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

6 months to
14 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 15 20
Rank change year-on-year -12 +5 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 421 300 362
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.46% 9.21% 7.39%
As % of the Programming Languages category 26.10% 33.37% 28.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 293 213 244
10th Percentile £329 £351 £275
25th Percentile £400 £400 £374
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £486 £475
Median % change year-on-year -7.41% +2.32% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £638 £644 £610
England median daily rate £500 £518 £550
% change year-on-year -3.38% -5.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 6 11
10th Percentile £36.50 £28.86 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.38 £31.54 £39.44
Median hourly rate £69.00 £49.06 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +40.66% +15.42% -24.65%
75th Percentile £77.88 £65.00 £44.97
90th Percentile £90.00 £68.75 £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -19.05%

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 1,613 899 1,270
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.57% 27.61% 25.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,091 629 905
10th Percentile £344 £348 £312
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £463
Median % change year-on-year - +2.70% -11.90%
75th Percentile £542 £564 £550
90th Percentile £622 £638 £625
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.42% -6.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 18 61
10th Percentile £41.94 £31.67 £38.39
25th Percentile £52.50 £50.89 £45.88
Median hourly rate £64.57 £67.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.70% +42.63% -3.06%
75th Percentile £74.26 £87.13 £65.00
90th Percentile £87.20 £99.59 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 14 March 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 14 March 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 14 March 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 0 241 £447 -5.89% 232
Yorkshire -21 158 £475 -6.86% 130
North East -3 31 £475 +5.56% 61
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 26 (6.18%) Apache Spark
2 25 (5.94%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (4.75%) Apache
4 17 (4.04%) Confluence
5 7 (1.66%) Apache Geronimo
5 7 (1.66%) Apache ServiceMix
5 7 (1.66%) Red Hat Fuse
5 7 (1.66%) Tomcat
5 7 (1.66%) WebSphere
6 6 (1.43%) SAS
6 6 (1.43%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.48%) IIS
8 1 (0.24%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.24%) Mule
8 1 (0.24%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 29 (6.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.95%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.48%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.24%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.90%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.48%) Elite 3E
2 2 (0.48%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Maximo
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.24%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 136 (32.30%) Azure
2 124 (29.45%) AWS
3 73 (17.34%) Power Platform
4 49 (11.64%) GCP
5 27 (6.41%) Azure Data Factory
5 27 (6.41%) Serverless
6 26 (6.18%) GitHub
7 21 (4.99%) dbt
8 18 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
8 18 (4.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 18 (4.28%) Snowflake
9 14 (3.33%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (2.61%) IaaS
10 11 (2.61%) SaaS
11 10 (2.38%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (2.38%) PaaS
12 9 (2.14%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (1.90%) Amazon S3
14 7 (1.66%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (1.66%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 17 (4.04%) Firewall
2 10 (2.38%) DNS
3 7 (1.66%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.43%) SSL
5 5 (1.19%) IPsec
5 5 (1.19%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.48%) VPN
7 1 (0.24%) DHCP
7 1 (0.24%) HTTP
7 1 (0.24%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.24%) Internet
7 1 (0.24%) LAN
7 1 (0.24%) WAN
7 1 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (15.91%) SQL Server
2 66 (15.68%) Power BI
3 49 (11.64%) NoSQL
4 46 (10.93%) Data Warehouse
5 33 (7.84%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (6.18%) Relational Database
7 24 (5.70%) Data Lake
8 23 (5.46%) MySQL
9 21 (4.99%) Tableau
10 18 (4.28%) Metadata
10 18 (4.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 17 (4.04%) Hadoop
12 16 (3.80%) Azure SQL Database
12 16 (3.80%) DB2
12 16 (3.80%) MongoDB
12 16 (3.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 15 (3.56%) Delta Lake
14 14 (3.33%) Snowflake Schema
15 12 (2.85%) BigQuery
15 12 (2.85%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 49 (11.64%) Git
2 44 (10.45%) JIRA
3 39 (9.26%) GitLab
4 35 (8.31%) Jenkins
5 15 (3.56%) Selenium
6 14 (3.33%) Cucumber
6 14 (3.33%) REST Assured
7 11 (2.61%) Postman
8 8 (1.90%) Jaeger
9 6 (1.43%) Mocha
9 6 (1.43%) TestRail
10 5 (1.19%) Liquibase
11 4 (0.95%) Flyway
12 3 (0.71%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.71%) Cypress.io
13 2 (0.48%) PyCharm
13 2 (0.48%) SoapUI
13 2 (0.48%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
14 1 (0.24%) Browser DevTools
14 1 (0.24%) ER Studio
General
1 135 (32.07%) Social Skills
2 108 (25.65%) Finance
3 85 (20.19%) Analytical Skills
4 56 (13.30%) Banking
5 43 (10.21%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.33%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.61%) Financial Institution
8 10 (2.38%) Legal
9 9 (2.14%) Law
9 9 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (1.66%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.66%) Retail
11 4 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.95%) Local Government
11 4 (0.95%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.95%) Marketing
