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

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 11 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,329 3,090 3,807
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.63% 11.62% 10.47%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.58% 35.61% 34.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,295 2,070 2,760
10th Percentile £336 £350 £363
25th Percentile £413 £413 £437
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £600 £638 £660
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 47 64
10th Percentile £21.19 £25.26 £21.64
25th Percentile £30.47 £35.00 £27.51
Median hourly rate £49.36 £52.50 £44.25
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% +18.64% -11.50%
75th Percentile £57.50 £65.00 £53.84
90th Percentile £72.98 £77.75 £64.52
UK median hourly rate £45.25 £50.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -9.50% +11.11% -10.00%

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 9,627 8,678 10,955
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 30.73% 32.64% 30.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,401 5,575 7,936
10th Percentile £350 £356 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £438
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £538 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £663
90th Percentile £738 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £505 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.81% -4.55% -3.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 362 207 397
10th Percentile £39.64 £25.26 £35.00
25th Percentile £52.50 £45.59 £46.39
Median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%
75th Percentile £68.75 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £75.00 £85.00 £79.25
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -0.79%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -1 2,039 £506 -7.95% 660
North of England -6 341 £446 -6.11% 374
Midlands -4 317 £515 +13.19% 274
South East -14 296 £475 -5.94% 742
West Midlands +1 230 £515 +5.10% 137
North West +3 195 £420 -8.45% 187
South West -3 156 £475 -5.00% 201
Yorkshire -22 130 £475 -5.00% 134
East Midlands -7 87 £475 +21.02% 135
East of England -5 75 £563 +7.14% 225
North East -10 18 £488 +0.52% 58
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
1 154 (4.63%) Apache Spark
2 131 (3.94%) Apache Airflow
3 106 (3.18%) Confluence
4 94 (2.82%) SharePoint
5 92 (2.76%) Apache
6 60 (1.80%) SAS
7 47 (1.41%) WebLogic
8 23 (0.69%) Microsoft Exchange
9 20 (0.60%) IIS
10 19 (0.57%) Skype for Business
11 18 (0.54%) nginx
12 15 (0.45%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 15 (0.45%) Oracle Workflow
13 13 (0.39%) Jupyter
13 13 (0.39%) Mattermost
14 12 (0.36%) CMS
14 12 (0.36%) HCL Notes
14 12 (0.36%) Tomcat
15 9 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 9 (0.27%) JBoss
Applications
1 229 (6.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.86%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (1.17%) MS Visio
4 35 (1.05%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.39%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.30%) Chatbot
7 9 (0.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 6 (0.18%) Trello
9 5 (0.15%) Spreadsheet
10 3 (0.090%) Notion
11 2 (0.060%) Maya
11 2 (0.060%) NUKE
11 2 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.060%) SPSS
12 1 (0.030%) Stata
12 1 (0.030%) Weka
Business Applications
1 31 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
1 31 (0.93%) Oracle Payables
2 29 (0.87%) Oracle General Ledger
3 23 (0.69%) Aladdin
4 22 (0.66%) Oracle Receivables
5 21 (0.63%) Oracle Assets
6 20 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
6 20 (0.60%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.45%) Endur
8 15 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
9 14 (0.42%) NetSuite
9 14 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle ERP
10 12 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 10 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.27%) Maximo
12 9 (0.27%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 9 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,093 (32.83%) Azure
2 786 (23.61%) AWS
3 633 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 291 (8.74%) Azure DevOps
5 279 (8.38%) GCP
6 243 (7.30%) GitHub
7 226 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
8 225 (6.76%) Serverless
8 225 (6.76%) Snowflake
9 171 (5.14%) Amazon S3
