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

6 months to
4 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,453 3,279 3,626
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.61% 11.68% 11.19%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.10% 35.55% 34.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,998 2,269 2,546
10th Percentile £350 £329 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
75th Percentile £600 £613 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 74 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £25.90 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.52 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -11.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £76.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -19.67%

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 12,004 9,223 10,587
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.91% 32.85% 32.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,766 6,190 7,076
10th Percentile £363 £350 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £634 £631 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £506 £525
% change year-on-year +3.86% -3.71% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 510 269 300
10th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £30.45
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £48.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £78.75 £80.00
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 4 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 4 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 4 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 2,517 £525 - 4,317
North of England 0 600 £475 +5.56% 1,088
Midlands -5 446 £469 -1.26% 637
South East -15 440 £475 -3.06% 1,027
West Midlands -4 349 £469 -6.20% 383
North West +5 297 £500 +12.99% 610
Yorkshire +11 248 £474 -0.21% 316
South West +2 230 £528 +17.22% 411
East of England -6 114 £500 -0.30% 358
East Midlands -4 95 £463 +12.80% 253
North East -2 65 £406 -9.72% 174
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
1 235 (5.28%) Apache Airflow
2 200 (4.49%) Confluence
3 196 (4.40%) Apache Spark
4 153 (3.44%) Apache
5 85 (1.91%) SharePoint
6 64 (1.44%) SAS
7 34 (0.76%) WebLogic
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
9 28 (0.63%) Jupyter
10 27 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
11 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.52%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.45%) CMS
14 18 (0.40%) Camunda
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
17 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
18 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 257 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 34 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 19 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) 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%) Notepad++
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
2 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 26 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
3 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
9 10 (0.22%) Finacle
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
9 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
10 9 (0.20%) Summit
11 8 (0.18%) Oracle Payroll
12 7 (0.16%) Maximo
12 7 (0.16%) OpenText MBPM
Cloud Services
1 1,364 (30.63%) Azure
2 1,082 (24.30%) AWS
3 856 (19.22%) Power Platform
4 454 (10.20%) GCP
5 364 (8.17%) Azure DevOps
6 362 (8.13%) Snowflake
7 309 (6.94%) GitHub
8 293 (6.58%) dbt
9 290 (6.51%) Azure Data Factory
10 258 (5.79%) Serverless
11 234 (5.25%) Amazon S3
12 180 (4.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 162 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
14 143 (3.21%) GitHub Actions
15 102 (2.29%) SaaS
16 99 (2.22%) Entra ID
17 97 (2.18%) Power Automate
18 92 (2.07%) PowerApps
19 88 (1.98%) Azure Databricks
20 75 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 65 (1.46%) DNS
2 42 (0.94%) Firewall
3 29 (0.65%) Network Security
4 27 (0.61%) HTTP
4 27 (0.61%) SSL
5 22 (0.49%) Internet
6 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
