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

6 months to
5 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 23 17
Rank change year-on-year -2 -6 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 366 258 372
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.17% 7.68% 7.48%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.84% 29.28% 28.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 261 167 252
10th Percentile £315 £333 £285
25th Percentile £369 £391 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £476
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -0.26% -4.75%
75th Percentile £519 £567 £575
90th Percentile £644 £638 £624
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 13
10th Percentile £36.30 - £20.91
25th Percentile £40.75 £26.25 £37.63
Median hourly rate £64.50 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +96.59% -22.80% -35.61%
75th Percentile £71.85 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £77.16 - £46.18
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -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 1,535 881 1,296
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 30.06% 26.23% 26.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,062 578 930
10th Percentile £331 £341 £318
25th Percentile £400 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £565 £563
90th Percentile £625 £638 £625
England median daily rate £510 £535 £550
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.73% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 19 63
10th Percentile £41.94 £30.43 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £43.57
Median hourly rate £61.00 £65.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -6.15% +40.75% -2.78%
75th Percentile £74.26 £86.00 £50.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £97.71 £71.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -7.69%

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 5 February 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 5 February 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 5 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
North West +7 203 £420 -8.45% 235
Yorkshire -25 141 £488 -2.50% 120
North East -4 27 £475 -7.32% 45
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 31 (8.47%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.55%) Apache Spark
3 10 (2.73%) Apache
4 9 (2.46%) Confluence
4 9 (2.46%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.19%) SAS
6 5 (1.37%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.55%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.27%) Apache Geronimo
8 1 (0.27%) Apache ServiceMix
8 1 (0.27%) IIS
8 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.27%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.27%) Red Hat Fuse
8 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 23 (6.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.64%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.09%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.82%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.55%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.27%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.46%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.55%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.55%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.55%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.27%) Finacle
3 1 (0.27%) Magento
3 1 (0.27%) Maximo
3 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 126 (34.43%) Azure
2 125 (34.15%) AWS
3 78 (21.31%) Power Platform
4 46 (12.57%) GCP
5 31 (8.47%) Serverless
6 26 (7.10%) GitHub
7 20 (5.46%) Azure Data Factory
7 20 (5.46%) dbt
8 19 (5.19%) Snowflake
9 16 (4.37%) Azure DevOps
9 16 (4.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 15 (4.10%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (3.83%) AWS Lambda
12 12 (3.28%) SaaS
13 10 (2.73%) IaaS
14 9 (2.46%) Amazon EKS
14 9 (2.46%) PaaS
14 9 (2.46%) Prefect
15 8 (2.19%) Amazon S3
16 7 (1.91%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (4.64%) Firewall
2 7 (1.91%) TCP/IP
3 6 (1.64%) DNS
3 6 (1.64%) SSL
4 5 (1.37%) IPsec
4 5 (1.37%) Kerberos
5 3 (0.82%) HTTP
5 3 (0.82%) HTTPS
6 1 (0.27%) Internet
6 1 (0.27%) IP Telephony
6 1 (0.27%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (20.49%) Power BI
2 50 (13.66%) SQL Server
3 42 (11.48%) NoSQL
4 40 (10.93%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (8.20%) Relational Database
6 28 (7.65%) PostgreSQL
7 26 (7.10%) Data Lake
8 24 (6.56%) MySQL
8 24 (6.56%) Tableau
9 15 (4.10%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (4.10%) MongoDB
9 15 (4.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 14 (3.83%) DB2
10 14 (3.83%) Power Query
10 14 (3.83%) Snowflake Schema
11 12 (3.28%) BigQuery
11 12 (3.28%) Delta Lake
11 12 (3.28%) Hadoop
12 11 (3.01%) Metadata
13 10 (2.73%) Redis
Development Applications
1 48 (13.11%) Git
2 47 (12.84%) JIRA
3 38 (10.38%) GitLab
4 32 (8.74%) Jenkins
5 14 (3.83%) Cucumber
5 14 (3.83%) REST Assured
5 14 (3.83%) Selenium
6 10 (2.73%) Postman
7 8 (2.19%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.64%) Mocha
8 6 (1.64%) TestRail
9 4 (1.09%) Liquibase
9 4 (1.09%) Mockito
10 3 (0.82%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.55%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.55%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.55%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.27%) Gradle
12 1 (0.27%) Rational DOORS
12 1 (0.27%) SoapUI
General
1 119 (32.51%) Social Skills
2 103 (28.14%) Finance
3 66 (18.03%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (16.39%) Banking
5 34 (9.29%) Public Sector
6 15 (4.10%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.55%) Financial Institution
8 9 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.91%) Law
10 6 (1.64%) Local Government
10 6 (1.64%) Marketing
