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 18 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,993 3,053 3,638
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.74% 12.48% 9.98%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.72% 36.97% 33.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,736 2,167 2,686
10th Percentile £350 £358 £356
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £695 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +0.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 54 56
10th Percentile £26.52 £20.02 £23.38
25th Percentile £35.25 £30.06 £29.72
Median hourly rate £48.11 £48.25 £44.25
Median % change year-on-year -0.29% +9.04% -10.21%
75th Percentile £72.63 £65.46 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.00 £80.73 £61.68
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £43.66 £44.25
% change year-on-year +20.25% -1.34% -11.50%

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 10,873 8,259 10,884
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.54% 33.75% 29.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,179 5,731 7,900
10th Percentile £355 £363 £350
25th Percentile £415 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.65%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £656
90th Percentile £720 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £530
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 526 211 446
10th Percentile £41.42 £26.32 £37.59
25th Percentile £55.00 £37.81 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

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 18 May 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 18 May 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 18 May 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 2,247 £520 -3.70% 857
Midlands +4 519 £469 +4.22% 294
North of England -6 479 £460 -2.90% 482
West Midlands +5 416 £463 +0.54% 160
South East -17 346 £500 - 546
North West -3 261 £450 -5.26% 255
South West -4 201 £473 -0.53% 177
Yorkshire -13 192 £468 -1.47% 159
East Midlands 0 100 £525 +34.27% 134
East of England -14 92 £495 +2.86% 137
North East -12 38 £463 +2.78% 73
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
1 222 (5.56%) Apache Spark
2 149 (3.73%) Apache Airflow
3 134 (3.36%) Confluence
4 133 (3.33%) Apache
5 84 (2.10%) SAS
6 71 (1.78%) SharePoint
7 38 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.78%) IIS
9 23 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
9 23 (0.58%) Tomcat
10 19 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
11 15 (0.38%) Jupyter
11 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
12 13 (0.33%) Appian
12 13 (0.33%) CMS
12 13 (0.33%) HCL Notes
12 13 (0.33%) Mendix
12 13 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
13 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 270 (6.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (1.15%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
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%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 26 (0.65%) Aladdin
2 26 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.63%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
5 17 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
5 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
6 15 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 15 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
7 14 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 11 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
11 8 (0.20%) Endur
11 8 (0.20%) Findur
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
11 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,334 (33.41%) Azure
2 951 (23.82%) AWS
3 771 (19.31%) Power Platform
4 391 (9.79%) Azure DevOps
5 338 (8.46%) Azure Data Factory
6 325 (8.14%) GCP
7 290 (7.26%) GitHub
8 246 (6.16%) Serverless
9 229 (5.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 222 (5.56%) Snowflake
11 216 (5.41%) Amazon S3
12 179 (4.48%) dbt
13 148 (3.71%) GitHub Actions
14 145 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
15 79 (1.98%) Power Automate
16 76 (1.90%) SaaS
17 70 (1.75%) Entra ID
18 66 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 65 (1.63%) Azure Functions
20 64 (1.60%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.20%) Firewall
