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

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 3,635 3,017 3,828
As % of all contract jobs in England 10.39% 11.89% 10.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.96% 35.49% 34.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,518 2,040 2,783
10th Percentile £350 £353 £350
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
75th Percentile £591 £625 £655
90th Percentile £709 £750 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -1.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 54 62
10th Percentile £19.60 £25.26 £21.65
25th Percentile £31.25 £30.74 £25.91
Median hourly rate £48.72 £52.75 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.64% +24.12% -15.00%
75th Percentile £69.25 £65.46 £53.63
90th Percentile £82.25 £79.16 £61.61
UK median hourly rate £51.25 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -2.38% +23.53% -15.84%

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 10,398 8,500 11,043
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 29.72% 33.49% 29.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 6,959 5,540 7,960
10th Percentile £352 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £508 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £614 £650 £658
90th Percentile £725 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -5.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 430 206 467
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.26 £35.51
25th Percentile £54.06 £41.75 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -7.69%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £69.62
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.53
UK median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.16%

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 February 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 February 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 February 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 2,169 £510 -7.27% 664
Midlands -1 422 £488 +6.03% 277
North of England -7 395 £450 -5.26% 354
West Midlands +1 332 £483 -1.33% 180
South East -19 273 £480 -4.00% 533
North West 0 223 £425 -10.29% 213
South West -2 187 £475 -6.86% 130
Yorkshire -19 151 £500 -1.96% 101
East Midlands -9 90 £531 +37.92% 96
East of England -13 80 £550 +17.33% 108
North East -7 28 £475 +2.70% 45
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
1 192 (5.28%) Apache Spark
2 148 (4.07%) Apache Airflow
3 114 (3.14%) Apache
4 112 (3.08%) Confluence
5 82 (2.26%) SharePoint
6 78 (2.15%) SAS
7 53 (1.46%) WebLogic
8 24 (0.66%) IIS
9 22 (0.61%) Microsoft Exchange
10 19 (0.52%) Tomcat
11 18 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 17 (0.47%) CMS
13 16 (0.44%) Jupyter
14 15 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
15 14 (0.39%) Skype for Business
16 13 (0.36%) nginx
17 12 (0.33%) Appian
17 12 (0.33%) JBoss
17 12 (0.33%) Oracle Workflow
17 12 (0.33%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 227 (6.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 69 (1.90%) Microsoft Office
3 45 (1.24%) MS Visio
4 33 (0.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 12 (0.33%) Microsoft Project
5 12 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.25%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.11%) Trello
8 3 (0.083%) Mozilla Thunderbird
8 3 (0.083%) Notion
8 3 (0.083%) Oracle Smart View
9 1 (0.028%) Maya
9 1 (0.028%) NUKE
9 1 (0.028%) SPSS
9 1 (0.028%) Weka
Business Applications
1 25 (0.69%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.66%) Oracle Payables
3 21 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
3 21 (0.58%) Oracle Receivables
4 20 (0.55%) NEC Housing
4 20 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.55%) Oracle General Ledger
5 15 (0.41%) Oracle Assets
5 15 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
6 14 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
7 13 (0.36%) Endur
7 13 (0.36%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
8 11 (0.30%) Oracle Cash Management
8 11 (0.30%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 10 (0.28%) Advent Geneva
9 10 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 8 (0.22%) Maximo
10 8 (0.22%) SAP HR
Cloud Services
1 1,234 (33.95%) Azure
2 907 (24.95%) AWS
3 691 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 346 (9.52%) Azure DevOps
5 310 (8.53%) GCP
6 287 (7.90%) Azure Data Factory
7 270 (7.43%) GitHub
8 260 (7.15%) Serverless
9 245 (6.74%) Snowflake
10 193 (5.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 191 (5.25%) Amazon S3
