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

6 months to
4 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,352 3,202 3,809
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.90% 12.16% 10.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.04% 36.14% 33.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,909 2,288 2,818
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -0.05% -6.93% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 63 54
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.09 £23.13
25th Percentile £31.86 £30.75 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.10% +0.74% -14.63%
75th Percentile £69.72 £51.88 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.70 £67.20 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £41.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +7.42% -1.98% -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 11,748 8,861 11,480
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.72% 33.64% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,648 6,116 8,213
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £521 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -3.61% -2.70%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £511 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -0.29% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 502 216 481
10th Percentile £35.25 £28.18 £35.58
25th Percentile £55.58 £36.19 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.38 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.30% -13.27% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.98 £81.48 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 -5 2,338 £525 -1.87% 1,000
North of England -5 567 £464 -2.37% 411
Midlands +2 550 £460 +8.24% 243
West Midlands +5 453 £459 +2.00% 121
South East -9 449 £483 -3.50% 484
North West -1 301 £475 +0.53% 246
South West -5 232 £500 +11.11% 143
Yorkshire -9 229 £475 - 105
East of England -11 106 £491 +0.77% 116
East Midlands -2 93 £525 +38.16% 122
North East -14 49 £413 -11.05% 65
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
1 211 (4.85%) Apache Spark
2 180 (4.14%) Apache Airflow
3 172 (3.95%) Confluence
4 145 (3.33%) Apache
5 95 (2.18%) SAS
6 51 (1.17%) SharePoint
7 36 (0.83%) WebLogic
8 35 (0.80%) IIS
9 33 (0.76%) Oracle Workflow
10 24 (0.55%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.51%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.46%) CMS
13 19 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
14 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
15 17 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
16 16 (0.37%) nginx
17 15 (0.34%) Appian
18 13 (0.30%) Tuxedo
19 11 (0.25%) Camunda
20 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 281 (6.46%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.92%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.092%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.092%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.092%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.069%) Notion
9 3 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
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%) Trello
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 37 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.57%) Aladdin
4 23 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
4 23 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 20 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.41%) NEC Housing
7 17 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
8 15 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
12 9 (0.21%) Elite 3E
12 9 (0.21%) Fidessa
12 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
13 8 (0.18%) Summit
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,396 (32.08%) Azure
2 1,048 (24.08%) AWS
3 821 (18.86%) Power Platform
4 404 (9.28%) Azure DevOps
5 354 (8.13%) GCP
6 315 (7.24%) Azure Data Factory
7 311 (7.15%) GitHub
8 273 (6.27%) Serverless
9 267 (6.14%) Snowflake
10 243 (5.58%) Amazon S3
11 224 (5.15%) dbt
12 203 (4.66%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.72%) GitHub Actions
15 81 (1.86%) Entra ID
16 78 (1.79%) SaaS
17 77 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 77 (1.77%) Power Automate
18 72 (1.65%) Amazon EC2
19 68 (1.56%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (1.01%) DNS
2 39 (0.90%) Firewall
3 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 20 (0.46%) Internet
4 20 (0.46%) Network Security
4 20 (0.46%) SSL
5 19 (0.44%) HTTP
6 18 (0.41%) VPN
7 13 (0.30%) WAN
8 10 (0.23%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.21%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.16%) SAN
11 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) LAN
12 6 (0.14%) Reverse Proxy
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 756 (17.37%) Power BI
2 574 (13.19%) Data Warehouse
3 560 (12.87%) SQL Server
4 295 (6.78%) Tableau
5 289 (6.64%) Relational Database
6 277 (6.36%) PostgreSQL
7 274 (6.30%) Data Lake
8 219 (5.03%) NoSQL
9 201 (4.62%) Metadata
10 174 (4.00%) Azure SQL Database
10 174 (4.00%) Oracle Database
11 147 (3.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 146 (3.35%) BigQuery
13 134 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
14 130 (2.99%) Delta Lake
15 106 (2.44%) MySQL
16 104 (2.39%) Big Data
17 99 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
18 98 (2.25%) Oracle Reports
19 89 (2.05%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 460 (10.57%) Git
2 342 (7.86%) JIRA
3 235 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 187 (4.30%) GitLab
5 69 (1.59%) JUnit
6 53 (1.22%) Postman
7 50 (1.15%) Maven
7 50 (1.15%) Selenium
8 48 (1.10%) Mockito
9 44 (1.01%) Gradle
10 33 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 31 (0.71%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.69%) MLflow
12 30 (0.69%) Visual Studio
13 28 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
14 27 (0.62%) Bitbucket
14 27 (0.62%) ERwin
14 27 (0.62%) JMeter
15 26 (0.60%) Liquibase
15 26 (0.60%) Zephyr
General
1 1,152 (26.47%) Finance
2 1,127 (25.90%) Social Skills
3 837 (19.23%) Analytical Skills
4 417 (9.58%) Banking
5 375 (8.62%) Public Sector
6 124 (2.85%) Marketing
7 120 (2.76%) Front Office
8 102 (2.34%) Investment Banking
9 100 (2.30%) Retail
10 88 (2.02%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.22%) Legal
12 53 (1.22%) Manufacturing
13 52 (1.19%) Financial Institution
