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

6 months to
29 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 16 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 -3 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 557 335 457
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 8.06% 9.39% 9.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 29.58% 33.57% 36.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 247 297
10th Percentile £313 £324 £316
25th Percentile £400 £396 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £548 £550
90th Percentile £625 £625 £610
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 3 10
10th Percentile £23.68 £31.53 £37.46
25th Percentile £29.96 £31.62 £38.53
Median hourly rate £44.00 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.89% -22.09% +6.25%
75th Percentile £68.02 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £76.90 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.00 £43.16 £42.50
% change year-on-year +4.27% +1.55% -15.00%

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 1,883 998 1,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.23% 27.96% 25.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,217 735 842
10th Percentile £350 £325 £313
25th Percentile £413 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +4.43% -2.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £571 £538 £575
90th Percentile £639 £611 £625
England median daily rate £518 £520 £540
% change year-on-year -0.48% -3.70% -2.96%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 10 51
10th Percentile £29.96 £31.32 £37.55
25th Percentile £46.25 £36.82 £43.57
Median hourly rate £69.00 £70.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% +47.37% +0.34%
75th Percentile £76.00 £87.69 £68.75
90th Percentile £84.20 £95.36 £79.17
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.88 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.33% -14.04% +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 29 June 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 29 June 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 29 June 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 -1 294 £466 -1.95% 213
Yorkshire -9 224 £475 - 85
North East -12 51 £425 -8.36% 50
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 39 (7.00%) Confluence
2 32 (5.75%) Apache Spark
3 27 (4.85%) Apache
4 24 (4.31%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.80%) SharePoint
6 9 (1.62%) Jupyter
7 8 (1.44%) WebSphere
8 7 (1.26%) Apache Geronimo
8 7 (1.26%) Apache ServiceMix
8 7 (1.26%) Red Hat Fuse
8 7 (1.26%) Tomcat
9 6 (1.08%) SAS
10 5 (0.90%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.36%) IIS
11 2 (0.36%) Mule
11 2 (0.36%) Mule ESB
11 2 (0.36%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.18%) Camunda
12 1 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 38 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.72%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.18%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (1.97%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.26%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.90%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.72%) Elite 3E
4 4 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
5 3 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.54%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.18%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.18%) NEC Housing
7 1 (0.18%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.18%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 160 (28.73%) Azure
2 119 (21.36%) AWS
3 101 (18.13%) Power Platform
4 49 (8.80%) GCP
5 37 (6.64%) GitHub
6 33 (5.92%) Azure Data Factory
7 30 (5.39%) Serverless
8 25 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (4.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 22 (3.95%) dbt
11 19 (3.41%) Snowflake
12 16 (2.87%) SaaS
13 15 (2.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 14 (2.51%) Amazon S3
14 14 (2.51%) AWS Lambda
14 14 (2.51%) Power Automate
14 14 (2.51%) PowerApps
15 13 (2.33%) GitHub Actions
