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

6 months to
20 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,410 3,294 3,646
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.82% 12.01% 10.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.09% 36.29% 32.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,960 2,338 2,757
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £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 £761 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 62 44
10th Percentile £25.34 £22.83 £24.00
25th Percentile £31.86 £30.50 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £41.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +8.02% -1.98% -10.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £52.81 £51.79
90th Percentile £82.25 £65.85 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £40.50 £41.50
% change year-on-year +11.11% -2.41% -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 11,891 9,076 11,083
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.49% 33.09% 31.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,727 6,243 7,973
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £543
Median % change year-on-year +0.05% -4.20% -1.36%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 492 228 423
10th Percentile £34.02 £29.07 £35.10
25th Percentile £55.00 £38.97 £51.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £59.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +9.24% -8.46% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.13 £83.42 £76.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.79% -8.60% +2.97%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 2,355 £525 - 597
North of England -3 585 £463 -2.63% 260
Midlands +2 553 £459 +7.37% 174
South East -12 457 £475 -5.00% 348
West Midlands +3 453 £459 +2.00% 87
North West 0 311 £475 - 130
Yorkshire -7 237 £475 - 92
South West -7 236 £500 +14.29% 108
East of England -7 117 £488 -2.50% 77
East Midlands -4 96 £525 +32.74% 87
North East -13 52 £425 -8.11% 43
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 (4.65%) Apache Spark
2 189 (4.29%) Apache Airflow
3 177 (4.01%) Confluence
4 149 (3.38%) Apache
5 94 (2.13%) SAS
6 54 (1.22%) SharePoint
7 39 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
8 34 (0.77%) IIS
9 33 (0.75%) WebLogic
10 22 (0.50%) CMS
10 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
10 22 (0.50%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
12 17 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
13 16 (0.36%) nginx
14 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.27%) Camunda
16 11 (0.25%) Appian
17 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 290 (6.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.91%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.091%) Notion
8 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
11 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.023%) InDesign
11 1 (0.023%) Mingle
11 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 41 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.68%) Aladdin
4 25 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
4 25 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
5 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 19 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.41%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.36%) NEC Housing
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
13 7 (0.16%) Infor LN
13 7 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 1,395 (31.63%) Azure
2 1,048 (23.76%) AWS
3 828 (18.78%) Power Platform
4 400 (9.07%) Azure DevOps
5 378 (8.57%) GCP
6 316 (7.17%) GitHub
7 314 (7.12%) Azure Data Factory
8 287 (6.51%) Snowflake
9 271 (6.15%) Serverless
10 246 (5.58%) Amazon S3
11 244 (5.53%) dbt
12 202 (4.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 176 (3.99%) AWS Lambda
14 164 (3.72%) GitHub Actions
15 83 (1.88%) Entra ID
16 79 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 79 (1.79%) SaaS
17 76 (1.72%) Power Automate
18 71 (1.61%) Amazon EC2
19 67 (1.52%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (1.00%) DNS
2 40 (0.91%) Firewall
3 22 (0.50%) SSL
4 21 (0.48%) SNMP
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
5 20 (0.45%) Network Security
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 19 (0.43%) VPN
7 13 (0.29%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) SAN
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
13 6 (0.14%) BGP
13 6 (0.14%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 765 (17.35%) Power BI
2 605 (13.72%) Data Warehouse
3 573 (12.99%) SQL Server
4 296 (6.71%) Tableau
5 280 (6.35%) PostgreSQL
5 280 (6.35%) Relational Database
6 271 (6.15%) Data Lake
7 219 (4.97%) Metadata
8 215 (4.88%) NoSQL
9 183 (4.15%) Oracle Database
10 173 (3.92%) Azure SQL Database
11 158 (3.58%) BigQuery
12 154 (3.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 135 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 119 (2.70%) Delta Lake
15 105 (2.38%) Big Data
16 103 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
17 100 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
18 99 (2.24%) MySQL
19 88 (2.00%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 480 (10.88%) Git
2 341 (7.73%) JIRA
3 237 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 179 (4.06%) GitLab
5 69 (1.56%) JUnit
6 57 (1.29%) Maven
7 54 (1.22%) Gradle
8 53 (1.20%) Postman
9 50 (1.13%) Selenium
10 47 (1.07%) Mockito
11 36 (0.82%) Oracle Forms
12 34 (0.77%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.75%) Bitbucket
13 33 (0.75%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.63%) Team Foundation Server
15 27 (0.61%) Cucumber
15 27 (0.61%) JMeter
15 27 (0.61%) Zephyr
16 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
16 26 (0.59%) TeamCity
General
1 1,144 (25.94%) Finance
2 1,138 (25.80%) Social Skills
3 874 (19.82%) Analytical Skills
4 415 (9.41%) Banking
5 399 (9.05%) Public Sector
6 133 (3.02%) Marketing
7 123 (2.79%) Front Office
8 98 (2.22%) Retail
9 94 (2.13%) Investment Banking
10 88 (2.00%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (1.27%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 51 (1.16%) Legal
