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

6 months to
29 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 17 16
Rank change year-on-year -8 -1 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 491 315 411
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.51% 9.52% 8.77%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.74% 33.87% 33.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 229 280
10th Percentile £313 £350 £306
25th Percentile £400 £402 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% - -2.06%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £564
90th Percentile £625 £625 £615
England median daily rate £500 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -0.05% -9.05% -
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 £46.80 £36.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -15.29% -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 1,770 930 1,220
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.07% 28.11% 26.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,157 686 854
10th Percentile £350 £350 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £466 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.93% -1.89% -9.52%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £575
90th Percentile £625 £610 £625
England median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -3.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 10 53
10th Percentile £36.28 £31.73 £37.56
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.88 £41.25
Median hourly rate £62.82 £74.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.68% +56.84% -3.13%
75th Percentile £74.26 £88.06 £68.75
90th Percentile £80.65 £95.36 £74.10
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% -

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 29 May 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 May 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 May 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 -9 251 £460 -3.16% 222
Yorkshire -10 207 £475 - 104
North East -8 45 £450 -2.70% 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 29 (5.91%) Apache Spark
2 24 (4.89%) Apache
2 24 (4.89%) Confluence
3 20 (4.07%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (2.04%) SharePoint
5 8 (1.63%) WebSphere
6 7 (1.43%) Apache Geronimo
6 7 (1.43%) Apache ServiceMix
6 7 (1.43%) Red Hat Fuse
6 7 (1.43%) Tomcat
7 5 (1.02%) Jupyter
7 5 (1.02%) Oracle Workflow
8 4 (0.81%) SAS
9 3 (0.61%) IIS
10 2 (0.41%) Mule
10 2 (0.41%) Mule ESB
10 2 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
11 1 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.20%) Camunda
11 1 (0.20%) JBoss
Applications
1 34 (6.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (2.24%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.22%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.81%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.61%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.61%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.41%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.41%) Infor LN
5 2 (0.41%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.41%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.41%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.41%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.41%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.41%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.20%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 159 (32.38%) Azure
2 125 (25.46%) AWS
3 83 (16.90%) Power Platform
4 55 (11.20%) GCP
5 37 (7.54%) Azure Data Factory
6 34 (6.92%) GitHub
7 27 (5.50%) Serverless
8 23 (4.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 21 (4.28%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (3.26%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (3.05%) dbt
12 14 (2.85%) SaaS
13 13 (2.65%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 13 (2.65%) Snowflake
14 11 (2.24%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (2.24%) IaaS
15 10 (2.04%) Amazon S3
15 10 (2.04%) PaaS
16 9 (1.83%) Power Automate
17 8 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.46%) Firewall
2 14 (2.85%) DNS
3 8 (1.63%) SSL
3 8 (1.63%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.22%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.22%) RTP
4 6 (1.22%) Wireshark
5 5 (1.02%) IPsec
5 5 (1.02%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.61%) DHCP
7 2 (0.41%) BGP
7 2 (0.41%) HTTP
7 2 (0.41%) Internet
7 2 (0.41%) LAN
7 2 (0.41%) Network Security
7 2 (0.41%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.41%) VPN
7 2 (0.41%) WAN
7 2 (0.41%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.20%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 84 (17.11%) SQL Server
2 76 (15.48%) Power BI
3 64 (13.03%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (8.35%) NoSQL
5 36 (7.33%) PostgreSQL
6 31 (6.31%) Tableau
7 26 (5.30%) Data Lake
8 25 (5.09%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 24 (4.89%) Relational Database
10 22 (4.48%) Azure SQL Database
10 22 (4.48%) Metadata
11 20 (4.07%) MongoDB
12 19 (3.87%) Oracle Database
13 17 (3.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 16 (3.26%) Hadoop
14 16 (3.26%) MySQL
15 15 (3.05%) Delta Lake
16 12 (2.44%) Big Data
16 12 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
17 11 (2.24%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 58 (11.81%) Git
2 49 (9.98%) JIRA
3 39 (7.94%) GitLab
4 36 (7.33%) Jenkins
5 19 (3.87%) Cucumber
6 16 (3.26%) Selenium
7 15 (3.05%) REST Assured
8 11 (2.24%) Postman
9 9 (1.83%) Jaeger
10 8 (1.63%) Flyway
11 7 (1.43%) Bitbucket
12 6 (1.22%) Gradle
12 6 (1.22%) Liquibase
12 6 (1.22%) Oracle Forms
12 6 (1.22%) TeamCity
12 6 (1.22%) TestRail
13 5 (1.02%) JUnit
13 5 (1.02%) Maven
14 4 (0.81%) ERwin
14 4 (0.81%) Snyk
General
1 140 (28.51%) Social Skills
2 108 (22.00%) Finance
3 89 (18.13%) Analytical Skills
4 48 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 47 (9.57%) Banking
6 13 (2.65%) Law
7 12 (2.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.44%) Legal
8 10 (2.04%) Retail
9 8 (1.63%) Financial Institution
9 8 (1.63%) Manufacturing
10 7 (1.43%) Documentation Skills
10 7 (1.43%) Marketing
