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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 16 18
Rank change year-on-year -11 +2 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 445 307 372
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.59% 9.57% 7.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.10% 34.34% 30.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 303 220 253
10th Percentile £337 £350 £282
25th Percentile £400 £400 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £557 £550
90th Percentile £643 £638 £610
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% +0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 11
10th Percentile £37.35 £27.82 £37.63
25th Percentile £56.06 £30.17 £39.44
Median hourly rate £66.75 £32.96 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.52% -22.45% +4.71%
75th Percentile £76.07 £43.97 £44.97
90th Percentile £89.15 £61.09 £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.25 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -9.50% +17.65% -14.63%

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 1,642 894 1,212
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.99% 27.86% 25.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,115 639 866
10th Percentile £348 £350 £313
25th Percentile £401 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year - +1.01% -10.43%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £550
90th Percentile £621 £638 £625
England median daily rate £501 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.42% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 15 53
10th Percentile £41.94 £31.59 £37.78
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.38 £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +57.89% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £92.70 £63.75
90th Percentile £81.50 £100.62 £72.37
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -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 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 2 April 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 +1 255 £450 -5.26% 248
Yorkshire -20 169 £481 -2.53% 149
North East -3 33 £475 +3.26% 66
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 24 (5.39%) Apache Spark
2 22 (4.94%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (4.49%) Confluence
4 18 (4.04%) Apache
5 7 (1.57%) Apache Geronimo
5 7 (1.57%) Apache ServiceMix
5 7 (1.57%) Red Hat Fuse
5 7 (1.57%) Tomcat
5 7 (1.57%) WebSphere
6 6 (1.35%) SAS
6 6 (1.35%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.45%) IIS
9 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.22%) Mule
9 1 (0.22%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 28 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.90%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.90%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.45%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.22%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.22%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.80%) Advent Geneva
2 6 (1.35%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.45%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.45%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.45%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.45%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.45%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.22%) Maximo
4 1 (0.22%) SAP CRM
4 1 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 133 (29.89%) Azure
2 124 (27.87%) AWS
3 75 (16.85%) Power Platform
4 46 (10.34%) GCP
5 30 (6.74%) Azure Data Factory
6 25 (5.62%) GitHub
7 24 (5.39%) Serverless
8 20 (4.49%) dbt
9 18 (4.04%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (4.04%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 16 (3.60%) Snowflake
11 14 (3.15%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.47%) IaaS
13 10 (2.25%) PaaS
13 10 (2.25%) SaaS
14 9 (2.02%) AWS Lambda
15 8 (1.80%) Amazon EKS
15 8 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
15 8 (1.80%) Power Automate
16 6 (1.35%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 16 (3.60%) Firewall
2 10 (2.25%) DNS
3 7 (1.57%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.35%) SSL
5 5 (1.12%) IPsec
5 5 (1.12%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.45%) VPN
7 1 (0.22%) DHCP
7 1 (0.22%) Internet
7 1 (0.22%) LAN
7 1 (0.22%) WAN
7 1 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 80 (17.98%) SQL Server
2 68 (15.28%) Power BI
3 56 (12.58%) Data Warehouse
4 50 (11.24%) NoSQL
5 40 (8.99%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (5.84%) MySQL
6 26 (5.84%) Relational Database
7 24 (5.39%) Data Lake
8 23 (5.17%) Tableau
9 20 (4.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 19 (4.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 18 (4.04%) MongoDB
12 17 (3.82%) Azure SQL Database
13 16 (3.60%) DB2
13 16 (3.60%) Metadata
13 16 (3.60%) Oracle Database
13 16 (3.60%) Snowflake Schema
14 15 (3.37%) Hadoop
14 15 (3.37%) Power Query
15 14 (3.15%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 50 (11.24%) Git
2 48 (10.79%) JIRA
3 35 (7.87%) Jenkins
4 34 (7.64%) GitLab
5 14 (3.15%) Cucumber
5 14 (3.15%) REST Assured
5 14 (3.15%) Selenium
6 10 (2.25%) Postman
7 8 (1.80%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.35%) Mocha
8 6 (1.35%) TestRail
9 5 (1.12%) Flyway
9 5 (1.12%) Liquibase
9 5 (1.12%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.90%) ERwin
11 3 (0.67%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.45%) PyCharm
12 2 (0.45%) SoapUI
13 1 (0.22%) Hudson
13 1 (0.22%) Rational DOORS
General
1 134 (30.11%) Social Skills
2 108 (24.27%) Finance
3 90 (20.22%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (12.13%) Banking
5 41 (9.21%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.47%) Law
8 10 (2.25%) Legal
9 9 (2.02%) Financial Institution
10 7 (1.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (1.57%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.57%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.57%) Retail
