SQL Contract Job Trends in the North of England

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 18 16
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 581 341 392
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 8.04% 8.89% 8.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 30.66% 33.20% 35.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 345 251 290
10th Percentile £313 £313 £325
25th Percentile £402 £382 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £545 £550
90th Percentile £616 £622 £610
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 4 6
10th Percentile £23.68 £25.41 £33.63
25th Percentile £29.96 £29.31 £36.38
Median hourly rate £44.90 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +36.23% -17.60% -
75th Percentile £69.86 £43.97 £43.44
90th Percentile £77.80 £61.09 £44.97
England median hourly rate £45.90 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +13.33% -4.71% -10.52%

All Programming Languages
North of 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 the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 1,895 1,027 1,117
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 26.22% 26.79% 25.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,195 737 792
10th Percentile £350 £318 £319
25th Percentile £413 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £453 £475
Median % change year-on-year +7.62% -4.63% -9.18%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £650 £600 £630
England median daily rate £520 £515 £545
% change year-on-year +1.02% -5.50% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 91 11 36
10th Percentile £29.96 £30.00 £37.50
25th Percentile £52.50 £31.62 £44.72
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year - +30.23% +16.39%
75th Percentile £76.00 £86.63 £71.87
90th Percentile £86.00 £95.00 £81.09
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

SQL job vacancy trend in the North of England

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the North of England

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 23 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the North of England

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the North of 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 North of England region over the 6 months to 23 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
North West -4 309 £475 +1.71% 167
Yorkshire -7 235 £460 -3.16% 95
North East -16 50 £425 -8.11% 55
SQL
England

