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 21 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,989 3,011 3,603
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.08% 12.28% 9.73%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.49% 36.30% 33.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,745 2,136 2,644
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.82% -6.45% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £766 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £536
% change year-on-year - -6.72% -0.28%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 56 60
10th Percentile £26.51 £20.87 £22.52
25th Percentile £35.50 £29.77 £25.99
Median hourly rate £51.25 £49.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.53% +16.47% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.95 £65.71 £53.75
90th Percentile £83.00 £79.72 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £54.75 £45.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +21.67% +5.88% -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 10,932 8,294 10,749
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.64% 33.84% 29.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,268 5,734 7,813
10th Percentile £354 £363 £350
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -4.52%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £653
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 524 212 428
10th Percentile £42.11 £25.25 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £38.97 £47.31
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.18
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +0.92% -0.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.13 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 21 April 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 21 April 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 21 April 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 2,283 £512 -4.78% 820
Midlands +6 513 £465 +1.09% 279
North of England -9 467 £450 -5.26% 388
West Midlands +7 408 £459 -3.37% 146
South East -19 309 £500 - 477
North West +2 262 £450 -5.26% 225
South West -8 217 £475 -5.00% 156
Yorkshire -19 185 £465 -4.62% 108
East Midlands +1 103 £525 +34.27% 131
East of England -16 90 £505 +12.22% 127
North East -8 31 £475 +4.40% 62
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
1 229 (5.74%) Apache Spark
2 160 (4.01%) Apache Airflow
3 144 (3.61%) Apache
4 121 (3.03%) Confluence
5 83 (2.08%) SAS
6 81 (2.03%) SharePoint
7 47 (1.18%) WebLogic
8 32 (0.80%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 20 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
12 14 (0.35%) nginx
13 13 (0.33%) Appian
13 13 (0.33%) CMS
13 13 (0.33%) HCL Notes
13 13 (0.33%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
14 12 (0.30%) Mendix
14 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 276 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.075%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.70%) Aladdin
3 23 (0.58%) NEC Housing
4 21 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
6 17 (0.43%) Oracle General Ledger
6 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
7 16 (0.40%) NetSuite
8 15 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 11 (0.28%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
10 10 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
11 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
11 9 (0.23%) Maximo
11 9 (0.23%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,370 (34.34%) Azure
2 971 (24.34%) AWS
3 784 (19.65%) Power Platform
4 416 (10.43%) Azure DevOps
5 347 (8.70%) Azure Data Factory
6 318 (7.97%) GCP
7 303 (7.60%) GitHub
8 272 (6.82%) Serverless
9 236 (5.92%) Amazon S3
10 232 (5.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 230 (5.77%) Snowflake
12 176 (4.41%) dbt
13 160 (4.01%) AWS Lambda
14 158 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
15 90 (2.26%) Power Automate
16 80 (2.01%) SaaS
17 78 (1.96%) AWS CloudFormation
18 75 (1.88%) Azure Functions
19 74 (1.86%) Entra ID
20 72 (1.80%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.18%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) HTTP
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 18 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.38%) Internet
5 15 (0.38%) WAN
6 12 (0.30%) LAN
7 11 (0.28%) SNMP
8 10 (0.25%) SSL
8 10 (0.25%) VPN
9 9 (0.23%) DHCP
10 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 6 (0.15%) IPsec
11 6 (0.15%) VLAN
11 6 (0.15%) Wireshark
12 5 (0.13%) 3GPP
12 5 (0.13%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.13%) PuTTY
12 5 (0.13%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 715 (17.92%) Power BI
2 511 (12.81%) Data Warehouse
3 494 (12.38%) SQL Server
4 279 (6.99%) Tableau
5 262 (6.57%) NoSQL
5 262 (6.57%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (6.47%) Data Lake
7 248 (6.22%) Relational Database
8 212 (5.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 209 (5.24%) Metadata
10 144 (3.61%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 139 (3.48%) Oracle Database
12 121 (3.03%) BigQuery
12 121 (3.03%) MySQL
13 120 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
14 116 (2.91%) Delta Lake
15 106 (2.66%) Big Data
16 100 (2.51%) MongoDB
16 100 (2.51%) Oracle Reports
17 99 (2.48%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 431 (10.80%) Git
2 320 (8.02%) JIRA
3 211 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 162 (4.06%) GitLab
5 62 (1.55%) Selenium
6 61 (1.53%) JUnit
7 51 (1.28%) Postman
8 41 (1.03%) Maven
9 38 (0.95%) Oracle APEX
10 37 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
11 35 (0.88%) Mockito
12 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
13 27 (0.68%) Bitbucket
13 27 (0.68%) SonarQube
14 25 (0.63%) ERwin
14 25 (0.63%) JMeter
15 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
15 22 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
15 22 (0.55%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,102 (27.63%) Social Skills
2 1,086 (27.22%) Finance
3 748 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
4 380 (9.53%) Banking
5 344 (8.62%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.53%) Front Office
7 99 (2.48%) Investment Banking
8 93 (2.33%) Marketing
9 91 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
10 63 (1.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 57 (1.43%) Retail
12 55 (1.38%) Legal
13 53 (1.33%) Financial Institution
14 39 (0.98%) Telecoms
15 35 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
