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 22 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,442 3,231 3,557
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.60% 11.78% 10.95%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.06% 35.87% 33.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,984 2,257 2,556
10th Percentile £355 £333 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £646
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 72 42
10th Percentile £21.29 £29.00 £25.33
25th Percentile £27.14 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £40.58
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% +23.22% -11.56%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.90 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +31.58% -17.28%

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 11,987 9,007 10,577
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.90% 32.85% 32.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,745 6,074 7,211
10th Percentile £363 £350 £351
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.14% -6.55% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £523 £505 £526
% change year-on-year +3.47% -3.90% -4.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 516 257 305
10th Percentile £26.68 £31.25 £30.00
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £49.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.25 £79.67
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 22 September 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 22 September 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 22 September 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 2,485 £525 - 3,050
North of England -1 589 £475 +5.56% 711
Midlands -5 456 £469 +1.68% 449
South East -13 448 £475 -3.06% 683
West Midlands -4 353 £469 -6.20% 276
North West -1 288 £500 +13.64% 415
Yorkshire +7 252 £459 -3.42% 216
South West -2 236 £524 +19.71% 273
East of England -9 120 £495 -1.49% 194
East Midlands -3 101 £464 +15.54% 173
North East -6 56 £406 -12.63% 85
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 (5.09%) Apache Airflow
2 187 (4.21%) Apache Spark
2 187 (4.21%) Confluence
3 143 (3.22%) Apache
4 84 (1.89%) SharePoint
5 72 (1.62%) SAS
6 32 (0.72%) Oracle Workflow
7 30 (0.68%) WebLogic
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
9 27 (0.61%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 22 (0.50%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) CMS
13 18 (0.41%) nginx
14 17 (0.38%) Camunda
15 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
16 12 (0.27%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 268 (6.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.14%) Windchill
8 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.090%) Notion
9 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
11 2 (0.045%) Mingle
12 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.023%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 46 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
3 27 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 25 (0.56%) Aladdin
5 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
9 13 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
10 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle FAH
12 9 (0.20%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
12 9 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.20%) Summit
13 8 (0.18%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,355 (30.50%) Azure
2 1,075 (24.20%) AWS
3 853 (19.20%) Power Platform
4 435 (9.79%) GCP
5 364 (8.19%) Azure DevOps
6 348 (7.83%) Snowflake
7 307 (6.91%) GitHub
8 297 (6.69%) Azure Data Factory
9 289 (6.51%) dbt
10 272 (6.12%) Serverless
11 233 (5.25%) Amazon S3
12 183 (4.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
15 100 (2.25%) Power Automate
16 94 (2.12%) SaaS
17 88 (1.98%) PowerApps
18 87 (1.96%) Entra ID
19 82 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 81 (1.82%) Azure Databricks
Communications & Networking
1 59 (1.33%) DNS
2 38 (0.86%) Firewall
3 27 (0.61%) HTTP
4 25 (0.56%) SSL
5 23 (0.52%) Internet
5 23 (0.52%) Network Security
6 19 (0.43%) Broadband
6 19 (0.43%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.43%) VPN
7 15 (0.34%) DHCP
