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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,484 3,269 3,578
As % of all contract jobs in England 9.66% 11.75% 10.85%
As % of the Programming Languages category 37.25% 35.80% 33.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,027 2,291 2,600
10th Percentile £358 £331 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £539
Median % change year-on-year - -7.28% -0.14%
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 80 80 39
10th Percentile £22.95 £29.00 £25.99
25th Percentile £28.50 £33.56 £30.25
Median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year -18.00% +20.48% +3.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £77.53 £62.63 £60.00
UK median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +25.00% -11.97%

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 12,038 9,131 10,638
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 25.95% 32.82% 32.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 7,784 6,184 7,375
10th Percentile £363 £349 £354
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £550
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £788
UK median daily rate £520 £501 £525
% change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 499 265 303
10th Percentile £28.40 £31.25 £30.65
25th Percentile £51.25 £42.25 £50.69
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.25 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £80.00 £80.00
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 11 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 11 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 11 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 2,533 £525 - 1,546
North of England 0 589 £475 +5.56% 391
South East -12 464 £490 -2.00% 522
Midlands -5 450 £469 +4.22% 272
West Midlands -4 350 £469 -6.20% 163
North West 0 293 £481 +6.89% 227
Yorkshire 0 254 £475 +5.44% 113
South West -5 223 £513 +20.59% 217
East of England -7 120 £495 -1.49% 131
East Midlands -2 98 £464 +18.91% 109
North East -17 51 £406 -12.63% 55
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
1 225 (5.02%) Apache Airflow
2 189 (4.21%) Apache Spark
3 188 (4.19%) Confluence
4 149 (3.32%) Apache
5 84 (1.87%) SharePoint
6 72 (1.61%) SAS
7 36 (0.80%) Oracle Workflow
8 29 (0.65%) IIS
8 29 (0.65%) WebLogic
9 26 (0.58%) Jupyter
10 25 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
11 20 (0.45%) CMS
11 20 (0.45%) Palantir Foundry
12 18 (0.40%) nginx
13 17 (0.38%) Camunda
14 15 (0.33%) WebSphere
15 12 (0.27%) ArcGIS
16 11 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 9 (0.20%) Tomcat
18 7 (0.16%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 276 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.87%) Spreadsheet
4 26 (0.58%) MS Visio
5 24 (0.54%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.11%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.089%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.089%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.089%) Notion
8 4 (0.089%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.067%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.067%) Windchill
10 2 (0.045%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.022%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 45 (1.00%) Dynamics CRM
2 40 (0.89%) Oracle EBS
3 28 (0.62%) Oracle Payables
4 26 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.49%) Aladdin
7 21 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
8 19 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
9 16 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
10 15 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
11 11 (0.25%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.25%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.22%) Finacle
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
12 10 (0.22%) Summit
13 9 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
14 8 (0.18%) Findur
14 8 (0.18%) NetSuite
14 8 (0.18%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,399 (31.20%) Azure
2 1,078 (24.04%) AWS
3 860 (19.18%) Power Platform
4 419 (9.34%) GCP
5 389 (8.68%) Azure DevOps
6 336 (7.49%) Snowflake
7 324 (7.23%) GitHub
8 309 (6.89%) Azure Data Factory
9 278 (6.20%) dbt
10 277 (6.18%) Serverless
11 224 (5.00%) Amazon S3
12 195 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 177 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
