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

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,439 3,279 3,618
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.88% 11.98% 10.35%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.32% 36.35% 33.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,972 2,336 2,742
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £421
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £756 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 58 41
10th Percentile £24.40 £21.59 £24.00
25th Percentile £30.91 £29.37 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £39.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.69% -8.24% -7.61%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £45.00 £38.85 £41.50
% change year-on-year +15.85% -6.40% -14.19%

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 11,894 9,021 10,921
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.46% 32.97% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,719 6,221 7,866
10th Percentile £363 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £515 £545
Median % change year-on-year +0.97% -5.50% -0.91%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £513 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +2.40% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 483 225 399
10th Percentile £34.01 £29.07 £34.79
25th Percentile £53.53 £39.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.00 £83.88 £77.50
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% +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 24 July 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 24 July 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 24 July 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 2,384 £525 - 895
North of England -3 585 £463 -2.63% 336
Midlands +1 546 £459 +8.00% 190
South East -11 461 £475 -5.00% 384
West Midlands +4 447 £458 +1.78% 106
North West -3 311 £475 +3.32% 184
Yorkshire -7 237 £460 -3.16% 98
South West -10 232 £500 +14.29% 144
East of England -6 121 £484 -3.25% 80
East Midlands -5 95 £503 +29.26% 84
North East -14 50 £425 -8.11% 62
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
1 208 (4.69%) Apache Spark
2 188 (4.24%) Apache Airflow
3 179 (4.03%) Confluence
4 154 (3.47%) Apache
5 91 (2.05%) SAS
6 57 (1.28%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.86%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 24 (0.54%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
11 21 (0.47%) Tomcat
12 18 (0.41%) CMS
12 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
13 17 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
14 16 (0.36%) nginx
15 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.25%) Camunda
17 10 (0.23%) Appian
18 8 (0.18%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 289 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.24%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 28 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.25%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
7 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.090%) Notion
7 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
9 1 (0.023%) InDesign
9 1 (0.023%) Mingle
9 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
7 18 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
8 17 (0.38%) NEC Housing
9 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.23%) Fidessa
12 10 (0.23%) Finacle
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,402 (31.58%) Azure
2 1,050 (23.65%) AWS
3 836 (18.83%) Power Platform
4 398 (8.97%) Azure DevOps
5 386 (8.70%) GCP
6 319 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
7 313 (7.05%) GitHub
8 285 (6.42%) Snowflake
9 275 (6.20%) Serverless
10 251 (5.65%) dbt
11 245 (5.52%) Amazon S3
12 204 (4.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 178 (4.01%) AWS Lambda
14 161 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (2.00%) Entra ID
16 82 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 82 (1.85%) Power Automate
17 79 (1.78%) SaaS
18 71 (1.60%) PowerApps
19 70 (1.58%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.04%) DNS
2 40 (0.90%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
4 21 (0.47%) VPN
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 19 (0.43%) Network Security
7 14 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) DHCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 774 (17.44%) Power BI
2 608 (13.70%) Data Warehouse
3 576 (12.98%) SQL Server
4 295 (6.65%) Tableau
5 282 (6.35%) Relational Database
6 276 (6.22%) Data Lake
7 271 (6.10%) PostgreSQL
8 224 (5.05%) Metadata
9 223 (5.02%) NoSQL
10 186 (4.19%) Oracle Database
11 173 (3.90%) Azure SQL Database
12 161 (3.63%) BigQuery
13 154 (3.47%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 138 (3.11%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.75%) Delta Lake
16 105 (2.37%) Big Data
17 102 (2.30%) Oracle Reports
18 97 (2.19%) MySQL
18 97 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 89 (2.00%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 487 (10.97%) Git
2 346 (7.79%) JIRA
3 239 (5.38%) Jenkins
4 182 (4.10%) GitLab
5 70 (1.58%) JUnit
6 61 (1.37%) Maven
7 54 (1.22%) Gradle
8 52 (1.17%) Postman
9 50 (1.13%) Selenium
10 47 (1.06%) Mockito
11 34 (0.77%) Oracle Forms
11 34 (0.77%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.74%) Bitbucket
13 31 (0.70%) Visual Studio
14 30 (0.68%) ERwin
15 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
17 26 (0.59%) Cucumber
17 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) TeamCity
General
1 1,152 (25.95%) Social Skills
2 1,142 (25.73%) Finance
3 888 (20.00%) Analytical Skills
4 418 (9.42%) Banking
5 403 (9.08%) Public Sector
6 132 (2.97%) Marketing
7 123 (2.77%) Front Office
8 100 (2.25%) Retail
9 96 (2.16%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.96%) Documentation Skills
11 72 (1.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.35%) Manufacturing
13 55 (1.24%) Presentation Skills
14 50 (1.13%) Legal
