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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,418 3,063 3,853
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.50% 11.65% 10.21%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.47% 35.08% 34.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,358 2,034 2,778
10th Percentile £350 £354 £363
25th Percentile £413 £416 £429
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £540
% change year-on-year -2.44% -5.09% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 65 51 67
10th Percentile £21.51 £25.26 £21.64
25th Percentile £31.25 £35.00 £30.04
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -15.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.51 £77.19 £64.51
UK median hourly rate £47.11 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.27% +23.53% -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 9,917 8,732 11,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.46% 33.22% 29.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,590 5,572 8,054
10th Percentile £350 £358 £356
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
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 £730 £774 £763
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 210 471
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £35.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £43.13 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £69.62
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 0 2,103 £513 -6.82% 707
North of England -4 345 £450 -5.76% 483
Midlands -3 343 £515 +8.42% 372
South East -13 291 £475 -5.00% 913
West Midlands +2 257 £514 +2.80% 178
North West -1 194 £420 -11.11% 235
South West -2 168 £475 -5.00% 298
Yorkshire -22 131 £481 -3.75% 175
East Midlands -8 86 £525 +36.36% 188
East of England -13 72 £575 +14.71% 329
North East -11 23 £475 -4.52% 78
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
1 165 (4.83%) Apache Spark
2 137 (4.01%) Apache Airflow
3 107 (3.13%) Confluence
4 98 (2.87%) Apache
5 90 (2.63%) SharePoint
6 68 (1.99%) SAS
7 44 (1.29%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.76%) Microsoft Exchange
9 23 (0.67%) IIS
10 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
11 17 (0.50%) nginx
11 17 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 16 (0.47%) CMS
13 15 (0.44%) Tomcat
14 14 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
15 13 (0.38%) Jupyter
15 13 (0.38%) Mattermost
16 12 (0.35%) JBoss
17 11 (0.32%) HCL Notes
18 9 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 226 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.17%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.97%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.23%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.23%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 6 (0.18%) Trello
8 4 (0.12%) Spreadsheet
9 3 (0.088%) Notion
10 2 (0.059%) Maya
10 2 (0.059%) NUKE
10 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.029%) SPSS
11 1 (0.029%) Weka
Business Applications
1 29 (0.85%) Oracle Payables
2 27 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.76%) Oracle General Ledger
4 22 (0.64%) Aladdin
5 21 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
6 20 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
6 20 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
7 18 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
8 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
8 17 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
9 14 (0.41%) Endur
9 14 (0.41%) NetSuite
10 13 (0.38%) NEC Housing
11 12 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
11 12 (0.35%) Oracle Financials
11 12 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.32%) Oracle Cash Management
13 9 (0.26%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.26%) Maximo
14 8 (0.23%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,131 (33.09%) Azure
2 809 (23.67%) AWS
3 642 (18.78%) Power Platform
4 319 (9.33%) Azure DevOps
5 285 (8.34%) GCP
6 257 (7.52%) GitHub
7 243 (7.11%) Azure Data Factory
8 234 (6.85%) Serverless
9 233 (6.82%) Snowflake
10 172 (5.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 171 (5.00%) Amazon S3
12 133 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
13 129 (3.77%) dbt
14 109 (3.19%) AWS Lambda
15 92 (2.69%) SaaS
16 83 (2.43%) Azure Functions
17 78 (2.28%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.99%) PowerApps
