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

6 months to
15 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,375 3,134 3,783
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 11.62% 10.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.53% 35.51% 35.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,327 2,105 2,709
10th Percentile £338 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £413 £433
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £658
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 49 63
10th Percentile £21.26 £25.26 £21.83
25th Percentile £31.18 £35.00 £30.04
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +16.67% -2.17%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £53.94
90th Percentile £74.55 £77.75 £64.53
UK median hourly rate £47.11 £50.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -5.78% +11.11% -5.76%

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 9,773 8,826 10,796
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.77% 32.73% 30.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,508 5,677 7,786
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £506 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.71% -4.55% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 365 210 396
10th Percentile £40.00 £25.26 £35.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £45.30 £47.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £79.38
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 2,068 £510 -7.27% 656
North of England -1 345 £443 -6.84% 392
Midlands -3 332 £513 +10.44% 264
South East -14 295 £469 -6.90% 723
West Midlands +2 246 £515 +5.10% 136
North West +4 196 £415 -8.79% 201
South West -7 158 £475 -5.00% 202
Yorkshire -22 133 £472 -5.70% 135
East Midlands -7 86 £468 +19.11% 126
East of England -7 75 £575 +9.52% 200
North East -12 18 £488 +0.52% 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
1 157 (4.65%) Apache Spark
2 131 (3.88%) Apache Airflow
3 106 (3.14%) Confluence
4 94 (2.79%) Apache
4 94 (2.79%) SharePoint
5 64 (1.90%) SAS
6 48 (1.42%) WebLogic
7 25 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
8 20 (0.59%) IIS
9 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
10 18 (0.53%) nginx
11 15 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
12 14 (0.41%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 13 (0.39%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
14 12 (0.36%) CMS
14 12 (0.36%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.36%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 9 (0.27%) JBoss
Applications
1 231 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.87%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (1.21%) MS Visio
4 36 (1.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.33%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.089%) Notion
11 2 (0.059%) Maya
11 2 (0.059%) NUKE
11 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.059%) SPSS
12 1 (0.030%) Stata
12 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 31 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
1 31 (0.92%) Oracle Payables
2 29 (0.86%) Oracle General Ledger
3 24 (0.71%) Aladdin
4 22 (0.65%) Oracle Receivables
5 21 (0.62%) Oracle Assets
6 20 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
6 20 (0.59%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.44%) Endur
8 15 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
9 14 (0.41%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.27%) Maximo
12 9 (0.27%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,111 (32.92%) Azure
2 803 (23.79%) AWS
3 644 (19.08%) Power Platform
4 297 (8.80%) Azure DevOps
5 284 (8.41%) GCP
6 244 (7.23%) GitHub
7 233 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
8 228 (6.76%) Serverless
8 228 (6.76%) Snowflake
9 169 (5.01%) Amazon S3
10 168 (4.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 125 (3.70%) dbt
12 122 (3.61%) GitHub Actions
13 111 (3.29%) AWS Lambda
14 86 (2.55%) SaaS
15 81 (2.40%) Azure Functions
16 77 (2.28%) Power Automate
17 71 (2.10%) PowerApps
18 57 (1.69%) Azure Monitor
19 56 (1.66%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.63%) Firewall
2 40 (1.19%) DNS
3 38 (1.13%) HTTP
4 25 (0.74%) Skype
5 17 (0.50%) Network Security
6 16 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.44%) Internet
8 14 (0.41%) DHCP
9 13 (0.39%) SSH