16 12 (2.15%) OpenShift
17 10 (1.80%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 10 (1.80%) DNS
1 10 (1.80%) SSL
2 8 (1.44%) Firewall
3 6 (1.08%) 3GPP
3 6 (1.08%) RTP
3 6 (1.08%) Wireshark
4 5 (0.90%) Kerberos
4 5 (0.90%) Network Security
5 4 (0.72%) BGP
5 4 (0.72%) HTTP
5 4 (0.72%) IPsec
5 4 (0.72%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (0.54%) DHCP
7 2 (0.36%) Internet
7 2 (0.36%) LAN
7 2 (0.36%) TCP/IP
7 2 (0.36%) VPN
7 2 (0.36%) WAN
7 2 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.18%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 105 (18.85%) SQL Server
2 91 (16.34%) Power BI
3 75 (13.46%) Data Warehouse
4 40 (7.18%) NoSQL
5 36 (6.46%) PostgreSQL
6 33 (5.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 33 (5.92%) Tableau
7 30 (5.39%) Relational Database
8 26 (4.67%) Data Lake
9 24 (4.31%) Metadata
10 22 (3.95%) MongoDB
11 21 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
12 20 (3.59%) Oracle Database
12 20 (3.59%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 17 (3.05%) MySQL
14 16 (2.87%) Delta Lake
14 16 (2.87%) Hadoop
15 14 (2.51%) Big Data
15 14 (2.51%) Snowflake Schema
16 13 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 68 (12.21%) Git
2 48 (8.62%) JIRA
3 43 (7.72%) Jenkins
4 33 (5.92%) GitLab
5 11 (1.97%) Selenium
6 10 (1.80%) Cucumber
7 8 (1.44%) Flyway
7 8 (1.44%) REST Assured
8 7 (1.26%) Bitbucket
8 7 (1.26%) Gradle
8 7 (1.26%) Postman
9 6 (1.08%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.08%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (1.08%) TeamCity
10 5 (0.90%) Claude Code
10 5 (0.90%) Jaeger
10 5 (0.90%) JUnit
10 5 (0.90%) Maven
10 5 (0.90%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (0.72%) Snyk
General
1 155 (27.83%) Social Skills
2 124 (22.26%) Finance
3 96 (17.24%) Analytical Skills
4 51 (9.16%) Banking
4 51 (9.16%) Public Sector
5 16 (2.87%) Manufacturing
6 13 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.15%) Retail
8 11 (1.97%) Legal
9 9 (1.62%) Marketing
10 8 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
10 8 (1.44%) Law
11 6 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
11 6 (1.08%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (0.90%) Aviation
12 5 (0.90%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (0.90%) Games
12 5 (0.90%) Police
13 4 (0.72%) Financial Institution
13 4 (0.72%) Military
Job Titles
1 116 (20.83%) Developer
2 95 (17.06%) Analyst
3 72 (12.93%) Data Engineer
4 66 (11.85%) Senior
5 44 (7.90%) Lead
6 40 (7.18%) DBA
7 35 (6.28%) Data Analyst
8 28 (5.03%) Java Developer
9 27 (4.85%) Architect
9 27 (4.85%) Consultant
10 23 (4.13%) SQL DBA
11 22 (3.95%) Senior Developer
12 20 (3.59%) Software Engineer
13 16 (2.87%) Senior Data Engineer
14 15 (2.69%) Business Analyst
14 15 (2.69%) Software Developer
15 13 (2.33%) Performance Analyst
15 13 (2.33%) SQL Developer
15 13 (2.33%) Test Engineer
16 12 (2.15%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (7.18%) REST
2 38 (6.82%) Kafka
2 38 (6.82%) PySpark
3 37 (6.64%) .NET
4 36 (6.46%) Spring Boot
5 31 (5.57%) Spring
6 28 (5.03%) XML
7 27 (4.85%) RESTful
8 21 (3.77%) JSON
9 19 (3.41%) Middleware
10 16 (2.87%) React
11 15 (2.69%) Web Services
12 14 (2.51%) HTML
13 12 (2.15%) .NET Core
13 12 (2.15%) OAuth
14 11 (1.97%) AngularJS
14 11 (1.97%) OpenTelemetry
14 11 (1.97%) Pandas
15 10 (1.80%) CSS
15 10 (1.80%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 39 (7.00%) Cloud Native
2 35 (6.28%) Product Ownership
3 28 (5.03%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.59%) Clustering
4 20 (3.59%) Data Protection Act
5 19 (3.41%) Replication
6 17 (3.05%) Legacy Systems
7 16 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
8 14 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
8 14 (2.51%) NHS
9 12 (2.15%) Linux Command Line
10 10 (1.80%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.62%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.62%) Self-Motivation
12 8 (1.44%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 7 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 7 (1.26%) Analytical Mindset
13 7 (1.26%) Onboarding
