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

6 months to
16 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 22 20
Rank change year-on-year -3 -2 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 375 256 379
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.24% 7.73% 7.63%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.26% 29.39% 28.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 269 169 262
10th Percentile £313 £334 £281
25th Percentile £363 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £480
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -0.99% -4.05%
75th Percentile £519 £567 £575
90th Percentile £645 £638 £615
England median daily rate £500 £523 £550
% change year-on-year -4.40% -4.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 5 13
10th Percentile £40.75 - £20.91
25th Percentile £48.69 £26.25 £37.63
Median hourly rate £66.97 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +104.11% -22.80% -35.61%
75th Percentile £73.06 £65.00 £43.75
90th Percentile £77.88 - £46.18
England median hourly rate £50.00 £55.25 £42.50
% change year-on-year -9.50% +30.00% -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 1,546 871 1,315
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.83% 26.29% 26.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,061 583 942
10th Percentile £340 £335 £313
25th Percentile £400 £390 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £465 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £562
90th Percentile £625 £638 £625
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 66 17 62
10th Percentile £41.94 £29.38 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £42.41
Median hourly rate £63.50 £65.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -3.05% +41.84% -2.78%
75th Percentile £74.26 £86.00 £59.38
90th Percentile £83.75 £98.79 £72.44
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.14
% change year-on-year +3.17% +4.76% -7.48%

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 16 February 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 16 February 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 16 February 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 +5 215 £424 -7.49% 203
Yorkshire -24 140 £500 - 102
North East -6 25 £475 -1.04% 38
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 (7.73%) Apache Airflow
2 13 (3.47%) Apache Spark
3 11 (2.93%) Apache
4 9 (2.40%) Confluence
5 8 (2.13%) SAS
6 6 (1.60%) SharePoint
7 4 (1.07%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.53%) Apache Geronimo
8 2 (0.53%) Apache ServiceMix
8 2 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
8 2 (0.53%) Tomcat
8 2 (0.53%) WebSphere
9 1 (0.27%) IIS
9 1 (0.27%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
9 1 (0.27%) Mule
9 1 (0.27%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 18 (4.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.80%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.27%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.40%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.53%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.53%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.53%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.27%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.27%) Maximo
3 1 (0.27%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 126 (33.60%) Azure
2 122 (32.53%) AWS
3 72 (19.20%) Power Platform
4 48 (12.80%) GCP
5 31 (8.27%) Serverless
6 24 (6.40%) GitHub
7 21 (5.60%) Azure Data Factory
8 20 (5.33%) dbt
9 17 (4.53%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (4.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 16 (4.27%) Snowflake
11 15 (4.00%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (2.93%) IaaS
13 11 (2.93%) SaaS
14 10 (2.67%) PaaS
15 9 (2.40%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (2.40%) Prefect
16 7 (1.87%) Amazon ECS
16 7 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 16 (4.27%) Firewall
2 6 (1.60%) DNS
2 6 (1.60%) SSL
2 6 (1.60%) TCP/IP
3 5 (1.33%) IPsec
3 5 (1.33%) Kerberos
4 3 (0.80%) HTTP
4 3 (0.80%) HTTPS
5 1 (0.27%) Internet
5 1 (0.27%) IP Telephony
5 1 (0.27%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (18.13%) Power BI
2 51 (13.60%) SQL Server
3 43 (11.47%) NoSQL
4 42 (11.20%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (8.00%) PostgreSQL
6 29 (7.73%) Relational Database
7 24 (6.40%) MySQL
8 23 (6.13%) Data Lake
9 21 (5.60%) Tableau
10 16 (4.27%) MongoDB
11 15 (4.00%) Snowflake Schema
11 15 (4.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (3.73%) DB2
13 13 (3.47%) Azure SQL Database
14 12 (3.20%) BigQuery
14 12 (3.20%) Delta Lake
14 12 (3.20%) Power Query
15 11 (2.93%) Hadoop
15 11 (2.93%) Metadata
16 9 (2.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 48 (12.80%) Git
2 46 (12.27%) JIRA
3 37 (9.87%) GitLab
4 32 (8.53%) Jenkins
5 15 (4.00%) Cucumber
5 15 (4.00%) REST Assured
5 15 (4.00%) Selenium
6 12 (3.20%) Postman
7 8 (2.13%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.60%) Mocha
8 6 (1.60%) TestRail
9 5 (1.33%) Liquibase
10 4 (1.07%) Mockito
11 3 (0.80%) CircleCI
11 3 (0.80%) Cypress.io
11 3 (0.80%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.53%) JUnit
12 2 (0.53%) PyCharm
12 2 (0.53%) Visual Studio Code
13 1 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 123 (32.80%) Social Skills
2 104 (27.73%) Finance
3 70 (18.67%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (16.00%) Banking
5 38 (10.13%) Public Sector
6 16 (4.27%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.47%) Financial Institution
8 10 (2.67%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (2.13%) Law
10 6 (1.60%) Marketing
10 6 (1.60%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.60%) Retail