10 6 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.37%) Retail
12 4 (1.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (1.09%) Legal
12 4 (1.09%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.09%) Wholesale Banking
13 3 (0.82%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.82%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 101 (27.60%) Developer
2 71 (19.40%) Analyst
3 55 (15.03%) Data Engineer
4 53 (14.48%) Senior
5 29 (7.92%) Data Analyst
6 25 (6.83%) Lead
7 20 (5.46%) Business Analyst
7 20 (5.46%) Java Developer
8 16 (4.37%) Architect
8 16 (4.37%) Software Engineer
9 15 (4.10%) Senior Developer
10 12 (3.28%) Test Engineer
11 11 (3.01%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (3.01%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 10 (2.73%) Azure Engineer
12 10 (2.73%) DevOps Engineer
12 10 (2.73%) Test Automation Engineer
13 9 (2.46%) Data Scientist
13 9 (2.46%) DBA
13 9 (2.46%) Power BI Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (13.39%) REST
2 41 (11.20%) .NET
3 36 (9.84%) Spring Boot
4 32 (8.74%) Kafka
5 30 (8.20%) Spring
6 19 (5.19%) RESTful
7 18 (4.92%) React
8 17 (4.64%) OpenID
9 16 (4.37%) OAuth
10 15 (4.10%) HTML
11 14 (3.83%) JMS
11 14 (3.83%) Middleware
11 14 (3.83%) PySpark
11 14 (3.83%) XML
12 13 (3.55%) CSS
13 12 (3.28%) JSON
13 12 (3.28%) LDAP
13 12 (3.28%) Node.js
13 12 (3.28%) SailPoint
14 8 (2.19%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 33 (9.02%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.64%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (4.37%) Clustering
4 13 (3.55%) Product Ownership
4 13 (3.55%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 12 (3.28%) Data Protection Act
6 11 (3.01%) Data Structures
7 10 (2.73%) Management Information System
8 9 (2.46%) Algorithms
9 8 (2.19%) Onboarding
9 8 (2.19%) Virtual Team
10 7 (1.91%) Distributed Computing
11 6 (1.64%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.64%) NHS
11 6 (1.64%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.37%) Credit Risk
12 5 (1.37%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
13 4 (1.09%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.47%) Linux
2 16 (4.37%) Windows
3 11 (3.01%) Unix
4 7 (1.91%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.82%) AIX
5 3 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.55%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.55%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.27%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (32.24%) CI/CD
2 110 (30.05%) Agile
3 100 (27.32%) DevOps
4 84 (22.95%) Problem-Solving
5 82 (22.40%) Data Modelling
6 81 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
7 77 (21.04%) Analytics
8 62 (16.94%) ETL
9 58 (15.85%) Microservices
10 51 (13.93%) Data Pipeline
11 47 (12.84%) Data Governance
12 46 (12.57%) Visualisation
13 45 (12.30%) Test Automation
14 44 (12.02%) Data Engineering
15 42 (11.48%) Data Analysis
16 41 (11.20%) Stakeholder Management
17 37 (10.11%) Containerisation
17 37 (10.11%) Performance Tuning
18 36 (9.84%) Data Science
19 35 (9.56%) Actionable Insight
Programming Languages
1 110 (30.05%) Python
2 82 (22.40%) Java
3 27 (7.38%) JavaScript
4 26 (7.10%) C#
5 19 (5.19%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.55%) PHP
7 12 (3.28%) PowerShell
8 11 (3.01%) Bash
8 11 (3.01%) VBA
9 10 (2.73%) TypeScript
10 9 (2.46%) Scala
11 8 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (2.19%) Go
11 8 (2.19%) Rust
11 8 (2.19%) T-SQL
12 6 (1.64%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.09%) ProC
13 4 (1.09%) R
14 3 (0.82%) Bicep
14 3 (0.82%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 54 (14.75%) Degree
2 36 (9.84%) Security Cleared
3 23 (6.28%) Computer Science Degree
4 22 (6.01%) SC Cleared
5 17 (4.64%) Master's Degree
6 15 (4.10%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.91%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.91%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.09%) MBA
9 3 (0.82%) CEH
9 3 (0.82%) GIAC
9 3 (0.82%) GWAPT
9 3 (0.82%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.55%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.55%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.55%) ITIL Certification
10 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.55%) Tableau Certification
11 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (12.84%) Data Quality
2 31 (8.47%) QA
3 13 (3.55%) ISO 20022
3 13 (3.55%) PSD2
3 13 (3.55%) SEPA
4 11 (3.01%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.91%) WCAG
6 6 (1.64%) SLA
7 5 (1.37%) GDPR
8 4 (1.09%) PMO
9 2 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.55%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.27%) HL7
10 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.27%) PERC
System Software
1 65 (17.76%) Docker
2 6 (1.64%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (1.37%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.37%) RACF
4 3 (0.82%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.82%) KVM
5 1 (0.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 55 (15.03%) Kubernetes
2 27 (7.38%) Terraform
3 21 (5.74%) Grafana
4 18 (4.92%) Prometheus
5 13 (3.55%) Ansible
6 9 (2.46%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.19%) Kiali
8 4 (1.09%) SCCM
9 3 (0.82%) IBM BigFix
9 3 (0.82%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.55%) Control-M
11 1 (0.27%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle Identity Manager
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 64 (17.49%) Microsoft
2 44 (12.02%) Oracle
3 28 (7.65%) Databricks
3 28 (7.65%) Splunk
4 21 (5.74%) ServiceNow
5 16 (4.37%) Google
6 9 (2.46%) Advent
7 7 (1.91%) IBM
7 7 (1.91%) Salesforce
8 6 (1.64%) MuleSoft
9 5 (1.37%) SAP
10 4 (1.09%) AppDynamics
10 4 (1.09%) Cognos
10 4 (1.09%) Dynatrace
10 4 (1.09%) SolarWinds
11 3 (0.82%) Citrix
11 3 (0.82%) F5
11 3 (0.82%) Imperva
11 3 (0.82%) Informatica
11 3 (0.82%) RedGate