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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,490 3,301 3,580
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.64% 11.81% 11.09%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.10% 35.78% 33.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,023 2,290 2,516
10th Percentile £350 £327 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.90 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.60 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.90 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -18.89%

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 12,101 9,227 10,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.99% 33.02% 32.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,837 6,209 7,054
10th Percentile £363 £350 £355
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £545
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 511 262 300
10th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £30.45
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £48.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% +1.56%
75th Percentile £70.75 £67.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £76.13 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.59%

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 1 October 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 1 October 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 1 October 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 2,529 £525 - 3,475
North of England -1 601 £475 +5.56% 838
Midlands -5 452 £469 -1.26% 468
South East -15 446 £475 -3.06% 648
West Midlands -4 353 £469 -6.20% 295
North West +2 300 £500 +12.36% 505
Yorkshire +5 247 £460 -3.16% 240
South West 0 239 £525 +16.67% 300
East of England -9 114 £495 -1.49% 216
East Midlands -4 97 £463 +12.80% 173
North East -1 64 £406 -14.47% 99
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
1 235 (5.23%) Apache Airflow
2 199 (4.43%) Apache Spark
2 199 (4.43%) Confluence
3 154 (3.43%) Apache
4 87 (1.94%) SharePoint
5 65 (1.45%) SAS
6 33 (0.73%) WebLogic
7 29 (0.65%) IIS
8 28 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
9 27 (0.60%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 23 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.45%) CMS
13 18 (0.40%) Camunda
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
15 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
16 11 (0.24%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
18 6 (0.13%) Appian
Applications
1 261 (5.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 20 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.089%) Notion
9 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
10 3 (0.067%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 25 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
5 19 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.24%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.24%) Siebel CRM
9 10 (0.22%) Finacle
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
9 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.20%) Maximo
10 9 (0.20%) Oracle EBS R12
10 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 9 (0.20%) Summit
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,376 (30.65%) Azure
2 1,090 (24.28%) AWS
3 864 (19.24%) Power Platform
4 446 (9.93%) GCP
5 367 (8.17%) Snowflake
6 362 (8.06%) Azure DevOps
7 309 (6.88%) GitHub
8 300 (6.68%) dbt
9 297 (6.61%) Azure Data Factory
10 263 (5.86%) Serverless
11 242 (5.39%) Amazon S3
12 185 (4.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 169 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
14 143 (3.18%) GitHub Actions
15 101 (2.25%) Power Automate
16 99 (2.20%) SaaS
17 97 (2.16%) Entra ID
18 93 (2.07%) PowerApps
19 88 (1.96%) Azure Databricks
20 78 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 64 (1.43%) DNS
2 39 (0.87%) Firewall
3 28 (0.62%) HTTP
3 28 (0.62%) Network Security
4 27 (0.60%) SSL
5 22 (0.49%) Internet
6 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.47%) VPN
7 20 (0.45%) Broadband
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 13 (0.29%) SNMP
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 10 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
13 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.16%) 5G
14 7 (0.16%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 791 (17.62%) Power BI
2 606 (13.50%) Data Warehouse
3 578 (12.87%) SQL Server
4 285 (6.35%) Relational Database
5 278 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (5.75%) Data Lake
7 254 (5.66%) Tableau
8 233 (5.19%) Metadata
9 210 (4.68%) NoSQL
10 199 (4.43%) BigQuery
11 196 (4.37%) Oracle Database
12 151 (3.36%) Azure SQL Database
13 135 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 129 (2.87%) Delta Lake
15 122 (2.72%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 115 (2.56%) MySQL
17 105 (2.34%) Amazon Athena
18 101 (2.25%) Big Data
19 94 (2.09%) Power Query
20 88 (1.96%) Looker
Development Applications
1 582 (12.96%) Git
2 359 (8.00%) JIRA
3 242 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 225 (5.01%) GitLab
5 94 (2.09%) Selenium
6 79 (1.76%) JUnit
7 76 (1.69%) Maven
8 74 (1.65%) Gradle
9 59 (1.31%) Postman
10 49 (1.09%) Mockito
11 41 (0.91%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.89%) Bitbucket
13 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
14 29 (0.65%) Zephyr
15 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
16 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.53%) JMeter
18 23 (0.51%) Artifactory
18 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,253 (27.91%) Social Skills
2 1,201 (26.75%) Finance
3 933 (20.78%) Analytical Skills
4 534 (11.89%) Banking
5 399 (8.89%) Public Sector
6 147 (3.27%) Marketing
7 136 (3.03%) Retail
8 127 (2.83%) Front Office
9 119 (2.65%) Investment Banking
10 89 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 80 (1.78%) Manufacturing
12 77 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
13 53 (1.18%) Legal
14 50 (1.11%) Financial Institution
