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 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,423 3,287 3,620
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.86% 12.02% 10.29%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.25% 36.40% 33.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,958 2,334 2,738
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £759 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 61 41
10th Percentile £24.14 £22.81 £24.00
25th Percentile £29.96 £30.25 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £40.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.33% -4.71% -10.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £51.91
90th Percentile £82.25 £64.50 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £39.67 £41.50
% change year-on-year +13.43% -4.40% -15.30%

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 11,873 9,030 10,954
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.46% 33.02% 31.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,704 6,213 7,885
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £545
Median % change year-on-year +1.02% -5.50% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £503 £525
% change year-on-year +1.99% -4.29% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 480 230 402
10th Percentile £34.01 £29.07 £35.00
25th Percentile £53.88 £39.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £83.11 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.75
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.56% +3.51%

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 23 July 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 23 July 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 23 July 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 2,369 £525 - 890
North of England -3 581 £463 -2.63% 303
Midlands +2 549 £459 +8.00% 197
South East -11 461 £475 -5.00% 373
West Midlands +4 449 £458 +1.78% 108
North West -4 309 £475 +1.71% 167
Yorkshire -7 235 £460 -3.16% 89
South West -7 234 £500 +14.29% 137
East of England -9 119 £491 -1.75% 85
East Midlands -6 96 £515 +32.48% 89
North East -16 50 £425 -8.11% 54
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
1 205 (4.63%) Apache Spark
2 187 (4.23%) Apache Airflow
3 178 (4.02%) Confluence
4 151 (3.41%) Apache
5 91 (2.06%) SAS
6 57 (1.29%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 39 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 23 (0.52%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Tomcat
12 19 (0.43%) CMS
13 18 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
13 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
14 17 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
17 12 (0.27%) Camunda
18 10 (0.23%) Appian
19 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 287 (6.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 30 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
7 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.090%) Notion
7 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.023%) InDesign
9 1 (0.023%) Mingle
9 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
8 17 (0.38%) NEC Housing
8 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Fidessa
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
12 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
12 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,395 (31.54%) Azure
2 1,042 (23.56%) AWS
3 832 (18.81%) Power Platform
4 396 (8.95%) Azure DevOps
5 383 (8.66%) GCP
6 320 (7.23%) Azure Data Factory
7 309 (6.99%) GitHub
8 286 (6.47%) Snowflake
9 271 (6.13%) Serverless
10 248 (5.61%) dbt
11 246 (5.56%) Amazon S3
12 204 (4.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 180 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
14 157 (3.55%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (2.01%) Entra ID
16 81 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 81 (1.83%) SaaS
17 80 (1.81%) Power Automate
18 70 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
18 70 (1.58%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.04%) DNS
2 40 (0.90%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
4 21 (0.47%) VPN
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 19 (0.43%) Network Security
7 14 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) DHCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (17.41%) Power BI
2 608 (13.75%) Data Warehouse
3 575 (13.00%) SQL Server
4 296 (6.69%) Tableau
5 280 (6.33%) Relational Database
6 274 (6.19%) Data Lake
7 272 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
8 222 (5.02%) Metadata
8 222 (5.02%) NoSQL
9 183 (4.14%) Oracle Database
10 174 (3.93%) Azure SQL Database
11 158 (3.57%) BigQuery
12 153 (3.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 137 (3.10%) Amazon Redshift
14 121 (2.74%) Delta Lake
15 103 (2.33%) Big Data
15 103 (2.33%) Oracle Reports
16 98 (2.22%) MySQL
16 98 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
17 89 (2.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 485 (10.97%) Git
2 343 (7.75%) JIRA
3 237 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 180 (4.07%) GitLab
5 70 (1.58%) JUnit
6 61 (1.38%) Maven
7 54 (1.22%) Gradle
8 52 (1.18%) Postman
9 50 (1.13%) Selenium
10 47 (1.06%) Mockito
11 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
12 34 (0.77%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.72%) Bitbucket
14 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
15 29 (0.66%) ERwin
16 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
17 27 (0.61%) Cucumber
17 27 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
18 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
18 26 (0.59%) TeamCity
General
1 1,144 (25.86%) Social Skills
2 1,143 (25.84%) Finance
3 880 (19.90%) Analytical Skills
4 416 (9.41%) Banking
5 397 (8.98%) Public Sector
6 132 (2.98%) Marketing
7 124 (2.80%) Front Office
8 99 (2.24%) Retail
9 95 (2.15%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
11 73 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.36%) Manufacturing
