) NEC Housing
3 20 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 19 (0.50%) Dynamics CRM
4 19 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
5 17 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
6 15 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
7 14 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
8 13 (0.34%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 10 (0.26%) Endur
10 10 (0.26%) Oracle Cash Management
10 10 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.24%) Advent Geneva
12 8 (0.21%) Maximo
12 8 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
12 8 (0.21%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,314 (34.78%) Azure
2 926 (24.51%) AWS
3 723 (19.14%) Power Platform
4 386 (10.22%) Azure DevOps
5 312 (8.26%) GCP
6 307 (8.13%) Azure Data Factory
7 294 (7.78%) GitHub
8 267 (7.07%) Serverless
9 258 (6.83%) Snowflake
10 205 (5.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 199 (5.27%) Amazon S3
12 156 (4.13%) dbt
13 150 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
14 138 (3.65%) AWS Lambda
15 95 (2.51%) SaaS
16 85 (2.25%) Azure Functions
17 84 (2.22%) Power Automate
18 73 (1.93%) Entra ID
19 69 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
19 69 (1.83%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (1.30%) Firewall
2 42 (1.11%) DNS
3 21 (0.56%) HTTP
3 21 (0.56%) Network Security
3 21 (0.56%) TCP/IP
4 15 (0.40%) Internet
4 15 (0.40%) VPN
5 14 (0.37%) WAN
6 13 (0.34%) 5G
6 13 (0.34%) DHCP
6 13 (0.34%) LAN
6 13 (0.34%) SSL
7 10 (0.26%) 4G
8 9 (0.24%) 2G
8 9 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
9 8 (0.21%) SMS
10 7 (0.19%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.16%) Multicast
11 6 (0.16%) Skype
11 6 (0.16%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 659 (17.44%) Power BI
2 454 (12.02%) Data Warehouse
3 447 (11.83%) SQL Server
4 263 (6.96%) NoSQL
5 250 (6.62%) Relational Database
6 247 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
7 232 (6.14%) Data Lake
7 232 (6.14%) Tableau
8 197 (5.21%) Azure SQL Database
9 176 (4.66%) Metadata
10 144 (3.81%) Oracle Database
11 138 (3.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 119 (3.15%) BigQuery
13 116 (3.07%) Big Data
14 107 (2.83%) MySQL
15 100 (2.65%) Amazon Redshift
15 100 (2.65%) Delta Lake
16 99 (2.62%) MongoDB
17 94 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
18 78 (2.06%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 439 (11.62%) Git
2 304 (8.05%) JIRA
3 208 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 153 (4.05%) GitLab
5 62 (1.64%) JUnit
6 60 (1.59%) Selenium
7 46 (1.22%) Postman
8 43 (1.14%) Oracle APEX
9 38 (1.01%) Cucumber
10 32 (0.85%) Maven
10 32 (0.85%) MLflow
11 29 (0.77%) Bitbucket
12 28 (0.74%) REST Assured
13 25 (0.66%) Mockito
14 24 (0.64%) Cypress.io
14 24 (0.64%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.58%) ERwin
15 22 (0.58%) SpecFlow
16 19 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
17 18 (0.48%) SonarQube
General
1 1,100 (29.12%) Social Skills
2 1,031 (27.29%) Finance
3 666 (17.63%) Analytical Skills
4 393 (10.40%) Banking
5 331 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 103 (2.73%) Investment Banking
7 102 (2.70%) Front Office
8 95 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 81 (2.14%) Marketing
10 61 (1.61%) Retail
11 59 (1.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.40%) Financial Institution
13 50 (1.32%) Legal
14 35 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 34 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
15 34 (0.90%) Publishing
16 31 (0.82%) Influencing Skills
16 31 (0.82%) Law
17 30 (0.79%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 908 (24.03%) Developer
2 674 (17.84%) Data Engineer
3 541 (14.32%) Analyst
4 485 (12.84%) Senior
5 270 (7.15%) Lead
6 227 (6.01%) Data Analyst
7 203 (5.37%) Architect
8 197 (5.21%) Business Analyst
9 158 (4.18%) Consultant
10 145 (3.84%) Senior Developer
11 135 (3.57%) Java Developer
12 115 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
13 107 (2.83%) Software Engineer
14 101 (2.67%) Senior Data Engineer
15 99 (2.62%) C# Developer
16 89 (2.36%) Full-Stack Developer
16 89 (2.36%) Python Developer
17 88 (2.33%) DBA
18 84 (2.22%) Data Scientist
19 79 (2.09%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 339 (8.97%) .NET
2 306 (8.10%) REST
3 242 (6.41%) Kafka
4 227 (6.01%) PySpark
5 182 (4.82%) React
6 175 (4.63%) RESTful
7 160 (4.24%) Spring
8 150 (3.97%) XML
9 140 (3.71%) HTML
9 140 (3.71%) Spring Boot
10 114 (3.02%) CSS
11 110 (2.91%) AngularJS
11 110 (2.91%) JSON
12 106 (2.81%) Pandas
13 101 (2.67%) Node.js
14 85 (2.25%) .NET Framework
15 81 (2.14%) SOAP
16 78 (2.06%) Middleware
17 72 (1.91%) Web Services
17 72 (1.91%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 248 (6.56%) Cloud Native
2 123 (3.26%) Data Structures
3 118 (3.12%) Legacy Systems
4 107 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 80 (2.12%) Management Information System
6 75 (1.99%) Distributed Systems
7 73 (1.93%) Data Protection Act
