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 27 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,073 2,975 3,631
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.78% 12.51% 9.93%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.78% 36.99% 33.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,769 2,135 2,688
10th Percentile £350 £359 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £503 £550
Median % change year-on-year -0.50% -8.64% -
75th Percentile £588 £626 £650
90th Percentile £688 £769 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £533
% change year-on-year - -6.19% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 53 53
10th Percentile £25.19 £23.55 £23.00
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.25 £30.37
Median hourly rate £47.15 £40.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.42% -10.00% -9.61%
75th Percentile £70.99 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £82.40 £77.00 £62.37
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £38.85 £45.00
% change year-on-year +28.72% -13.68% -10.00%

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 11,073 8,043 10,984
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.58% 33.83% 30.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,270 5,602 7,987
10th Percentile £357 £360 £350
25th Percentile £417 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% -4.55% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 533 183 452
10th Percentile £36.65 £28.53 £37.55
25th Percentile £54.55 £36.37 £49.34
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -

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 27 May 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 27 May 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 27 May 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 2,267 £523 -2.70% 861
Midlands +3 531 £469 +4.57% 198
North of England -8 493 £463 -2.63% 414
West Midlands +5 426 £461 +0.27% 108
South East -16 379 £475 -2.56% 429
North West -4 258 £460 -3.16% 239
South West -4 206 £475 - 129
Yorkshire -11 205 £475 -2.56% 123
East Midlands 0 101 £525 +34.62% 90
East of England -12 96 £495 +1.54% 107
North East -8 42 £450 -2.44% 58
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
1 231 (5.67%) Apache Spark
2 164 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
3 144 (3.54%) Apache
4 141 (3.46%) Confluence
5 85 (2.09%) SAS
6 65 (1.60%) SharePoint
7 38 (0.93%) WebLogic
8 32 (0.79%) IIS
9 28 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
10 23 (0.56%) Tomcat
11 17 (0.42%) Jupyter
11 17 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
12 15 (0.37%) Appian
12 15 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.34%) CMS
14 13 (0.32%) HCL Notes
14 13 (0.32%) Mendix
15 12 (0.29%) nginx
15 12 (0.29%) WebSphere
Applications
1 272 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
2 45 (1.10%) MS Visio
3 30 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 27 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.25%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.17%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
7 5 (0.12%) Notion
8 3 (0.074%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.074%) Trello
9 1 (0.025%) InDesign
9 1 (0.025%) Mingle
9 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.66%) Aladdin
4 22 (0.54%) NEC Housing
5 21 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
7 19 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
8 15 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.29%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 11 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.22%) Endur
13 9 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.20%) Findur
14 8 (0.20%) Oracle 11i
14 8 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,367 (33.56%) Azure
2 991 (24.33%) AWS
3 792 (19.45%) Power Platform
4 400 (9.82%) Azure DevOps
5 345 (8.47%) Azure Data Factory
6 337 (8.27%) GCP
7 303 (7.44%) GitHub
8 250 (6.14%) Serverless
9 241 (5.92%) Snowflake
10 229 (5.62%) Amazon S3
11 223 (5.48%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 184 (4.52%) dbt
13 157 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
14 153 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
15 80 (1.96%) Power Automate
16 74 (1.82%) SaaS
17 73 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 69 (1.69%) Entra ID
19 68 (1.67%) PowerApps
20 67 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.13%) Firewall
2 43 (1.06%) DNS
