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 2 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,079 3,030 3,646
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.79% 12.58% 9.88%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.79% 36.96% 32.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,173 2,697
10th Percentile £350 £360 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £545
Median % change year-on-year - -8.26% -0.91%
75th Percentile £589 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £765 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -1.87%
Number of hourly rates quoted 67 57 54
10th Percentile £25.92 £21.30 £22.65
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.00 £27.28
Median hourly rate £47.50 £37.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.38% -12.94% -15.00%
75th Percentile £72.25 £58.75 £54.03
90th Percentile £82.85 £76.63 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £38.85 £42.50
% change year-on-year +31.92% -8.60% -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 11,088 8,197 11,129
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.61% 34.04% 30.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,280 5,685 8,036
10th Percentile £358 £361 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £543
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -3.23% -3.81%
75th Percentile £613 £644 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -2.72% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 528 194 471
10th Percentile £37.03 £28.25 £35.50
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.25 £48.84
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -1.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.83 £85.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -7.26% -0.80%

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 2 June 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 2 June 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 2 June 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 -1 2,270 £525 -2.05% 1,033
Midlands +1 522 £468 +6.74% 221
North of England -9 498 £461 -2.89% 433
West Midlands +5 418 £460 +0.69% 129
South East -15 382 £475 -2.56% 478
North West -7 254 £460 -3.16% 255
Yorkshire -12 210 £475 - 113
South West -2 201 £475 - 169
East of England -18 102 £495 -1.00% 129
East Midlands -1 100 £525 +34.62% 92
North East -9 46 £438 -5.41% 70
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
1 231 (5.66%) Apache Spark
2 167 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
3 145 (3.55%) Apache
4 140 (3.43%) Confluence
5 82 (2.01%) SAS
6 61 (1.50%) SharePoint
7 32 (0.78%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.76%) IIS
9 28 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
10 23 (0.56%) Tomcat
11 19 (0.47%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
12 16 (0.39%) Appian
13 15 (0.37%) CMS
13 15 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
14 14 (0.34%) WebSphere
15 13 (0.32%) nginx
16 11 (0.27%) Camunda
16 11 (0.27%) Mendix
17 10 (0.25%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 266 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 42 (1.03%) MS Visio
3 40 (0.98%) Microsoft Office
4 29 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 27 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 6 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
8 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.098%) Notion
10 3 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.049%) Trello
12 1 (0.025%) InDesign
12 1 (0.025%) Mingle
12 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 39 (0.96%) Oracle EBS
2 31 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.64%) Aladdin
4 21 (0.51%) NEC Housing
5 19 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 11 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.25%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.22%) Endur
13 9 (0.22%) Findur
13 9 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
15 7 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,366 (33.49%) Azure
2 995 (24.39%) AWS
3 796 (19.51%) Power Platform
4 401 (9.83%) Azure DevOps
5 340 (8.34%) Azure Data Factory
6 339 (8.31%) GCP
7 308 (7.55%) GitHub
8 250 (6.13%) Serverless
9 248 (6.08%) Snowflake
10 230 (5.64%) Amazon S3
11 217 (5.32%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 193 (4.73%) dbt
13 161 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
14 157 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
15 79 (1.94%) SaaS