7 73 (1.93%) Derivative
8 69 (1.83%) Analytical Mindset
9 62 (1.64%) Equities
10 56 (1.48%) Algorithms
10 56 (1.48%) Fixed Income
11 54 (1.43%) Onboarding
12 48 (1.27%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 41 (1.09%) Clustering
14 40 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
15 37 (0.98%) Replication
16 36 (0.95%) Market Risk
17 35 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
18 29 (0.77%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 279 (7.38%) Linux
2 226 (5.98%) Windows
3 183 (4.84%) Unix
4 72 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.40%) AIX
7 14 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
8 13 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.32%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.19%) Android
11 6 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 5 (0.13%) VMS
12 5 (0.13%) zOS
13 4 (0.11%) Solaris
13 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.079%) CentOS
15 2 (0.053%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.053%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.026%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,016 (26.89%) Agile
2 1,011 (26.76%) CI/CD
3 985 (26.07%) Analytics
4 890 (23.56%) Data Modelling
5 882 (23.35%) DevOps
6 875 (23.16%) Business Intelligence
7 856 (22.66%) ETL
8 837 (22.15%) Problem-Solving
9 617 (16.33%) Data Pipeline
10 561 (14.85%) Data Engineering
11 451 (11.94%) Migration
12 444 (11.75%) Data Governance
13 437 (11.57%) AI
14 401 (10.61%) Validation
15 372 (9.85%) Data Analysis
16 358 (9.48%) Test Automation
17 337 (8.92%) Data Science
18 332 (8.79%) Visualisation
19 329 (8.71%) Continuous Improvement
19 329 (8.71%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,409 (37.29%) Python
2 540 (14.29%) Java
3 410 (10.85%) C#
4 322 (8.52%) JavaScript
5 270 (7.15%) PL/SQL
6 157 (4.16%) T-SQL
7 150 (3.97%) PowerShell
8 145 (3.84%) TypeScript
9 105 (2.78%) Shell Script
10 103 (2.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 97 (2.57%) Scala
12 95 (2.51%) R
13 70 (1.85%) C++
14 64 (1.69%) Bash
15 63 (1.67%) VBA
16 48 (1.27%) Bicep
17 45 (1.19%) Perl
18 43 (1.14%) VB
19 38 (1.01%) Go
20 28 (0.74%) PHP
Qualifications
1 745 (19.72%) Security Cleared
2 588 (15.56%) SC Cleared
3 326 (8.63%) Degree
4 107 (2.83%) Computer Science Degree
5 81 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.88%) Azure Certification
7 54 (1.43%) Master's Degree
8 52 (1.38%) DV Cleared
9 49 (1.30%) ISTQB
10 44 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
11 42 (1.11%) AWS Certification
12 21 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) CBAP
15 13 (0.34%) PhD
16 10 (0.26%) ISEB
16 10 (0.26%) PMP
17 9 (0.24%) PMI Certification
18 8 (0.21%) CFA
18 8 (0.21%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 640 (16.94%) Data Quality
2 274 (7.25%) QA
3 160 (4.24%) GDPR
4 61 (1.61%) Accessibility
5 28 (0.74%) SLA
6 27 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 23 (0.61%) PMO
8 21 (0.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 20 (0.53%) MiFID
10 17 (0.45%) NIST
11 16 (0.42%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
13 14 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 13 (0.34%) SEPA
14 13 (0.34%) WCAG
15 12 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 12 (0.32%) EMIR
15 12 (0.32%) IFRS
16 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 450 (11.91%) Docker
2 99 (2.62%) Active Directory
3 31 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.40%) 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%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.11%) Postfix
11 3 (0.079%) Oracle Clusterware
11 3 (0.079%) VMware ESXi
12 2 (0.053%) NDS
12 2 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
12 2 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.053%) vSphere
12 2 (0.053%) zsh
Systems Management
1 413 (10.93%) Kubernetes
2 298 (7.89%) Terraform
3 84 (2.22%) Grafana
4 62 (1.64%) Ansible
5 61 (1.61%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
6 21 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.50%) SCCM
8 17 (0.45%) Progress Chef
9 14 (0.37%) Data Guard
9 14 (0.37%) Puppet
10 13 (0.34%) Control-M
10 13 (0.34%) Kibana
11 9 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 8 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 8 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
12 8 (0.21%) Kiali
12 8 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
12 8 (0.21%) WSUS
13 7 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 617 (16.33%) Oracle
2 612 (16.20%) Microsoft
3 458 (12.12%) Databricks
4 161 (4.26%) Google
5 100 (2.65%) Informatica
6 98 (2.59%) ServiceNow
7 97 (2.57%) SAP
7 97 (2.57%) Talend
8 67 (1.77%) Splunk
9 63 (1.67%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.46%) IBM
11 50 (1.32%) Citrix
12 46 (1.22%) OpenAI
13 43 (1.14%) Denodo
14 40 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 35 (0.93%) Bloomberg
16 30 (0.79%) VMware
17 28 (0.74%) Foundry
18 25 (0.66%) Palantir
19 24 (0.64%) Dynatrace