13 55 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
14 50 (1.13%) Legal
15 49 (1.11%) Financial Institution
16 46 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
18 37 (0.84%) Publishing
18 37 (0.84%) Telecoms
19 30 (0.68%) Law
Job Titles
1 939 (21.23%) Developer
2 879 (19.87%) Data Engineer
3 630 (14.24%) Analyst
4 587 (13.27%) Senior
5 308 (6.96%) Lead
6 276 (6.24%) Data Analyst
7 231 (5.22%) Architect
8 214 (4.84%) Consultant
9 178 (4.02%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.98%) Java Developer
11 173 (3.91%) Senior Data Engineer
12 167 (3.78%) DBA
13 146 (3.30%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.89%) Software Engineer
15 113 (2.55%) SQL Developer
16 111 (2.51%) SQL DBA
17 109 (2.46%) Azure Engineer
18 100 (2.26%) C# Developer
19 92 (2.08%) Data Architect
20 87 (1.97%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (8.12%) .NET
2 358 (8.09%) REST
3 268 (6.06%) Kafka
3 268 (6.06%) PySpark
4 225 (5.09%) Spring
5 205 (4.63%) Spring Boot
6 198 (4.48%) React
7 181 (4.09%) RESTful
8 166 (3.75%) JSON
9 161 (3.64%) XML
10 138 (3.12%) HTML
11 127 (2.87%) AngularJS
12 122 (2.76%) CSS
13 111 (2.51%) Pandas
14 103 (2.33%) SOAP
15 102 (2.31%) Web Services
16 92 (2.08%) .NET Framework
16 92 (2.08%) Middleware
17 71 (1.61%) Node.js
17 71 (1.61%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 199 (4.50%) Data Structures
3 159 (3.59%) Legacy Systems
4 158 (3.57%) Product Ownership
5 136 (3.07%) Distributed Systems
6 91 (2.06%) Onboarding
7 81 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
8 79 (1.79%) Derivative
9 78 (1.76%) Management Information System
10 72 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
10 72 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
11 66 (1.49%) Clustering
12 64 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.36%) Replication
14 55 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.20%) Fixed Income
16 50 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
17 49 (1.11%) Equities
18 45 (1.02%) Reference Data
19 41 (0.93%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 301 (6.81%) Linux
2 274 (6.19%) Windows
3 207 (4.68%) Unix
4 104 (2.35%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.36%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
8 8 (0.18%) zOS
9 7 (0.16%) Android
9 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.090%) VMS
13 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,164 (26.32%) CI/CD
2 1,152 (26.05%) Analytics
3 1,121 (25.34%) Agile
4 1,108 (25.05%) Data Modelling
5 1,025 (23.17%) ETL
6 991 (22.41%) Business Intelligence
7 888 (20.08%) DevOps
8 858 (19.40%) Data Pipeline
9 854 (19.31%) Problem-Solving
10 748 (16.91%) Data Engineering
11 630 (14.24%) AI
12 604 (13.66%) Migration
13 586 (13.25%) Validation
14 483 (10.92%) Data Governance
15 456 (10.31%) Test Automation
16 452 (10.22%) Decision-Making
17 448 (10.13%) Continuous Improvement
18 436 (9.86%) Stakeholder Management
19 426 (9.63%) Data Analysis
20 390 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,573 (35.56%) Python
2 560 (12.66%) Java
3 436 (9.86%) C#
4 349 (7.89%) PL/SQL
5 306 (6.92%) JavaScript
6 240 (5.43%) T-SQL
7 239 (5.40%) PowerShell
8 165 (3.73%) TypeScript
9 132 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 127 (2.87%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.10%) R
12 91 (2.06%) Bash
13 67 (1.51%) Scala
14 46 (1.04%) C++
15 44 (0.99%) VBA
16 38 (0.86%) Bicep
17 33 (0.75%) C
18 31 (0.70%) VB
19 22 (0.50%) Go
20 21 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 948 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 754 (17.05%) SC Cleared
3 323 (7.30%) Degree
4 102 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
4 102 (2.31%) DV Cleared
5 100 (2.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 67 (1.51%) Azure Certification
7 50 (1.13%) Master's Degree
8 49 (1.11%) ISTQB
9 37 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 28 (0.63%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 17 (0.38%) PhD
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 12 (0.27%) ISEB
14 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 10 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 10 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
15 9 (0.20%) CIMA
15 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 811 (18.34%) Data Quality
2 328 (7.42%) QA
3 164 (3.71%) GDPR
4 48 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 19 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 18 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
9 18 (0.41%) NIST
10 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.34%) IFRS
12 13 (0.29%) MiFID
13 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 11 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.23%) HL7
15 10 (0.23%) PCI DSS
16 9 (0.20%) WCAG
17 8 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 431 (9.74%) Docker
2 111 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 33 (0.75%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.29%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 7 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
16 1 (0.023%) XenApp
16 1 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 372 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 343 (7.75%) Terraform
3 92 (2.08%) Grafana
4 80 (1.81%) Ansible
5 48 (1.09%) Prometheus
6 39 (0.88%) Oracle RMAN
7 35 (0.79%) Data Guard
8 27 (0.61%) Control-M
9 22 (0.50%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.43%) Kibana
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 767 (17.34%) Oracle
2 701 (15.85%) Microsoft
3 503 (11.37%) Databricks
4 172 (3.89%) Google
5 156 (3.53%) Informatica
6 123 (2.78%) ServiceNow
7 122 (2.76%) Talend
8 119 (2.69%) SAP
9 80 (1.81%) Splunk
10 76 (1.72%) IBM
11 60 (1.36%) Denodo
12 54 (1.22%) Salesforce
13 52 (1.18%) VMware
14 42 (0.95%) Citrix
15 38 (0.86%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.75%) Alteryx
16 33 (0.75%) BMC
17 32 (0.72%) Murex
18 29 (0.66%) SolarWinds