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

6 months to
25 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,464 3,271 3,534
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.77% 11.88% 10.64%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.56% 36.27% 33.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,997 2,310 2,619
10th Percentile £358 £335 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 78 40
10th Percentile £23.08 £25.06 £25.99
25th Percentile £29.96 £31.64 £31.03
Median hourly rate £43.75 £47.25 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +12.50% -8.46%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £81.73 £59.00 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £43.16 £41.16
% change year-on-year +3.11% +4.87% -10.30%

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 11,884 9,019 10,642
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.01% 32.74% 32.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,706 6,157 7,495
10th Percentile £363 £345 £356
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £753 £788
UK median daily rate £518 £505 £530
% change year-on-year +2.48% -4.72% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 490 263 335
10th Percentile £30.00 £29.46 £31.25
25th Percentile £51.50 £40.63 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.59%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.08 £79.75 £79.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.55%

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 August 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 August 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 August 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 2,486 £525 -0.94% 785
North of England -1 582 £472 +1.51% 371
Midlands -2 473 £463 +2.78% 222
South East -9 472 £500 - 482
West Midlands -2 371 £463 - 122
North West -1 295 £478 +2.36% 204
Yorkshire 0 247 £475 +1.33% 106
South West -3 227 £505 +18.82% 200
East of England -4 124 £495 -1.10% 105
East Midlands -4 98 £463 +20.13% 100
North East -17 49 £413 -11.29% 69
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 (4.66%) Apache Airflow
2 191 (4.28%) Apache Spark
3 178 (3.99%) Confluence
4 146 (3.27%) Apache
5 76 (1.70%) SharePoint
6 75 (1.68%) SAS
7 37 (0.83%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.69%) IIS
9 29 (0.65%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.56%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
12 20 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
13 17 (0.38%) CMS
13 17 (0.38%) nginx
14 16 (0.36%) Camunda
14 16 (0.36%) WebSphere
15 12 (0.27%) Tomcat
16 9 (0.20%) ArcGIS
17 8 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.18%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 295 (6.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 32 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 27 (0.60%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
10 2 (0.045%) Windchill
11 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.022%) InDesign
11 1 (0.022%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.022%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 44 (0.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
3 25 (0.56%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.54%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
4 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
7 15 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.22%) Finacle
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
11 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
11 8 (0.18%) Findur
11 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
12 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
12 7 (0.16%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 1,419 (31.79%) Azure
2 1,043 (23.36%) AWS
3 850 (19.04%) Power Platform
4 412 (9.23%) Azure DevOps
5 388 (8.69%) GCP
6 319 (7.15%) GitHub
7 315 (7.06%) Snowflake
8 311 (6.97%) Azure Data Factory
9 276 (6.18%) Serverless
10 261 (5.85%) dbt
11 217 (4.86%) Amazon S3
12 198 (4.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 174 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
15 95 (2.13%) Power Automate
16 92 (2.06%) SaaS
17 84 (1.88%) Entra ID
18 83 (1.86%) PowerApps