3 20 (0.49%) SNMP
4 16 (0.39%) Internet
4 16 (0.39%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.37%) HTTP
5 15 (0.37%) Network Security
5 15 (0.37%) WAN
6 13 (0.32%) SSL
7 11 (0.27%) LAN
7 11 (0.27%) VPN
7 11 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (0.22%) Wireshark
9 8 (0.20%) 3GPP
10 6 (0.15%) DHCP
10 6 (0.15%) IPsec
10 6 (0.15%) RTP
10 6 (0.15%) SAN
11 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.12%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 728 (17.87%) Power BI
2 521 (12.79%) Data Warehouse
3 511 (12.55%) SQL Server
4 287 (7.05%) Tableau
5 283 (6.95%) Data Lake
6 261 (6.41%) PostgreSQL
7 255 (6.26%) Relational Database
8 234 (5.75%) NoSQL
9 213 (5.23%) Metadata
10 193 (4.74%) Azure SQL Database
11 155 (3.81%) Oracle Database
12 147 (3.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 137 (3.36%) BigQuery
14 127 (3.12%) Delta Lake
15 110 (2.70%) Amazon Redshift
15 110 (2.70%) Big Data
16 105 (2.58%) MySQL
17 101 (2.48%) Oracle Reports
18 92 (2.26%) Snowflake Schema
19 89 (2.19%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 421 (10.34%) Git
2 312 (7.66%) JIRA
3 214 (5.25%) Jenkins
4 192 (4.71%) GitLab
5 60 (1.47%) JUnit
6 56 (1.37%) Selenium
7 52 (1.28%) Postman
8 49 (1.20%) Maven
9 46 (1.13%) Mockito
10 40 (0.98%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.91%) Gradle
12 36 (0.88%) SonarQube
13 33 (0.81%) MLflow
14 30 (0.74%) REST Assured
15 28 (0.69%) ERwin
16 24 (0.59%) Bitbucket
16 24 (0.59%) JMeter
17 23 (0.56%) TeamCity
18 22 (0.54%) Visual Studio
19 21 (0.52%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,088 (26.71%) Finance
2 1,052 (25.83%) Social Skills
3 749 (18.39%) Analytical Skills
4 383 (9.40%) Banking
5 339 (8.32%) Public Sector
6 107 (2.63%) Marketing
7 106 (2.60%) Front Office
8 95 (2.33%) Investment Banking
9 81 (1.99%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.57%) Retail
11 63 (1.55%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (1.37%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.25%) Legal
14 40 (0.98%) Publishing
15 35 (0.86%) Manufacturing
15 35 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
16 34 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
16 34 (0.83%) Telecoms
17 32 (0.79%) Law
18 27 (0.66%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 854 (20.97%) Data Engineer
2 840 (20.62%) Developer
3 580 (14.24%) Analyst
4 521 (12.79%) Senior
5 281 (6.90%) Lead
6 261 (6.41%) Data Analyst
7 231 (5.67%) Architect
8 181 (4.44%) Consultant
9 174 (4.27%) Business Analyst
10 166 (4.08%) Java Developer
11 152 (3.73%) Senior Data Engineer
12 128 (3.14%) DBA
13 127 (3.12%) Senior Developer
14 122 (3.00%) Software Engineer
15 112 (2.75%) Azure Engineer
16 99 (2.43%) C# Developer
17 88 (2.16%) Data Architect
17 88 (2.16%) Data Scientist
18 86 (2.11%) Python Developer
19 83 (2.04%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 348 (8.54%) .NET
2 333 (8.18%) REST
3 261 (6.41%) PySpark
4 256 (6.29%) Kafka
5 205 (5.03%) Spring
6 197 (4.84%) React
7 194 (4.76%) Spring Boot
8 179 (4.39%) RESTful
9 147 (3.61%) HTML
10 140 (3.44%) JSON
11 135 (3.31%) XML
12 124 (3.04%) CSS
13 120 (2.95%) Pandas
14 108 (2.65%) AngularJS
15 101 (2.48%) SOAP
16 85 (2.09%) Middleware
17 83 (2.04%) Web Services
18 82 (2.01%) .NET Framework
19 75 (1.84%) OAuth
20 69 (1.69%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 262 (6.43%) Cloud Native
2 148 (3.63%) Data Structures
3 132 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
4 131 (3.22%) Product Ownership
5 112 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
6 85 (2.09%) Management Information System
7 79 (1.94%) Derivative
8 76 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 69 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 66 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
11 54 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 53 (1.30%) Clustering
13 52 (1.28%) Equities
14 51 (1.25%) Fixed Income
15 49 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
15 49 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
16 46 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 41 (1.01%) Low-Code
18 40 (0.98%) Replication
19 38 (0.93%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 289 (7.10%) Linux
2 250 (6.14%) Windows
3 203 (4.98%) Unix
4 85 (2.09%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.61%) AIX
6 20 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.22%) zOS
10 8 (0.20%) Solaris
10 8 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.15%) Android
