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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 16 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 521 325 430
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.77% 9.55% 8.87%
As % of the Programming Languages category 28.93% 33.68% 34.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 325 239 290
10th Percentile £313 £325 £318
25th Percentile £400 £396 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £486
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -2.31% -0.77%
75th Percentile £550 £548 £567
90th Percentile £625 £625 £615
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 3 10
10th Percentile £24.70 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £35.63 £31.62 £41.25
Median hourly rate £46.80 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.35% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £66.60 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £83.20 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £47.50 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +17.28% -4.71% -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 1,801 965 1,253
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 26.85% 28.35% 25.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,177 713 862
10th Percentile £350 £333 £321
25th Percentile £413 £388 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% -2.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £552 £538 £575
90th Percentile £625 £606 £625
England median daily rate £513 £524 £540
% change year-on-year -2.10% -3.06% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 9 54
10th Percentile £35.88 £31.70 £37.55
25th Percentile £51.88 £52.00 £42.41
Median hourly rate £64.07 £70.00 £47.75
Median % change year-on-year -8.48% +46.60% +0.53%
75th Percentile £74.70 £88.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £82.20 £95.71 £73.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.88 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.40% -5.80% -

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -4 266 £460 -3.16% 244
Yorkshire -14 215 £475 - 101
North East -4 52 £425 -8.11% 56
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 32 (6.14%) Apache Spark
2 26 (4.99%) Apache
2 26 (4.99%) Confluence
3 24 (4.61%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.92%) SharePoint
5 8 (1.54%) Jupyter
5 8 (1.54%) WebSphere
6 7 (1.34%) Apache Geronimo
6 7 (1.34%) Apache ServiceMix
6 7 (1.34%) Red Hat Fuse
6 7 (1.34%) Tomcat
7 6 (1.15%) SAS
8 5 (0.96%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.38%) IIS
9 2 (0.38%) Mule
9 2 (0.38%) Mule ESB
9 2 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.19%) Camunda
10 1 (0.19%) WebLogic
Applications
1 35 (6.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.77%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (2.11%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.15%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.77%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.58%) Infor LN
4 3 (0.58%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.58%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.58%) Remedy ITSM
4 3 (0.58%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.19%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.19%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.19%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 167 (32.05%) Azure
2 132 (25.34%) AWS
3 87 (16.70%) Power Platform
4 59 (11.32%) GCP
5 37 (7.10%) GitHub
6 35 (6.72%) Azure Data Factory
7 31 (5.95%) Serverless
8 24 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
8 24 (4.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 23 (4.41%) dbt
10 19 (3.65%) SaaS
11 16 (3.07%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (3.07%) Snowflake
12 15 (2.88%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 13 (2.50%) Amazon S3
13 13 (2.50%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (2.11%) IaaS
