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

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,342 3,175 3,824
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.89% 12.17% 10.23%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.03% 36.12% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,902 2,269 2,814
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £644
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 55
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.09 £22.66
25th Percentile £31.86 £30.75 £28.13
Median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.10% +0.74% -15.00%
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 11,725 8,789 11,494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.70% 33.68% 30.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,633 6,064 8,224
10th Percentile £360 £352 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year -0.16% -3.70% -2.70%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £510 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -0.26% -2.60% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 506 216 481
10th Percentile £35.25 £28.18 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.84 £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 £78.88 £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 3 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 3 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 3 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 2,330 £525 -1.87% 1,000
North of England -5 566 £463 -2.63% 411
Midlands +3 551 £460 +8.24% 243
West Midlands +5 454 £459 +2.00% 121
South East -9 445 £490 -2.00% 484
North West -3 300 £475 +0.53% 246
South West -3 233 £503 +9.84% 143
Yorkshire -8 229 £475 - 105
East of England -11 106 £491 +0.77% 116
East Midlands -1 93 £525 +38.16% 122
North East -16 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
1 210 (4.84%) Apache Spark
2 179 (4.12%) Apache Airflow
3 172 (3.96%) Confluence
4 144 (3.32%) Apache
5 95 (2.19%) SAS
6 50 (1.15%) SharePoint
7 35 (0.81%) IIS
7 35 (0.81%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.76%) Oracle Workflow
9 24 (0.55%) Tomcat
10 22 (0.51%) Jupyter
11 20 (0.46%) CMS
12 19 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
13 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
14 17 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
15 16 (0.37%) nginx
16 15 (0.35%) Appian
17 13 (0.30%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.25%) Camunda
19 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 278 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.78%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.12%) 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 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.58%) 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 (0.35%) 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 Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,395 (32.13%) Azure
2 1,049 (24.16%) AWS
3 819 (18.86%) Power Platform
4 402 (9.26%) Azure DevOps
5 354 (8.15%) GCP
6 318 (7.32%) Azure Data Factory
7 309 (7.12%) GitHub
8 273 (6.29%) Serverless
9 266 (6.13%) Snowflake
10 243 (5.60%) Amazon S3
11 224 (5.16%) dbt
12 204 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (4.03%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
15 79 (1.82%) Entra ID
16 77 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 77 (1.77%) Power Automate
16 77 (1.77%) SaaS
17 72 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
18 68 (1.57%) 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
5 19 (0.44%) HTTP
5 19 (0.44%) SSL
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
1 754 (17.37%) Power BI
2 575 (13.24%) Data Warehouse
3 556 (12.81%) SQL Server
4 292 (6.73%) Tableau
5 288 (6.63%) Relational Database
6 278 (6.40%) PostgreSQL
7 272 (6.26%) Data Lake
8 221 (5.09%) NoSQL
9 199 (4.58%) Metadata
10 176 (4.05%) Azure SQL Database
11 172 (3.96%) Oracle Database
12 147 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 145 (3.34%) BigQuery
14 134 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
15 129 (2.97%) Delta Lake
16 106 (2.44%) MySQL
17 103 (2.37%) Big Data
18 99 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
19 98 (2.26%) Oracle Reports
20 89 (2.05%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 460 (10.59%) Git
2 343 (7.90%) JIRA
3 234 (5.39%) Jenkins
4 187 (4.31%) GitLab
5 69 (1.59%) JUnit
6 53 (1.22%) Postman
7 50 (1.15%) Maven
7 50 (1.15%) Selenium
8 48 (1.11%) Mockito
9 44 (1.01%) Gradle
10 33 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 31 (0.71%) Cucumber
12 30 (0.69%) MLflow
13 29 (0.67%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.64%) JMeter
14 28 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
15 27 (0.62%) Bitbucket
15 27 (0.62%) ERwin
16 26 (0.60%) Liquibase
16 26 (0.60%) Zephyr
General
1 1,149 (26.46%) Finance
2 1,124 (25.89%) Social Skills
3 834 (19.21%) Analytical Skills
4 417 (9.60%) Banking
5 373 (8.59%) Public Sector
6 122 (2.81%) Marketing
7 120 (2.76%) Front Office
8 102 (2.35%) Investment Banking
9 99 (2.28%) Retail
10 88 (2.03%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.22%) Legal
13 52 (1.20%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.20%) Manufacturing
14 49 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.85%) Publishing
16 36 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
17 35 (0.81%) Back Office
18 34 (0.78%) Telecoms
19 27 (0.62%) Law
Job Titles
1 915 (21.07%) Developer
2 875 (20.15%) Data Engineer
3 627 (14.44%) Analyst