19 57 (1.67%) Dynamics 365
20 56 (1.64%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 56 (1.64%) Firewall
2 39 (1.14%) DNS
3 35 (1.02%) HTTP
4 25 (0.73%) Skype
5 18 (0.53%) Network Security
6 16 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.44%) Internet
8 14 (0.41%) DHCP
9 12 (0.35%) SSH
9 12 (0.35%) Unified Communications
10 10 (0.29%) LAN
10 10 (0.29%) SMTP
10 10 (0.29%) VPN
10 10 (0.29%) WAN
11 9 (0.26%) 2G
11 9 (0.26%) 5G
11 9 (0.26%) SSL
12 8 (0.23%) FTP
12 8 (0.23%) Multicast
12 8 (0.23%) SMS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 582 (17.03%) Power BI
2 381 (11.15%) SQL Server
3 354 (10.36%) Data Warehouse
4 251 (7.34%) Relational Database
5 246 (7.20%) PostgreSQL
6 239 (6.99%) NoSQL
7 208 (6.09%) Tableau
8 202 (5.91%) Data Lake
9 174 (5.09%) Azure SQL Database
10 151 (4.42%) Oracle Database
11 137 (4.01%) Metadata
12 108 (3.16%) Big Data
13 106 (3.10%) MySQL
14 103 (3.01%) BigQuery
15 98 (2.87%) MongoDB
16 97 (2.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 83 (2.43%) Amazon RDS
18 73 (2.14%) Delta Lake
19 70 (2.05%) Amazon Redshift
20 63 (1.84%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 387 (11.32%) Git
2 301 (8.81%) JIRA
3 183 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 129 (3.77%) GitLab
5 57 (1.67%) JUnit
6 55 (1.61%) Selenium
7 46 (1.35%) Oracle APEX
8 37 (1.08%) Cucumber
9 35 (1.02%) Postman
10 30 (0.88%) Bitbucket
11 25 (0.73%) REST Assured
12 24 (0.70%) Maven
13 23 (0.67%) ERwin
13 23 (0.67%) MLflow
14 21 (0.61%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.61%) Mockito
14 21 (0.61%) SpecFlow
15 20 (0.59%) Visual Studio
16 19 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
17 17 (0.50%) Gradle
General
1 1,064 (31.13%) Social Skills
2 988 (28.91%) Finance
3 600 (17.55%) Analytical Skills
4 396 (11.59%) Banking
5 266 (7.78%) Public Sector
6 118 (3.45%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.81%) Front Office
8 86 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
9 82 (2.40%) Marketing
10 60 (1.76%) Retail
11 56 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 53 (1.55%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
14 34 (0.99%) Legal
15 29 (0.85%) Manufacturing
15 29 (0.85%) Telecoms
16 28 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
16 28 (0.82%) Publishing
17 27 (0.79%) General Ledger
17 27 (0.79%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 878 (25.69%) Developer
2 531 (15.54%) Analyst
3 521 (15.24%) Data Engineer
4 439 (12.84%) Senior
5 219 (6.41%) Lead
6 207 (6.06%) Data Analyst
7 195 (5.71%) Business Analyst
8 165 (4.83%) Architect
9 140 (4.10%) Senior Developer
10 123 (3.60%) Consultant
11 119 (3.48%) Java Developer
12 107 (3.13%) Software Engineer
13 104 (3.04%) Azure Engineer
14 86 (2.52%) Python Developer
15 85 (2.49%) Full-Stack Developer
16 81 (2.37%) C# Developer
17 79 (2.31%) Senior Data Engineer
18 78 (2.28%) Data Scientist
19 70 (2.05%) Azure Data Engineer
20 63 (1.84%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (9.51%) .NET
2 287 (8.40%) REST
3 216 (6.32%) Kafka
4 190 (5.56%) PySpark
5 166 (4.86%) React
6 156 (4.56%) RESTful
7 141 (4.13%) Spring
8 139 (4.07%) HTML
9 129 (3.77%) XML
10 121 (3.54%) Spring Boot
11 119 (3.48%) CSS
12 101 (2.95%) JSON
13 99 (2.90%) Node.js
14 94 (2.75%) AngularJS
15 81 (2.37%) Pandas
15 81 (2.37%) SOAP
16 76 (2.22%) .NET Framework
17 73 (2.14%) Middleware
18 60 (1.76%) NumPy
18 60 (1.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 209 (6.11%) Cloud Native
2 102 (2.98%) Data Structures
3 99 (2.90%) Product Ownership
4 94 (2.75%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
6 77 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 70 (2.05%) Analytical Mindset
8 64 (1.87%) Derivative
9 62 (1.81%) Algorithms
10 55 (1.61%) Distributed Systems
11 54 (1.58%) Equities
12 51 (1.49%) Onboarding
13 48 (1.40%) Fixed Income
13 48 (1.40%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 42 (1.23%) Market Risk
15 40 (1.17%) Replication
16 36 (1.05%) Credit Risk
17 34 (0.99%) SWIFT Messaging Network
18 33 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
19 32 (0.94%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 318 (9.30%) Linux
2 225 (6.58%) Windows
3 198 (5.79%) Unix
4 61 (1.78%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.41%) VMS
5 14 (0.41%) Windows 10