10 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
11 10 (0.30%) SMTP
11 10 (0.30%) VPN
12 9 (0.27%) 2G
12 9 (0.27%) 5G
12 9 (0.27%) FTP
12 9 (0.27%) IMAP
12 9 (0.27%) LAN
12 9 (0.27%) OpenLDAP
12 9 (0.27%) WAN
13 8 (0.24%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 584 (17.30%) Power BI
2 373 (11.05%) SQL Server
3 349 (10.34%) Data Warehouse
4 245 (7.26%) Relational Database
5 243 (7.20%) PostgreSQL
6 242 (7.17%) NoSQL
7 208 (6.16%) Tableau
8 198 (5.87%) Data Lake
9 167 (4.95%) Azure SQL Database
10 159 (4.71%) Oracle Database
11 128 (3.79%) Metadata
12 111 (3.29%) Big Data
13 104 (3.08%) MySQL
14 100 (2.96%) MongoDB
15 99 (2.93%) BigQuery
16 96 (2.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 84 (2.49%) Amazon RDS
18 73 (2.16%) Amazon Redshift
19 65 (1.93%) Oracle Reports
20 64 (1.90%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 376 (11.14%) Git
2 295 (8.74%) JIRA
3 181 (5.36%) Jenkins
4 127 (3.76%) GitLab
5 58 (1.72%) JUnit
6 57 (1.69%) Selenium
7 46 (1.36%) Oracle APEX
8 35 (1.04%) Postman
9 34 (1.01%) Cucumber
10 32 (0.95%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.65%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.65%) ERwin
11 22 (0.65%) Maven
11 22 (0.65%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.65%) SpecFlow
12 21 (0.62%) Mockito
12 21 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
13 19 (0.56%) MLflow
13 19 (0.56%) Visual Studio
14 17 (0.50%) Gradle
General
1 1,060 (31.41%) Social Skills
2 971 (28.77%) Finance
3 590 (17.48%) Analytical Skills
4 387 (11.47%) Banking
5 269 (7.97%) Public Sector
6 114 (3.38%) Investment Banking
7 93 (2.76%) Front Office
8 85 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
8 85 (2.52%) Marketing
9 61 (1.81%) Retail
10 52 (1.54%) Financial Institution
10 52 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 44 (1.30%) Presentation Skills
12 38 (1.13%) Legal
13 33 (0.98%) Manufacturing
14 29 (0.86%) Back Office
15 28 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
16 27 (0.80%) General Ledger
16 27 (0.80%) Local Government
16 27 (0.80%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 870 (25.78%) Developer
2 543 (16.09%) Analyst
3 494 (14.64%) Data Engineer
4 431 (12.77%) Senior
5 221 (6.55%) Data Analyst
6 205 (6.07%) Lead
7 191 (5.66%) Business Analyst
8 151 (4.47%) Architect
9 138 (4.09%) Senior Developer
10 125 (3.70%) Consultant
11 123 (3.64%) Java Developer
12 113 (3.35%) Software Engineer
13 98 (2.90%) Azure Engineer
14 81 (2.40%) Python Developer
15 79 (2.34%) C# Developer
15 79 (2.34%) Data Scientist
15 79 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
16 75 (2.22%) Senior Data Engineer
17 70 (2.07%) Azure Data Engineer
18 67 (1.99%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 318 (9.42%) .NET
2 273 (8.09%) REST
3 216 (6.40%) Kafka
4 187 (5.54%) PySpark
5 157 (4.65%) React
6 145 (4.30%) RESTful
7 142 (4.21%) Spring
8 137 (4.06%) HTML
9 129 (3.82%) XML
10 120 (3.56%) CSS
11 117 (3.47%) Spring Boot
12 102 (3.02%) JSON
13 101 (2.99%) Node.js
14 92 (2.73%) AngularJS
15 76 (2.25%) SOAP
16 75 (2.22%) .NET Framework
17 71 (2.10%) Middleware
18 70 (2.07%) Pandas
19 56 (1.66%) Web Services
20 52 (1.54%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 196 (5.81%) Cloud Native
2 100 (2.96%) Data Structures
3 92 (2.73%) Product Ownership
4 90 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
5 80 (2.37%) Data Protection Act
6 74 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 73 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
8 61 (1.81%) Algorithms
9 59 (1.75%) Derivative
10 54 (1.60%) Onboarding
11 53 (1.57%) Distributed Systems
12 52 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 51 (1.51%) Equities
14 45 (1.33%) Fixed Income
15 42 (1.24%) Replication
16 39 (1.16%) Market Risk
17 37 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
18 35 (1.04%) Self-Motivation
19 34 (1.01%) SWIFT Messaging Network
20 31 (0.92%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 314 (9.30%) Linux
2 242 (7.17%) Windows
3 196 (5.81%) Unix
4 63 (1.87%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 15 (0.44%) VMS
7 14 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 12 (0.36%) Android
8 12 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.36%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
10 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.15%) AIX