11 4 (0.95%) Military
12 3 (0.71%) Health Technology
13 2 (0.48%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 90 (21.38%) Developer
2 78 (18.53%) Analyst
3 67 (15.91%) Data Engineer
4 49 (11.64%) Senior
5 45 (10.69%) Lead
6 29 (6.89%) Data Analyst
7 19 (4.51%) Business Analyst
7 19 (4.51%) DBA
8 17 (4.04%) Architect
8 17 (4.04%) Software Engineer
9 12 (2.85%) Java Developer
9 12 (2.85%) Test Engineer
10 11 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
10 11 (2.61%) Consultant
10 11 (2.61%) Senior Developer
10 11 (2.61%) SQL DBA
11 10 (2.38%) DevOps Engineer
11 10 (2.38%) Test Automation Engineer
12 9 (2.14%) .NET Developer
12 9 (2.14%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (11.16%) REST
2 43 (10.21%) .NET
3 30 (7.13%) Kafka
4 28 (6.65%) Spring Boot
5 25 (5.94%) XML
6 23 (5.46%) Spring
7 21 (4.99%) Middleware
8 20 (4.75%) RESTful
9 17 (4.04%) OpenID
10 16 (3.80%) PySpark
10 16 (3.80%) React
11 15 (3.56%) OAuth
12 14 (3.33%) HTML
12 14 (3.33%) Node.js
13 13 (3.09%) JSON
14 12 (2.85%) LDAP
14 12 (2.85%) SailPoint
15 11 (2.61%) CSS
15 11 (2.61%) SOAP
16 10 (2.38%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 36 (8.55%) Cloud Native
2 20 (4.75%) Product Ownership
3 18 (4.28%) Clustering
4 15 (3.56%) Data Protection Act
4 15 (3.56%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.33%) Management Information System
6 11 (2.61%) Linux Command Line
7 10 (2.38%) Data Structures
8 9 (2.14%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.14%) Replication
9 8 (1.90%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 8 (1.90%) Virtual Team
10 7 (1.66%) NHS
10 7 (1.66%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.43%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.43%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.19%) Credit Risk
12 5 (1.19%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (1.19%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 37 (8.79%) Linux
2 20 (4.75%) Windows
3 12 (2.85%) Unix
4 10 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.43%) AIX
6 2 (0.48%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.24%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.24%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (31.83%) CI/CD
2 121 (28.74%) Agile
3 103 (24.47%) DevOps
4 99 (23.52%) Problem-Solving
5 91 (21.62%) Analytics
5 91 (21.62%) Data Modelling
6 84 (19.95%) ETL
7 81 (19.24%) Business Intelligence
8 67 (15.91%) Data Pipeline
9 54 (12.83%) Data Engineering
10 53 (12.59%) Microservices
11 52 (12.35%) Data Analysis
12 49 (11.64%) Test Automation
13 46 (10.93%) Data Governance
14 45 (10.69%) Performance Tuning
15 41 (9.74%) Stakeholder Management
16 39 (9.26%) Visualisation
17 37 (8.79%) Actionable Insight
18 33 (7.84%) Containerisation
18 33 (7.84%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 131 (31.12%) Python
2 76 (18.05%) Java
3 29 (6.89%) C#
3 29 (6.89%) JavaScript
4 21 (4.99%) PowerShell
5 18 (4.28%) PL/SQL
6 17 (4.04%) T-SQL
6 17 (4.04%) TypeScript
7 15 (3.56%) Bash
8 12 (2.85%) PHP
9 11 (2.61%) VBA
10 8 (1.90%) Go
10 8 (1.90%) Rust
10 8 (1.90%) Shell Script
11 6 (1.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 5 (1.19%) R
12 5 (1.19%) Scala
13 4 (0.95%) ProC
14 3 (0.71%) C++
14 3 (0.71%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 53 (12.59%) Degree
2 51 (12.11%) Security Cleared
3 32 (7.60%) SC Cleared
4 20 (4.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (3.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.09%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.95%) MBA
8 3 (0.71%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.71%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.71%) ISTQB
8 3 (0.71%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.48%) CISSP
10 1 (0.24%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.24%) CEH
10 1 (0.24%) CISM
10 1 (0.24%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.24%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.24%) GIAC
10 1 (0.24%) GWAPT
10 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (13.54%) Data Quality
2 31 (7.36%) QA
3 17 (4.04%) GDPR
4 11 (2.61%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.90%) ISO 20022
5 8 (1.90%) PSD2
5 8 (1.90%) SEPA
5 8 (1.90%) WCAG
6 7 (1.66%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.66%) SLA
7 6 (1.43%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 4 (0.95%) PMO
8 4 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.48%) NIST
9 2 (0.48%) Solvency II
10 1 (0.24%) HL7
10 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.24%) PERC
System Software
1 65 (15.44%) Docker
2 9 (2.14%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (1.66%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.43%) Hyper-V
4 6 (1.43%) KVM
5 5 (1.19%) RACF
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.24%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 56 (13.30%) Kubernetes
2 28 (6.65%) Terraform
3 21 (4.99%) Grafana
4 18 (4.28%) Prometheus
5 14 (3.33%) Ansible
6 8 (1.90%) Kiali
6 8 (1.90%) Single Sign-On
7 7 (1.66%) Oracle RMAN
8 6 (1.43%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.43%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.19%) SCCM
10 3 (0.71%) Foglight
11 1 (0.24%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.24%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.24%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 63 (14.96%) Microsoft
2 54 (12.83%) Oracle
3 38 (9.03%) Databricks
4 29 (6.89%) Splunk
5 25 (5.94%) ServiceNow
6 22 (5.23%) Google
7 9 (2.14%) IBM
8 8 (1.90%) Advent
9 7 (1.66%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.66%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.43%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.43%) RedGate
10 6 (1.43%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.43%) SAP
11 5 (1.19%) Varonis
12 3 (0.71%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.71%) Citrix
12 3 (0.71%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.71%) Dynatrace
12 3 (0.71%) Informatica