15 49 (1.10%) Financial Institution
16 46 (1.04%) Organisational Skills
17 38 (0.86%) Back Office
18 37 (0.83%) Publishing
18 37 (0.83%) Telecoms
19 33 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 948 (21.36%) Developer
2 881 (19.85%) Data Engineer
3 632 (14.24%) Analyst
4 594 (13.38%) Senior
5 311 (7.01%) Lead
6 280 (6.31%) Data Analyst
7 232 (5.23%) Architect
8 213 (4.80%) Consultant
9 178 (4.01%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.96%) Java Developer
11 173 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
12 168 (3.78%) DBA
13 150 (3.38%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.91%) Software Engineer
15 114 (2.57%) SQL Developer
16 111 (2.50%) SQL DBA
17 108 (2.43%) Azure Engineer
18 101 (2.28%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.10%) Data Architect
20 91 (2.05%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 363 (8.18%) .NET
2 361 (8.13%) REST
3 273 (6.15%) PySpark
4 269 (6.06%) Kafka
5 228 (5.14%) Spring
6 207 (4.66%) Spring Boot
7 200 (4.51%) React
8 183 (4.12%) RESTful
9 168 (3.78%) JSON
10 161 (3.63%) XML
11 142 (3.20%) HTML
12 127 (2.86%) AngularJS
13 126 (2.84%) CSS
14 114 (2.57%) Pandas
15 103 (2.32%) SOAP
16 102 (2.30%) Web Services
17 93 (2.10%) .NET Framework
17 93 (2.10%) Middleware
18 73 (1.64%) OAuth
19 71 (1.60%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 289 (6.51%) Cloud Native
2 202 (4.55%) Data Structures
3 160 (3.60%) Product Ownership
4 158 (3.56%) Legacy Systems
5 139 (3.13%) Distributed Systems
6 91 (2.05%) Onboarding
7 84 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
8 80 (1.80%) Derivative
9 79 (1.78%) Management Information System
10 72 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
10 72 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
11 67 (1.51%) Clustering
12 63 (1.42%) Data Protection Act
13 60 (1.35%) Replication
14 54 (1.22%) Algorithms
14 54 (1.22%) Fixed Income
15 50 (1.13%) Equities
15 50 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 47 (1.06%) Reference Data
17 43 (0.97%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 300 (6.76%) Linux
2 274 (6.17%) Windows
3 206 (4.64%) Unix
4 104 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) AIX
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 16 (0.36%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
8 8 (0.18%) zOS
9 7 (0.16%) Android
9 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 6 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
11 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.090%) VMS
13 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,175 (26.47%) CI/CD
2 1,150 (25.91%) Analytics
3 1,130 (25.46%) Agile
4 1,114 (25.10%) Data Modelling
5 1,028 (23.16%) ETL
6 996 (22.44%) Business Intelligence
7 892 (20.09%) DevOps
8 862 (19.42%) Problem-Solving
9 858 (19.33%) Data Pipeline
10 750 (16.90%) Data Engineering
11 634 (14.28%) AI
12 609 (13.72%) Migration
13 590 (13.29%) Validation
14 488 (10.99%) Data Governance
15 458 (10.32%) Test Automation
16 453 (10.21%) Decision-Making
17 448 (10.09%) Continuous Improvement
18 439 (9.89%) Stakeholder Management
19 430 (9.69%) Data Analysis
20 390 (8.79%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,581 (35.62%) Python
2 561 (12.64%) Java
3 440 (9.91%) C#
4 351 (7.91%) PL/SQL
5 313 (7.05%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.43%) PowerShell
7 240 (5.41%) T-SQL
8 167 (3.76%) TypeScript
9 133 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.88%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.10%) R
12 92 (2.07%) Bash
13 68 (1.53%) Scala
14 46 (1.04%) C++
15 44 (0.99%) VBA
16 39 (0.88%) Bicep
17 33 (0.74%) C
18 31 (0.70%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Go
20 20 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 956 (21.54%) Security Cleared
2 761 (17.14%) SC Cleared
3 319 (7.19%) Degree
4 102 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
4 102 (2.30%) DV Cleared
5 98 (2.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 68 (1.53%) Azure Certification
7 50 (1.13%) Master's Degree
8 49 (1.10%) ISTQB
9 38 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 17 (0.38%) PhD
12 15 (0.34%) CISSP
13 12 (0.27%) ISEB
14 11 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
15 10 (0.23%) CISM
15 10 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 8 (0.18%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 820 (18.47%) Data Quality
2 331 (7.46%) QA
3 165 (3.72%) GDPR
4 48 (1.08%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 23 (0.52%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (0.41%) NIST
8 18 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) IFRS
11 14 (0.32%) MiFID
12 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) HL7
14 10 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
16 8 (0.18%) COBIT
System Software
1 440 (9.91%) Docker
2 112 (2.52%) Active Directory
3 44 (0.99%) Virtual Machines
4 35 (0.79%) VMware Infrastructure
5 34 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.29%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 7 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.090%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
16 1 (0.023%) XenApp
16 1 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 374 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 350 (7.88%) Terraform
3 92 (2.07%) Grafana
4 81 (1.82%) Ansible
5 48 (1.08%) Prometheus
6 40 (0.90%) Oracle RMAN
7 36 (0.81%) Data Guard
8 27 (0.61%) Control-M
9 23 (0.52%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.43%) Kibana
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 768 (17.30%) Oracle
2 705 (15.88%) Microsoft
3 508 (11.44%) Databricks
4 173 (3.90%) Google
5 159 (3.58%) Informatica
6 123 (2.77%) ServiceNow
7 122 (2.75%) Talend
8 120 (2.70%) SAP
9 82 (1.85%) Splunk
10 76 (1.71%) IBM
11 60 (1.35%) Denodo
12 54 (1.22%) Salesforce
13 53 (1.19%) VMware
14 42 (0.95%) Citrix
15 39 (0.88%) Dynatrace
16 38 (0.86%) Bloomberg
17 34 (0.77%) BMC
18 32 (0.72%) Alteryx
18 32 (0.72%) Murex
19 29 (0.65%) SolarWinds