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 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,332 3,118 3,781
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.90% 12.23% 10.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.04% 36.21% 33.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,898 2,228 2,782
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 63 54
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.09 £23.13
25th Percentile £31.86 £30.75 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.10% +0.74% -15.00%
75th Percentile £69.72 £51.88 £51.87
90th Percentile £82.70 £67.20 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £41.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +7.42% -1.98% -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 11,697 8,610 11,407
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.73% 33.76% 30.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,613 5,945 8,152
10th Percentile £360 £355 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £518 £520 £543
Median % change year-on-year -0.48% -4.15% -1.36%
75th Percentile £614 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £510 £511 £525
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 211 484
10th Percentile £35.25 £28.18 £35.60
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.13 £50.47
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £64.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -12.02% +3.20%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.80 £82.96 £75.88
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +1.46%

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 30 June 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 30 June 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 30 June 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 -5 2,335 £525 -1.87% 618
North of England -5 564 £460 -3.16% 330
Midlands +3 546 £460 +8.24% 205
West Midlands +5 448 £459 +2.00% 112
South East -10 438 £490 -2.00% 423
North West -2 298 £463 -2.63% 199
South West -3 231 £500 +7.53% 106
Yorkshire -11 228 £475 - 86
East of England -10 107 £491 +0.77% 94
East Midlands -3 94 £525 +40.00% 93
North East -13 50 £419 -9.70% 51
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
1 213 (4.92%) Apache Spark
2 181 (4.18%) Apache Airflow
3 174 (4.02%) Confluence
4 144 (3.32%) Apache
5 93 (2.15%) SAS
6 53 (1.22%) SharePoint
7 34 (0.78%) Oracle Workflow
7 34 (0.78%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.76%) IIS
9 24 (0.55%) Tomcat
10 22 (0.51%) Jupyter
11 19 (0.44%) WebSphere
12 18 (0.42%) CMS
12 18 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
12 18 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
13 16 (0.37%) Appian
13 16 (0.37%) nginx
14 13 (0.30%) Tuxedo
15 12 (0.28%) Camunda
16 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 275 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.95%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 3 (0.069%) Acrobat
8 3 (0.069%) Notion
8 3 (0.069%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.069%) Photoshop
9 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
9 1 (0.023%) InDesign
9 1 (0.023%) Mingle
9 1 (0.023%) Trello
9 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 38 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 34 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.58%) Aladdin
4 23 (0.53%) Oracle ERP
4 23 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 21 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.42%) NEC Housing
7 16 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
8 15 (0.35%) Remedy ITSM
9 14 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
12 9 (0.21%) Elite 3E
12 9 (0.21%) Fidessa
12 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
13 8 (0.18%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,393 (32.16%) Azure
2 1,052 (24.28%) AWS
3 822 (18.98%) Power Platform
4 404 (9.33%) Azure DevOps
5 349 (8.06%) GCP
6 321 (7.41%) Azure Data Factory
7 317 (7.32%) GitHub
8 277 (6.39%) Serverless
9 262 (6.05%) Snowflake
10 246 (5.68%) Amazon S3
11 224 (5.17%) dbt
12 209 (4.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 176 (4.06%) AWS Lambda
14 166 (3.83%) GitHub Actions
15 80 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 78 (1.80%) Entra ID
16 78 (1.80%) Power Automate
17 77 (1.78%) SaaS
18 72 (1.66%) Amazon EC2
19 69 (1.59%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.06%) DNS
