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

6 months to
15 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,980 2,995 3,644
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.15% 12.28% 9.83%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.45% 36.26% 33.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,757 2,113 2,674
10th Percentile £350 £355 £353
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -6.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £762 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 56 59
10th Percentile £26.50 £24.13 £22.43
25th Percentile £35.19 £30.19 £26.12
Median hourly rate £51.25 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +2.49% +17.65% -14.63%
75th Percentile £74.37 £65.71 £53.75
90th Percentile £83.30 £79.72 £61.99
UK median hourly rate £54.75 £47.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +16.49% +10.59% -15.00%

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 10,920 8,259 10,744
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.86% 33.86% 28.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,280 5,686 7,810
10th Percentile £352 £362 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.42% -5.61%
75th Percentile £610 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 519 212 426
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.31 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.40 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.32
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +4.03% -3.49%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%

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 15 April 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 15 April 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 15 April 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 2,277 £512 -5.16% 879
Midlands +6 513 £465 +1.20% 296
North of England -10 456 £450 -5.26% 421
West Midlands +7 408 £463 -2.01% 163
South East -19 307 £500 - 500
North West -2 259 £450 -5.26% 241
South West -7 223 £475 -5.00% 168
Yorkshire -19 178 £465 -2.11% 124
East Midlands +1 103 £525 +34.27% 133
East of England -18 89 £510 +9.09% 142
North East -13 30 £475 +4.40% 62
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
1 225 (5.65%) Apache Spark
2 159 (3.99%) Apache Airflow
3 137 (3.44%) Apache
4 121 (3.04%) Confluence
5 90 (2.26%) SAS
6 81 (2.04%) SharePoint
7 48 (1.21%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.78%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 18 (0.45%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.35%) nginx
14 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.33%) Appian
16 12 (0.30%) CMS
16 12 (0.30%) HCL Notes
16 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 273 (6.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.23%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.075%) 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%) SPSS
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 40 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 21 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.53%) NEC Housing
3 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
3 21 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
4 19 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
5 17 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
5 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
6 15 (0.38%) NetSuite
6 15 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
7 10 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
7 10 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
8 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
9 8 (0.20%) Endur
9 8 (0.20%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 1,375 (34.55%) Azure
2 974 (24.47%) AWS
3 782 (19.65%) Power Platform
4 414 (10.40%) Azure DevOps
5 338 (8.49%) Azure Data Factory
6 320 (8.04%) GCP
7 301 (7.56%) GitHub
8 270 (6.78%) Serverless
9 234 (5.88%) Amazon S3
10 231 (5.80%) Snowflake
11 226 (5.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 177 (4.45%) dbt
13 158 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
14 155 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
15 88 (2.21%) Power Automate
16 83 (2.09%) SaaS
17 77 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
18 75 (1.88%) Azure Functions
19 72 (1.81%) Entra ID
20 71 (1.78%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.21%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) HTTP
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 17 (0.43%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.40%) Internet
6 14 (0.35%) WAN
7 11 (0.28%) LAN
7 11 (0.28%) SNMP
7 11 (0.28%) SSL
7 11 (0.28%) VPN
8 9 (0.23%) DHCP
9 8 (0.20%) 5G
10 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.15%) 4G
11 6 (0.15%) IPsec
11 6 (0.15%) VLAN
12 5 (0.13%) NetScaler
12 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
12 5 (0.13%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 714 (17.94%) Power BI
2 513 (12.89%) Data Warehouse
3 485 (12.19%) SQL Server
4 270 (6.78%) Tableau
5 269 (6.76%) NoSQL
6 262 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
7 258 (6.48%) Relational Database
8 251 (6.31%) Data Lake
9 211 (5.30%) Azure SQL Database
10 207 (5.20%) Metadata
11 145 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 144 (3.62%) Oracle Database
13 123 (3.09%) MySQL
14 120 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
15 117 (2.94%) BigQuery
16 112 (2.81%) Delta Lake
17 107 (2.69%) Big Data
18 100 (2.51%) Amazon RDS
19 98 (2.46%) MongoDB
19 98 (2.46%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 435 (10.93%) Git
2 322 (8.09%) JIRA
3 221 (5.55%) Jenkins
4 160 (4.02%) GitLab
5 62 (1.56%) Selenium
6 61 (1.53%) JUnit
7 47 (1.18%) Postman
8 40 (1.01%) Oracle APEX
9 39 (0.98%) Maven
10 37 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
12 34 (0.85%) Mockito
13 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.68%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.65%) SonarQube
16 25 (0.63%) ERwin
16 25 (0.63%) JMeter
17 23 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
18 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
19 21 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,106 (27.79%) Social Skills
2 1,082 (27.19%) Finance
3 751 (18.87%) Analytical Skills
4 389 (9.77%) Banking
5 338 (8.49%) Public Sector
