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

6 months to
13 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,992 2,983 3,671
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.17% 12.24% 9.83%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.39% 36.16% 33.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,773 2,106 2,690
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -6.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £700 £761 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 56 59
10th Percentile £26.50 £24.13 £22.43
25th Percentile £34.75 £30.19 £26.12
Median hourly rate £48.11 £50.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.78% +17.65% -13.76%
75th Percentile £72.19 £65.71 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.40 £79.72 £61.99
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £47.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +11.70% +10.59% -15.00%

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 10,971 8,249 10,843
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.94% 33.84% 29.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,317 5,679 7,875
10th Percentile £352 £361 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £538
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -5.11%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £656
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 212 431
10th Percentile £41.94 £25.31 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +1.87% -1.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.56 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 April 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 April 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 April 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 0 2,288 £510 -5.56% 821
Midlands +5 508 £465 +1.20% 282
North of England -12 456 £450 -5.26% 404
West Midlands +6 404 £460 -2.54% 162
South East -18 311 £500 - 496
North West -3 256 £450 -5.26% 235
South West -5 223 £475 -5.00% 165
Yorkshire -17 180 £465 -2.11% 116
East Midlands +1 102 £525 +34.27% 120
East of England -21 88 £510 +9.09% 137
North East -9 32 £475 +4.40% 58
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
1 216 (5.41%) Apache Spark
2 150 (3.76%) Apache Airflow
3 136 (3.41%) Apache
4 121 (3.03%) Confluence
5 89 (2.23%) SAS
6 81 (2.03%) SharePoint
7 50 (1.25%) WebLogic
8 31 (0.78%) IIS
9 25 (0.63%) Tomcat
10 21 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
12 18 (0.45%) Jupyter
13 15 (0.38%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.35%) nginx
14 14 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
15 13 (0.33%) Appian
15 13 (0.33%) CMS
16 12 (0.30%) HCL Notes
16 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 11 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 272 (6.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.23%) MS Visio
4 34 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 21 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.28%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.075%) Notion
9 3 (0.075%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.075%) Trello
10 1 (0.025%) InDesign
10 1 (0.025%) Mingle
10 1 (0.025%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 39 (0.98%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.68%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
4 23 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
5 22 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.53%) NEC Housing
6 21 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
7 20 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
8 17 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
9 16 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
10 15 (0.38%) NetSuite
11 13 (0.33%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.28%) Oracle Cash Management
12 11 (0.28%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
13 10 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 10 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
13 10 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
14 9 (0.23%) Advent Geneva
15 8 (0.20%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,379 (34.54%) Azure
2 968 (24.25%) AWS
3 782 (19.59%) Power Platform
4 418 (10.47%) Azure DevOps
5 336 (8.42%) Azure Data Factory
6 317 (7.94%) GCP
7 304 (7.62%) GitHub
8 268 (6.71%) Serverless
9 236 (5.91%) Snowflake
10 227 (5.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 223 (5.59%) Amazon S3
12 178 (4.46%) dbt