2 40 (0.92%) Firewall
3 21 (0.48%) Network Security
3 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 19 (0.44%) HTTP
4 19 (0.44%) Internet
4 19 (0.44%) SSL
5 18 (0.42%) VPN
6 14 (0.32%) WAN
7 10 (0.23%) TCP/IP
8 9 (0.21%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (0.21%) Wireshark
9 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 7 (0.16%) LAN
10 7 (0.16%) SAN
10 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
11 6 (0.14%) BGP
11 6 (0.14%) Kerberos
11 6 (0.14%) Reverse Proxy
11 6 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 757 (17.47%) Power BI
2 577 (13.32%) Data Warehouse
3 555 (12.81%) SQL Server
4 290 (6.69%) Relational Database
5 289 (6.67%) Tableau
6 281 (6.49%) Data Lake
7 279 (6.44%) PostgreSQL
8 225 (5.19%) NoSQL
9 202 (4.66%) Metadata
10 181 (4.18%) Azure SQL Database
11 167 (3.86%) Oracle Database
12 152 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 144 (3.32%) BigQuery
14 134 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
15 127 (2.93%) Delta Lake
16 111 (2.56%) MySQL
17 103 (2.38%) Big Data
18 99 (2.29%) Snowflake Schema
19 98 (2.26%) Oracle Reports
20 89 (2.05%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 462 (10.66%) Git
2 344 (7.94%) JIRA
3 238 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 192 (4.43%) GitLab
5 69 (1.59%) JUnit
6 53 (1.22%) Postman
7 51 (1.18%) Maven
7 51 (1.18%) Selenium
8 49 (1.13%) Mockito
9 45 (1.04%) Gradle
10 33 (0.76%) Cucumber
10 33 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 31 (0.72%) MLflow
12 30 (0.69%) Visual Studio
13 27 (0.62%) Bitbucket
13 27 (0.62%) ERwin
13 27 (0.62%) JMeter
13 27 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
14 26 (0.60%) Liquibase
14 26 (0.60%) Zephyr
General
1 1,152 (26.59%) Finance
2 1,122 (25.90%) Social Skills
3 823 (19.00%) Analytical Skills
4 419 (9.67%) Banking
5 372 (8.59%) Public Sector
6 122 (2.82%) Front Office
7 120 (2.77%) Marketing
8 103 (2.38%) Investment Banking
9 98 (2.26%) Retail
10 90 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
11 75 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 54 (1.25%) Legal
13 52 (1.20%) Financial Institution
13 52 (1.20%) Manufacturing
14 49 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 38 (0.88%) Publishing
16 35 (0.81%) Back Office
16 35 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
17 34 (0.78%) Telecoms
18 28 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 908 (20.96%) Developer
2 880 (20.31%) Data Engineer
3 619 (14.29%) Analyst
4 564 (13.02%) Senior
5 299 (6.90%) Lead
6 264 (6.09%) Data Analyst
7 238 (5.49%) Architect
8 204 (4.71%) Consultant
9 184 (4.25%) Business Analyst
10 175 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 166 (3.83%) Senior Data Engineer
12 145 (3.35%) DBA
13 134 (3.09%) Senior Developer
13 134 (3.09%) Software Engineer
14 106 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
15 103 (2.38%) SQL Developer
16 102 (2.35%) C# Developer
17 90 (2.08%) SQL DBA
18 88 (2.03%) Python Developer
19 84 (1.94%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (8.38%) .NET
2 342 (7.89%) REST
3 267 (6.16%) Kafka
4 263 (6.07%) PySpark
5 226 (5.22%) Spring
6 212 (4.89%) Spring Boot
7 204 (4.71%) React
8 188 (4.34%) RESTful
9 155 (3.58%) JSON
10 150 (3.46%) XML
11 139 (3.21%) HTML
12 126 (2.91%) CSS
13 119 (2.75%) AngularJS
14 113 (2.61%) Pandas
15 102 (2.35%) SOAP
16 100 (2.31%) Web Services
17 99 (2.29%) Middleware
18 88 (2.03%) .NET Framework
19 73 (1.69%) OAuth
20 68 (1.57%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 282 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 173 (3.99%) Data Structures
3 155 (3.58%) Legacy Systems
4 141 (3.25%) Product Ownership
5 129 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
6 80 (1.85%) Derivative
7 79 (1.82%) Onboarding
8 76 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 71 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
10 70 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 65 (1.50%) Self-Motivation
12 64 (1.48%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.39%) Clustering
14 53 (1.22%) Algorithms
14 53 (1.22%) Equities
15 51 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (1.15%) Fixed Income
17 48 (1.11%) Replication
18 41 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 41 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 286 (6.60%) Linux
2 266 (6.14%) Windows
3 205 (4.73%) Unix
4 95 (2.19%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.55%) AIX
