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

6 months to
4 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,449 3,272 3,532
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.86% 11.85% 10.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.38% 36.13% 33.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,987 2,331 2,656
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £646
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 57 42
10th Percentile £23.30 £21.18 £24.20
25th Percentile £29.96 £29.07 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £37.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -9.64% -9.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £40.58
% change year-on-year +14.56% -4.27% -14.57%

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 11,903 9,056 10,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.37% 32.80% 31.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,713 6,248 7,619
10th Percentile £363 £350 £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 £651
90th Percentile £738 £763 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.14% -4.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 495 228 360
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.07 £30.00
25th Percentile £53.53 £40.00 £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 £79.80 £83.42 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,417 £525 -0.94% 1,523
North of England -3 581 £463 -1.49% 440
Midlands +1 541 £459 +8.00% 255
South East -10 471 £490 -2.00% 487
West Midlands +4 442 £459 +2.00% 151
North West -4 307 £475 +1.28% 240
Yorkshire -4 236 £460 -3.16% 141
South West -4 222 £500 +17.65% 179
East of England -3 116 £475 -5.00% 122
East Midlands -2 95 £473 +22.86% 103
North East -15 49 £413 -10.57% 69
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
1 200 (4.50%) Apache Airflow
2 197 (4.43%) Apache Spark
3 184 (4.14%) Confluence
4 155 (3.48%) Apache
5 97 (2.18%) SAS
6 63 (1.42%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 31 (0.70%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
13 18 (0.40%) Tomcat
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
14 16 (0.36%) WebSphere
15 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.25%) Camunda
17 8 (0.18%) Apache Superset
17 8 (0.18%) Appian
Applications
1 295 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) 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 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 41 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.63%) Aladdin
4 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
6 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
6 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
7 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.34%) NEC Housing
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.22%) Finacle
13 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
13 9 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
14 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
15 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,406 (31.60%) Azure
2 1,047 (23.53%) AWS
3 865 (19.44%) Power Platform
4 407 (9.15%) Azure DevOps
5 394 (8.86%) GCP
6 319 (7.17%) Azure Data Factory
7 316 (7.10%) GitHub
8 299 (6.72%) Snowflake
9 270 (6.07%) Serverless
10 256 (5.75%) dbt
11 229 (5.15%) Amazon S3
12 206 (4.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.93%) AWS Lambda
14 161 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (2.00%) Entra ID
16 88 (1.98%) Power Automate
17 83 (1.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 79 (1.78%) SaaS
19 78 (1.75%) PowerApps
20 70 (1.57%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.12%) DNS
2 42 (0.94%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
3 23 (0.52%) VPN
4 21 (0.47%) Network Security
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
5 19 (0.43%) Internet
6 18 (0.40%) HTTP
7 15 (0.34%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Broadband
10 9 (0.20%) DHCP
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) LAN
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 798 (17.94%) Power BI
2 623 (14.00%) Data Warehouse
3 571 (12.83%) SQL Server
4 288 (6.47%) Tableau
5 274 (6.16%) Relational Database
6 264 (5.93%) PostgreSQL
7 263 (5.91%) Data Lake
8 221 (4.97%) NoSQL
9 219 (4.92%) Metadata
10 183 (4.11%) Oracle Database
11 176 (3.96%) Azure SQL Database
12 165 (3.71%) BigQuery
13 154 (3.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 136 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
15 124 (2.79%) Delta Lake
16 104 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
17 99 (2.23%) Big Data
18 95 (2.14%) Snowflake Schema
19 93 (2.09%) MySQL
20 89 (2.00%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 505 (11.35%) Git
2 344 (7.73%) JIRA
3 250 (5.62%) Jenkins
4 190 (4.27%) GitLab
5 72 (1.62%) JUnit
6 60 (1.35%) Maven
7 56 (1.26%) Gradle
8 51 (1.15%) Postman
9 49 (1.10%) Mockito
10 48 (1.08%) Selenium
11 37 (0.83%) SonarQube
12 36 (0.81%) Bitbucket
13 34 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
14 29 (0.65%) ERwin
15 28 (0.63%) Liquibase
15 28 (0.63%) Visual Studio
16 27 (0.61%) TeamCity
16 27 (0.61%) Zephyr
17 26 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
18 25 (0.56%) JMeter
General
1 1,161 (26.10%) Social Skills
2 1,146 (25.76%) Finance
3 902 (20.27%) Analytical Skills
4 429 (9.64%) Banking
5 401 (9.01%) Public Sector
6 138 (3.10%) Marketing
7 127 (2.85%) Front Office
8 113 (2.54%) Retail
9 99 (2.23%) Investment Banking
10 83 (1.87%) Documentation Skills
11 77 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 66 (1.48%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.19%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.17%) Presentation Skills
15 47 (1.06%) Legal
16 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
17 39 (0.88%) Publishing
18 38 (0.85%) Back Office
