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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,001 3,031 3,638
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.73% 12.48% 9.99%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.76% 37.01% 33.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,737 2,155 2,686
10th Percentile £350 £358 £356
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £588 £631 £650
90th Percentile £688 £772 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% +0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 68 55 56
10th Percentile £26.50 £20.44 £23.38
25th Percentile £34.75 £30.13 £29.72
Median hourly rate £47.50 £46.50 £44.25
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% +5.08% -11.12%
75th Percentile £71.88 £65.31 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.70 £80.23 £61.68
UK median hourly rate £52.49 £43.66 £44.25
% change year-on-year +20.23% -1.34% -11.50%

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 10,885 8,189 10,891
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.47% 33.72% 29.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,190 5,683 7,905
10th Percentile £355 £361 £350
25th Percentile £415 £419 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.22%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £656
90th Percentile £720 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £530
% change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 529 210 447
10th Percentile £41.25 £27.40 £37.59
25th Percentile £55.00 £38.40 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.10 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.43
% change year-on-year +4.00% +0.12% +2.85%

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 2,249 £520 -3.48% 832
Midlands +2 514 £469 +7.08% 360
North of England -7 477 £460 -3.16% 641
West Midlands +5 411 £463 +0.54% 202
South East -16 356 £500 - 652
North West -3 257 £460 -3.16% 304
South West -9 205 £475 - 206
Yorkshire -13 194 £467 -1.79% 234
East Midlands -1 99 £525 +35.05% 150
East of England -13 94 £498 +2.05% 159
North East -14 38 £463 +2.78% 111
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
1 227 (5.67%) Apache Spark
2 150 (3.75%) Apache Airflow
3 136 (3.40%) Confluence
4 134 (3.35%) Apache
5 80 (2.00%) SAS
6 64 (1.60%) SharePoint
7 38 (0.95%) WebLogic
8 32 (0.80%) IIS
9 26 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
10 23 (0.57%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.37%) Jupyter
12 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.35%) Appian
14 13 (0.32%) CMS
14 13 (0.32%) HCL Notes
14 13 (0.32%) Mendix
14 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 11 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 260 (6.50%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (1.15%) MS Visio
4 30 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
8 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.12%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.67%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.65%) Dynamics CRM
4 25 (0.62%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
6 19 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
7 18 (0.45%) Oracle ERP
8 17 (0.42%) SAP S/4HANA
9 16 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
10 14 (0.35%) NetSuite
10 14 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
11 12 (0.30%) Oracle Assets
11 12 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.22%) Endur
14 8 (0.20%) Fidessa
14 8 (0.20%) Findur
14 8 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
14 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,341 (33.52%) Azure
2 965 (24.12%) AWS
3 767 (19.17%) Power Platform
4 393 (9.82%) Azure DevOps
5 339 (8.47%) Azure Data Factory
6 328 (8.20%) GCP
7 292 (7.30%) GitHub
8 251 (6.27%) Serverless
9 227 (5.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 225 (5.62%) Amazon S3
11 223 (5.57%) Snowflake
12 180 (4.50%) dbt
13 150 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
14 148 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
15 78 (1.95%) Power Automate
16 75 (1.87%) SaaS
17 71 (1.77%) Entra ID
18 70 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 69 (1.72%) Amazon EC2
20 65 (1.62%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.17%) Firewall
2 39 (0.97%) DNS
3 20 (0.50%) SNMP
4 17 (0.42%) Network Security