15 47 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
16 44 (0.98%) Back Office
16 44 (0.98%) Local Government
17 42 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
18 37 (0.82%) Law
18 37 (0.82%) Military
Job Titles
1 948 (21.11%) Developer
2 861 (19.18%) Data Engineer
3 657 (14.63%) Analyst
3 657 (14.63%) Senior
4 313 (6.97%) Lead
5 267 (5.95%) Data Analyst
6 217 (4.83%) Architect
7 210 (4.68%) Senior Data Engineer
8 197 (4.39%) Business Analyst
9 179 (3.99%) Consultant
10 168 (3.74%) DBA
11 157 (3.50%) Java Developer
12 149 (3.32%) Senior Developer
13 112 (2.49%) Software Engineer
14 105 (2.34%) Azure Engineer
15 104 (2.32%) Full-Stack Developer
16 102 (2.27%) SQL DBA
17 99 (2.20%) Python Developer
18 97 (2.16%) Data Architect
18 97 (2.16%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 421 (9.38%) REST
2 389 (8.66%) Terraform
3 385 (8.57%) .NET
4 306 (6.82%) PySpark
5 301 (6.70%) Kafka
6 222 (4.94%) Spring
7 211 (4.70%) React
7 211 (4.70%) Spring Boot
8 178 (3.96%) HTML
9 166 (3.70%) JSON
10 162 (3.61%) RESTful
11 150 (3.34%) CSS
12 143 (3.18%) XML
13 110 (2.45%) AngularJS
13 110 (2.45%) SOAP
14 104 (2.32%) Web Services
15 95 (2.12%) Middleware
16 89 (1.98%) Pandas
17 84 (1.87%) .NET Framework
17 84 (1.87%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 285 (6.35%) Cloud Native
2 219 (4.88%) Data Structures
3 213 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 141 (3.14%) Legacy Systems
5 128 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
6 125 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 123 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
8 97 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 85 (1.89%) AI Agents
10 79 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
11 74 (1.65%) Derivative
12 67 (1.49%) Replication
13 61 (1.36%) Analytical Mindset
14 60 (1.34%) Data Protection Act
15 59 (1.31%) Reference Data
16 57 (1.27%) Clustering
17 56 (1.25%) Algorithms
18 49 (1.09%) Data Centre
18 49 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
19 46 (1.02%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 322 (7.17%) Linux
2 275 (6.12%) Windows
3 212 (4.72%) Unix
4 113 (2.52%) Windows Server
5 23 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 23 (0.51%) Solaris
6 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.22%) AIX
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) VMS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.089%) zOS
14 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 3 (0.067%) Windows Server 2016
15 2 (0.045%) Amazon Linux
15 2 (0.045%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,228 (27.35%) CI/CD
2 1,207 (26.88%) Agile
3 1,144 (25.48%) Data Modelling
4 1,142 (25.43%) Analytics
5 985 (21.94%) Business Intelligence
6 977 (21.76%) ETL
7 891 (19.84%) Problem-Solving
8 867 (19.31%) Data Pipeline
9 845 (18.82%) DevOps
10 791 (17.62%) Data Engineering
11 776 (17.28%) AI
12 705 (15.70%) Validation
13 668 (14.88%) Stakeholder Management
14 658 (14.65%) Migration
15 536 (11.94%) Continuous Improvement
16 528 (11.76%) Test Automation
17 505 (11.25%) Data Analysis
18 503 (11.20%) Decision-Making
19 496 (11.05%) Data Governance
20 394 (8.78%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,612 (35.90%) Python
2 553 (12.32%) Java
3 411 (9.15%) C#
4 373 (8.31%) JavaScript
5 326 (7.26%) PL/SQL
6 235 (5.23%) PowerShell
7 213 (4.74%) T-SQL
8 195 (4.34%) TypeScript
9 143 (3.18%) Shell Script
10 134 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 112 (2.49%) Bash
12 75 (1.67%) Scala
13 69 (1.54%) R
14 36 (0.80%) C++
15 34 (0.76%) VBA
16 30 (0.67%) Bicep
17 29 (0.65%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.60%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
20 25 (0.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 958 (21.34%) Security Cleared
2 750 (16.70%) SC Cleared
3 340 (7.57%) Degree
4 130 (2.90%) DV Cleared
5 121 (2.69%) BPSS Clearance
6 116 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
7 71 (1.58%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.20%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
10 40 (0.89%) AWS Certification
10 40 (0.89%) Master's Degree
11 20 (0.45%) CISSP
12 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 16 (0.36%) ACCA
13 16 (0.36%) CIMA
13 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
16 13 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 904 (20.13%) Data Quality
2 363 (8.08%) QA
3 114 (2.54%) GDPR
4 50 (1.11%) SLA
5 46 (1.02%) Accessibility
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 23 (0.51%) IFRS
7 23 (0.51%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.38%) MiFID
10 15 (0.33%) COBIT
10 15 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 12 (0.27%) Basel III
12 9 (0.20%) PCI DSS
13 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
13 8 (0.18%) PMO
13 8 (0.18%) SEPA
13 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
14 7 (0.16%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 423 (9.42%) Docker
2 115 (2.56%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.13%) Postfix
11 5 (0.11%) KVM
12 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 371 (8.26%) Kubernetes
2 94 (2.09%) Ansible
3 89 (1.98%) Grafana
4 52 (1.16%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.89%) Control-M
6 39 (0.87%) SCOM
7 38 (0.85%) Kibana
8 34 (0.76%) Data Guard
9 30 (0.67%) Oracle RMAN
10 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.22%) Argo
13 10 (0.22%) Progress Chef
14 9 (0.20%) Istio
14 9 (0.20%) Tivoli
15 8 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
15 8 (0.18%) Nagios
Vendors
1 768 (17.10%) Microsoft
2 744 (16.57%) Oracle
3 590 (13.14%) Databricks
4 209 (4.65%) Google
5 127 (2.83%) Informatica
6 120 (2.67%) SAP
7 101 (2.25%) IBM
8 94 (2.09%) Talend
9 85 (1.89%) ServiceNow
10 79 (1.76%) Splunk
11 65 (1.45%) VMware
12 62 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 46 (1.02%) Denodo
14 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Foundry
16 37 (0.82%) OpenAI
17 35 (0.78%) Murex
17 35 (0.78%) UiPath
18 34 (0.76%) Adobe
19 33 (0.73%) Alteryx