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

6 months to
3 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,482 3,281 3,626
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.63% 11.71% 11.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.12% 35.62% 34.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,018 2,271 2,548
10th Percentile £350 £328 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £618 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.10%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.90 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.76 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £46.80 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -6.40% +25.00% -11.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.70 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -10.50% +36.99% -19.67%

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 12,074 9,210 10,603
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.95% 32.87% 32.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,812 6,183 7,103
10th Percentile £363 £350 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.16% -1.27%
75th Percentile £634 £635 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £507 £525
% change year-on-year +3.65% -3.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 513 265 298
10th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £30.35
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £48.38
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +3.17%
75th Percentile £71.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.75 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 3 October 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 3 October 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 3 October 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 -7 2,528 £525 - 4,114
North of England 0 606 £475 +5.56% 1,050
Midlands -5 451 £469 -1.26% 602
South East -15 443 £475 -3.06% 985
West Midlands -4 353 £469 -6.20% 366
North West +4 301 £500 +14.29% 594
Yorkshire +8 251 £475 - 302
South West +1 234 £525 +16.67% 392
East of England -8 114 £500 -0.50% 322
East Midlands -6 96 £463 +12.80% 235
North East -4 64 £406 -14.47% 167
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
1 236 (5.27%) Apache Airflow
2 200 (4.46%) Confluence
3 198 (4.42%) Apache Spark
4 153 (3.41%) Apache
5 85 (1.90%) SharePoint
6 65 (1.45%) SAS
7 34 (0.76%) WebLogic
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
9 28 (0.62%) Jupyter
10 27 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
11 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.45%) CMS
14 18 (0.40%) Camunda
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
17 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 19 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Mingle
9 3 (0.067%) Notepad++
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.60%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
3 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
3 25 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
5 15 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
7 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
8 10 (0.22%) Finacle
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
8 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
9 9 (0.20%) Maximo
9 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
9 9 (0.20%) Summit
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle EBS R12
10 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,374 (30.66%) Azure
2 1,085 (24.21%) AWS
3 861 (19.21%) Power Platform
4 456 (10.17%) GCP
5 367 (8.19%) Azure DevOps
6 365 (8.14%) Snowflake
7 310 (6.92%) GitHub
8 294 (6.56%) dbt
9 293 (6.54%) Azure Data Factory
10 261 (5.82%) Serverless
11 237 (5.29%) Amazon S3
12 184 (4.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 165 (3.68%) AWS Lambda
14 144 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
15 102 (2.28%) SaaS
16 99 (2.21%) Entra ID
17 97 (2.16%) Power Automate
18 92 (2.05%) PowerApps
19 89 (1.99%) Azure Databricks
20 76 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 65 (1.45%) DNS
2 42 (0.94%) Firewall
3 29 (0.65%) Network Security
4 28 (0.62%) HTTP
5 27 (0.60%) SSL
6 22 (0.49%) Internet
7 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 21 (0.47%) VPN
8 20 (0.45%) Broadband
9 16 (0.36%) DHCP
10 12 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 11 (0.25%) SNMP
12 10 (0.22%) SAN
13 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
14 8 (0.18%) Multicast
14 8 (0.18%) RTP
14 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
15 7 (0.16%) 5G
16 6 (0.13%) 4G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 789 (17.60%) Power BI
2 603 (13.45%) Data Warehouse
3 581 (12.96%) SQL Server
4 290 (6.47%) Relational Database
5 277 (6.18%) PostgreSQL
6 260 (5.80%) Data Lake
7 253 (5.64%) Tableau
8 235 (5.24%) Metadata
9 214 (4.77%) NoSQL
10 203 (4.53%) BigQuery
11 199 (4.44%) Oracle Database
12 152 (3.39%) Azure SQL Database
13 133 (2.97%) Amazon Redshift
14 130 (2.90%) Delta Lake
15 123 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 113 (2.52%) MySQL
17 103 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
18 101 (2.25%) Big Data
19 92 (2.05%) Power Query
20 89 (1.99%) Looker
Development Applications
1 588 (13.12%) Git
2 367 (8.19%) JIRA
3 241 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 232 (5.18%) GitLab
5 96 (2.14%) Selenium
6 79 (1.76%) JUnit
7 78 (1.74%) Maven
8 77 (1.72%) Gradle
9 61 (1.36%) Postman
10 47 (1.05%) Mockito
11 40 (0.89%) Bitbucket
12 39 (0.87%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.67%) Zephyr
14 28 (0.62%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.56%) JMeter
16 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 23 (0.51%) Cucumber
17 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,255 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 1,201 (26.80%) Finance
3 939 (20.95%) Analytical Skills
4 541 (12.07%) Banking
5 401 (8.95%) Public Sector
6 146 (3.26%) Marketing
7 137 (3.06%) Retail
8 129 (2.88%) Front Office
9 122 (2.72%) Investment Banking
10 88 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 81 (1.81%) Manufacturing
12 77 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