13 157 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
14 149 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
15 90 (2.25%) Power Automate
16 87 (2.18%) SaaS
17 77 (1.93%) Azure Functions
18 76 (1.90%) AWS CloudFormation
19 73 (1.83%) PowerApps
20 72 (1.80%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 49 (1.23%) Firewall
2 37 (0.93%) DNS
3 22 (0.55%) HTTP
3 22 (0.55%) Network Security
4 16 (0.40%) Internet
4 16 (0.40%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.35%) WAN
6 13 (0.33%) SSL
7 11 (0.28%) LAN
7 11 (0.28%) SNMP
7 11 (0.28%) VPN
8 9 (0.23%) 5G
8 9 (0.23%) DHCP
9 7 (0.18%) 4G
9 7 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (0.15%) VLAN
11 5 (0.13%) 2G
11 5 (0.13%) IPsec
11 5 (0.13%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 712 (17.84%) Power BI
2 521 (13.05%) Data Warehouse
3 485 (12.15%) SQL Server
4 263 (6.59%) NoSQL
4 263 (6.59%) Tableau
5 262 (6.56%) Relational Database
6 259 (6.49%) PostgreSQL
7 253 (6.34%) Data Lake
8 210 (5.26%) Azure SQL Database
9 208 (5.21%) Metadata
10 143 (3.58%) Oracle Database
10 143 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 123 (3.08%) MySQL
12 118 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
13 114 (2.86%) BigQuery
13 114 (2.86%) Delta Lake
14 101 (2.53%) Big Data
15 99 (2.48%) Oracle Reports
16 96 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
17 93 (2.33%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 437 (10.95%) Git
2 322 (8.07%) JIRA
3 213 (5.34%) Jenkins
4 156 (3.91%) GitLab
5 62 (1.55%) Selenium
6 61 (1.53%) JUnit
7 47 (1.18%) Postman
8 40 (1.00%) Oracle APEX
9 38 (0.95%) Maven
10 37 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 35 (0.88%) MLflow
12 33 (0.83%) Mockito
13 29 (0.73%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.68%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.65%) ERwin
16 25 (0.63%) JMeter
16 25 (0.63%) SonarQube
17 23 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
18 22 (0.55%) Cypress.io
19 21 (0.53%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,120 (28.06%) Social Skills
2 1,089 (27.28%) Finance
3 749 (18.76%) Analytical Skills
4 400 (10.02%) Banking
5 341 (8.54%) Public Sector
6 104 (2.61%) Front Office
6 104 (2.61%) Investment Banking
7 95 (2.38%) Documentation Skills
8 87 (2.18%) Marketing
9 66 (1.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 56 (1.40%) Legal
10 56 (1.40%) Retail
11 54 (1.35%) Financial Institution
12 41 (1.03%) Telecoms
13 37 (0.93%) Publishing
14 33 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
14 33 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
15 32 (0.80%) Law
16 29 (0.73%) Manufacturing
17 28 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 895 (22.42%) Developer
2 782 (19.59%) Data Engineer
3 580 (14.53%) Analyst
4 502 (12.58%) Senior
5 271 (6.79%) Lead
6 247 (6.19%) Data Analyst
7 217 (5.44%) Architect
8 197 (4.93%) Business Analyst
9 185 (4.63%) Consultant
10 153 (3.83%) Java Developer
11 146 (3.66%) Senior Developer
12 120 (3.01%) Senior Data Engineer
13 117 (2.93%) Azure Engineer
14 113 (2.83%) DBA
15 109 (2.73%) Software Engineer
16 102 (2.56%) C# Developer
17 94 (2.35%) Python Developer
18 87 (2.18%) Full-Stack Developer
19 86 (2.15%) Data Architect
20 85 (2.13%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (8.79%) .NET
2 317 (7.94%) REST
3 253 (6.34%) Kafka
4 245 (6.14%) PySpark
5 197 (4.93%) React
6 184 (4.61%) RESTful
7 183 (4.58%) Spring
8 169 (4.23%) Spring Boot
9 149 (3.73%) XML
10 141 (3.53%) HTML
11 127 (3.18%) Pandas
12 122 (3.06%) JSON
13 120 (3.01%) CSS
14 113 (2.83%) AngularJS
15 91 (2.28%) Node.js
16 84 (2.10%) Middleware
17 82 (2.05%) SOAP
18 81 (2.03%) .NET Framework
19 78 (1.95%) Web Services
20 74 (1.85%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 250 (6.26%) Cloud Native
2 140 (3.51%) Data Structures
3 128 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
4 118 (2.96%) Product Ownership
5 91 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
6 86 (2.15%) Management Information System
7 74 (1.85%) Derivative
8 68 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
9 67 (1.68%) Onboarding
10 64 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
11 59 (1.48%) Equities
12 57 (1.43%) Fixed Income
13 52 (1.30%) Algorithms
14 48 (1.20%) Clustering
15 46 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
15 46 (1.15%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 45 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 39 (0.98%) Replication
18 37 (0.93%) NHS
19 35 (0.88%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 280 (7.01%) Linux