6 105 (2.64%) Front Office
7 100 (2.51%) Investment Banking
8 90 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
9 87 (2.19%) Marketing
10 65 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 57 (1.43%) Retail
12 56 (1.41%) Legal
13 53 (1.33%) Financial Institution
14 40 (1.01%) Telecoms
15 37 (0.93%) Publishing
16 35 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 32 (0.80%) Law
17 32 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
18 30 (0.75%) Local Government
18 30 (0.75%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 877 (22.04%) Developer
2 791 (19.87%) Data Engineer
3 582 (14.62%) Analyst
4 497 (12.49%) Senior
5 275 (6.91%) Lead
6 248 (6.23%) Data Analyst
7 215 (5.40%) Architect
8 199 (5.00%) Business Analyst
9 183 (4.60%) Consultant
10 152 (3.82%) Java Developer
11 140 (3.52%) Senior Developer
12 121 (3.04%) Senior Data Engineer
13 117 (2.94%) Azure Engineer
14 115 (2.89%) DBA
15 109 (2.74%) Software Engineer
16 101 (2.54%) C# Developer
17 92 (2.31%) Python Developer
18 87 (2.19%) Full-Stack Developer
19 85 (2.14%) Data Scientist
20 84 (2.11%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (8.64%) .NET
2 313 (7.86%) REST
3 249 (6.26%) Kafka
4 243 (6.11%) PySpark
5 195 (4.90%) React
6 186 (4.67%) RESTful
7 183 (4.60%) Spring
8 170 (4.27%) Spring Boot
9 149 (3.74%) XML
10 144 (3.62%) HTML
11 123 (3.09%) CSS
11 123 (3.09%) Pandas
12 122 (3.07%) JSON
13 114 (2.86%) AngularJS
14 88 (2.21%) Node.js
15 86 (2.16%) Middleware
16 80 (2.01%) SOAP
16 80 (2.01%) Web Services
17 79 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 74 (1.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 252 (6.33%) Cloud Native
2 139 (3.49%) Data Structures
3 127 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
4 123 (3.09%) Product Ownership
5 92 (2.31%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (2.14%) Management Information System
7 73 (1.83%) Derivative
8 67 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
8 67 (1.68%) Onboarding
9 63 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
10 57 (1.43%) Equities
10 57 (1.43%) Fixed Income
11 52 (1.31%) Algorithms
12 49 (1.23%) Clustering
13 45 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
13 45 (1.13%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 44 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
15 38 (0.95%) Replication
16 37 (0.93%) NHS
17 34 (0.85%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 282 (7.09%) Linux
2 241 (6.06%) Windows
3 199 (5.00%) Unix
4 77 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (0.15%) zOS
11 4 (0.10%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.075%) CentOS
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) VME
14 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,079 (27.11%) CI/CD
2 1,052 (26.43%) Agile
3 1,036 (26.03%) Analytics
4 992 (24.92%) Data Modelling
5 948 (23.82%) ETL
6 943 (23.69%) Business Intelligence
7 924 (23.22%) DevOps
8 855 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
9 707 (17.76%) Data Pipeline
10 625 (15.70%) Data Engineering
11 491 (12.34%) AI
12 485 (12.19%) Migration
13 483 (12.14%) Data Governance
14 475 (11.93%) Validation
15 387 (9.72%) Test Automation
16 381 (9.57%) Data Analysis
17 375 (9.42%) Decision-Making
18 361 (9.07%) Performance Tuning
19 351 (8.82%) Microservices
20 348 (8.74%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 1,500 (37.69%) Python
2 553 (13.89%) Java
3 423 (10.63%) C#
4 322 (8.09%) JavaScript
5 305 (7.66%) PL/SQL
6 183 (4.60%) T-SQL
7 169 (4.25%) PowerShell
8 138 (3.47%) TypeScript
9 118 (2.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 116 (2.91%) Shell Script
11 114 (2.86%) R
12 100 (2.51%) Scala
13 69 (1.73%) Bash
14 62 (1.56%) C++
15 61 (1.53%) VBA
16 44 (1.11%) Bicep
16 44 (1.11%) Perl
17 28 (0.70%) Go
18 26 (0.65%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 840 (21.11%) Security Cleared
2 679 (17.06%) SC Cleared
3 318 (7.99%) Degree
4 111 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 86 (2.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 50 (1.26%) DV Cleared
7 50 (1.26%) ISTQB
7 50 (1.26%) Master's Degree
8 40 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
9 31 (0.78%) AWS Certification
10 18 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
11 16 (0.40%) PhD
12 13 (0.33%) CBAP
13 10 (0.25%) PMP
14 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
15 8 (0.20%) ISEB
16 7 (0.18%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 718 (18.04%) Data Quality
2 303 (7.61%) QA
3 177 (4.45%) GDPR
4 51 (1.28%) Accessibility
5 32 (0.80%) SLA
6 30 (0.75%) PMO
7 29 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) NIST
11 15 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 14 (0.35%) MiFID
13 13 (0.33%) IFRS
14 12 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 11 (0.28%) HL7
15 11 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.25%) GRC
16 10 (0.25%) SEPA
16 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 468 (11.76%) Docker
2 95 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 34 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 14 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.20%) KVM
7 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 7 (0.18%) Postfix
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.13%) XenApp
10 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 411 (10.33%) Kubernetes
2 325 (8.17%) Terraform
3 100 (2.51%) Grafana
4 66 (1.66%) Ansible
5 62 (1.56%) Prometheus
6 33 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
7 22 (0.55%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.43%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.38%) Kibana
10 15 (0.38%) SCCM
11 14 (0.35%) Control-M
12 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.25%) Nagios
13 10 (0.25%) Netcool
13 10 (0.25%) OpenView
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.23%) Kiali
14 9 (0.23%) Puppet
Vendors
1 659 (16.56%) Oracle
2 655 (16.46%) Microsoft
3 482 (12.11%) Databricks
4 158 (3.97%) Google
5 122 (3.07%) Informatica
5 122 (3.07%) ServiceNow
6 105 (2.64%) Talend
7 102 (2.56%) SAP
8 81 (2.04%) Splunk
9 62 (1.56%) Salesforce
10 60 (1.51%) IBM
11 55 (1.38%) Denodo
12 52 (1.31%) Citrix
13 44 (1.11%) OpenAI
14 34 (0.85%) MuleSoft
15 31 (0.78%) Bloomberg
15 31 (0.78%) VMware
16 30 (0.75%) Dynatrace
17 28 (0.70%) HP
18 26 (0.65%) Atlassian