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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,505 3,235 3,583
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.62% 11.49% 11.16%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.81% 35.27% 34.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,036 2,232 2,492
10th Percentile £356 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 74 45
10th Percentile £20.90 £24.14 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.51 £32.85 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.20% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £75.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £37.75
% change year-on-year -11.00% +32.45% -16.11%

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 12,238 9,172 10,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.13% 32.58% 32.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,911 6,135 6,913
10th Percentile £363 £350 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £543
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -5.53% -1.36%
75th Percentile £634 £625 £650
90th Percentile £738 £748 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +3.93% -3.79% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 530 263 290
10th Percentile £21.25 £31.25 £30.00
25th Percentile £48.16 £42.25 £47.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.04% -13.08% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £78.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -7 2,548 £525 - 2,680
North of England +3 616 £475 +5.56% 643
Midlands -3 449 £469 -4.29% 352
South East -12 443 £475 -1.04% 505
West Midlands -1 361 £469 -8.04% 228
North West +4 313 £493 +13.87% 367
Yorkshire +8 250 £475 - 172
South West +1 237 £545 +14.74% 191
East of England -8 114 £505 +0.70% 179
East Midlands -8 86 £450 +9.76% 124
North East -1 63 £406 -14.47% 108
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
1 226 (5.02%) Apache Airflow
2 211 (4.68%) Confluence
3 202 (4.48%) Apache Spark
4 165 (3.66%) Apache
5 88 (1.95%) SharePoint
6 79 (1.75%) SAS
7 35 (0.78%) WebLogic
8 30 (0.67%) IIS
9 27 (0.60%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
10 26 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.44%) CMS
13 19 (0.42%) Camunda
14 15 (0.33%) nginx
14 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
15 12 (0.27%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
18 6 (0.13%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 263 (5.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 22 (0.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 43 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.51%) Oracle EBS
6 20 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
8 15 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
10 11 (0.24%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
11 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.18%) Finacle
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
12 8 (0.18%) Summit
13 7 (0.16%) Maximo
13 7 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
Cloud Services
1 1,376 (30.54%) Azure
2 1,093 (24.26%) AWS
3 856 (19.00%) Power Platform
4 460 (10.21%) GCP
5 365 (8.10%) Azure DevOps
6 364 (8.08%) Snowflake
7 322 (7.15%) GitHub
8 291 (6.46%) Azure Data Factory
9 287 (6.37%) dbt
10 264 (5.86%) Serverless
11 225 (4.99%) Amazon S3
12 181 (4.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 156 (3.46%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (3.20%) GitHub Actions
15 108 (2.40%) Entra ID
16 103 (2.29%) SaaS
17 99 (2.20%) Power Automate
18 95 (2.11%) Azure Databricks
18 95 (2.11%) PowerApps
19 75 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 70 (1.55%) DNS
2 43 (0.95%) Firewall
3 29 (0.64%) Network Security
3 29 (0.64%) SSL
4 26 (0.58%) HTTP
5 22 (0.49%) Broadband
6 21 (0.47%) VPN
7 20 (0.44%) Internet
7 20 (0.44%) TCP/IP
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 14 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 11 (0.24%) SNMP
12 10 (0.22%) SAN
