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

6 months to
11 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,985 2,977 3,670
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.18% 12.23% 9.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.36% 36.16% 33.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,771 2,103 2,687
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% +1.85%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £760 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 56 60
10th Percentile £26.50 £24.13 £22.52
25th Percentile £34.75 £30.19 £26.18
Median hourly rate £48.11 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.78% +17.65% -13.26%
75th Percentile £72.19 £65.71 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.40 £79.72 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £47.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +11.70% +10.59% -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 10,959 8,232 10,809
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 28.01% 33.82% 28.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,310 5,666 7,852
10th Percentile £352 £360 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -4.78%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 516 211 425
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.26 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.63 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 11 April 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 11 April 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 11 April 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 2,285 £510 -5.56% 840
Midlands +4 508 £465 +1.09% 280
North of England -10 455 £450 -5.26% 459
West Midlands +7 404 £460 -3.16% 157
South East -19 310 £500 - 526
North West -1 256 £450 -5.26% 248
South West -7 223 £475 -5.00% 165
Yorkshire -16 180 £465 -7.00% 149
East Midlands -1 102 £525 +34.27% 123
East of England -15 86 £510 +9.09% 147
North East -9 31 £475 +3.26% 66
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
1 216 (5.42%) Apache Spark
2 150 (3.76%) Apache Airflow
3 136 (3.41%) Apache
4 121 (3.04%) Confluence
5 89 (2.23%) SAS
6 81 (2.03%) SharePoint
7 50 (1.25%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.78%) IIS
9 25 (0.63%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 18 (0.45%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.35%) nginx
14 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.33%) Appian
15 13 (0.33%) CMS
16 12 (0.30%) HCL Notes
16 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 271 (6.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 54 (1.36%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.23%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.075%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 38 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
4 23 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
5 22 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.53%) NEC Housing
6 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
7 20 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
8 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
9 16 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
10 15 (0.38%) NetSuite
11 13 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
12 11 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 11 (0.28%) Remedy ITSM
13 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
13 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
14 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
14 9 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
15 8 (0.20%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,378 (34.58%) Azure
2 967 (24.27%) AWS
3 780 (19.57%) Power Platform
4 418 (10.49%) Azure DevOps
5 336 (8.43%) Azure Data Factory
6 317 (7.95%) GCP
7 304 (7.63%) GitHub
8 268 (6.73%) Serverless
9 236 (5.92%) Snowflake
10 227 (5.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 223 (5.60%) Amazon S3
12 178 (4.47%) dbt
13 157 (3.94%) GitHub Actions
14 149 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
15 89 (2.23%) Power Automate
16 87 (2.18%) SaaS
17 77 (1.93%) Azure Functions
18 75 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
19 72 (1.81%) Entra ID
19 72 (1.81%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 49 (1.23%) Firewall
2 37 (0.93%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) HTTP
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 16 (0.40%) Internet
4 16 (0.40%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.35%) WAN
6 13 (0.33%) SSL
7 11 (0.28%) LAN
7 11 (0.28%) SNMP
7 11 (0.28%) VPN
8 10 (0.25%) 5G
9 9 (0.23%) DHCP
10 8 (0.20%) 4G
11 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
12 6 (0.15%) 2G
12 6 (0.15%) Radio Access Network
12 6 (0.15%) VLAN
13 5 (0.13%) NetScaler
13 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 711 (17.84%) Power BI
2 521 (13.07%) Data Warehouse
3 485 (12.17%) SQL Server
4 263 (6.60%) NoSQL
4 263 (6.60%) Tableau
5 261 (6.55%) Relational Database
6 259 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
7 253 (6.35%) Data Lake
8 209 (5.24%) Azure SQL Database
9 208 (5.22%) Metadata
10 143 (3.59%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 142 (3.56%) Oracle Database
12 123 (3.09%) MySQL
13 118 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
14 114 (2.86%) BigQuery
14 114 (2.86%) Delta Lake
15 101 (2.53%) Big Data
16 99 (2.48%) Oracle Reports
17 96 (2.41%) Amazon RDS
18 93 (2.33%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 437 (10.97%) Git
2 322 (8.08%) JIRA
3 213 (5.35%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.91%) GitLab
5 62 (1.56%) Selenium
6 61 (1.53%) JUnit
7 47 (1.18%) Postman
8 40 (1.00%) Oracle APEX
9 38 (0.95%) Maven
10 37 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
12 33 (0.83%) Mockito
13 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.68%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.65%) ERwin
16 25 (0.63%) SonarQube
17 24 (0.60%) JMeter
18 23 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
19 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
20 21 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,116 (28.01%) Social Skills
2 1,088 (27.30%) Finance
3 746 (18.72%) Analytical Skills
4 399 (10.01%) Banking
5 341 (8.56%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.61%) Investment Banking
7 103 (2.58%) Front Office