14 160 (3.57%) GitHub Actions
15 97 (2.16%) Power Automate
16 96 (2.14%) SaaS
17 87 (1.94%) Azure Databricks
17 87 (1.94%) PowerApps
18 86 (1.92%) Entra ID
19 82 (1.83%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 59 (1.32%) DNS
2 45 (1.00%) Firewall
3 27 (0.60%) SSL
4 26 (0.58%) HTTP
5 24 (0.54%) Network Security
6 19 (0.42%) Internet
6 19 (0.42%) VPN
7 18 (0.40%) TCP/IP
8 17 (0.38%) SNMP
9 16 (0.36%) Broadband
10 15 (0.33%) DHCP
11 11 (0.25%) SSH
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 9 (0.20%) SAN
13 8 (0.18%) Multicast
13 8 (0.18%) Reverse Proxy
13 8 (0.18%) RTP
13 8 (0.18%) WinSCP
14 7 (0.16%) WAN
14 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 790 (17.62%) Power BI
2 624 (13.92%) Data Warehouse
3 579 (12.91%) SQL Server
4 295 (6.58%) Relational Database
5 281 (6.27%) PostgreSQL
6 268 (5.98%) Tableau
7 262 (5.84%) Data Lake
8 241 (5.37%) Metadata
9 218 (4.86%) NoSQL
10 203 (4.53%) Oracle Database
11 179 (3.99%) BigQuery
12 161 (3.59%) Azure SQL Database
13 139 (3.10%) Amazon Redshift
14 131 (2.92%) Delta Lake
15 127 (2.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 121 (2.70%) MySQL
17 98 (2.19%) Amazon Athena
18 97 (2.16%) Big Data
19 91 (2.03%) MongoDB
20 89 (1.98%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 547 (12.20%) Git
2 353 (7.87%) JIRA
3 247 (5.51%) Jenkins
4 209 (4.66%) GitLab
5 89 (1.98%) Selenium
6 78 (1.74%) JUnit
7 73 (1.63%) Gradle
8 66 (1.47%) Maven
9 57 (1.27%) Postman
10 50 (1.12%) Mockito
11 45 (1.00%) SonarQube
12 38 (0.85%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.78%) Oracle Forms
14 29 (0.65%) Visual Studio
15 28 (0.62%) Zephyr
16 27 (0.60%) JMeter
17 26 (0.58%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.58%) MLflow
18 24 (0.54%) ERwin
19 23 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 1,253 (27.94%) Social Skills
2 1,187 (26.47%) Finance
3 952 (21.23%) Analytical Skills
4 504 (11.24%) Banking
5 391 (8.72%) Public Sector
6 152 (3.39%) Marketing
7 133 (2.97%) Front Office
8 127 (2.83%) Retail
9 118 (2.63%) Investment Banking
10 93 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 78 (1.74%) Documentation Skills
12 69 (1.54%) Manufacturing
13 53 (1.18%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.16%) Presentation Skills
15 45 (1.00%) Legal
16 38 (0.85%) Back Office
16 38 (0.85%) Local Government
16 38 (0.85%) Publishing
17 37 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
18 36 (0.80%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 938 (20.92%) Developer
2 863 (19.25%) Data Engineer
3 673 (15.01%) Analyst
4 642 (14.32%) Senior
5 309 (6.89%) Lead
6 274 (6.11%) Data Analyst
7 227 (5.06%) Architect
8 199 (4.44%) Consultant
9 196 (4.37%) Business Analyst
10 195 (4.35%) Senior Data Engineer
11 180 (4.01%) DBA
12 160 (3.57%) Java Developer
13 157 (3.50%) Senior Developer
14 119 (2.65%) Software Engineer
15 110 (2.45%) SQL DBA
16 103 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
17 102 (2.27%) Data Architect
18 101 (2.25%) SQL Developer
19 100 (2.23%) Full-Stack Developer
20 96 (2.14%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (8.81%) .NET
1 395 (8.81%) REST
2 373 (8.32%) Terraform
3 313 (6.98%) PySpark
4 295 (6.58%) Kafka
5 224 (5.00%) Spring
6 221 (4.93%) React
7 212 (4.73%) Spring Boot
8 182 (4.06%) HTML
9 173 (3.86%) RESTful
10 168 (3.75%) JSON
11 159 (3.55%) CSS
12 143 (3.19%) XML
13 110 (2.45%) AngularJS
14 103 (2.30%) Pandas
15 101 (2.25%) Web Services
16 97 (2.16%) SOAP
17 95 (2.12%) Middleware
18 83 (1.85%) .NET Framework
19 80 (1.78%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 284 (6.33%) Cloud Native
2 220 (4.91%) Data Structures
3 194 (4.33%) Product Ownership
4 144 (3.21%) Legacy Systems
5 123 (2.74%) Distributed Systems
6 115 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
7 113 (2.52%) Onboarding
8 96 (2.14%) Management Information System
9 80 (1.78%) Self-Motivation
10 74 (1.65%) AI Agents
11 73 (1.63%) Derivative
12 68 (1.52%) Replication
13 65 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
14 59 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
15 57 (1.27%) Clustering
15 57 (1.27%) Reference Data
16 52 (1.16%) Algorithms
17 49 (1.09%) Fixed Income
18 47 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
19 40 (0.89%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 318 (7.09%) Linux
2 280 (6.24%) Windows
3 213 (4.75%) Unix
