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

6 months to
6 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,145 3,017 3,659
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.83% 12.48% 9.90%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.90% 36.70% 32.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,816 2,162 2,702
10th Percentile £350 £360 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £589 £625 £650
90th Percentile £688 £768 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 58 54
10th Percentile £26.50 £21.72 £22.65
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.06 £27.28
Median hourly rate £47.50 £37.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.52% -12.35% -15.00%
75th Percentile £72.63 £57.50 £54.03
90th Percentile £83.00 £76.53 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £52.49 £38.85 £42.50
% change year-on-year +35.13% -8.60% -20.93%

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 11,233 8,221 11,175
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.63% 34.00% 30.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,371 5,694 8,040
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.29% -2.87% -4.00%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £650
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 531 193 471
10th Percentile £37.25 £28.23 £35.52
25th Percentile £55.00 £36.00 £49.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +5.69% -1.60% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £85.00 £78.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.25
% change year-on-year +14.54% -8.84% -0.40%

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 6 June 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 6 June 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 6 June 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 -2 2,296 £523 -1.42% 983
Midlands +3 522 £465 +7.89% 224
North of England -8 511 £460 -3.16% 450
West Midlands +5 420 £459 +1.25% 139
South East -14 398 £475 -5.00% 450
North West -3 260 £460 -3.16% 270
Yorkshire -14 214 £475 - 120
South West -1 211 £500 +5.26% 165
East of England -13 103 £495 +1.54% 113
East Midlands 0 98 £525 +36.36% 85
North East -5 49 £425 -8.11% 64
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
1 228 (5.50%) Apache Spark
2 169 (4.08%) Apache Airflow
3 146 (3.52%) Confluence
4 144 (3.47%) Apache
5 86 (2.07%) SAS
6 61 (1.47%) SharePoint
7 31 (0.75%) IIS
7 31 (0.75%) WebLogic
8 28 (0.68%) Oracle Workflow
9 24 (0.58%) Tomcat
10 20 (0.48%) Jupyter
10 20 (0.48%) Microsoft Exchange
11 16 (0.39%) Appian
12 15 (0.36%) CMS
12 15 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
12 15 (0.36%) WebSphere
13 14 (0.34%) nginx
14 11 (0.27%) Camunda
14 11 (0.27%) Mendix
15 10 (0.24%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 262 (6.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 41 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 41 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 30 (0.72%) Spreadsheet
4 29 (0.70%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 10 (0.24%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.14%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.12%) Notepad++
8 3 (0.072%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.048%) Notion
9 2 (0.048%) Trello
10 1 (0.024%) InDesign
10 1 (0.024%) Mingle
10 1 (0.024%) Weka
Business Applications
1 38 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.63%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.48%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
4 20 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
4 20 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
5 17 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
6 16 (0.39%) Oracle Receivables
7 15 (0.36%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
9 12 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 10 (0.24%) Findur
10 10 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.24%) Payment Gateway
11 9 (0.22%) Endur
11 9 (0.22%) NetSuite
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.19%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,375 (33.17%) Azure
2 1,018 (24.56%) AWS
3 794 (19.16%) Power Platform
4 400 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
5 349 (8.42%) GCP
6 333 (8.03%) Azure Data Factory
7 311 (7.50%) GitHub
8 256 (6.18%) Serverless
9 249 (6.01%) Snowflake
10 234 (5.65%) Amazon S3
11 215 (5.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 198 (4.78%) dbt
13 162 (3.91%) GitHub Actions
14 161 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
15 77 (1.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 77 (1.86%) SaaS
