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

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,436 3,242 3,594
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.60% 11.68% 10.91%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.07% 35.69% 33.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,991 2,269 2,611
10th Percentile £356 £327 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -0.92%
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 80 79 40
10th Percentile £22.95 £29.00 £25.99
25th Percentile £28.38 £33.21 £30.38
Median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% +20.48% -2.72%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £54.69
90th Percentile £77.53 £58.50 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +25.00% -12.82%

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 11,965 9,085 10,675
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.90% 32.74% 32.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,734 6,156 7,381
10th Percentile £363 £345 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £520 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 503 262 308
10th Percentile £28.50 £31.25 £31.03
25th Percentile £51.25 £41.76 £50.94
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.25 £67.88 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.80 £79.88 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 13 September 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 September 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 September 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 2,496 £525 - 2,599
North of England +2 586 £475 +5.56% 510
South East -11 459 £500 - 613
Midlands -5 452 £469 +4.22% 332
West Midlands -3 351 £469 -6.20% 201
North West -3 292 £483 +8.54% 285
Yorkshire +7 251 £475 +4.11% 166
South West -2 221 £513 +20.59% 252
East of England -4 119 £495 -1.49% 168
East Midlands -4 99 £464 +17.41% 131
North East -15 52 £406 -12.63% 63
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
1 222 (5.00%) Apache Airflow
2 184 (4.15%) Confluence
3 180 (4.06%) Apache Spark
4 143 (3.22%) Apache
5 84 (1.89%) SharePoint
6 70 (1.58%) SAS
7 35 (0.79%) Oracle Workflow
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
8 29 (0.65%) WebLogic
9 26 (0.59%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) CMS
13 18 (0.41%) nginx
14 17 (0.38%) Camunda
15 15 (0.34%) WebSphere
16 12 (0.27%) ArcGIS
17 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 9 (0.20%) Tomcat
19 6 (0.14%) MTS
Applications
1 270 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.52%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.090%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.090%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.068%) Windchill
10 2 (0.045%) Mingle
11 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.023%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 45 (1.01%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
3 27 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
4 25 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.50%) Aladdin
7 21 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
8 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
9 15 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
10 11 (0.25%) Summit
11 10 (0.23%) Finacle
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.23%) Oracle FAH
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
13 8 (0.18%) Findur
13 8 (0.18%) Front Arena
13 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,377 (31.04%) Azure
2 1,059 (23.87%) AWS
3 851 (19.18%) Power Platform
4 415 (9.36%) GCP
5 379 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (7.57%) Snowflake
7 314 (7.08%) GitHub
8 301 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
9 277 (6.24%) dbt
10 272 (6.13%) Serverless
11 221 (4.98%) Amazon S3
12 193 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
14 154 (3.47%) GitHub Actions
15 98 (2.21%) Power Automate
16 94 (2.12%) SaaS
17 88 (1.98%) PowerApps
18 85 (1.92%) Entra ID
19 82 (1.85%) Azure Databricks
20 79 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 58 (1.31%) DNS
2 43 (0.97%) Firewall
3 27 (0.61%) SSL
4 26 (0.59%) HTTP
5 23 (0.52%) Network Security
6 21 (0.47%) Internet
7 19 (0.43%) VPN
8 18 (0.41%) TCP/IP
9 17 (0.38%) Broadband
