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

6 months to
22 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,411 3,286 3,613
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.83% 12.04% 10.22%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.15% 36.43% 32.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,953 2,333 2,733
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £420
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 £760 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 83 61 42
10th Percentile £25.34 £22.81 £24.20
25th Percentile £31.86 £30.25 £30.09
Median hourly rate £46.80 £40.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -4.71% -10.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £51.87
90th Percentile £82.25 £64.50 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.90 £39.67 £42.00
% change year-on-year +15.70% -5.54% -14.28%

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 11,875 9,020 10,986
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.47% 33.04% 31.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,716 6,204 7,905
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £516 £545
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% -5.32% -0.91%
75th Percentile £623 £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 482 228 407
10th Percentile £34.01 £29.07 £35.31
25th Percentile £54.53 £38.97 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.89 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.38 £62.50
% change year-on-year +15.30% -9.80% +3.09%

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 22 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 22 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 22 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 2,359 £525 - 924
North of England -3 581 £463 -2.63% 321
Midlands +2 550 £459 +8.00% 206
South East -10 461 £475 -5.00% 396
West Midlands +4 451 £459 +1.89% 114
North West -2 311 £475 +1.28% 173
South West -11 235 £500 +14.29% 135
Yorkshire -8 233 £463 -2.63% 98
East of England -8 116 £491 -1.75% 84
East Midlands -4 95 £525 +34.44% 92
North East -14 50 £425 -8.11% 57
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
2 186 (4.22%) Apache Airflow
3 177 (4.01%) Confluence
4 148 (3.36%) Apache
5 92 (2.09%) SAS
6 55 (1.25%) SharePoint
7 39 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
7 39 (0.88%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.75%) IIS
9 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
9 22 (0.50%) Tomcat
10 20 (0.45%) CMS
11 18 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
11 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
12 17 (0.39%) 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
1 284 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 29 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
7 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.091%) Notion
7 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.023%) InDesign
10 1 (0.023%) Mingle
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 19 (0.43%) Remedy ITSM
7 17 (0.39%) 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
12 8 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,392 (31.56%) Azure
2 1,043 (23.65%) AWS
3 824 (18.68%) Power Platform
4 397 (9.00%) Azure DevOps
5 381 (8.64%) GCP
6 317 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
7 309 (7.01%) GitHub
8 287 (6.51%) Snowflake
9 273 (6.19%) Serverless
10 247 (5.60%) dbt
11 245 (5.55%) Amazon S3
12 202 (4.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 179 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
14 158 (3.58%) GitHub Actions
15 88 (2.00%) Entra ID
16 81 (1.84%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 79 (1.79%) SaaS
18 77 (1.75%) Power Automate
19 70 (1.59%) Amazon EC2
20 68 (1.54%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.04%) DNS
2 41 (0.93%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
4 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 21 (0.48%) VPN
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
5 20 (0.45%) Network Security
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
7 14 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) DHCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 762 (17.27%) Power BI
2 605 (13.72%) Data Warehouse
3 576 (13.06%) SQL Server
4 295 (6.69%) Tableau
5 280 (6.35%) Relational Database
6 277 (6.28%) PostgreSQL
7 274 (6.21%) Data Lake
8 220 (4.99%) NoSQL
9 218 (4.94%) Metadata
10 183 (4.15%) Oracle Database
11 175 (3.97%) Azure SQL Database
12 160 (3.63%) BigQuery
13 155 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 136 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
15 121 (2.74%) Delta Lake
16 104 (2.36%) Big Data
17 103 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
18 98 (2.22%) MySQL
18 98 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
19 89 (2.02%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 478 (10.84%) Git
2 342 (7.75%) JIRA
3 237 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 180 (4.08%) GitLab
5 69 (1.56%) JUnit
6 59 (1.34%) Maven
7 54 (1.22%) Gradle
8 51 (1.16%) Postman
9 49 (1.11%) Selenium
10 47 (1.07%) Mockito
11 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
12 34 (0.77%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.73%) Bitbucket
14 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.63%) Team Foundation Server
15 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.61%) Cucumber
16 27 (0.61%) ERwin
17 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) TeamCity
General
1 1,145 (25.96%) Finance
2 1,140 (25.84%) Social Skills
3 873 (19.79%) Analytical Skills
4 418 (9.48%) Banking
5 395 (8.95%) Public Sector
6 132 (2.99%) Marketing
7 123 (2.79%) Front Office
8 99 (2.24%) Retail
9 95 (2.15%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.97%) Documentation Skills
11 73 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 58 (1.31%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 50 (1.13%) Legal