16 73 (1.76%) Amazon EC2
16 73 (1.76%) Entra ID
16 73 (1.76%) Power Automate
17 59 (1.42%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 46 (1.11%) DNS
1 46 (1.11%) Firewall
2 20 (0.48%) SNMP
3 17 (0.41%) HTTP
3 17 (0.41%) Network Security
4 16 (0.39%) Internet
5 15 (0.36%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.36%) VPN
6 14 (0.34%) SSL
6 14 (0.34%) WAN
7 11 (0.27%) Wi-Fi
8 10 (0.24%) LAN
9 9 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 8 (0.19%) 3GPP
11 7 (0.17%) SAN
12 6 (0.14%) IPsec
12 6 (0.14%) RTP
13 5 (0.12%) BGP
13 5 (0.12%) DHCP
13 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 728 (17.56%) Power BI
2 536 (12.93%) Data Warehouse
3 521 (12.57%) SQL Server
4 284 (6.85%) Data Lake
5 281 (6.78%) Tableau
6 267 (6.44%) PostgreSQL
7 258 (6.22%) Relational Database
8 225 (5.43%) NoSQL
9 205 (4.95%) Metadata
10 189 (4.56%) Azure SQL Database
11 160 (3.86%) Oracle Database
12 152 (3.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 135 (3.26%) BigQuery
14 126 (3.04%) Delta Lake
15 114 (2.75%) Amazon Redshift
15 114 (2.75%) Big Data
16 106 (2.56%) MySQL
17 105 (2.53%) Oracle Reports
18 93 (2.24%) Amazon RDS
19 89 (2.15%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 436 (10.52%) Git
2 328 (7.91%) JIRA
3 224 (5.40%) Jenkins
4 201 (4.85%) GitLab
5 65 (1.57%) JUnit
6 58 (1.40%) Selenium
7 56 (1.35%) Postman
8 49 (1.18%) Maven
9 47 (1.13%) Mockito
10 41 (0.99%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.99%) Gradle
11 35 (0.84%) SonarQube
12 31 (0.75%) MLflow
13 29 (0.70%) REST Assured
14 28 (0.68%) ERwin
15 25 (0.60%) Bitbucket
15 25 (0.60%) JMeter
16 24 (0.58%) TeamCity
16 24 (0.58%) Zephyr
17 23 (0.55%) Liquibase
General
1 1,116 (26.92%) Finance
2 1,065 (25.69%) Social Skills
3 770 (18.58%) Analytical Skills
4 396 (9.55%) Banking
5 345 (8.32%) Public Sector
6 115 (2.77%) Marketing
7 113 (2.73%) Front Office
8 99 (2.39%) Investment Banking
9 87 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
10 74 (1.79%) Retail
11 64 (1.54%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 57 (1.38%) Financial Institution
13 54 (1.30%) Legal
14 42 (1.01%) Publishing
15 38 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
16 37 (0.89%) Manufacturing
17 34 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 34 (0.82%) Telecoms
18 32 (0.77%) Law
19 31 (0.75%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 861 (20.77%) Developer
2 858 (20.70%) Data Engineer
3 578 (13.94%) Analyst
4 532 (12.83%) Senior
5 284 (6.85%) Lead
6 254 (6.13%) Data Analyst
7 232 (5.60%) Architect
8 193 (4.66%) Consultant
9 172 (4.15%) Business Analyst
10 166 (4.00%) Java Developer
11 155 (3.74%) Senior Data Engineer
12 133 (3.21%) Senior Developer
13 132 (3.18%) DBA
14 124 (2.99%) Software Engineer
15 104 (2.51%) Azure Engineer
16 101 (2.44%) C# Developer
17 91 (2.20%) SQL Developer
18 86 (2.07%) Data Architect
18 86 (2.07%) Python Developer
19 83 (2.00%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (8.61%) .NET
2 341 (8.23%) REST
3 258 (6.22%) PySpark
4 256 (6.18%) Kafka
5 209 (5.04%) Spring
6 199 (4.80%) Spring Boot
7 196 (4.73%) React
8 183 (4.41%) RESTful
9 151 (3.64%) HTML
10 144 (3.47%) JSON
11 138 (3.33%) XML
12 133 (3.21%) CSS
13 119 (2.87%) Pandas
14 109 (2.63%) AngularJS
15 102 (2.46%) SOAP
16 91 (2.20%) Middleware
16 91 (2.20%) Web Services
17 82 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 77 (1.86%) OAuth
19 69 (1.66%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 275 (6.63%) Cloud Native
2 146 (3.52%) Data Structures
3 139 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 127 (3.06%) Product Ownership
5 117 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
6 84 (2.03%) Management Information System
7 81 (1.95%) Derivative
8 77 (1.86%) Onboarding
9 69 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
10 68 (1.64%) Analytical Mindset
11 56 (1.35%) Clustering
12 54 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
13 53 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
14 52 (1.25%) Equities
15 49 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
16 48 (1.16%) Fixed Income
17 44 (1.06%) Algorithms
18 41 (0.99%) Replication
19 40 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 39 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 293 (7.07%) Linux
2 250 (6.03%) Windows
3 202 (4.87%) Unix
4 87 (2.10%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.58%) AIX
6 21 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 15 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.24%) Solaris
9 9 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 8 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.19%) zOS