2 41 (1.03%) DNS
3 20 (0.50%) SNMP
4 19 (0.48%) Network Security
5 16 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.38%) HTTP
6 15 (0.38%) Internet
6 15 (0.38%) WAN
7 12 (0.30%) LAN
7 12 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (0.28%) SSL
8 11 (0.28%) VPN
9 8 (0.20%) Wireshark
10 7 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 7 (0.18%) DHCP
11 6 (0.15%) IPsec
12 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
12 5 (0.13%) RTP
12 5 (0.13%) SAN
12 5 (0.13%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 705 (17.66%) Power BI
2 514 (12.87%) Data Warehouse
3 501 (12.55%) SQL Server
4 280 (7.01%) Tableau
5 271 (6.79%) Data Lake
6 255 (6.39%) Relational Database
7 249 (6.24%) PostgreSQL
8 234 (5.86%) NoSQL
9 209 (5.23%) Metadata
10 193 (4.83%) Azure SQL Database
11 153 (3.83%) Oracle Database
12 144 (3.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 134 (3.36%) BigQuery
14 119 (2.98%) Delta Lake
15 111 (2.78%) Amazon Redshift
16 105 (2.63%) Big Data
17 102 (2.55%) MySQL
18 99 (2.48%) Oracle Reports
19 89 (2.23%) MongoDB
20 88 (2.20%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 412 (10.32%) Git
2 310 (7.76%) JIRA
3 207 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 170 (4.26%) GitLab
5 56 (1.40%) Selenium
6 51 (1.28%) JUnit
7 47 (1.18%) Postman
8 44 (1.10%) Maven
9 39 (0.98%) Mockito
10 38 (0.95%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) Gradle
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
12 29 (0.73%) SonarQube
13 28 (0.70%) ERwin
13 28 (0.70%) REST Assured
14 23 (0.58%) Bitbucket
15 22 (0.55%) JMeter
15 22 (0.55%) TeamCity
15 22 (0.55%) Visual Studio
16 20 (0.50%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,073 (26.87%) Finance
2 1,036 (25.95%) Social Skills
3 733 (18.36%) Analytical Skills
4 380 (9.52%) Banking
5 339 (8.49%) Public Sector
6 102 (2.55%) Front Office
7 100 (2.50%) Marketing
8 94 (2.35%) Investment Banking
9 82 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
10 59 (1.48%) Retail
11 58 (1.45%) Financial Institution
11 58 (1.45%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 52 (1.30%) Legal
13 38 (0.95%) Publishing
14 36 (0.90%) Telecoms
15 35 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
16 33 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
17 32 (0.80%) Law
18 29 (0.73%) Local Government
19 28 (0.70%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 829 (20.76%) Developer
2 826 (20.69%) Data Engineer
3 575 (14.40%) Analyst
4 505 (12.65%) Senior
5 271 (6.79%) Lead
6 246 (6.16%) Data Analyst
7 223 (5.58%) Architect
8 182 (4.56%) Consultant
9 180 (4.51%) Business Analyst
10 152 (3.81%) Java Developer
11 148 (3.71%) Senior Data Engineer
12 126 (3.16%) DBA
13 122 (3.06%) Software Engineer
14 118 (2.96%) Senior Developer
15 117 (2.93%) Azure Engineer
16 98 (2.45%) C# Developer
17 87 (2.18%) Data Scientist
18 86 (2.15%) Data Architect
18 86 (2.15%) Python Developer
19 84 (2.10%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 342 (8.56%) .NET
2 316 (7.91%) REST
3 251 (6.29%) PySpark
4 248 (6.21%) Kafka
5 193 (4.83%) React
6 191 (4.78%) Spring
7 184 (4.61%) Spring Boot
8 167 (4.18%) RESTful
9 141 (3.53%) HTML
10 128 (3.21%) XML
11 124 (3.11%) JSON
12 118 (2.96%) CSS
13 116 (2.91%) Pandas
14 102 (2.55%) AngularJS
15 91 (2.28%) Middleware
16 86 (2.15%) SOAP
17 79 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 74 (1.85%) Web Services
19 70 (1.75%) Node.js
20 68 (1.70%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 250 (6.26%) Cloud Native
2 150 (3.76%) Data Structures
3 128 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
4 120 (3.01%) Product Ownership
5 102 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (2.10%) Management Information System
7 78 (1.95%) Derivative
8 73 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 68 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 52 (1.30%) Clustering
11 52 (1.30%) Equities
11 52 (1.30%) Fixed Income
12 48 (1.20%) Algorithms
12 48 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
13 46 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
13 46 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
14 39 (0.98%) Replication
15 38 (0.95%) Low-Code
16 37 (0.93%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 294 (7.36%) Linux
2 247 (6.19%) Windows
3 200 (5.01%) Unix
