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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,469 3,273 3,601
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.60% 11.75% 10.97%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.90% 35.74% 33.73%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,001 2,291 2,565
10th Percentile £350 £331 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £600 £620 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 73 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £26.80 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.85 £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 £77.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -20.44%

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 12,112 9,159 10,676
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.03% 32.88% 32.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,841 6,186 7,227
10th Percentile £363 £349 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £626 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £523 £505 £526
% change year-on-year +3.47% -3.90% -4.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 513 261 309
10th Percentile £26.52 £31.25 £29.55
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £48.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.80 £78.75 £79.34
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% +3.17%

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 25 September 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 25 September 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 25 September 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 2,508 £525 - 3,878
North of England 0 595 £475 +5.56% 881
Midlands -5 453 £469 +1.41% 526
South East -14 446 £475 -3.06% 789
West Midlands -4 355 £469 -6.20% 324
North West +1 292 £500 +12.99% 509
Yorkshire +6 251 £454 -4.42% 276
South West 0 233 £525 +18.31% 312
East of England -10 123 £500 -0.50% 242
East Midlands -6 96 £463 +14.84% 202
North East -9 59 £400 -13.98% 103
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
1 231 (5.17%) Apache Airflow
2 197 (4.41%) Confluence
3 191 (4.27%) Apache Spark
4 148 (3.31%) Apache
5 84 (1.88%) SharePoint
6 72 (1.61%) SAS
7 31 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.67%) WebLogic
9 28 (0.63%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
13 19 (0.43%) CMS
14 18 (0.40%) Camunda
14 18 (0.40%) nginx
15 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
16 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 268 (6.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (0.81%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.090%) Notion
9 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
11 2 (0.045%) Mingle
12 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 46 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 32 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 19 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
8 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
8 11 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
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%) Maximo
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,360 (30.43%) Azure
2 1,084 (24.26%) AWS
3 860 (19.24%) Power Platform
4 442 (9.89%) GCP
5 365 (8.17%) Azure DevOps
6 362 (8.10%) Snowflake
7 307 (6.87%) GitHub
8 296 (6.62%) Azure Data Factory
9 295 (6.60%) dbt
10 272 (6.09%) Serverless
11 239 (5.35%) Amazon S3
12 183 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 174 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (3.27%) GitHub Actions
15 101 (2.26%) Power Automate
16 96 (2.15%) SaaS
17 89 (1.99%) PowerApps
18 86 (1.92%) Entra ID
19 84 (1.88%) Azure Databricks
20 80 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 59 (1.32%) DNS
2 38 (0.85%) Firewall
3 28 (0.63%) HTTP
4 25 (0.56%) SSL
5 22 (0.49%) Internet
5 22 (0.49%) Network Security
6 19 (0.43%) Broadband
6 19 (0.43%) TCP/IP
6 19 (0.43%) VPN
7 15 (0.34%) DHCP
8 14 (0.31%) SNMP
9 12 (0.27%) SSH
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
11 8 (0.18%) RTP
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) 5G
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 791 (17.70%) Power BI
2 616 (13.78%) Data Warehouse
3 567 (12.69%) SQL Server
4 283 (6.33%) Relational Database
5 277 (6.20%) PostgreSQL
6 260 (5.82%) Tableau
7 256 (5.73%) Data Lake
8 231 (5.17%) Metadata
9 212 (4.74%) NoSQL
10 200 (4.48%) Oracle Database
11 194 (4.34%) BigQuery
12 145 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 139 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
14 127 (2.84%) Delta Lake
15 118 (2.64%) MySQL
15 118 (2.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 108 (2.42%) Amazon Athena
17 97 (2.17%) Big Data
18 93 (2.08%) Power Query
19 88 (1.97%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 575 (12.87%) Git
2 361 (8.08%) JIRA
3 246 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 216 (4.83%) GitLab
5 96 (2.15%) Selenium
6 79 (1.77%) JUnit
7 75 (1.68%) Gradle
8 73 (1.63%) Maven
9 60 (1.34%) Postman
10 49 (1.10%) Mockito
11 45 (1.01%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.90%) Bitbucket
13 32 (0.72%) Oracle Forms
14 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 29 (0.65%) Zephyr
16 25 (0.56%) JMeter
16 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
17 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
17 23 (0.51%) MLflow
17 23 (0.51%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,248 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 1,191 (26.65%) Finance
3 928 (20.77%) Analytical Skills
4 530 (11.86%) Banking
5 385 (8.61%) Public Sector
6 146 (3.27%) Marketing
7 133 (2.98%) Retail
8 129 (2.89%) Front Office
9 117 (2.62%) Investment Banking
10 91 (2.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 77 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
11 77 (1.72%) Manufacturing
12 51 (1.14%) Financial Institution
13 48 (1.07%) Legal
13 48 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
14 43 (0.96%) Local Government
15 42 (0.94%) Back Office
15 42 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
16 37 (0.83%) Law
17 36 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 945 (21.15%) Developer
