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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,501 3,092 3,836
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.48% 11.77% 10.09%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.84% 35.20% 34.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,413 2,063 2,779
10th Percentile £344 £356 £360
25th Percentile £413 £413 £432
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £545
% change year-on-year -2.44% -5.96% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 69 51 66
10th Percentile £22.52 £25.26 £21.64
25th Percentile £32.50 £35.00 £28.89
Median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -15.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.31 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.34 £77.19 £64.52
UK median hourly rate £53.75 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +2.38% +23.53% -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 10,050 8,783 11,145
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.08% 33.43% 29.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,693 5,630 8,047
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -4.35%
75th Percentile £620 £650 £656
90th Percentile £726 £774 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -4.44%
Number of hourly rates quoted 425 203 485
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £36.25
25th Percentile £52.50 £42.75 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £69.62
90th Percentile £76.25 £85.00 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 2,133 £510 -7.27% 782
North of England -6 364 £450 -6.25% 379
Midlands -4 355 £507 +6.74% 288
South East -17 290 £475 -5.00% 550
West Midlands 0 270 £500 - 172
North West +4 200 £420 -10.16% 221
South West -1 181 £475 -5.94% 164
Yorkshire -24 142 £475 -5.00% 119
East Midlands -8 85 £525 +33.76% 116
East of England -16 77 £550 +9.45% 122
North East -5 27 £475 -7.32% 43
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
1 178 (5.08%) Apache Spark
2 146 (4.17%) Apache Airflow
3 108 (3.08%) Apache
4 106 (3.03%) Confluence
5 87 (2.49%) SharePoint
6 58 (1.66%) SAS
7 42 (1.20%) WebLogic
8 26 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
9 24 (0.69%) IIS
10 19 (0.54%) Skype for Business
11 17 (0.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 16 (0.46%) CMS
13 14 (0.40%) nginx
14 13 (0.37%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.37%) Mattermost
14 13 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
14 13 (0.37%) Tomcat
15 12 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
16 11 (0.31%) HCL Notes
16 11 (0.31%) JBoss
Applications
1 228 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 75 (2.14%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 36 (1.03%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.37%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.26%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
8 7 (0.20%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 6 (0.17%) Trello
10 3 (0.086%) Notion
11 2 (0.057%) Maya
11 2 (0.057%) NUKE
11 2 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
12 1 (0.029%) SPSS
12 1 (0.029%) Weka
Business Applications
1 25 (0.71%) Oracle Payables
2 24 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
3 23 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
4 21 (0.60%) Oracle Receivables
5 19 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
6 17 (0.49%) Remedy ITSM
7 16 (0.46%) NEC Housing
7 16 (0.46%) Oracle Assets
8 14 (0.40%) Endur
8 14 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
8 14 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
9 13 (0.37%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.34%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.31%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.26%) Advent Geneva
12 9 (0.26%) Maximo
12 9 (0.26%) Oracle Financials
13 8 (0.23%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,165 (33.28%) Azure
2 844 (24.11%) AWS
3 649 (18.54%) Power Platform
4 332 (9.48%) Azure DevOps
5 293 (8.37%) GCP
6 266 (7.60%) GitHub
7 261 (7.46%) Azure Data Factory
8 244 (6.97%) Serverless
9 243 (6.94%) Snowflake
10 184 (5.26%) Amazon S3
11 179 (5.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 144 (4.11%) dbt
13 139 (3.97%) GitHub Actions
14 116 (3.31%) AWS Lambda
15 97 (2.77%) SaaS