2 243 (6.09%) Windows
3 198 (4.96%) Unix
4 78 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 21 (0.53%) AIX
6 19 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (0.15%) Android
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
10 6 (0.15%) zOS
11 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 3 (0.075%) CentOS
12 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
13 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 1 (0.025%) VME
14 1 (0.025%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,083 (27.13%) CI/CD
2 1,052 (26.35%) Agile
3 1,044 (26.15%) Analytics
4 992 (24.85%) Data Modelling
5 950 (23.80%) ETL
6 947 (23.72%) Business Intelligence
7 924 (23.15%) DevOps
8 859 (21.52%) Problem-Solving
9 701 (17.56%) Data Pipeline
10 623 (15.61%) Data Engineering
11 487 (12.20%) AI
12 483 (12.10%) Data Governance
12 483 (12.10%) Migration
13 471 (11.80%) Validation
14 382 (9.57%) Data Analysis
15 380 (9.52%) Test Automation
16 370 (9.27%) Decision-Making
17 365 (9.14%) Performance Tuning
18 353 (8.84%) Microservices
19 349 (8.74%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,500 (37.58%) Python
2 549 (13.75%) Java
3 430 (10.77%) C#
4 321 (8.04%) JavaScript
5 308 (7.72%) PL/SQL
6 180 (4.51%) T-SQL
7 171 (4.28%) PowerShell
8 140 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 119 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 117 (2.93%) Shell Script
11 112 (2.81%) R
12 92 (2.30%) Scala
13 67 (1.68%) Bash
14 62 (1.55%) C++
14 62 (1.55%) VBA
15 45 (1.13%) Bicep
16 44 (1.10%) Perl
17 29 (0.73%) Go
18 27 (0.68%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 835 (20.92%) Security Cleared
2 673 (16.86%) SC Cleared
3 320 (8.02%) Degree
4 115 (2.88%) Computer Science Degree
5 84 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 66 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 51 (1.28%) DV Cleared
8 50 (1.25%) ISTQB
8 50 (1.25%) Master's Degree
9 41 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
10 31 (0.78%) AWS Certification
11 18 (0.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 16 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
12 16 (0.40%) PhD
13 13 (0.33%) CBAP
14 10 (0.25%) PMP
15 9 (0.23%) DBS Check
15 9 (0.23%) PMI Certification
16 8 (0.20%) ISEB
17 7 (0.18%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 722 (18.09%) Data Quality
2 303 (7.59%) QA
3 177 (4.43%) GDPR
4 54 (1.35%) Accessibility
5 35 (0.88%) SLA
6 30 (0.75%) PMO
7 29 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 23 (0.58%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) NIST
11 15 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
11 15 (0.38%) MiFID
12 14 (0.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 13 (0.33%) HIPAA
13 13 (0.33%) IFRS
14 12 (0.30%) WCAG
15 11 (0.28%) HL7
16 10 (0.25%) ISO 20022
16 10 (0.25%) SEPA
16 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 462 (11.57%) Docker
2 96 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 34 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
4 20 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
5 18 (0.45%) VMware Infrastructure
6 14 (0.35%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.20%) KVM
7 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.15%) HDFS
8 6 (0.15%) Postfix
8 6 (0.15%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
11 2 (0.050%) GridGain
11 2 (0.050%) vSphere
12 1 (0.025%) Microsoft App-V
12 1 (0.025%) Varnish
12 1 (0.025%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 412 (10.32%) Kubernetes
2 317 (7.94%) Terraform
3 93 (2.33%) Grafana
4 63 (1.58%) Ansible
5 61 (1.53%) Prometheus
6 32 (0.80%) Oracle RMAN
7 21 (0.53%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.43%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.38%) SCCM
11 14 (0.35%) Control-M
12 11 (0.28%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.25%) Nagios
13 10 (0.25%) Netcool
13 10 (0.25%) OpenView
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.23%) Kiali
14 9 (0.23%) Kibana
15 8 (0.20%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 665 (16.66%) Oracle
2 657 (16.46%) Microsoft
3 485 (12.15%) Databricks
4 157 (3.93%) Google
5 122 (3.06%) ServiceNow
6 121 (3.03%) Informatica
7 103 (2.58%) SAP
8 102 (2.56%) Talend
9 76 (1.90%) Splunk
10 61 (1.53%) Salesforce
11 60 (1.50%) IBM
12 55 (1.38%) Denodo
13 52 (1.30%) Citrix
14 44 (1.10%) OpenAI
15 34 (0.85%) MuleSoft
16 31 (0.78%) VMware
17 30 (0.75%) Bloomberg
17 30 (0.75%) Dynatrace
18 29 (0.73%) HP
19 26 (0.65%) Foundry