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 10 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,480 3,300 3,504
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.83% 11.86% 10.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.38% 36.26% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,005 2,343 2,632
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 62 42
10th Percentile £23.23 £22.83 £25.99
25th Percentile £32.80 £29.37 £30.09
Median hourly rate £45.00 £37.25 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +20.81% -11.31% -8.46%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £41.16
% change year-on-year +14.56% -5.61% -10.42%

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 11,986 9,101 10,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.31% 32.70% 31.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,763 6,255 7,550
10th Percentile £363 £345 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £655
90th Percentile £738 £763 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £504 £530
% change year-on-year +1.69% -4.91% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 496 236 359
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.07 £30.00
25th Percentile £52.88 £37.45 £51.25
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 £80.00 £84.75 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +7.96%

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 10 August 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 10 August 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 10 August 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 2,437 £525 -0.71% 1,464
North of England -1 589 £463 -1.39% 441
Midlands +1 543 £459 +2.34% 243
South East -9 471 £490 -2.00% 480
West Midlands +4 444 £459 +1.32% 131
North West -3 306 £475 +1.71% 236
Yorkshire -4 244 £474 -0.21% 136
South West -7 222 £500 +17.65% 182
East of England -1 118 £480 -4.00% 117
East Midlands -2 95 £464 +23.67% 112
North East -16 50 £413 -10.81% 79
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
1 204 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
2 194 (4.33%) Apache Spark
3 182 (4.06%) Confluence
4 149 (3.33%) Apache
5 97 (2.17%) SAS
6 64 (1.43%) SharePoint
7 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
8 37 (0.83%) WebLogic
9 31 (0.69%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
14 17 (0.38%) nginx
14 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
15 16 (0.36%) Tomcat
16 12 (0.27%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 8 (0.18%) Apache Superset
18 8 (0.18%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 298 (6.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
4 36 (0.80%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 44 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.63%) Aladdin
4 26 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
5 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
6 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
9 13 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.27%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.22%) Finacle
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Fidessa
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
14 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,415 (31.58%) Azure
2 1,058 (23.62%) AWS
3 863 (19.26%) Power Platform
4 412 (9.20%) Azure DevOps
5 388 (8.66%) GCP
6 317 (7.08%) GitHub
7 316 (7.05%) Azure Data Factory
8 303 (6.76%) Snowflake
9 274 (6.12%) Serverless
10 256 (5.71%) dbt
11 226 (5.04%) Amazon S3
12 200 (4.46%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
15 92 (2.05%) Entra ID
16 90 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 90 (2.01%) Power Automate
17 84 (1.88%) SaaS
18 80 (1.79%) PowerApps
19 69 (1.54%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.27%) DNS
2 45 (1.00%) Firewall
3 25 (0.56%) Network Security
4 24 (0.54%) VPN
5 23 (0.51%) SSL
6 21 (0.47%) HTTP
6 21 (0.47%) SNMP
7 20 (0.45%) Internet
8 19 (0.42%) TCP/IP
9 12 (0.27%) DHCP
9 12 (0.27%) WAN
10 10 (0.22%) Broadband
10 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
11 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
12 8 (0.18%) SAN
12 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
13 7 (0.16%) 5G
13 7 (0.16%) LAN
13 7 (0.16%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 795 (17.75%) Power BI
2 634 (14.15%) Data Warehouse
3 572 (12.77%) SQL Server
4 282 (6.29%) Tableau
5 274 (6.12%) Relational Database
6 269 (6.00%) PostgreSQL
7 264 (5.89%) Data Lake
8 223 (4.98%) Metadata
8 223 (4.98%) NoSQL
9 186 (4.15%) Oracle Database
10 175 (3.91%) Azure SQL Database
11 163 (3.64%) BigQuery
12 150 (3.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 138 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
14 124 (2.77%) Delta Lake
15 102 (2.28%) Oracle Reports
16 101 (2.25%) MySQL
17 100 (2.23%) Big Data
18 93 (2.08%) Snowflake Schema
19 90 (2.01%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 521 (11.63%) Git
2 352 (7.86%) JIRA
3 257 (5.74%) Jenkins
4 199 (4.44%) GitLab
5 72 (1.61%) JUnit
6 61 (1.36%) Maven
7 57 (1.27%) Gradle
7 57 (1.27%) Selenium
8 56 (1.25%) Postman
9 49 (1.09%) Mockito
10 38 (0.85%) SonarQube
11 36 (0.80%) Bitbucket
12 33 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
13 31 (0.69%) Zephyr
14 29 (0.65%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.63%) ERwin
16 27 (0.60%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.58%) JMeter
17 26 (0.58%) TeamCity
18 25 (0.56%) MLflow
General
1 1,185 (26.45%) Social Skills
2 1,146 (25.58%) Finance
3 914 (20.40%) Analytical Skills
4 441 (9.84%) Banking
5 411 (9.17%) Public Sector
6 142 (3.17%) Marketing
7 128 (2.86%) Front Office
8 116 (2.59%) Retail
9 103 (2.30%) Investment Banking
10 82 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
11 81 (1.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 68 (1.52%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (1.16%) Financial Institution
15 48 (1.07%) Legal
16 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
17 41 (0.92%) Telecoms
18 39 (0.87%) Back Office
19 36 (0.80%) Publishing
20 32 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 952 (21.25%) Developer
2 886 (19.78%) Data Engineer
3 647 (14.44%) Analyst
4 598 (13.35%) Senior
5 308 (6.88%) Lead
6 270 (6.03%) Data Analyst
7 230 (5.13%) Architect
8 223 (4.98%) Consultant