15 10 (1.92%) PaaS
16 9 (1.73%) Amazon EMR
16 9 (1.73%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (3.07%) Firewall
2 14 (2.69%) DNS
3 8 (1.54%) SSL
4 7 (1.34%) TCP/IP
5 6 (1.15%) 3GPP
5 6 (1.15%) RTP
5 6 (1.15%) Wireshark
6 5 (0.96%) IPsec
6 5 (0.96%) Kerberos
7 3 (0.58%) BGP
7 3 (0.58%) DHCP
7 3 (0.58%) HTTP
7 3 (0.58%) Network Security
7 3 (0.58%) Reverse Proxy
8 2 (0.38%) Internet
8 2 (0.38%) LAN
8 2 (0.38%) VPN
8 2 (0.38%) WAN
8 2 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (0.19%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 91 (17.47%) SQL Server
2 81 (15.55%) Power BI
3 71 (13.63%) Data Warehouse
4 40 (7.68%) NoSQL
5 37 (7.10%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (6.14%) Tableau
7 30 (5.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 25 (4.80%) Data Lake
9 24 (4.61%) Metadata
9 24 (4.61%) Relational Database
10 23 (4.41%) Azure SQL Database
11 20 (3.84%) Oracle Database
12 19 (3.65%) MongoDB
12 19 (3.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 16 (3.07%) Delta Lake
13 16 (3.07%) Hadoop
14 15 (2.88%) MySQL
15 13 (2.50%) Big Data
15 13 (2.50%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 63 (12.09%) Git
2 53 (10.17%) JIRA
3 42 (8.06%) GitLab
4 38 (7.29%) Jenkins
5 19 (3.65%) Cucumber
6 18 (3.45%) Selenium
7 17 (3.26%) REST Assured
8 13 (2.50%) Postman
9 8 (1.54%) Flyway
9 8 (1.54%) Jaeger
10 7 (1.34%) Bitbucket
10 7 (1.34%) TestRail
11 6 (1.15%) Gradle
11 6 (1.15%) Liquibase
11 6 (1.15%) Oracle Forms
11 6 (1.15%) TeamCity
12 5 (0.96%) JUnit
12 5 (0.96%) Maven
13 4 (0.77%) ERwin
13 4 (0.77%) Snyk
General
1 150 (28.79%) Social Skills
2 116 (22.26%) Finance
3 95 (18.23%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (9.98%) Public Sector
5 50 (9.60%) Banking
6 13 (2.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.11%) Law
7 11 (2.11%) Legal
7 11 (2.11%) Retail
8 9 (1.73%) Manufacturing
8 9 (1.73%) Marketing
9 7 (1.34%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.96%) Aviation
11 5 (0.96%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.96%) Police
12 4 (0.77%) Games
12 4 (0.77%) Military
Job Titles
1 103 (19.77%) Developer
2 86 (16.51%) Analyst
3 72 (13.82%) Data Engineer
4 63 (12.09%) Senior
5 51 (9.79%) Lead
6 30 (5.76%) DBA
7 28 (5.37%) Java Developer
8 27 (5.18%) Consultant
8 27 (5.18%) Data Analyst
9 25 (4.80%) Architect
10 20 (3.84%) Senior Developer
11 19 (3.65%) SQL DBA
11 19 (3.65%) Test Engineer
12 16 (3.07%) Senior Data Engineer
13 14 (2.69%) Business Analyst
13 14 (2.69%) Software Engineer
14 13 (2.50%) Performance Analyst
15 12 (2.30%) Software Developer
15 12 (2.30%) SQL Developer
15 12 (2.30%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (8.25%) REST
2 37 (7.10%) PySpark
3 35 (6.72%) .NET
4 34 (6.53%) Spring Boot
5 30 (5.76%) Kafka
6 29 (5.57%) Spring
7 28 (5.37%) XML
8 27 (5.18%) RESTful
9 21 (4.03%) Middleware
10 17 (3.26%) HTML
10 17 (3.26%) OpenID
11 15 (2.88%) JSON
11 15 (2.88%) OAuth
12 14 (2.69%) OpenTelemetry
13 12 (2.30%) CSS
13 12 (2.30%) SOAP
13 12 (2.30%) Web Services
14 11 (2.11%) LDAP
14 11 (2.11%) OAuth2
14 11 (2.11%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 37 (7.10%) Cloud Native
2 33 (6.33%) Product Ownership
3 21 (4.03%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.84%) Data Protection Act
5 18 (3.45%) Clustering
6 17 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
7 14 (2.69%) NHS
7 14 (2.69%) Replication
8 13 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
8 13 (2.50%) Management Information System
9 12 (2.30%) Linux Command Line
10 9 (1.73%) Onboarding
11 8 (1.54%) AI Agents
11 8 (1.54%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 7 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
12 7 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.34%) Robotics
12 7 (1.34%) Security Posture
13 6 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (0.96%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 53 (10.17%) Linux
2 29 (5.57%) Windows
