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

6 months to
5 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,486 3,272 3,532
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.88% 11.85% 10.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.43% 36.13% 33.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,018 2,331 2,656
10th Percentile £355 £340 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £646
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 57 42
10th Percentile £23.38 £21.18 £24.20
25th Percentile £30.91 £29.07 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £37.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.00% -9.64% -9.55%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £56.56
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £40.58
% change year-on-year +14.56% -4.27% -14.57%

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 11,984 9,056 10,614
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.38% 32.80% 31.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,769 6,248 7,619
10th Percentile £363 £350 £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 £651
90th Percentile £738 £763 £800
UK median daily rate £513 £502 £525
% change year-on-year +2.14% -4.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 499 228 360
10th Percentile £33.70 £29.07 £30.00
25th Percentile £53.13 £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 £79.60 £83.42 £78.75
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +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 5 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 5 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 5 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 2,437 £525 -0.94% 1,567
North of England -2 586 £463 -1.49% 463
Midlands +1 542 £459 +8.00% 259
South East -10 477 £500 - 500
West Midlands +4 443 £459 +2.00% 149
North West -4 310 £475 +1.28% 254
Yorkshire -5 238 £460 -3.16% 144
South West -3 223 £500 +17.65% 189
East of England -2 119 £475 -5.00% 131
East Midlands -2 95 £473 +22.86% 110
North East -13 49 £413 -10.57% 74
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 (4.50%) Apache Airflow
2 198 (4.41%) Apache Spark
3 185 (4.12%) Confluence
4 155 (3.46%) Apache
5 97 (2.16%) SAS
6 63 (1.40%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.89%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.85%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.71%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.47%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
13 18 (0.40%) CMS
13 18 (0.40%) Tomcat
14 17 (0.38%) WebSphere
15 16 (0.36%) nginx
16 13 (0.29%) Tuxedo
17 11 (0.25%) Camunda
18 8 (0.18%) Apache Superset
18 8 (0.18%) Appian
Applications
1 296 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 51 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.87%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
5 25 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) 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
2 41 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.62%) Aladdin
4 26 (0.58%) Oracle ERP
4 26 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.33%) NEC Housing
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
12 9 (0.20%) Unit4 Business World
13 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
14 7 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
14 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,420 (31.65%) Azure
2 1,057 (23.56%) AWS
3 867 (19.33%) Power Platform
4 410 (9.14%) Azure DevOps
5 400 (8.92%) GCP
6 321 (7.16%) Azure Data Factory
7 317 (7.07%) GitHub
8 303 (6.75%) Snowflake
9 272 (6.06%) Serverless
10 257 (5.73%) dbt
11 229 (5.10%) Amazon S3
12 206 (4.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 176 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
14 161 (3.59%) GitHub Actions
15 91 (2.03%) Entra ID
16 88 (1.96%) Power Automate
17 83 (1.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 81 (1.81%) SaaS
19 78 (1.74%) PowerApps
20 70 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.20%) DNS
2 44 (0.98%) Firewall
3 23 (0.51%) Network Security
3 23 (0.51%) SSL
3 23 (0.51%) VPN
4 21 (0.47%) HTTP
4 21 (0.47%) SNMP
