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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 0 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,410 3,120 3,823
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.56% 11.71% 10.37%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.50% 35.37% 34.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,362 2,091 2,750
10th Percentile £350 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £418 £425
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 £516 £540
% change year-on-year -3.15% -4.40% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 51 67
10th Percentile £21.26 £25.26 £21.64
25th Percentile £31.18 £35.00 £30.04
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +20.69% -12.12%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.55 £80.00 £64.51
UK median hourly rate £47.11 £50.00 £43.50
% change year-on-year -5.78% +14.94% -12.56%

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 9,885 8,820 11,046
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.62% 33.09% 29.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,599 5,666 7,975
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
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 £729 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £503 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.29% -2.78% -4.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 215 445
10th Percentile £40.00 £25.26 £35.51
25th Percentile £52.50 £44.63 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -6.92%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £70.00
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 21 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 21 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 21 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 2,096 £510 -7.27% 653
North of England -3 351 £444 -6.58% 493
Midlands -3 337 £515 +8.65% 343
South East -15 292 £475 -5.00% 830
West Midlands +2 254 £515 +3.00% 156
North West +2 199 £418 -9.73% 238
South West -3 161 £475 -5.00% 278
Yorkshire -23 135 £475 -5.94% 186
East Midlands -9 83 £503 +28.03% 183
East of England -12 76 £550 +9.45% 272
North East -15 19 £475 -4.04% 77
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
1 161 (4.72%) Apache Spark
2 131 (3.84%) Apache Airflow
3 110 (3.23%) Confluence
4 101 (2.96%) Apache
5 91 (2.67%) SharePoint
6 66 (1.94%) SAS
7 50 (1.47%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.76%) Microsoft Exchange
9 22 (0.65%) IIS
10 19 (0.56%) Skype for Business
11 18 (0.53%) nginx
12 16 (0.47%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 14 (0.41%) CMS
13 14 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
14 13 (0.38%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.38%) Mattermost
14 13 (0.38%) Tomcat
15 11 (0.32%) HCL Notes
15 11 (0.32%) JBoss
16 9 (0.26%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 228 (6.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.96%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.23%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.38%) Microsoft Project
6 11 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.26%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.088%) Notion
11 2 (0.059%) Maya
11 2 (0.059%) NUKE
11 2 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.029%) SPSS
12 1 (0.029%) Weka
Business Applications
1 30 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
1 30 (0.88%) Oracle Payables
2 28 (0.82%) Oracle General Ledger
3 23 (0.67%) Aladdin
4 22 (0.65%) Oracle Receivables
5 20 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
5 20 (0.59%) Oracle Assets
6 19 (0.56%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.50%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
9 14 (0.41%) Endur
9 14 (0.41%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.41%) Oracle Financials
10 12 (0.35%) NEC Housing
10 12 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.35%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.29%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.26%) Advent Geneva
12 9 (0.26%) Maximo
12 9 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,128 (33.08%) Azure
2 807 (23.67%) AWS
