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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,203 3,044 3,731
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.84% 12.38% 9.95%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.90% 36.50% 32.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,840 2,191 2,754
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £539
Median % change year-on-year - -7.28% -1.95%
75th Percentile £591 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 62 56
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.05 £22.68
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.50 £29.06
Median hourly rate £46.80 £41.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.34% -1.98% -15.00%
75th Percentile £72.25 £62.50 £53.84
90th Percentile £82.25 £77.10 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +17.28% -4.71% -22.73%

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 11,391 8,339 11,366
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.68% 33.90% 30.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,459 5,790 8,149
10th Percentile £358 £356 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £523 £540
Median % change year-on-year -1.91% -3.24% -4.00%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £505 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 517 197 481
10th Percentile £36.25 £28.18 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.00 £49.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.30 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -3 2,296 £525 -0.94% 690
Midlands +4 534 £463 +5.59% 225
North of England -7 526 £460 -3.16% 364
West Midlands +5 437 £459 +1.32% 132
South East -12 407 £475 -5.00% 411
North West -2 272 £460 -3.16% 233
South West -2 229 £500 +5.26% 123
Yorkshire -10 213 £475 - 85
East of England -13 105 £491 +0.77% 98
East Midlands 0 93 £525 +36.36% 93
North East -9 53 £425 -8.36% 48
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
1 220 (5.23%) Apache Spark
2 172 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
3 151 (3.59%) Confluence
4 141 (3.35%) Apache
5 89 (2.12%) SAS
6 57 (1.36%) SharePoint
7 32 (0.76%) WebLogic
8 30 (0.71%) IIS
9 29 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
10 24 (0.57%) Tomcat
11 21 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 19 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
13 17 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
13 17 (0.40%) WebSphere
14 16 (0.38%) Appian
15 15 (0.36%) CMS
16 14 (0.33%) Tuxedo
17 13 (0.31%) nginx
18 11 (0.26%) Camunda
19 9 (0.21%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 268 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 44 (1.05%) Microsoft Office
3 42 (1.00%) MS Visio
4 31 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
5 30 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 3 (0.071%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.048%) Notion
10 1 (0.024%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.024%) InDesign
10 1 (0.024%) Mingle
10 1 (0.024%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.024%) Trello
10 1 (0.024%) Weka
Business Applications
1 34 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 25 (0.59%) Aladdin
4 21 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
5 20 (0.48%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
6 19 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
7 17 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 15 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.26%) Findur
11 10 (0.24%) Endur
11 10 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 8 (0.19%) NetSuite
13 8 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
13 8 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
14 7 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
Cloud Services
1 1,369 (32.57%) Azure
2 1,037 (24.67%) AWS
3 810 (19.27%) Power Platform
4 398 (9.47%) Azure DevOps
5 338 (8.04%) GCP
6 331 (7.88%) Azure Data Factory
7 315 (7.49%) GitHub
8 280 (6.66%) Serverless
9 251 (5.97%) Snowflake
10 248 (5.90%) Amazon S3
11 210 (5.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 202 (4.81%) dbt
13 176 (4.19%) AWS Lambda
14 165 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
15 81 (1.93%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 74 (1.76%) Entra ID
16 74 (1.76%) Power Automate
17 71 (1.69%) Amazon EC2
18 67 (1.59%) SaaS
19 64 (1.52%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 51 (1.21%) DNS