5 14 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (0.38%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.32%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.23%) Amazon Linux
9 8 (0.23%) Android
10 7 (0.20%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.18%) AIX
12 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.12%) CentOS
13 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.088%) zOS
15 1 (0.029%) Mac OS X
15 1 (0.029%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 969 (28.35%) Agile
2 829 (24.25%) CI/CD
3 802 (23.46%) Problem-Solving
4 799 (23.38%) Analytics
5 768 (22.47%) DevOps
6 755 (22.09%) Business Intelligence
7 732 (21.42%) Data Modelling
8 661 (19.34%) ETL
9 503 (14.72%) Data Pipeline
10 415 (12.14%) Data Engineering
11 371 (10.85%) Migration
12 362 (10.59%) Data Governance
13 347 (10.15%) Validation
14 346 (10.12%) AI
15 334 (9.77%) Data Analysis
16 329 (9.63%) Visualisation
17 304 (8.89%) Test Automation
18 302 (8.84%) Microservices
19 293 (8.57%) Data Science
20 289 (8.46%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,253 (36.66%) Python
2 518 (15.16%) Java
3 369 (10.80%) C#
4 314 (9.19%) JavaScript
5 258 (7.55%) PL/SQL
6 145 (4.24%) PowerShell
7 131 (3.83%) TypeScript
8 100 (2.93%) R
9 97 (2.84%) T-SQL
10 96 (2.81%) Shell Script
11 95 (2.78%) Scala
12 81 (2.37%) C++
13 75 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 72 (2.11%) VBA
15 63 (1.84%) VB
16 54 (1.58%) Bash
17 48 (1.40%) Perl
18 46 (1.35%) Go
19 39 (1.14%) Bicep
20 28 (0.82%) PHP
Qualifications
1 582 (17.03%) Security Cleared
2 449 (13.14%) SC Cleared
3 341 (9.98%) Degree
4 121 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 74 (2.17%) Azure Certification
6 60 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
7 59 (1.73%) DV Cleared
8 56 (1.64%) AWS Certification
9 55 (1.61%) Master's Degree
10 44 (1.29%) Microsoft Certification
11 38 (1.11%) ISTQB
12 23 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
13 22 (0.64%) Oracle Certification
14 19 (0.56%) CBAP
15 17 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 12 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
16 12 (0.35%) MCSE
16 12 (0.35%) PMI Certification
17 11 (0.32%) CCNA
18 10 (0.29%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 499 (14.60%) Data Quality
2 249 (7.28%) QA
3 126 (3.69%) GDPR
4 57 (1.67%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 23 (0.67%) SLA
7 19 (0.56%) MiFID
8 18 (0.53%) SEPA
9 17 (0.50%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.44%) PSD2
11 14 (0.41%) HIPAA
11 14 (0.41%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 14 (0.41%) WCAG
12 13 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
12 13 (0.38%) IFRS
13 12 (0.35%) EMIR
14 11 (0.32%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.32%) PMO
15 9 (0.26%) NIST
16 8 (0.23%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 415 (12.14%) Docker
2 99 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.82%) VMware Infrastructure
4 21 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
6 9 (0.26%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.23%) DFS Replication
7 8 (0.23%) Dovecot
7 8 (0.23%) HDFS
7 8 (0.23%) Postfix
7 8 (0.23%) Squid
8 6 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.18%) zsh
9 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
10 4 (0.12%) XenApp
10 4 (0.12%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.088%) NFS
Systems Management
1 378 (11.06%) Kubernetes
2 249 (7.28%) Terraform
3 73 (2.14%) Grafana
4 59 (1.73%) Ansible
4 59 (1.73%) Prometheus
5 24 (0.70%) SCCM
5 24 (0.70%) SCOM
6 21 (0.61%) HP SiteScope
7 19 (0.56%) Kibana
8 18 (0.53%) Data Guard
8 18 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
8 18 (0.53%) Progress Chef
9 16 (0.47%) Puppet
9 16 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
10 15 (0.44%) Control-M
11 14 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 11 (0.32%) Proxmox
12 11 (0.32%) WSUS
13 9 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 9 (0.26%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 601 (17.58%) Oracle
2 572 (16.73%) Microsoft
3 369 (10.80%) Databricks
4 144 (4.21%) Google
5 97 (2.84%) SAP
6 95 (2.78%) Splunk
7 70 (2.05%) ServiceNow
8 67 (1.96%) Salesforce
9 65 (1.90%) Talend
10 60 (1.76%) Informatica
11 46 (1.35%) IBM
12 44 (1.29%) OpenAI
13 41 (1.20%) Citrix
14 39 (1.14%) Denodo
14 39 (1.14%) VMware
15 34 (0.99%) MuleSoft
16 33 (0.97%) Dynatrace
17 27 (0.79%) Bloomberg
18 26 (0.76%) Foundry
19 24 (0.70%) AppDynamics