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 18 (0.40%) TCP/IP
7 12 (0.27%) WAN
8 10 (0.22%) DHCP
8 10 (0.22%) Wireshark
9 9 (0.20%) Broadband
9 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
10 8 (0.18%) SAN
10 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 7 (0.16%) LAN
11 7 (0.16%) Multicast
11 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 800 (17.83%) Power BI
2 625 (13.93%) Data Warehouse
3 574 (12.80%) SQL Server
4 288 (6.42%) Tableau
5 276 (6.15%) Relational Database
6 267 (5.95%) PostgreSQL
7 264 (5.88%) Data Lake
8 227 (5.06%) NoSQL
9 221 (4.93%) Metadata
10 185 (4.12%) Oracle Database
11 177 (3.95%) Azure SQL Database
12 167 (3.72%) BigQuery
13 154 (3.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 136 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
15 124 (2.76%) Delta Lake
16 104 (2.32%) Oracle Reports
17 100 (2.23%) Big Data
18 96 (2.14%) MySQL
19 95 (2.12%) Snowflake Schema
20 90 (2.01%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 514 (11.46%) Git
2 347 (7.74%) JIRA
3 256 (5.71%) Jenkins
4 195 (4.35%) GitLab
5 72 (1.60%) JUnit
6 61 (1.36%) Maven
7 57 (1.27%) Gradle
8 52 (1.16%) Postman
8 52 (1.16%) Selenium
9 49 (1.09%) Mockito
10 37 (0.82%) SonarQube
11 36 (0.80%) Bitbucket
12 34 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
13 29 (0.65%) ERwin
14 28 (0.62%) Liquibase
14 28 (0.62%) Visual Studio
15 27 (0.60%) TeamCity
15 27 (0.60%) Zephyr
16 26 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
17 25 (0.56%) JMeter
General
1 1,179 (26.28%) Social Skills
2 1,159 (25.84%) Finance
3 909 (20.26%) Analytical Skills
4 435 (9.70%) Banking
5 404 (9.01%) Public Sector
6 139 (3.10%) Marketing
7 127 (2.83%) Front Office
8 115 (2.56%) Retail
9 101 (2.25%) Investment Banking
10 85 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
11 77 (1.72%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 69 (1.54%) Manufacturing
13 54 (1.20%) Financial Institution
14 53 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
15 47 (1.05%) Legal
16 46 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
17 43 (0.96%) Telecoms
18 39 (0.87%) Publishing
19 38 (0.85%) Back Office
20 31 (0.69%) Law
Job Titles
1 955 (21.29%) Developer
2 904 (20.15%) Data Engineer
3 645 (14.38%) Analyst
4 598 (13.33%) Senior
5 309 (6.89%) Lead
6 273 (6.09%) Data Analyst
7 232 (5.17%) Architect
8 226 (5.04%) Consultant
9 189 (4.21%) Business Analyst
10 176 (3.92%) Senior Data Engineer
11 175 (3.90%) DBA
12 171 (3.81%) Java Developer
13 150 (3.34%) Senior Developer
14 131 (2.92%) Software Engineer
15 117 (2.61%) SQL DBA
16 113 (2.52%) SQL Developer
17 103 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
18 97 (2.16%) C# Developer
19 93 (2.07%) Full-Stack Developer
20 92 (2.05%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 378 (8.43%) REST
2 370 (8.25%) .NET
3 282 (6.29%) PySpark
4 271 (6.04%) Kafka
5 227 (5.06%) Spring
6 204 (4.55%) Spring Boot
7 200 (4.46%) React
8 182 (4.06%) RESTful
9 170 (3.79%) JSON
10 158 (3.52%) XML
11 149 (3.32%) HTML
12 131 (2.92%) AngularJS
13 128 (2.85%) CSS
14 112 (2.50%) Pandas
15 100 (2.23%) Web Services
16 99 (2.21%) SOAP
17 94 (2.10%) Middleware
18 92 (2.05%) .NET Framework
19 73 (1.63%) Node.js
20 70 (1.56%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 293 (6.53%) Cloud Native
2 202 (4.50%) Data Structures
3 168 (3.74%) Product Ownership
4 154 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
5 134 (2.99%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.14%) Onboarding
7 92 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
8 80 (1.78%) Derivative
8 80 (1.78%) Management Information System
9 77 (1.72%) Self-Motivation
10 72 (1.60%) Analytical Mindset
11 69 (1.54%) Clustering
12 63 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
13 59 (1.32%) Replication
14 55 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 52 (1.16%) Fixed Income
16 49 (1.09%) Equities
17 48 (1.07%) Greenfield Project
17 48 (1.07%) Reference Data
18 45 (1.00%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 299 (6.67%) Linux
2 278 (6.20%) Windows
3 200 (4.46%) Unix
4 106 (2.36%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.16%) zOS
11 6 (0.13%) Android
11 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.13%) VMS