12 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
13 4 (0.098%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.074%) VMS
14 3 (0.074%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.049%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.049%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,117 (27.42%) CI/CD
2 1,029 (25.26%) Analytics
3 1,017 (24.97%) Data Modelling
4 986 (24.21%) Agile
5 982 (24.11%) ETL
6 926 (22.74%) Business Intelligence
7 889 (21.83%) DevOps
8 799 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
9 763 (18.73%) Data Pipeline
10 670 (16.45%) Data Engineering
11 546 (13.41%) AI
12 516 (12.67%) Migration
13 500 (12.28%) Validation
14 468 (11.49%) Data Governance
15 412 (10.12%) Test Automation
16 406 (9.97%) Decision-Making
17 393 (9.65%) Data Analysis
18 370 (9.08%) Performance Tuning
19 368 (9.04%) Microservices
20 359 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,533 (37.64%) Python
2 554 (13.60%) Java
3 435 (10.68%) C#
4 313 (7.68%) JavaScript
5 291 (7.14%) PL/SQL
6 206 (5.06%) T-SQL
7 195 (4.79%) PowerShell
8 135 (3.31%) TypeScript
9 130 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 114 (2.80%) R
11 111 (2.73%) Shell Script
12 84 (2.06%) Scala
13 79 (1.94%) Bash
14 59 (1.45%) C++
15 42 (1.03%) VBA
16 39 (0.96%) Bicep
17 35 (0.86%) Perl
18 29 (0.71%) VB
19 24 (0.59%) C
19 24 (0.59%) Go
Qualifications
1 854 (20.97%) Security Cleared
2 687 (16.87%) SC Cleared
3 328 (8.05%) Degree
4 110 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
5 90 (2.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (1.77%) Azure Certification
6 72 (1.77%) DV Cleared
7 50 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 47 (1.15%) ISTQB
9 37 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
10 23 (0.56%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.42%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.39%) PhD
13 13 (0.32%) CBAP
14 11 (0.27%) CISSP
14 11 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
15 10 (0.25%) PMP
16 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 744 (18.27%) Data Quality
2 306 (7.51%) QA
3 178 (4.37%) GDPR
4 42 (1.03%) SLA
5 38 (0.93%) Accessibility
6 32 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 26 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.59%) PMO
9 19 (0.47%) NIST
9 19 (0.47%) PCI DSS
10 17 (0.42%) IFRS
11 16 (0.39%) MiFID
12 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.37%) HIPAA
13 12 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
13 12 (0.29%) HL7
13 12 (0.29%) Solvency II
14 11 (0.27%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.25%) GRC
16 8 (0.20%) NCSC
System Software
1 461 (11.32%) Docker
2 93 (2.28%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
4 27 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
5 26 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 13 (0.32%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.25%) KVM
9 9 (0.22%) Postfix
9 9 (0.22%) VMware NSX
10 8 (0.20%) vCloud
10 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
11 6 (0.15%) HDFS
11 6 (0.15%) RACF
12 4 (0.098%) XenApp
12 4 (0.098%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.074%) Oracle Clusterware
14 2 (0.049%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.049%) GridGain
14 2 (0.049%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 383 (9.40%) Kubernetes
2 328 (8.05%) Terraform
3 107 (2.63%) Grafana
4 66 (1.62%) Ansible
5 63 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 41 (1.01%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.74%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.44%) Kibana
10 15 (0.37%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.37%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.34%) Nagios
11 14 (0.34%) Netcool
11 14 (0.34%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.32%) Control-M
12 13 (0.32%) OpenView
12 13 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 12 (0.29%) SCCM
14 10 (0.25%) SCOM
15 9 (0.22%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 670 (16.45%) Oracle
2 637 (15.64%) Microsoft
3 502 (12.33%) Databricks
4 158 (3.88%) Google
5 144 (3.54%) Informatica
6 132 (3.24%) ServiceNow
7 113 (2.77%) Talend
8 106 (2.60%) SAP
9 86 (2.11%) Splunk
10 61 (1.50%) IBM
11 58 (1.42%) Denodo
12 52 (1.28%) Salesforce
13 45 (1.10%) Citrix
14 42 (1.03%) VMware
15 36 (0.88%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.81%) OpenAI
17 32 (0.79%) Bloomberg
18 31 (0.76%) MuleSoft
19 30 (0.74%) HP
20 29 (0.71%) BMC