10 7 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (1.02%) Aviation
11 5 (1.02%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (1.02%) Police
12 4 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (0.81%) Local Government
12 4 (0.81%) Military
Job Titles
1 97 (19.76%) Developer
2 84 (17.11%) Analyst
3 71 (14.46%) Data Engineer
4 58 (11.81%) Senior
5 51 (10.39%) Lead
6 28 (5.70%) Java Developer
7 27 (5.50%) Data Analyst
8 25 (5.09%) DBA
9 24 (4.89%) Consultant
10 22 (4.48%) Architect
11 18 (3.67%) Senior Developer
11 18 (3.67%) Test Engineer
12 15 (3.05%) SQL DBA
13 14 (2.85%) Business Analyst
13 14 (2.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 14 (2.85%) Software Engineer
14 12 (2.44%) Software Developer
14 12 (2.44%) SQL Developer
14 12 (2.44%) Technical Analyst
14 12 (2.44%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (7.94%) REST
2 36 (7.33%) .NET
3 34 (6.92%) Spring Boot
4 32 (6.52%) PySpark
5 30 (6.11%) XML
6 29 (5.91%) Kafka
7 28 (5.70%) Spring
8 25 (5.09%) RESTful
9 21 (4.28%) Middleware
10 18 (3.67%) HTML
11 17 (3.46%) OpenID
12 16 (3.26%) JSON
13 15 (3.05%) OAuth
13 15 (3.05%) OpenTelemetry
14 12 (2.44%) React
14 12 (2.44%) SOAP
14 12 (2.44%) Web Services
15 11 (2.24%) OAuth2
15 11 (2.24%) Pandas
15 11 (2.24%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 33 (6.72%) Cloud Native
1 33 (6.72%) Product Ownership
2 18 (3.67%) Data Protection Act
2 18 (3.67%) Data Structures
3 17 (3.46%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (3.26%) Clustering
5 15 (3.05%) NHS
6 14 (2.85%) Management Information System
7 13 (2.65%) Replication
8 12 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (2.44%) Linux Command Line
9 8 (1.63%) Onboarding
10 7 (1.43%) AI Agents
10 7 (1.43%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
10 7 (1.43%) Robotics
10 7 (1.43%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.22%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (1.22%) Enterprise Software
12 5 (1.02%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.02%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 51 (10.39%) Linux
2 27 (5.50%) Windows
3 16 (3.26%) Unix
3 16 (3.26%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.63%) AIX
5 3 (0.61%) Oracle Linux
5 3 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.61%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.41%) Ubuntu
6 2 (0.41%) Windows 10
6 2 (0.41%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.20%) VMS
7 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
7 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (31.36%) CI/CD
2 130 (26.48%) Agile
3 113 (23.01%) DevOps
4 105 (21.38%) Analytics
5 104 (21.18%) ETL
6 98 (19.96%) Data Modelling
7 95 (19.35%) Business Intelligence
7 95 (19.35%) Problem-Solving
8 81 (16.50%) Data Pipeline
9 62 (12.63%) Microservices
10 59 (12.02%) Migration
10 59 (12.02%) Performance Tuning
10 59 (12.02%) Test Automation
11 55 (11.20%) Data Engineering
12 53 (10.79%) Validation
13 49 (9.98%) Data Analysis
14 48 (9.78%) AI
15 43 (8.76%) Infrastructure as Code
16 41 (8.35%) Data Governance
17 39 (7.94%) Actionable Insight
Programming Languages
1 149 (30.35%) Python
2 91 (18.53%) Java
3 35 (7.13%) C#
4 33 (6.72%) PowerShell
5 31 (6.31%) JavaScript
6 28 (5.70%) PL/SQL
6 28 (5.70%) T-SQL
7 21 (4.28%) Bash
8 14 (2.85%) TypeScript
9 13 (2.65%) Shell Script
10 12 (2.44%) R
11 9 (1.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 9 (1.83%) PHP
12 8 (1.63%) Rust
13 6 (1.22%) Kotlin
14 5 (1.02%) Go
14 5 (1.02%) Scala
14 5 (1.02%) VBA
15 4 (0.81%) ProC
16 3 (0.61%) VB
Qualifications
1 58 (11.81%) Degree
2 56 (11.41%) Security Cleared
3 46 (9.37%) SC Cleared
4 21 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.46%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.04%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.81%) Azure Certification
7 4 (0.81%) MBA
8 3 (0.61%) CISSP
9 2 (0.41%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.41%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.41%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.41%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.20%) CISM
10 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.20%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 82 (16.70%) Data Quality
2 31 (6.31%) QA
3 21 (4.28%) GDPR
4 9 (1.83%) SLA
5 8 (1.63%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.43%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (1.02%) GRC
8 5 (1.02%) PMO
9 4 (0.81%) ISO 20022
10 3 (0.61%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.61%) NIST
10 3 (0.61%) PSD2
10 3 (0.61%) SEPA
10 3 (0.61%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.41%) WCAG
12 1 (0.20%) HL7
12 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 70 (14.26%) Docker
2 10 (2.04%) Hyper-V
2 10 (2.04%) KVM
3 9 (1.83%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.83%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.02%) RACF
5 4 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.41%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.20%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 58 (11.81%) Kubernetes
2 40 (8.15%) Terraform
3 24 (4.89%) Grafana
4 21 (4.28%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.05%) Ansible
6 11 (2.24%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (1.83%) Kiali
8 6 (1.22%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.22%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.22%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.81%) Argo
10 3 (0.61%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.61%) Foglight
10 3 (0.61%) SCCM
11 2 (0.41%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.41%) Consul
11 2 (0.41%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.20%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 69 (14.05%) Microsoft
2 67 (13.65%) Oracle
3 47 (9.57%) Databricks
4 32 (6.52%) Splunk
5 25 (5.09%) ServiceNow
6 22 (4.48%) Google
7 14 (2.85%) SAP
8 10 (2.04%) IBM
9 7 (1.43%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.43%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.22%) RedGate
10 6 (1.22%) Varonis
11 5 (1.02%) SYSPRO
11 5 (1.02%) Teradata
11 5 (1.02%) VMware
12 4 (0.81%) Adobe
12 4 (0.81%) AppDynamics
12 4 (0.81%) MuleSoft
12 4 (0.81%) OpenAI
12 4 (0.81%) Salesforce