11 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.089%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.045%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,196 (26.66%) CI/CD
2 1,167 (26.01%) Analytics
3 1,153 (25.70%) Agile
4 1,148 (25.59%) Data Modelling
5 1,034 (23.05%) Business Intelligence
6 1,029 (22.94%) ETL
7 911 (20.31%) DevOps
8 882 (19.66%) Data Pipeline
9 875 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
10 758 (16.90%) Data Engineering
11 653 (14.56%) AI
12 622 (13.87%) Migration
13 605 (13.49%) Validation
14 497 (11.08%) Data Governance
15 481 (10.72%) Stakeholder Management
16 476 (10.61%) Decision-Making
17 463 (10.32%) Continuous Improvement
18 458 (10.21%) Test Automation
19 440 (9.81%) Data Analysis
20 391 (8.72%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,605 (35.78%) Python
2 556 (12.39%) Java
3 441 (9.83%) C#
4 358 (7.98%) PL/SQL
5 328 (7.31%) JavaScript
6 243 (5.42%) T-SQL
7 241 (5.37%) PowerShell
8 162 (3.61%) TypeScript
9 145 (3.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 130 (2.90%) Shell Script
11 99 (2.21%) Bash
12 88 (1.96%) R
13 66 (1.47%) Scala
14 44 (0.98%) C++
15 43 (0.96%) VBA
16 42 (0.94%) Bicep
17 30 (0.67%) C
18 28 (0.62%) VB
19 21 (0.47%) Go
19 21 (0.47%) Perl
Qualifications
1 985 (21.96%) Security Cleared
2 792 (17.65%) SC Cleared
3 322 (7.18%) Degree
4 112 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (2.25%) DV Cleared
6 100 (2.23%) BPSS Clearance
7 70 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 48 (1.07%) ISTQB
9 45 (1.00%) Master's Degree
10 42 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 29 (0.65%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.42%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) DBS Check
14 16 (0.36%) PhD
15 12 (0.27%) ISEB
15 12 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.25%) FFIEC
17 10 (0.22%) CISM
18 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 9 (0.20%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 837 (18.66%) Data Quality
2 331 (7.38%) QA
3 155 (3.46%) GDPR
4 47 (1.05%) Accessibility
5 43 (0.96%) SLA
6 22 (0.49%) NIST
6 22 (0.49%) PMO
7 21 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 19 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.33%) MiFID
11 14 (0.31%) IFRS
11 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
12 13 (0.29%) PCI DSS
13 12 (0.27%) COBIT
13 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
14 10 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
16 8 (0.18%) GRC
System Software
1 454 (10.12%) Docker
2 120 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 44 (0.98%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.94%) Virtual Machines
5 36 (0.80%) Oracle RAC
6 17 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.29%) Hyper-V
8 13 (0.29%) vCloud
9 9 (0.20%) Postfix
10 8 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.16%) KVM
12 4 (0.089%) HDFS
13 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) GridGain
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
14 1 (0.022%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) XenApp
14 1 (0.022%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 391 (8.72%) Kubernetes
2 349 (7.78%) Terraform
3 91 (2.03%) Grafana
4 88 (1.96%) Ansible
5 47 (1.05%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 38 (0.85%) Data Guard
8 30 (0.67%) Control-M
9 26 (0.58%) SCOM
10 19 (0.42%) Kibana
11 17 (0.38%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.33%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.31%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.22%) Microsoft Clustering
16 10 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
17 9 (0.20%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 765 (17.05%) Oracle
2 721 (16.07%) Microsoft
3 527 (11.75%) Databricks
4 177 (3.95%) Google
5 153 (3.41%) Informatica
6 124 (2.76%) Talend
7 122 (2.72%) SAP
7 122 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 81 (1.81%) Splunk
9 79 (1.76%) IBM
10 66 (1.47%) Denodo
11 61 (1.36%) VMware
12 55 (1.23%) Salesforce
13 40 (0.89%) Citrix
14 39 (0.87%) BMC
15 38 (0.85%) Bloomberg
15 38 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 33 (0.74%) Alteryx
16 33 (0.74%) Murex
17 31 (0.69%) Adobe