19 81 (1.81%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 65 (1.46%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 58 (1.30%) DNS
2 45 (1.01%) Firewall
3 27 (0.60%) Network Security
4 24 (0.54%) HTTP
5 22 (0.49%) SSL
6 21 (0.47%) SNMP
7 20 (0.45%) Internet
8 19 (0.43%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.43%) VPN
9 15 (0.34%) DHCP
10 11 (0.25%) Broadband
10 11 (0.25%) WAN
11 10 (0.22%) SSH
11 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
12 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 784 (17.56%) Power BI
2 623 (13.96%) Data Warehouse
3 573 (12.84%) SQL Server
4 285 (6.38%) Relational Database
5 271 (6.07%) Tableau
6 264 (5.91%) PostgreSQL
7 262 (5.87%) Data Lake
8 235 (5.26%) Metadata
9 225 (5.04%) NoSQL
10 196 (4.39%) Oracle Database
11 174 (3.90%) Azure SQL Database
12 170 (3.81%) BigQuery
13 144 (3.23%) Amazon Redshift
14 132 (2.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 125 (2.80%) Delta Lake
16 104 (2.33%) MySQL
17 99 (2.22%) Big Data
18 96 (2.15%) Amazon Athena
19 90 (2.02%) MongoDB
20 87 (1.95%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 512 (11.47%) Git
2 344 (7.71%) JIRA
3 250 (5.60%) Jenkins
4 203 (4.55%) GitLab
5 76 (1.70%) JUnit
5 76 (1.70%) Selenium
6 65 (1.46%) Gradle
7 60 (1.34%) Maven
8 58 (1.30%) Postman
9 49 (1.10%) Mockito
10 39 (0.87%) SonarQube
11 37 (0.83%) Bitbucket
12 33 (0.74%) JMeter
12 33 (0.74%) Oracle Forms
13 32 (0.72%) Visual Studio
14 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
15 27 (0.60%) Liquibase
15 27 (0.60%) TeamCity
16 26 (0.58%) ERwin
17 24 (0.54%) MLflow
General
1 1,209 (27.08%) Social Skills
2 1,157 (25.92%) Finance
3 925 (20.72%) Analytical Skills
4 476 (10.66%) Banking
5 388 (8.69%) Public Sector
6 144 (3.23%) Marketing
7 134 (3.00%) Front Office
8 123 (2.76%) Retail
9 113 (2.53%) Investment Banking
10 87 (1.95%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 78 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
12 67 (1.50%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.21%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
15 50 (1.12%) Legal
16 43 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
17 40 (0.90%) Telecoms
18 37 (0.83%) Back Office
19 35 (0.78%) Law
19 35 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 958 (21.46%) Developer
2 839 (18.79%) Data Engineer
3 652 (14.61%) Analyst
4 615 (13.78%) Senior
5 307 (6.88%) Lead
6 266 (5.96%) Data Analyst
7 241 (5.40%) Architect
8 229 (5.13%) Consultant
9 195 (4.37%) Business Analyst
10 182 (4.08%) DBA
11 178 (3.99%) Senior Data Engineer
12 158 (3.54%) Java Developer
13 151 (3.38%) Senior Developer
14 124 (2.78%) Software Engineer
15 111 (2.49%) SQL DBA
15 111 (2.49%) SQL Developer
16 103 (2.31%) Data Architect
17 100 (2.24%) Azure Engineer
18 97 (2.17%) Full-Stack Developer
19 96 (2.15%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (8.85%) .NET
2 394 (8.83%) REST
3 364 (8.15%) Terraform
4 304 (6.81%) PySpark
5 287 (6.43%) Kafka
6 221 (4.95%) Spring
7 212 (4.75%) React
8 202 (4.53%) Spring Boot
9 180 (4.03%) RESTful
10 177 (3.97%) HTML
11 171 (3.83%) JSON
12 162 (3.63%) XML
13 145 (3.25%) CSS
14 124 (2.78%) AngularJS
15 103 (2.31%) Web Services
16 101 (2.26%) Pandas
17 99 (2.22%) Middleware
18 93 (2.08%) SOAP
19 88 (1.97%) .NET Framework
20 75 (1.68%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.45%) Cloud Native
2 204 (4.57%) Data Structures
3 184 (4.12%) Product Ownership
4 142 (3.18%) Legacy Systems
5 128 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
6 108 (2.42%) Onboarding
7 101 (2.26%) Enterprise Software
8 87 (1.95%) Management Information System
9 79 (1.77%) Derivative
9 79 (1.77%) Self-Motivation
10 66 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
11 62 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
12 60 (1.34%) Replication
13 59 (1.32%) Clustering
14 58 (1.30%) Reference Data
15 54 (1.21%) AI Agents
16 51 (1.14%) Algorithms
16 51 (1.14%) Fixed Income
17 48 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
18 43 (0.96%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 313 (7.01%) Linux
2 276 (6.18%) Windows
3 207 (4.64%) Unix
4 100 (2.24%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.40%) AIX
7 15 (0.34%) Solaris
8 9 (0.20%) Ubuntu
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