11 4 (1.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.07%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (1.07%) Legal
11 4 (1.07%) Local Government
11 4 (1.07%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.07%) Military
12 3 (0.80%) Retail Banking
12 3 (0.80%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 101 (26.93%) Developer
2 71 (18.93%) Analyst
3 57 (15.20%) Data Engineer
4 53 (14.13%) Senior
5 29 (7.73%) Lead
6 28 (7.47%) Data Analyst
7 20 (5.33%) Business Analyst
8 19 (5.07%) Java Developer
9 17 (4.53%) Software Engineer
10 16 (4.27%) Architect
11 15 (4.00%) Senior Developer
12 13 (3.47%) Test Engineer
13 12 (3.20%) DBA
14 10 (2.67%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (2.67%) Test Automation Engineer
15 9 (2.40%) .NET Developer
15 9 (2.40%) AWS Engineer
15 9 (2.40%) Data Scientist
15 9 (2.40%) Senior Software Engineer
15 9 (2.40%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (13.33%) REST
2 45 (12.00%) .NET
3 35 (9.33%) Spring Boot
4 32 (8.53%) Kafka
5 29 (7.73%) Spring
6 19 (5.07%) RESTful
7 18 (4.80%) React
8 17 (4.53%) OpenID
8 17 (4.53%) XML
9 16 (4.27%) HTML
9 16 (4.27%) OAuth
9 16 (4.27%) PySpark
10 15 (4.00%) Middleware
11 14 (3.73%) JSON
12 13 (3.47%) CSS
12 13 (3.47%) JMS
13 12 (3.20%) LDAP
13 12 (3.20%) SailPoint
14 11 (2.93%) Node.js
15 10 (2.67%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 31 (8.27%) Cloud Native
2 20 (5.33%) Clustering
3 16 (4.27%) Distributed Systems
3 16 (4.27%) Product Ownership
4 13 (3.47%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.20%) SWIFT Messaging Network
6 11 (2.93%) Data Structures
7 10 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.13%) Algorithms
8 8 (2.13%) Virtual Team
9 7 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.87%) Public Cloud
9 7 (1.87%) Replication
10 6 (1.60%) Data Centre
10 6 (1.60%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.60%) NHS
11 5 (1.33%) Credit Risk
11 5 (1.33%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 5 (1.33%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 31 (8.27%) Linux
2 16 (4.27%) Windows
3 10 (2.67%) Unix
4 7 (1.87%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.80%) AIX
5 3 (0.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.27%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.27%) Mac OS X
Processes & Methodologies
1 123 (32.80%) CI/CD
2 112 (29.87%) Agile
3 104 (27.73%) DevOps
4 89 (23.73%) Problem-Solving
5 85 (22.67%) Data Modelling
6 79 (21.07%) Analytics
7 75 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
8 65 (17.33%) ETL
9 60 (16.00%) Microservices
10 49 (13.07%) Data Pipeline
11 47 (12.53%) Data Engineering
12 46 (12.27%) Test Automation
13 45 (12.00%) Data Analysis
14 44 (11.73%) Data Governance
15 43 (11.47%) Stakeholder Management
15 43 (11.47%) Visualisation
16 42 (11.20%) Performance Tuning
17 35 (9.33%) Containerisation
18 34 (9.07%) Computer Science
18 34 (9.07%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 115 (30.67%) Python
2 83 (22.13%) Java
3 31 (8.27%) C#
4 28 (7.47%) JavaScript
5 20 (5.33%) PL/SQL
6 15 (4.00%) PowerShell
7 12 (3.20%) PHP
8 11 (2.93%) VBA
9 10 (2.67%) Bash
9 10 (2.67%) TypeScript
10 9 (2.40%) Go
11 8 (2.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (2.13%) Rust
11 8 (2.13%) T-SQL
12 6 (1.60%) Scala
12 6 (1.60%) Shell Script
13 4 (1.07%) ProC
13 4 (1.07%) R
14 3 (0.80%) C++
14 3 (0.80%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 55 (14.67%) Degree
2 43 (11.47%) Security Cleared
3 28 (7.47%) SC Cleared
4 22 (5.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (4.53%) Master's Degree
6 15 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.87%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.60%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.07%) MBA
10 3 (0.80%) CEH
10 3 (0.80%) GIAC
10 3 (0.80%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.80%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.53%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.53%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.53%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.27%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (13.07%) Data Quality
2 31 (8.27%) QA
3 12 (3.20%) ISO 20022
3 12 (3.20%) PSD2
3 12 (3.20%) SEPA
4 11 (2.93%) Accessibility
5 8 (2.13%) GDPR
6 7 (1.87%) WCAG
7 6 (1.60%) SLA
8 4 (1.07%) PMO
9 2 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.53%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.27%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.27%) HL7
10 1 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.27%) PERC
System Software
1 64 (17.07%) Docker
2 6 (1.60%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (1.33%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.33%) RACF
4 3 (0.80%) Hyper-V
4 3 (0.80%) KVM
5 1 (0.27%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 53 (14.13%) Kubernetes
2 28 (7.47%) Terraform
3 22 (5.87%) Grafana
4 19 (5.07%) Prometheus
5 14 (3.73%) Ansible
6 9 (2.40%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.13%) Kiali
8 4 (1.07%) SCCM
9 3 (0.80%) IBM BigFix
9 3 (0.80%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.53%) Control-M
11 1 (0.27%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle Identity Manager
11 1 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 59 (15.73%) Microsoft
2 47 (12.53%) Oracle
3 30 (8.00%) Databricks
4 26 (6.93%) Splunk
5 21 (5.60%) ServiceNow
6 17 (4.53%) Google
7 9 (2.40%) Advent
8 8 (2.13%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.87%) IBM
9 7 (1.87%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.60%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.60%) RedGate
11 5 (1.33%) SAP
12 4 (1.07%) Cognos
13 3 (0.80%) AppDynamics
13 3 (0.80%) Citrix
13 3 (0.80%) F5
13 3 (0.80%) Imperva
13 3 (0.80%) Informatica
13 3 (0.80%) Red Hat