7 15 (0.34%) SNMP
8 12 (0.27%) SSH
9 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
9 9 (0.20%) SAN
10 8 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
10 8 (0.18%) RTP
10 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 7 (0.16%) 5G
11 7 (0.16%) Multicast
11 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 786 (17.69%) Power BI
2 612 (13.78%) Data Warehouse
3 566 (12.74%) SQL Server
4 285 (6.42%) Relational Database
5 276 (6.21%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (5.81%) Tableau
7 256 (5.76%) Data Lake
8 231 (5.20%) Metadata
9 210 (4.73%) NoSQL
10 201 (4.52%) Oracle Database
11 190 (4.28%) BigQuery
12 147 (3.31%) Azure SQL Database
13 135 (3.04%) Amazon Redshift
14 129 (2.90%) Delta Lake
15 121 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 118 (2.66%) MySQL
17 107 (2.41%) Amazon Athena
18 94 (2.12%) Big Data
18 94 (2.12%) Power Query
19 87 (1.96%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 564 (12.70%) Git
2 351 (7.90%) JIRA
3 248 (5.58%) Jenkins
4 214 (4.82%) GitLab
5 96 (2.16%) Selenium
6 78 (1.76%) JUnit
7 74 (1.67%) Gradle
8 72 (1.62%) Maven
9 60 (1.35%) Postman
10 48 (1.08%) Mockito
11 45 (1.01%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.90%) Bitbucket
13 32 (0.72%) Oracle Forms
14 29 (0.65%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.65%) Zephyr
15 25 (0.56%) JMeter
16 24 (0.54%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.52%) Cypress.io
18 22 (0.50%) Artifactory
18 22 (0.50%) TeamCity
General
1 1,238 (27.87%) Social Skills
2 1,179 (26.54%) Finance
3 932 (20.98%) Analytical Skills
4 518 (11.66%) Banking
5 383 (8.62%) Public Sector
6 149 (3.35%) Marketing
7 129 (2.90%) Front Office
8 128 (2.88%) Retail
9 116 (2.61%) Investment Banking
10 93 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 77 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
12 76 (1.71%) Manufacturing
13 48 (1.08%) Financial Institution
13 48 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
14 47 (1.06%) Legal
15 42 (0.95%) Back Office
16 41 (0.92%) Local Government
17 40 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
18 36 (0.81%) Law
19 35 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 938 (21.12%) Developer
2 850 (19.14%) Data Engineer
3 651 (14.66%) Analyst
4 640 (14.41%) Senior
5 304 (6.84%) Lead
6 262 (5.90%) Data Analyst
7 222 (5.00%) Architect
8 199 (4.48%) Senior Data Engineer
9 193 (4.34%) Business Analyst
10 189 (4.25%) Consultant
11 171 (3.85%) DBA
12 161 (3.62%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.35%) Senior Developer
14 114 (2.57%) Software Engineer
15 105 (2.36%) SQL DBA
16 102 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
16 102 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
16 102 (2.30%) SQL Developer
17 98 (2.21%) Data Architect
18 96 (2.16%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 406 (9.14%) REST
2 382 (8.60%) .NET
3 371 (8.35%) Terraform
4 302 (6.80%) PySpark
5 286 (6.44%) Kafka
6 228 (5.13%) Spring
7 216 (4.86%) Spring Boot
8 211 (4.75%) React
9 181 (4.07%) HTML
10 164 (3.69%) RESTful
11 157 (3.53%) CSS
12 156 (3.51%) JSON
13 134 (3.02%) XML
14 107 (2.41%) AngularJS
15 104 (2.34%) Web Services
16 101 (2.27%) SOAP
17 96 (2.16%) Middleware
18 92 (2.07%) Pandas
19 81 (1.82%) .NET Framework
20 79 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 278 (6.26%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.98%) Data Structures
3 204 (4.59%) Product Ownership
4 138 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
5 123 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
6 122 (2.75%) Enterprise Software
7 118 (2.66%) Onboarding
8 94 (2.12%) Management Information System
9 82 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 78 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
11 71 (1.60%) Derivative
12 64 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
12 64 (1.44%) Replication
13 60 (1.35%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.35%) Reference Data
14 55 (1.24%) Clustering
15 50 (1.13%) Algorithms
16 48 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
17 44 (0.99%) Fixed Income
18 43 (0.97%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 315 (7.09%) Linux
2 277 (6.24%) Windows
3 215 (4.84%) Unix