5 16 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.37%) HTTP
6 15 (0.37%) Internet
6 15 (0.37%) WAN
7 12 (0.30%) Wi-Fi
8 11 (0.27%) LAN
8 11 (0.27%) SSL
9 10 (0.25%) VPN
10 8 (0.20%) Wireshark
11 7 (0.17%) 3GPP
12 6 (0.15%) DHCP
12 6 (0.15%) IPsec
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
13 5 (0.12%) SAN
13 5 (0.12%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 702 (17.55%) Power BI
2 513 (12.82%) Data Warehouse
3 505 (12.62%) SQL Server
4 280 (7.00%) Tableau
5 274 (6.85%) Data Lake
6 255 (6.37%) PostgreSQL
7 251 (6.27%) Relational Database
8 238 (5.95%) NoSQL
9 211 (5.27%) Metadata
10 194 (4.85%) Azure SQL Database
11 155 (3.87%) Oracle Database
12 147 (3.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 134 (3.35%) BigQuery
14 121 (3.02%) Delta Lake
15 110 (2.75%) Amazon Redshift
16 109 (2.72%) Big Data
17 104 (2.60%) MySQL
18 99 (2.47%) Oracle Reports
19 94 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
20 90 (2.25%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 417 (10.42%) Git
2 307 (7.67%) JIRA
3 209 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 170 (4.25%) GitLab
5 57 (1.42%) JUnit
6 56 (1.40%) Selenium
7 49 (1.22%) Maven
8 47 (1.17%) Postman
9 43 (1.07%) Mockito
10 38 (0.95%) Cucumber
11 36 (0.90%) Gradle
12 35 (0.87%) MLflow
13 34 (0.85%) SonarQube
14 29 (0.72%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.70%) ERwin
16 23 (0.57%) Bitbucket
16 23 (0.57%) JMeter
17 22 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
17 22 (0.55%) TeamCity
17 22 (0.55%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,067 (26.67%) Finance
2 1,032 (25.79%) Social Skills
3 730 (18.25%) Analytical Skills
4 379 (9.47%) Banking
5 338 (8.45%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.60%) Front Office
7 99 (2.47%) Marketing
8 96 (2.40%) Investment Banking
9 81 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
10 62 (1.55%) Retail
11 59 (1.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 55 (1.37%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.27%) Legal
14 39 (0.97%) Publishing
15 36 (0.90%) Telecoms
16 35 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
17 31 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
18 30 (0.75%) Law
18 30 (0.75%) Manufacturing
19 29 (0.72%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 836 (20.89%) Developer
2 825 (20.62%) Data Engineer
3 570 (14.25%) Analyst
4 513 (12.82%) Senior
5 276 (6.90%) Lead
6 247 (6.17%) Data Analyst
7 224 (5.60%) Architect
8 178 (4.45%) Consultant
9 174 (4.35%) Business Analyst
10 160 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 149 (3.72%) Senior Data Engineer
12 127 (3.17%) DBA
13 123 (3.07%) Senior Developer
13 123 (3.07%) Software Engineer
14 117 (2.92%) Azure Engineer
15 100 (2.50%) C# Developer
16 87 (2.17%) Data Scientist
16 87 (2.17%) Python Developer
17 86 (2.15%) Data Architect
18 85 (2.12%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 345 (8.62%) .NET
2 319 (7.97%) REST
3 254 (6.35%) PySpark
4 253 (6.32%) Kafka
5 197 (4.92%) Spring
6 194 (4.85%) React
7 189 (4.72%) Spring Boot
8 171 (4.27%) RESTful
9 142 (3.55%) HTML
10 128 (3.20%) JSON
11 127 (3.17%) XML
12 118 (2.95%) CSS
13 116 (2.90%) Pandas
14 109 (2.72%) AngularJS
15 92 (2.30%) Middleware
16 91 (2.27%) SOAP
17 80 (2.00%) .NET Framework
18 78 (1.95%) Web Services
19 72 (1.80%) Node.js
20 69 (1.72%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 253 (6.32%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.60%) Data Structures
3 130 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
4 124 (3.10%) Product Ownership
5 106 (2.65%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (2.12%) Management Information System
7 77 (1.92%) Derivative
8 74 (1.85%) Onboarding
9 70 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
10 62 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 53 (1.32%) Clustering
12 52 (1.30%) Equities
13 51 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
14 50 (1.25%) Fixed Income
15 47 (1.17%) Algorithms
15 47 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 46 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
17 39 (0.97%) Low-Code
17 39 (0.97%) Replication
18 38 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 293 (7.32%) Linux
2 250 (6.25%) Windows
3 197 (4.92%) Unix
4 84 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.60%) AIX