3 20 (3.84%) Unix
4 15 (2.88%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.54%) AIX
6 3 (0.58%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.58%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.58%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.38%) Solaris
7 2 (0.38%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.38%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.19%) VMS
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 171 (32.82%) CI/CD
2 138 (26.49%) Agile
3 122 (23.42%) DevOps
4 119 (22.84%) Analytics
5 109 (20.92%) Data Modelling
5 109 (20.92%) ETL
6 102 (19.58%) Business Intelligence
7 97 (18.62%) Problem-Solving
8 91 (17.47%) Data Pipeline
9 67 (12.86%) Migration
10 65 (12.48%) Microservices
10 65 (12.48%) Performance Tuning
10 65 (12.48%) Test Automation
10 65 (12.48%) Validation
11 61 (11.71%) Data Engineering
12 53 (10.17%) AI
13 52 (9.98%) Data Analysis
14 48 (9.21%) Infrastructure as Code
15 46 (8.83%) Data Governance
16 41 (7.87%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 161 (30.90%) Python
2 90 (17.27%) Java
3 40 (7.68%) PowerShell
4 34 (6.53%) C#
5 31 (5.95%) JavaScript
5 31 (5.95%) T-SQL
6 28 (5.37%) PL/SQL
7 24 (4.61%) Bash
8 16 (3.07%) Shell Script
9 13 (2.50%) TypeScript
10 12 (2.30%) R
11 11 (2.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 9 (1.73%) PHP
13 7 (1.34%) Rust
14 6 (1.15%) Kotlin
15 5 (0.96%) Go
15 5 (0.96%) Scala
15 5 (0.96%) VBA
16 4 (0.77%) ProC
16 4 (0.77%) VB
Qualifications
1 59 (11.32%) Security Cleared
2 54 (10.36%) Degree
3 48 (9.21%) SC Cleared
4 21 (4.03%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (3.65%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.92%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.77%) Azure Certification
7 4 (0.77%) MBA
8 3 (0.58%) CISSP
9 2 (0.38%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.38%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.19%) CISM
10 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (17.47%) Data Quality
2 34 (6.53%) QA
3 21 (4.03%) GDPR
4 9 (1.73%) SLA
5 7 (1.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 7 (1.34%) HIPAA
6 6 (1.15%) GRC
6 6 (1.15%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.96%) PMO
8 4 (0.77%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.58%) NIST
9 3 (0.58%) PSD2
9 3 (0.58%) SEPA
9 3 (0.58%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.38%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.38%) WCAG
11 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 76 (14.59%) Docker
2 10 (1.92%) Hyper-V
2 10 (1.92%) KVM
3 9 (1.73%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.54%) Active Directory
5 5 (0.96%) RACF
6 4 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.38%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 61 (11.71%) Kubernetes
2 45 (8.64%) Terraform
3 25 (4.80%) Grafana
4 21 (4.03%) Prometheus
5 18 (3.45%) Ansible
6 11 (2.11%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (1.54%) Kiali
8 6 (1.15%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.15%) vCenter Server
9 5 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.77%) Argo
11 3 (0.58%) Data Guard
11 3 (0.58%) Foglight
12 2 (0.38%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.38%) Consul
12 2 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.38%) SCCM
12 2 (0.38%) Zipkin
13 1 (0.19%) HAProxy
13 1 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 73 (14.01%) Microsoft
2 66 (12.67%) Oracle
3 52 (9.98%) Databricks
4 32 (6.14%) Splunk
5 28 (5.37%) ServiceNow
6 25 (4.80%) Google
7 16 (3.07%) SAP
8 11 (2.11%) IBM
9 7 (1.34%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.34%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.15%) RedGate
10 6 (1.15%) Salesforce
10 6 (1.15%) Teradata
10 6 (1.15%) Varonis
11 5 (0.96%) MuleSoft
11 5 (0.96%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.96%) SYSPRO
12 4 (0.77%) Adobe
12 4 (0.77%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.77%) VMware