16 84 (2.40%) Azure Functions
17 77 (2.20%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.94%) PowerApps
19 59 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
20 58 (1.66%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.51%) Firewall
2 37 (1.06%) DNS
3 29 (0.83%) HTTP
4 25 (0.71%) Skype
5 18 (0.51%) Network Security
6 16 (0.46%) Internet
6 16 (0.46%) TCP/IP
7 14 (0.40%) DHCP
8 12 (0.34%) SSL
8 12 (0.34%) Unified Communications
9 11 (0.31%) SSH
10 9 (0.26%) 2G
10 9 (0.26%) 5G
10 9 (0.26%) LAN
10 9 (0.26%) SMTP
10 9 (0.26%) VPN
10 9 (0.26%) WAN
11 8 (0.23%) SMS
12 7 (0.20%) FTP
12 7 (0.20%) OpenLDAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 590 (16.85%) Power BI
2 396 (11.31%) SQL Server
3 372 (10.63%) Data Warehouse
4 252 (7.20%) Relational Database
5 243 (6.94%) PostgreSQL
6 242 (6.91%) NoSQL
7 219 (6.26%) Tableau
8 215 (6.14%) Data Lake
9 176 (5.03%) Azure SQL Database
10 155 (4.43%) Oracle Database
11 147 (4.20%) Metadata
12 109 (3.11%) MySQL
12 109 (3.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 108 (3.08%) Big Data
14 107 (3.06%) BigQuery
15 98 (2.80%) MongoDB
16 81 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
16 81 (2.31%) Amazon Redshift
17 80 (2.29%) Delta Lake
18 66 (1.89%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 381 (10.88%) Git
2 296 (8.45%) JIRA
3 180 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 132 (3.77%) GitLab
5 59 (1.69%) Selenium
6 55 (1.57%) JUnit
7 44 (1.26%) Oracle APEX
8 38 (1.09%) Cucumber
8 38 (1.09%) Postman
9 30 (0.86%) Bitbucket
9 30 (0.86%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.69%) Maven
10 24 (0.69%) MLflow
11 23 (0.66%) Visual Studio
12 22 (0.63%) ERwin
12 22 (0.63%) Mockito
12 22 (0.63%) SpecFlow
13 21 (0.60%) Cypress.io
14 18 (0.51%) Gradle
14 18 (0.51%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,077 (30.76%) Social Skills
2 1,011 (28.88%) Finance
3 624 (17.82%) Analytical Skills
4 398 (11.37%) Banking
5 276 (7.88%) Public Sector
6 115 (3.28%) Investment Banking
7 99 (2.83%) Front Office
8 90 (2.57%) Documentation Skills
9 80 (2.29%) Marketing
10 61 (1.74%) Retail
11 57 (1.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 51 (1.46%) Financial Institution
13 42 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (1.00%) Legal
15 30 (0.86%) Organisational Skills
15 30 (0.86%) Telecoms
16 29 (0.83%) Law
17 28 (0.80%) Publishing
18 27 (0.77%) Back Office
19 26 (0.74%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 878 (25.08%) Developer
2 558 (15.94%) Data Engineer
3 546 (15.60%) Analyst
4 465 (13.28%) Senior
5 237 (6.77%) Lead
6 221 (6.31%) Data Analyst
7 192 (5.48%) Business Analyst
8 172 (4.91%) Architect
9 146 (4.17%) Senior Developer
10 121 (3.46%) Consultant
11 119 (3.40%) Java Developer
12 107 (3.06%) Azure Engineer
13 105 (3.00%) Software Engineer
14 91 (2.60%) Senior Data Engineer
15 85 (2.43%) Data Scientist
16 83 (2.37%) Python Developer
17 82 (2.34%) C# Developer
17 82 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
18 71 (2.03%) Azure Data Engineer
19 66 (1.89%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 329 (9.40%) .NET
2 284 (8.11%) REST
3 228 (6.51%) Kafka
4 198 (5.66%) PySpark
5 166 (4.74%) React
6 161 (4.60%) RESTful
7 140 (4.00%) Spring
8 136 (3.88%) HTML
9 132 (3.77%) XML
10 124 (3.54%) Spring Boot
11 118 (3.37%) CSS
12 104 (2.97%) JSON
13 98 (2.80%) Node.js
14 92 (2.63%) AngularJS
15 86 (2.46%) Pandas
16 82 (2.34%) .NET Framework
16 82 (2.34%) SOAP
17 71 (2.03%) Middleware
18 63 (1.80%) Web Services
19 62 (1.77%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 215 (6.14%) Cloud Native
2 108 (3.08%) Data Structures
3 104 (2.97%) Product Ownership
4 96 (2.74%) Legacy Systems
5 84 (2.40%) Management Information System
6 79 (2.26%) Data Protection Act
7 74 (2.11%) Analytical Mindset
8 65 (1.86%) Algorithms
8 65 (1.86%) Derivative
8 65 (1.86%) Distributed Systems
9 56 (1.60%) Equities
10 50 (1.43%) Fixed Income
11 49 (1.40%) Onboarding
12 48 (1.37%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 39 (1.11%) Market Risk
13 39 (1.11%) Replication
14 34 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
15 33 (0.94%) Credit Risk
15 33 (0.94%) Distributed Computing
15 33 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 308 (8.80%) Linux
2 222 (6.34%) Windows
3 190 (5.43%) Unix
4 62 (1.77%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
