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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,739 3,028 3,809
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.39% 12.16% 10.00%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.50% 35.89% 34.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,569 2,113 2,753
10th Percentile £350 £356 £356
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £511 £533
% change year-on-year -2.10% -4.13% -1.34%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 56 63
10th Percentile £18.48 £20.87 £21.66
25th Percentile £28.93 £29.07 £26.02
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -19.05%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.15 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.72 £62.72
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £47.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +1.06% +10.59% -20.93%

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 10,533 8,438 11,037
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.26% 33.88% 28.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,027 5,642 7,934
10th Percentile £351 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £506 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.71% -2.78% -6.09%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £660
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -6.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 447 216 471
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.25 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £40.75 £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 £68.19 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.20 £85.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 9 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 9 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 9 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 2,211 £511 -7.11% 644
Midlands +2 464 £475 +1.71% 282
North of England -10 400 £450 -9.09% 405
West Midlands +6 367 £470 -4.08% 170
South East -19 288 £500 - 575
North West +1 228 £430 -9.47% 227
South West -5 194 £475 -9.52% 177
Yorkshire -22 150 £475 -8.87% 128
East Midlands -7 96 £531 +37.03% 110
East of England -30 75 £500 +6.95% 134
North East -2 31 £475 +2.98% 56
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
1 204 (5.46%) Apache Spark
2 147 (3.93%) Apache Airflow
3 121 (3.24%) Apache
4 115 (3.08%) Confluence
5 78 (2.09%) SAS
5 78 (2.09%) SharePoint
6 52 (1.39%) WebLogic
7 27 (0.72%) IIS
8 23 (0.62%) Microsoft Exchange
9 20 (0.53%) Tomcat
10 18 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.45%) CMS
12 15 (0.40%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.35%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 12 (0.32%) Appian
15 12 (0.32%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.32%) JBoss
15 12 (0.32%) WebSphere
16 11 (0.29%) Mendix
Applications
1 251 (6.71%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.66%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.31%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.080%) Notion
9 3 (0.080%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) InDesign
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
10 1 (0.027%) Weka
Business Applications
1 29 (0.78%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle Payables
3 20 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.53%) NEC Housing
3 20 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 19 (0.51%) Oracle General Ledger
5 17 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
6 14 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
6 14 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
7 13 (0.35%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
8 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 10 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
9 10 (0.27%) Endur
9 10 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
9 10 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 9 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
11 8 (0.21%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,290 (34.50%) Azure
2 915 (24.47%) AWS
3 710 (18.99%) Power Platform
4 372 (9.95%) Azure DevOps
5 308 (8.24%) GCP
6 302 (8.08%) Azure Data Factory
7 284 (7.60%) GitHub
8 264 (7.06%) Serverless
9 256 (6.85%) Snowflake
10 198 (5.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 195 (5.22%) Amazon S3
12 153 (4.09%) dbt
13 147 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