4 84 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.60%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.18%) Solaris
10 7 (0.18%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.075%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
13 2 (0.050%) VMS
14 1 (0.025%) HPUX
14 1 (0.025%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,078 (27.00%) CI/CD
2 1,010 (25.29%) Analytics
3 1,005 (25.17%) Data Modelling
4 972 (24.34%) ETL
5 970 (24.29%) Agile
6 907 (22.71%) Business Intelligence
7 870 (21.79%) DevOps
8 795 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
9 738 (18.48%) Data Pipeline
10 649 (16.25%) Data Engineering
11 514 (12.87%) AI
12 502 (12.57%) Migration
13 482 (12.07%) Validation
14 470 (11.77%) Data Governance
15 398 (9.97%) Test Automation
16 395 (9.89%) Decision-Making
17 370 (9.27%) Data Analysis
18 365 (9.14%) Performance Tuning
19 351 (8.79%) Microservices
20 341 (8.54%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,503 (37.64%) Python
2 532 (13.32%) Java
3 437 (10.94%) C#
4 300 (7.51%) JavaScript
5 292 (7.31%) PL/SQL
6 205 (5.13%) T-SQL
7 187 (4.68%) PowerShell
8 128 (3.21%) TypeScript
9 124 (3.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 116 (2.91%) R
11 115 (2.88%) Shell Script
12 88 (2.20%) Scala
13 77 (1.93%) Bash
14 61 (1.53%) C++
15 44 (1.10%) VBA
16 39 (0.98%) Bicep
16 39 (0.98%) Perl
17 29 (0.73%) VB
18 26 (0.65%) Go
19 23 (0.58%) C
Qualifications
1 839 (21.01%) Security Cleared
2 671 (16.80%) SC Cleared
3 321 (8.04%) Degree
4 106 (2.65%) Computer Science Degree
5 86 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.78%) Azure Certification
6 71 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 51 (1.28%) Master's Degree
8 47 (1.18%) ISTQB
9 36 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
10 22 (0.55%) AWS Certification
11 15 (0.38%) CBAP
11 15 (0.38%) PhD
12 12 (0.30%) DBS Check
12 12 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
13 11 (0.28%) CISSP
13 11 (0.28%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
13 11 (0.28%) PMI Certification
14 10 (0.25%) PMP
15 9 (0.23%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 736 (18.43%) Data Quality
2 303 (7.59%) QA
3 178 (4.46%) GDPR
4 38 (0.95%) SLA
5 37 (0.93%) Accessibility
6 32 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 25 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.60%) PMO
9 20 (0.50%) PCI DSS
10 19 (0.48%) NIST
11 18 (0.45%) MiFID
12 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 14 (0.35%) IFRS
14 14 (0.35%) ISO 20022
15 13 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
16 12 (0.30%) HL7
17 11 (0.28%) GRC
18 10 (0.25%) SEPA
19 9 (0.23%) Solvency II
System Software
1 453 (11.34%) Docker
2 92 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 37 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
4 27 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 25 (0.63%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.28%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.25%) KVM
9 8 (0.20%) Postfix
9 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.18%) VMware NSX
11 6 (0.15%) HDFS
11 6 (0.15%) RACF
11 6 (0.15%) vCloud
12 4 (0.10%) XenApp
12 4 (0.10%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
14 2 (0.050%) GridGain
14 2 (0.050%) vSphere
15 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 385 (9.64%) Kubernetes
2 322 (8.06%) Terraform
3 103 (2.58%) Grafana
4 67 (1.68%) Ansible
5 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
7 27 (0.68%) Data Guard
8 18 (0.45%) Kibana
8 18 (0.45%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.38%) SCCM
9 15 (0.38%) ZABBIX
10 14 (0.35%) Control-M
10 14 (0.35%) Nagios
10 14 (0.35%) Netcool
10 14 (0.35%) Tivoli
11 13 (0.33%) OpenView
11 13 (0.33%) Tivoli Monitoring
11 13 (0.33%) vCenter Server
12 12 (0.30%) Progress Chef
13 9 (0.23%) Kiali
Vendors
1 651 (16.30%) Oracle
2 630 (15.78%) Microsoft
3 482 (12.07%) Databricks
4 158 (3.96%) Google
5 135 (3.38%) Informatica
6 130 (3.26%) ServiceNow
7 107 (2.68%) Talend
8 106 (2.65%) SAP
9 89 (2.23%) Splunk
10 62 (1.55%) IBM
11 55 (1.38%) Denodo
12 52 (1.30%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.18%) Citrix
14 41 (1.03%) VMware
15 36 (0.90%) Bloomberg
15 36 (0.90%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.85%) OpenAI
17 32 (0.80%) HP
17 32 (0.80%) MuleSoft
18 30 (0.75%) BMC