13 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
13 9 (0.20%) Multicast
14 7 (0.16%) 5G
15 6 (0.13%) 4G
15 6 (0.13%) MQTT
15 6 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 780 (17.31%) Power BI
2 603 (13.39%) Data Warehouse
3 588 (13.05%) SQL Server
4 288 (6.39%) Relational Database
5 263 (5.84%) Data Lake
5 263 (5.84%) PostgreSQL
6 243 (5.39%) Tableau
7 233 (5.17%) Metadata
8 208 (4.62%) NoSQL
9 200 (4.44%) Oracle Database
10 197 (4.37%) BigQuery
11 157 (3.49%) Azure SQL Database
12 137 (3.04%) Delta Lake
13 126 (2.80%) Amazon Redshift
14 120 (2.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 114 (2.53%) MySQL
16 96 (2.13%) Amazon Athena
17 94 (2.09%) Big Data
18 93 (2.06%) Power Query
19 91 (2.02%) Looker
Development Applications
1 610 (13.54%) Git
2 384 (8.52%) JIRA
3 245 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 230 (5.11%) GitLab
5 95 (2.11%) Selenium
6 79 (1.75%) JUnit
7 77 (1.71%) Maven
8 75 (1.66%) Gradle
9 63 (1.40%) Postman
10 47 (1.04%) Mockito
11 41 (0.91%) Bitbucket
12 39 (0.87%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.69%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.69%) Zephyr
14 29 (0.64%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.60%) Cucumber
16 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
17 25 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
18 24 (0.53%) Cypress.io
19 23 (0.51%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,274 (28.28%) Social Skills
2 1,214 (26.95%) Finance
3 957 (21.24%) Analytical Skills
4 561 (12.45%) Banking
5 408 (9.06%) Public Sector
6 145 (3.22%) Marketing
7 140 (3.11%) Retail
8 131 (2.91%) Front Office
9 129 (2.86%) Investment Banking
10 88 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 83 (1.84%) Manufacturing
12 75 (1.66%) Documentation Skills
13 58 (1.29%) Financial Institution
14 50 (1.11%) Legal
15 47 (1.04%) Influencing Skills
16 46 (1.02%) Back Office
17 44 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
18 41 (0.91%) Military
19 40 (0.89%) Law
20 38 (0.84%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 956 (21.22%) Developer
2 847 (18.80%) Data Engineer
3 671 (14.89%) Analyst
4 658 (14.61%) Senior
5 307 (6.81%) Lead
6 285 (6.33%) Data Analyst
7 219 (4.86%) Architect
8 200 (4.44%) Senior Data Engineer
9 198 (4.40%) Business Analyst
10 170 (3.77%) DBA
11 169 (3.75%) Consultant
12 152 (3.37%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.31%) Senior Developer
14 114 (2.53%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.38%) Azure Engineer
16 101 (2.24%) Full-Stack Developer
16 101 (2.24%) Python Developer
17 97 (2.15%) SQL DBA
18 94 (2.09%) SQL Developer
19 91 (2.02%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 444 (9.86%) REST
2 395 (8.77%) Terraform
3 392 (8.70%) .NET
4 317 (7.04%) PySpark
5 309 (6.86%) Kafka
6 227 (5.04%) Spring
7 218 (4.84%) Spring Boot
8 215 (4.77%) React
9 173 (3.84%) HTML
9 173 (3.84%) JSON
10 162 (3.60%) RESTful
11 146 (3.24%) XML
12 140 (3.11%) CSS
13 110 (2.44%) SOAP
14 109 (2.42%) AngularJS
15 106 (2.35%) Web Services
16 94 (2.09%) Middleware
17 90 (2.00%) OAuth
18 84 (1.86%) Pandas
19 82 (1.82%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 301 (6.68%) Cloud Native
2 229 (5.08%) Data Structures
3 217 (4.82%) Product Ownership
4 146 (3.24%) Enterprise Software
4 146 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
5 122 (2.71%) Distributed Systems
5 122 (2.71%) Onboarding
6 104 (2.31%) Management Information System
7 97 (2.15%) AI Agents
8 80 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
9 74 (1.64%) Replication
10 72 (1.60%) Derivative
11 66 (1.47%) Reference Data
12 64 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
14 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
15 55 (1.22%) Clustering
16 49 (1.09%) Data Centre
17 47 (1.04%) Fixed Income
18 43 (0.95%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 315 (6.99%) Linux
2 267 (5.93%) Windows
3 199 (4.42%) Unix
4 111 (2.46%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.22%) VMS