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of 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 40 (6.88%) Confluence
2 31 (5.34%) Apache Spark
3 26 (4.48%) Apache
4 22 (3.79%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.55%) Jupyter
5 9 (1.55%) SharePoint
6 8 (1.38%) SAS
6 8 (1.38%) WebSphere
7 7 (1.20%) Apache Geronimo
7 7 (1.20%) Apache ServiceMix
7 7 (1.20%) Red Hat Fuse
7 7 (1.20%) Tomcat
8 5 (0.86%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.34%) CMS
9 2 (0.34%) IIS
9 2 (0.34%) Mule
9 2 (0.34%) Mule ESB
9 2 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
9 2 (0.34%) WordPress
10 1 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 38 (6.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.52%) MS Visio
2 3 (0.52%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.17%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (1.89%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.20%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.86%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
5 3 (0.52%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.52%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.52%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.52%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 159 (27.37%) Azure
2 123 (21.17%) AWS
3 98 (16.87%) Power Platform
4 51 (8.78%) GCP
5 42 (7.23%) GitHub
6 34 (5.85%) Serverless
7 30 (5.16%) Azure Data Factory
8 26 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
9 22 (3.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 22 (3.79%) dbt
10 21 (3.61%) Snowflake
11 18 (3.10%) Amazon S3
11 18 (3.10%) AWS Lambda
12 16 (2.75%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 16 (2.75%) SaaS
13 15 (2.58%) GitHub Actions
13 15 (2.58%) OpenShift
14 14 (2.41%) Power Automate
14 14 (2.41%) PowerApps
15 12 (2.07%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 14 (2.41%) SSL
2 11 (1.89%) DNS
3 7 (1.20%) Kerberos
4 6 (1.03%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.03%) Firewall
4 6 (1.03%) Network Security
4 6 (1.03%) RTP
4 6 (1.03%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.69%) BGP
5 4 (0.69%) DHCP
5 4 (0.69%) HTTP
5 4 (0.69%) IPsec
5 4 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (0.52%) LAN
6 3 (0.52%) VPN
7 2 (0.34%) Internet
7 2 (0.34%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.34%) WAN
7 2 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.17%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 134 (23.06%) SQL Server
2 90 (15.49%) Power BI
3 84 (14.46%) Data Warehouse
4 43 (7.40%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (6.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 38 (6.54%) NoSQL
7 36 (6.20%) Tableau
8 32 (5.51%) Relational Database
9 28 (4.82%) Metadata
10 26 (4.48%) Data Lake
10 26 (4.48%) Oracle Database
11 25 (4.30%) MySQL
12 22 (3.79%) MongoDB
13 20 (3.44%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 19 (3.27%) Azure SQL Database
15 16 (2.75%) Looker
16 15 (2.58%) Hadoop
17 13 (2.24%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (2.24%) BigQuery
17 13 (2.24%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 67 (11.53%) Git
2 47 (8.09%) Jenkins
3 42 (7.23%) JIRA
4 30 (5.16%) GitLab
5 10 (1.72%) Gradle
6 9 (1.55%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.38%) Flyway
7 8 (1.38%) Selenium
8 7 (1.20%) Cucumber
8 7 (1.20%) JUnit
8 7 (1.20%) Postman
8 7 (1.20%) Sonatype Nexus
9 6 (1.03%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.03%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (1.03%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.03%) TeamCity
10 5 (0.86%) Claude Code
10 5 (0.86%) Maven
10 5 (0.86%) REST Assured
11 4 (0.69%) Snyk
General
1 156 (26.85%) Social Skills
2 108 (18.59%) Finance
3 102 (17.56%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 44 (7.57%) Banking
6 16 (2.75%) Manufacturing
7 13 (2.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 11 (1.89%) Retail
9 8 (1.38%) Legal
9 8 (1.38%) Marketing
10 7 (1.20%) Games
10 7 (1.20%) Law
10 7 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.20%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.03%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
12 5 (0.86%) Aviation
12 5 (0.86%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (0.86%) Military
12 5 (0.86%) Police
Job Titles
1 119 (20.48%) Developer
2 85 (14.63%) Analyst
3 75 (12.91%) Data Engineer
4 65 (11.19%) Senior
5 62 (10.67%) DBA
6 48 (8.26%) Lead
7 40 (6.88%) SQL DBA
8 35 (6.02%) Data Analyst
9 29 (4.99%) Consultant
10 26 (4.48%) Architect
11 25 (4.30%) Software Engineer
12 24 (4.13%) Java Developer
13 23 (3.96%) Senior Developer
14 22 (3.79%) Administrator
15 21 (3.61%) Oracle DBA
16 19 (3.27%) SQL Developer
17 18 (3.10%) Senior Data Engineer
17 18 (3.10%) Software Developer
18 14 (2.41%) Performance Analyst
19 13 (2.24%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (7.23%) Kafka