4 111 (2.50%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 24 (0.54%) Solaris
6 12 (0.27%) AIX
6 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) VMS
10 6 (0.14%) Android
10 6 (0.14%) Windows 10
11 5 (0.11%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.11%) zOS
12 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.068%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
14 2 (0.045%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,215 (27.35%) CI/CD
2 1,177 (26.50%) Agile
3 1,139 (25.64%) Data Modelling
4 1,123 (25.28%) Analytics
5 980 (22.06%) Business Intelligence
6 978 (22.02%) ETL
7 891 (20.06%) Problem-Solving
8 871 (19.61%) Data Pipeline
9 843 (18.98%) DevOps
10 766 (17.24%) Data Engineering
11 742 (16.70%) AI
12 686 (15.44%) Validation
13 636 (14.32%) Migration
13 636 (14.32%) Stakeholder Management
14 515 (11.59%) Continuous Improvement
15 511 (11.50%) Test Automation
16 500 (11.26%) Data Governance
17 497 (11.19%) Data Analysis
18 484 (10.90%) Decision-Making
19 384 (8.64%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,608 (36.20%) Python
2 549 (12.36%) Java
3 404 (9.10%) C#
4 365 (8.22%) JavaScript
5 344 (7.74%) PL/SQL
6 233 (5.25%) PowerShell
7 208 (4.68%) T-SQL
8 188 (4.23%) TypeScript
9 141 (3.17%) Shell Script
10 136 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 104 (2.34%) Bash
12 75 (1.69%) R
13 71 (1.60%) Scala
14 37 (0.83%) C++
14 37 (0.83%) VBA
15 28 (0.63%) Bicep
16 27 (0.61%) Kotlin
17 26 (0.59%) Go
17 26 (0.59%) VB
18 25 (0.56%) C
Qualifications
1 942 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 738 (16.61%) SC Cleared
3 331 (7.45%) Degree
4 128 (2.88%) DV Cleared
5 115 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 113 (2.54%) Computer Science Degree
7 72 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.22%) ISTQB
9 52 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.97%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.90%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.38%) ACCA
12 17 (0.38%) CIMA
12 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 16 (0.36%) CISSP
13 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 15 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.32%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 886 (19.95%) Data Quality
2 367 (8.26%) QA
3 117 (2.63%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.04%) SLA
6 28 (0.63%) Actionable Recommendations
7 23 (0.52%) IFRS
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 19 (0.43%) NIST
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 13 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 11 (0.25%) Basel III
12 11 (0.25%) COBIT
12 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.25%) PMO
13 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
14 7 (0.16%) EMIR
14 7 (0.16%) WCAG
System Software
1 425 (9.57%) Docker
2 112 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 51 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
6 19 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.32%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.16%) Postfix
11 5 (0.11%) KVM
12 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.023%) HDFS
14 1 (0.023%) RACF
14 1 (0.023%) Varnish
14 1 (0.023%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 358 (8.06%) Kubernetes
2 90 (2.03%) Grafana
3 89 (2.00%) Ansible
4 51 (1.15%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.90%) SCOM
6 38 (0.86%) Control-M
6 38 (0.86%) Data Guard
6 38 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.77%) Kibana
8 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
9 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
11 10 (0.23%) Nagios
11 10 (0.23%) ZABBIX
12 9 (0.20%) Argo
12 9 (0.20%) Progress Chef
12 9 (0.20%) Tivoli
13 8 (0.18%) Podman
Vendors
1 751 (16.91%) Microsoft
2 749 (16.86%) Oracle
3 569 (12.81%) Databricks
4 202 (4.55%) Google
5 124 (2.79%) Informatica
6 122 (2.75%) SAP
7 99 (2.23%) Talend
8 96 (2.16%) IBM
9 85 (1.91%) ServiceNow
10 79 (1.78%) Splunk
11 69 (1.55%) VMware
12 60 (1.35%) Salesforce
13 49 (1.10%) Denodo
14 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
15 36 (0.81%) Alteryx
15 36 (0.81%) Foundry
16 35 (0.79%) Adobe
16 35 (0.79%) OpenAI
17 34 (0.77%) UiPath
18 33 (0.74%) Murex