14 135 (3.61%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (2.51%) SaaS
16 85 (2.27%) Azure Functions
17 83 (2.22%) Power Automate
18 72 (1.93%) Entra ID
19 68 (1.82%) AWS CloudFormation
19 68 (1.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.28%) Firewall
2 40 (1.07%) DNS
3 21 (0.56%) HTTP
3 21 (0.56%) Network Security
4 20 (0.53%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.40%) Internet
6 14 (0.37%) VPN
7 13 (0.35%) 5G
7 13 (0.35%) SSL
7 13 (0.35%) WAN
8 12 (0.32%) DHCP
8 12 (0.32%) LAN
9 10 (0.27%) 4G
10 9 (0.24%) 2G
10 9 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
11 8 (0.21%) Skype
11 8 (0.21%) SMS
12 6 (0.16%) Multicast
12 6 (0.16%) VLAN
12 6 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 647 (17.30%) Power BI
2 450 (12.04%) Data Warehouse
3 440 (11.77%) SQL Server
4 257 (6.87%) NoSQL
5 252 (6.74%) Relational Database
6 245 (6.55%) PostgreSQL
7 232 (6.20%) Tableau
8 229 (6.12%) Data Lake
9 193 (5.16%) Azure SQL Database
10 171 (4.57%) Metadata
11 141 (3.77%) Oracle Database
12 138 (3.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 117 (3.13%) BigQuery
14 114 (3.05%) Big Data
15 109 (2.92%) MySQL
16 99 (2.65%) Amazon Redshift
16 99 (2.65%) MongoDB
17 96 (2.57%) Delta Lake
18 94 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
19 78 (2.09%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 433 (11.58%) Git
2 301 (8.05%) JIRA
3 203 (5.43%) Jenkins
4 151 (4.04%) GitLab
5 61 (1.63%) JUnit
6 56 (1.50%) Selenium
7 45 (1.20%) Postman
8 43 (1.15%) Oracle APEX
9 36 (0.96%) Cucumber
10 32 (0.86%) Maven
11 30 (0.80%) MLflow
12 29 (0.78%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.78%) REST Assured
13 25 (0.67%) Mockito
14 24 (0.64%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.59%) ERwin
16 20 (0.53%) SpecFlow
17 18 (0.48%) SonarQube
17 18 (0.48%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,102 (29.47%) Social Skills
2 1,030 (27.55%) Finance
3 657 (17.57%) Analytical Skills
4 390 (10.43%) Banking
5 325 (8.69%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.70%) Investment Banking
7 100 (2.67%) Front Office
8 94 (2.51%) Documentation Skills
9 84 (2.25%) Marketing
10 61 (1.63%) Retail
11 60 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.42%) Financial Institution
13 45 (1.20%) Legal
14 35 (0.94%) Publishing
14 35 (0.94%) Telecoms
15 34 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
16 31 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
16 31 (0.83%) Manufacturing
16 31 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
17 29 (0.78%) Law
Job Titles
1 899 (24.04%) Developer
2 664 (17.76%) Data Engineer
3 544 (14.55%) Analyst
4 483 (12.92%) Senior
5 267 (7.14%) Lead
6 226 (6.04%) Data Analyst
7 196 (5.24%) Business Analyst
8 195 (5.22%) Architect
9 151 (4.04%) Consultant
10 146 (3.90%) Senior Developer
11 134 (3.58%) Java Developer
12 115 (3.08%) Azure Engineer
13 108 (2.89%) Software Engineer
14 101 (2.70%) Senior Data Engineer
15 97 (2.59%) C# Developer
16 87 (2.33%) Python Developer
17 85 (2.27%) Data Scientist
17 85 (2.27%) DBA
18 84 (2.25%) Full-Stack Developer
19 79 (2.11%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (9.01%) .NET
2 296 (7.92%) REST
3 234 (6.26%) Kafka
4 221 (5.91%) PySpark
5 178 (4.76%) React
6 175 (4.68%) RESTful
7 156 (4.17%) Spring
8 146 (3.90%) XML
9 141 (3.77%) HTML
10 140 (3.74%) Spring Boot
11 115 (3.08%) CSS
12 108 (2.89%) JSON
13 107 (2.86%) AngularJS
14 106 (2.83%) Pandas
15 101 (2.70%) Node.js
16 85 (2.27%) .NET Framework
17 81 (2.17%) SOAP
18 77 (2.06%) Middleware
19 70 (1.87%) Web Services
20 69 (1.85%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 238 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 121 (3.24%) Data Structures
3 116 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
4 106 (2.83%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.11%) Management Information System
6 73 (1.95%) Data Protection Act
7 71 (1.90%) Derivative
8 70 (1.87%) Analytical Mindset
9 69 (1.85%) Distributed Systems
10 61 (1.63%) Equities
11 56 (1.50%) Algorithms
11 56 (1.50%) Onboarding
12 55 (1.47%) Fixed Income
13 46 (1.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 40 (1.07%) Clustering
14 40 (1.07%) Enterprise Software
15 37 (0.99%) Replication
16 35 (0.94%) Market Risk
16 35 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
17 29 (0.78%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 279 (7.46%) Linux
2 224 (5.99%) Windows
3 185 (4.95%) Unix
4 71 (1.90%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.37%) AIX
