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 6 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,964 2,949 3,677
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.25% 12.10% 9.84%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.36% 35.94% 34.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,756 2,081 2,686
10th Percentile £350 £354 £354
25th Percentile £413 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% +0.92%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £756 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 57 61
10th Percentile £26.24 £24.35 £21.64
25th Percentile £34.51 £30.00 £25.79
Median hourly rate £47.50 £52.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.52% +23.53% -13.76%
75th Percentile £70.75 £65.62 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.55 £79.21 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £47.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +10.53% +11.76% -15.00%

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 10,902 8,205 10,814
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 28.20% 33.66% 28.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,285 5,627 7,849
10th Percentile £355 £360 £350
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -3.90% -2.33% -4.87%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 501 213 430
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £68.56
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 6 April 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 6 April 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 6 April 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 2,277 £513 -5.09% 840
Midlands +4 502 £465 +1.31% 280
North of England -10 457 £450 -5.26% 459
West Midlands +8 403 £461 -2.28% 157
South East -17 306 £500 - 526
North West +1 259 £450 -5.26% 248
South West -4 225 £475 -5.00% 165
Yorkshire -20 178 £475 -5.00% 149
East Midlands +2 97 £525 +34.87% 123
East of England -21 86 £510 +8.80% 147
North East -8 32 £475 +3.26% 66
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
1 216 (5.45%) Apache Spark
2 154 (3.88%) Apache Airflow
3 137 (3.46%) Apache
4 119 (3.00%) Confluence
5 88 (2.22%) SAS
6 80 (2.02%) SharePoint
7 49 (1.24%) WebLogic
8 30 (0.76%) IIS
9 25 (0.63%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 19 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
13 13 (0.33%) Appian
13 13 (0.33%) CMS
13 13 (0.33%) nginx
14 12 (0.30%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 271 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.39%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (1.19%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.10%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.076%) Notion
9 3 (0.076%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.076%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 37 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
4 23 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
5 21 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
5 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.50%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
7 16 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.38%) NetSuite
8 15 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
11 11 (0.28%) Oracle 11i
11 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
11 11 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
14 8 (0.20%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,373 (34.64%) Azure
2 966 (24.37%) AWS
3 776 (19.58%) Power Platform
4 412 (10.39%) Azure DevOps
5 334 (8.43%) Azure Data Factory
6 319 (8.05%) GCP
7 306 (7.72%) GitHub
8 274 (6.91%) Serverless
9 242 (6.10%) Snowflake
10 222 (5.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 217 (5.47%) Amazon S3
12 179 (4.52%) dbt
13 158 (3.99%) GitHub Actions
14 151 (3.81%) AWS Lambda
15 90 (2.27%) SaaS
16 87 (2.19%) Power Automate
17 80 (2.02%) Azure Functions
18 76 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
19 72 (1.82%) Entra ID
20 68 (1.72%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (1.24%) Firewall
2 37 (0.93%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 21 (0.53%) HTTP
