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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,414 3,286 3,565
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.84% 11.95% 10.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.29% 36.39% 33.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,953 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 11,838 9,030 10,715
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 26.40% 32.83% 31.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,679 6,226 7,721
10th Percentile £363 £345 £353
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £524 £515 £550
Median % change year-on-year +1.85% -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 485 226 373
10th Percentile £34.01 £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 £80.12 £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 29 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 29 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 29 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 2,385 £525 - 849
North of England -5 580 £463 -2.63% 355
Midlands +1 533 £459 +8.00% 196
South East -10 467 £475 -5.00% 396
West Midlands +3 439 £459 +2.00% 111
North West -4 307 £475 +1.28% 190
Yorkshire -8 234 £475 -0.11% 103
South West -6 224 £500 +14.29% 144
East of England -3 117 £478 -4.50% 98
East Midlands -3 90 £473 +22.06% 85
North East -19 51 £419 -9.46% 71
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
1 201 (4.55%) Apache Spark
2 186 (4.21%) Apache Airflow
3 181 (4.10%) Confluence
4 151 (3.42%) Apache
5 93 (2.11%) SAS
6 57 (1.29%) SharePoint
7 40 (0.91%) WebLogic
8 38 (0.86%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.72%) IIS
10 24 (0.54%) Jupyter
11 21 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 19 (0.43%) Tomcat
13 18 (0.41%) CMS
14 17 (0.39%) 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
1 288 (6.52%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.88%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.61%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.091%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.091%) Notion
8 4 (0.091%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.068%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.068%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.023%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.023%) InDesign
10 1 (0.023%) Mingle
10 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
1 42 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.66%) Aladdin
3 25 (0.57%) Oracle ERP
4 24 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
5 23 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
6 18 (0.41%) Oracle EBS R12
7 16 (0.36%) NEC Housing
7 16 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.25%) Findur
9 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
9 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.23%) Finacle
11 9 (0.20%) Fidessa
12 8 (0.18%) Elite 3E
12 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
12 8 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
13 7 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,394 (31.58%) Azure
2 1,039 (23.54%) AWS
3 839 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 398 (9.02%) Azure DevOps
5 389 (8.81%) GCP
6 316 (7.16%) Azure Data Factory
7 310 (7.02%) GitHub
8 286 (6.48%) Snowflake
9 272 (6.16%) Serverless
10 248 (5.62%) dbt
11 235 (5.32%) Amazon S3
12 202 (4.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 175 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
14 160 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (2.02%) Entra ID
16 84 (1.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 81 (1.84%) Power Automate
18 78 (1.77%) SaaS
19 71 (1.61%) PowerApps
20 69 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.09%) DNS
2 40 (0.91%) Firewall
3 23 (0.52%) SSL
4 21 (0.48%) SNMP
4 21 (0.48%) VPN
5 20 (0.45%) Internet
6 19 (0.43%) HTTP
6 19 (0.43%) Network Security
7 14 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 12 (0.27%) WAN
9 10 (0.23%) Wireshark
10 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.18%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
11 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Broadband
