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

6 months to
14 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,509 3,240 3,571
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.63% 11.52% 11.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.83% 35.32% 34.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,038 2,238 2,482
10th Percentile £356 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
75th Percentile £600 £617 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 74 45
10th Percentile £21.10 £24.14 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.76 £32.85 £30.00
Median hourly rate £47.15 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.70% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £37.75
% change year-on-year -10.00% +32.45% -16.11%

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 12,243 9,174 10,385
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.14% 32.61% 32.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,916 6,144 6,872
10th Percentile £363 £350 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £543
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -5.53% -1.36%
75th Percentile £635 £626 £650
90th Percentile £738 £748 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £505 £525
% change year-on-year +3.96% -3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 533 264 289
10th Percentile £21.33 £31.25 £30.00
25th Percentile £48.64 £42.25 £47.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £78.75 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 14 October 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 14 October 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 14 October 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 -7 2,547 £525 - 2,653
North of England +1 615 £475 +5.56% 635
Midlands -3 450 £469 -3.89% 330
South East -12 448 £475 -1.04% 480
West Midlands 0 362 £469 -7.50% 221
North West +3 314 £500 +16.28% 361
Yorkshire +8 248 £475 - 174
South West +1 235 £539 +13.42% 193
East of England -11 115 £505 +0.70% 170
East Midlands -9 86 £450 +9.76% 109
North East -3 63 £406 -9.72% 105
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
1 232 (5.15%) Apache Airflow
2 209 (4.64%) Confluence
3 204 (4.52%) Apache Spark
4 161 (3.57%) Apache
5 88 (1.95%) SharePoint
6 78 (1.73%) SAS
7 35 (0.78%) WebLogic
8 28 (0.62%) IIS
9 27 (0.60%) Jupyter
9 27 (0.60%) Microsoft Exchange
10 26 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.44%) CMS
13 19 (0.42%) Camunda
14 15 (0.33%) nginx
14 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
15 12 (0.27%) ArcGIS
16 10 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 263 (5.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 37 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.55%) MS Visio
5 20 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 44 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 27 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
3 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 24 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 20 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.35%) Oracle General Ledger
7 15 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.24%) Oracle Financials
9 11 (0.24%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.22%) NEC Housing
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
10 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.18%) Finacle
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
11 8 (0.18%) Summit
12 7 (0.16%) Maximo
12 7 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
Cloud Services
1 1,373 (30.45%) Azure
2 1,099 (24.37%) AWS
3 857 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 464 (10.29%) GCP
5 365 (8.09%) Snowflake
6 363 (8.05%) Azure DevOps
7 319 (7.07%) GitHub
8 291 (6.45%) Azure Data Factory
8 291 (6.45%) dbt
9 265 (5.88%) Serverless
10 230 (5.10%) Amazon S3
11 179 (3.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 162 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
13 143 (3.17%) GitHub Actions
14 106 (2.35%) Entra ID
15 103 (2.28%) SaaS
16 97 (2.15%) Power Automate
17 93 (2.06%) Azure Databricks
17 93 (2.06%) PowerApps
18 75 (1.66%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 68 (1.51%) DNS
2 43 (0.95%) Firewall