11 4 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.90%) Local Government
11 4 (0.90%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.90%) Marketing
11 4 (0.90%) Military
12 3 (0.67%) Health Technology
13 2 (0.45%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 97 (21.80%) Developer
2 85 (19.10%) Analyst
3 65 (14.61%) Data Engineer
4 46 (10.34%) Senior
5 45 (10.11%) Lead
6 26 (5.84%) Data Analyst
6 26 (5.84%) DBA
7 19 (4.27%) Architect
8 18 (4.04%) Business Analyst
9 17 (3.82%) Consultant
10 14 (3.15%) Java Developer
11 13 (2.92%) Software Engineer
11 13 (2.92%) SQL DBA
11 13 (2.92%) Test Engineer
12 12 (2.70%) Azure Engineer
13 11 (2.47%) .NET Developer
13 11 (2.47%) AWS Engineer
13 11 (2.47%) Senior Developer
13 11 (2.47%) Technical Analyst
14 10 (2.25%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (9.66%) .NET
2 42 (9.44%) REST
3 30 (6.74%) Spring Boot
4 29 (6.52%) XML
5 28 (6.29%) Kafka
6 25 (5.62%) Spring
7 24 (5.39%) RESTful
8 19 (4.27%) Middleware
9 17 (3.82%) HTML
9 17 (3.82%) OpenID
9 17 (3.82%) React
10 16 (3.60%) PySpark
11 15 (3.37%) JSON
11 15 (3.37%) OAuth
12 14 (3.15%) CSS
13 12 (2.70%) LDAP
13 12 (2.70%) SailPoint
14 11 (2.47%) Pandas
14 11 (2.47%) SOAP
15 10 (2.25%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 33 (7.42%) Cloud Native
2 27 (6.07%) Product Ownership
3 21 (4.72%) Clustering
4 16 (3.60%) Data Protection Act
4 16 (3.60%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.15%) Management Information System
6 13 (2.92%) Data Structures
6 13 (2.92%) Replication
7 11 (2.47%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
8 9 (2.02%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.02%) Virtual Team
9 8 (1.80%) NHS
10 7 (1.57%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 6 (1.35%) Security Posture
12 5 (1.12%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (1.12%) Public Cloud
13 4 (0.90%) Data Centre
13 4 (0.90%) IoT
13 4 (0.90%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 40 (8.99%) Linux
2 22 (4.94%) Windows
3 13 (2.92%) Unix
4 11 (2.47%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.35%) AIX
6 3 (0.67%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.67%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (30.79%) CI/CD
2 117 (26.29%) Agile
3 111 (24.94%) Problem-Solving
4 100 (22.47%) Data Modelling
4 100 (22.47%) DevOps
5 95 (21.35%) Analytics
6 93 (20.90%) ETL
7 87 (19.55%) Business Intelligence
8 68 (15.28%) Data Pipeline
9 58 (13.03%) Microservices
10 55 (12.36%) Performance Tuning
11 52 (11.69%) Data Engineering
12 50 (11.24%) Test Automation
13 48 (10.79%) Data Governance
14 47 (10.56%) Data Analysis
15 40 (8.99%) Actionable Insight
15 40 (8.99%) Migration
16 36 (8.09%) Stakeholder Management
17 35 (7.87%) Visualisation
18 32 (7.19%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 132 (29.66%) Python
2 75 (16.85%) Java
3 32 (7.19%) C#
4 29 (6.52%) JavaScript
5 24 (5.39%) PL/SQL
5 24 (5.39%) PowerShell
6 23 (5.17%) T-SQL
7 16 (3.60%) Bash
8 15 (3.37%) TypeScript
9 12 (2.70%) PHP
10 11 (2.47%) VBA
11 9 (2.02%) Shell Script
12 8 (1.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 8 (1.80%) Rust
13 7 (1.57%) Go
13 7 (1.57%) R
14 4 (0.90%) ProC
14 4 (0.90%) Scala
15 3 (0.67%) C++
15 3 (0.67%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 56 (12.58%) Security Cleared
2 52 (11.69%) Degree
3 38 (8.54%) SC Cleared
4 19 (4.27%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (3.15%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (2.70%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.90%) MBA
8 3 (0.67%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.67%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.45%) CISSP
9 2 (0.45%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
10 1 (0.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.22%) CISM
10 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.22%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (13.71%) Data Quality
2 34 (7.64%) QA
3 19 (4.27%) GDPR
4 7 (1.57%) Accessibility
4 7 (1.57%) HIPAA
4 7 (1.57%) ISO 20022
4 7 (1.57%) PSD2
4 7 (1.57%) SEPA
4 7 (1.57%) SLA
5 6 (1.35%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 6 (1.35%) PMO
5 6 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.35%) WCAG
6 4 (0.90%) GRC
7 2 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.45%) NIST
7 2 (0.45%) Solvency II
8 1 (0.22%) HL7
8 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.22%) PERC
System Software
1 63 (14.16%) Docker
2 9 (2.02%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (1.57%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.35%) Hyper-V
4 6 (1.35%) KVM
5 5 (1.12%) RACF
6 2 (0.45%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.22%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 55 (12.36%) Kubernetes
2 28 (6.29%) Terraform
3 20 (4.49%) Grafana
4 17 (3.82%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.37%) Ansible
6 12 (2.70%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (1.80%) Kiali
7 8 (1.80%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.35%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.35%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.12%) SCCM
10 3 (0.67%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.67%) Foglight
11 1 (0.22%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.22%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.22%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.22%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 71 (15.96%) Microsoft
2 64 (14.38%) Oracle
3 39 (8.76%) Databricks
4 29 (6.52%) ServiceNow
5 28 (6.29%) Splunk
6 19 (4.27%) Google
7 9 (2.02%) IBM
8 8 (1.80%) Advent
8 8 (1.80%) SAP
9 7 (1.57%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.57%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.35%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.35%) RedGate
10 6 (1.35%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.12%) Varonis
12 3 (0.67%) Alteryx
12 3 (0.67%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.67%) Atlassian
12 3 (0.67%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.67%) Dynatrace