8 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 8 (0.18%) VMS
10 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.13%) zOS
12 4 (0.090%) Android
12 4 (0.090%) Apple iOS
12 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.045%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,225 (27.44%) CI/CD
2 1,160 (25.99%) Agile
3 1,119 (25.07%) Data Modelling
4 1,111 (24.89%) Analytics
5 994 (22.27%) ETL
6 988 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
7 898 (20.12%) DevOps
8 877 (19.65%) Problem-Solving
9 859 (19.24%) Data Pipeline
10 743 (16.64%) Data Engineering
11 676 (15.14%) AI
12 636 (14.25%) Validation
13 633 (14.18%) Migration
14 548 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
15 490 (10.98%) Data Governance
16 485 (10.86%) Test Automation
17 466 (10.44%) Decision-Making
18 463 (10.37%) Continuous Improvement
19 460 (10.30%) Data Analysis
20 369 (8.27%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,583 (35.46%) Python
2 556 (12.46%) Java
3 439 (9.83%) C#
4 355 (7.95%) JavaScript
5 349 (7.82%) PL/SQL
6 242 (5.42%) PowerShell
7 230 (5.15%) T-SQL
8 183 (4.10%) TypeScript
9 138 (3.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 135 (3.02%) Shell Script
11 91 (2.04%) Bash
12 84 (1.88%) R
13 63 (1.41%) Scala
14 48 (1.08%) C++
15 39 (0.87%) VBA
16 37 (0.83%) Bicep
17 29 (0.65%) C
18 26 (0.58%) VB
19 22 (0.49%) Go
19 22 (0.49%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 955 (21.39%) Security Cleared
2 760 (17.03%) SC Cleared
3 330 (7.39%) Degree
4 122 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 107 (2.40%) DV Cleared
6 100 (2.24%) BPSS Clearance
7 71 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 57 (1.28%) ISTQB
9 45 (1.01%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.96%) Master's Degree
11 39 (0.87%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.29%) ACCA
15 13 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 13 (0.29%) CIMA
15 13 (0.29%) FFIEC
16 12 (0.27%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 837 (18.75%) Data Quality
2 355 (7.95%) QA
3 144 (3.23%) GDPR
4 51 (1.14%) Accessibility
5 43 (0.96%) SLA
6 26 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
7 21 (0.47%) NIST
8 20 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (0.45%) IFRS
8 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 16 (0.36%) MiFID
10 13 (0.29%) PMO
10 13 (0.29%) Solvency II
11 12 (0.27%) COBIT
11 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
12 9 (0.20%) GRC
12 9 (0.20%) HL7
12 9 (0.20%) WCAG
13 8 (0.18%) NCSC
System Software
1 440 (9.86%) Docker
2 127 (2.84%) Active Directory
3 48 (1.08%) VMware Infrastructure
4 39 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
5 38 (0.85%) Oracle RAC
6 18 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.34%) vCloud
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 10 (0.22%) Hyper-V
11 7 (0.16%) Postfix
12 4 (0.090%) KVM
13 3 (0.067%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
14 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
14 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 2 (0.045%) Squid
15 1 (0.022%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.022%) RACF
15 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 370 (8.29%) Kubernetes
2 93 (2.08%) Ansible
3 82 (1.84%) Grafana
4 45 (1.01%) Prometheus
5 43 (0.96%) Oracle RMAN
6 40 (0.90%) Control-M
6 40 (0.90%) Data Guard
7 30 (0.67%) SCOM
8 21 (0.47%) Kibana
9 16 (0.36%) Nagios
9 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
10 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
10 15 (0.34%) vCenter Server
11 14 (0.31%) Netcool
12 13 (0.29%) OpenView
12 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
14 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
15 10 (0.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 748 (16.76%) Microsoft
2 747 (16.73%) Oracle
3 532 (11.92%) Databricks
4 170 (3.81%) Google
5 142 (3.18%) Informatica
6 122 (2.73%) SAP
7 103 (2.31%) ServiceNow
8 101 (2.26%) Talend
9 91 (2.04%) IBM
10 81 (1.81%) Splunk
11 65 (1.46%) VMware
12 56 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 54 (1.21%) Denodo
14 41 (0.92%) Bloomberg
15 40 (0.90%) BMC
16 39 (0.87%) Dynatrace
17 35 (0.78%) Citrix
18 34 (0.76%) Alteryx
19 33 (0.74%) Murex
20 32 (0.72%) Adobe