5 16 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.38%) Internet
7 14 (0.35%) WAN
8 13 (0.33%) 5G
8 13 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.30%) VPN
10 11 (0.28%) LAN
10 11 (0.28%) SNMP
11 10 (0.25%) 4G
12 9 (0.23%) 2G
12 9 (0.23%) DHCP
12 9 (0.23%) Radio Access Network
13 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 6 (0.15%) Multicast
14 6 (0.15%) VLAN
15 5 (0.13%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 710 (17.91%) Power BI
2 513 (12.94%) Data Warehouse
3 475 (11.98%) SQL Server
4 263 (6.63%) Tableau
5 262 (6.61%) NoSQL
6 258 (6.51%) Relational Database
7 257 (6.48%) PostgreSQL
8 253 (6.38%) Data Lake
9 209 (5.27%) Azure SQL Database
10 202 (5.10%) Metadata
11 142 (3.58%) Oracle Database
11 142 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 123 (3.10%) MySQL
13 114 (2.88%) Amazon Redshift
14 113 (2.85%) Delta Lake
15 111 (2.80%) BigQuery
16 104 (2.62%) Big Data
17 100 (2.52%) Oracle Reports
18 97 (2.45%) Amazon RDS
19 92 (2.32%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 437 (11.02%) Git
2 318 (8.02%) JIRA
3 217 (5.47%) Jenkins
4 160 (4.04%) GitLab
5 60 (1.51%) JUnit
5 60 (1.51%) Selenium
6 46 (1.16%) Postman
7 40 (1.01%) Oracle APEX
8 37 (0.93%) Maven
9 36 (0.91%) Cucumber
10 35 (0.88%) MLflow
11 32 (0.81%) Mockito
12 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
13 26 (0.66%) Bitbucket
14 25 (0.63%) ERwin
14 25 (0.63%) JMeter
15 23 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
15 23 (0.58%) SonarQube
16 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
16 22 (0.55%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,120 (28.25%) Social Skills
2 1,078 (27.19%) Finance
3 737 (18.59%) Analytical Skills
4 401 (10.12%) Banking
5 339 (8.55%) Public Sector
6 106 (2.67%) Investment Banking
7 105 (2.65%) Front Office
8 95 (2.40%) Documentation Skills
9 84 (2.12%) Marketing
10 65 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 55 (1.39%) Legal
11 55 (1.39%) Retail
12 54 (1.36%) Financial Institution
13 45 (1.14%) Telecoms
14 38 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
14 38 (0.96%) Publishing
15 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
16 32 (0.81%) Law
17 28 (0.71%) Back Office
17 28 (0.71%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 888 (22.40%) Developer
2 770 (19.42%) Data Engineer
3 574 (14.48%) Analyst
4 501 (12.64%) Senior
5 271 (6.84%) Lead
6 245 (6.18%) Data Analyst
7 216 (5.45%) Architect
8 197 (4.97%) Business Analyst
9 183 (4.62%) Consultant
10 147 (3.71%) Senior Developer
11 146 (3.68%) Java Developer
12 115 (2.90%) Senior Data Engineer
13 113 (2.85%) Azure Engineer
14 112 (2.83%) DBA
15 105 (2.65%) Software Engineer
16 102 (2.57%) C# Developer
17 93 (2.35%) Python Developer
18 85 (2.14%) Data Architect
18 85 (2.14%) Full-Stack Developer
19 84 (2.12%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (8.68%) .NET
2 315 (7.95%) REST
3 255 (6.43%) Kafka
4 242 (6.10%) PySpark
5 197 (4.97%) React
6 184 (4.64%) RESTful
7 178 (4.49%) Spring
8 163 (4.11%) Spring Boot
9 148 (3.73%) XML
10 142 (3.58%) HTML
11 125 (3.15%) Pandas
12 123 (3.10%) CSS
13 121 (3.05%) JSON
14 112 (2.83%) AngularJS
15 90 (2.27%) Node.js
16 84 (2.12%) Middleware
17 82 (2.07%) .NET Framework
17 82 (2.07%) SOAP
18 75 (1.89%) Web Services
19 74 (1.87%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 254 (6.41%) Cloud Native
2 141 (3.56%) Data Structures
3 127 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
4 120 (3.03%) Product Ownership
5 87 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 76 (1.92%) Derivative
8 69 (1.74%) Data Protection Act
9 65 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
9 65 (1.64%) Onboarding
10 60 (1.51%) Equities
11 59 (1.49%) Fixed Income
12 52 (1.31%) Algorithms
13 47 (1.19%) Clustering
14 45 (1.14%) Enterprise Software
14 45 (1.14%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 45 (1.14%) Self-Motivation
15 40 (1.01%) Replication
16 35 (0.88%) Market Risk
16 35 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 278 (7.01%) Linux
2 236 (5.95%) Windows
3 196 (4.94%) Unix
4 78 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (0.15%) zOS