6 13 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 12 (0.34%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (0.34%) VMS
7 12 (0.34%) Windows Server 2016
8 10 (0.29%) Ubuntu
9 8 (0.23%) AIX
10 7 (0.20%) Amazon Linux
10 7 (0.20%) Android
11 6 (0.17%) Apple iOS
12 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.11%) CentOS
14 3 (0.086%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.086%) zOS
15 1 (0.029%) Mac OS X
15 1 (0.029%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 969 (27.68%) Agile
2 860 (24.56%) CI/CD
3 844 (24.11%) Analytics
4 806 (23.02%) Problem-Solving
5 768 (21.94%) DevOps
6 764 (21.82%) Business Intelligence
7 750 (21.42%) Data Modelling
8 698 (19.94%) ETL
9 516 (14.74%) Data Pipeline
10 460 (13.14%) Data Engineering
11 391 (11.17%) Migration
12 383 (10.94%) Data Governance
13 369 (10.54%) AI
14 367 (10.48%) Validation
15 343 (9.80%) Data Analysis
16 336 (9.60%) Visualisation
17 321 (9.17%) Data Science
18 308 (8.80%) Microservices
19 307 (8.77%) Test Automation
20 302 (8.63%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,294 (36.96%) Python
2 526 (15.02%) Java
3 377 (10.77%) C#
4 310 (8.85%) JavaScript
5 261 (7.46%) PL/SQL
6 155 (4.43%) PowerShell
7 137 (3.91%) TypeScript
8 105 (3.00%) T-SQL
9 99 (2.83%) R
9 99 (2.83%) Shell Script
10 96 (2.74%) Scala
11 82 (2.34%) C++
12 79 (2.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 72 (2.06%) VBA
14 67 (1.91%) VB
15 54 (1.54%) Bash
16 48 (1.37%) Perl
17 47 (1.34%) Go
18 39 (1.11%) Bicep
19 28 (0.80%) PHP
Qualifications
1 590 (16.85%) Security Cleared
2 455 (13.00%) SC Cleared
3 346 (9.88%) Degree
4 117 (3.34%) Computer Science Degree
5 77 (2.20%) Azure Certification
6 66 (1.89%) BPSS Clearance
7 61 (1.74%) DV Cleared
8 60 (1.71%) Master's Degree
9 56 (1.60%) AWS Certification
10 44 (1.26%) Microsoft Certification
11 40 (1.14%) ISTQB
12 22 (0.63%) ITIL Certification
12 22 (0.63%) Oracle Certification
13 20 (0.57%) CBAP
14 19 (0.54%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.34%) Cisco Certification
15 12 (0.34%) MCSE
15 12 (0.34%) PMI Certification
16 11 (0.31%) CCNA
17 10 (0.29%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 534 (15.25%) Data Quality
2 261 (7.46%) QA
3 136 (3.88%) GDPR
4 58 (1.66%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 23 (0.66%) SLA
7 18 (0.51%) MiFID
8 17 (0.49%) SEPA
9 16 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.43%) HIPAA
10 15 (0.43%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 14 (0.40%) PMO
11 14 (0.40%) PSD2
11 14 (0.40%) WCAG
12 12 (0.34%) EMIR
12 12 (0.34%) IFRS
13 11 (0.31%) PCI DSS
14 9 (0.26%) NIST
15 8 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 412 (11.77%) Docker
2 98 (2.80%) Active Directory
3 25 (0.71%) VMware Infrastructure
4 22 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
6 10 (0.29%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.20%) DFS Replication
7 7 (0.20%) Dovecot
7 7 (0.20%) HDFS
7 7 (0.20%) Postfix
7 7 (0.20%) Squid
8 6 (0.17%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.17%) zsh
9 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
9 5 (0.14%) RACF
9 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
10 4 (0.11%) XenApp
10 4 (0.11%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.086%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 368 (10.51%) Kubernetes
2 263 (7.51%) Terraform
3 75 (2.14%) Grafana
4 62 (1.77%) Prometheus
5 57 (1.63%) Ansible
6 23 (0.66%) SCOM
7 22 (0.63%) SCCM
8 21 (0.60%) HP SiteScope
9 20 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
10 19 (0.54%) Progress Chef
11 18 (0.51%) Kibana
12 17 (0.49%) Control-M
13 16 (0.46%) Data Guard
13 16 (0.46%) Oracle RMAN
14 14 (0.40%) Puppet
15 12 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 11 (0.31%) WSUS
17 10 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 10 (0.29%) ITRS Geneos
17 10 (0.29%) Proxmox
Vendors
1 594 (16.97%) Oracle
2 590 (16.85%) Microsoft
3 393 (11.23%) Databricks
4 146 (4.17%) Google
5 92 (2.63%) SAP
5 92 (2.63%) Splunk
6 71 (2.03%) ServiceNow
7 64 (1.83%) Salesforce
8 63 (1.80%) Informatica
9 61 (1.74%) Talend
10 45 (1.29%) IBM
11 44 (1.26%) Citrix
11 44 (1.26%) OpenAI
12 38 (1.09%) VMware
13 35 (1.00%) MuleSoft
14 29 (0.83%) Denodo
15 28 (0.80%) Bloomberg
16 27 (0.77%) Dynatrace
17 26 (0.74%) Foundry
18 21 (0.60%) Remedy