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 27 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,443 3,265 3,527
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.72% 11.83% 10.62%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.34% 36.19% 33.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,988 2,305 2,613
10th Percentile £357 £335 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 80 39
10th Percentile £23.08 £25.52 £25.99
25th Percentile £29.96 £31.64 £30.81
Median hourly rate £43.75 £50.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.50% +20.48% -9.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.73 £62.63 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £43.50 £40.58
% change year-on-year +2.30% +7.20% -11.56%

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 11,900 9,021 10,633
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.03% 32.69% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,713 6,160 7,486
10th Percentile £363 £345 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -6.55% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £519 £501 £530
% change year-on-year +3.70% -5.57% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 488 266 329
10th Percentile £29.99 £29.67 £31.25
25th Percentile £51.31 £41.25 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £79.38 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +5.11%

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 27 August 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 27 August 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 27 August 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 -6 2,483 £525 - 2,944
North of England 0 583 £466 -0.59% 628
Midlands -4 464 £464 +3.06% 345
South East -12 464 £490 -2.00% 653
West Midlands -2 364 £465 +0.54% 199
North West -1 295 £478 +1.70% 368
Yorkshire +1 249 £475 +4.11% 164
South West -4 226 £509 +19.71% 287
East of England -3 123 £478 -4.69% 171
East Midlands -5 97 £463 +20.13% 146
North East -17 48 £413 -11.29% 102
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
1 208 (4.68%) Apache Airflow
2 190 (4.28%) Apache Spark
3 178 (4.01%) Confluence
4 146 (3.29%) Apache
5 76 (1.71%) SharePoint
6 74 (1.67%) SAS
7 36 (0.81%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.70%) IIS
9 27 (0.61%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.56%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
12 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
13 18 (0.41%) nginx
14 17 (0.38%) Camunda
14 17 (0.38%) CMS
14 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
15 11 (0.25%) Tomcat
16 10 (0.23%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 7 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 287 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.22%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
4 29 (0.65%) MS Visio
5 25 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.045%) Windchill
11 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.023%) InDesign
11 1 (0.023%) Mingle
11 1 (0.023%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.023%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 44 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.56%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 15 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.23%) Finacle
10 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
11 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
11 8 (0.18%) Findur
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
12 7 (0.16%) Summit
12 7 (0.16%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,415 (31.85%) Azure
2 1,042 (23.45%) AWS
3 846 (19.04%) Power Platform
4 411 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
5 386 (8.69%) GCP
6 328 (7.38%) GitHub
7 315 (7.09%) Snowflake
8 313 (7.04%) Azure Data Factory
9 278 (6.26%) Serverless
10 262 (5.90%) dbt
11 219 (4.93%) Amazon S3
12 200 (4.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 176 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
14 164 (3.69%) GitHub Actions
15 95 (2.14%) Power Automate
16 93 (2.09%) SaaS
17 84 (1.89%) Entra ID
18 83 (1.87%) PowerApps