11 7 (0.17%) Android
11 7 (0.17%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.17%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.097%) Oracle Linux
12 4 (0.097%) VMS
13 3 (0.072%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.048%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.048%) HPUX
14 2 (0.048%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,159 (27.96%) CI/CD
2 1,041 (25.11%) Analytics
3 1,026 (24.75%) Data Modelling
4 1,013 (24.44%) Agile
5 998 (24.08%) ETL
6 923 (22.27%) Business Intelligence
7 894 (21.57%) DevOps
8 807 (19.47%) Problem-Solving
9 777 (18.75%) Data Pipeline
10 674 (16.26%) Data Engineering
11 564 (13.61%) AI
12 543 (13.10%) Migration
13 507 (12.23%) Validation
14 453 (10.93%) Data Governance
15 433 (10.45%) Test Automation
16 403 (9.72%) Decision-Making
17 398 (9.60%) Data Analysis
18 372 (8.97%) Continuous Improvement
18 372 (8.97%) Microservices
19 371 (8.95%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,533 (36.98%) Python
2 555 (13.39%) Java
3 440 (10.62%) C#
4 316 (7.62%) JavaScript
5 303 (7.31%) PL/SQL
6 217 (5.24%) T-SQL
7 210 (5.07%) PowerShell
8 141 (3.40%) TypeScript
9 122 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 116 (2.80%) Shell Script
11 102 (2.46%) R
12 80 (1.93%) Bash
13 77 (1.86%) Scala
14 59 (1.42%) C++
15 40 (0.97%) VBA
16 38 (0.92%) Bicep
17 30 (0.72%) Perl
18 29 (0.70%) VB
19 26 (0.63%) C
20 25 (0.60%) Go
Qualifications
1 864 (20.84%) Security Cleared
2 695 (16.77%) SC Cleared
3 326 (7.86%) Degree
4 107 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 91 (2.20%) BPSS Clearance
6 78 (1.88%) DV Cleared
7 70 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 50 (1.21%) Master's Degree
9 49 (1.18%) ISTQB
10 34 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
11 25 (0.60%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.41%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.39%) PhD
14 12 (0.29%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 11 (0.27%) CISSP
16 10 (0.24%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.24%) PMP
17 9 (0.22%) CISM
17 9 (0.22%) Oracle Certification
17 9 (0.22%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 741 (17.88%) Data Quality
2 314 (7.58%) QA
3 175 (4.22%) GDPR
4 43 (1.04%) SLA
5 39 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 32 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.58%) PMO
9 23 (0.55%) NIST
10 18 (0.43%) PCI DSS
11 17 (0.41%) IFRS
12 15 (0.36%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 14 (0.34%) HIPAA
13 14 (0.34%) MiFID
14 12 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
14 12 (0.29%) ISO 20022
14 12 (0.29%) Solvency II
15 11 (0.27%) HL7
16 10 (0.24%) GRC
17 8 (0.19%) NCSC
System Software
1 474 (11.44%) Docker
2 93 (2.24%) Active Directory
3 36 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 28 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
5 23 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
6 16 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 15 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.24%) KVM
9 10 (0.24%) vCloud
10 9 (0.22%) Postfix
11 6 (0.14%) HDFS
11 6 (0.14%) RACF
12 4 (0.097%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.097%) XenApp
12 4 (0.097%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.072%) Oracle Clusterware
14 2 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.048%) GridGain
15 1 (0.024%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 383 (9.24%) Kubernetes
2 333 (8.03%) Terraform
3 108 (2.61%) Grafana
4 68 (1.64%) Ansible
5 64 (1.54%) Prometheus
6 38 (0.92%) Oracle RMAN
7 29 (0.70%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.46%) Kibana
8 19 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.41%) Control-M
9 17 (0.41%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.36%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.34%) Nagios
11 14 (0.34%) Netcool
11 14 (0.34%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.31%) OpenView
12 13 (0.31%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.27%) SCOM
14 9 (0.22%) Kiali
14 9 (0.22%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 695 (16.77%) Oracle
2 641 (15.46%) Microsoft
3 495 (11.94%) Databricks
4 163 (3.93%) Google
5 147 (3.55%) Informatica
6 129 (3.11%) ServiceNow
7 118 (2.85%) Talend
8 107 (2.58%) SAP
9 86 (2.07%) Splunk
10 64 (1.54%) IBM
11 62 (1.50%) Denodo
12 51 (1.23%) Salesforce
13 44 (1.06%) VMware
14 43 (1.04%) Citrix
15 37 (0.89%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.82%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.77%) Murex
17 32 (0.77%) OpenAI
18 31 (0.75%) MuleSoft
19 30 (0.72%) HP