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 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,600 3,058 3,839
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.41% 11.85% 10.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.77% 35.42% 34.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,482 2,048 2,788
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.08% -5.23% -
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £741 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 52 63
10th Percentile £20.75 £25.26 £21.66
25th Percentile £31.56 £34.12 £26.29
Median hourly rate £49.36 £55.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -10.66% +30.00% -15.42%
75th Percentile £59.17 £65.62 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.64 £79.72 £61.75
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £52.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -5.21% +24.12% -16.26%

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 10,353 8,634 11,050
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.94% 33.45% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,896 5,574 7,937
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £660
90th Percentile £726 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £534
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.69% -5.07%
Number of hourly rates quoted 434 201 478
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £36.27
25th Percentile £52.69 £42.50 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £61.05
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +3.19% -6.08%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.35 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -6.92%

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 18 February 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 18 February 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 18 February 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 2,179 £510 -7.27% 670
North of England -5 386 £450 -5.26% 347
Midlands -6 385 £500 +7.07% 295
West Midlands +1 299 £495 -0.50% 186
South East -17 279 £475 -5.00% 565
North West +5 221 £425 -8.11% 214
South West -1 185 £475 -5.00% 142
Yorkshire -19 144 £500 - 98
East Midlands -12 86 £525 +35.48% 109
East of England -17 80 £550 +14.88% 116
North East -5 26 £475 -1.04% 38
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
1 185 (5.14%) Apache Spark
2 141 (3.92%) Apache Airflow
3 110 (3.06%) Apache
4 108 (3.00%) Confluence
5 83 (2.31%) SharePoint
6 62 (1.72%) SAS
7 52 (1.44%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.72%) IIS
9 23 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
10 18 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 17 (0.47%) CMS
11 17 (0.47%) Skype for Business
11 17 (0.47%) Tomcat
12 16 (0.44%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.36%) nginx
15 12 (0.33%) Appian
15 12 (0.33%) JBoss
15 12 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.31%) Mattermost
Applications
1 233 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 72 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 43 (1.19%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.11%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 4 (0.11%) Trello
8 3 (0.083%) Notion
8 3 (0.083%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.056%) Maya
9 2 (0.056%) NUKE
10 1 (0.028%) SPSS
10 1 (0.028%) Weka
Business Applications
1 26 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
2 25 (0.69%) Aladdin
3 22 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
4 21 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
5 20 (0.56%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
6 17 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
7 16 (0.44%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.36%) Endur
9 13 (0.36%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
9 13 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
12 10 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 9 (0.25%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.25%) Maximo
14 8 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,214 (33.72%) Azure
2 878 (24.39%) AWS
3 680 (18.89%) Power Platform
4 341 (9.47%) Azure DevOps
5 307 (8.53%) GCP
6 284 (7.89%) Azure Data Factory
7 261 (7.25%) GitHub
8 258 (7.17%) Serverless
9 250 (6.94%) Snowflake
10 190 (5.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 188 (5.22%) Amazon S3
12 145 (4.03%) dbt
13 134 (3.72%) GitHub Actions
14 131 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
15 100 (2.78%) SaaS
