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

6 months to
8 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 11
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,765 3,060 3,803
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.42% 12.15% 10.01%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.53% 35.91% 34.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,593 2,115 2,751
10th Percentile £350 £356 £355
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £512 £525
% change year-on-year -2.25% -2.57% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 57 63
10th Percentile £18.48 £18.52 £21.66
25th Percentile £28.93 £29.07 £26.02
Median hourly rate £45.00 £47.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% +11.76% -19.05%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.21 £62.72
UK median hourly rate £47.50 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +2.15% +9.41% -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 10,598 8,521 11,017
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.33% 33.83% 28.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,077 5,644 7,925
10th Percentile £351 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -6.09%
75th Percentile £613 £650 £660
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -5.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 448 217 469
10th Percentile £41.83 £24.95 £35.00
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £69.00
90th Percentile £77.15 £85.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 8 March 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 8 March 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 8 March 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 2,233 £510 -7.27% 847
Midlands -1 465 £481 +3.44% 279
North of England -11 407 £450 -9.09% 401
West Midlands +5 368 £471 -3.88% 174
South East -20 284 £500 - 530
North West +1 232 £425 -10.53% 228
South West -3 194 £475 -9.52% 162
Yorkshire -26 153 £488 -6.47% 127
East Midlands -5 96 £531 +37.03% 105
East of England -26 76 £500 +6.95% 114
North East +1 31 £475 +2.98% 51
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
1 204 (5.42%) Apache Spark
2 154 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
3 121 (3.21%) Apache
4 116 (3.08%) Confluence
5 80 (2.12%) SharePoint
6 78 (2.07%) SAS
7 52 (1.38%) WebLogic
8 27 (0.72%) IIS
9 24 (0.64%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.53%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 18 (0.48%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.45%) CMS
13 15 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
13 15 (0.40%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
15 12 (0.32%) Appian
15 12 (0.32%) HCL Notes
15 12 (0.32%) JBoss
15 12 (0.32%) WebSphere
Applications
1 243 (6.45%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.30%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 13 (0.35%) Spreadsheet
6 12 (0.32%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.21%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.11%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.080%) Notion
9 3 (0.080%) Trello
10 1 (0.027%) InDesign
10 1 (0.027%) SPSS
10 1 (0.027%) Weka
Business Applications
1 29 (0.77%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle EBS
2 24 (0.64%) Oracle Payables
3 20 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.53%) NEC Housing
3 20 (0.53%) Oracle Receivables
4 19 (0.50%) Oracle General Ledger
5 18 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
7 14 (0.37%) Oracle Assets
7 14 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
8 13 (0.35%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.29%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.27%) Advent Geneva
10 10 (0.27%) Endur
10 10 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
10 10 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 8 (0.21%) Oracle 11i
11 8 (0.21%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,294 (34.37%) Azure
2 930 (24.70%) AWS
3 711 (18.88%) Power Platform
4 371 (9.85%) Azure DevOps
5 318 (8.45%) GCP
6 302 (8.02%) Azure Data Factory
7 287 (7.62%) GitHub
8 268 (7.12%) Serverless
9 262 (6.96%) Snowflake
10 199 (5.29%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 196 (5.21%) Amazon S3
12 156 (4.14%) dbt
13 150 (3.98%) GitHub Actions
14 137 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (2.50%) SaaS
16 85 (2.26%) Azure Functions
17 83 (2.20%) Power Automate
18 72 (1.91%) Entra ID
19 68 (1.81%) AWS CloudFormation