12 147 (4.04%) dbt
13 140 (3.85%) GitHub Actions
14 133 (3.66%) AWS Lambda
15 95 (2.61%) SaaS
16 82 (2.26%) Azure Functions
17 80 (2.20%) Power Automate
18 66 (1.82%) PowerApps
19 65 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
20 60 (1.65%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 48 (1.32%) Firewall
2 40 (1.10%) DNS
3 25 (0.69%) HTTP
4 17 (0.47%) Network Security
4 17 (0.47%) Skype
4 17 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 14 (0.39%) Internet
6 13 (0.36%) DHCP
6 13 (0.36%) SSL
7 11 (0.30%) VPN
8 10 (0.28%) 5G
8 10 (0.28%) LAN
8 10 (0.28%) Unified Communications
8 10 (0.28%) WAN
9 9 (0.25%) 2G
10 8 (0.22%) SMS
11 7 (0.19%) 4G
11 7 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
12 6 (0.17%) Multicast
13 5 (0.14%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 626 (17.22%) Power BI
2 425 (11.69%) Data Warehouse
3 413 (11.36%) SQL Server
4 252 (6.93%) Relational Database
5 249 (6.85%) NoSQL
6 241 (6.63%) PostgreSQL
7 231 (6.35%) Data Lake
8 228 (6.27%) Tableau
9 183 (5.03%) Azure SQL Database
10 159 (4.37%) Metadata
11 148 (4.07%) Oracle Database
12 131 (3.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 116 (3.19%) BigQuery
14 111 (3.05%) Big Data
15 103 (2.83%) MySQL
16 97 (2.67%) MongoDB
17 95 (2.61%) Delta Lake
18 93 (2.56%) Amazon RDS
19 87 (2.39%) Amazon Redshift
20 79 (2.17%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 410 (11.28%) Git
2 291 (8.01%) JIRA
3 190 (5.23%) Jenkins
4 139 (3.82%) GitLab
5 60 (1.65%) JUnit
6 55 (1.51%) Selenium
7 45 (1.24%) Postman
8 43 (1.18%) Oracle APEX
9 34 (0.94%) Cucumber
10 30 (0.83%) Maven
11 29 (0.80%) MLflow
12 27 (0.74%) Bitbucket
12 27 (0.74%) REST Assured
13 24 (0.66%) ERwin
13 24 (0.66%) Mockito
14 22 (0.61%) Visual Studio
15 21 (0.58%) Cypress.io
15 21 (0.58%) SpecFlow
16 18 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
17 17 (0.47%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,115 (30.67%) Social Skills
2 1,024 (28.17%) Finance
3 655 (18.02%) Analytical Skills
4 379 (10.43%) Banking
5 314 (8.64%) Public Sector
6 103 (2.83%) Investment Banking
7 96 (2.64%) Documentation Skills
8 93 (2.56%) Front Office
9 84 (2.31%) Marketing
10 63 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 62 (1.71%) Retail
12 56 (1.54%) Financial Institution
13 40 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 38 (1.05%) Legal
15 35 (0.96%) Publishing
16 33 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
16 33 (0.91%) Telecoms
17 31 (0.85%) Manufacturing
18 30 (0.83%) Law
19 28 (0.77%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 883 (24.29%) Developer
2 632 (17.39%) Data Engineer
3 566 (15.57%) Analyst
4 479 (13.18%) Senior
5 256 (7.04%) Lead
6 237 (6.52%) Data Analyst
7 196 (5.39%) Business Analyst
8 182 (5.01%) Architect
9 146 (4.02%) Senior Developer
10 133 (3.66%) Java Developer
11 120 (3.30%) Consultant
12 113 (3.11%) Azure Engineer
13 109 (3.00%) Software Engineer
14 95 (2.61%) Senior Data Engineer
15 88 (2.42%) Data Scientist
16 87 (2.39%) Python Developer
17 82 (2.26%) C# Developer
17 82 (2.26%) Full-Stack Developer
18 75 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
19 73 (2.01%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 317 (8.72%) .NET
2 286 (7.87%) REST
3 231 (6.35%) Kafka
4 219 (6.02%) PySpark
5 173 (4.76%) React
6 165 (4.54%) RESTful
7 153 (4.21%) Spring
8 139 (3.82%) Spring Boot
9 132 (3.63%) XML
10 130 (3.58%) HTML
11 114 (3.14%) CSS
12 105 (2.89%) JSON
13 99 (2.72%) Pandas
14 96 (2.64%) AngularJS
15 92 (2.53%) Node.js
16 84 (2.31%) SOAP
17 79 (2.17%) .NET Framework
18 76 (2.09%) Middleware
19 69 (1.90%) Web Services
20 68 (1.87%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 225 (6.19%) Cloud Native
2 119 (3.27%) Data Structures
3 113 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
4 101 (2.78%) Product Ownership
5 82 (2.26%) Management Information System
6 76 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
7 73 (2.01%) Analytical Mindset
8 66 (1.82%) Derivative
8 66 (1.82%) Distributed Systems
9 60 (1.65%) Algorithms
10 58 (1.60%) Equities
11 53 (1.46%) Fixed Income
12 50 (1.38%) Onboarding
13 47 (1.29%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 42 (1.16%) Replication
15 37 (1.02%) Clustering
16 36 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
17 34 (0.94%) Market Risk
18 31 (0.85%) Distributed Computing
19 30 (0.83%) Credit Risk
Operating Systems
1 291 (8.01%) Linux
2 209 (5.75%) Windows
3 190 (5.23%) Unix
4 67 (1.84%) Windows Server
5 16 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 16 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