16 80 (2.22%) Azure Functions
17 78 (2.17%) Power Automate
18 65 (1.81%) PowerApps
19 60 (1.67%) AWS CloudFormation
20 59 (1.64%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.33%) Firewall
2 37 (1.03%) DNS
3 25 (0.69%) HTTP
4 20 (0.56%) Skype
5 19 (0.53%) Network Security
6 16 (0.44%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.42%) Internet
8 13 (0.36%) DHCP
9 12 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.33%) Unified Communications
10 10 (0.28%) 5G
10 10 (0.28%) VPN
11 9 (0.25%) 2G
11 9 (0.25%) LAN
11 9 (0.25%) WAN
12 8 (0.22%) SMS
13 7 (0.19%) 4G
13 7 (0.19%) Multicast
13 7 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
14 6 (0.17%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 616 (17.11%) Power BI
2 409 (11.36%) SQL Server
3 403 (11.19%) Data Warehouse
4 255 (7.08%) Relational Database
5 247 (6.86%) PostgreSQL
6 245 (6.81%) NoSQL
7 228 (6.33%) Data Lake
7 228 (6.33%) Tableau
8 179 (4.97%) Azure SQL Database
9 156 (4.33%) Metadata
10 151 (4.19%) Oracle Database
11 125 (3.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 114 (3.17%) BigQuery
13 110 (3.06%) Big Data
14 106 (2.94%) MySQL
15 100 (2.78%) MongoDB
16 91 (2.53%) Delta Lake
17 85 (2.36%) Amazon Redshift
18 83 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
19 74 (2.06%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 393 (10.92%) Git
2 285 (7.92%) JIRA
3 169 (4.69%) Jenkins
4 130 (3.61%) GitLab
5 56 (1.56%) JUnit
5 56 (1.56%) Selenium
6 43 (1.19%) Oracle APEX
7 40 (1.11%) Postman
8 35 (0.97%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.81%) MLflow
10 28 (0.78%) REST Assured
11 27 (0.75%) Maven
12 26 (0.72%) Bitbucket
13 23 (0.64%) ERwin
13 23 (0.64%) Mockito
14 22 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 21 (0.58%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.58%) SpecFlow
16 17 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
16 17 (0.47%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,115 (30.97%) Social Skills
2 1,028 (28.56%) Finance
3 658 (18.28%) Analytical Skills
4 387 (10.75%) Banking
5 297 (8.25%) Public Sector
6 110 (3.06%) Investment Banking
7 98 (2.72%) Front Office
8 96 (2.67%) Documentation Skills
9 85 (2.36%) Marketing
10 62 (1.72%) Retail
11 60 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 56 (1.56%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 36 (1.00%) Legal
15 35 (0.97%) Publishing
16 34 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 34 (0.94%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.92%) Manufacturing
18 30 (0.83%) Law
19 29 (0.81%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 890 (24.72%) Developer
2 596 (16.56%) Data Engineer
3 574 (15.94%) Analyst
4 475 (13.19%) Senior
5 248 (6.89%) Lead
6 235 (6.53%) Data Analyst
7 202 (5.61%) Business Analyst
8 180 (5.00%) Architect
9 145 (4.03%) Senior Developer
10 131 (3.64%) Java Developer
11 119 (3.31%) Consultant
12 113 (3.14%) Azure Engineer
13 105 (2.92%) Software Engineer
14 94 (2.61%) Data Scientist
15 93 (2.58%) Senior Data Engineer
16 87 (2.42%) Python Developer
17 84 (2.33%) C# Developer
18 83 (2.31%) Full-Stack Developer
19 74 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
20 71 (1.97%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 325 (9.03%) .NET
2 287 (7.97%) REST
3 232 (6.44%) Kafka
4 215 (5.97%) PySpark
5 170 (4.72%) React
6 163 (4.53%) RESTful
7 155 (4.31%) Spring
8 138 (3.83%) Spring Boot
9 135 (3.75%) HTML
10 133 (3.69%) XML
11 118 (3.28%) CSS
12 105 (2.92%) JSON
13 100 (2.78%) Pandas
14 96 (2.67%) AngularJS
15 93 (2.58%) Node.js
16 85 (2.36%) SOAP
17 79 (2.19%) .NET Framework
18 75 (2.08%) Middleware
19 71 (1.97%) Web Services
20 69 (1.92%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 215 (5.97%) Cloud Native
2 113 (3.14%) Data Structures
3 103 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
3 103 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 80 (2.22%) Data Protection Act
4 80 (2.22%) Management Information System
5 73 (2.03%) Analytical Mindset
6 66 (1.83%) Derivative
7 64 (1.78%) Algorithms
7 64 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
8 57 (1.58%) Equities
9 52 (1.44%) Fixed Income
10 49 (1.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 49 (1.36%) Onboarding
11 40 (1.11%) Replication
12 37 (1.03%) Market Risk
13 36 (1.00%) Enterprise Software
14 35 (0.97%) Clustering
15 33 (0.92%) Credit Risk
15 33 (0.92%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 296 (8.22%) Linux
2 212 (5.89%) Windows
3 187 (5.19%) Unix
4 66 (1.83%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