19 68 (1.81%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.27%) Firewall
2 41 (1.09%) DNS
3 21 (0.56%) HTTP
3 21 (0.56%) Network Security
4 20 (0.53%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.40%) Internet
6 14 (0.37%) VPN
7 13 (0.35%) 5G
7 13 (0.35%) DHCP
7 13 (0.35%) SSL
7 13 (0.35%) WAN
8 12 (0.32%) LAN
9 11 (0.29%) Skype
10 10 (0.27%) 4G
11 9 (0.24%) 2G
11 9 (0.24%) Radio Access Network
12 8 (0.21%) SMS
13 6 (0.16%) Multicast
13 6 (0.16%) VLAN
13 6 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 648 (17.21%) Power BI
2 456 (12.11%) Data Warehouse
3 440 (11.69%) SQL Server
4 264 (7.01%) NoSQL
5 256 (6.80%) Relational Database
6 248 (6.59%) PostgreSQL
7 234 (6.22%) Tableau
8 231 (6.14%) Data Lake
9 194 (5.15%) Azure SQL Database
10 172 (4.57%) Metadata
11 141 (3.75%) Oracle Database
12 138 (3.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 121 (3.21%) BigQuery
14 114 (3.03%) Big Data
15 109 (2.90%) MySQL
16 102 (2.71%) Amazon Redshift
17 100 (2.66%) MongoDB
18 96 (2.55%) Delta Lake
19 94 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
20 83 (2.20%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 436 (11.58%) Git
2 304 (8.07%) JIRA
3 207 (5.50%) Jenkins
4 154 (4.09%) GitLab
5 62 (1.65%) JUnit
6 56 (1.49%) Selenium
7 46 (1.22%) Postman
8 43 (1.14%) Oracle APEX
9 37 (0.98%) Cucumber
10 32 (0.85%) Maven
11 30 (0.80%) MLflow
12 29 (0.77%) Bitbucket
12 29 (0.77%) REST Assured
13 26 (0.69%) Mockito
14 23 (0.61%) ERwin
14 23 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 22 (0.58%) Cypress.io
16 20 (0.53%) SpecFlow
17 18 (0.48%) SonarQube
17 18 (0.48%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,116 (29.64%) Social Skills
2 1,047 (27.81%) Finance
3 663 (17.61%) Analytical Skills
4 392 (10.41%) Banking
5 328 (8.71%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.68%) Front Office
6 101 (2.68%) Investment Banking
7 95 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
8 86 (2.28%) Marketing
9 61 (1.62%) Retail
10 60 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 55 (1.46%) Financial Institution
12 45 (1.20%) Legal
13 36 (0.96%) Publishing
14 35 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
14 35 (0.93%) Telecoms
15 32 (0.85%) Influencing Skills
15 32 (0.85%) Manufacturing
16 31 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
17 30 (0.80%) Law
Job Titles
1 908 (24.12%) Developer
2 670 (17.80%) Data Engineer
3 550 (14.61%) Analyst
4 487 (12.93%) Senior
5 271 (7.20%) Lead
6 228 (6.06%) Data Analyst
7 198 (5.26%) Architect
8 196 (5.21%) Business Analyst
9 147 (3.90%) Senior Developer
10 143 (3.80%) Consultant
11 137 (3.64%) Java Developer
12 115 (3.05%) Azure Engineer
13 111 (2.95%) Software Engineer
14 101 (2.68%) Senior Data Engineer
15 97 (2.58%) C# Developer
16 88 (2.34%) Python Developer
17 86 (2.28%) Data Scientist
18 84 (2.23%) DBA
19 83 (2.20%) Full-Stack Developer
20 79 (2.10%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 337 (8.95%) .NET
2 306 (8.13%) REST
3 237 (6.29%) Kafka
4 223 (5.92%) PySpark
5 180 (4.78%) React
6 177 (4.70%) RESTful
7 161 (4.28%) Spring
8 145 (3.85%) Spring Boot
9 142 (3.77%) HTML
10 138 (3.67%) XML
11 115 (3.05%) CSS
12 110 (2.92%) AngularJS
13 109 (2.90%) JSON
14 106 (2.82%) Pandas
15 101 (2.68%) Node.js
16 86 (2.28%) SOAP
17 84 (2.23%) .NET Framework
18 79 (2.10%) Middleware
19 71 (1.89%) Web Services
20 68 (1.81%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 242 (6.43%) Cloud Native
2 123 (3.27%) Data Structures
3 116 (3.08%) Legacy Systems
4 108 (2.87%) Product Ownership
5 79 (2.10%) Management Information System
6 76 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
7 73 (1.94%) Distributed Systems
8 72 (1.91%) Analytical Mindset
9 71 (1.89%) Derivative
10 61 (1.62%) Equities
11 58 (1.54%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.51%) Onboarding
13 55 (1.46%) Fixed Income
14 47 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 42 (1.12%) Clustering
16 40 (1.06%) Enterprise Software
17 38 (1.01%) Replication
18 35 (0.93%) Market Risk
18 35 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
19 29 (0.77%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 285 (7.57%) Linux
2 227 (6.03%) Windows
3 186 (4.94%) Unix
4 74 (1.97%) Windows Server
5 17 (0.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 15 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
7 14 (0.37%) AIX
7 14 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
8 11 (0.29%) Windows 10
9 7 (0.19%) Android
10 6 (0.16%) VMS
