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

6 months to
1 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,003 2,989 3,647
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.92% 12.28% 9.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.46% 36.36% 33.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,765 2,124 2,688
10th Percentile £350 £358 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £516 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.15% -6.14% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £775 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 54 57
10th Percentile £29.73 £20.02 £23.50
25th Percentile £35.75 £29.30 £26.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £43.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.53% +2.72% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.84 £65.46 £54.13
90th Percentile £83.45 £80.73 £62.24
UK median hourly rate £54.75 £42.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +28.82% - -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 10,978 8,221 10,920
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.19% 33.77% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,289 5,685 7,931
10th Percentile £355 £363 £350
25th Percentile £415 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £610 £650 £652
90th Percentile £725 £788 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 530 214 441
10th Percentile £42.44 £25.25 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £37.65 £48.00
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -0.33%

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 1 May 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 1 May 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 1 May 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 2,264 £513 -6.82% 822
Midlands +5 522 £469 +2.07% 258
North of England -9 478 £450 -5.26% 370
West Midlands +6 414 £463 - 147
South East -17 323 £500 - 507
North West -1 262 £450 -5.26% 215
South West -7 206 £475 -5.00% 159
Yorkshire -15 192 £465 -2.11% 111
East Midlands +7 105 £525 +24.26% 111
East of England -12 93 £500 +8.99% 124
North East -10 35 £475 +4.40% 46
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
1 233 (5.82%) Apache Spark
2 152 (3.80%) Apache Airflow
3 136 (3.40%) Apache
4 130 (3.25%) Confluence
5 86 (2.15%) SAS
6 79 (1.97%) SharePoint
7 39 (0.97%) WebLogic
8 34 (0.85%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
13 14 (0.35%) HCL Notes
14 13 (0.32%) Appian
14 13 (0.32%) Jupyter
14 13 (0.32%) Mendix
15 12 (0.30%) nginx
15 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 12 (0.30%) Palantir Foundry
16 11 (0.27%) CMS
Applications
1 275 (6.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.20%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.20%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.12%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (1.02%) Oracle EBS
2 24 (0.60%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.60%) NEC Housing
3 21 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle EBS R12
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
5 19 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 17 (0.42%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.42%) Oracle General Ledger
7 16 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
8 12 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 12 (0.30%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Endur
12 8 (0.20%) Findur
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,368 (34.17%) Azure
2 951 (23.76%) AWS
3 784 (19.59%) Power Platform
4 407 (10.17%) Azure DevOps
5 345 (8.62%) Azure Data Factory
6 322 (8.04%) GCP
7 295 (7.37%) GitHub
8 260 (6.50%) Serverless
9 233 (5.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 225 (5.62%) Amazon S3
10 225 (5.62%) Snowflake
11 170 (4.25%) dbt
12 154 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
13 151 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
14 87 (2.17%) Power Automate
15 75 (1.87%) SaaS
16 72 (1.80%) Entra ID
17 71 (1.77%) Azure Functions
18 70 (1.75%) AWS CloudFormation
19 67 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.17%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 18 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 16 (0.40%) HTTP
