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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,004 3,011 3,635
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.08% 12.24% 9.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.56% 36.26% 33.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,755 2,135 2,672
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -6.36% -
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £688 £772 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 57 60
10th Percentile £27.62 £21.30 £22.61
25th Percentile £35.50 £30.00 £26.18
Median hourly rate £49.36 £52.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% +23.53% -15.00%
75th Percentile £72.63 £65.62 £53.84
90th Percentile £83.00 £79.21 £61.87
UK median hourly rate £52.50 £45.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +15.38% +7.06% -16.26%

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 10,952 8,304 10,862
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 27.56% 33.76% 29.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,280 5,733 7,897
10th Percentile £352 £363 £350
25th Percentile £414 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £501 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -4.67% -2.78% -4.42%
75th Percentile £606 £650 £653
90th Percentile £725 £780 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 525 213 434
10th Percentile £41.73 £25.25 £35.51
25th Percentile £55.00 £39.25 £47.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.18
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +0.52% -0.52%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £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% -1.54%

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 2,275 £513 -6.82% 653
Midlands +7 517 £465 +2.57% 236
North of England -8 473 £450 -5.26% 322
West Midlands +8 409 £460 -0.65% 138
South East -18 321 £500 - 490
North West -1 263 £450 -5.26% 186
South West -6 217 £475 -5.00% 138
Yorkshire -18 188 £463 -5.13% 91
East Midlands +4 105 £525 +32.74% 98
East of England -17 89 £503 +11.67% 130
North East -7 33 £475 +4.40% 48
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
1 229 (5.72%) Apache Spark
2 162 (4.05%) Apache Airflow
3 142 (3.55%) Apache
4 120 (3.00%) Confluence
5 81 (2.02%) SharePoint
6 80 (2.00%) SAS
7 47 (1.17%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.82%) IIS
9 24 (0.60%) Tomcat
10 20 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
10 20 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
11 15 (0.37%) Tuxedo
12 14 (0.35%) HCL Notes
12 14 (0.35%) nginx
13 13 (0.32%) Appian
13 13 (0.32%) CMS
13 13 (0.32%) Mendix
13 13 (0.32%) Palantir Foundry
14 12 (0.30%) Jupyter
14 12 (0.30%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 271 (6.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 56 (1.40%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (1.17%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.82%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 23 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.15%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.12%) 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
10 1 (0.025%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (1.05%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.67%) Aladdin
3 23 (0.57%) NEC Housing
4 21 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
4 21 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.47%) Oracle Receivables
5 19 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
6 17 (0.42%) Oracle General Ledger
7 16 (0.40%) NetSuite
8 15 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
9 11 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 11 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
9 11 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
11 9 (0.22%) Maximo
11 9 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.20%) Endur
12 8 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,378 (34.42%) Azure
2 974 (24.33%) AWS
3 780 (19.48%) Power Platform
4 414 (10.34%) Azure DevOps
5 346 (8.64%) Azure Data Factory
6 323 (8.07%) GCP
7 300 (7.49%) GitHub
8 268 (6.69%) Serverless
9 233 (5.82%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 232 (5.79%) Snowflake
11 229 (5.72%) Amazon S3
12 176 (4.40%) dbt
13 156 (3.90%) AWS Lambda
14 154 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
15 91 (2.27%) Power Automate
16 78 (1.95%) SaaS