3 29 (0.64%) Network Security
4 27 (0.60%) SSL
5 26 (0.58%) HTTP
6 22 (0.49%) Broadband
7 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
7 21 (0.47%) VPN
8 20 (0.44%) Internet
9 16 (0.35%) DHCP
10 12 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 11 (0.24%) SNMP
12 10 (0.22%) SAN
13 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
13 9 (0.20%) Multicast
14 7 (0.16%) 5G
15 6 (0.13%) 4G
15 6 (0.13%) MQTT
15 6 (0.13%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 783 (17.37%) Power BI
2 604 (13.40%) Data Warehouse
3 585 (12.97%) SQL Server
4 285 (6.32%) Relational Database
5 270 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
6 261 (5.79%) Data Lake
7 249 (5.52%) Tableau
8 235 (5.21%) Metadata
9 215 (4.77%) NoSQL
10 203 (4.50%) Oracle Database
11 201 (4.46%) BigQuery
12 158 (3.50%) Azure SQL Database
13 136 (3.02%) Delta Lake
14 127 (2.82%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 113 (2.51%) MySQL
17 99 (2.20%) Big Data
18 98 (2.17%) Amazon Athena
19 94 (2.08%) Power Query
20 91 (2.02%) Looker
Development Applications
1 607 (13.46%) Git
2 381 (8.45%) JIRA
3 250 (5.54%) Jenkins
4 231 (5.12%) GitLab
5 94 (2.08%) Selenium
6 79 (1.75%) JUnit
7 76 (1.69%) Maven
8 75 (1.66%) Gradle
9 62 (1.38%) Postman
10 47 (1.04%) Mockito
11 41 (0.91%) Bitbucket
12 40 (0.89%) SonarQube
13 31 (0.69%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.69%) Zephyr
14 28 (0.62%) REST Assured
15 26 (0.58%) Cucumber
15 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.55%) Team Foundation Server
17 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
18 22 (0.49%) Artifactory
General
1 1,271 (28.19%) Social Skills
2 1,216 (26.97%) Finance
3 955 (21.18%) Analytical Skills
4 559 (12.40%) Banking
5 407 (9.03%) Public Sector
6 147 (3.26%) Marketing
7 140 (3.10%) Retail
8 132 (2.93%) Front Office
9 129 (2.86%) Investment Banking
10 88 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 82 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 74 (1.64%) Documentation Skills
13 57 (1.26%) Financial Institution
14 49 (1.09%) Legal
15 46 (1.02%) Back Office
15 46 (1.02%) Influencing Skills
16 45 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
17 41 (0.91%) Local Government
18 40 (0.89%) Law
18 40 (0.89%) Military
Job Titles
1 953 (21.14%) Developer
2 855 (18.96%) Data Engineer
3 673 (14.93%) Analyst
4 661 (14.66%) Senior
5 312 (6.92%) Lead
6 286 (6.34%) Data Analyst
7 220 (4.88%) Architect
8 205 (4.55%) Senior Data Engineer
9 199 (4.41%) Business Analyst
10 172 (3.81%) Consultant
11 171 (3.79%) DBA
12 153 (3.39%) Java Developer
13 149 (3.30%) Senior Developer
14 113 (2.51%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.37%) Azure Engineer
16 101 (2.24%) Full-Stack Developer
16 101 (2.24%) Python Developer
17 98 (2.17%) SQL DBA
18 94 (2.08%) SQL Developer
19 93 (2.06%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 438 (9.71%) REST
2 401 (8.89%) Terraform
3 388 (8.61%) .NET
4 316 (7.01%) PySpark
5 308 (6.83%) Kafka
6 226 (5.01%) Spring
7 217 (4.81%) Spring Boot
8 214 (4.75%) React
9 177 (3.93%) HTML
10 169 (3.75%) JSON
11 163 (3.61%) RESTful
12 145 (3.22%) XML
13 144 (3.19%) CSS
14 109 (2.42%) AngularJS
15 108 (2.40%) SOAP
16 105 (2.33%) Web Services
17 94 (2.08%) Middleware
18 88 (1.95%) OAuth
19 84 (1.86%) Pandas
20 82 (1.82%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 299 (6.63%) Cloud Native
2 228 (5.06%) Data Structures
3 220 (4.88%) Product Ownership
4 147 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
5 140 (3.10%) Enterprise Software
6 123 (2.73%) Onboarding
7 122 (2.71%) Distributed Systems
8 103 (2.28%) Management Information System
9 95 (2.11%) AI Agents
10 80 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
11 74 (1.64%) Replication
12 72 (1.60%) Derivative
13 66 (1.46%) Reference Data
14 64 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
15 59 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
16 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
17 56 (1.24%) Clustering
18 49 (1.09%) Data Centre
19 47 (1.04%) Fixed Income
20 45 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 320 (7.10%) Linux
2 267 (5.92%) Windows
3 202 (4.48%) Unix
4 112 (2.48%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.22%) VMS
8 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.20%) AIX