2 46 (1.09%) Firewall
3 20 (0.48%) SNMP
4 18 (0.43%) HTTP
4 18 (0.43%) Network Security
5 17 (0.40%) WAN
6 16 (0.38%) Internet
7 15 (0.36%) SSL
7 15 (0.36%) TCP/IP
7 15 (0.36%) VPN
8 11 (0.26%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.21%) LAN
9 9 (0.21%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.19%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.17%) SAN
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) IPsec
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 748 (17.80%) Power BI
2 551 (13.11%) Data Warehouse
3 524 (12.47%) SQL Server
4 300 (7.14%) Data Lake
5 280 (6.66%) Tableau
6 273 (6.50%) PostgreSQL
7 270 (6.42%) Relational Database
8 221 (5.26%) NoSQL
9 208 (4.95%) Metadata
10 183 (4.35%) Azure SQL Database
11 160 (3.81%) Oracle Database
12 153 (3.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 135 (3.21%) BigQuery
14 131 (3.12%) Amazon Redshift
15 124 (2.95%) Delta Lake
16 111 (2.64%) Big Data
17 101 (2.40%) Oracle Reports
18 100 (2.38%) MySQL
19 93 (2.21%) Snowflake Schema
20 91 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 451 (10.73%) Git
2 331 (7.88%) JIRA
3 221 (5.26%) Jenkins
4 198 (4.71%) GitLab
5 66 (1.57%) JUnit
6 51 (1.21%) Postman
7 50 (1.19%) Maven
7 50 (1.19%) Selenium
8 48 (1.14%) Mockito
9 42 (1.00%) Gradle
10 34 (0.81%) Cucumber
11 33 (0.79%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.74%) MLflow
13 26 (0.62%) ERwin
13 26 (0.62%) Liquibase
13 26 (0.62%) Visual Studio
14 25 (0.59%) Bitbucket
14 25 (0.59%) JMeter
15 24 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
15 24 (0.57%) Zephyr
General
1 1,123 (26.72%) Finance
2 1,068 (25.41%) Social Skills
3 782 (18.61%) Analytical Skills
4 398 (9.47%) Banking
5 367 (8.73%) Public Sector
6 116 (2.76%) Front Office
7 114 (2.71%) Marketing
8 99 (2.36%) Investment Banking
9 88 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
10 77 (1.83%) Retail
11 67 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 52 (1.24%) Financial Institution
13 51 (1.21%) Legal
14 43 (1.02%) Publishing
15 39 (0.93%) Manufacturing
15 39 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
16 34 (0.81%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
18 31 (0.74%) Back Office
19 30 (0.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 874 (20.79%) Data Engineer
2 864 (20.56%) Developer
3 598 (14.23%) Analyst
4 543 (12.92%) Senior
5 288 (6.85%) Lead
6 263 (6.26%) Data Analyst
7 229 (5.45%) Architect
8 197 (4.69%) Consultant
9 178 (4.24%) Business Analyst
10 168 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 164 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
12 134 (3.19%) DBA
12 134 (3.19%) Software Engineer
13 131 (3.12%) Senior Developer
14 103 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
15 101 (2.40%) C# Developer
16 95 (2.26%) SQL Developer
17 84 (2.00%) Data Architect
17 84 (2.00%) Python Developer
17 84 (2.00%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 348 (8.28%) .NET
2 332 (7.90%) REST
3 256 (6.09%) Kafka
3 256 (6.09%) PySpark
4 213 (5.07%) Spring
5 203 (4.83%) Spring Boot
6 194 (4.62%) React
7 182 (4.33%) RESTful
8 146 (3.47%) HTML
9 141 (3.35%) JSON
10 138 (3.28%) XML
11 130 (3.09%) CSS
12 118 (2.81%) Pandas
13 107 (2.55%) AngularJS
14 102 (2.43%) SOAP
15 92 (2.19%) Middleware
15 92 (2.19%) Web Services
16 82 (1.95%) .NET Framework
17 77 (1.83%) OAuth
18 69 (1.64%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 274 (6.52%) Cloud Native
2 154 (3.66%) Data Structures
3 150 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (3.02%) Product Ownership
5 123 (2.93%) Distributed Systems
6 83 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 80 (1.90%) Onboarding
8 79 (1.88%) Derivative
9 67 (1.59%) Data Protection Act
10 63 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
11 58 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
12 57 (1.36%) Clustering
13 55 (1.31%) Enterprise Software
14 51 (1.21%) Equities
14 51 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
15 49 (1.17%) Fixed Income
16 44 (1.05%) Algorithms
17 43 (1.02%) Low-Code
18 41 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 41 (0.98%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 291 (6.92%) Linux
2 253 (6.02%) Windows
3 207 (4.93%) Unix
4 89 (2.12%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.57%) AIX
6 18 (0.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.24%) Solaris
9 9 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.19%) zOS
11 7 (0.17%) Android
