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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,400 3,246 3,795
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.90% 12.17% 10.24%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.04% 36.27% 33.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,945 2,315 2,808
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £420
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £646
90th Percentile £688 £763 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 64 55
10th Percentile £26.50 £23.14 £23.25
25th Percentile £31.86 £31.00 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £43.16 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.27% +1.55% -15.00%
75th Percentile £69.72 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.70 £67.05 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.75 £42.82 £42.50
% change year-on-year +4.52% +0.74% -17.07%

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 11,879 8,949 11,483
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.72% 33.54% 30.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,738 6,168 8,213
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £520 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
75th Percentile £615 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £512 £512 £525
% change year-on-year -0.04% -2.48% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 499 219 475
10th Percentile £34.83 £28.18 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.25 £49.63
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.60 £80.00 £75.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 2,356 £525 -0.94% 899
North of England -4 575 £463 -2.63% 370
Midlands +3 567 £460 +8.24% 238
West Midlands +5 466 £459 +2.00% 117
South East -11 453 £483 -3.50% 453
North West 0 303 £475 +1.06% 213
Yorkshire -5 234 £475 - 106
South West -5 233 £500 +14.29% 148
East of England -9 106 £491 +0.77% 111
East Midlands -1 97 £525 +38.16% 121
North East -16 50 £419 -9.70% 56
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
1 211 (4.80%) Apache Spark
2 181 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 175 (3.98%) Confluence
4 144 (3.27%) Apache
5 95 (2.16%) SAS
6 52 (1.18%) SharePoint
7 37 (0.84%) WebLogic
8 35 (0.80%) IIS
9 33 (0.75%) Oracle Workflow
10 24 (0.55%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.45%) CMS
13 19 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
14 18 (0.41%) Microsoft Exchange
14 18 (0.41%) WebSphere
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 15 (0.34%) Appian
17 13 (0.30%) Tuxedo
18 11 (0.25%) Camunda
19 9 (0.20%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 284 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.91%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.82%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.66%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.068%) Notion
9 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.023%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.023%) InDesign
10 1 (0.023%) Mingle
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 39 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 35 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.64%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.55%) Oracle ERP
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 20 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
7 18 (0.41%) NEC Housing
8 17 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
9 16 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.25%) Findur
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.23%) Finacle
13 9 (0.20%) Elite 3E
13 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
13 9 (0.20%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
14 8 (0.18%) Summit
15 7 (0.16%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 1,411 (32.07%) Azure
2 1,061 (24.11%) AWS
3 826 (18.77%) Power Platform
4 407 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
5 362 (8.23%) GCP
6 318 (7.23%) Azure Data Factory
7 315 (7.16%) GitHub
8 279 (6.34%) Serverless
9 270 (6.14%) Snowflake
10 247 (5.61%) Amazon S3
11 231 (5.25%) dbt
12 208 (4.73%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 179 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
14 164 (3.73%) GitHub Actions
15 82 (1.86%) Entra ID