2 859 (19.22%) Data Engineer
3 653 (14.61%) Analyst
4 647 (14.48%) Senior
5 315 (7.05%) Lead
6 262 (5.86%) Data Analyst
7 221 (4.95%) Architect
8 202 (4.52%) Senior Data Engineer
9 194 (4.34%) Business Analyst
10 183 (4.09%) Consultant
11 168 (3.76%) DBA
12 157 (3.51%) Java Developer
13 152 (3.40%) Senior Developer
14 113 (2.53%) Software Engineer
15 103 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
15 103 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
15 103 (2.30%) SQL DBA
16 102 (2.28%) SQL Developer
17 99 (2.22%) Data Architect
18 98 (2.19%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 411 (9.20%) REST
2 384 (8.59%) .NET
3 376 (8.41%) Terraform
4 304 (6.80%) PySpark
5 292 (6.53%) Kafka
6 223 (4.99%) Spring
7 212 (4.74%) Spring Boot
8 210 (4.70%) React
9 179 (4.01%) HTML
10 163 (3.65%) RESTful
11 160 (3.58%) JSON
12 155 (3.47%) CSS
13 141 (3.16%) XML
14 108 (2.42%) AngularJS
15 106 (2.37%) SOAP
16 104 (2.33%) Web Services
17 97 (2.17%) Middleware
18 91 (2.04%) Pandas
19 82 (1.83%) .NET Framework
20 80 (1.79%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 284 (6.35%) Cloud Native
2 221 (4.95%) Data Structures
3 211 (4.72%) Product Ownership
4 140 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
5 124 (2.77%) Enterprise Software
6 122 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
6 122 (2.73%) Onboarding
7 97 (2.17%) Management Information System
8 83 (1.86%) AI Agents
9 78 (1.75%) Self-Motivation
10 73 (1.63%) Derivative
11 63 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
11 63 (1.41%) Replication
12 62 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.34%) Reference Data
14 56 (1.25%) Clustering
15 49 (1.10%) Algorithms
15 49 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 45 (1.01%) Fixed Income
17 43 (0.96%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.14%) Linux
2 273 (6.11%) Windows
3 218 (4.88%) Unix
4 109 (2.44%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.54%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.25%) AIX
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.18%) VMS
12 7 (0.16%) Android
13 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 5 (0.11%) zOS
15 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
16 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
17 2 (0.045%) Amazon Linux
17 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,225 (27.41%) CI/CD
2 1,182 (26.45%) Agile
3 1,146 (25.64%) Data Modelling
4 1,133 (25.35%) Analytics
5 988 (22.11%) Business Intelligence
6 986 (22.06%) ETL
7 893 (19.98%) Problem-Solving
8 873 (19.53%) Data Pipeline
9 846 (18.93%) DevOps
10 778 (17.41%) Data Engineering
11 761 (17.03%) AI
12 687 (15.37%) Validation
13 658 (14.72%) Stakeholder Management
14 650 (14.54%) Migration
15 520 (11.64%) Continuous Improvement
16 517 (11.57%) Test Automation
17 505 (11.30%) Data Governance
18 500 (11.19%) Data Analysis
19 492 (11.01%) Decision-Making
20 386 (8.64%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,620 (36.25%) Python
2 546 (12.22%) Java
3 406 (9.08%) C#
4 370 (8.28%) JavaScript
5 340 (7.61%) PL/SQL
6 233 (5.21%) PowerShell
7 207 (4.63%) T-SQL
8 192 (4.30%) TypeScript
9 141 (3.16%) Shell Script
10 136 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 111 (2.48%) Bash
12 75 (1.68%) R
13 71 (1.59%) Scala
14 37 (0.83%) VBA
15 36 (0.81%) C++
16 28 (0.63%) Bicep
17 27 (0.60%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.58%) C
18 26 (0.58%) Go
18 26 (0.58%) VB
Qualifications
1 945 (21.15%) Security Cleared
2 745 (16.67%) SC Cleared
3 335 (7.50%) Degree
4 127 (2.84%) DV Cleared
5 117 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 115 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 71 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 52 (1.16%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.96%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.90%) Master's Degree
12 17 (0.38%) ACCA
12 17 (0.38%) CIMA
12 17 (0.38%) ISEB
13 16 (0.36%) CISSP
13 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 15 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
15 14 (0.31%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 13 (0.29%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 898 (20.09%) Data Quality
2 367 (8.21%) QA
3 116 (2.60%) GDPR
4 49 (1.10%) SLA
5 46 (1.03%) Accessibility
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 23 (0.51%) IFRS
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 19 (0.43%) NIST
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 13 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 11 (0.25%) Basel III
12 11 (0.25%) COBIT
12 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
13 9 (0.20%) PMO
14 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
14 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
15 7 (0.16%) EMIR
15 7 (0.16%) SEPA
System Software
1 426 (9.53%) Docker
2 110 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 51 (1.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
6 19 (0.43%) 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 6 (0.13%) Postfix
11 5 (0.11%) KVM
12 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) RACF
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 360 (8.06%) Kubernetes
2 87 (1.95%) Ansible
2 87 (1.95%) Grafana
3 49 (1.10%) Prometheus
4 40 (0.90%) Control-M
4 40 (0.90%) SCOM
5 37 (0.83%) Data Guard
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
6 36 (0.81%) Kibana
7 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
8 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
10 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
11 9 (0.20%) Argo
11 9 (0.20%) Istio
11 9 (0.20%) Nagios
11 9 (0.20%) Netcool
11 9 (0.20%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 758 (16.96%) Microsoft
2 748 (16.74%) Oracle
3 578 (12.93%) Databricks
4 206 (4.61%) Google
5 122 (2.73%) Informatica
5 122 (2.73%) SAP
6 100 (2.24%) IBM
7 99 (2.22%) Talend
8 89 (1.99%) ServiceNow
9 80 (1.79%) Splunk
10 69 (1.54%) VMware
11 62 (1.39%) Salesforce
12 50 (1.12%) Denodo
13 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
14 37 (0.83%) Foundry
15 36 (0.81%) Alteryx
16 35 (0.78%) Adobe
16 35 (0.78%) Murex
16 35 (0.78%) OpenAI
16 35 (0.78%) UiPath