5 16 (0.40%) Internet
6 15 (0.37%) SNMP
6 15 (0.37%) WAN
7 12 (0.30%) LAN
8 11 (0.27%) SSL
8 11 (0.27%) VPN
9 10 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.22%) DHCP
11 7 (0.17%) Wireshark
12 6 (0.15%) 3GPP
12 6 (0.15%) IPsec
12 6 (0.15%) VLAN
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
13 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
13 5 (0.12%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 716 (17.89%) Power BI
2 517 (12.92%) Data Warehouse
3 509 (12.72%) SQL Server
4 280 (6.99%) Tableau
5 266 (6.65%) Data Lake
6 255 (6.37%) PostgreSQL
7 249 (6.22%) Relational Database
8 245 (6.12%) NoSQL
9 209 (5.22%) Metadata
10 205 (5.12%) Azure SQL Database
11 147 (3.67%) Oracle Database
12 145 (3.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 120 (3.00%) BigQuery
14 118 (2.95%) Amazon Redshift
15 116 (2.90%) Delta Lake
16 114 (2.85%) MySQL
17 111 (2.77%) Big Data
18 101 (2.52%) Oracle Reports
19 96 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
20 93 (2.32%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 428 (10.69%) Git
2 317 (7.92%) JIRA
3 207 (5.17%) Jenkins
4 161 (4.02%) GitLab
5 59 (1.47%) Selenium
6 52 (1.30%) JUnit
7 47 (1.17%) Postman
8 41 (1.02%) Maven
9 38 (0.95%) Cucumber
10 36 (0.90%) Mockito
11 35 (0.87%) MLflow
12 29 (0.72%) REST Assured
13 28 (0.70%) Bitbucket
13 28 (0.70%) SonarQube
14 27 (0.67%) Gradle
15 24 (0.60%) ERwin
15 24 (0.60%) JMeter
15 24 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
16 22 (0.55%) TeamCity
17 21 (0.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,096 (27.38%) Finance
2 1,074 (26.83%) Social Skills
3 750 (18.74%) Analytical Skills
4 382 (9.54%) Banking
5 339 (8.47%) Public Sector
6 102 (2.55%) Front Office
7 98 (2.45%) Marketing
8 94 (2.35%) Investment Banking
9 87 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 57 (1.42%) Retail
12 55 (1.37%) Financial Institution
12 55 (1.37%) Legal
13 38 (0.95%) Telecoms
14 36 (0.90%) Publishing
15 35 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
16 34 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
17 33 (0.82%) Law
18 31 (0.77%) Local Government
19 28 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 865 (21.61%) Developer
2 808 (20.18%) Data Engineer
3 591 (14.76%) Analyst
4 500 (12.49%) Senior
5 277 (6.92%) Lead
6 248 (6.20%) Data Analyst
7 227 (5.67%) Architect
8 192 (4.80%) Business Analyst
9 179 (4.47%) Consultant
10 148 (3.70%) Java Developer
11 136 (3.40%) Senior Data Engineer
12 127 (3.17%) Senior Developer
13 123 (3.07%) DBA
14 114 (2.85%) Azure Engineer
14 114 (2.85%) Software Engineer
15 103 (2.57%) C# Developer
16 87 (2.17%) Data Scientist
17 86 (2.15%) Data Architect
17 86 (2.15%) Python Developer
18 83 (2.07%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 352 (8.79%) .NET
2 314 (7.84%) REST
3 247 (6.17%) Kafka
4 241 (6.02%) PySpark
5 191 (4.77%) React
6 188 (4.70%) Spring
7 180 (4.50%) Spring Boot
8 172 (4.30%) RESTful
9 135 (3.37%) XML
10 134 (3.35%) HTML
11 121 (3.02%) JSON
11 121 (3.02%) Pandas
12 118 (2.95%) CSS
13 104 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 90 (2.25%) Middleware
15 86 (2.15%) .NET Framework
15 86 (2.15%) SOAP
16 78 (1.95%) Node.js
17 71 (1.77%) Web Services
18 68 (1.70%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 259 (6.47%) Cloud Native
2 144 (3.60%) Data Structures
3 138 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 128 (3.20%) Product Ownership
5 100 (2.50%) Distributed Systems
6 90 (2.25%) Management Information System
7 74 (1.85%) Derivative
8 71 (1.77%) Data Protection Act
9 69 (1.72%) Onboarding
10 66 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
11 54 (1.35%) Equities
11 54 (1.35%) Fixed Income
12 49 (1.22%) Clustering
13 48 (1.20%) Algorithms
13 48 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 45 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
15 41 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 41 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
16 38 (0.95%) NHS
16 38 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 286 (7.14%) Linux
2 245 (6.12%) Windows
3 197 (4.92%) Unix
4 78 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.67%) AIX