16 79 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 79 (1.80%) SaaS
17 77 (1.75%) Power Automate
18 74 (1.68%) Amazon EC2
19 68 (1.55%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 45 (1.02%) DNS
2 39 (0.89%) Firewall
3 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 20 (0.45%) Internet
4 20 (0.45%) Network Security
4 20 (0.45%) SSL
5 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 18 (0.41%) VPN
7 13 (0.30%) WAN
8 10 (0.23%) TCP/IP
9 9 (0.20%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 7 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.16%) SAN
11 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
12 6 (0.14%) BGP
12 6 (0.14%) DHCP
12 6 (0.14%) LAN
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 761 (17.30%) Power BI
2 578 (13.14%) Data Warehouse
3 567 (12.89%) SQL Server
4 297 (6.75%) Tableau
5 290 (6.59%) Relational Database
6 278 (6.32%) PostgreSQL
7 272 (6.18%) Data Lake
8 222 (5.05%) NoSQL
9 204 (4.64%) Metadata
10 174 (3.95%) Azure SQL Database
10 174 (3.95%) Oracle Database
11 148 (3.36%) BigQuery
12 146 (3.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 134 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
14 131 (2.98%) Delta Lake
15 104 (2.36%) Big Data
16 103 (2.34%) MySQL
17 100 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
18 97 (2.20%) Oracle Reports
19 91 (2.07%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 464 (10.55%) Git
2 346 (7.86%) JIRA
3 238 (5.41%) Jenkins
4 191 (4.34%) GitLab
5 70 (1.59%) JUnit
6 54 (1.23%) Postman
7 52 (1.18%) Maven
8 50 (1.14%) Selenium
9 48 (1.09%) Mockito
10 45 (1.02%) Gradle
11 33 (0.75%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.70%) Bitbucket
12 31 (0.70%) Cucumber
13 30 (0.68%) MLflow
14 29 (0.66%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
16 27 (0.61%) ERwin
16 27 (0.61%) JMeter
17 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.59%) Zephyr
General
1 1,159 (26.34%) Finance
2 1,138 (25.86%) Social Skills
3 846 (19.23%) Analytical Skills
4 418 (9.50%) Banking
5 382 (8.68%) Public Sector
6 128 (2.91%) Marketing
7 122 (2.77%) Front Office
8 101 (2.30%) Investment Banking
8 101 (2.30%) Retail
9 91 (2.07%) Documentation Skills
10 75 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (1.23%) Manufacturing
12 53 (1.20%) Legal
13 52 (1.18%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.84%) Back Office
15 37 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
15 37 (0.84%) Publishing
16 34 (0.77%) Telecoms
17 28 (0.64%) Billing
Job Titles
1 930 (21.14%) Developer
2 890 (20.23%) Data Engineer
3 632 (14.36%) Analyst
4 573 (13.02%) Senior
5 304 (6.91%) Lead
6 270 (6.14%) Data Analyst
7 243 (5.52%) Architect
8 205 (4.66%) Consultant
9 185 (4.20%) Business Analyst
10 175 (3.98%) Java Developer
11 174 (3.95%) Senior Data Engineer
12 153 (3.48%) DBA
13 135 (3.07%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.89%) Software Engineer
15 109 (2.48%) Azure Engineer
16 106 (2.41%) SQL Developer
17 104 (2.36%) C# Developer
18 101 (2.30%) SQL DBA
19 89 (2.02%) Python Developer
20 87 (1.98%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 364 (8.27%) .NET
2 346 (7.86%) REST
3 266 (6.05%) Kafka
4 262 (5.95%) PySpark
5 224 (5.09%) Spring
6 208 (4.73%) Spring Boot
7 202 (4.59%) React
8 185 (4.20%) RESTful
9 156 (3.55%) JSON
10 149 (3.39%) XML
11 140 (3.18%) HTML
12 123 (2.80%) CSS
13 121 (2.75%) AngularJS
14 114 (2.59%) Pandas
15 103 (2.34%) SOAP
16 102 (2.32%) Web Services
17 95 (2.16%) Middleware
18 89 (2.02%) .NET Framework
19 70 (1.59%) Node.js
20 68 (1.55%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 287 (6.52%) Cloud Native
2 178 (4.05%) Data Structures
3 154 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
4 147 (3.34%) Product Ownership
5 126 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 83 (1.89%) Derivative
7 80 (1.82%) Onboarding
8 73 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
8 73 (1.66%) Enterprise Software
8 73 (1.66%) Management Information System
9 67 (1.52%) Self-Motivation
10 66 (1.50%) Data Protection Act
11 61 (1.39%) Clustering
12 55 (1.25%) Algorithms
13 54 (1.23%) Equities
14 51 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
15 50 (1.14%) Fixed Income
15 50 (1.14%) Replication
16 41 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 39 (0.89%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 293 (6.66%) Linux