17 74 (1.85%) AWS CloudFormation
17 74 (1.85%) Azure Functions
17 74 (1.85%) Entra ID
18 72 (1.80%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 47 (1.17%) Firewall
2 36 (0.90%) DNS
3 23 (0.57%) Network Security
4 18 (0.45%) HTTP
4 18 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 15 (0.37%) Internet
5 15 (0.37%) WAN
6 12 (0.30%) LAN
7 11 (0.27%) SNMP
7 11 (0.27%) SSL
7 11 (0.27%) VPN
8 9 (0.22%) DHCP
9 8 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
10 6 (0.15%) IPsec
10 6 (0.15%) VLAN
10 6 (0.15%) Wireshark
11 5 (0.12%) 3GPP
11 5 (0.12%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.12%) PuTTY
11 5 (0.12%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 712 (17.78%) Power BI
2 513 (12.81%) Data Warehouse
3 497 (12.41%) SQL Server
4 281 (7.02%) Tableau
5 259 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
6 257 (6.42%) Data Lake
7 256 (6.39%) NoSQL
8 248 (6.19%) Relational Database
9 206 (5.14%) Metadata
10 205 (5.12%) Azure SQL Database
11 146 (3.65%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 144 (3.60%) Oracle Database
13 122 (3.05%) Amazon Redshift
14 120 (3.00%) BigQuery
15 119 (2.97%) MySQL
16 114 (2.85%) Delta Lake
17 111 (2.77%) Big Data
18 100 (2.50%) Oracle Reports
19 99 (2.47%) MongoDB
20 94 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 432 (10.79%) Git
2 318 (7.94%) JIRA
3 209 (5.22%) Jenkins
4 161 (4.02%) GitLab
5 62 (1.55%) Selenium
6 57 (1.42%) JUnit
7 48 (1.20%) Postman
8 40 (1.00%) Maven
9 37 (0.92%) Cucumber
10 36 (0.90%) Oracle APEX
11 35 (0.87%) MLflow
12 34 (0.85%) Mockito
13 29 (0.72%) Bitbucket
14 28 (0.70%) REST Assured
15 27 (0.67%) SonarQube
16 25 (0.62%) ERwin
17 24 (0.60%) JMeter
18 22 (0.55%) Oracle Forms
18 22 (0.55%) SpecFlow
18 22 (0.55%) Visual Studio
General
1 1,103 (27.55%) Social Skills
2 1,089 (27.20%) Finance
3 751 (18.76%) Analytical Skills
4 378 (9.44%) Banking
5 341 (8.52%) Public Sector
6 101 (2.52%) Front Office
7 98 (2.45%) Investment Banking
8 94 (2.35%) Marketing
9 89 (2.22%) Documentation Skills
10 64 (1.60%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 57 (1.42%) Retail
12 55 (1.37%) Legal
13 53 (1.32%) Financial Institution
14 39 (0.97%) Telecoms
15 34 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
15 34 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
15 34 (0.85%) Publishing
16 32 (0.80%) Law
17 31 (0.77%) Local Government
18 29 (0.72%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 873 (21.80%) Developer
2 802 (20.03%) Data Engineer
3 589 (14.71%) Analyst
4 499 (12.46%) Senior
5 276 (6.89%) Lead
6 251 (6.27%) Data Analyst
7 224 (5.59%) Architect
8 192 (4.80%) Business Analyst
9 181 (4.52%) Consultant
10 150 (3.75%) Java Developer
11 131 (3.27%) Senior Developer
12 129 (3.22%) Senior Data Engineer
13 120 (3.00%) DBA
14 117 (2.92%) Azure Engineer
15 113 (2.82%) Software Engineer
16 105 (2.62%) C# Developer
17 88 (2.20%) Python Developer
18 85 (2.12%) Data Architect
18 85 (2.12%) Data Scientist
18 85 (2.12%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 350 (8.74%) .NET
2 316 (7.89%) REST
3 245 (6.12%) Kafka
4 242 (6.04%) PySpark
5 194 (4.85%) React
6 185 (4.62%) Spring
7 180 (4.50%) RESTful
8 172 (4.30%) Spring Boot
9 149 (3.72%) XML
10 145 (3.62%) HTML
11 125 (3.12%) CSS
12 124 (3.10%) JSON
13 120 (3.00%) Pandas
14 112 (2.80%) AngularJS
15 89 (2.22%) SOAP
16 88 (2.20%) Middleware
17 82 (2.05%) .NET Framework
17 82 (2.05%) Node.js
18 73 (1.82%) Web Services
19 70 (1.75%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 252 (6.29%) Cloud Native
2 141 (3.52%) Data Structures
3 138 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 125 (3.12%) Product Ownership
5 98 (2.45%) Distributed Systems
6 87 (2.17%) Management Information System
7 73 (1.82%) Derivative
8 68 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
9 63 (1.57%) Analytical Mindset
9 63 (1.57%) Onboarding
10 56 (1.40%) Equities
11 55 (1.37%) Fixed Income
12 49 (1.22%) Clustering
13 47 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
13 47 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
14 45 (1.12%) Algorithms
15 43 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 38 (0.95%) NHS
17 37 (0.92%) Greenfield Project
17 37 (0.92%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 284 (7.09%) Linux
2 244 (6.09%) Windows
3 200 (5.00%) Unix
4 76 (1.90%) Windows Server
5 23 (0.57%) AIX
6 19 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 13 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
