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

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 11
Rank change year-on-year -4 -2 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,479 3,284 3,607
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.62% 11.75% 11.01%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.02% 35.75% 33.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,014 2,296 2,561
10th Percentile £350 £332 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £540
Median % change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
75th Percentile £600 £619 £638
90th Percentile £694 £738 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 72 45
10th Percentile £21.25 £26.53 £25.26
25th Percentile £26.85 £33.91 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -11.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £77.00 - £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -20.44%

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 12,100 9,187 10,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.99% 32.88% 32.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,841 6,202 7,188
10th Percentile £363 £348 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £630 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £525 £507 £525
% change year-on-year +3.65% -3.52% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 514 260 310
10th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £29.78
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.44 £47.69
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.04% -12.31% -
75th Percentile £70.38 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.58 £78.75 £79.25
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 26 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 26 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 26 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 2,522 £525 - 4,013
North of England +1 593 £475 +5.56% 905
Midlands -5 452 £469 +1.41% 538
South East -15 446 £475 -3.06% 839
West Midlands -3 354 £469 -6.20% 326
North West +2 292 £500 +13.64% 524
Yorkshire +5 249 £456 -4.05% 284
South West 0 235 £525 +16.67% 328
East of England -10 121 £505 +0.50% 262
East Midlands -6 96 £463 +13.81% 212
North East -9 58 £400 -13.98% 104
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 (5.09%) Apache Airflow
2 195 (4.35%) Confluence
3 192 (4.29%) Apache Spark
4 148 (3.30%) Apache
5 84 (1.88%) SharePoint
6 72 (1.61%) SAS
7 31 (0.69%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.67%) WebLogic
9 28 (0.63%) IIS
10 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 24 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.45%) CMS
14 18 (0.40%) Camunda
14 18 (0.40%) nginx
15 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
16 11 (0.25%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 7 (0.16%) OpenStack
17 7 (0.16%) Tomcat
Applications
1 268 (5.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.29%) Microsoft Office
3 36 (0.80%) Spreadsheet
4 25 (0.56%) MS Visio
5 21 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.18%) Windchill
8 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.089%) Notion
9 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.067%) Microsoft Project
11 2 (0.045%) Mingle
12 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 46 (1.03%) Dynamics CRM
2 32 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
3 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
4 25 (0.56%) Remedy ITSM
5 24 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
6 19 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
8 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
9 11 (0.25%) Oracle EBS R12
9 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.22%) Finacle
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
10 10 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
11 9 (0.20%) Summit
12 8 (0.18%) Maximo
12 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
Cloud Services
1 1,365 (30.48%) Azure
2 1,088 (24.29%) AWS
3 865 (19.31%) Power Platform
4 447 (9.98%) GCP
5 365 (8.15%) Azure DevOps
6 359 (8.02%) Snowflake
7 307 (6.85%) GitHub
8 298 (6.65%) Azure Data Factory
9 291 (6.50%) dbt
10 268 (5.98%) Serverless
11 237 (5.29%) Amazon S3
12 184 (4.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 172 (3.84%) AWS Lambda
14 146 (3.26%) GitHub Actions
15 101 (2.25%) Power Automate