2 271 (6.16%) Windows
3 211 (4.80%) Unix
4 100 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.55%) AIX
6 21 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 13 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 8 (0.18%) zOS
10 7 (0.16%) Android
10 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
11 6 (0.14%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.091%) Ubuntu
12 4 (0.091%) VMS
13 3 (0.068%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,195 (27.16%) CI/CD
2 1,134 (25.77%) Analytics
3 1,117 (25.39%) Agile
4 1,068 (24.27%) Data Modelling
5 1,014 (23.05%) ETL
6 968 (22.00%) Business Intelligence
7 901 (20.48%) DevOps
8 866 (19.68%) Problem-Solving
9 838 (19.05%) Data Pipeline
10 732 (16.64%) Data Engineering
11 639 (14.52%) AI
12 582 (13.23%) Migration
13 568 (12.91%) Validation
14 461 (10.48%) Data Governance
15 459 (10.43%) Test Automation
16 454 (10.32%) Decision-Making
17 437 (9.93%) Data Analysis
18 428 (9.73%) Continuous Improvement
19 417 (9.48%) Stakeholder Management
20 387 (8.80%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,596 (36.27%) Python
2 552 (12.55%) Java
3 445 (10.11%) C#
4 329 (7.48%) PL/SQL
5 305 (6.93%) JavaScript
6 240 (5.45%) T-SQL
7 228 (5.18%) PowerShell
8 164 (3.73%) TypeScript
9 135 (3.07%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 114 (2.59%) Shell Script
11 97 (2.20%) R
12 84 (1.91%) Bash
13 76 (1.73%) Scala
14 53 (1.20%) C++
15 43 (0.98%) VBA
16 37 (0.84%) Bicep
17 35 (0.80%) C
18 32 (0.73%) VB
19 24 (0.55%) Go
20 21 (0.48%) Perl
Qualifications
1 924 (21.00%) Security Cleared
2 745 (16.93%) SC Cleared
3 336 (7.64%) Degree
4 108 (2.45%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
6 93 (2.11%) DV Cleared
7 66 (1.50%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.11%) Master's Degree
9 47 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.70%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.39%) PhD
13 15 (0.34%) CISSP
14 10 (0.23%) CISM
14 10 (0.23%) TOGAF Certification
15 9 (0.20%) ACCA
15 9 (0.20%) CIMA
15 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 8 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 780 (17.73%) Data Quality
2 333 (7.57%) QA
3 172 (3.91%) GDPR
4 46 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 24 (0.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.48%) PMO
7 21 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 19 (0.43%) NIST
9 17 (0.39%) IFRS
9 17 (0.39%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) MiFID
11 14 (0.32%) HIPAA
12 13 (0.30%) Actionable Recommendations
12 13 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 13 (0.30%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.27%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) HL7
15 9 (0.20%) GRC
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 450 (10.23%) Docker
2 104 (2.36%) Active Directory
3 44 (1.00%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 27 (0.61%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.30%) vCloud
10 10 (0.23%) KVM
11 9 (0.20%) Postfix
12 6 (0.14%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.11%) RACF
14 4 (0.091%) HDFS
15 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
15 2 (0.045%) XenApp
15 2 (0.045%) XenDesktop
16 1 (0.023%) Varnish
16 1 (0.023%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 380 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 358 (8.14%) Terraform
3 98 (2.23%) Grafana
4 82 (1.86%) Ansible
5 52 (1.18%) Prometheus
6 35 (0.80%) Oracle RMAN
7 29 (0.66%) Data Guard
8 22 (0.50%) Kibana
9 21 (0.48%) Control-M
10 20 (0.45%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.43%) SCOM
12 16 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Nagios
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.30%) OpenView
15 13 (0.30%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.20%) HP Quality Center
16 9 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 755 (17.16%) Oracle
2 687 (15.61%) Microsoft
3 505 (11.48%) Databricks
4 169 (3.84%) Google
5 156 (3.55%) Informatica
6 125 (2.84%) Talend
7 124 (2.82%) ServiceNow
8 107 (2.43%) SAP
9 83 (1.89%) Splunk
10 73 (1.66%) IBM
11 62 (1.41%) Denodo
12 51 (1.16%) Salesforce
13 47 (1.07%) VMware
14 44 (1.00%) Citrix
15 40 (0.91%) Bloomberg
15 40 (0.91%) Dynatrace
16 37 (0.84%) Murex
17 31 (0.70%) Alteryx
18 29 (0.66%) BMC
18 29 (0.66%) OpenAI