16 76 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 72 (1.77%) Power Automate
18 71 (1.74%) Entra ID
19 68 (1.67%) Amazon EC2
20 59 (1.45%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 45 (1.10%) DNS
1 45 (1.10%) Firewall
2 19 (0.47%) SNMP
3 17 (0.42%) Network Security
4 16 (0.39%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.37%) HTTP
5 15 (0.37%) Internet
6 14 (0.34%) SSL
6 14 (0.34%) WAN
7 13 (0.32%) VPN
8 11 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
9 10 (0.25%) LAN
10 9 (0.22%) Wireshark
11 8 (0.20%) 3GPP
12 6 (0.15%) IPsec
12 6 (0.15%) RTP
12 6 (0.15%) SAN
13 5 (0.12%) DHCP
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 730 (17.90%) Power BI
2 530 (12.99%) Data Warehouse
3 511 (12.53%) SQL Server
4 281 (6.89%) Data Lake
4 281 (6.89%) Tableau
5 263 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
6 255 (6.25%) Relational Database
7 226 (5.54%) NoSQL
8 206 (5.05%) Metadata
9 191 (4.68%) Azure SQL Database
10 153 (3.75%) Oracle Database
10 153 (3.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 136 (3.33%) BigQuery
12 125 (3.06%) Delta Lake
13 112 (2.75%) Big Data
14 110 (2.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 102 (2.50%) MySQL
16 100 (2.45%) Oracle Reports
17 92 (2.26%) Amazon RDS
18 91 (2.23%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 423 (10.37%) Git
2 320 (7.85%) JIRA
3 215 (5.27%) Jenkins
4 198 (4.85%) GitLab
5 62 (1.52%) JUnit
6 56 (1.37%) Selenium
7 52 (1.27%) Postman
8 49 (1.20%) Maven
9 47 (1.15%) Mockito
10 41 (1.01%) Cucumber
11 39 (0.96%) Gradle
12 35 (0.86%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.76%) MLflow
14 29 (0.71%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.69%) ERwin
16 25 (0.61%) JMeter
17 24 (0.59%) Bitbucket
18 23 (0.56%) Liquibase
18 23 (0.56%) TeamCity
19 22 (0.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,094 (26.82%) Finance
2 1,047 (25.67%) Social Skills
3 753 (18.46%) Analytical Skills
4 384 (9.41%) Banking
5 338 (8.29%) Public Sector
6 113 (2.77%) Marketing
7 108 (2.65%) Front Office
8 97 (2.38%) Investment Banking
9 81 (1.99%) Documentation Skills
10 68 (1.67%) Retail
11 63 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 57 (1.40%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.27%) Legal
14 41 (1.01%) Publishing
15 37 (0.91%) Manufacturing
15 37 (0.91%) Presentation Skills
16 34 (0.83%) Law
16 34 (0.83%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
18 28 (0.69%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 858 (21.03%) Data Engineer
2 840 (20.59%) Developer
3 572 (14.02%) Analyst
4 521 (12.77%) Senior
5 280 (6.86%) Lead
6 254 (6.23%) Data Analyst
7 229 (5.61%) Architect
8 186 (4.56%) Consultant
9 171 (4.19%) Business Analyst
10 162 (3.97%) Java Developer
11 155 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
12 127 (3.11%) Senior Developer
13 125 (3.06%) DBA
14 123 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.62%) Azure Engineer
16 101 (2.48%) C# Developer
17 86 (2.11%) Data Architect
17 86 (2.11%) Data Scientist
18 85 (2.08%) Python Developer
19 84 (2.06%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (8.63%) .NET
2 337 (8.26%) REST
3 258 (6.33%) PySpark
4 255 (6.25%) Kafka
5 205 (5.03%) Spring
6 195 (4.78%) React
7 193 (4.73%) Spring Boot
8 181 (4.44%) RESTful
9 145 (3.55%) HTML
10 140 (3.43%) JSON
11 136 (3.33%) XML
12 124 (3.04%) CSS
13 120 (2.94%) Pandas
14 106 (2.60%) AngularJS
15 99 (2.43%) SOAP
16 86 (2.11%) Middleware
16 86 (2.11%) Web Services
17 83 (2.03%) .NET Framework
18 76 (1.86%) OAuth
19 71 (1.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 270 (6.62%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.53%) Data Structures
3 133 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (3.11%) Product Ownership
5 116 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (2.06%) Management Information System
7 79 (1.94%) Derivative
8 78 (1.91%) Onboarding
9 67 (1.64%) Data Protection Act
10 65 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
11 56 (1.37%) Clustering
12 54 (1.32%) Enterprise Software
13 53 (1.30%) Equities
14 52 (1.27%) Self-Motivation
15 49 (1.20%) Fixed Income
15 49 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
16 42 (1.03%) Algorithms
17 41 (1.01%) Replication
18 38 (0.93%) NHS
18 38 (0.93%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 287 (7.04%) Linux
2 246 (6.03%) Windows
3 194 (4.76%) Unix
4 84 (2.06%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.59%) AIX
6 21 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.22%) Solaris
9 9 (0.22%) zOS