6 21 (0.47%) VPN
7 20 (0.45%) Broadband
8 16 (0.36%) DHCP
9 12 (0.27%) Reverse Proxy
9 12 (0.27%) SSH
10 11 (0.25%) SNMP
11 10 (0.22%) SAN
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
13 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
14 7 (0.16%) 5G
15 6 (0.13%) 4G
Database & Business Intelligence
1 784 (17.61%) Power BI
2 596 (13.38%) Data Warehouse
3 579 (13.00%) SQL Server
4 288 (6.47%) Relational Database
5 274 (6.15%) PostgreSQL
6 258 (5.79%) Data Lake
7 252 (5.66%) Tableau
8 230 (5.17%) Metadata
9 212 (4.76%) NoSQL
10 202 (4.54%) BigQuery
11 198 (4.45%) Oracle Database
12 153 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
13 133 (2.99%) Amazon Redshift
14 130 (2.92%) Delta Lake
15 122 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 113 (2.54%) MySQL
17 103 (2.31%) Amazon Athena
18 99 (2.22%) Big Data
19 90 (2.02%) Power Query
20 88 (1.98%) Looker
Development Applications
1 587 (13.18%) Git
2 366 (8.22%) JIRA
3 239 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 230 (5.17%) GitLab
5 94 (2.11%) Selenium
6 78 (1.75%) JUnit
7 77 (1.73%) Maven
8 76 (1.71%) Gradle
9 60 (1.35%) Postman
10 47 (1.06%) Mockito
11 40 (0.90%) Bitbucket
12 39 (0.88%) SonarQube
13 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.67%) Zephyr
14 27 (0.61%) REST Assured
15 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
16 25 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 24 (0.54%) JMeter
18 23 (0.52%) Artifactory
19 22 (0.49%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,249 (28.05%) Social Skills
2 1,194 (26.81%) Finance
3 937 (21.04%) Analytical Skills
4 540 (12.13%) Banking
5 401 (9.01%) Public Sector
6 145 (3.26%) Marketing
7 137 (3.08%) Retail
8 128 (2.87%) Front Office
9 120 (2.69%) Investment Banking
10 88 (1.98%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 81 (1.82%) Manufacturing
12 77 (1.73%) Documentation Skills
13 52 (1.17%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.15%) Legal
15 47 (1.06%) Presentation Skills
16 46 (1.03%) Back Office
17 44 (0.99%) Influencing Skills
18 43 (0.97%) Local Government
19 39 (0.88%) Military
20 36 (0.81%) Law
Job Titles
1 946 (21.24%) Developer
2 843 (18.93%) Data Engineer
3 655 (14.71%) Analyst
4 651 (14.62%) Senior
5 311 (6.98%) Lead
6 266 (5.97%) Data Analyst
7 215 (4.83%) Architect
8 206 (4.63%) Senior Data Engineer
9 196 (4.40%) Business Analyst
10 173 (3.89%) Consultant
11 169 (3.80%) DBA
12 155 (3.48%) Java Developer
13 146 (3.28%) Senior Developer
14 112 (2.52%) Software Engineer
15 107 (2.40%) Azure Engineer
16 104 (2.34%) Full-Stack Developer
17 101 (2.27%) Python Developer
17 101 (2.27%) SQL DBA
18 95 (2.13%) Data Architect
18 95 (2.13%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 420 (9.43%) REST
2 390 (8.76%) Terraform
3 382 (8.58%) .NET
4 303 (6.80%) PySpark
5 299 (6.71%) Kafka
6 223 (5.01%) Spring
7 213 (4.78%) Spring Boot
8 210 (4.72%) React
9 176 (3.95%) HTML
10 164 (3.68%) JSON
11 163 (3.66%) RESTful
12 148 (3.32%) CSS
13 143 (3.21%) XML
14 108 (2.43%) AngularJS
15 105 (2.36%) SOAP
16 102 (2.29%) Web Services
17 91 (2.04%) Middleware
18 87 (1.95%) Pandas
19 85 (1.91%) OAuth
20 84 (1.89%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 285 (6.40%) Cloud Native
2 219 (4.92%) Data Structures
3 211 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 139 (3.12%) Legacy Systems
5 130 (2.92%) Enterprise Software
6 124 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 123 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
8 97 (2.18%) Management Information System
9 88 (1.98%) AI Agents
10 80 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
11 73 (1.64%) Derivative
12 70 (1.57%) Replication
13 62 (1.39%) Analytical Mindset
14 61 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
15 59 (1.32%) Reference Data
16 57 (1.28%) Algorithms
17 55 (1.24%) Clustering
18 49 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
19 48 (1.08%) Data Centre
20 44 (0.99%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 322 (7.23%) Linux
2 273 (6.13%) Windows
3 202 (4.54%) Unix
4 112 (2.52%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.52%) Solaris
7 13 (0.29%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.20%) VMS