8 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) AIX
10 7 (0.16%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.11%) zOS
13 4 (0.089%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.044%) Amazon Linux
14 2 (0.044%) CentOS
14 2 (0.044%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,262 (28.01%) CI/CD
2 1,238 (27.48%) Agile
3 1,174 (26.06%) Data Modelling
4 1,145 (25.42%) Analytics
5 992 (22.02%) ETL
6 967 (21.47%) Business Intelligence
7 892 (19.80%) Problem-Solving
8 886 (19.67%) Data Pipeline
9 858 (19.05%) DevOps
10 832 (18.47%) Data Engineering
11 828 (18.38%) AI
12 753 (16.71%) Validation
13 700 (15.54%) Stakeholder Management
14 671 (14.89%) Migration
15 569 (12.63%) Test Automation
16 551 (12.23%) Continuous Improvement
17 525 (11.65%) Data Governance
18 522 (11.59%) Data Analysis
19 507 (11.25%) Decision-Making
20 415 (9.21%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,630 (36.18%) Python
2 558 (12.39%) Java
3 417 (9.26%) C#
4 387 (8.59%) JavaScript
5 315 (6.99%) PL/SQL
6 233 (5.17%) PowerShell
7 204 (4.53%) T-SQL
8 202 (4.48%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.11%) Shell Script
10 137 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 112 (2.49%) Bash
12 66 (1.47%) R
13 64 (1.42%) Scala
14 37 (0.82%) Bicep
15 34 (0.75%) C++
15 34 (0.75%) Kotlin
16 32 (0.71%) Go
16 32 (0.71%) VBA
17 26 (0.58%) C
18 24 (0.53%) VB
Qualifications
1 969 (21.51%) Security Cleared
2 755 (16.76%) SC Cleared
3 338 (7.50%) Degree
4 144 (3.20%) DV Cleared
5 124 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
6 114 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 77 (1.71%) Azure Certification
8 64 (1.42%) ISTQB
9 52 (1.15%) AWS Certification
10 50 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 41 (0.91%) Master's Degree
12 25 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 20 (0.44%) CISSP
13 20 (0.44%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) ACCA
14 16 (0.36%) CIMA
15 15 (0.33%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 13 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 941 (20.89%) Data Quality
2 362 (8.04%) QA
3 121 (2.69%) GDPR
4 51 (1.13%) Accessibility
5 45 (1.00%) SLA
6 32 (0.71%) Actionable Recommendations
7 25 (0.55%) IFRS
7 25 (0.55%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 19 (0.42%) ISO 20022
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) COBIT
12 14 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 12 (0.27%) Basel III
14 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) SEPA
16 8 (0.18%) GRC
16 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.18%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 419 (9.30%) Docker
2 121 (2.69%) Active Directory
3 49 (1.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
5 32 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.27%) Hyper-V
10 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 4 (0.089%) Postfix
11 3 (0.067%) KVM
12 2 (0.044%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.044%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.044%) Squid
13 1 (0.022%) HDFS
13 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 393 (8.72%) Kubernetes
2 93 (2.06%) Ansible
3 80 (1.78%) Grafana
4 51 (1.13%) Prometheus
5 41 (0.91%) Control-M
6 39 (0.87%) SCOM
7 33 (0.73%) Kibana
8 31 (0.69%) Data Guard
9 26 (0.58%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
14 11 (0.24%) Istio
14 11 (0.24%) Progress Chef
15 10 (0.22%) Argo
16 8 (0.18%) Podman
16 8 (0.18%) SCCM
16 8 (0.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 794 (17.62%) Microsoft
2 751 (16.67%) Oracle
3 608 (13.50%) Databricks
4 225 (4.99%) Google
5 130 (2.89%) Informatica
6 123 (2.73%) SAP
7 104 (2.31%) Talend
8 103 (2.29%) IBM
9 87 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 73 (1.62%) Splunk
11 66 (1.47%) VMware
12 63 (1.40%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.04%) Denodo
14 45 (1.00%) OpenAI
15 43 (0.95%) Foundry
16 40 (0.89%) UiPath
17 38 (0.84%) Bloomberg
18 35 (0.78%) Dynatrace
18 35 (0.78%) Murex
19 34 (0.75%) Alteryx