9 194 (4.33%) Business Analyst
10 185 (4.13%) DBA
11 173 (3.86%) Senior Data Engineer
12 168 (3.75%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.33%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.86%) Software Engineer
15 119 (2.66%) SQL DBA
16 108 (2.41%) SQL Developer
17 104 (2.32%) Azure Engineer
18 96 (2.14%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.08%) Full-Stack Developer
20 92 (2.05%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 374 (8.35%) .NET
2 373 (8.33%) REST
3 279 (6.23%) PySpark
4 270 (6.03%) Kafka
5 224 (5.00%) Spring
6 201 (4.49%) Spring Boot
7 197 (4.40%) React
8 179 (4.00%) RESTful
9 167 (3.73%) JSON
10 158 (3.53%) XML
11 152 (3.39%) HTML
12 128 (2.86%) AngularJS
12 128 (2.86%) CSS
13 106 (2.37%) Pandas
14 100 (2.23%) Web Services
15 98 (2.19%) SOAP
16 92 (2.05%) Middleware
17 90 (2.01%) .NET Framework
18 74 (1.65%) Node.js
19 69 (1.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 293 (6.54%) Cloud Native
2 201 (4.49%) Data Structures
3 172 (3.84%) Product Ownership
4 151 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
5 129 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
6 98 (2.19%) Onboarding
7 91 (2.03%) Enterprise Software
8 83 (1.85%) Management Information System
9 81 (1.81%) Derivative
10 79 (1.76%) Self-Motivation
11 69 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
12 65 (1.45%) Clustering
13 64 (1.43%) Data Protection Act
13 64 (1.43%) Replication
14 53 (1.18%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.16%) Fixed Income
16 49 (1.09%) Equities
16 49 (1.09%) Reference Data
17 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
18 46 (1.03%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 304 (6.79%) Linux
2 275 (6.14%) Windows
3 202 (4.51%) Unix
4 105 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 13 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) VMS
11 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.16%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.067%) Android
15 3 (0.067%) Apple iOS
15 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.045%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,207 (26.94%) CI/CD
2 1,160 (25.89%) Agile
3 1,155 (25.78%) Analytics
4 1,147 (25.60%) Data Modelling
5 1,037 (23.15%) ETL
6 1,016 (22.68%) Business Intelligence
7 915 (20.42%) DevOps
8 879 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
9 875 (19.53%) Data Pipeline
10 759 (16.94%) Data Engineering
11 647 (14.44%) AI
12 627 (14.00%) Migration
13 609 (13.59%) Validation
14 491 (10.96%) Stakeholder Management
15 487 (10.87%) Data Governance
16 476 (10.63%) Decision-Making
17 470 (10.49%) Test Automation
18 468 (10.45%) Continuous Improvement
19 436 (9.73%) Data Analysis
20 386 (8.62%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,587 (35.42%) Python
2 554 (12.37%) Java
3 444 (9.91%) C#
4 362 (8.08%) PL/SQL
5 335 (7.48%) JavaScript
6 246 (5.49%) PowerShell
7 239 (5.33%) T-SQL
8 165 (3.68%) TypeScript
9 143 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.86%) Shell Script
11 105 (2.34%) Bash
12 83 (1.85%) R
13 66 (1.47%) Scala
14 44 (0.98%) C++
15 43 (0.96%) VBA
16 40 (0.89%) Bicep
17 29 (0.65%) C
18 27 (0.60%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Kotlin
19 21 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,006 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 809 (18.06%) SC Cleared
3 317 (7.08%) Degree
4 112 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 102 (2.28%) DV Cleared
6 97 (2.17%) BPSS Clearance
7 69 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 43 (0.96%) Master's Degree
10 42 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 34 (0.76%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) CISSP
13 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 13 (0.29%) PhD
15 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
15 12 (0.27%) ISEB
15 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.22%) ACCA
16 10 (0.22%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 10 (0.22%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 831 (18.55%) Data Quality
2 337 (7.52%) QA
3 152 (3.39%) GDPR
4 45 (1.00%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.94%) SLA
6 24 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 22 (0.49%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 21 (0.47%) PMO
9 19 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.36%) IFRS
10 16 (0.36%) ISO 20022
10 16 (0.36%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) Solvency II
12 12 (0.27%) COBIT
12 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
12 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
13 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 9 (0.20%) HL7
14 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 451 (10.07%) Docker
2 125 (2.79%) Active Directory
3 47 (1.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.98%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) vCloud
9 12 (0.27%) Hyper-V
10 9 (0.20%) Postfix
10 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.16%) KVM
12 3 (0.067%) HDFS
13 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) Lustre
14 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
14 1 (0.022%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 389 (8.68%) Kubernetes
2 355 (7.92%) Terraform
3 89 (1.99%) Ansible
3 89 (1.99%) Grafana
4 45 (1.00%) Prometheus
5 44 (0.98%) Oracle RMAN
6 39 (0.87%) Data Guard
7 31 (0.69%) Control-M
8 28 (0.63%) SCOM
9 18 (0.40%) Kibana
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.36%) Nagios
11 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.33%) Tivoli
13 14 (0.31%) Netcool
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Clustering
16 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
17 9 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 764 (17.05%) Oracle
2 730 (16.29%) Microsoft
3 516 (11.52%) Databricks
4 173 (3.86%) Google
5 154 (3.44%) Informatica
6 124 (2.77%) Talend
7 121 (2.70%) SAP
8 120 (2.68%) ServiceNow
9 81 (1.81%) IBM
9 81 (1.81%) Splunk
10 66 (1.47%) Denodo
11 63 (1.41%) VMware
12 55 (1.23%) Salesforce
13 39 (0.87%) Citrix
14 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
14 38 (0.85%) BMC
14 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
15 34 (0.76%) Murex
16 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
17 32 (0.71%) Adobe