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

6 months to
13 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,427 3,288 3,729
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.87% 12.05% 10.17%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.01% 36.26% 32.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,972 2,346 2,778
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 64 49
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.14 £24.00
25th Percentile £33.75 £31.00 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% +1.55% -14.63%
75th Percentile £69.44 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.55 £67.05 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £42.00
% change year-on-year +5.10% +1.94% -16.00%

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 11,962 9,069 11,381
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.68% 33.23% 31.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,791 6,248 8,148
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
75th Percentile £618 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +0.49% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 502 233 461
10th Percentile £34.22 £28.54 £35.64
25th Percentile £55.00 £37.50 £50.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -

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 July 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 July 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 July 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 -6 2,375 £525 -0.28% 1,079
North of England -4 576 £463 -2.63% 384
Midlands +3 569 £459 +8.00% 223
West Midlands +5 468 £459 +2.00% 112
South East -11 455 £475 -5.00% 427
North West -1 308 £475 +1.28% 216
South West -6 236 £500 +14.29% 258
Yorkshire -9 229 £475 - 110
East of England -13 106 £491 +0.77% 107
East Midlands +1 97 £525 +38.16% 111
North East -10 52 £425 -8.11% 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
1 211 (4.77%) Apache Spark
2 182 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 178 (4.02%) Confluence
4 143 (3.23%) Apache
5 96 (2.17%) SAS
6 53 (1.20%) SharePoint
7 37 (0.84%) Oracle Workflow
8 36 (0.81%) WebLogic
9 35 (0.79%) IIS
10 24 (0.54%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.45%) CMS
13 19 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
14 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
15 17 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
16 16 (0.36%) nginx
17 14 (0.32%) Appian
18 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
19 11 (0.25%) Camunda
20 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 285 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 41 (0.93%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
5 31 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) Notion
9 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.045%) Microsoft Project
11 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.023%) InDesign
11 1 (0.023%) Mingle
11 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (0.93%) Dynamics CRM
1 41 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.63%) Aladdin
3 24 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
3 24 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
4 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
5 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 18 (0.41%) NEC Housing
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) Elite 3E
12 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
12 9 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Summit
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 1,416 (31.99%) Azure
2 1,063 (24.01%) AWS
3 835 (18.86%) Power Platform
4 410 (9.26%) Azure DevOps
5 369 (8.34%) GCP
6 320 (7.23%) Azure Data Factory
7 317 (7.16%) GitHub
8 276 (6.23%) Serverless
9 273 (6.17%) Snowflake
10 245 (5.53%) Amazon S3
11 233 (5.26%) dbt
12 210 (4.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
14 163 (3.68%) GitHub Actions
15 84 (1.90%) Entra ID
16 79 (1.78%) SaaS
17 78 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 76 (1.72%) Power Automate
19 71 (1.60%) Amazon EC2
20 68 (1.54%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 44 (0.99%) DNS
2 38 (0.86%) Firewall
3 21 (0.47%) SNMP
4 20 (0.45%) Network Security
4 20 (0.45%) SSL
5 19 (0.43%) HTTP
5 19 (0.43%) Internet
6 18 (0.41%) VPN
7 13 (0.29%) WAN
8 10 (0.23%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.20%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.16%) SAN
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) DHCP
12 6 (0.14%) Reverse Proxy
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 770 (17.39%) Power BI
2 590 (13.33%) Data Warehouse
3 578 (13.06%) SQL Server
4 299 (6.75%) Tableau
5 293 (6.62%) Relational Database
6 280 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
7 274 (6.19%) Data Lake
8 215 (4.86%) NoSQL
9 206 (4.65%) Metadata
10 178 (4.02%) Azure SQL Database
11 174 (3.93%) Oracle Database
12 152 (3.43%) BigQuery
13 149 (3.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 137 (3.09%) Amazon Redshift
15 129 (2.91%) Delta Lake
16 107 (2.42%) Big Data
17 103 (2.33%) MySQL
17 103 (2.33%) Oracle Reports
18 101 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
19 91 (2.06%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 474 (10.71%) Git
2 347 (7.84%) JIRA
3 234 (5.29%) Jenkins
4 187 (4.22%) GitLab
5 68 (1.54%) JUnit
6 57 (1.29%) Maven
7 53 (1.20%) Postman
8 50 (1.13%) Gradle
9 48 (1.08%) Mockito
10 47 (1.06%) Selenium
11 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
12 33 (0.75%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.75%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.70%) Bitbucket
14 29 (0.66%) Cucumber
15 28 (0.63%) MLflow
16 27 (0.61%) JMeter
17 26 (0.59%) ERwin
17 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,166 (26.34%) Finance
2 1,141 (25.77%) Social Skills
3 866 (19.56%) Analytical Skills
4 416 (9.40%) Banking
5 390 (8.81%) Public Sector
6 129 (2.91%) Marketing
7 123 (2.78%) Front Office
8 103 (2.33%) Retail
9 99 (2.24%) Investment Banking
10 92 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