6 21 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 14 (0.32%) Solaris
7 14 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
8 8 (0.18%) zOS
9 7 (0.16%) Android
9 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 4 (0.092%) Oracle Linux
10 4 (0.092%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.092%) VMS
11 3 (0.069%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.046%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,191 (27.49%) CI/CD
2 1,113 (25.69%) Analytics
3 1,100 (25.39%) Agile
4 1,048 (24.19%) Data Modelling
5 1,007 (23.25%) ETL
6 959 (22.14%) Business Intelligence
7 896 (20.68%) DevOps
8 857 (19.78%) Problem-Solving
9 821 (18.95%) Data Pipeline
10 720 (16.62%) Data Engineering
11 630 (14.54%) AI
12 576 (13.30%) Migration
13 557 (12.86%) Validation
14 452 (10.43%) Data Governance
15 449 (10.36%) Test Automation
16 441 (10.18%) Decision-Making
17 429 (9.90%) Data Analysis
18 409 (9.44%) Stakeholder Management
19 408 (9.42%) Continuous Improvement
20 382 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,571 (36.27%) Python
2 552 (12.74%) Java
3 445 (10.27%) C#
4 323 (7.46%) PL/SQL
5 305 (7.04%) JavaScript
6 238 (5.49%) T-SQL
7 225 (5.19%) PowerShell
8 163 (3.76%) TypeScript
9 132 (3.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 112 (2.59%) Shell Script
11 96 (2.22%) R
12 83 (1.92%) Bash
13 75 (1.73%) Scala
14 54 (1.25%) C++
15 42 (0.97%) VBA
16 35 (0.81%) Bicep
16 35 (0.81%) C
17 32 (0.74%) VB
18 24 (0.55%) Go
19 22 (0.51%) Perl
Qualifications
1 910 (21.01%) Security Cleared
2 734 (16.94%) SC Cleared
3 337 (7.78%) Degree
4 109 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 98 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 90 (2.08%) DV Cleared
7 68 (1.57%) Azure Certification
8 51 (1.18%) Master's Degree
9 49 (1.13%) ISTQB
10 42 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.72%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.39%) PhD
13 14 (0.32%) CISSP
14 11 (0.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.21%) ACCA
16 9 (0.21%) CIMA
16 9 (0.21%) CISM
17 8 (0.18%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 769 (17.75%) Data Quality
2 333 (7.69%) QA
3 174 (4.02%) GDPR
4 44 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 40 (0.92%) SLA
6 27 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (0.53%) NIST
7 23 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 21 (0.48%) PMO
9 17 (0.39%) IFRS
10 16 (0.37%) PCI DSS
11 15 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.35%) MiFID
11 15 (0.35%) Solvency II
12 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
13 13 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) HL7
15 9 (0.21%) GRC
15 9 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 461 (10.64%) Docker
2 98 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 45 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
5 22 (0.51%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.35%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.30%) VMware NSX
9 12 (0.28%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.21%) Postfix
12 7 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.12%) RACF
14 4 (0.092%) HDFS
15 3 (0.069%) XenApp
15 3 (0.069%) XenDesktop
16 2 (0.046%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 2 (0.046%) GridGain
17 1 (0.023%) Varnish
17 1 (0.023%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 384 (8.86%) Kubernetes
2 356 (8.22%) Terraform
3 99 (2.29%) Grafana
4 80 (1.85%) Ansible
5 54 (1.25%) Prometheus
6 33 (0.76%) Oracle RMAN
7 24 (0.55%) Data Guard
8 22 (0.51%) Control-M
8 22 (0.51%) Kibana
9 19 (0.44%) vCenter Server
10 18 (0.42%) SCOM
11 17 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.37%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.35%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Nagios
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.30%) OpenView
15 13 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.21%) Progress Chef
17 8 (0.18%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 735 (16.97%) Oracle
2 677 (15.63%) Microsoft
3 502 (11.59%) Databricks
4 164 (3.79%) Google
5 155 (3.58%) Informatica
6 126 (2.91%) ServiceNow
7 123 (2.84%) Talend
8 111 (2.56%) SAP
9 83 (1.92%) Splunk
10 69 (1.59%) IBM
11 62 (1.43%) Denodo
12 52 (1.20%) Salesforce
13 45 (1.04%) VMware
14 44 (1.02%) Citrix
15 39 (0.90%) Dynatrace
16 38 (0.88%) Bloomberg
17 34 (0.78%) Murex
18 32 (0.74%) OpenAI
19 28 (0.65%) BMC
19 28 (0.65%) SolarWinds