11 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.12%) CentOS
12 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.089%) zOS
14 1 (0.030%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.030%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 944 (27.97%) Agile
2 789 (23.38%) CI/CD
3 788 (23.35%) Analytics
4 775 (22.96%) Problem-Solving
5 767 (22.73%) Business Intelligence
6 737 (21.84%) DevOps
7 709 (21.01%) Data Modelling
8 631 (18.70%) ETL
9 483 (14.31%) Data Pipeline
10 402 (11.91%) Data Engineering
11 357 (10.58%) Migration
12 354 (10.49%) Data Governance
13 341 (10.10%) Validation
14 338 (10.01%) Visualisation
15 324 (9.60%) AI
16 318 (9.42%) Data Analysis
17 298 (8.83%) Microservices
18 296 (8.77%) Test Automation
19 287 (8.50%) Data Science
20 278 (8.24%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,240 (36.74%) Python
2 514 (15.23%) Java
3 369 (10.93%) C#
4 314 (9.30%) JavaScript
5 266 (7.88%) PL/SQL
6 146 (4.33%) PowerShell
7 131 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 108 (3.20%) R
9 99 (2.93%) T-SQL
10 89 (2.64%) C++
11 88 (2.61%) Scala
12 86 (2.55%) Shell Script
13 77 (2.28%) VBA
14 74 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 64 (1.90%) VB
16 54 (1.60%) Bash
17 47 (1.39%) Perl
18 42 (1.24%) Go
19 41 (1.21%) Bicep
20 37 (1.10%) PHP
Qualifications
1 569 (16.86%) Security Cleared
2 430 (12.74%) SC Cleared
3 327 (9.69%) Degree
4 121 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 72 (2.13%) Azure Certification
6 62 (1.84%) DV Cleared
7 56 (1.66%) Master's Degree
8 54 (1.60%) AWS Certification
9 50 (1.48%) BPSS Clearance
10 44 (1.30%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (1.07%) ISTQB
12 24 (0.71%) Oracle Certification
13 23 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
14 19 (0.56%) CBAP
15 16 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 14 (0.41%) MCSE
17 12 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
17 12 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 11 (0.33%) OCA
18 11 (0.33%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 490 (14.52%) Data Quality
2 237 (7.02%) QA
3 127 (3.76%) GDPR
4 62 (1.84%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 23 (0.68%) SLA
7 21 (0.62%) MiFID
8 18 (0.53%) SEPA
8 18 (0.53%) WCAG
9 17 (0.50%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.44%) EMIR
10 15 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 13 (0.39%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.39%) PSD2
12 11 (0.33%) IFRS
12 11 (0.33%) PMO
13 10 (0.30%) PCI DSS
14 9 (0.27%) NIST
15 7 (0.21%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 395 (11.70%) Docker
2 97 (2.87%) Active Directory
3 30 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 20 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (0.47%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.27%) DFS Replication
6 9 (0.27%) Dovecot
6 9 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 9 (0.27%) Postfix
6 9 (0.27%) Squid
7 8 (0.24%) HDFS
8 7 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
8 7 (0.21%) zsh
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 5 (0.15%) NFS
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) vSphere
11 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
11 4 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 364 (10.79%) Kubernetes
2 236 (6.99%) Terraform
3 71 (2.10%) Grafana
4 60 (1.78%) Ansible
5 55 (1.63%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.71%) SCCM
6 24 (0.71%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.59%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.59%) Oracle RMAN
9 18 (0.53%) Kibana
9 18 (0.53%) Puppet
10 16 (0.47%) Progress Chef
11 15 (0.44%) Control-M
12 14 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 14 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
13 12 (0.36%) Proxmox
14 11 (0.33%) WSUS
15 10 (0.30%) ITRS Geneos
16 9 (0.27%) Nessus
Vendors
1 597 (17.69%) Oracle
2 570 (16.89%) Microsoft
3 356 (10.55%) Databricks
4 136 (4.03%) Google
5 104 (3.08%) Splunk
6 94 (2.79%) SAP
7 71 (2.10%) Salesforce
8 70 (2.07%) ServiceNow
9 59 (1.75%) Talend
10 54 (1.60%) Informatica
11 43 (1.27%) IBM
12 42 (1.24%) Dynatrace
12 42 (1.24%) OpenAI
12 42 (1.24%) VMware
13 41 (1.21%) Citrix
14 37 (1.10%) Denodo
15 35 (1.04%) MuleSoft
16 31 (0.92%) AppDynamics
17 29 (0.86%) Cisco
18 26 (0.77%) Adobe