9 17 (0.38%) SNMP
10 15 (0.34%) DHCP
11 11 (0.25%) SSH
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
13 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 8 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
14 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
15 6 (0.14%) 3GPP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 781 (17.61%) Power BI
2 612 (13.80%) Data Warehouse
3 575 (12.96%) SQL Server
4 296 (6.67%) Relational Database
5 279 (6.29%) PostgreSQL
6 257 (5.79%) Data Lake
6 257 (5.79%) Tableau
7 234 (5.28%) Metadata
8 213 (4.80%) NoSQL
9 199 (4.49%) Oracle Database
10 179 (4.04%) BigQuery
11 159 (3.58%) Azure SQL Database
12 134 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
13 129 (2.91%) Delta Lake
14 125 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 117 (2.64%) MySQL
16 97 (2.19%) Amazon Athena
17 93 (2.10%) Big Data
18 92 (2.07%) MongoDB
19 91 (2.05%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 548 (12.35%) Git
2 352 (7.94%) JIRA
3 245 (5.52%) Jenkins
4 205 (4.62%) GitLab
5 88 (1.98%) Selenium
6 79 (1.78%) JUnit
7 76 (1.71%) Gradle
8 69 (1.56%) Maven
9 57 (1.28%) Postman
10 50 (1.13%) Mockito
11 45 (1.01%) SonarQube
12 38 (0.86%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
14 29 (0.65%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
16 26 (0.59%) Liquibase
16 26 (0.59%) MLflow
17 25 (0.56%) JMeter
18 23 (0.52%) REST Assured
18 23 (0.52%) TeamCity
General
1 1,239 (27.93%) Social Skills
2 1,176 (26.51%) Finance
3 930 (20.96%) Analytical Skills
4 510 (11.50%) Banking
5 382 (8.61%) Public Sector
6 151 (3.40%) Marketing
7 132 (2.98%) Front Office
8 126 (2.84%) Retail
9 118 (2.66%) Investment Banking
10 92 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 76 (1.71%) Documentation Skills
12 70 (1.58%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.19%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (0.95%) Legal
16 38 (0.86%) Back Office
16 38 (0.86%) Local Government
17 36 (0.81%) Organisational Skills
18 35 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
19 34 (0.77%) Law
Job Titles
1 935 (21.08%) Developer
2 840 (18.94%) Data Engineer
3 667 (15.04%) Analyst
4 636 (14.34%) Senior
5 306 (6.90%) Lead
6 271 (6.11%) Data Analyst
7 225 (5.07%) Architect
8 197 (4.44%) Business Analyst
9 195 (4.40%) Consultant
10 193 (4.35%) Senior Data Engineer
11 175 (3.94%) DBA
12 160 (3.61%) Java Developer
13 155 (3.49%) Senior Developer
14 121 (2.73%) Software Engineer
15 108 (2.43%) SQL DBA
16 103 (2.32%) Azure Engineer
17 102 (2.30%) Data Architect
17 102 (2.30%) SQL Developer
18 101 (2.28%) Full-Stack Developer
19 95 (2.14%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (8.95%) REST
2 394 (8.88%) .NET
3 372 (8.39%) Terraform
4 307 (6.92%) PySpark
5 290 (6.54%) Kafka
6 227 (5.12%) Spring
7 220 (4.96%) React
8 217 (4.89%) Spring Boot
9 182 (4.10%) HTML
10 172 (3.88%) RESTful
11 166 (3.74%) JSON
12 159 (3.58%) CSS
13 140 (3.16%) XML
14 109 (2.46%) AngularJS
15 99 (2.23%) Web Services
16 98 (2.21%) Pandas
17 97 (2.19%) SOAP
18 93 (2.10%) Middleware
19 82 (1.85%) .NET Framework
20 79 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 273 (6.15%) Cloud Native
2 218 (4.91%) Data Structures
3 197 (4.44%) Product Ownership
4 137 (3.09%) Legacy Systems
5 123 (2.77%) Distributed Systems
6 115 (2.59%) Enterprise Software
7 114 (2.57%) Onboarding
8 95 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 76 (1.71%) AI Agents
9 76 (1.71%) Self-Motivation
10 73 (1.65%) Derivative
11 67 (1.51%) Replication
12 65 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
13 59 (1.33%) Data Protection Act
14 58 (1.31%) Reference Data
15 57 (1.28%) Clustering
16 50 (1.13%) Algorithms
17 48 (1.08%) Fixed Income
18 45 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
19 40 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 318 (7.17%) Linux
2 280 (6.31%) Windows
3 212 (4.78%) Unix
4 110 (2.48%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (0.50%) Solaris
7 14 (0.32%) AIX
8 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
9 10 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.18%) VMS
12 6 (0.14%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) zOS
14 4 (0.090%) Android
14 4 (0.090%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.090%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.068%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.045%) HPUX