10 159 (4.78%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 123 (3.69%) dbt
12 120 (3.60%) GitHub Actions
13 108 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (2.52%) SaaS
15 81 (2.43%) Azure Functions
16 77 (2.31%) Power Automate
17 71 (2.13%) PowerApps
18 56 (1.68%) Azure Logic Apps
18 56 (1.68%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.71%) Firewall
2 42 (1.26%) DNS
3 38 (1.14%) HTTP
4 25 (0.75%) Skype
5 17 (0.51%) Network Security
5 17 (0.51%) TCP/IP
6 15 (0.45%) Internet
7 14 (0.42%) DHCP
7 14 (0.42%) SSH
8 12 (0.36%) Unified Communications
9 10 (0.30%) SMTP
9 10 (0.30%) VPN
10 9 (0.27%) 2G
10 9 (0.27%) 5G
10 9 (0.27%) FTP
10 9 (0.27%) IMAP
10 9 (0.27%) LAN
10 9 (0.27%) Multicast
10 9 (0.27%) OpenLDAP
10 9 (0.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 574 (17.24%) Power BI
2 362 (10.87%) SQL Server
3 349 (10.48%) Data Warehouse
4 247 (7.42%) Relational Database
5 246 (7.39%) PostgreSQL
6 236 (7.09%) NoSQL
7 202 (6.07%) Tableau
8 193 (5.80%) Data Lake
9 166 (4.99%) Azure SQL Database
10 161 (4.84%) Oracle Database
11 124 (3.72%) Metadata
12 112 (3.36%) Big Data
13 103 (3.09%) MySQL
14 99 (2.97%) MongoDB
15 97 (2.91%) BigQuery
16 96 (2.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 81 (2.43%) Amazon RDS
18 74 (2.22%) Amazon Redshift
19 65 (1.95%) Oracle Reports
20 62 (1.86%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 374 (11.23%) Git
2 292 (8.77%) JIRA
3 184 (5.53%) Jenkins
4 121 (3.63%) GitLab
5 58 (1.74%) JUnit
5 58 (1.74%) Selenium
6 46 (1.38%) Oracle APEX
7 36 (1.08%) Postman
8 34 (1.02%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.99%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.69%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.66%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.66%) Maven
11 22 (0.66%) SpecFlow
12 21 (0.63%) ERwin
12 21 (0.63%) Mockito
12 21 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
13 19 (0.57%) MLflow
14 18 (0.54%) SonarQube
14 18 (0.54%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,049 (31.51%) Social Skills
2 955 (28.69%) Finance
3 578 (17.36%) Analytical Skills
4 384 (11.53%) Banking
5 266 (7.99%) Public Sector
6 116 (3.48%) Investment Banking
7 92 (2.76%) Front Office
8 83 (2.49%) Marketing
9 81 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
10 57 (1.71%) Retail
11 52 (1.56%) Financial Institution
12 50 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 43 (1.29%) Presentation Skills
14 37 (1.11%) Legal
15 34 (1.02%) Manufacturing
16 29 (0.87%) Back Office
16 29 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
17 27 (0.81%) General Ledger
17 27 (0.81%) Local Government
17 27 (0.81%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 866 (26.01%) Developer
2 537 (16.13%) Analyst
3 478 (14.36%) Data Engineer
4 425 (12.77%) Senior
5 219 (6.58%) Data Analyst
6 200 (6.01%) Lead
7 189 (5.68%) Business Analyst
8 145 (4.36%) Architect
9 139 (4.18%) Senior Developer
10 125 (3.75%) Consultant
11 120 (3.60%) Java Developer
12 111 (3.33%) Software Engineer
13 99 (2.97%) Azure Engineer
14 80 (2.40%) Python Developer
15 79 (2.37%) Full-Stack Developer
16 78 (2.34%) C# Developer
16 78 (2.34%) Data Scientist
17 71 (2.13%) Azure Data Engineer
17 71 (2.13%) Senior Data Engineer
18 67 (2.01%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 320 (9.61%) .NET
2 270 (8.11%) REST
3 209 (6.28%) Kafka
4 180 (5.41%) PySpark
5 154 (4.63%) React
6 143 (4.30%) RESTful
7 139 (4.18%) Spring
8 133 (4.00%) HTML
9 131 (3.94%) XML
10 116 (3.48%) CSS
11 114 (3.42%) Spring Boot
12 103 (3.09%) JSON
13 101 (3.03%) Node.js
14 94 (2.82%) AngularJS
15 76 (2.28%) SOAP
16 73 (2.19%) .NET Framework
17 71 (2.13%) Pandas
18 69 (2.07%) Middleware
19 56 (1.68%) Web Services
20 53 (1.59%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 193 (5.80%) Cloud Native
2 97 (2.91%) Data Structures
3 90 (2.70%) Product Ownership
4 88 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
5 80 (2.40%) Data Protection Act
6 72 (2.16%) Analytical Mindset
7 71 (2.13%) Management Information System
8 60 (1.80%) Algorithms
9 59 (1.77%) Derivative
10 55 (1.65%) Onboarding
11 54 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
12 53 (1.59%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 51 (1.53%) Equities
14 47 (1.41%) Fixed Income
15 42 (1.26%) Replication
16 38 (1.14%) Market Risk
17 36 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
17 36 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
18 34 (1.02%) SWIFT Messaging Network
19 31 (0.93%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 314 (9.43%) Linux
