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

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,463 3,286 3,565
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.87% 11.95% 10.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.32% 36.39% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,989 2,341 2,687
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £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 88 57 42
10th Percentile £23.53 £21.18 £24.20
25th Percentile £29.96 £29.07 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.90 £37.50 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.40% -10.71% -8.58%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £41.50
% change year-on-year +14.56% -6.40% -12.84%

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 11,958 9,030 10,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.46% 32.83% 31.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,763 6,226 7,721
10th Percentile £363 £345 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.55% -6.45% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £653
90th Percentile £738 £772 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 226 373
10th Percentile £33.96 £29.07 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £40.00 £51.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.04 £83.73 £77.90
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +8.33%

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 2,414 £525 - 861
North of England -5 589 £463 -2.63% 359
Midlands +1 537 £459 +8.00% 199
South East -10 471 £490 -2.00% 396
West Midlands +3 443 £459 +2.00% 114
North West -4 313 £475 +1.28% 189
Yorkshire -7 237 £474 -0.21% 105
South West -7 226 £500 +14.29% 143
East of England -3 117 £478 -4.50% 98
East Midlands -3 90 £473 +22.06% 85
North East -18 51 £419 -9.46% 73
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
1 202 (4.53%) Apache Spark
2 191 (4.28%) Apache Airflow
3 184 (4.12%) Confluence
4 154 (3.45%) Apache
5 93 (2.08%) SAS
6 59 (1.32%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.90%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 24 (0.54%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 19 (0.43%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
14 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 9 (0.20%) Appian
19 8 (0.18%) Apache Superset
Applications
1 294 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 53 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.90%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
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%) Notion
8 4 (0.090%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.65%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.56%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.38%) NEC Housing
8 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.25%) Findur
10 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.22%) Finacle
12 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
14 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,408 (31.55%) Azure
2 1,051 (23.55%) AWS
3 846 (18.96%) Power Platform
4 401 (8.98%) Azure DevOps
5 391 (8.76%) GCP
6 319 (7.15%) Azure Data Factory
7 313 (7.01%) GitHub
8 294 (6.59%) Snowflake
9 273 (6.12%) Serverless
10 256 (5.74%) dbt
11 235 (5.27%) Amazon S3
12 205 (4.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 176 (3.94%) AWS Lambda
14 162 (3.63%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.99%) Entra ID
16 85 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 84 (1.88%) Power Automate
18 81 (1.81%) SaaS
19 74 (1.66%) PowerApps
20 69 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 50 (1.12%) DNS
2 42 (0.94%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
3 23 (0.52%) VPN
4 21 (0.47%) Network Security
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
7 15 (0.34%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) DHCP
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) Broadband
11 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 781 (17.50%) Power BI
2 625 (14.00%) Data Warehouse
3 569 (12.75%) SQL Server
4 292 (6.54%) Tableau
5 283 (6.34%) Relational Database
6 271 (6.07%) Data Lake
7 269 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
8 223 (5.00%) NoSQL
9 221 (4.95%) Metadata
10 184 (4.12%) Oracle Database
11 176 (3.94%) Azure SQL Database
12 162 (3.63%) BigQuery
13 152 (3.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 135 (3.02%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.73%) Delta Lake
16 105 (2.35%) Oracle Reports
17 103 (2.31%) Big Data
18 97 (2.17%) Snowflake Schema
19 96 (2.15%) MySQL
20 88 (1.97%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 495 (11.09%) Git
2 345 (7.73%) JIRA
3 243 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 187 (4.19%) GitLab
5 71 (1.59%) JUnit
6 60 (1.34%) Maven
7 54 (1.21%) Gradle
8 52 (1.17%) Postman
9 48 (1.08%) Mockito
9 48 (1.08%) Selenium
10 34 (0.76%) Bitbucket
10 34 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
10 34 (0.76%) SonarQube
11 30 (0.67%) ERwin
12 28 (0.63%) TeamCity
12 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
13 27 (0.60%) Liquibase
13 27 (0.60%) Visual Studio
14 26 (0.58%) JMeter
14 26 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,164 (26.08%) Social Skills
2 1,145 (25.66%) Finance
3 889 (19.92%) Analytical Skills
4 429 (9.61%) Banking
5 407 (9.12%) Public Sector
6 137 (3.07%) Marketing
7 127 (2.85%) Front Office
8 111 (2.49%) Retail
9 99 (2.22%) Investment Banking
10 86 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
11 74 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 65 (1.46%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.19%) Presentation Skills
14 52 (1.17%) Financial Institution
15 50 (1.12%) Legal
16 48 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
17 39 (0.87%) Publishing
18 37 (0.83%) Back Office
18 37 (0.83%) Telecoms
19 32 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 943 (21.13%) Developer