6 19 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 11 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
9 9 (0.22%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.17%) zOS
11 6 (0.15%) Android
11 6 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.15%) Solaris
12 5 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.050%) VMS
15 1 (0.025%) CentOS
15 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,081 (27.00%) CI/CD
2 1,031 (25.76%) Analytics
3 1,016 (25.38%) Agile
4 994 (24.83%) Data Modelling
5 957 (23.91%) ETL
6 931 (23.26%) Business Intelligence
7 906 (22.63%) DevOps
8 819 (20.46%) Problem-Solving
9 732 (18.29%) Data Pipeline
10 640 (15.99%) Data Engineering
11 503 (12.57%) AI
12 497 (12.42%) Migration
13 491 (12.27%) Validation
14 484 (12.09%) Data Governance
15 388 (9.69%) Decision-Making
16 386 (9.64%) Test Automation
17 382 (9.54%) Data Analysis
18 362 (9.04%) Performance Tuning
19 351 (8.77%) Microservices
20 336 (8.39%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,516 (37.87%) Python
2 544 (13.59%) Java
3 438 (10.94%) C#
4 309 (7.72%) JavaScript
5 301 (7.52%) PL/SQL
6 193 (4.82%) T-SQL
7 178 (4.45%) PowerShell
8 134 (3.35%) TypeScript
9 122 (3.05%) Shell Script
10 121 (3.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 119 (2.97%) R
12 89 (2.22%) Scala
13 75 (1.87%) Bash
14 61 (1.52%) C++
15 56 (1.40%) VBA
16 43 (1.07%) Bicep
16 43 (1.07%) Perl
17 29 (0.72%) VB
18 27 (0.67%) Go
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 849 (21.21%) Security Cleared
2 690 (17.24%) SC Cleared
3 320 (7.99%) Degree
4 111 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (2.12%) BPSS Clearance
6 70 (1.75%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.40%) DV Cleared
8 51 (1.27%) Master's Degree
9 47 (1.17%) ISTQB
10 38 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 28 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.40%) PhD
13 15 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
14 14 (0.35%) CBAP
15 11 (0.27%) CISSP
15 11 (0.27%) DBS Check
15 11 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 10 (0.25%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.25%) PMP
17 9 (0.22%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 720 (17.99%) Data Quality
2 311 (7.77%) QA
3 180 (4.50%) GDPR
4 41 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 35 (0.87%) SLA
6 33 (0.82%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.70%) PMO
8 23 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.47%) NIST
9 19 (0.47%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
10 16 (0.40%) MiFID
11 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.35%) IFRS
13 13 (0.32%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.30%) HL7
15 10 (0.25%) GRC
15 10 (0.25%) SEPA
16 9 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 455 (11.37%) Docker
2 91 (2.27%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 24 (0.60%) Oracle RAC
5 20 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (0.42%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.25%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.12%) XenApp
10 5 (0.12%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 397 (9.92%) Kubernetes
2 331 (8.27%) Terraform
3 104 (2.60%) Grafana
4 66 (1.65%) Ansible
5 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 37 (0.92%) Oracle RMAN
7 26 (0.65%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.45%) Kibana
10 17 (0.42%) SCCM
11 15 (0.37%) ZABBIX
12 14 (0.35%) Control-M
12 14 (0.35%) Nagios
12 14 (0.35%) Netcool
12 14 (0.35%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.35%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.32%) OpenView
13 13 (0.32%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.22%) Kiali
15 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 659 (16.46%) Oracle
2 649 (16.21%) Microsoft
3 476 (11.89%) Databricks
4 156 (3.90%) Google
5 136 (3.40%) Informatica
6 122 (3.05%) ServiceNow
7 106 (2.65%) SAP
8 101 (2.52%) Talend
9 84 (2.10%) Splunk
10 67 (1.67%) IBM
11 59 (1.47%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 50 (1.25%) Denodo
14 41 (1.02%) OpenAI
15 35 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 35 (0.87%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.82%) MuleSoft
16 33 (0.82%) VMware
17 32 (0.80%) HP
18 28 (0.70%) BMC