2 239 (7.18%) Windows
3 192 (5.77%) Unix
4 61 (1.83%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.48%) VMS
5 16 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
6 14 (0.42%) Windows 10
7 12 (0.36%) Android
7 12 (0.36%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (0.36%) Ubuntu
7 12 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
9 7 (0.21%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.15%) AIX
10 5 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.12%) CentOS
11 4 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.060%) zOS
13 1 (0.030%) Mac OS X
13 1 (0.030%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 932 (28.00%) Agile
2 773 (23.22%) CI/CD
3 766 (23.01%) Analytics
4 758 (22.77%) Problem-Solving
5 755 (22.68%) Business Intelligence
6 728 (21.87%) DevOps
7 693 (20.82%) Data Modelling
8 617 (18.53%) ETL
9 471 (14.15%) Data Pipeline
10 389 (11.69%) Data Engineering
11 360 (10.81%) Migration
12 348 (10.45%) Data Governance
13 331 (9.94%) Validation
14 328 (9.85%) Visualisation
15 317 (9.52%) AI
16 306 (9.19%) Data Analysis
17 294 (8.83%) Test Automation
18 292 (8.77%) Microservices
19 281 (8.44%) Data Science
20 269 (8.08%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,217 (36.56%) Python
2 514 (15.44%) Java
3 373 (11.20%) C#
4 312 (9.37%) JavaScript
5 267 (8.02%) PL/SQL
6 146 (4.39%) PowerShell
7 129 (3.88%) TypeScript
8 106 (3.18%) R
9 98 (2.94%) T-SQL
10 87 (2.61%) C++
10 87 (2.61%) Scala
11 86 (2.58%) Shell Script
12 77 (2.31%) VBA
13 70 (2.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 64 (1.92%) VB
15 56 (1.68%) Bash
16 47 (1.41%) Perl
17 42 (1.26%) Go
18 41 (1.23%) PHP
19 38 (1.14%) Bicep
Qualifications
1 551 (16.55%) Security Cleared
2 413 (12.41%) SC Cleared
3 317 (9.52%) Degree
4 118 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 69 (2.07%) Azure Certification
6 60 (1.80%) DV Cleared
7 57 (1.71%) AWS Certification
8 55 (1.65%) Master's Degree
9 46 (1.38%) BPSS Clearance
10 41 (1.23%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (1.08%) ISTQB
12 24 (0.72%) Oracle Certification
13 23 (0.69%) ITIL Certification
14 19 (0.57%) CBAP
15 16 (0.48%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 14 (0.42%) MCSE
17 12 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
17 12 (0.36%) PMI Certification
18 11 (0.33%) OCA
18 11 (0.33%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 478 (14.36%) Data Quality
2 234 (7.03%) QA
3 126 (3.78%) GDPR
4 62 (1.86%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 23 (0.69%) SLA
7 21 (0.63%) MiFID
8 18 (0.54%) SEPA
8 18 (0.54%) WCAG
9 17 (0.51%) ISO 20022
10 15 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
10 15 (0.45%) EMIR
10 15 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 13 (0.39%) HIPAA
11 13 (0.39%) PSD2
12 11 (0.33%) IFRS
12 11 (0.33%) PMO
13 9 (0.27%) NIST
13 9 (0.27%) PCI DSS
14 7 (0.21%) GAAP
System Software
1 391 (11.75%) Docker
2 93 (2.79%) Active Directory
3 30 (0.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
5 16 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
6 9 (0.27%) DFS Replication
6 9 (0.27%) Dovecot
6 9 (0.27%) Hyper-V
6 9 (0.27%) Postfix
6 9 (0.27%) Squid
7 8 (0.24%) HDFS
7 8 (0.24%) zsh
8 7 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
9 6 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 5 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 5 (0.15%) NFS
10 5 (0.15%) Virtual Servers
10 5 (0.15%) vSphere
11 4 (0.12%) VMware Workstation
11 4 (0.12%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 359 (10.78%) Kubernetes
2 227 (6.82%) Terraform
3 70 (2.10%) Grafana
4 62 (1.86%) Ansible
5 55 (1.65%) Prometheus
6 24 (0.72%) SCCM
6 24 (0.72%) SCOM
7 21 (0.63%) HP SiteScope
8 20 (0.60%) Oracle RMAN
9 19 (0.57%) Data Guard
9 19 (0.57%) Puppet
10 16 (0.48%) Control-M
10 16 (0.48%) Kibana
10 16 (0.48%) Progress Chef
11 14 (0.42%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 14 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.36%) Proxmox
13 11 (0.33%) ITRS Geneos
13 11 (0.33%) WSUS
14 9 (0.27%) Nessus
Vendors
1 591 (17.75%) Oracle
2 559 (16.79%) Microsoft
3 347 (10.42%) Databricks
4 133 (4.00%) Google
5 103 (3.09%) Splunk
6 95 (2.85%) SAP
7 70 (2.10%) Salesforce
8 67 (2.01%) ServiceNow
9 53 (1.59%) Talend
10 46 (1.38%) Informatica
11 42 (1.26%) Dynatrace
11 42 (1.26%) IBM
12 41 (1.23%) OpenAI
12 41 (1.23%) VMware
13 40 (1.20%) Citrix
14 36 (1.08%) Denodo
15 34 (1.02%) MuleSoft
16 30 (0.90%) AppDynamics
17 29 (0.87%) Cisco
18 26 (0.78%) Adobe