3 646 (18.94%) Power Platform
4 313 (9.18%) Azure DevOps
5 282 (8.27%) GCP
6 250 (7.33%) GitHub
7 237 (6.95%) Azure Data Factory
8 231 (6.77%) Serverless
9 227 (6.66%) Snowflake
10 169 (4.96%) Amazon S3
10 169 (4.96%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 126 (3.70%) dbt
11 126 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (3.20%) AWS Lambda
13 90 (2.64%) SaaS
14 83 (2.43%) Azure Functions
15 80 (2.35%) Power Automate
16 70 (2.05%) PowerApps
17 58 (1.70%) Dynamics 365
18 56 (1.64%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.67%) Firewall
2 40 (1.17%) DNS
3 37 (1.09%) HTTP
4 25 (0.73%) 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 (0.38%) SSH
10 12 (0.35%) Unified Communications
11 10 (0.29%) LAN
11 10 (0.29%) SMTP
11 10 (0.29%) VPN
11 10 (0.29%) WAN
12 9 (0.26%) 2G
12 9 (0.26%) 5G
12 9 (0.26%) FTP
12 9 (0.26%) IMAP
12 9 (0.26%) OpenLDAP
13 8 (0.23%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 586 (17.18%) Power BI
2 377 (11.06%) SQL Server
3 349 (10.23%) Data Warehouse
4 249 (7.30%) Relational Database
5 247 (7.24%) PostgreSQL
6 241 (7.07%) NoSQL
7 205 (6.01%) Tableau
8 200 (5.87%) Data Lake
9 168 (4.93%) Azure SQL Database
10 156 (4.57%) Oracle Database
11 133 (3.90%) Metadata
12 108 (3.17%) Big Data
12 108 (3.17%) MySQL
13 102 (2.99%) MongoDB
14 98 (2.87%) BigQuery
15 95 (2.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 84 (2.46%) Amazon RDS
17 72 (2.11%) Amazon Redshift
18 68 (1.99%) Delta Lake
19 65 (1.91%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 386 (11.32%) Git
2 307 (9.00%) JIRA
3 187 (5.48%) Jenkins
4 131 (3.84%) GitLab
5 59 (1.73%) JUnit
6 58 (1.70%) Selenium
7 46 (1.35%) Oracle APEX
8 36 (1.06%) Cucumber
8 36 (1.06%) Postman
9 33 (0.97%) Bitbucket
10 24 (0.70%) Maven
10 24 (0.70%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.67%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.67%) ERwin
11 23 (0.67%) Mockito
12 22 (0.65%) SpecFlow
13 21 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
14 20 (0.59%) MLflow
14 20 (0.59%) Visual Studio
15 19 (0.56%) Gradle
General
1 1,058 (31.03%) Social Skills
2 982 (28.80%) Finance
3 599 (17.57%) Analytical Skills
4 393 (11.52%) Banking
5 263 (7.71%) Public Sector
6 116 (3.40%) Investment Banking
7 95 (2.79%) Front Office
8 87 (2.55%) Documentation Skills
9 86 (2.52%) Marketing
10 64 (1.88%) Retail
11 54 (1.58%) Financial Institution
12 52 (1.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 43 (1.26%) Presentation Skills
14 38 (1.11%) Legal
15 33 (0.97%) Manufacturing
16 28 (0.82%) General Ledger
16 28 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 27 (0.79%) Back Office
17 27 (0.79%) Local Government
17 27 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 870 (25.51%) Developer
2 543 (15.92%) Analyst
3 511 (14.99%) Data Engineer
4 432 (12.67%) Senior
5 215 (6.30%) Data Analyst
6 211 (6.19%) Lead
7 195 (5.72%) Business Analyst
8 152 (4.46%) Architect
9 134 (3.93%) Senior Developer
10 124 (3.64%) Consultant
11 121 (3.55%) Java Developer
12 112 (3.28%) Software Engineer
13 103 (3.02%) Azure Engineer
14 85 (2.49%) Python Developer
15 82 (2.40%) Data Scientist
15 82 (2.40%) Full-Stack Developer
16 79 (2.32%) C# Developer
17 78 (2.29%) Senior Data Engineer
18 71 (2.08%) Azure Data Engineer
19 64 (1.88%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 315 (9.24%) .NET
2 283 (8.30%) REST
3 214 (6.28%) Kafka
4 192 (5.63%) PySpark
5 165 (4.84%) React
6 155 (4.55%) RESTful
7 145 (4.25%) Spring
8 140 (4.11%) HTML
9 128 (3.75%) XML
10 123 (3.61%) Spring Boot
11 119 (3.49%) CSS
12 102 (2.99%) JSON
12 102 (2.99%) Node.js
13 92 (2.70%) AngularJS
14 79 (2.32%) SOAP
15 76 (2.23%) .NET Framework
16 74 (2.17%) Pandas
17 72 (2.11%) Middleware
18 57 (1.67%) Web Services
19 54 (1.58%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 204 (5.98%) Cloud Native
2 102 (2.99%) Data Structures
3 95 (2.79%) Product Ownership
4 87 (2.55%) Legacy Systems
5 85 (2.49%) Data Protection Act
6 75 (2.20%) Management Information System
7 74 (2.17%) Analytical Mindset
8 63 (1.85%) Derivative
9 59 (1.73%) Algorithms
10 53 (1.55%) Distributed Systems
10 53 (1.55%) Equities
10 53 (1.55%) Onboarding
11 50 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
12 49 (1.44%) Fixed Income