13 7 (1.26%) Robotics
13 7 (1.26%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 48 (8.62%) Linux
2 26 (4.67%) Windows
3 18 (3.23%) Unix
4 17 (3.05%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.44%) AIX
6 6 (1.08%) Solaris
7 3 (0.54%) Oracle Linux
7 3 (0.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.36%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.36%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.18%) VMS
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.18%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 164 (29.44%) CI/CD
2 147 (26.39%) Agile
3 131 (23.52%) Analytics
4 118 (21.18%) Business Intelligence
5 117 (21.01%) DevOps
6 115 (20.65%) Data Modelling
7 110 (19.75%) ETL
8 97 (17.41%) Problem-Solving
9 91 (16.34%) Data Pipeline
10 76 (13.64%) Migration
11 71 (12.75%) Validation
12 69 (12.39%) AI
13 67 (12.03%) Performance Tuning
14 66 (11.85%) Test Automation
15 63 (11.31%) Data Analysis
16 62 (11.13%) Data Engineering
16 62 (11.13%) Microservices
17 53 (9.52%) Stakeholder Management
18 46 (8.26%) Data Governance
19 45 (8.08%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 160 (28.73%) Python
2 80 (14.36%) Java
3 47 (8.44%) PowerShell
4 42 (7.54%) C#
5 35 (6.28%) T-SQL
6 30 (5.39%) PL/SQL
7 24 (4.31%) JavaScript
8 22 (3.95%) Bash
9 13 (2.33%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 13 (2.33%) TypeScript
10 12 (2.15%) R
11 10 (1.80%) Shell Script
12 7 (1.26%) Kotlin
13 6 (1.08%) Scala
14 4 (0.72%) Rust
14 4 (0.72%) VB
14 4 (0.72%) VBA
15 3 (0.54%) VB6
16 2 (0.36%) Perl
16 2 (0.36%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 72 (12.93%) Security Cleared
2 61 (10.95%) SC Cleared
3 52 (9.34%) Degree
4 20 (3.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (1.44%) Master's Degree
8 5 (0.90%) Azure Certification
9 3 (0.54%) CISSP
9 3 (0.54%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.36%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.36%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 2 (0.36%) MBA
11 1 (0.18%) CISM
11 1 (0.18%) DBS Check
11 1 (0.18%) Numerate Degree
11 1 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
11 1 (0.18%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 100 (17.95%) Data Quality
2 33 (5.92%) QA
3 22 (3.95%) GDPR
4 7 (1.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 7 (1.26%) HIPAA
5 6 (1.08%) GRC
5 6 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.90%) ISO 20022
7 4 (0.72%) PMO
7 4 (0.72%) SLA
8 3 (0.54%) NIST
8 3 (0.54%) PSD2
8 3 (0.54%) SEPA
8 3 (0.54%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.36%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.36%) WCAG
10 1 (0.18%) Actionable Recommendations
10 1 (0.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.18%) MiFID
System Software
1 73 (13.11%) Docker
2 14 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.97%) Virtual Machines
4 10 (1.80%) Hyper-V
4 10 (1.80%) KVM
5 4 (0.72%) RACF
5 4 (0.72%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.54%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 58 (10.41%) Kubernetes
2 43 (7.72%) Terraform
3 28 (5.03%) Ansible
4 18 (3.23%) Grafana
5 16 (2.87%) Prometheus
6 11 (1.97%) Oracle RMAN
7 6 (1.08%) Control-M
7 6 (1.08%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.08%) vCenter Server
8 5 (0.90%) Kiali
8 5 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 4 (0.72%) Argo
10 3 (0.54%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.54%) Foglight
11 2 (0.36%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.36%) Consul
11 2 (0.36%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.36%) SCCM
11 2 (0.36%) SCOM
11 2 (0.36%) Zipkin
Vendors
1 97 (17.41%) Microsoft
2 69 (12.39%) Oracle
3 54 (9.69%) Databricks
4 26 (4.67%) Google
5 25 (4.49%) Splunk
6 21 (3.77%) ServiceNow
7 18 (3.23%) SAP
8 11 (1.97%) IBM
9 9 (1.62%) Salesforce
10 7 (1.26%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.26%) SolarWinds
10 7 (1.26%) TIBCO
11 6 (1.08%) Alteryx
11 6 (1.08%) RedGate
11 6 (1.08%) Teradata
11 6 (1.08%) Varonis
12 5 (0.90%) Adobe
12 5 (0.90%) Infor
12 5 (0.90%) Sybase
12 5 (0.90%) SYSPRO