16 2 (0.045%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,214 (27.37%) CI/CD
2 1,159 (26.13%) Agile
3 1,115 (25.14%) Data Modelling
4 1,107 (24.95%) Analytics
5 980 (22.09%) Business Intelligence
6 967 (21.80%) ETL
7 889 (20.04%) Problem-Solving
8 867 (19.54%) DevOps
9 866 (19.52%) Data Pipeline
10 752 (16.95%) Data Engineering
11 731 (16.48%) AI
12 665 (14.99%) Validation
13 622 (14.02%) Migration
14 607 (13.68%) Stakeholder Management
15 501 (11.29%) Continuous Improvement
16 497 (11.20%) Test Automation
17 493 (11.11%) Data Governance
18 481 (10.84%) Data Analysis
19 476 (10.73%) Decision-Making
20 388 (8.75%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,617 (36.45%) Python
2 552 (12.44%) Java
3 421 (9.49%) C#
4 364 (8.21%) JavaScript
5 353 (7.96%) PL/SQL
6 244 (5.50%) PowerShell
7 209 (4.71%) T-SQL
8 188 (4.24%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 135 (3.04%) Shell Script
11 103 (2.32%) Bash
12 80 (1.80%) R
13 60 (1.35%) Scala
14 42 (0.95%) C++
15 35 (0.79%) VBA
16 29 (0.65%) Bicep
17 26 (0.59%) C
17 26 (0.59%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.56%) VB
19 23 (0.52%) Go
Qualifications
1 940 (21.19%) Security Cleared
2 739 (16.66%) SC Cleared
3 329 (7.42%) Degree
4 128 (2.89%) DV Cleared
5 117 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
6 106 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 71 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.22%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.13%) Microsoft Certification
10 41 (0.92%) Master's Degree
11 38 (0.86%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.41%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.34%) ACCA
15 15 (0.34%) CIMA
15 15 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
16 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
17 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
17 12 (0.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 863 (19.45%) Data Quality
2 363 (8.18%) QA
3 125 (2.82%) GDPR
4 48 (1.08%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.99%) SLA
6 27 (0.61%) Actionable Recommendations
7 25 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 21 (0.47%) IFRS
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
9 19 (0.43%) NIST
10 17 (0.38%) MiFID
11 15 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 11 (0.25%) COBIT
12 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
12 11 (0.25%) PMO
13 10 (0.23%) HIPAA
14 9 (0.20%) GRC
14 9 (0.20%) Solvency II
15 8 (0.18%) WCAG
16 7 (0.16%) HL7
System Software
1 434 (9.78%) Docker
2 116 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.90%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
6 19 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.32%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.16%) Postfix
11 4 (0.090%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 4 (0.090%) KVM
12 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.045%) GridGain
12 2 (0.045%) Squid
13 1 (0.023%) GPFS
13 1 (0.023%) RACF
13 1 (0.023%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 362 (8.16%) Kubernetes
2 93 (2.10%) Ansible
3 83 (1.87%) Grafana
4 49 (1.10%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.90%) Control-M
5 40 (0.90%) SCOM
6 39 (0.88%) Data Guard
6 39 (0.88%) Oracle RMAN
7 22 (0.50%) Kibana
8 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
9 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
9 12 (0.27%) Nagios
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 12 (0.27%) ZABBIX
10 11 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
10 11 (0.25%) Tivoli
11 10 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 10 (0.23%) Netcool
12 9 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
12 9 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 756 (17.04%) Microsoft
2 755 (17.02%) Oracle
3 562 (12.67%) Databricks
4 189 (4.26%) Google
5 129 (2.91%) Informatica
6 124 (2.80%) SAP
7 99 (2.23%) Talend
8 91 (2.05%) ServiceNow
9 89 (2.01%) IBM
10 77 (1.74%) Splunk
11 70 (1.58%) VMware
12 62 (1.40%) Salesforce
13 49 (1.10%) Denodo
14 39 (0.88%) Bloomberg
15 36 (0.81%) BMC
16 35 (0.79%) Alteryx
16 35 (0.79%) Murex
17 32 (0.72%) Citrix
17 32 (0.72%) Dynatrace
17 32 (0.72%) Foundry