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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,774 3,058 3,772
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.39% 12.06% 10.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.24% 35.79% 34.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,601 2,102 2,734
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £658
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £503 £538
% change year-on-year -0.50% -6.51% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 55 62
10th Percentile £18.25 £20.44 £21.65
25th Percentile £28.86 £29.07 £25.91
Median hourly rate £45.00 £47.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +11.76% -19.05%
75th Percentile £69.72 £65.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £76.81 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £46.50 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year - +9.41% -22.73%

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 10,709 8,545 10,884
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.49% 33.69% 29.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,151 5,637 7,840
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £507 £525 £544
Median % change year-on-year -3.43% -3.45% -5.43%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £663
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 447 210 467
10th Percentile £41.45 £25.25 £35.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £41.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £69.62
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.92
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.34%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 5 March 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 2,255 £512 -6.95% 850
Midlands +1 451 £483 +4.72% 295
North of England -5 405 £450 -8.35% 426
West Midlands +2 359 £475 -2.06% 181
South East -20 280 £500 - 555
North West +1 230 £425 -10.53% 237
South West -3 194 £475 -7.77% 169
Yorkshire -23 154 £500 -3.38% 139
East Midlands -10 91 £531 +37.48% 112
East of England -23 80 £510 +9.09% 134
North East 0 30 £475 +2.98% 55
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
1 201 (5.33%) Apache Spark
2 155 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 117 (3.10%) Apache
4 116 (3.07%) Confluence
5 81 (2.15%) SharePoint
6 80 (2.12%) SAS
7 52 (1.38%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.69%) IIS
9 25 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.50%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.45%) CMS
13 15 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.40%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.32%) Appian
15 12 (0.32%) JBoss
16 11 (0.29%) HCL Notes
16 11 (0.29%) WebSphere
Applications
1 242 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
7 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.079%) Notion
8 3 (0.079%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.079%) Trello
9 1 (0.026%) InDesign
9 1 (0.026%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 1 (0.026%) SPSS
9 1 (0.026%) Weka
Business Applications
1 26 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 23 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
4 21 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
5 20 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
5 20 (0.53%) NEC Housing
6 16 (0.42%) Oracle Assets
6 16 (0.42%) Oracle EBS R12
7 15 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
8 14 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.34%) Endur
9 13 (0.34%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
10 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.26%) Advent Geneva
11 10 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 8 (0.21%) Maximo
12 8 (0.21%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,303 (34.53%) Azure
2 930 (24.64%) AWS
3 714 (18.92%) Power Platform
4 369 (9.78%) Azure DevOps
5 319 (8.45%) GCP
6 302 (8.00%) Azure Data Factory
7 284 (7.53%) GitHub
8 270 (7.15%) Serverless
9 261 (6.92%) Snowflake
10 203 (5.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 194 (5.14%) Amazon S3
12 156 (4.13%) dbt
13 148 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
14 137 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (2.54%) SaaS
16 88 (2.33%) Azure Functions
17 81 (2.15%) Power Automate
18 72 (1.91%) Entra ID