6 14 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 13 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.29%) Windows 10
9 7 (0.19%) Android
10 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.13%) VMS
10 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.13%) zOS
11 4 (0.11%) Solaris
11 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.080%) CentOS
13 2 (0.053%) Ubuntu
14 1 (0.027%) OpenVMS
14 1 (0.027%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,005 (26.88%) Agile
2 984 (26.32%) CI/CD
3 976 (26.10%) Analytics
4 873 (23.35%) Data Modelling
5 863 (23.08%) Business Intelligence
6 860 (23.00%) DevOps
7 842 (22.52%) ETL
8 834 (22.31%) Problem-Solving
9 611 (16.34%) Data Pipeline
10 549 (14.68%) Data Engineering
11 438 (11.71%) Migration
12 432 (11.55%) Data Governance
13 426 (11.39%) AI
14 398 (10.64%) Validation
15 364 (9.74%) Data Analysis
16 354 (9.47%) Test Automation
17 334 (8.93%) Data Science
18 333 (8.91%) Visualisation
19 330 (8.83%) Decision-Making
20 326 (8.72%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,392 (37.23%) Python
2 529 (14.15%) Java
3 407 (10.89%) C#
4 320 (8.56%) JavaScript
5 270 (7.22%) PL/SQL
6 153 (4.09%) T-SQL
7 152 (4.07%) PowerShell
8 143 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 102 (2.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 102 (2.73%) Shell Script
10 96 (2.57%) R
11 95 (2.54%) Scala
12 73 (1.95%) C++
13 63 (1.68%) Bash
13 63 (1.68%) VBA
14 47 (1.26%) Bicep
15 46 (1.23%) Perl
16 43 (1.15%) VB
17 38 (1.02%) Go
18 28 (0.75%) PHP
Qualifications
1 731 (19.55%) Security Cleared
2 579 (15.49%) SC Cleared
3 328 (8.77%) Degree
4 105 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (2.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.90%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.39%) DV Cleared
7 52 (1.39%) Master's Degree
8 48 (1.28%) ISTQB
9 44 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (1.12%) AWS Certification
11 21 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 17 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
13 16 (0.43%) CBAP
14 12 (0.32%) PhD
15 10 (0.27%) ISEB
15 10 (0.27%) PMP
16 9 (0.24%) PMI Certification
17 8 (0.21%) CFA
17 8 (0.21%) Cisco Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 630 (16.85%) Data Quality
2 270 (7.22%) QA
3 156 (4.17%) GDPR
4 61 (1.63%) Accessibility
5 28 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 27 (0.72%) SLA
7 23 (0.62%) PMO
8 20 (0.53%) MiFID
9 17 (0.45%) 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 (0.35%) SEPA
12 13 (0.35%) WCAG
13 12 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 12 (0.32%) EMIR
13 12 (0.32%) IFRS
14 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 441 (11.79%) Docker
2 100 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 29 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
4 15 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
4 15 (0.40%) 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%) RACF
8 5 (0.13%) XenApp
8 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) Postfix
10 3 (0.080%) Oracle Clusterware
10 3 (0.080%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.053%) NDS
11 2 (0.053%) Slurm Workload Manager
11 2 (0.053%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.053%) vSphere
11 2 (0.053%) zsh
Systems Management
1 403 (10.78%) Kubernetes
2 294 (7.86%) Terraform
3 83 (2.22%) Grafana
4 61 (1.63%) Ansible
4 61 (1.63%) Prometheus
5 21 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
6 18 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
6 18 (0.48%) SCCM
7 17 (0.45%) Progress Chef
8 14 (0.37%) Data Guard
8 14 (0.37%) Puppet
9 13 (0.35%) Control-M
9 13 (0.35%) Kibana
10 9 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 8 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 8 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
11 8 (0.21%) Kiali
11 8 (0.21%) WSUS
12 7 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
12 7 (0.19%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 612 (16.37%) Oracle
2 598 (15.99%) Microsoft
3 452 (12.09%) Databricks
4 157 (4.20%) Google
5 100 (2.67%) ServiceNow
6 96 (2.57%) SAP
6 96 (2.57%) Talend
7 95 (2.54%) Informatica
8 65 (1.74%) Splunk
9 64 (1.71%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.47%) IBM
11 49 (1.31%) Citrix
12 46 (1.23%) OpenAI
13 43 (1.15%) Denodo
14 40 (1.07%) MuleSoft
15 34 (0.91%) Bloomberg
16 29 (0.78%) VMware
17 26 (0.70%) Foundry
18 23 (0.62%) NEC
18 23 (0.62%) Palantir