6 15 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
7 11 (0.30%) AIX
7 11 (0.30%) Windows 10
8 9 (0.25%) Android
8 9 (0.25%) VMS
9 7 (0.19%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 4 (0.11%) Solaris
11 4 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
12 3 (0.083%) Amazon Linux
12 3 (0.083%) CentOS
12 3 (0.083%) zOS
13 1 (0.028%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 986 (27.13%) Agile
2 935 (25.72%) Analytics
3 912 (25.09%) CI/CD
4 839 (23.08%) Business Intelligence
5 829 (22.81%) Data Modelling
6 828 (22.78%) Problem-Solving
7 811 (22.31%) DevOps
8 785 (21.60%) ETL
9 572 (15.74%) Data Pipeline
10 525 (14.44%) Data Engineering
11 424 (11.66%) Migration
12 416 (11.44%) Data Governance
13 401 (11.03%) AI
14 377 (10.37%) Validation
15 360 (9.90%) Data Analysis
16 348 (9.57%) Visualisation
17 344 (9.46%) Data Science
18 324 (8.91%) Test Automation
19 318 (8.75%) Decision-Making
20 317 (8.72%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,373 (37.77%) Python
2 530 (14.58%) Java
3 380 (10.45%) C#
4 306 (8.42%) JavaScript
5 274 (7.54%) PL/SQL
6 151 (4.15%) PowerShell
7 133 (3.66%) TypeScript
8 117 (3.22%) T-SQL
9 102 (2.81%) Shell Script
10 100 (2.75%) R
11 92 (2.53%) Scala
12 90 (2.48%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 75 (2.06%) C++
14 66 (1.82%) VBA
15 61 (1.68%) Bash
16 49 (1.35%) VB
17 45 (1.24%) Perl
18 44 (1.21%) Go
19 41 (1.13%) Bicep
20 28 (0.77%) PHP
Qualifications
1 674 (18.54%) Security Cleared
2 531 (14.61%) SC Cleared
3 339 (9.33%) Degree
4 109 (3.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 78 (2.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 77 (2.12%) Azure Certification
7 61 (1.68%) Master's Degree
8 58 (1.60%) DV Cleared
9 53 (1.46%) AWS Certification
10 46 (1.27%) Microsoft Certification
11 45 (1.24%) ISTQB
12 21 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 19 (0.52%) CBAP
13 19 (0.52%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.44%) ITIL Certification
15 12 (0.33%) MCSE
16 11 (0.30%) Cisco Certification
16 11 (0.30%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.28%) PhD
17 10 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 604 (16.62%) Data Quality
2 262 (7.21%) QA
3 150 (4.13%) GDPR
4 56 (1.54%) Accessibility
5 27 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 25 (0.69%) SLA
7 23 (0.63%) PMO
8 19 (0.52%) HIPAA
8 19 (0.52%) MiFID
9 17 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
9 17 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 15 (0.41%) NIST
11 14 (0.39%) PCI DSS
12 13 (0.36%) SEPA
13 12 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 12 (0.33%) EMIR
13 12 (0.33%) IFRS
13 12 (0.33%) WCAG
14 11 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 10 (0.28%) PSD2
System Software
1 431 (11.86%) Docker
2 95 (2.61%) Active Directory
3 28 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 18 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
4 18 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
5 12 (0.33%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.17%) HDFS
7 6 (0.17%) KVM
7 6 (0.17%) Postfix
8 5 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
8 5 (0.14%) RACF
8 5 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
8 5 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
8 5 (0.14%) XenApp
8 5 (0.14%) XenDesktop
9 4 (0.11%) vSphere
9 4 (0.11%) zsh
10 3 (0.083%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.083%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 384 (10.56%) Kubernetes
2 282 (7.76%) Terraform
3 82 (2.26%) Grafana
4 64 (1.76%) Prometheus
5 58 (1.60%) Ansible
6 21 (0.58%) SCCM
6 21 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
7 20 (0.55%) Oracle RMAN
8 17 (0.47%) Control-M
8 17 (0.47%) Data Guard
8 17 (0.47%) Progress Chef
9 15 (0.41%) SCOM
10 14 (0.39%) Kibana
10 14 (0.39%) Puppet
11 13 (0.36%) HP SiteScope
12 11 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 11 (0.30%) WSUS
13 8 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 8 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
13 8 (0.22%) Kiali
Vendors
1 617 (16.97%) Oracle
2 594 (16.34%) Microsoft
3 438 (12.05%) Databricks
4 151 (4.15%) Google
5 96 (2.64%) SAP
6 87 (2.39%) ServiceNow
6 87 (2.39%) Talend
7 84 (2.31%) Informatica
8 79 (2.17%) Splunk
9 63 (1.73%) Salesforce
10 52 (1.43%) IBM
11 47 (1.29%) OpenAI
12 45 (1.24%) Citrix
13 40 (1.10%) MuleSoft
14 36 (0.99%) Denodo
15 33 (0.91%) VMware
16 31 (0.85%) Bloomberg
17 26 (0.72%) Foundry
18 23 (0.63%) NEC
18 23 (0.63%) Palantir