16 97 (2.17%) SaaS
17 91 (2.03%) PowerApps
18 87 (1.94%) Entra ID
19 85 (1.90%) Azure Databricks
20 78 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 60 (1.34%) DNS
2 37 (0.83%) Firewall
3 29 (0.65%) HTTP
4 24 (0.54%) SSL
5 22 (0.49%) Internet
5 22 (0.49%) Network Security
6 20 (0.45%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.42%) Broadband
7 19 (0.42%) VPN
8 15 (0.33%) DHCP
9 14 (0.31%) SNMP
10 12 (0.27%) SSH
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.20%) SAN
12 8 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
12 8 (0.18%) RTP
12 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.16%) 5G
13 7 (0.16%) Multicast
Database & Business Intelligence
1 795 (17.75%) Power BI
2 612 (13.66%) Data Warehouse
3 571 (12.75%) SQL Server
4 286 (6.39%) Relational Database
5 276 (6.16%) PostgreSQL
6 259 (5.78%) Data Lake
7 257 (5.74%) Tableau
8 229 (5.11%) Metadata
9 211 (4.71%) NoSQL
10 200 (4.47%) Oracle Database
11 196 (4.38%) BigQuery
12 145 (3.24%) Azure SQL Database
13 137 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
14 129 (2.88%) Delta Lake
15 121 (2.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 116 (2.59%) MySQL
17 107 (2.39%) Amazon Athena
18 97 (2.17%) Big Data
19 91 (2.03%) Power Query
20 87 (1.94%) Looker
Development Applications
1 577 (12.88%) Git
2 361 (8.06%) JIRA
3 245 (5.47%) Jenkins
4 218 (4.87%) GitLab
5 96 (2.14%) Selenium
6 79 (1.76%) JUnit
7 75 (1.67%) Gradle
8 73 (1.63%) Maven
9 60 (1.34%) Postman
10 49 (1.09%) Mockito
11 43 (0.96%) SonarQube
12 40 (0.89%) Bitbucket
13 31 (0.69%) Oracle Forms
14 30 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 29 (0.65%) Zephyr
16 25 (0.56%) JMeter
16 25 (0.56%) REST Assured
17 24 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
18 23 (0.51%) Cypress.io
18 23 (0.51%) MLflow
General
1 1,247 (27.84%) Social Skills
2 1,195 (26.68%) Finance
3 934 (20.85%) Analytical Skills
4 527 (11.77%) Banking
5 389 (8.68%) Public Sector
6 148 (3.30%) Marketing
7 132 (2.95%) Retail
8 129 (2.88%) Front Office
9 116 (2.59%) Investment Banking
10 90 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 78 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
11 78 (1.74%) Manufacturing
12 51 (1.14%) Financial Institution
13 48 (1.07%) Legal
13 48 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
14 44 (0.98%) Back Office
14 44 (0.98%) Influencing Skills
15 43 (0.96%) Local Government
16 37 (0.83%) Law
17 36 (0.80%) Military
Job Titles
1 948 (21.17%) Developer
2 861 (19.22%) Data Engineer
3 655 (14.62%) Analyst
4 650 (14.51%) Senior
5 313 (6.99%) Lead
6 266 (5.94%) Data Analyst
7 221 (4.93%) Architect
8 203 (4.53%) Senior Data Engineer
9 195 (4.35%) Business Analyst
10 182 (4.06%) Consultant
11 169 (3.77%) DBA
12 158 (3.53%) Java Developer
13 153 (3.42%) Senior Developer
14 113 (2.52%) Software Engineer
15 103 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
15 103 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
15 103 (2.30%) SQL DBA
16 101 (2.25%) SQL Developer
17 98 (2.19%) Data Architect
17 98 (2.19%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (9.20%) REST
2 385 (8.60%) .NET
3 374 (8.35%) Terraform
4 304 (6.79%) PySpark
5 292 (6.52%) Kafka
6 225 (5.02%) Spring
7 214 (4.78%) Spring Boot
8 211 (4.71%) React
9 180 (4.02%) HTML
10 162 (3.62%) RESTful
11 161 (3.59%) JSON
12 154 (3.44%) CSS
13 143 (3.19%) XML
14 109 (2.43%) SOAP
15 108 (2.41%) AngularJS
16 105 (2.34%) Web Services
17 97 (2.17%) Middleware
18 90 (2.01%) Pandas
19 83 (1.85%) .NET Framework
20 79 (1.76%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 284 (6.34%) Cloud Native
2 222 (4.96%) Data Structures
3 209 (4.67%) Product Ownership
4 139 (3.10%) Legacy Systems
5 125 (2.79%) Distributed Systems
5 125 (2.79%) Onboarding
6 124 (2.77%) Enterprise Software
7 95 (2.12%) Management Information System
8 83 (1.85%) AI Agents
9 80 (1.79%) Self-Motivation
10 71 (1.59%) Derivative
11 64 (1.43%) Replication
12 63 (1.41%) Analytical Mindset
13 62 (1.38%) Data Protection Act
14 59 (1.32%) Reference Data
15 56 (1.25%) Clustering
16 49 (1.09%) Algorithms
16 49 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
17 44 (0.98%) Fixed Income
18 43 (0.96%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 320 (7.14%) Linux
2 270 (6.03%) Windows
3 219 (4.89%) Unix
4 107 (2.39%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.54%) Solaris
7 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.25%) AIX