12 7 (0.16%) DHCP
12 7 (0.16%) Multicast
12 7 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 775 (17.56%) Power BI
2 614 (13.91%) Data Warehouse
3 564 (12.78%) SQL Server
4 292 (6.62%) Tableau
5 281 (6.37%) Relational Database
6 269 (6.09%) Data Lake
7 268 (6.07%) PostgreSQL
8 221 (5.01%) Metadata
8 221 (5.01%) NoSQL
9 182 (4.12%) Oracle Database
10 174 (3.94%) Azure SQL Database
11 159 (3.60%) BigQuery
12 150 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 132 (2.99%) Amazon Redshift
14 121 (2.74%) Delta Lake
15 105 (2.38%) Oracle Reports
16 103 (2.33%) Big Data
17 97 (2.20%) Snowflake Schema
18 95 (2.15%) MySQL
19 88 (1.99%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 491 (11.12%) Git
2 343 (7.77%) JIRA
3 240 (5.44%) Jenkins
4 183 (4.15%) GitLab
5 69 (1.56%) JUnit
6 59 (1.34%) Maven
7 54 (1.22%) Gradle
8 52 (1.18%) Postman
9 48 (1.09%) Selenium
10 46 (1.04%) Mockito
11 34 (0.77%) Bitbucket
11 34 (0.77%) Oracle Forms
11 34 (0.77%) SonarQube
12 30 (0.68%) ERwin
13 28 (0.63%) Zephyr
14 27 (0.61%) Liquibase
14 27 (0.61%) TeamCity
14 27 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 25 (0.57%) JMeter
15 25 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,146 (25.96%) Social Skills
2 1,133 (25.67%) Finance
3 880 (19.94%) Analytical Skills
4 424 (9.61%) Banking
5 402 (9.11%) Public Sector
6 134 (3.04%) Marketing
7 125 (2.83%) Front Office
8 104 (2.36%) Retail
9 98 (2.22%) Investment Banking
10 86 (1.95%) Documentation Skills
11 74 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 62 (1.40%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
14 51 (1.16%) Financial Institution
15 49 (1.11%) Legal
16 47 (1.06%) Organisational Skills
17 39 (0.88%) Publishing
18 37 (0.84%) Back Office
18 37 (0.84%) Telecoms
19 32 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 934 (21.16%) Developer
2 885 (20.05%) Data Engineer
3 630 (14.27%) Analyst
4 588 (13.32%) Senior
5 309 (7.00%) Lead
6 271 (6.14%) Data Analyst
7 232 (5.26%) Architect
8 221 (5.01%) Consultant
9 178 (4.03%) Business Analyst
10 172 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
11 170 (3.85%) DBA
11 170 (3.85%) Java Developer
12 147 (3.33%) Senior Developer
13 128 (2.90%) Software Engineer
14 113 (2.56%) SQL DBA
15 111 (2.51%) SQL Developer
16 108 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
17 97 (2.20%) C# Developer
18 94 (2.13%) Data Architect
19 91 (2.06%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 360 (8.16%) REST
2 358 (8.11%) .NET
3 276 (6.25%) PySpark
4 268 (6.07%) Kafka
5 222 (5.03%) Spring
6 202 (4.58%) Spring Boot
7 196 (4.44%) React
8 178 (4.03%) RESTful
9 169 (3.83%) JSON
10 156 (3.53%) XML
11 146 (3.31%) HTML
12 126 (2.85%) AngularJS
12 126 (2.85%) CSS
13 108 (2.45%) Pandas
14 101 (2.29%) Web Services
15 100 (2.27%) SOAP
16 91 (2.06%) .NET Framework
17 90 (2.04%) Middleware
18 72 (1.63%) Node.js
19 71 (1.61%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 287 (6.50%) Cloud Native
2 200 (4.53%) Data Structures
3 161 (3.65%) Product Ownership
4 156 (3.53%) Legacy Systems
5 135 (3.06%) Distributed Systems
6 93 (2.11%) Onboarding
7 86 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
8 79 (1.79%) Derivative
9 75 (1.70%) Management Information System
10 74 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
11 70 (1.59%) Analytical Mindset
12 68 (1.54%) Clustering
13 62 (1.40%) Data Protection Act
14 57 (1.29%) Replication
15 54 (1.22%) Algorithms
16 53 (1.20%) Fixed Income
17 51 (1.16%) Equities
18 48 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
18 48 (1.09%) Reference Data
19 40 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 291 (6.59%) Linux
2 278 (6.30%) Windows
3 198 (4.49%) Unix
4 105 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (0.50%) AIX
7 16 (0.36%) Solaris
8 14 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.18%) zOS
11 7 (0.16%) Ubuntu
12 6 (0.14%) Android
12 6 (0.14%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.14%) VMS
12 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2016
13 5 (0.11%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.045%) OpenVMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,177 (26.67%) CI/CD
2 1,154 (26.14%) Analytics
3 1,127 (25.53%) Agile
4 1,120 (25.37%) Data Modelling