11 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.076%) CentOS
12 3 (0.076%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.076%) VMS
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,067 (26.92%) CI/CD
2 1,042 (26.29%) Agile
3 1,030 (25.98%) Analytics
4 976 (24.62%) Data Modelling
5 944 (23.81%) ETL
6 937 (23.64%) Business Intelligence
7 913 (23.03%) DevOps
8 846 (21.34%) Problem-Solving
9 695 (17.53%) Data Pipeline
10 621 (15.67%) Data Engineering
11 483 (12.18%) Data Governance
12 482 (12.16%) AI
13 477 (12.03%) Migration
14 460 (11.60%) Validation
15 380 (9.59%) Data Analysis
16 377 (9.51%) Test Automation
17 363 (9.16%) Decision-Making
17 363 (9.16%) Performance Tuning
18 350 (8.83%) Visualisation
19 346 (8.73%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,488 (37.54%) Python
2 543 (13.70%) Java
3 425 (10.72%) C#
4 319 (8.05%) JavaScript
5 301 (7.59%) PL/SQL
6 173 (4.36%) PowerShell
6 173 (4.36%) T-SQL
7 141 (3.56%) TypeScript
8 116 (2.93%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 114 (2.88%) Shell Script
10 109 (2.75%) R
11 90 (2.27%) Scala
12 65 (1.64%) Bash
13 62 (1.56%) VBA
14 60 (1.51%) C++
15 46 (1.16%) Bicep
16 45 (1.14%) Perl
17 30 (0.76%) Go
18 27 (0.68%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 820 (20.69%) Security Cleared
2 656 (16.55%) SC Cleared
3 318 (8.02%) Degree
4 114 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 65 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 51 (1.29%) DV Cleared
7 51 (1.29%) ISTQB
8 50 (1.26%) Master's Degree
9 41 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (0.81%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 15 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
12 15 (0.38%) PhD
13 14 (0.35%) CBAP
14 10 (0.25%) PMP
15 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
16 8 (0.20%) DBS Check
16 8 (0.20%) ISEB
16 8 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 715 (18.04%) Data Quality
2 301 (7.59%) QA
3 180 (4.54%) GDPR
4 55 (1.39%) Accessibility
5 33 (0.83%) SLA
6 30 (0.76%) PMO
7 29 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 18 (0.45%) MiFID
10 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
11 16 (0.40%) NIST
12 15 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 15 (0.38%) HIPAA
13 14 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 13 (0.33%) IFRS
15 12 (0.30%) SEPA
15 12 (0.30%) WCAG
16 11 (0.28%) EMIR
16 11 (0.28%) ISO 20022
17 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 452 (11.40%) Docker
2 97 (2.45%) Active Directory
3 34 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
4 19 (0.48%) Oracle RAC
5 17 (0.43%) VMware Infrastructure
6 13 (0.33%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.18%) KVM
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) Postfix
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.13%) XenApp
10 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.076%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
13 1 (0.025%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 405 (10.22%) Kubernetes
2 314 (7.92%) Terraform
3 93 (2.35%) Grafana
4 62 (1.56%) Ansible
4 62 (1.56%) Prometheus
5 33 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
6 20 (0.50%) Data Guard
6 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
7 18 (0.45%) Progress Chef
8 15 (0.38%) SCCM
9 14 (0.35%) Control-M
10 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
11 10 (0.25%) Nagios
11 10 (0.25%) Netcool
11 10 (0.25%) OpenView
11 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
11 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
12 9 (0.23%) Kibana
13 8 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
13 8 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 666 (16.80%) Oracle
2 648 (16.35%) Microsoft
3 482 (12.16%) Databricks
4 159 (4.01%) Google
5 122 (3.08%) Informatica
6 120 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 106 (2.67%) Talend
8 101 (2.55%) SAP
9 73 (1.84%) Splunk
10 61 (1.54%) IBM
11 60 (1.51%) Salesforce
12 54 (1.36%) Denodo
13 51 (1.29%) Citrix
14 43 (1.08%) OpenAI
15 35 (0.88%) MuleSoft
16 34 (0.86%) Bloomberg
17 29 (0.73%) Dynatrace
17 29 (0.73%) HP
17 29 (0.73%) VMware
18 27 (0.68%) Foundry