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.18%) VMS
12 7 (0.16%) Android
13 6 (0.13%) Apple iOS
13 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2016
15 4 (0.089%) zOS
16 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
17 2 (0.045%) HPUX
17 2 (0.045%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,224 (27.33%) CI/CD
2 1,188 (26.52%) Agile
3 1,149 (25.65%) Data Modelling
4 1,138 (25.41%) Analytics
5 991 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
6 981 (21.90%) ETL
7 891 (19.89%) Problem-Solving
8 868 (19.38%) Data Pipeline
9 848 (18.93%) DevOps
10 781 (17.44%) Data Engineering
11 763 (17.04%) AI
12 689 (15.38%) Validation
13 663 (14.80%) Stakeholder Management
14 655 (14.62%) Migration
15 524 (11.70%) Continuous Improvement
16 516 (11.52%) Test Automation
17 505 (11.27%) Data Governance
18 504 (11.25%) Data Analysis
19 493 (11.01%) Decision-Making
20 388 (8.66%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,621 (36.19%) Python
2 549 (12.26%) Java
3 408 (9.11%) C#
4 373 (8.33%) JavaScript
5 337 (7.52%) PL/SQL
6 232 (5.18%) PowerShell
7 209 (4.67%) T-SQL
8 193 (4.31%) TypeScript
9 141 (3.15%) Shell Script
10 134 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 111 (2.48%) Bash
12 74 (1.65%) R
13 71 (1.59%) Scala
14 37 (0.83%) VBA
15 36 (0.80%) C++
16 28 (0.63%) Bicep
17 27 (0.60%) Kotlin
18 26 (0.58%) C
18 26 (0.58%) Go
18 26 (0.58%) VB
Qualifications
1 947 (21.14%) Security Cleared
2 748 (16.70%) SC Cleared
3 334 (7.46%) Degree
4 127 (2.84%) DV Cleared
5 121 (2.70%) BPSS Clearance
6 115 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
7 71 (1.59%) Azure Certification
8 54 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 51 (1.14%) Microsoft Certification
10 42 (0.94%) AWS Certification
11 40 (0.89%) Master's Degree
12 20 (0.45%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ACCA
13 17 (0.38%) CIMA
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) DBS Check
15 15 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.33%) Oracle Certification
16 13 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 13 (0.29%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 903 (20.16%) Data Quality
2 369 (8.24%) QA
3 116 (2.59%) GDPR
4 50 (1.12%) SLA
5 45 (1.00%) Accessibility
6 29 (0.65%) Actionable Recommendations
7 23 (0.51%) IFRS
7 23 (0.51%) NIST
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
8 21 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 17 (0.38%) MiFID
10 16 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
11 15 (0.33%) COBIT
12 11 (0.25%) Basel III
13 10 (0.22%) PCI DSS
14 9 (0.20%) GRC
14 9 (0.20%) PMO
15 8 (0.18%) HIPAA
15 8 (0.18%) SEPA
15 8 (0.18%) Solvency II
System Software
1 425 (9.49%) Docker
2 109 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 50 (1.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
5 36 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
6 19 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.36%) vCloud
7 16 (0.36%) VMware NSX
8 14 (0.31%) Hyper-V
9 13 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.13%) Postfix
11 5 (0.11%) KVM
12 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
13 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
13 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
13 2 (0.045%) Squid
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
14 1 (0.022%) HDFS
14 1 (0.022%) RACF
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 359 (8.02%) Kubernetes
2 88 (1.96%) Ansible
3 86 (1.92%) Grafana
4 49 (1.09%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.89%) Control-M
6 39 (0.87%) SCOM
7 37 (0.83%) Data Guard
7 37 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
8 36 (0.80%) Kibana
9 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
11 11 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
13 9 (0.20%) Argo
13 9 (0.20%) Istio
13 9 (0.20%) Nagios
13 9 (0.20%) Netcool
13 9 (0.20%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 763 (17.04%) Microsoft
2 747 (16.68%) Oracle
3 579 (12.93%) Databricks
4 207 (4.62%) Google
5 122 (2.72%) Informatica
6 121 (2.70%) SAP
7 101 (2.25%) IBM
8 98 (2.19%) Talend
9 87 (1.94%) ServiceNow
10 81 (1.81%) Splunk
11 67 (1.50%) VMware
12 65 (1.45%) Salesforce
13 49 (1.09%) Denodo
14 39 (0.87%) Bloomberg
15 37 (0.83%) Foundry
16 36 (0.80%) Alteryx
17 35 (0.78%) Adobe
17 35 (0.78%) Murex
17 35 (0.78%) OpenAI
17 35 (0.78%) UiPath