6 19 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 8 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.17%) Solaris
10 7 (0.17%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
12 3 (0.075%) VMS
12 3 (0.075%) Windows Server 2012
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) HPUX
14 1 (0.025%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,090 (27.24%) CI/CD
2 1,007 (25.17%) Analytics
3 1,002 (25.04%) Data Modelling
4 975 (24.37%) Agile
5 966 (24.14%) ETL
6 903 (22.57%) Business Intelligence
7 875 (21.87%) DevOps
8 789 (19.72%) Problem-Solving
9 741 (18.52%) Data Pipeline
10 652 (16.30%) Data Engineering
11 519 (12.97%) AI
12 503 (12.57%) Migration
13 482 (12.05%) Validation
14 471 (11.77%) Data Governance
15 399 (9.97%) Decision-Making
16 395 (9.87%) Test Automation
17 371 (9.27%) Data Analysis
18 368 (9.20%) Performance Tuning
19 363 (9.07%) Microservices
20 345 (8.62%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,502 (37.54%) Python
2 546 (13.65%) Java
3 439 (10.97%) C#
4 307 (7.67%) JavaScript
5 293 (7.32%) PL/SQL
6 206 (5.15%) T-SQL
7 186 (4.65%) PowerShell
8 131 (3.27%) TypeScript
9 124 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 114 (2.85%) Shell Script
11 113 (2.82%) R
12 88 (2.20%) Scala
13 78 (1.95%) Bash
14 59 (1.47%) C++
15 43 (1.07%) VBA
16 40 (1.00%) Bicep
17 36 (0.90%) Perl
18 29 (0.72%) VB
19 26 (0.65%) Go
20 24 (0.60%) C
Qualifications
1 838 (20.94%) Security Cleared
2 674 (16.85%) SC Cleared
3 322 (8.05%) Degree
4 102 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 89 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
6 73 (1.82%) Azure Certification
7 71 (1.77%) DV Cleared
8 50 (1.25%) Master's Degree
9 46 (1.15%) ISTQB
10 36 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 23 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.40%) PhD
13 15 (0.37%) CBAP
14 13 (0.32%) DBS Check
15 12 (0.30%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.27%) CISSP
16 11 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 11 (0.27%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.25%) PMP
18 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 733 (18.32%) Data Quality
2 299 (7.47%) QA
3 177 (4.42%) GDPR
4 38 (0.95%) Accessibility
4 38 (0.95%) SLA
5 32 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 24 (0.60%) PMO
8 19 (0.47%) NIST
8 19 (0.47%) PCI DSS
9 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
9 16 (0.40%) MiFID
10 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 14 (0.35%) IFRS
12 13 (0.32%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.30%) HL7
13 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.27%) GRC
15 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
16 8 (0.20%) FATCA
System Software
1 459 (11.47%) Docker
2 91 (2.27%) Active Directory
3 36 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
4 27 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 25 (0.62%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.25%) KVM
9 9 (0.22%) Postfix
10 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.17%) VMware NSX
12 6 (0.15%) HDFS
12 6 (0.15%) RACF
12 6 (0.15%) vCloud
13 4 (0.100%) XenApp
13 4 (0.100%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
15 2 (0.050%) GridGain
15 2 (0.050%) vSphere
16 1 (0.025%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 384 (9.60%) Kubernetes
2 320 (8.00%) Terraform
3 106 (2.65%) Grafana
4 66 (1.65%) Ansible
5 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
7 27 (0.67%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Kibana
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 15 (0.37%) ZABBIX
10 14 (0.35%) Control-M
10 14 (0.35%) Nagios
10 14 (0.35%) Netcool
10 14 (0.35%) SCCM
10 14 (0.35%) Tivoli
11 13 (0.32%) OpenView
11 13 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
11 13 (0.32%) vCenter Server
12 11 (0.27%) Progress Chef
13 9 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 655 (16.37%) Oracle
2 628 (15.70%) Microsoft
3 483 (12.07%) Databricks
4 159 (3.97%) Google
5 136 (3.40%) Informatica
6 131 (3.27%) ServiceNow
7 106 (2.65%) Talend
8 103 (2.57%) SAP
9 87 (2.17%) Splunk
10 60 (1.50%) IBM
11 53 (1.32%) Denodo
12 51 (1.27%) Salesforce
13 48 (1.20%) Citrix
14 41 (1.02%) VMware
15 36 (0.90%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.87%) OpenAI
17 33 (0.82%) Bloomberg
18 31 (0.77%) HP
18 31 (0.77%) MuleSoft
19 30 (0.75%) BMC