15 35 (0.88%) Publishing
16 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.80%) Law
18 31 (0.78%) Local Government
19 30 (0.75%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 871 (21.84%) Developer
2 802 (20.11%) Data Engineer
3 591 (14.82%) Analyst
4 502 (12.58%) Senior
5 274 (6.87%) Lead
6 248 (6.22%) Data Analyst
7 221 (5.54%) Architect
8 196 (4.91%) Business Analyst
9 179 (4.49%) Consultant
10 150 (3.76%) Java Developer
11 135 (3.38%) Senior Developer
12 128 (3.21%) Senior Data Engineer
13 121 (3.03%) Azure Engineer
14 116 (2.91%) DBA
15 114 (2.86%) Software Engineer
16 102 (2.56%) C# Developer
17 87 (2.18%) Python Developer
18 86 (2.16%) Data Architect
18 86 (2.16%) Full-Stack Developer
19 84 (2.11%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 344 (8.62%) .NET
2 311 (7.80%) REST
3 250 (6.27%) PySpark
4 247 (6.19%) Kafka
5 195 (4.89%) React
6 184 (4.61%) Spring
7 183 (4.59%) RESTful
8 172 (4.31%) Spring Boot
9 147 (3.69%) XML
10 143 (3.58%) HTML
11 130 (3.26%) JSON
12 125 (3.13%) CSS
13 119 (2.98%) Pandas
14 115 (2.88%) AngularJS
15 87 (2.18%) Middleware
15 87 (2.18%) Node.js
16 86 (2.16%) SOAP
17 80 (2.01%) .NET Framework
18 75 (1.88%) Web Services
19 72 (1.80%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 253 (6.34%) Cloud Native
2 136 (3.41%) Data Structures
3 132 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
4 126 (3.16%) Product Ownership
5 94 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
6 87 (2.18%) Management Information System
7 71 (1.78%) Derivative
8 68 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
9 63 (1.58%) Onboarding
10 62 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 56 (1.40%) Equities
11 56 (1.40%) Fixed Income
12 48 (1.20%) Clustering
13 47 (1.18%) Algorithms
13 47 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
14 46 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
15 42 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 37 (0.93%) NHS
17 36 (0.90%) Replication
18 35 (0.88%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 276 (6.92%) Linux
2 239 (5.99%) Windows
3 196 (4.91%) Unix
4 75 (1.88%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 7 (0.18%) zOS
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.10%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.050%) CentOS
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) VME
14 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,080 (27.07%) CI/CD
2 1,045 (26.20%) Agile
3 1,027 (25.75%) Analytics
4 984 (24.67%) Data Modelling
5 942 (23.61%) ETL
6 937 (23.49%) Business Intelligence
7 918 (23.01%) DevOps
8 828 (20.76%) Problem-Solving
9 709 (17.77%) Data Pipeline
10 635 (15.92%) Data Engineering
11 492 (12.33%) AI
12 489 (12.26%) Migration
13 487 (12.21%) Data Governance
14 485 (12.16%) Validation
15 381 (9.55%) Test Automation
16 379 (9.50%) Decision-Making
17 376 (9.43%) Data Analysis
18 357 (8.95%) Performance Tuning
19 347 (8.70%) Microservices
20 336 (8.42%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,506 (37.75%) Python
2 541 (13.56%) Java
3 427 (10.70%) C#
4 323 (8.10%) JavaScript
5 309 (7.75%) PL/SQL
6 187 (4.69%) T-SQL
7 170 (4.26%) PowerShell
8 139 (3.48%) TypeScript
9 119 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 115 (2.88%) Shell Script
11 113 (2.83%) R
12 99 (2.48%) Scala
13 72 (1.80%) Bash
14 60 (1.50%) C++
15 59 (1.48%) VBA
16 44 (1.10%) Bicep
17 42 (1.05%) Perl
18 28 (0.70%) Go
19 25 (0.63%) VB
20 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 846 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 691 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 319 (8.00%) Degree
4 112 (2.81%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (2.13%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (1.73%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.30%) ISTQB
7 52 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 47 (1.18%) DV Cleared
9 40 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
10 32 (0.80%) AWS Certification
11 16 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 16 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
11 16 (0.40%) PhD
12 13 (0.33%) CBAP
13 10 (0.25%) CISSP
13 10 (0.25%) PMP
14 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
14 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
15 8 (0.20%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 719 (18.02%) Data Quality
2 305 (7.65%) QA
3 181 (4.54%) GDPR
4 48 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 34 (0.85%) SLA
6 31 (0.78%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 29 (0.73%) PMO
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.43%) NIST
9 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 15 (0.38%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 15 (0.38%) HIPAA
11 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
11 14 (0.35%) MiFID
12 13 (0.33%) IFRS
13 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 11 (0.28%) HL7
15 10 (0.25%) SEPA
15 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
15 10 (0.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 456 (11.43%) Docker
2 95 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 34 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 21 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 15 (0.38%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.23%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.13%) XenApp
10 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 395 (9.90%) Kubernetes
2 333 (8.35%) Terraform
3 100 (2.51%) Grafana
4 62 (1.55%) Ansible
4 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
5 33 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
6 22 (0.55%) Data Guard
7 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
8 16 (0.40%) SCCM
9 15 (0.38%) Kibana
9 15 (0.38%) Progress Chef
10 14 (0.35%) Control-M
11 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
12 10 (0.25%) Nagios
12 10 (0.25%) Netcool
12 10 (0.25%) OpenView
12 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
12 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 9 (0.23%) Kiali
13 9 (0.23%) Puppet
Vendors
1 660 (16.55%) Oracle
2 648 (16.24%) Microsoft
3 489 (12.26%) Databricks
4 158 (3.96%) Google
5 125 (3.13%) ServiceNow
6 124 (3.11%) Informatica
7 106 (2.66%) SAP
8 100 (2.51%) Talend
9 82 (2.06%) Splunk
10 62 (1.55%) IBM
11 61 (1.53%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 47 (1.18%) Denodo
14 44 (1.10%) OpenAI
15 33 (0.83%) MuleSoft
16 32 (0.80%) Bloomberg
17 31 (0.78%) Dynatrace
17 31 (0.78%) VMware
18 29 (0.73%) HP
19 27 (0.68%) Atlassian