15 48 (1.09%) Financial Institution
16 43 (0.98%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
17 38 (0.86%) Publishing
18 34 (0.77%) Telecoms
19 29 (0.66%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 950 (21.54%) Developer
2 874 (19.82%) Data Engineer
3 636 (14.42%) Analyst
4 577 (13.08%) Senior
5 307 (6.96%) Lead
6 275 (6.24%) Data Analyst
7 239 (5.42%) Architect
8 206 (4.67%) Consultant
9 181 (4.10%) Business Analyst
10 177 (4.01%) Java Developer
11 172 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
12 165 (3.74%) DBA
13 143 (3.24%) Senior Developer
14 125 (2.83%) Software Engineer
15 114 (2.59%) SQL Developer
16 110 (2.49%) SQL DBA
17 107 (2.43%) Azure Engineer
18 105 (2.38%) C# Developer
19 92 (2.09%) Data Architect
20 91 (2.06%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 367 (8.32%) .NET
2 347 (7.87%) REST
3 264 (5.99%) Kafka
4 259 (5.87%) PySpark
5 222 (5.03%) Spring
6 203 (4.60%) React
6 203 (4.60%) Spring Boot
7 182 (4.13%) RESTful
8 165 (3.74%) JSON
9 156 (3.54%) XML
10 142 (3.22%) HTML
11 125 (2.83%) AngularJS
11 125 (2.83%) CSS
12 111 (2.52%) Pandas
13 101 (2.29%) SOAP
14 99 (2.24%) Web Services
15 91 (2.06%) .NET Framework
16 90 (2.04%) Middleware
17 73 (1.66%) Node.js
18 67 (1.52%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.53%) Cloud Native
2 189 (4.29%) Data Structures
3 157 (3.56%) Legacy Systems
4 153 (3.47%) Product Ownership
5 131 (2.97%) Distributed Systems
6 88 (2.00%) Onboarding
7 79 (1.79%) Derivative
8 78 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
9 77 (1.75%) Management Information System
10 74 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
11 72 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
12 65 (1.47%) Clustering
13 64 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
14 58 (1.32%) Replication
15 55 (1.25%) Algorithms
16 51 (1.16%) Fixed Income
17 49 (1.11%) Equities
17 49 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
18 40 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 40 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 295 (6.69%) Linux
2 271 (6.15%) Windows
3 210 (4.76%) Unix
4 102 (2.31%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.54%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.091%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.091%) VMS
14 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,177 (26.69%) CI/CD
2 1,130 (25.62%) Analytics
3 1,126 (25.53%) Agile
4 1,093 (24.78%) Data Modelling
5 1,022 (23.17%) ETL
6 985 (22.34%) Business Intelligence
7 892 (20.23%) DevOps
8 856 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
9 843 (19.12%) Data Pipeline
10 734 (16.64%) Data Engineering
11 630 (14.29%) AI
12 594 (13.47%) Migration
13 577 (13.08%) Validation
14 473 (10.73%) Data Governance
15 451 (10.23%) Decision-Making
16 450 (10.20%) Test Automation
17 437 (9.91%) Continuous Improvement
18 426 (9.66%) Stakeholder Management
19 425 (9.64%) Data Analysis
20 393 (8.91%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,572 (35.65%) Python
2 552 (12.52%) Java
3 441 (10.00%) C#
4 349 (7.91%) PL/SQL
5 308 (6.98%) JavaScript
6 240 (5.44%) T-SQL
7 234 (5.31%) PowerShell
8 168 (3.81%) TypeScript
9 132 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 121 (2.74%) Shell Script
11 96 (2.18%) R
12 87 (1.97%) Bash
13 73 (1.66%) Scala
14 50 (1.13%) C++
15 46 (1.04%) VBA
16 34 (0.77%) Bicep
17 33 (0.75%) C
17 33 (0.75%) VB
18 24 (0.54%) Go
19 23 (0.52%) Perl
Qualifications
1 945 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 754 (17.10%) SC Cleared
3 322 (7.30%) Degree
4 103 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (2.29%) DV Cleared
6 100 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
7 63 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 47 (1.07%) ISTQB
9 46 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 38 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
11 30 (0.68%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
13 15 (0.34%) CISSP
14 14 (0.32%) PhD
15 10 (0.23%) CISM
16 9 (0.20%) ACCA
16 9 (0.20%) CIMA
16 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 9 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
17 8 (0.18%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 788 (17.87%) Data Quality
2 331 (7.51%) QA
3 165 (3.74%) GDPR
4 49 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 22 (0.50%) PMO
7 20 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 18 (0.41%) NIST
9 17 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.34%) IFRS
12 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.29%) MiFID
14 12 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.23%) HL7
16 10 (0.23%) PCI DSS
17 9 (0.20%) GMP
17 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 437 (9.91%) Docker
2 105 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.02%) Virtual Machines
4 33 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) 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 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.091%) 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
1 371 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 343 (7.78%) Terraform
3 94 (2.13%) Grafana
4 80 (1.81%) Ansible
5 49 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 26 (0.59%) Control-M
9 21 (0.48%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) Kibana
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.36%) Nagios
11 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
13 14 (0.32%) Netcool
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 10 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
16 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 766 (17.37%) Oracle
2 694 (15.74%) Microsoft
3 493 (11.18%) Databricks
4 176 (3.99%) Google
5 156 (3.54%) Informatica
6 121 (2.74%) ServiceNow
6 121 (2.74%) Talend
7 114 (2.59%) SAP
8 82 (1.86%) Splunk
9 75 (1.70%) IBM
10 60 (1.36%) Denodo
11 53 (1.20%) Salesforce
12 51 (1.16%) VMware
13 43 (0.98%) Citrix
14 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
15 37 (0.84%) Bloomberg
16 32 (0.73%) Alteryx
16 32 (0.73%) BMC
16 32 (0.73%) Murex
17 29 (0.66%) SolarWinds