11 5 (0.13%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.13%) zOS
12 4 (0.11%) Solaris
12 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
13 3 (0.080%) CentOS
14 2 (0.053%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.027%) OpenVMS
15 1 (0.027%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,014 (26.93%) Agile
2 991 (26.32%) CI/CD
3 981 (26.06%) Analytics
4 880 (23.37%) Data Modelling
5 871 (23.13%) Business Intelligence
6 862 (22.90%) DevOps
7 847 (22.50%) ETL
8 843 (22.39%) Problem-Solving
9 615 (16.33%) Data Pipeline
10 555 (14.74%) Data Engineering
11 442 (11.74%) Migration
12 437 (11.61%) Data Governance
13 428 (11.37%) AI
14 401 (10.65%) Validation
15 367 (9.75%) Data Analysis
16 357 (9.48%) Test Automation
17 340 (9.03%) Data Science
18 335 (8.90%) Visualisation
19 333 (8.84%) Continuous Improvement
19 333 (8.84%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 1,405 (37.32%) Python
2 535 (14.21%) Java
3 408 (10.84%) C#
4 322 (8.55%) JavaScript
5 277 (7.36%) PL/SQL
6 158 (4.20%) PowerShell
7 145 (3.85%) T-SQL
8 144 (3.82%) TypeScript
9 102 (2.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 102 (2.71%) Shell Script
10 96 (2.55%) R
11 95 (2.52%) Scala
12 73 (1.94%) C++
13 64 (1.70%) VBA
14 63 (1.67%) Bash
15 47 (1.25%) Bicep
16 46 (1.22%) Perl
17 43 (1.14%) VB
18 41 (1.09%) Go
19 28 (0.74%) PHP
Qualifications
1 736 (19.55%) Security Cleared
2 581 (15.43%) SC Cleared
3 333 (8.84%) Degree
4 109 (2.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 82 (2.18%) BPSS Clearance
6 71 (1.89%) Azure Certification
7 56 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 54 (1.43%) DV Cleared
9 48 (1.27%) ISTQB
10 47 (1.25%) Microsoft Certification
11 44 (1.17%) AWS Certification
12 21 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 17 (0.45%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.42%) CBAP
15 12 (0.32%) PhD
16 10 (0.27%) ISEB
16 10 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
16 10 (0.27%) MCSE
16 10 (0.27%) PMP
17 9 (0.24%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 636 (16.89%) Data Quality
2 271 (7.20%) QA
3 158 (4.20%) GDPR
4 61 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 28 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 27 (0.72%) SLA
7 23 (0.61%) PMO
8 20 (0.53%) MiFID
9 17 (0.45%) HIPAA
9 17 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.45%) NIST
10 15 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 14 (0.37%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.35%) SEPA
12 13 (0.35%) WCAG
13 12 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 12 (0.32%) EMIR
13 12 (0.32%) IFRS
14 11 (0.29%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.27%) PSD2
System Software
1 449 (11.93%) Docker
2 105 (2.79%) Active Directory
3 29 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 16 (0.42%) VMware Infrastructure
5 15 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
6 12 (0.32%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.21%) HDFS
7 8 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.16%) KVM
9 5 (0.13%) RACF
9 5 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
9 5 (0.13%) XenApp
9 5 (0.13%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.11%) Postfix
10 4 (0.11%) VMware NSX
10 4 (0.11%) vSphere
11 3 (0.080%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 3 (0.080%) Oracle Clusterware
11 3 (0.080%) Virtual Servers
12 2 (0.053%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 408 (10.84%) Kubernetes
2 301 (7.99%) Terraform
3 85 (2.26%) Grafana
4 64 (1.70%) Ansible
5 63 (1.67%) Prometheus
6 21 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
7 19 (0.50%) SCCM
8 18 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
9 17 (0.45%) Progress Chef
10 15 (0.40%) Control-M
11 14 (0.37%) Data Guard
11 14 (0.37%) Kibana
11 14 (0.37%) Puppet
12 9 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 9 (0.24%) WSUS
13 8 (0.21%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (0.21%) HP Quality Center
13 8 (0.21%) ITRS Geneos
13 8 (0.21%) Kiali
13 8 (0.21%) SCOM
Vendors
1 621 (16.49%) Oracle
2 606 (16.10%) Microsoft
3 453 (12.03%) Databricks
4 159 (4.22%) Google
5 100 (2.66%) ServiceNow
6 96 (2.55%) SAP
6 96 (2.55%) Talend
7 95 (2.52%) Informatica
8 72 (1.91%) Splunk
9 64 (1.70%) Salesforce
10 55 (1.46%) IBM
11 49 (1.30%) Citrix
12 46 (1.22%) OpenAI
13 43 (1.14%) Denodo
14 40 (1.06%) MuleSoft
15 34 (0.90%) Bloomberg
16 32 (0.85%) VMware
17 26 (0.69%) Foundry
18 23 (0.61%) NEC
18 23 (0.61%) Palantir