19 80 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 66 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.35%) DNS
2 45 (1.01%) Firewall
3 27 (0.61%) Network Security
4 26 (0.59%) HTTP
5 22 (0.50%) SSL
6 21 (0.47%) SNMP
6 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 20 (0.45%) Internet
8 19 (0.43%) VPN
9 16 (0.36%) DHCP
10 11 (0.25%) Broadband
10 11 (0.25%) SSH
11 10 (0.23%) WAN
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
12 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.20%) Wireshark
13 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
14 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 779 (17.53%) Power BI
2 625 (14.07%) Data Warehouse
3 571 (12.85%) SQL Server
4 285 (6.41%) Relational Database
5 270 (6.08%) Tableau
6 262 (5.90%) PostgreSQL
7 261 (5.87%) Data Lake
8 230 (5.18%) Metadata
9 223 (5.02%) NoSQL
10 197 (4.43%) Oracle Database
11 175 (3.94%) Azure SQL Database
12 168 (3.78%) BigQuery
13 144 (3.24%) Amazon Redshift
14 128 (2.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 127 (2.86%) Delta Lake
16 103 (2.32%) MySQL
17 97 (2.18%) Amazon Athena
17 97 (2.18%) Big Data
18 89 (2.00%) MongoDB
18 89 (2.00%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 510 (11.48%) Git
2 342 (7.70%) JIRA
3 251 (5.65%) Jenkins
4 204 (4.59%) GitLab
5 78 (1.76%) JUnit
6 76 (1.71%) Selenium
7 66 (1.49%) Gradle
8 62 (1.40%) Maven
9 59 (1.33%) Postman
10 51 (1.15%) Mockito
11 41 (0.92%) SonarQube
12 37 (0.83%) Bitbucket
13 33 (0.74%) JMeter
13 33 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
14 32 (0.72%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.61%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) TeamCity
18 25 (0.56%) MLflow
19 24 (0.54%) ERwin
General
1 1,212 (27.28%) Social Skills
2 1,152 (25.93%) Finance
3 920 (20.71%) Analytical Skills
4 475 (10.69%) Banking
5 388 (8.73%) Public Sector
6 145 (3.26%) Marketing
7 133 (2.99%) Front Office
8 122 (2.75%) Retail
9 114 (2.57%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 79 (1.78%) Documentation Skills
12 66 (1.49%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.19%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 47 (1.06%) Legal
16 42 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
17 40 (0.90%) Telecoms
18 36 (0.81%) Back Office
19 35 (0.79%) Local Government
20 34 (0.77%) Law
Job Titles
1 956 (21.52%) Developer
2 838 (18.86%) Data Engineer
3 650 (14.63%) Analyst
4 615 (13.84%) Senior
5 304 (6.84%) Lead
6 265 (5.96%) Data Analyst
7 231 (5.20%) Architect
8 225 (5.06%) Consultant
9 192 (4.32%) Business Analyst
10 184 (4.14%) DBA
11 176 (3.96%) Senior Data Engineer
12 160 (3.60%) Java Developer
13 152 (3.42%) Senior Developer
14 122 (2.75%) Software Engineer
15 113 (2.54%) SQL DBA
16 108 (2.43%) SQL Developer
17 101 (2.27%) Full-Stack Developer
18 100 (2.25%) Azure Engineer
19 98 (2.21%) Data Architect
19 98 (2.21%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 396 (8.91%) REST
2 386 (8.69%) .NET
3 367 (8.26%) Terraform
4 306 (6.89%) PySpark
5 291 (6.55%) Kafka
6 224 (5.04%) Spring
7 218 (4.91%) React
8 205 (4.61%) Spring Boot
9 181 (4.07%) RESTful
10 172 (3.87%) HTML
11 169 (3.80%) JSON
12 157 (3.53%) XML
13 148 (3.33%) CSS
14 115 (2.59%) AngularJS
15 101 (2.27%) Pandas
15 101 (2.27%) Web Services
16 97 (2.18%) Middleware
17 94 (2.12%) SOAP
18 88 (1.98%) .NET Framework
19 76 (1.71%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.48%) Cloud Native
2 206 (4.64%) Data Structures
3 184 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 139 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
5 127 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 107 (2.41%) Onboarding
7 100 (2.25%) Enterprise Software
8 86 (1.94%) Management Information System
9 80 (1.80%) Derivative
10 79 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
11 66 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
12 61 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.35%) Replication
14 56 (1.26%) AI Agents
14 56 (1.26%) Clustering
14 56 (1.26%) Reference Data
15 51 (1.15%) Fixed Income
16 50 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 46 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 43 (0.97%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.18%) Linux
2 270 (6.08%) Windows