6 14 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 11 (0.31%) AIX
7 11 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.28%) Android
8 10 (0.28%) VMS
9 9 (0.25%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.17%) Ubuntu
11 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.11%) Amazon Linux
13 3 (0.083%) CentOS
13 3 (0.083%) zOS
14 2 (0.056%) Solaris
14 2 (0.056%) Windows Server 2008
15 1 (0.028%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 970 (26.94%) Agile
2 891 (24.75%) Analytics
3 881 (24.47%) CI/CD
4 832 (23.11%) Problem-Solving
5 809 (22.47%) Business Intelligence
6 789 (21.92%) Data Modelling
7 785 (21.81%) DevOps
8 743 (20.64%) ETL
9 542 (15.06%) Data Pipeline
10 507 (14.08%) Data Engineering
11 411 (11.42%) Migration
12 392 (10.89%) AI
12 392 (10.89%) Data Governance
13 375 (10.42%) Validation
14 362 (10.06%) Data Analysis
15 348 (9.67%) Visualisation
16 341 (9.47%) Data Science
17 315 (8.75%) Decision-Making
18 314 (8.72%) Stakeholder Management
19 309 (8.58%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,356 (37.67%) Python
2 541 (15.03%) Java
3 384 (10.67%) C#
4 309 (8.58%) JavaScript
5 271 (7.53%) PL/SQL
6 149 (4.14%) PowerShell
7 137 (3.81%) TypeScript
8 118 (3.28%) T-SQL
9 103 (2.86%) R
10 102 (2.83%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.58%) Scala
12 86 (2.39%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 79 (2.19%) C++
14 70 (1.94%) VBA
15 59 (1.64%) Bash
16 56 (1.56%) VB
17 47 (1.31%) Perl
18 43 (1.19%) Go
19 42 (1.17%) Bicep
20 28 (0.78%) PHP
Qualifications
1 621 (17.25%) Security Cleared
2 482 (13.39%) SC Cleared
3 345 (9.58%) Degree
4 115 (3.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (2.14%) Azure Certification
6 76 (2.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 60 (1.67%) Master's Degree
8 57 (1.58%) DV Cleared
9 53 (1.47%) AWS Certification
10 46 (1.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 39 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.58%) Oracle Certification
13 19 (0.53%) CBAP
13 19 (0.53%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 19 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
14 12 (0.33%) Cisco Certification
14 12 (0.33%) MCSE
15 11 (0.31%) CCNA
15 11 (0.31%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.28%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 575 (15.97%) Data Quality
2 264 (7.33%) QA
3 145 (4.03%) GDPR
4 56 (1.56%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.69%) SLA
7 20 (0.56%) MiFID
7 20 (0.56%) PMO
8 19 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
9 17 (0.47%) SEPA
10 16 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 15 (0.42%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.39%) EMIR
12 14 (0.39%) HIPAA
12 14 (0.39%) PCI DSS
12 14 (0.39%) PSD2
13 12 (0.33%) IFRS
13 12 (0.33%) NIST
13 12 (0.33%) WCAG
14 8 (0.22%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 415 (11.53%) Docker
2 98 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
4 17 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
4 17 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
5 13 (0.36%) Hyper-V
6 7 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.17%) KVM
7 6 (0.17%) zsh
8 5 (0.14%) HDFS
8 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.14%) Postfix
8 5 (0.14%) RACF
8 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.14%) XenApp
8 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) DFS Replication
9 4 (0.11%) Dovecot
9 4 (0.11%) Squid
9 4 (0.11%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 372 (10.33%) Kubernetes
2 273 (7.58%) Terraform
3 78 (2.17%) Grafana
4 63 (1.75%) Prometheus
5 54 (1.50%) Ansible
6 21 (0.58%) SCCM
6 21 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.56%) SCOM
8 18 (0.50%) HP SiteScope
8 18 (0.50%) Oracle RMAN
9 17 (0.47%) Control-M
9 17 (0.47%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.44%) Data Guard
11 14 (0.39%) Kibana
11 14 (0.39%) Puppet
12 12 (0.33%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.31%) WSUS
14 8 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
14 8 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 598 (16.61%) Oracle
2 592 (16.44%) Microsoft
3 428 (11.89%) Databricks
4 148 (4.11%) Google
5 95 (2.64%) SAP
6 84 (2.33%) Splunk
7 82 (2.28%) ServiceNow
8 69 (1.92%) Informatica
9 65 (1.81%) Talend
10 64 (1.78%) Salesforce
11 51 (1.42%) IBM
12 48 (1.33%) OpenAI
13 45 (1.25%) Citrix
14 36 (1.00%) MuleSoft
15 32 (0.89%) Bloomberg
16 31 (0.86%) VMware
17 27 (0.75%) Foundry
18 26 (0.72%) Denodo
19 23 (0.64%) Dynatrace
20 22 (0.61%) Palantir