14 49 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.85%) Publishing
16 36 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
17 35 (0.80%) Back Office
18 34 (0.78%) Telecoms
19 28 (0.64%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 917 (21.07%) Developer
2 876 (20.13%) Data Engineer
3 632 (14.52%) Analyst
4 564 (12.96%) Senior
5 300 (6.89%) Lead
6 269 (6.18%) Data Analyst
7 239 (5.49%) Architect
8 204 (4.69%) Consultant
9 187 (4.30%) Business Analyst
10 173 (3.98%) Java Developer
11 169 (3.88%) Senior Data Engineer
12 154 (3.54%) DBA
13 134 (3.08%) Senior Developer
14 131 (3.01%) Software Engineer
15 105 (2.41%) Azure Engineer
15 105 (2.41%) C# Developer
16 104 (2.39%) SQL Developer
17 99 (2.27%) SQL DBA
18 89 (2.05%) Python Developer
19 86 (1.98%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 362 (8.32%) .NET
2 341 (7.84%) REST
3 263 (6.04%) Kafka
4 261 (6.00%) PySpark
5 222 (5.10%) Spring
6 206 (4.73%) Spring Boot
7 201 (4.62%) React
8 183 (4.20%) RESTful
9 155 (3.56%) JSON
10 149 (3.42%) XML
11 135 (3.10%) HTML
12 122 (2.80%) CSS
13 120 (2.76%) AngularJS
14 114 (2.62%) Pandas
15 103 (2.37%) SOAP
16 101 (2.32%) Web Services
17 97 (2.23%) Middleware
18 90 (2.07%) .NET Framework
19 68 (1.56%) Node.js
19 68 (1.56%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 281 (6.46%) Cloud Native
2 175 (4.02%) Data Structures
3 151 (3.47%) Legacy Systems
4 143 (3.29%) Product Ownership
5 126 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 81 (1.86%) Derivative
7 80 (1.84%) Onboarding
8 74 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
9 73 (1.68%) Management Information System
10 72 (1.65%) Enterprise Software
11 67 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 64 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
13 59 (1.36%) Clustering
14 54 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.19%) Equities
16 51 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
17 50 (1.15%) Replication
18 49 (1.13%) Fixed Income
19 41 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 39 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 289 (6.64%) Linux
2 268 (6.16%) Windows
3 208 (4.78%) Unix
4 98 (2.25%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.55%) AIX
6 21 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.37%) Solaris
8 13 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.14%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.092%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.092%) VMS
13 3 (0.069%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.046%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,187 (27.27%) CI/CD
2 1,121 (25.76%) Analytics
3 1,107 (25.44%) Agile
4 1,047 (24.06%) Data Modelling
5 1,005 (23.09%) ETL
6 960 (22.06%) Business Intelligence
7 893 (20.52%) DevOps
8 858 (19.72%) Problem-Solving
9 824 (18.93%) Data Pipeline
10 719 (16.52%) Data Engineering
11 635 (14.59%) AI
12 577 (13.26%) Migration
13 564 (12.96%) Validation
14 456 (10.48%) Data Governance
15 453 (10.41%) Test Automation
16 448 (10.29%) Decision-Making
17 437 (10.04%) Data Analysis
18 420 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
19 416 (9.56%) Stakeholder Management
20 383 (8.80%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,577 (36.24%) Python
2 546 (12.55%) Java
3 444 (10.20%) C#
4 329 (7.56%) PL/SQL
5 301 (6.92%) JavaScript
6 239 (5.49%) T-SQL
7 227 (5.22%) PowerShell
8 163 (3.75%) TypeScript
9 134 (3.08%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 113 (2.60%) Shell Script
11 97 (2.23%) R
12 84 (1.93%) Bash
13 76 (1.75%) Scala
14 53 (1.22%) C++
15 43 (0.99%) VBA
16 37 (0.85%) Bicep
17 35 (0.80%) C
18 32 (0.74%) VB
19 24 (0.55%) Go
20 21 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 912 (20.96%) Security Cleared
2 733 (16.84%) SC Cleared
3 337 (7.74%) Degree
4 107 (2.46%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
6 94 (2.16%) DV Cleared
7 65 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.13%) Master's Degree
9 47 (1.08%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.71%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.39%) PhD
13 15 (0.34%) CISSP
14 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 10 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
15 9 (0.21%) ACCA
15 9 (0.21%) CIMA
15 9 (0.21%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 8 (0.18%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 773 (17.76%) Data Quality
2 332 (7.63%) QA
3 172 (3.95%) GDPR
4 45 (1.03%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.97%) SLA
6 24 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 20 (0.46%) PMO
9 19 (0.44%) NIST
10 17 (0.39%) Solvency II
11 16 (0.37%) IFRS
12 15 (0.34%) MiFID
13 14 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 12 (0.28%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.23%) HL7
17 9 (0.21%) GRC
17 9 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 449 (10.32%) Docker
2 101 (2.32%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.01%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 28 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.30%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.21%) Postfix
12 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.092%) HDFS
15 2 (0.046%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.046%) GridGain
15 2 (0.046%) XenApp
15 2 (0.046%) XenDesktop
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 375 (8.62%) Kubernetes
2 354 (8.13%) Terraform
3 98 (2.25%) Grafana
4 80 (1.84%) Ansible
5 52 (1.19%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 22 (0.51%) Kibana
9 21 (0.48%) Control-M
10 20 (0.46%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.44%) SCOM
12 16 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.37%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Nagios
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.30%) OpenView
15 13 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.21%) Progress Chef
17 8 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 747 (17.16%) Oracle
2 676 (15.53%) Microsoft
3 505 (11.60%) Databricks
4 168 (3.86%) Google
5 155 (3.56%) Informatica
6 124 (2.85%) ServiceNow
6 124 (2.85%) Talend
7 108 (2.48%) SAP
8 83 (1.91%) Splunk
9 70 (1.61%) IBM
10 62 (1.42%) Denodo
11 51 (1.17%) Salesforce
12 47 (1.08%) VMware
13 45 (1.03%) Citrix
14 41 (0.94%) Bloomberg
15 40 (0.92%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.80%) Murex
17 30 (0.69%) Alteryx
18 29 (0.67%) OpenAI
19 28 (0.64%) SolarWinds