15 49 (1.11%) Financial Institution
16 45 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
18 37 (0.84%) Publishing
19 36 (0.82%) Telecoms
20 30 (0.68%) Law
Job Titles
1 944 (21.40%) Developer
2 877 (19.88%) Data Engineer
3 628 (14.24%) Analyst
4 584 (13.24%) Senior
5 305 (6.91%) Lead
6 274 (6.21%) Data Analyst
7 237 (5.37%) Architect
8 211 (4.78%) Consultant
9 177 (4.01%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.99%) Java Developer
11 173 (3.92%) Senior Data Engineer
12 166 (3.76%) DBA
13 144 (3.26%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.88%) Software Engineer
15 113 (2.56%) SQL Developer
16 111 (2.52%) SQL DBA
17 109 (2.47%) Azure Engineer
18 102 (2.31%) C# Developer
19 92 (2.09%) Data Architect
20 87 (1.97%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (8.16%) .NET
2 351 (7.96%) REST
3 267 (6.05%) Kafka
4 265 (6.01%) PySpark
5 224 (5.08%) Spring
6 204 (4.62%) Spring Boot
7 196 (4.44%) React
8 180 (4.08%) RESTful
9 165 (3.74%) JSON
10 160 (3.63%) XML
11 138 (3.13%) HTML
12 125 (2.83%) AngularJS
13 122 (2.77%) CSS
14 109 (2.47%) Pandas
15 103 (2.34%) Web Services
16 102 (2.31%) SOAP
17 92 (2.09%) Middleware
18 91 (2.06%) .NET Framework
19 71 (1.61%) OAuth
20 70 (1.59%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.53%) Cloud Native
2 194 (4.40%) Data Structures
3 159 (3.60%) Legacy Systems
3 159 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 134 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
5 91 (2.06%) Onboarding
6 82 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
7 78 (1.77%) Derivative
7 78 (1.77%) Management Information System
8 72 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
8 72 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
9 65 (1.47%) Clustering
10 64 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
11 60 (1.36%) Replication
12 54 (1.22%) Algorithms
13 51 (1.16%) Fixed Income
14 49 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
15 48 (1.09%) Equities
16 42 (0.95%) Reference Data
17 40 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 298 (6.76%) Linux
2 273 (6.19%) Windows
3 207 (4.69%) Unix
4 103 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.36%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
8 8 (0.18%) zOS
9 7 (0.16%) Android
9 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.091%) VMS
13 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,169 (26.50%) CI/CD
2 1,142 (25.89%) Analytics
3 1,122 (25.44%) Agile
4 1,101 (24.96%) Data Modelling
5 1,025 (23.24%) ETL
6 982 (22.26%) Business Intelligence
7 889 (20.15%) DevOps
8 854 (19.36%) Data Pipeline
9 852 (19.32%) Problem-Solving
10 744 (16.87%) Data Engineering
11 624 (14.15%) AI
12 603 (13.67%) Migration
13 578 (13.10%) Validation
14 476 (10.79%) Data Governance
15 454 (10.29%) Test Automation
16 445 (10.09%) Decision-Making
17 444 (10.07%) Continuous Improvement
18 431 (9.77%) Stakeholder Management
19 421 (9.54%) Data Analysis
20 389 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,569 (35.57%) Python
2 556 (12.60%) Java
3 438 (9.93%) C#
4 349 (7.91%) PL/SQL
5 304 (6.89%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.46%) T-SQL
7 237 (5.37%) PowerShell
8 165 (3.74%) TypeScript
9 131 (2.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 123 (2.79%) Shell Script
11 95 (2.15%) R
12 89 (2.02%) Bash
13 67 (1.52%) Scala
14 49 (1.11%) C++
15 44 (1.00%) VBA
16 37 (0.84%) Bicep
17 33 (0.75%) C
18 31 (0.70%) VB
19 25 (0.57%) Go
20 21 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 941 (21.33%) Security Cleared
2 749 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 321 (7.28%) Degree
4 100 (2.27%) DV Cleared
5 98 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 98 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 65 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 49 (1.11%) ISTQB
8 47 (1.07%) Master's Degree
9 37 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 28 (0.63%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 14 (0.32%) PhD
14 12 (0.27%) ISEB
15 10 (0.23%) CISM
15 10 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 9 (0.20%) CIMA
16 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 9 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 805 (18.25%) Data Quality
2 325 (7.37%) QA
3 163 (3.70%) GDPR
4 48 (1.09%) Accessibility
5 41 (0.93%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) PMO
7 21 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 19 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 18 (0.41%) NIST
10 17 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
12 15 (0.34%) IFRS
13 13 (0.29%) MiFID
14 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.25%) 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%) WCAG
18 8 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 434 (9.84%) Docker
2 109 (2.47%) Active Directory
3 46 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.39%) 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 7 (0.16%) 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
1 374 (8.48%) Kubernetes
2 346 (7.84%) Terraform
3 92 (2.09%) Grafana
4 80 (1.81%) Ansible
5 48 (1.09%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.86%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 27 (0.61%) Control-M
9 22 (0.50%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.43%) Kibana
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 765 (17.34%) Oracle
2 701 (15.89%) Microsoft
3 499 (11.31%) Databricks
4 177 (4.01%) Google
5 156 (3.54%) Informatica
6 122 (2.77%) ServiceNow
6 122 (2.77%) Talend
7 120 (2.72%) SAP
8 81 (1.84%) Splunk
9 76 (1.72%) IBM
10 60 (1.36%) Denodo
11 54 (1.22%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.18%) VMware
13 42 (0.95%) Citrix
14 38 (0.86%) Bloomberg
14 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
15 33 (0.75%) Alteryx
16 32 (0.73%) BMC
16 32 (0.73%) Murex
17 29 (0.66%) SolarWinds