10 7 (0.16%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2008
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
12 5 (0.11%) zOS
13 4 (0.089%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.044%) Amazon Linux
14 2 (0.044%) CentOS
14 2 (0.044%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,258 (27.90%) CI/CD
2 1,237 (27.43%) Agile
3 1,180 (26.17%) Data Modelling
4 1,142 (25.33%) Analytics
5 997 (22.11%) ETL
6 971 (21.53%) Business Intelligence
7 890 (19.74%) Problem-Solving
8 887 (19.67%) Data Pipeline
9 855 (18.96%) DevOps
10 829 (18.39%) Data Engineering
11 822 (18.23%) AI
12 748 (16.59%) Validation
13 698 (15.48%) Stakeholder Management
14 673 (14.93%) Migration
15 574 (12.73%) Test Automation
16 545 (12.09%) Continuous Improvement
17 525 (11.64%) Data Analysis
18 524 (11.62%) Data Governance
19 505 (11.20%) Decision-Making
20 415 (9.20%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,634 (36.24%) Python
2 560 (12.42%) Java
3 413 (9.16%) C#
4 387 (8.58%) JavaScript
5 317 (7.03%) PL/SQL
6 234 (5.19%) PowerShell
7 206 (4.57%) T-SQL
8 198 (4.39%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.10%) Shell Script
10 138 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 114 (2.53%) Bash
12 69 (1.53%) Scala
13 65 (1.44%) R
14 37 (0.82%) Bicep
15 35 (0.78%) C++
16 34 (0.75%) Kotlin
17 32 (0.71%) VBA
18 29 (0.64%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
20 24 (0.53%) VB
Qualifications
1 972 (21.56%) Security Cleared
2 756 (16.77%) SC Cleared
3 338 (7.50%) Degree
4 141 (3.13%) DV Cleared
5 126 (2.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 114 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
7 76 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 64 (1.42%) ISTQB
9 51 (1.13%) AWS Certification
10 50 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
11 41 (0.91%) Master's Degree
12 25 (0.55%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 20 (0.44%) CISSP
13 20 (0.44%) ISEB
14 16 (0.35%) ACCA
14 16 (0.35%) CIMA
15 15 (0.33%) DBS Check
16 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 13 (0.29%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 935 (20.74%) Data Quality
2 361 (8.01%) QA
3 122 (2.71%) GDPR
4 48 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 45 (1.00%) SLA
6 31 (0.69%) Actionable Recommendations
7 25 (0.55%) IFRS
7 25 (0.55%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 20 (0.44%) ISO 20022
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) COBIT
12 14 (0.31%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 12 (0.27%) Basel III
14 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) SEPA
16 8 (0.18%) GRC
16 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
16 8 (0.18%) SOC 2
16 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 422 (9.36%) Docker
2 119 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 33 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.35%) vCloud
7 16 (0.35%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 12 (0.27%) Hyper-V
10 5 (0.11%) Postfix
11 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 3 (0.067%) KVM
13 2 (0.044%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.044%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.044%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
14 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 387 (8.58%) Kubernetes
2 96 (2.13%) Ansible
3 87 (1.93%) Grafana
4 53 (1.18%) Prometheus
5 41 (0.91%) Control-M
6 39 (0.86%) SCOM
7 37 (0.82%) Kibana
8 32 (0.71%) Data Guard
9 27 (0.60%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.31%) Single Sign-On
12 13 (0.29%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
14 11 (0.24%) Progress Chef
15 10 (0.22%) Argo
16 9 (0.20%) Istio
17 8 (0.18%) Podman
17 8 (0.18%) Puppet
17 8 (0.18%) WMI
Vendors
1 792 (17.56%) Microsoft
2 752 (16.68%) Oracle
3 603 (13.37%) Databricks
4 225 (4.99%) Google
5 130 (2.88%) Informatica
6 121 (2.68%) SAP
7 108 (2.40%) Talend
8 103 (2.28%) IBM
9 87 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 73 (1.62%) Splunk
11 65 (1.44%) VMware
12 64 (1.42%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.04%) Denodo
14 43 (0.95%) Foundry
14 43 (0.95%) OpenAI
15 40 (0.89%) UiPath
16 39 (0.86%) Bloomberg
17 35 (0.78%) Murex
18 34 (0.75%) Alteryx
19 32 (0.71%) Dynatrace