11 78 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 55 (1.24%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (1.17%) Legal
15 51 (1.15%) Financial Institution
16 39 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
17 38 (0.86%) Publishing
18 35 (0.79%) Telecoms
19 29 (0.66%) Law
Job Titles
1 948 (21.41%) Developer
2 892 (20.15%) Data Engineer
3 639 (14.43%) Analyst
4 578 (13.06%) Senior
5 308 (6.96%) Lead
6 274 (6.19%) Data Analyst
7 240 (5.42%) Architect
8 206 (4.65%) Consultant
9 186 (4.20%) Business Analyst
10 179 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 174 (3.93%) Senior Data Engineer
12 158 (3.57%) DBA
13 138 (3.12%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.85%) Software Engineer
15 109 (2.46%) Azure Engineer
16 107 (2.42%) SQL Developer
17 105 (2.37%) SQL DBA
18 103 (2.33%) C# Developer
19 88 (1.99%) Python Developer
20 87 (1.97%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (8.20%) .NET
2 347 (7.84%) REST
3 267 (6.03%) PySpark
4 261 (5.90%) Kafka
5 226 (5.11%) Spring
6 209 (4.72%) Spring Boot
7 203 (4.59%) React
8 184 (4.16%) RESTful
9 159 (3.59%) JSON
10 157 (3.55%) XML
11 143 (3.23%) HTML
12 125 (2.82%) CSS
13 121 (2.73%) AngularJS
14 116 (2.62%) Pandas
15 103 (2.33%) SOAP
16 101 (2.28%) Web Services
17 95 (2.15%) Middleware
18 90 (2.03%) .NET Framework
19 70 (1.58%) Node.js
20 67 (1.51%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 291 (6.57%) Cloud Native
2 180 (4.07%) Data Structures
3 157 (3.55%) Legacy Systems
4 146 (3.30%) Product Ownership
5 127 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (1.90%) Derivative
7 83 (1.87%) Onboarding
8 76 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
9 74 (1.67%) Management Information System
10 72 (1.63%) Analytical Mindset
11 68 (1.54%) Self-Motivation
12 65 (1.47%) Data Protection Act
13 61 (1.38%) Clustering
14 56 (1.26%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.17%) Equities
15 52 (1.17%) Fixed Income
16 51 (1.15%) Replication
17 50 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
18 39 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 39 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 289 (6.53%) Linux
2 269 (6.08%) Windows
3 212 (4.79%) Unix
4 102 (2.30%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
6 21 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.090%) Ubuntu
13 4 (0.090%) VMS
14 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,187 (26.81%) CI/CD
2 1,142 (25.80%) Analytics
3 1,128 (25.48%) Agile
4 1,079 (24.37%) Data Modelling
5 1,022 (23.09%) ETL
6 987 (22.30%) Business Intelligence
7 903 (20.40%) DevOps
8 874 (19.74%) Problem-Solving
9 848 (19.16%) Data Pipeline
10 738 (16.67%) Data Engineering
11 640 (14.46%) AI
12 586 (13.24%) Migration
13 572 (12.92%) Validation
14 463 (10.46%) Data Governance
15 457 (10.32%) Decision-Making
16 454 (10.26%) Test Automation
17 442 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
18 435 (9.83%) Data Analysis
19 421 (9.51%) Stakeholder Management
20 390 (8.81%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,596 (36.05%) Python
2 556 (12.56%) Java
3 440 (9.94%) C#
4 339 (7.66%) PL/SQL
5 304 (6.87%) JavaScript
6 240 (5.42%) T-SQL
7 228 (5.15%) PowerShell
8 165 (3.73%) TypeScript
9 134 (3.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 117 (2.64%) Shell Script
11 98 (2.21%) R
12 84 (1.90%) Bash
13 76 (1.72%) Scala
14 52 (1.17%) C++
15 43 (0.97%) VBA
16 37 (0.84%) Bicep
17 35 (0.79%) C
18 31 (0.70%) VB
19 24 (0.54%) Go
20 20 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 939 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 756 (17.08%) SC Cleared
3 336 (7.59%) Degree
4 107 (2.42%) BPSS Clearance
4 107 (2.42%) Computer Science Degree
5 97 (2.19%) DV Cleared
6 67 (1.51%) Azure Certification
7 48 (1.08%) Master's Degree
8 46 (1.04%) ISTQB
9 40 (0.90%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (0.68%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 17 (0.38%) PhD
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 9 (0.20%) ACCA
14 9 (0.20%) CIMA
14 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 9 (0.20%) Oracle Certification
14 9 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 782 (17.66%) Data Quality
2 336 (7.59%) QA
3 171 (3.86%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.47%) PMO
8 20 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 18 (0.41%) NIST
10 16 (0.36%) IFRS
10 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 15 (0.34%) MiFID
12 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 12 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 10 (0.23%) HL7
16 9 (0.20%) GRC
16 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 445 (10.05%) Docker
2 104 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 44 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 29 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 15 (0.34%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.29%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
16 1 (0.023%) XenApp
16 1 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 376 (8.49%) Kubernetes
2 355 (8.02%) Terraform
3 96 (2.17%) Grafana
4 81 (1.83%) Ansible
5 50 (1.13%) Prometheus
6 35 (0.79%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.70%) Data Guard
8 22 (0.50%) Control-M
8 22 (0.50%) Kibana
9 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
10 19 (0.43%) SCOM
11 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
11 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
13 14 (0.32%) Nagios
13 14 (0.32%) Netcool
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 9 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
16 8 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 772 (17.44%) Oracle
2 688 (15.54%) Microsoft
3 504 (11.38%) Databricks
4 172 (3.89%) Google
5 156 (3.52%) Informatica
6 126 (2.85%) Talend
7 124 (2.80%) ServiceNow
8 107 (2.42%) SAP
9 82 (1.85%) Splunk
10 74 (1.67%) IBM
11 62 (1.40%) Denodo
12 51 (1.15%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.06%) VMware
14 43 (0.97%) Citrix
15 41 (0.93%) Bloomberg
16 38 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.79%) Murex
18 31 (0.70%) Alteryx
19 29 (0.66%) BMC
20 28 (0.63%) Adobe