8 95 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
9 87 (2.18%) Marketing
10 66 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 56 (1.41%) Legal
12 55 (1.38%) Retail
13 54 (1.36%) Financial Institution
14 42 (1.05%) Telecoms
15 37 (0.93%) Publishing
16 33 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
16 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.80%) Law
18 29 (0.73%) Manufacturing
19 28 (0.70%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 895 (22.46%) Developer
2 780 (19.57%) Data Engineer
3 579 (14.53%) Analyst
4 500 (12.55%) Senior
5 270 (6.78%) Lead
6 247 (6.20%) Data Analyst
7 216 (5.42%) Architect
8 197 (4.94%) Business Analyst
9 184 (4.62%) Consultant
10 153 (3.84%) Java Developer
11 146 (3.66%) Senior Developer
12 119 (2.99%) Senior Data Engineer
13 117 (2.94%) Azure Engineer
14 113 (2.84%) DBA
15 109 (2.74%) Software Engineer
16 102 (2.56%) C# Developer
17 94 (2.36%) Python Developer
18 87 (2.18%) Full-Stack Developer
19 85 (2.13%) Data Architect
19 85 (2.13%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (8.78%) .NET
2 317 (7.95%) REST
3 253 (6.35%) Kafka
4 244 (6.12%) PySpark
5 197 (4.94%) React
6 184 (4.62%) RESTful
7 183 (4.59%) Spring
8 169 (4.24%) Spring Boot
9 149 (3.74%) XML
10 141 (3.54%) HTML
11 126 (3.16%) Pandas
12 122 (3.06%) JSON
13 120 (3.01%) CSS
14 113 (2.84%) AngularJS
15 91 (2.28%) Node.js
16 84 (2.11%) Middleware
17 82 (2.06%) SOAP
18 81 (2.03%) .NET Framework
19 78 (1.96%) Web Services
20 74 (1.86%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 250 (6.27%) Cloud Native
2 140 (3.51%) Data Structures
3 128 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
4 117 (2.94%) Product Ownership
5 91 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
6 86 (2.16%) Management Information System
7 74 (1.86%) Derivative
8 68 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
9 67 (1.68%) Onboarding
10 63 (1.58%) Analytical Mindset
11 59 (1.48%) Equities
12 57 (1.43%) Fixed Income
13 52 (1.30%) Algorithms
14 48 (1.20%) Clustering
15 46 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 45 (1.13%) Enterprise Software
17 44 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
18 39 (0.98%) Replication
19 37 (0.93%) NHS
20 35 (0.88%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 280 (7.03%) Linux
2 241 (6.05%) Windows
3 198 (4.97%) Unix
4 78 (1.96%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (0.15%) zOS
11 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.075%) CentOS
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) VME
14 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,082 (27.15%) CI/CD
2 1,051 (26.37%) Agile
3 1,045 (26.22%) Analytics
4 991 (24.87%) Data Modelling
5 951 (23.86%) ETL
6 946 (23.74%) Business Intelligence
7 923 (23.16%) DevOps
8 856 (21.48%) Problem-Solving
9 701 (17.59%) Data Pipeline
10 623 (15.63%) Data Engineering
11 487 (12.22%) AI
12 483 (12.12%) Data Governance
13 482 (12.10%) Migration
14 471 (11.82%) Validation
15 381 (9.56%) Data Analysis
16 379 (9.51%) Test Automation
17 369 (9.26%) Decision-Making
18 364 (9.13%) Performance Tuning
19 353 (8.86%) Microservices
20 349 (8.76%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,499 (37.62%) Python
2 549 (13.78%) Java
3 430 (10.79%) C#
4 321 (8.06%) JavaScript
5 307 (7.70%) PL/SQL
6 180 (4.52%) T-SQL
7 171 (4.29%) PowerShell
8 140 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 119 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 117 (2.94%) Shell Script
11 112 (2.81%) R
12 92 (2.31%) Scala
13 67 (1.68%) Bash
14 62 (1.56%) C++
14 62 (1.56%) VBA
15 45 (1.13%) Bicep
16 44 (1.10%) Perl
17 29 (0.73%) Go
18 27 (0.68%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 835 (20.95%) Security Cleared
2 673 (16.89%) SC Cleared
3 318 (7.98%) Degree
4 114 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 51 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 50 (1.25%) ISTQB
8 50 (1.25%) Master's Degree
9 41 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (0.78%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 16 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
12 16 (0.40%) PhD
13 13 (0.33%) CBAP
14 10 (0.25%) PMP
15 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
15 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
16 8 (0.20%) ISEB
17 7 (0.18%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 721 (18.09%) Data Quality
2 303 (7.60%) QA
3 177 (4.44%) GDPR
4 54 (1.36%) Accessibility
5 34 (0.85%) SLA
6 30 (0.75%) PMO
7 29 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) NIST
11 15 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 15 (0.38%) MiFID
12 14 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 13 (0.33%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.33%) IFRS
14 12 (0.30%) WCAG
15 11 (0.28%) HL7
16 10 (0.25%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.25%) SEPA
16 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 461 (11.57%) Docker
2 96 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 34 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 14 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.20%) KVM
7 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.15%) HDFS
8 6 (0.15%) Postfix
8 6 (0.15%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
11 2 (0.050%) GridGain
11 2 (0.050%) vSphere
12 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.025%) Varnish
12 1 (0.025%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 411 (10.31%) Kubernetes
2 316 (7.93%) Terraform
3 93 (2.33%) Grafana
4 63 (1.58%) Ansible
5 61 (1.53%) Prometheus
6 32 (0.80%) Oracle RMAN
7 21 (0.53%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.43%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.38%) SCCM
11 14 (0.35%) Control-M
12 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.25%) Nagios
13 10 (0.25%) Netcool
13 10 (0.25%) OpenView
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.23%) Kiali
14 9 (0.23%) Kibana
15 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 663 (16.64%) Oracle
2 656 (16.46%) Microsoft
3 485 (12.17%) Databricks
4 157 (3.94%) Google
5 121 (3.04%) Informatica
5 121 (3.04%) ServiceNow
6 103 (2.58%) SAP
7 102 (2.56%) Talend
8 75 (1.88%) Splunk
9 61 (1.53%) Salesforce
10 60 (1.51%) IBM
11 55 (1.38%) Denodo
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 44 (1.10%) OpenAI
14 34 (0.85%) MuleSoft
15 31 (0.78%) VMware
16 30 (0.75%) Bloomberg
17 29 (0.73%) Dynatrace
17 29 (0.73%) HP
18 26 (0.65%) Foundry