3 208 (4.68%) Unix
4 100 (2.25%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.41%) AIX
7 15 (0.34%) Solaris
8 10 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
11 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) zOS
14 4 (0.090%) Android
14 4 (0.090%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.068%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,224 (27.55%) CI/CD
2 1,151 (25.91%) Agile
3 1,116 (25.12%) Data Modelling
4 1,111 (25.01%) Analytics
5 992 (22.33%) ETL
6 984 (22.15%) Business Intelligence
7 897 (20.19%) DevOps
8 871 (19.60%) Problem-Solving
9 858 (19.31%) Data Pipeline
10 754 (16.97%) Data Engineering
11 678 (15.26%) AI
12 632 (14.22%) Validation
13 631 (14.20%) Migration
14 554 (12.47%) Stakeholder Management
15 487 (10.96%) Data Governance
16 484 (10.89%) Test Automation
17 468 (10.53%) Continuous Improvement
18 463 (10.42%) Decision-Making
19 458 (10.31%) Data Analysis
20 367 (8.26%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,587 (35.72%) Python
2 555 (12.49%) Java
3 426 (9.59%) C#
4 350 (7.88%) JavaScript
5 349 (7.86%) PL/SQL
6 246 (5.54%) PowerShell
7 223 (5.02%) T-SQL
8 184 (4.14%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 135 (3.04%) Shell Script
11 96 (2.16%) Bash
12 83 (1.87%) R
13 63 (1.42%) Scala
14 46 (1.04%) C++
15 39 (0.88%) VBA
16 37 (0.83%) Bicep
17 27 (0.61%) C
18 25 (0.56%) VB
19 22 (0.50%) Go
19 22 (0.50%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 941 (21.18%) Security Cleared
2 747 (16.81%) SC Cleared
3 329 (7.40%) Degree
4 123 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 107 (2.41%) DV Cleared
6 101 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 71 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 56 (1.26%) ISTQB
9 44 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.97%) Master's Degree
11 40 (0.90%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.41%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.29%) ACCA
15 13 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 13 (0.29%) CIMA
16 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
17 11 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 835 (18.79%) Data Quality
2 358 (8.06%) QA
3 143 (3.22%) GDPR
4 50 (1.13%) Accessibility
5 43 (0.97%) SLA
6 26 (0.59%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 20 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.43%) IFRS
9 19 (0.43%) NIST
10 16 (0.36%) MiFID
11 13 (0.29%) PMO
11 13 (0.29%) Solvency II
12 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.25%) COBIT
14 9 (0.20%) GRC
14 9 (0.20%) WCAG
15 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.18%) HL7
System Software
1 442 (9.95%) Docker
2 124 (2.79%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.88%) Virtual Machines
5 38 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.34%) vCloud
7 15 (0.34%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 11 (0.25%) Hyper-V
10 7 (0.16%) Postfix
11 4 (0.090%) KVM
12 3 (0.068%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.023%) Microsoft App-V
14 1 (0.023%) RACF
14 1 (0.023%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 372 (8.37%) Kubernetes
2 92 (2.07%) Ansible
3 83 (1.87%) Grafana
4 47 (1.06%) Prometheus
5 43 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
6 40 (0.90%) Control-M
6 40 (0.90%) Data Guard
7 30 (0.68%) SCOM
8 21 (0.47%) Kibana
9 16 (0.36%) Nagios
9 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
10 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
10 15 (0.34%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.32%) Netcool
12 13 (0.29%) OpenView
12 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
14 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
15 10 (0.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 751 (16.90%) Microsoft
2 746 (16.79%) Oracle
3 534 (12.02%) Databricks
4 169 (3.80%) Google
5 138 (3.11%) Informatica
6 120 (2.70%) SAP
7 100 (2.25%) Talend
8 98 (2.21%) ServiceNow
9 91 (2.05%) IBM
10 81 (1.82%) Splunk
11 65 (1.46%) VMware
12 56 (1.26%) Salesforce
13 53 (1.19%) Denodo
14 40 (0.90%) Bloomberg
15 39 (0.88%) BMC
16 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.79%) Citrix
18 34 (0.77%) Alteryx
19 33 (0.74%) Murex
20 32 (0.72%) Adobe