19 68 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
20 67 (1.78%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.27%) Firewall
2 41 (1.09%) DNS
3 23 (0.61%) HTTP
4 20 (0.53%) Network Security
5 18 (0.48%) TCP/IP
6 14 (0.37%) Internet
6 14 (0.37%) Skype
7 13 (0.34%) SSL
7 13 (0.34%) VPN
8 12 (0.32%) 5G
8 12 (0.32%) DHCP
9 11 (0.29%) WAN
10 10 (0.26%) LAN
11 9 (0.24%) 2G
11 9 (0.24%) 4G
11 9 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
12 8 (0.21%) SMS
12 8 (0.21%) Unified Communications
13 6 (0.16%) Multicast
13 6 (0.16%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 651 (17.25%) Power BI
2 451 (11.95%) Data Warehouse
3 440 (11.66%) SQL Server
4 265 (7.02%) NoSQL
5 255 (6.76%) Relational Database
6 250 (6.62%) PostgreSQL
7 234 (6.20%) Data Lake
8 231 (6.12%) Tableau
9 194 (5.14%) Azure SQL Database
10 172 (4.56%) Metadata
11 144 (3.82%) Oracle Database
12 134 (3.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 120 (3.18%) BigQuery
14 111 (2.94%) Big Data
15 107 (2.84%) MySQL
16 101 (2.68%) MongoDB
17 97 (2.57%) Amazon Redshift
18 96 (2.54%) Delta Lake
19 93 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
20 82 (2.17%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 436 (11.55%) Git
2 306 (8.11%) JIRA
3 201 (5.33%) Jenkins
4 150 (3.97%) GitLab
5 63 (1.67%) JUnit
6 58 (1.54%) Selenium
7 46 (1.22%) Postman
8 42 (1.11%) Oracle APEX
9 36 (0.95%) Cucumber
10 34 (0.90%) Maven
11 29 (0.77%) Bitbucket
11 29 (0.77%) MLflow
11 29 (0.77%) REST Assured
12 27 (0.72%) Mockito
13 24 (0.64%) ERwin
14 22 (0.58%) Cypress.io
14 22 (0.58%) SpecFlow
14 22 (0.58%) Visual Studio
15 18 (0.48%) SonarQube
15 18 (0.48%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,134 (30.05%) Social Skills
2 1,054 (27.93%) Finance
3 669 (17.73%) Analytical Skills
4 397 (10.52%) Banking
5 327 (8.66%) Public Sector
6 102 (2.70%) Investment Banking
7 100 (2.65%) Front Office
8 97 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 88 (2.33%) Marketing
10 61 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 61 (1.62%) Retail
11 58 (1.54%) Financial Institution
12 43 (1.14%) Legal
13 37 (0.98%) Presentation Skills
14 36 (0.95%) Publishing
15 34 (0.90%) Manufacturing
15 34 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
16 33 (0.87%) Telecoms
17 30 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
17 30 (0.79%) Law
Job Titles
1 907 (24.03%) Developer
2 667 (17.67%) Data Engineer
3 564 (14.94%) Analyst
4 488 (12.93%) Senior
5 269 (7.13%) Lead
6 232 (6.15%) Data Analyst
7 198 (5.25%) Architect
7 198 (5.25%) Business Analyst
8 148 (3.92%) Senior Developer
9 141 (3.74%) Consultant
10 138 (3.66%) Java Developer
11 117 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
12 113 (2.99%) Software Engineer
13 101 (2.68%) Senior Data Engineer
14 98 (2.60%) C# Developer
15 89 (2.36%) Python Developer
16 87 (2.31%) Data Scientist
17 84 (2.23%) Full-Stack Developer
18 80 (2.12%) DBA
19 77 (2.04%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 340 (9.01%) .NET
2 299 (7.92%) REST
3 238 (6.31%) Kafka
4 221 (5.86%) PySpark
5 180 (4.77%) React
6 175 (4.64%) RESTful
7 160 (4.24%) Spring
8 145 (3.84%) Spring Boot
9 143 (3.79%) XML
10 142 (3.76%) HTML
11 114 (3.02%) CSS
12 113 (2.99%) AngularJS
13 110 (2.91%) JSON
14 104 (2.76%) Pandas
15 96 (2.54%) Node.js
16 84 (2.23%) .NET Framework
16 84 (2.23%) SOAP
17 78 (2.07%) Middleware
18 70 (1.85%) Web Services
19 69 (1.83%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 240 (6.36%) Cloud Native
2 122 (3.23%) Data Structures
3 118 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
4 105 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
5 79 (2.09%) Management Information System
6 72 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
7 71 (1.88%) Analytical Mindset
8 70 (1.85%) Derivative
9 60 (1.59%) Algorithms
10 59 (1.56%) Equities
11 57 (1.51%) Onboarding
12 53 (1.40%) Fixed Income
13 47 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 43 (1.14%) Clustering
15 41 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
15 41 (1.09%) Replication
16 36 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
17 34 (0.90%) Market Risk
18 32 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 285 (7.55%) Linux
2 228 (6.04%) Windows
3 187 (4.95%) Unix
4 75 (1.99%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
8 12 (0.32%) AIX
9 11 (0.29%) Windows 10
10 8 (0.21%) Android