2 890 (19.94%) Data Engineer
3 644 (14.43%) Analyst
4 597 (13.38%) Senior
5 314 (7.04%) Lead
6 274 (6.14%) Data Analyst
7 235 (5.27%) Architect
8 222 (4.97%) Consultant
9 184 (4.12%) Business Analyst
10 173 (3.88%) Java Developer
10 173 (3.88%) Senior Data Engineer
11 171 (3.83%) DBA
12 149 (3.34%) Senior Developer
13 130 (2.91%) Software Engineer
14 113 (2.53%) SQL DBA
15 112 (2.51%) SQL Developer
16 109 (2.44%) Azure Engineer
17 97 (2.17%) C# Developer
18 94 (2.11%) Data Architect
19 91 (2.04%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 366 (8.20%) REST
2 361 (8.09%) .NET
3 278 (6.23%) PySpark
4 271 (6.07%) Kafka
5 224 (5.02%) Spring
6 204 (4.57%) Spring Boot
7 197 (4.41%) React
8 179 (4.01%) RESTful
9 170 (3.81%) JSON
10 157 (3.52%) XML
11 147 (3.29%) HTML
12 126 (2.82%) AngularJS
12 126 (2.82%) CSS
13 109 (2.44%) Pandas
14 101 (2.26%) Web Services
15 100 (2.24%) SOAP
16 92 (2.06%) Middleware
17 91 (2.04%) .NET Framework
18 73 (1.64%) Node.js
19 71 (1.59%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 292 (6.54%) Cloud Native
2 200 (4.48%) Data Structures
3 163 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 156 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
5 136 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
6 93 (2.08%) Onboarding
7 87 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
8 81 (1.81%) Derivative
9 79 (1.77%) Management Information System
10 75 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
11 72 (1.61%) Analytical Mindset
12 68 (1.52%) Clustering
13 63 (1.41%) Data Protection Act
14 58 (1.30%) Replication
15 54 (1.21%) Algorithms
15 54 (1.21%) Fixed Income
16 51 (1.14%) Equities
17 48 (1.08%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.08%) Reference Data
18 40 (0.90%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 292 (6.54%) Linux
2 280 (6.27%) Windows
3 199 (4.46%) Unix
4 106 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (0.49%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) zOS
11 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.13%) VMS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.090%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,192 (26.71%) CI/CD
2 1,169 (26.19%) Analytics
3 1,137 (25.48%) Agile
4 1,133 (25.39%) Data Modelling
5 1,031 (23.10%) ETL
6 1,008 (22.59%) Business Intelligence
7 897 (20.10%) DevOps
8 872 (19.54%) Data Pipeline
9 860 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
10 763 (17.10%) Data Engineering
11 644 (14.43%) AI
12 608 (13.62%) Migration
13 594 (13.31%) Validation
14 491 (11.00%) Data Governance
15 469 (10.51%) Decision-Making
16 462 (10.35%) Stakeholder Management
17 461 (10.33%) Continuous Improvement
18 460 (10.31%) Test Automation
19 429 (9.61%) Data Analysis
20 392 (8.78%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,592 (35.67%) Python
2 561 (12.57%) Java
3 437 (9.79%) C#
4 355 (7.95%) PL/SQL
5 318 (7.13%) JavaScript
6 241 (5.40%) T-SQL
7 239 (5.36%) PowerShell
8 163 (3.65%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 126 (2.82%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.08%) R
12 91 (2.04%) Bash
13 68 (1.52%) Scala
14 46 (1.03%) C++
15 44 (0.99%) VBA
16 39 (0.87%) Bicep
17 32 (0.72%) C
18 30 (0.67%) VB
19 22 (0.49%) Go
19 22 (0.49%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 967 (21.67%) Security Cleared
2 775 (17.37%) SC Cleared
3 319 (7.15%) Degree
4 106 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
5 101 (2.26%) DV Cleared
6 68 (1.52%) Azure Certification
7 49 (1.10%) ISTQB
7 49 (1.10%) Master's Degree
8 38 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 28 (0.63%) AWS Certification
10 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
11 16 (0.36%) CISSP
11 16 (0.36%) PhD
12 12 (0.27%) ISEB
12 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
13 11 (0.25%) FFIEC
14 10 (0.22%) CISM
14 10 (0.22%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 831 (18.62%) Data Quality
2 328 (7.35%) QA
3 159 (3.56%) GDPR
4 49 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.94%) SLA
6 22 (0.49%) NIST
6 22 (0.49%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
8 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 19 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.34%) MiFID
12 14 (0.31%) IFRS
13 13 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 12 (0.27%) COBIT
15 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
15 11 (0.25%) PCI DSS
16 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 9 (0.20%) HL7
17 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 442 (9.90%) Docker
2 118 (2.64%) Active Directory
3 42 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
3 42 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 36 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
5 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.29%) vCloud
8 9 (0.20%) Postfix
9 8 (0.18%) KVM
9 8 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
10 4 (0.090%) HDFS
10 4 (0.090%) RACF
11 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.045%) GridGain
12 1 (0.022%) Varnish
12 1 (0.022%) vSphere
12 1 (0.022%) XenApp
12 1 (0.022%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 382 (8.56%) Kubernetes
2 354 (7.93%) Terraform
3 91 (2.04%) Grafana
4 83 (1.86%) Ansible
5 46 (1.03%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 38 (0.85%) Data Guard
8 28 (0.63%) Control-M
9 25 (0.56%) SCOM
10 20 (0.45%) Kibana
11 18 (0.40%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 765 (17.14%) Oracle
2 708 (15.86%) Microsoft
3 521 (11.67%) Databricks
4 171 (3.83%) Google
5 156 (3.50%) Informatica
6 125 (2.80%) Talend
7 123 (2.76%) SAP
7 123 (2.76%) ServiceNow
8 81 (1.81%) Splunk
9 77 (1.73%) IBM
10 63 (1.41%) Denodo
11 58 (1.30%) VMware
12 57 (1.28%) Salesforce
13 40 (0.90%) Citrix
14 39 (0.87%) Dynatrace
15 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
16 37 (0.83%) BMC
17 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
18 31 (0.69%) Adobe
18 31 (0.69%) Murex