10 8 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.17%) Android
11 7 (0.17%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.098%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.098%) VMS
13 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.049%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.049%) HPUX
14 2 (0.049%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,139 (27.92%) CI/CD
2 1,034 (25.35%) Analytics
3 1,018 (24.96%) Data Modelling
4 992 (24.32%) Agile
5 987 (24.20%) ETL
6 927 (22.73%) Business Intelligence
7 894 (21.92%) DevOps
8 795 (19.49%) Problem-Solving
9 769 (18.85%) Data Pipeline
10 672 (16.47%) Data Engineering
11 556 (13.63%) AI
12 529 (12.97%) Migration
13 496 (12.16%) Validation
14 454 (11.13%) Data Governance
15 421 (10.32%) Test Automation
16 401 (9.83%) Decision-Making
17 396 (9.71%) Data Analysis
18 369 (9.05%) Performance Tuning
19 365 (8.95%) Microservices
20 359 (8.80%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,519 (37.24%) Python
2 549 (13.46%) Java
3 437 (10.71%) C#
4 310 (7.60%) JavaScript
5 293 (7.18%) PL/SQL
6 215 (5.27%) T-SQL
7 202 (4.95%) PowerShell
8 139 (3.41%) TypeScript
9 123 (3.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 111 (2.72%) Shell Script
11 103 (2.53%) R
12 81 (1.99%) Bash
13 80 (1.96%) Scala
14 61 (1.50%) C++
15 40 (0.98%) VBA
16 39 (0.96%) Bicep
17 30 (0.74%) Perl
18 28 (0.69%) VB
19 25 (0.61%) C
19 25 (0.61%) Go
Qualifications
1 846 (20.74%) Security Cleared
2 686 (16.82%) SC Cleared
3 326 (7.99%) Degree
4 106 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 91 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.74%) Azure Certification
6 71 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 50 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 44 (1.08%) ISTQB
9 34 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (0.56%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.44%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.39%) PhD
13 11 (0.27%) CISSP
14 10 (0.25%) CBAP
14 10 (0.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
14 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
14 10 (0.25%) PMP
15 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 737 (18.07%) Data Quality
2 306 (7.50%) QA
3 176 (4.31%) GDPR
4 42 (1.03%) SLA
5 38 (0.93%) Accessibility
6 32 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 27 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.59%) PMO
9 21 (0.51%) NIST
10 19 (0.47%) PCI DSS
11 17 (0.42%) IFRS
12 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.37%) MiFID
13 14 (0.34%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.29%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.29%) Solvency II
15 11 (0.27%) HL7
16 10 (0.25%) GRC
17 8 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 470 (11.52%) Docker
2 91 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
4 27 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 23 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.34%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.25%) KVM
8 10 (0.25%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.22%) Postfix
9 9 (0.22%) vCloud
10 6 (0.15%) HDFS
10 6 (0.15%) RACF
11 4 (0.098%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.098%) XenApp
11 4 (0.098%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.074%) Oracle Clusterware
13 2 (0.049%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.049%) GridGain
13 2 (0.049%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 383 (9.39%) Kubernetes
2 331 (8.11%) Terraform
3 107 (2.62%) Grafana
4 67 (1.64%) Ansible
5 62 (1.52%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 29 (0.71%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.44%) Kibana
10 16 (0.39%) vCenter Server
11 15 (0.37%) ZABBIX
12 14 (0.34%) Nagios
12 14 (0.34%) Netcool
12 14 (0.34%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.32%) Control-M
13 13 (0.32%) OpenView
13 13 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 10 (0.25%) SCOM
15 9 (0.22%) Progress Chef
15 9 (0.22%) SCCM
Vendors
1 671 (16.45%) Oracle
2 631 (15.47%) Microsoft
3 497 (12.18%) Databricks
4 156 (3.82%) Google
5 143 (3.51%) Informatica
6 126 (3.09%) ServiceNow
7 114 (2.79%) Talend
8 105 (2.57%) SAP
9 85 (2.08%) Splunk
10 62 (1.52%) IBM
11 60 (1.47%) Denodo
12 50 (1.23%) Salesforce
13 46 (1.13%) Citrix
14 42 (1.03%) VMware
15 35 (0.86%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.81%) OpenAI
17 31 (0.76%) Bloomberg
17 31 (0.76%) MuleSoft
18 30 (0.74%) HP
19 29 (0.71%) BMC