11 7 (0.19%) VMS
12 6 (0.16%) Apple iOS
13 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.13%) zOS
14 4 (0.11%) Solaris
14 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
15 3 (0.079%) CentOS
15 3 (0.079%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.026%) OpenVMS
16 1 (0.026%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,015 (26.89%) Agile
2 980 (25.97%) CI/CD
3 977 (25.89%) Analytics
4 876 (23.21%) Data Modelling
5 873 (23.13%) Business Intelligence
6 858 (22.73%) DevOps
7 854 (22.63%) Problem-Solving
8 837 (22.18%) ETL
9 611 (16.19%) Data Pipeline
10 550 (14.57%) Data Engineering
11 442 (11.71%) Migration
12 436 (11.55%) Data Governance
13 423 (11.21%) AI
14 392 (10.39%) Validation
15 369 (9.78%) Data Analysis
16 358 (9.49%) Test Automation
17 344 (9.11%) Data Science
18 342 (9.06%) Visualisation
19 336 (8.90%) Decision-Making
20 332 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,408 (37.31%) Python
2 543 (14.39%) Java
3 414 (10.97%) C#
4 317 (8.40%) JavaScript
5 281 (7.45%) PL/SQL
6 157 (4.16%) PowerShell
7 144 (3.82%) T-SQL
8 140 (3.71%) TypeScript
9 102 (2.70%) Shell Script
10 100 (2.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 100 (2.65%) R
11 93 (2.46%) Scala
12 75 (1.99%) C++
13 65 (1.72%) VBA
14 64 (1.70%) Bash
15 46 (1.22%) Bicep
16 45 (1.19%) Perl
17 43 (1.14%) VB
18 41 (1.09%) Go
19 28 (0.74%) PHP
Qualifications
1 734 (19.45%) Security Cleared
2 582 (15.42%) SC Cleared
3 334 (8.85%) Degree
4 107 (2.84%) Computer Science Degree
5 80 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 76 (2.01%) Azure Certification
7 58 (1.54%) Master's Degree
8 54 (1.43%) DV Cleared
9 51 (1.35%) AWS Certification
10 49 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
11 48 (1.27%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 19 (0.50%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) CBAP
15 13 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
16 11 (0.29%) MCSE
16 11 (0.29%) PhD
17 10 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
17 10 (0.26%) ISEB
17 10 (0.26%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 633 (16.77%) Data Quality
2 274 (7.26%) QA
3 159 (4.21%) GDPR
4 61 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 26 (0.69%) SLA
6 23 (0.61%) PMO
7 20 (0.53%) MiFID
8 19 (0.50%) HIPAA
9 17 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.45%) NIST
10 15 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 14 (0.37%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.34%) IFRS
12 13 (0.34%) SEPA
12 13 (0.34%) WCAG
13 12 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 12 (0.32%) EMIR
14 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.26%) PSD2
System Software
1 448 (11.87%) Docker
2 109 (2.89%) Active Directory
3 29 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
4 17 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
5 12 (0.32%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.21%) HDFS
6 8 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.16%) KVM
8 5 (0.13%) Postfix
8 5 (0.13%) RACF
8 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.13%) XenApp
8 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 4 (0.11%) Virtual Servers
9 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
9 4 (0.11%) vSphere
10 3 (0.079%) Oracle Clusterware
10 3 (0.079%) zsh
Systems Management
1 405 (10.73%) Kubernetes
2 302 (8.00%) Terraform
3 84 (2.23%) Grafana
4 64 (1.70%) Prometheus
5 63 (1.67%) Ansible
6 20 (0.53%) SCCM
6 20 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
8 17 (0.45%) Control-M
8 17 (0.45%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.42%) Data Guard
10 14 (0.37%) Kibana
10 14 (0.37%) Puppet
11 11 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 11 (0.29%) SCOM
12 10 (0.26%) WSUS
13 9 (0.24%) HP SiteScope
14 8 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
14 8 (0.21%) ITRS Geneos
14 8 (0.21%) Kiali
Vendors
1 629 (16.67%) Oracle
2 615 (16.30%) Microsoft
3 450 (11.92%) Databricks
4 158 (4.19%) Google
5 99 (2.62%) ServiceNow
6 96 (2.54%) SAP
7 94 (2.49%) Talend
8 93 (2.46%) Informatica
9 75 (1.99%) Splunk
10 66 (1.75%) Salesforce
11 54 (1.43%) IBM
12 49 (1.30%) Citrix
13 46 (1.22%) OpenAI
14 41 (1.09%) Denodo
15 40 (1.06%) MuleSoft
16 35 (0.93%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.87%) VMware
18 25 (0.66%) Foundry
19 23 (0.61%) NEC
19 23 (0.61%) Sage