4 560 (12.90%) Senior
5 301 (6.93%) Lead
6 267 (6.15%) Data Analyst
7 239 (5.50%) Architect
8 203 (4.68%) Consultant
9 188 (4.33%) Business Analyst
10 174 (4.01%) Java Developer
11 165 (3.80%) Senior Data Engineer
12 150 (3.45%) DBA
13 133 (3.06%) Senior Developer
14 131 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 105 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
16 104 (2.40%) C# Developer
16 104 (2.40%) SQL Developer
17 95 (2.19%) SQL DBA
18 88 (2.03%) Python Developer
19 85 (1.96%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 361 (8.31%) .NET
2 338 (7.78%) REST
3 263 (6.06%) Kafka
3 263 (6.06%) PySpark
4 222 (5.11%) Spring
5 206 (4.74%) Spring Boot
6 200 (4.61%) React
7 184 (4.24%) RESTful
8 154 (3.55%) JSON
9 149 (3.43%) XML
10 135 (3.11%) HTML
11 122 (2.81%) CSS
12 120 (2.76%) AngularJS
13 113 (2.60%) Pandas
14 102 (2.35%) SOAP
15 100 (2.30%) Web Services
16 95 (2.19%) Middleware
17 89 (2.05%) .NET Framework
18 68 (1.57%) Node.js
19 67 (1.54%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 280 (6.45%) Cloud Native
2 173 (3.98%) Data Structures
3 150 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 143 (3.29%) Product Ownership
5 126 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 81 (1.87%) Derivative
7 80 (1.84%) Onboarding
8 73 (1.68%) Management Information System
9 72 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
9 72 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
10 65 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
11 64 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
12 59 (1.36%) Clustering
13 54 (1.24%) Algorithms
14 52 (1.20%) Equities
15 51 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
16 49 (1.13%) Fixed Income
16 49 (1.13%) Replication
17 41 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 39 (0.90%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 288 (6.63%) Linux
2 268 (6.17%) Windows
3 207 (4.77%) Unix
4 98 (2.26%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.55%) AIX
6 21 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.35%) 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 1,188 (27.36%) CI/CD
2 1,119 (25.77%) Analytics
3 1,107 (25.50%) Agile
4 1,050 (24.18%) Data Modelling
5 1,004 (23.12%) ETL
6 956 (22.02%) Business Intelligence
7 892 (20.54%) DevOps
8 856 (19.71%) Problem-Solving
9 823 (18.95%) Data Pipeline
10 718 (16.54%) Data Engineering
11 634 (14.60%) AI
12 576 (13.27%) Migration
13 564 (12.99%) Validation
14 455 (10.48%) Data Governance
15 452 (10.41%) Test Automation
16 446 (10.27%) Decision-Making
17 434 (10.00%) Data Analysis
18 419 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
19 414 (9.53%) Stakeholder Management
20 380 (8.75%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,575 (36.27%) Python
2 547 (12.60%) Java
3 442 (10.18%) C#
4 327 (7.53%) PL/SQL
5 300 (6.91%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.55%) T-SQL
7 227 (5.23%) PowerShell
8 162 (3.73%) TypeScript
9 136 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 113 (2.60%) Shell Script
11 97 (2.23%) R
12 84 (1.93%) Bash
13 77 (1.77%) Scala
14 53 (1.22%) C++
15 42 (0.97%) VBA
16 36 (0.83%) Bicep
17 35 (0.81%) C
18 32 (0.74%) VB
19 24 (0.55%) Go
20 21 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 909 (20.94%) Security Cleared
2 729 (16.79%) SC Cleared
3 337 (7.76%) Degree
4 108 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 93 (2.14%) DV Cleared
7 65 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.13%) Master's Degree
9 48 (1.11%) 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 (0.35%) CISSP
14 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 10 (0.23%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 10 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
15 9 (0.21%) ACCA
15 9 (0.21%) CIMA
16 8 (0.18%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 771 (17.76%) Data Quality
2 332 (7.65%) QA
3 172 (3.96%) GDPR
4 45 (1.04%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.97%) SLA
6 24 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 20 (0.46%) NIST
8 20 (0.46%) PMO
9 16 (0.37%) IFRS
9 16 (0.37%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.35%) MiFID
11 14 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
12 13 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
12 13 (0.30%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.28%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) HL7
15 9 (0.21%) GRC
15 9 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 449 (10.34%) Docker
2 100 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 25 (0.58%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.35%) 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 (0.12%) 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 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 352 (8.11%) Terraform
3 98 (2.26%) Grafana
4 80 (1.84%) Ansible
5 52 (1.20%) Prometheus
6 35 (0.81%) Oracle RMAN
7 27 (0.62%) 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 (0.35%) 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
1 741 (17.07%) Oracle
2 677 (15.59%) Microsoft
3 505 (11.63%) Databricks
4 168 (3.87%) Google
5 154 (3.55%) Informatica
6 124 (2.86%) ServiceNow
7 123 (2.83%) Talend
8 109 (2.51%) SAP
9 83 (1.91%) Splunk
10 70 (1.61%) IBM
11 62 (1.43%) Denodo
12 51 (1.17%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.08%) VMware
14 45 (1.04%) Citrix
15 41 (0.94%) Bloomberg
16 40 (0.92%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.81%) Murex
18 30 (0.69%) Alteryx
19 29 (0.67%) OpenAI
20 28 (0.64%) SolarWinds