8 10 (0.25%) Windows 10
8 10 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 7 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
9 7 (0.17%) zOS
10 6 (0.15%) Solaris
10 6 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
11 5 (0.12%) Android
12 4 (0.100%) Apple iOS
13 3 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.050%) CentOS
14 2 (0.050%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.050%) VMS
15 1 (0.025%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,081 (27.00%) CI/CD
2 1,037 (25.90%) Agile
3 1,028 (25.67%) Analytics
4 981 (24.50%) Data Modelling
5 943 (23.55%) ETL
6 933 (23.30%) Business Intelligence
7 916 (22.88%) DevOps
8 827 (20.65%) Problem-Solving
9 718 (17.93%) Data Pipeline
10 636 (15.88%) Data Engineering
11 495 (12.36%) AI
12 492 (12.29%) Validation
13 491 (12.26%) Migration
14 482 (12.04%) Data Governance
15 386 (9.64%) Decision-Making
16 383 (9.57%) Test Automation
17 375 (9.37%) Data Analysis
18 362 (9.04%) Performance Tuning
19 350 (8.74%) Microservices
20 334 (8.34%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 1,512 (37.76%) Python
2 542 (13.54%) Java
3 436 (10.89%) C#
4 325 (8.12%) JavaScript
5 309 (7.72%) PL/SQL
6 188 (4.70%) T-SQL
7 172 (4.30%) PowerShell
8 132 (3.30%) TypeScript
9 120 (3.00%) Shell Script
10 119 (2.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 117 (2.92%) R
12 94 (2.35%) Scala
13 73 (1.82%) Bash
14 60 (1.50%) C++
15 57 (1.42%) VBA
16 45 (1.12%) Bicep
17 43 (1.07%) Perl
18 28 (0.70%) Go
18 28 (0.70%) VB
19 22 (0.55%) C
Qualifications
1 848 (21.18%) Security Cleared
2 695 (17.36%) SC Cleared
3 323 (8.07%) Degree
4 114 (2.85%) Computer Science Degree
5 86 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 69 (1.72%) Azure Certification
7 52 (1.30%) Master's Degree
8 51 (1.27%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.25%) DV Cleared
10 40 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 32 (0.80%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 16 (0.40%) PhD
14 15 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.32%) CBAP
16 11 (0.27%) CISSP
17 10 (0.25%) DBS Check
17 10 (0.25%) PMP
18 9 (0.22%) CISM
18 9 (0.22%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 714 (17.83%) Data Quality
2 306 (7.64%) QA
3 183 (4.57%) GDPR
4 41 (1.02%) Accessibility
5 35 (0.87%) SLA
6 32 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.70%) PMO
8 23 (0.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 17 (0.42%) NIST
9 17 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.40%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.37%) MiFID
12 14 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
12 14 (0.35%) IFRS
13 12 (0.30%) HL7
13 12 (0.30%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.25%) GRC
14 10 (0.25%) SEPA
14 10 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 459 (11.46%) Docker
2 95 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
4 23 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
5 19 (0.47%) VMware Infrastructure
6 16 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 9 (0.22%) KVM
8 8 (0.20%) Postfix
8 8 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 6 (0.15%) HDFS
9 6 (0.15%) RACF
10 5 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
10 5 (0.12%) XenApp
10 5 (0.12%) XenDesktop
11 3 (0.075%) Oracle Clusterware
12 2 (0.050%) GridGain
12 2 (0.050%) vSphere
13 1 (0.025%) GPFS
13 1 (0.025%) Slurm Workload Manager
13 1 (0.025%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 399 (9.97%) Kubernetes
2 334 (8.34%) Terraform
3 99 (2.47%) Grafana
4 64 (1.60%) Ansible
5 62 (1.55%) Prometheus
6 36 (0.90%) Oracle RMAN
7 25 (0.62%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.50%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (0.40%) Kibana
9 16 (0.40%) SCCM
10 15 (0.37%) Progress Chef
11 14 (0.35%) Control-M
12 11 (0.27%) 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 (0.22%) Kiali
14 9 (0.22%) Puppet
Vendors
1 668 (16.68%) Oracle
2 651 (16.26%) Microsoft
3 484 (12.09%) Databricks
4 157 (3.92%) Google
5 126 (3.15%) Informatica
6 123 (3.07%) ServiceNow
7 111 (2.77%) SAP
8 102 (2.55%) Talend
9 82 (2.05%) Splunk
10 62 (1.55%) IBM
11 61 (1.52%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.30%) Citrix
13 45 (1.12%) Denodo
14 43 (1.07%) OpenAI
15 33 (0.82%) MuleSoft
16 32 (0.80%) Bloomberg
16 32 (0.80%) Dynatrace
16 32 (0.80%) VMware
17 29 (0.72%) HP
18 28 (0.70%) Sage