18 38 (0.85%) Telecoms
19 31 (0.70%) Law
Job Titles
1 949 (21.33%) Developer
2 896 (20.14%) Data Engineer
3 639 (14.36%) Analyst
4 594 (13.35%) Senior
5 306 (6.88%) Lead
6 270 (6.07%) Data Analyst
7 229 (5.15%) Architect
8 225 (5.06%) Consultant
9 188 (4.23%) Business Analyst
10 175 (3.93%) Senior Data Engineer
11 173 (3.89%) DBA
12 171 (3.84%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.35%) Senior Developer
14 130 (2.92%) Software Engineer
15 115 (2.58%) SQL DBA
16 113 (2.54%) SQL Developer
17 103 (2.32%) Azure Engineer
18 96 (2.16%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.09%) Full-Stack Developer
20 91 (2.05%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 368 (8.27%) REST
2 367 (8.25%) .NET
3 281 (6.32%) PySpark
4 267 (6.00%) Kafka
5 226 (5.08%) Spring
6 204 (4.59%) Spring Boot
7 198 (4.45%) React
8 177 (3.98%) RESTful
9 167 (3.75%) JSON
10 155 (3.48%) XML
11 146 (3.28%) HTML
12 128 (2.88%) AngularJS
13 125 (2.81%) CSS
14 109 (2.45%) Pandas
15 99 (2.23%) SOAP
15 99 (2.23%) Web Services
16 94 (2.11%) Middleware
17 91 (2.05%) .NET Framework
18 73 (1.64%) Node.js
19 69 (1.55%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 293 (6.59%) Cloud Native
2 198 (4.45%) Data Structures
3 166 (3.73%) Product Ownership
4 154 (3.46%) Legacy Systems
5 133 (2.99%) Distributed Systems
6 94 (2.11%) Onboarding
7 88 (1.98%) Enterprise Software
8 80 (1.80%) Derivative
8 80 (1.80%) Management Information System
9 76 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 72 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 69 (1.55%) Clustering
12 61 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
13 59 (1.33%) Replication
14 53 (1.19%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.17%) Fixed Income
16 49 (1.10%) Equities
17 48 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.08%) Reference Data
18 45 (1.01%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 293 (6.59%) Linux
2 277 (6.23%) Windows
3 200 (4.50%) Unix
4 106 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.16%) zOS
11 6 (0.13%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) VMS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,187 (26.68%) CI/CD
2 1,159 (26.05%) Analytics
3 1,146 (25.76%) Agile
4 1,136 (25.53%) Data Modelling
5 1,030 (23.15%) Business Intelligence
6 1,024 (23.02%) ETL
7 900 (20.23%) DevOps
8 875 (19.67%) Data Pipeline
9 869 (19.53%) Problem-Solving
10 753 (16.93%) Data Engineering
11 645 (14.50%) AI
12 617 (13.87%) Migration
13 593 (13.33%) Validation
14 488 (10.97%) Data Governance
15 474 (10.65%) Stakeholder Management
16 472 (10.61%) Decision-Making
17 458 (10.29%) Continuous Improvement
18 453 (10.18%) Test Automation
19 435 (9.78%) Data Analysis
20 390 (8.77%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,583 (35.58%) Python
2 552 (12.41%) Java
3 439 (9.87%) C#
4 355 (7.98%) PL/SQL
5 323 (7.26%) JavaScript
6 242 (5.44%) T-SQL
7 239 (5.37%) PowerShell
8 162 (3.64%) TypeScript
9 145 (3.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 126 (2.83%) Shell Script
11 96 (2.16%) Bash
12 87 (1.96%) R
13 66 (1.48%) Scala
14 43 (0.97%) C++
15 42 (0.94%) VBA
16 41 (0.92%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) C
18 27 (0.61%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Go
19 21 (0.47%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 971 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 780 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 313 (7.04%) Degree
4 106 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (2.27%) DV Cleared
6 100 (2.25%) BPSS Clearance
7 69 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 47 (1.06%) ISTQB
9 45 (1.01%) Master's Degree
10 42 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.38%) CISSP
12 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.36%) PhD
14 12 (0.27%) ISEB
14 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
15 11 (0.25%) FFIEC
16 10 (0.22%) CISM
17 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 9 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 828 (18.61%) Data Quality
2 322 (7.24%) QA
3 153 (3.44%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 43 (0.97%) SLA
6 22 (0.49%) NIST
6 22 (0.49%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 19 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
8 19 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) MiFID
11 14 (0.31%) IFRS
12 12 (0.27%) COBIT
12 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
12 12 (0.27%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
16 8 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 450 (10.11%) Docker
2 117 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 44 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.29%) vCloud
9 9 (0.20%) Postfix
10 8 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.16%) KVM
12 4 (0.090%) HDFS
13 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
14 1 (0.022%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) XenApp
14 1 (0.022%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 388 (8.72%) Kubernetes
2 348 (7.82%) Terraform
3 89 (2.00%) Grafana
4 85 (1.91%) Ansible
5 45 (1.01%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 38 (0.85%) Data Guard
8 30 (0.67%) Control-M
9 26 (0.58%) SCOM
10 19 (0.43%) Kibana
11 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.22%) Microsoft Clustering
16 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
17 9 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 759 (17.06%) Oracle
2 715 (16.07%) Microsoft
3 523 (11.76%) Databricks
4 174 (3.91%) Google
5 153 (3.44%) Informatica
6 124 (2.79%) Talend
7 122 (2.74%) ServiceNow
8 121 (2.72%) SAP
9 79 (1.78%) Splunk
10 77 (1.73%) IBM
11 66 (1.48%) Denodo
12 61 (1.37%) VMware
13 55 (1.24%) Salesforce
14 39 (0.88%) BMC
14 39 (0.88%) Citrix
15 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
16 33 (0.74%) Murex
17 31 (0.70%) Adobe