11 7 (0.17%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.095%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.095%) VMS
13 3 (0.071%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.048%) HPUX
14 2 (0.048%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,172 (27.88%) CI/CD
2 1,064 (25.32%) Analytics
3 1,037 (24.67%) Data Modelling
4 1,034 (24.60%) Agile
5 1,004 (23.89%) ETL
6 951 (22.63%) Business Intelligence
7 882 (20.99%) DevOps
8 830 (19.75%) Problem-Solving
9 802 (19.08%) Data Pipeline
10 695 (16.54%) Data Engineering
11 599 (14.25%) AI
12 557 (13.25%) Migration
13 536 (12.75%) Validation
14 447 (10.64%) Data Governance
15 437 (10.40%) Test Automation
16 424 (10.09%) Decision-Making
17 408 (9.71%) Data Analysis
18 383 (9.11%) Continuous Improvement
19 381 (9.06%) Stakeholder Management
20 374 (8.90%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,550 (36.88%) Python
2 544 (12.94%) Java
3 438 (10.42%) C#
4 312 (7.42%) PL/SQL
5 302 (7.19%) JavaScript
6 226 (5.38%) T-SQL
7 217 (5.16%) PowerShell
8 149 (3.55%) TypeScript
9 134 (3.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 112 (2.66%) Shell Script
11 101 (2.40%) R
12 81 (1.93%) Bash
13 73 (1.74%) Scala
14 59 (1.40%) C++
15 40 (0.95%) VBA
16 35 (0.83%) Bicep
17 33 (0.79%) VB
18 30 (0.71%) C
19 29 (0.69%) Perl
20 25 (0.59%) Go
Qualifications
1 887 (21.10%) Security Cleared
2 716 (17.04%) SC Cleared
3 322 (7.66%) Degree
4 102 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 84 (2.00%) DV Cleared
7 67 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 50 (1.19%) Master's Degree
9 49 (1.17%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (0.64%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.38%) DBS Check
12 16 (0.38%) PhD
13 13 (0.31%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.26%) CISSP
14 11 (0.26%) PMI Certification
15 9 (0.21%) CISM
15 9 (0.21%) PMP
15 9 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
16 7 (0.17%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 762 (18.13%) Data Quality
2 317 (7.54%) QA
3 173 (4.12%) GDPR
4 44 (1.05%) SLA
5 39 (0.93%) Accessibility
6 30 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 27 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.57%) PMO
9 23 (0.55%) NIST
10 17 (0.40%) IFRS
11 16 (0.38%) PCI DSS
12 15 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.36%) MiFID
13 14 (0.33%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
14 13 (0.31%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.29%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.24%) GRC
16 10 (0.24%) HL7
17 9 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 467 (11.11%) Docker
2 92 (2.19%) Active Directory
3 39 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
4 29 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
5 24 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.38%) Hyper-V
6 16 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 12 (0.29%) VMware NSX
8 11 (0.26%) vCloud
9 10 (0.24%) KVM
10 9 (0.21%) Postfix
11 8 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
12 6 (0.14%) HDFS
12 6 (0.14%) RACF
13 4 (0.095%) XenApp
13 4 (0.095%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.048%) GridGain
14 2 (0.048%) Oracle Clusterware
15 1 (0.024%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 377 (8.97%) Kubernetes
2 354 (8.42%) Terraform
3 106 (2.52%) Grafana
4 71 (1.69%) Ansible
5 60 (1.43%) Prometheus
6 35 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
7 26 (0.62%) Data Guard
8 21 (0.50%) Kibana
9 20 (0.48%) Single Sign-On
10 19 (0.45%) Control-M
11 18 (0.43%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.38%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.36%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.33%) Nagios
14 14 (0.33%) Netcool
15 13 (0.31%) OpenView
15 13 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 12 (0.29%) SCOM
17 8 (0.19%) HP Quality Center
17 8 (0.19%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 713 (16.96%) Oracle
2 646 (15.37%) Microsoft
3 495 (11.78%) Databricks
4 164 (3.90%) Google
5 152 (3.62%) Informatica
6 126 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 120 (2.86%) Talend
8 109 (2.59%) SAP
9 87 (2.07%) Splunk
10 67 (1.59%) IBM
11 62 (1.48%) Denodo
12 48 (1.14%) Salesforce
13 45 (1.07%) VMware
14 43 (1.02%) Citrix
15 37 (0.88%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.79%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.76%) OpenAI
18 31 (0.74%) Murex
19 28 (0.67%) BMC
20 27 (0.64%) HP