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) 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 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.090%) zOS
13 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.045%) CentOS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
14 2 (0.045%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,237 (27.78%) CI/CD
2 1,212 (27.22%) Agile
3 1,144 (25.69%) Data Modelling
4 1,133 (25.44%) Analytics
5 976 (21.92%) Business Intelligence
6 966 (21.69%) ETL
7 887 (19.92%) Problem-Solving
8 857 (19.25%) Data Pipeline
9 849 (19.07%) DevOps
10 793 (17.81%) Data Engineering
11 786 (17.65%) AI
12 706 (15.85%) Validation
13 669 (15.02%) Stakeholder Management
14 644 (14.46%) Migration
15 537 (12.06%) Test Automation
16 535 (12.01%) Continuous Improvement
17 512 (11.50%) Data Analysis
18 502 (11.27%) Decision-Making
19 487 (10.94%) Data Governance
20 397 (8.92%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,597 (35.86%) Python
2 551 (12.37%) Java
3 411 (9.23%) C#
4 377 (8.47%) JavaScript
5 319 (7.16%) PL/SQL
6 230 (5.17%) PowerShell
7 210 (4.72%) T-SQL
8 197 (4.42%) TypeScript
9 138 (3.10%) Shell Script
10 132 (2.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 112 (2.52%) Bash
12 75 (1.68%) Scala
13 69 (1.55%) R
14 35 (0.79%) C++
15 34 (0.76%) VBA
16 31 (0.70%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) Kotlin
18 27 (0.61%) Go
19 26 (0.58%) C
20 25 (0.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 952 (21.38%) Security Cleared
2 741 (16.64%) SC Cleared
3 337 (7.57%) Degree
4 132 (2.96%) DV Cleared
5 124 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 114 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
7 72 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (0.92%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.90%) Master's Degree
12 19 (0.43%) CISSP
13 18 (0.40%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.34%) ACCA
15 15 (0.34%) CIMA
16 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 14 (0.31%) PMI Certification
17 13 (0.29%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 896 (20.12%) Data Quality
2 363 (8.15%) QA
3 113 (2.54%) GDPR
4 47 (1.06%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.03%) SLA
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 24 (0.54%) NIST
8 23 (0.52%) IFRS
9 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 20 (0.45%) ISO 20022
11 17 (0.38%) MiFID
12 15 (0.34%) COBIT
12 15 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 12 (0.27%) Basel III
14 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
15 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.18%) PMO
15 8 (0.18%) SEPA
15 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
16 7 (0.16%) GRC
System Software
1 419 (9.41%) Docker
2 117 (2.63%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (0.76%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.11%) KVM
10 5 (0.11%) Postfix
11 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.045%) Squid
13 1 (0.022%) GPFS
13 1 (0.022%) HDFS
13 1 (0.022%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.022%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 373 (8.38%) Kubernetes
2 96 (2.16%) Ansible
3 84 (1.89%) Grafana
4 52 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.90%) Control-M
6 39 (0.88%) SCOM
7 38 (0.85%) Kibana
8 33 (0.74%) Data Guard
9 28 (0.63%) Oracle RMAN
10 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
12 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 11 (0.25%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.22%) Argo
15 9 (0.20%) Istio
16 8 (0.18%) Podman
16 8 (0.18%) Puppet
16 8 (0.18%) SCCM
Vendors
1 766 (17.20%) Microsoft
2 737 (16.55%) Oracle
3 587 (13.18%) Databricks
4 213 (4.78%) Google
5 126 (2.83%) Informatica
6 121 (2.72%) SAP
7 99 (2.22%) IBM
8 96 (2.16%) Talend
9 82 (1.84%) ServiceNow
10 76 (1.71%) Splunk
11 66 (1.48%) VMware
12 61 (1.37%) Salesforce
13 40 (0.90%) Denodo
14 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Foundry
16 37 (0.83%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.81%) UiPath
18 34 (0.76%) Murex
19 33 (0.74%) Adobe
19 33 (0.74%) Alteryx