5 1,020 (23.11%) ETL
6 998 (22.61%) Business Intelligence
7 888 (20.12%) DevOps
8 863 (19.55%) Data Pipeline
9 851 (19.28%) Problem-Solving
10 752 (17.04%) Data Engineering
11 634 (14.36%) AI
12 604 (13.68%) Migration
13 588 (13.32%) Validation
14 488 (11.06%) Data Governance
15 459 (10.40%) Continuous Improvement
15 459 (10.40%) Decision-Making
16 455 (10.31%) Test Automation
17 444 (10.06%) Stakeholder Management
18 423 (9.58%) Data Analysis
19 390 (8.84%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,574 (35.66%) Python
2 551 (12.48%) Java
3 435 (9.86%) C#
4 353 (8.00%) PL/SQL
5 315 (7.14%) JavaScript
6 237 (5.37%) PowerShell
6 237 (5.37%) T-SQL
7 162 (3.67%) TypeScript
8 137 (3.10%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 123 (2.79%) Shell Script
10 92 (2.08%) R
11 91 (2.06%) Bash
12 67 (1.52%) Scala
13 44 (1.00%) C++
13 44 (1.00%) VBA
14 39 (0.88%) Bicep
15 32 (0.72%) C
16 30 (0.68%) VB
17 22 (0.50%) Go
18 20 (0.45%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 961 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 769 (17.42%) SC Cleared
3 313 (7.09%) Degree
4 102 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 101 (2.29%) DV Cleared
6 98 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 68 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 49 (1.11%) ISTQB
9 48 (1.09%) Master's Degree
10 38 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
11 28 (0.63%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.39%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.36%) PhD
14 15 (0.34%) CISSP
15 12 (0.27%) ISEB
16 11 (0.25%) FFIEC
16 11 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.23%) CISM
17 10 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
18 9 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 820 (18.58%) Data Quality
2 326 (7.39%) QA
3 156 (3.53%) GDPR
4 49 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 42 (0.95%) SLA
6 22 (0.50%) NIST
6 22 (0.50%) PMO
7 20 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 18 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
8 18 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 16 (0.36%) Solvency II
10 15 (0.34%) MiFID
11 14 (0.32%) IFRS
12 12 (0.27%) COBIT
12 12 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.25%) ISO 20022
14 10 (0.23%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 10 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 9 (0.20%) HL7
15 9 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 437 (9.90%) Docker
2 115 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 42 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
3 42 (0.95%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
5 17 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
6 14 (0.32%) Hyper-V
6 14 (0.32%) VMware NSX
7 13 (0.29%) vCloud
8 9 (0.20%) Postfix
9 8 (0.18%) KVM
10 7 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
11 4 (0.091%) HDFS
11 4 (0.091%) RACF
12 2 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.045%) GridGain
13 1 (0.023%) Varnish
13 1 (0.023%) vSphere
13 1 (0.023%) XenApp
13 1 (0.023%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 376 (8.52%) Kubernetes
2 350 (7.93%) Terraform
3 91 (2.06%) Grafana
4 82 (1.86%) Ansible
5 46 (1.04%) Prometheus
6 41 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 37 (0.84%) Data Guard
8 28 (0.63%) Control-M
9 25 (0.57%) SCOM
10 19 (0.43%) Kibana
11 18 (0.41%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.36%) Nagios
12 16 (0.36%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.34%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.32%) Netcool
15 13 (0.29%) OpenView
15 13 (0.29%) Single Sign-On
15 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 10 (0.23%) ITRS Geneos
17 8 (0.18%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
Vendors
1 762 (17.26%) Oracle
2 695 (15.75%) Microsoft
3 514 (11.64%) Databricks
4 169 (3.83%) Google
5 156 (3.53%) Informatica
6 125 (2.83%) Talend
7 123 (2.79%) ServiceNow
8 120 (2.72%) SAP
9 79 (1.79%) Splunk
10 76 (1.72%) IBM
11 63 (1.43%) Denodo
12 58 (1.31%) VMware
13 56 (1.27%) Salesforce
14 40 (0.91%) Citrix
15 39 (0.88%) Dynatrace
16 38 (0.86%) Bloomberg
17 37 (0.84%) BMC
18 33 (0.75%) Alteryx
19 31 (0.70%) Murex
20 30 (0.68%) Adobe