4 110 (2.45%) Windows Server
5 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 22 (0.49%) Solaris
7 14 (0.31%) AIX
8 12 (0.27%) Ubuntu
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.18%) VMS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows 10
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) zOS
14 4 (0.089%) Android
14 4 (0.089%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.089%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.067%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.045%) HPUX
16 2 (0.045%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,232 (27.48%) CI/CD
2 1,179 (26.29%) Agile
3 1,133 (25.27%) Data Modelling
4 1,125 (25.09%) Analytics
5 992 (22.12%) Business Intelligence
6 982 (21.90%) ETL
7 898 (20.03%) Problem-Solving
8 885 (19.74%) DevOps
9 882 (19.67%) Data Pipeline
10 771 (17.19%) Data Engineering
11 731 (16.30%) AI
12 669 (14.92%) Validation
13 639 (14.25%) Migration
14 609 (13.58%) Stakeholder Management
15 504 (11.24%) Continuous Improvement
16 500 (11.15%) Test Automation
17 496 (11.06%) Data Governance
18 485 (10.82%) Data Analysis
19 483 (10.77%) Decision-Making
20 386 (8.61%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,644 (36.66%) Python
2 551 (12.29%) Java
3 421 (9.39%) C#
4 363 (8.10%) JavaScript
5 354 (7.89%) PL/SQL
6 243 (5.42%) PowerShell
7 210 (4.68%) T-SQL
8 191 (4.26%) TypeScript
9 140 (3.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 139 (3.10%) Shell Script
11 105 (2.34%) Bash
12 86 (1.92%) R
13 64 (1.43%) Scala
14 43 (0.96%) C++
15 36 (0.80%) VBA
16 29 (0.65%) Bicep
17 26 (0.58%) C
18 25 (0.56%) Kotlin
18 25 (0.56%) VB
19 23 (0.51%) Go
Qualifications
1 956 (21.32%) Security Cleared
2 754 (16.82%) SC Cleared
3 335 (7.47%) Degree
4 125 (2.79%) DV Cleared
5 120 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
6 107 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
7 73 (1.63%) Azure Certification
8 56 (1.25%) ISTQB
9 50 (1.12%) Microsoft Certification
10 43 (0.96%) Master's Degree
11 39 (0.87%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) CISSP
13 17 (0.38%) ISEB
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 15 (0.33%) Oracle Certification
16 14 (0.31%) ACCA
16 14 (0.31%) CIMA
16 14 (0.31%) DBS Check
17 12 (0.27%) FFIEC
17 12 (0.27%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 884 (19.71%) Data Quality
2 368 (8.21%) QA
3 132 (2.94%) GDPR
4 46 (1.03%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.98%) SLA
6 28 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
7 25 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 21 (0.47%) ISO 20022
9 20 (0.45%) IFRS
10 19 (0.42%) NIST
11 17 (0.38%) MiFID
12 16 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 13 (0.29%) PMO
14 12 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.25%) COBIT
15 11 (0.25%) Solvency II
16 10 (0.22%) HIPAA
17 9 (0.20%) GRC
18 8 (0.18%) WCAG
19 7 (0.16%) HL7
System Software
1 435 (9.70%) Docker
2 116 (2.59%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
5 37 (0.83%) Oracle RAC
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 7 (0.16%) Postfix
11 4 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 4 (0.089%) KVM
12 2 (0.045%) DFS Replication
12 2 (0.045%) Dovecot
12 2 (0.045%) GridGain
12 2 (0.045%) Squid
13 1 (0.022%) GPFS
13 1 (0.022%) RACF
13 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 362 (8.07%) Kubernetes
2 91 (2.03%) Ansible
3 83 (1.85%) Grafana
4 49 (1.09%) Prometheus
5 40 (0.89%) Control-M
5 40 (0.89%) Oracle RMAN
5 40 (0.89%) SCOM
6 39 (0.87%) Data Guard
7 22 (0.49%) Kibana
8 16 (0.36%) vCenter Server
9 12 (0.27%) Microsoft Clustering
9 12 (0.27%) Nagios
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 12 (0.27%) Single Sign-On
9 12 (0.27%) ZABBIX
10 11 (0.25%) Tivoli
11 10 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
11 10 (0.22%) Netcool
12 9 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
12 9 (0.20%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 765 (17.06%) Oracle
2 762 (16.99%) Microsoft
3 568 (12.67%) Databricks
4 191 (4.26%) Google
5 133 (2.97%) Informatica
6 125 (2.79%) SAP
7 102 (2.27%) Talend
8 95 (2.12%) ServiceNow
9 91 (2.03%) IBM
10 76 (1.69%) Splunk
11 70 (1.56%) VMware
12 62 (1.38%) Salesforce
13 50 (1.12%) Denodo
14 40 (0.89%) Bloomberg
15 36 (0.80%) BMC
16 35 (0.78%) Alteryx
17 34 (0.76%) Murex
18 33 (0.74%) Dynatrace
18 33 (0.74%) OpenAI
19 32 (0.71%) Foundry