13 40 (1.17%) Market Risk
13 40 (1.17%) Replication
14 35 (1.03%) Self-Motivation
15 34 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
15 34 (1.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 32 (0.94%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 319 (9.35%) Linux
2 241 (7.07%) Windows
3 201 (5.89%) Unix
4 62 (1.82%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
6 15 (0.44%) VMS
7 14 (0.41%) Windows 10
8 12 (0.35%) Android
8 12 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 12 (0.35%) Ubuntu
8 12 (0.35%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.26%) 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 (0.088%) zOS
14 1 (0.029%) Mac OS X
14 1 (0.029%) MVS
Processes & Methodologies
1 952 (27.92%) Agile
2 815 (23.90%) CI/CD
3 802 (23.52%) Analytics
4 797 (23.37%) Problem-Solving
5 766 (22.46%) Business Intelligence
6 759 (22.26%) DevOps
7 718 (21.06%) Data Modelling
8 643 (18.86%) ETL
9 493 (14.46%) Data Pipeline
10 407 (11.94%) Data Engineering
11 361 (10.59%) Migration
12 359 (10.53%) Data Governance
13 344 (10.09%) Validation
14 339 (9.94%) Visualisation
15 331 (9.71%) AI
16 329 (9.65%) Data Analysis
17 308 (9.03%) Test Automation
18 304 (8.91%) Microservices
19 294 (8.62%) Data Science
20 285 (8.36%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,262 (37.01%) Python
2 518 (15.19%) Java
3 369 (10.82%) C#
4 314 (9.21%) JavaScript
5 262 (7.68%) PL/SQL
6 147 (4.31%) PowerShell
7 129 (3.78%) TypeScript
8 106 (3.11%) R
9 97 (2.84%) T-SQL
10 93 (2.73%) Shell Script
11 91 (2.67%) Scala
12 88 (2.58%) C++
13 75 (2.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 75 (2.20%) VBA
14 65 (1.91%) VB
15 55 (1.61%) Bash
16 47 (1.38%) Perl
17 42 (1.23%) Go
18 40 (1.17%) Bicep
19 34 (1.00%) PHP
Qualifications
1 581 (17.04%) Security Cleared
2 445 (13.05%) SC Cleared
3 331 (9.71%) Degree
4 122 (3.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 74 (2.17%) Azure Certification
6 62 (1.82%) DV Cleared
7 60 (1.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 54 (1.58%) AWS Certification
8 54 (1.58%) Master's Degree
9 45 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
10 38 (1.11%) ISTQB
11 23 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
12 22 (0.65%) Oracle Certification
13 19 (0.56%) CBAP
14 17 (0.50%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.41%) MCSE
16 12 (0.35%) Cisco Certification
16 12 (0.35%) PMI Certification
17 11 (0.32%) CCNA
17 11 (0.32%) CFA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 501 (14.69%) Data Quality
2 243 (7.13%) QA
3 127 (3.72%) GDPR
4 58 (1.70%) Accessibility
5 26 (0.76%) 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%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 15 (0.44%) PSD2
11 14 (0.41%) WCAG
12 13 (0.38%) HIPAA
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
1 407 (11.94%) Docker
2 98 (2.87%) Active Directory
3 30 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
5 17 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.26%) DFS Replication
6 9 (0.26%) Dovecot
6 9 (0.26%) Postfix
6 9 (0.26%) Squid
7 8 (0.23%) HDFS
7 8 (0.23%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.23%) 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
1 370 (10.85%) Kubernetes
2 242 (7.10%) Terraform
3 74 (2.17%) Grafana
4 61 (1.79%) Ansible
5 59 (1.73%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.70%) SCCM
6 24 (0.70%) SCOM
7 21 (0.62%) HP SiteScope
8 19 (0.56%) Kibana
8 19 (0.56%) Progress Chef
9 18 (0.53%) Data Guard
9 18 (0.53%) Oracle RMAN
9 18 (0.53%) Puppet
10 15 (0.44%) Control-M
10 15 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
11 14 (0.41%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 12 (0.35%) Proxmox
13 11 (0.32%) WSUS
14 10 (0.29%) ITRS Geneos
15 9 (0.26%) Nessus
Vendors
1 608 (17.83%) Oracle
2 572 (16.77%) Microsoft
3 367 (10.76%) Databricks
4 136 (3.99%) Google
5 104 (3.05%) Splunk
6 94 (2.76%) SAP
7 71 (2.08%) ServiceNow
8 70 (2.05%) Salesforce
9 64 (1.88%) Talend
10 58 (1.70%) Informatica
11 46 (1.35%) IBM
12 42 (1.23%) OpenAI
13 41 (1.20%) Citrix
13 41 (1.20%) Dynatrace
14 40 (1.17%) VMware
15 39 (1.14%) Denodo
16 35 (1.03%) MuleSoft
17 31 (0.91%) AppDynamics
18 30 (0.88%) Cisco
19 28 (0.82%) Bloomberg