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 citing SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 4 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	23	26	17
Rank change year-on-year	+3	-9	+2
Contract jobs citing SQL	621	315	334
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England	8.15%	7.02%	8.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category	31.73%	24.19%	34.76%
Number of daily rates quoted	380	230	215
10^th Percentile	£350	£312	£337
25^th Percentile	£406	£363	£413
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£475	£449	£488
Median % change year-on-year	+5.91%	-8.00%	-2.50%
75^th Percentile	£538	£525	£550
90^th Percentile	£600	£626	£617
England median daily rate	£500	£500	£525
% change year-on-year	-	-4.76%	-3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted	28	5	8
10^th Percentile	£23.53	£28.09	£26.25
25^th Percentile	£29.60	£36.00	£30.00
Median hourly rate	£50.00	£64.50	£38.00
Median % change year-on-year	-22.48%	+69.74%	+33.85%
75^th Percentile	£70.67	£74.26	£48.13
90^th Percentile	£75.30	£78.60	£65.00
England median hourly rate	£48.00	£50.00	£41.16
% change year-on-year	-4.00%	+21.49%	-8.54%

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 citing coding skills in the North of England.

	6 months to 4 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing coding skills	1,957	1,302	961
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England	25.70%	29.00%	24.34%
Number of daily rates quoted	1,254	907	613
10^th Percentile	£353	£313	£325
25^th Percentile	£413	£375	£400
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£480	£453	£475
Median % change year-on-year	+5.96%	-4.63%	-5.00%
75^th Percentile	£569	£538	£565
90^th Percentile	£638	£638	£629
England median daily rate	£525	£513	£540
% change year-on-year	+2.44%	-5.09%	-1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted	103	22	27
10^th Percentile	£28.50	£36.59	£33.88
25^th Percentile	£57.50	£50.69	£37.52
Median hourly rate	£70.00	£68.25	£46.18
Median % change year-on-year	+2.56%	+47.79%	-
75^th Percentile	£75.00	£74.26	£65.00
90^th Percentile	£77.00	£85.85	£81.50
England median hourly rate	£65.00	£62.50	£65.00
% change year-on-year	+4.00%	-3.85%	+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 Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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 4 November 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.

SQL Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 4 November 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 4 November 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate % Change on Same Period Last Year	Live Jobs
North West	+4	317	£479	+12.05%	184
Yorkshire	+12	256	£475	-	92
North East	0	57	£413	-17.50%	58
SQL England

SQL Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 4 November 2026, contractor job vacancies citing SQL also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North of England region citing SQL.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	32.4%	201
2	CI/CD	29.6%	184
3	Analytics	29.3%	182
4	Azure	28.3%	176
5	Data Modelling	27.5%	171
6	Agile	27.2%	169
7	Business Intelligence	23.3%	145
7	Data Quality	23.3%	145
9	ETL	23.0%	143
10	AWS	22.9%	142
11	Microsoft	22.5%	140
12	Power Platform	21.7%	135
13	AI	21.4%	133
13	SQL Server	21.4%	133
15	Data Engineering	20.3%	126
16	Data Pipeline	20.1%	125
17	Power BI	19.6%	122
18	DevOps	19.2%	119
19	Validation	18.8%	117
20	Security Cleared	18.4%	114
21	Problem-Solving	16.9%	105
22	SC Cleared	16.3%	101
23	Stakeholder Management	16.1%	100
24	Java	15.5%	96
25	Git	14.7%	91
26	Migration	14.5%	90
27	Test Automation	14.3%	89
28	Data Warehouse	13.2%	82
28	GCP	13.2%	82
30	Oracle	12.9%	80

SQL Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Programming Languages

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	32.4%	201
2	Java	15.5%	96
3	JavaScript	9.3%	58
4	PowerShell	9.0%	56
5	C#	6.9%	43
6	T-SQL	5.8%	36
7	TypeScript	4.3%	27
8	Bash	3.2%	20
9	Data Analysis Expressions	3.1%	19
9	PL/SQL	3.1%	19
11	Kotlin	2.4%	15
12	Shell Script	2.3%	14
13	Kusto Query Language	1.4%	9
14	Scala	1.0%	6
15	Gremlin	0.8%	5
15	Search Processing Language	0.8%	5
15	VB	0.8%	5
18	PHP	0.6%	4
18	VB6	0.6%	4
20	Bicep	0.5%	3