13 52 (1.16%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.16%) Legal
14 47 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
15 46 (1.03%) Back Office
16 45 (1.00%) Local Government
17 44 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
18 39 (0.87%) Military
19 35 (0.78%) Law
Job Titles
1 949 (21.17%) Developer
2 852 (19.01%) Data Engineer
3 660 (14.73%) Senior
4 658 (14.68%) Analyst
5 313 (6.98%) Lead
6 269 (6.00%) Data Analyst
7 216 (4.82%) Architect
8 209 (4.66%) Senior Data Engineer
9 196 (4.37%) Business Analyst
10 173 (3.86%) Consultant
11 169 (3.77%) DBA
12 156 (3.48%) Java Developer
13 148 (3.30%) Senior Developer
14 113 (2.52%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.39%) Azure Engineer
16 104 (2.32%) Full-Stack Developer
17 101 (2.25%) Python Developer
17 101 (2.25%) SQL DBA
18 95 (2.12%) Data Architect
18 95 (2.12%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (9.46%) REST
2 392 (8.75%) Terraform
3 383 (8.55%) .NET
4 302 (6.74%) Kafka
4 302 (6.74%) PySpark
5 225 (5.02%) Spring
6 215 (4.80%) Spring Boot
7 211 (4.71%) React
8 176 (3.93%) HTML
9 166 (3.70%) JSON
10 164 (3.66%) RESTful
11 148 (3.30%) CSS
12 145 (3.24%) XML
13 109 (2.43%) AngularJS
14 108 (2.41%) SOAP
15 103 (2.30%) Web Services
16 93 (2.07%) Middleware
17 87 (1.94%) Pandas
18 85 (1.90%) OAuth
19 84 (1.87%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 287 (6.40%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.93%) Data Structures
3 212 (4.73%) Product Ownership
4 141 (3.15%) Legacy Systems
5 130 (2.90%) Enterprise Software
6 125 (2.79%) Onboarding
7 124 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
8 97 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 88 (1.96%) AI Agents
10 80 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
11 74 (1.65%) Derivative
12 70 (1.56%) Replication
13 62 (1.38%) Analytical Mindset
13 62 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (1.32%) Reference Data
15 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
16 55 (1.23%) Clustering
17 49 (1.09%) Data Centre
17 49 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
18 45 (1.00%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 323 (7.21%) Linux
2 273 (6.09%) Windows
3 208 (4.64%) Unix
4 112 (2.50%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.20%) VMS
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) AIX
10 7 (0.16%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.089%) zOS
13 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.045%) CentOS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
14 2 (0.045%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,243 (27.73%) CI/CD
2 1,216 (27.13%) Agile
3 1,147 (25.59%) Data Modelling
4 1,141 (25.46%) Analytics
5 981 (21.89%) Business Intelligence
6 973 (21.71%) ETL
7 889 (19.83%) Problem-Solving
8 860 (19.19%) Data Pipeline
9 855 (19.08%) DevOps
10 793 (17.69%) Data Engineering
11 788 (17.58%) AI
12 709 (15.82%) Validation
13 671 (14.97%) Stakeholder Management
14 653 (14.57%) Migration
15 539 (12.03%) Test Automation
16 536 (11.96%) Continuous Improvement
17 512 (11.42%) Data Analysis
18 504 (11.24%) Decision-Making
19 494 (11.02%) Data Governance
20 399 (8.90%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,607 (35.85%) Python
2 557 (12.43%) Java
3 412 (9.19%) C#
4 378 (8.43%) JavaScript
5 324 (7.23%) PL/SQL
6 233 (5.20%) PowerShell
7 211 (4.71%) T-SQL
8 198 (4.42%) TypeScript
9 142 (3.17%) Shell Script
10 134 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 112 (2.50%) Bash
12 75 (1.67%) Scala
13 69 (1.54%) R
14 36 (0.80%) C++
15 35 (0.78%) VBA
16 31 (0.69%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.60%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
19 26 (0.58%) VB
Qualifications
1 959 (21.40%) Security Cleared
2 747 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 339 (7.56%) Degree
4 132 (2.95%) DV Cleared
5 124 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
6 115 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 72 (1.61%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.20%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (0.91%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.89%) Master's Degree
12 19 (0.42%) CISSP
13 18 (0.40%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.33%) ACCA
15 15 (0.33%) CIMA
16 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
16 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 904 (20.17%) Data Quality
2 364 (8.12%) QA
3 114 (2.54%) GDPR
4 47 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.03%) SLA
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 24 (0.54%) NIST
8 23 (0.51%) IFRS
9 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
9 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) COBIT
11 15 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 12 (0.27%) Basel III
13 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
14 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.18%) PMO
14 8 (0.18%) SEPA
14 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
15 7 (0.16%) GRC
System Software
1 422 (9.42%) Docker
2 117 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.11%) KVM
10 5 (0.11%) Postfix
11 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.045%) Squid
13 1 (0.022%) GPFS
13 1 (0.022%) HDFS
13 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 376 (8.39%) Kubernetes
2 97 (2.16%) Ansible
3 84 (1.87%) Grafana
4 52 (1.16%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.89%) Control-M
6 39 (0.87%) SCOM
7 38 (0.85%) Kibana
8 34 (0.76%) Data Guard
9 29 (0.65%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.22%) Argo
15 9 (0.20%) Istio
16 8 (0.18%) Podman
16 8 (0.18%) Puppet
16 8 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 771 (17.20%) Microsoft
2 746 (16.64%) Oracle
3 590 (13.16%) Databricks
4 213 (4.75%) Google
5 131 (2.92%) Informatica
6 123 (2.74%) SAP
7 100 (2.23%) IBM
8 97 (2.16%) Talend
9 82 (1.83%) ServiceNow
10 77 (1.72%) Splunk
11 66 (1.47%) VMware
12 61 (1.36%) Salesforce
13 41 (0.91%) Denodo
14 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Foundry
16 37 (0.83%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.80%) UiPath
18 34 (0.76%) Murex
19 33 (0.74%) Adobe
19 33 (0.74%) Alteryx