1 42 (7.23%) REST
2 41 (7.06%) PySpark
3 37 (6.37%) .NET
4 36 (6.20%) Spring Boot
5 35 (6.02%) Spring
6 26 (4.48%) RESTful
6 26 (4.48%) XML
7 19 (3.27%) JSON
7 19 (3.27%) React
8 16 (2.75%) Web Services
9 15 (2.58%) HTML
9 15 (2.58%) Middleware
10 12 (2.07%) .NET Core
10 12 (2.07%) AngularJS
11 11 (1.89%) OAuth
11 11 (1.89%) Pandas
12 10 (1.72%) CSS
12 10 (1.72%) OAuth2
13 9 (1.55%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 39 (6.71%) Cloud Native
2 36 (6.20%) Data Structures
3 29 (4.99%) Product Ownership
4 26 (4.48%) Replication
5 23 (3.96%) Data Protection Act
6 22 (3.79%) Clustering
7 17 (2.93%) Legacy Systems
8 16 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
8 16 (2.75%) Enterprise Software
9 14 (2.41%) NHS
10 12 (2.07%) Linux Command Line
10 12 (2.07%) Self-Motivation
11 9 (1.55%) Onboarding
12 8 (1.38%) AI Agents
12 8 (1.38%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 7 (1.20%) Algorithms
13 7 (1.20%) Low-Code
13 7 (1.20%) Management Information System
13 7 (1.20%) Robotics
13 7 (1.20%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 49 (8.43%) Linux
2 30 (5.16%) Windows
3 21 (3.61%) Unix
3 21 (3.61%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.38%) AIX
5 6 (1.03%) Solaris
6 5 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.52%) Oracle Linux
7 3 (0.52%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.17%) VMS
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (26.51%) CI/CD
2 146 (25.13%) Agile
3 139 (23.92%) Analytics
4 129 (22.20%) Data Modelling
5 122 (21.00%) Business Intelligence
6 121 (20.83%) ETL
7 111 (19.10%) DevOps
8 102 (17.56%) Data Pipeline
8 102 (17.56%) Problem-Solving
9 86 (14.80%) Migration
10 78 (13.43%) Performance Tuning
11 72 (12.39%) Validation
12 70 (12.05%) AI
13 68 (11.70%) Data Engineering
14 63 (10.84%) Microservices
15 61 (10.50%) Test Automation
16 60 (10.33%) Data Analysis
17 57 (9.81%) Stakeholder Management
18 53 (9.12%) Data Governance
19 52 (8.95%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 162 (27.88%) Python
2 80 (13.77%) Java
3 49 (8.43%) PowerShell
4 42 (7.23%) T-SQL
5 39 (6.71%) C#
6 34 (5.85%) PL/SQL
7 24 (4.13%) JavaScript
8 22 (3.79%) Bash
9 16 (2.75%) TypeScript
10 13 (2.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 12 (2.07%) Shell Script
12 11 (1.89%) R
13 9 (1.55%) Kotlin
14 8 (1.38%) Scala
15 4 (0.69%) VB
16 3 (0.52%) Bicep
16 3 (0.52%) VB6
17 2 (0.34%) Perl
17 2 (0.34%) PromQL
17 2 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 91 (15.66%) Security Cleared
2 78 (13.43%) SC Cleared
3 47 (8.09%) Degree
4 20 (3.44%) BPSS Clearance
5 17 (2.93%) Computer Science Degree
6 11 (1.89%) Microsoft Certification
7 7 (1.20%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.03%) Azure Certification
9 4 (0.69%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 3 (0.52%) CISSP
10 3 (0.52%) Master's Degree
11 2 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.17%) AWS Certification
12 1 (0.17%) CISM
12 1 (0.17%) DBS Check
12 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
12 1 (0.17%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (19.97%) Data Quality
2 32 (5.51%) QA
3 23 (3.96%) GDPR
4 6 (1.03%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 6 (1.03%) GRC
4 6 (1.03%) HIPAA
5 5 (0.86%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 4 (0.69%) SLA
7 3 (0.52%) ISO 20022
7 3 (0.52%) NIST
7 3 (0.52%) PMO
7 3 (0.52%) Solvency II
8 2 (0.34%) Accessibility
8 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.34%) WCAG
9 1 (0.17%) MiFID
9 1 (0.17%) PSD2
9 1 (0.17%) SEPA
System Software
1 70 (12.05%) Docker
2 17 (2.93%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.41%) Oracle RAC
3 14 (2.41%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.72%) Hyper-V
4 10 (1.72%) KVM
5 4 (0.69%) RACF
5 4 (0.69%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 54 (9.29%) Kubernetes
2 47 (8.09%) Terraform
3 30 (5.16%) Ansible
4 15 (2.58%) Grafana
5 14 (2.41%) Data Guard
5 14 (2.41%) Oracle RMAN
5 14 (2.41%) Prometheus
6 10 (1.72%) Control-M
7 6 (1.03%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.03%) SCOM
7 6 (1.03%) vCenter Server
8 5 (0.86%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (0.69%) Argo
10 3 (0.52%) Foglight
11 2 (0.34%) Consul
11 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
11 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.34%) Nagios
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.34%) SCCM
Vendors
1 106 (18.24%) Microsoft
2 87 (14.97%) Oracle
3 53 (9.12%) Databricks
4 30 (5.16%) Google
5 24 (4.13%) SAP
6 23 (3.96%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.61%) Splunk
8 12 (2.07%) IBM
9 11 (1.89%) Alteryx
10 9 (1.55%) Salesforce
11 7 (1.20%) CyberArk
11 7 (1.20%) Informatica
11 7 (1.20%) SolarWinds
11 7 (1.20%) TIBCO
12 6 (1.03%) RedGate
12 6 (1.03%) Sybase
12 6 (1.03%) Teradata
12 6 (1.03%) Varonis
13 5 (0.86%) Adobe
13 5 (0.86%) Infor