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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 19 16
Rank change year-on-year -2 -3 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 594 351 369
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 8.09% 8.93% 8.79%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.38% 32.93% 35.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 356 259 266
10th Percentile £321 £313 £338
25th Percentile £406 £389 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £461 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.89% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £545 £550
90th Percentile £617 £623 £610
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 30 3 4
10th Percentile £23.68 £24.60 £32.68
25th Percentile £29.96 £27.29 £34.81
Median hourly rate £44.90 £33.11 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +35.61% -12.87% -6.07%
75th Percentile £69.86 £53.48 £42.50
90th Percentile £77.80 £64.89 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £37.50 £41.50
% change year-on-year +20.00% -9.64% -9.55%

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 1,893 1,066 1,052
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 25.77% 27.12% 25.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,198 769 750
10th Percentile £352 £315 £325
25th Percentile £413 £380 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £463 £485
Median % change year-on-year +5.41% -4.64% -6.73%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £650 £607 £638
England median daily rate £521 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.07% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 10 32
10th Percentile £29.96 £29.28 £37.50
25th Percentile £49.38 £36.82 £43.80
Median hourly rate £70.00 £70.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year - +27.27% +19.10%
75th Percentile £74.26 £87.69 £71.87
90th Percentile £82.68 £95.36 £82.62
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +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 1 August 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 1 August 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 1 August 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 -3 313 £475 +1.28% 230
Yorkshire -3 241 £465 -2.11% 131
North East -14 52 £413 -10.81% 74
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 44 (7.41%) Confluence
2 31 (5.22%) Apache Spark
3 26 (4.38%) Apache
4 23 (3.87%) Apache Airflow
5 10 (1.68%) Jupyter
6 9 (1.52%) SharePoint
7 8 (1.35%) SAS
8 7 (1.18%) WebSphere
9 6 (1.01%) Apache Geronimo
9 6 (1.01%) Apache ServiceMix
9 6 (1.01%) Red Hat Fuse
9 6 (1.01%) Tomcat
10 5 (0.84%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.34%) CMS
11 2 (0.34%) IIS
11 2 (0.34%) Mule
11 2 (0.34%) Mule ESB
11 2 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
11 2 (0.34%) WordPress
12 1 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
Applications
1 38 (6.40%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.34%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
2 7 (1.18%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (0.84%) Infor LN
4 4 (0.67%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
5 3 (0.51%) Elite 3E
5 3 (0.51%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.51%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 160 (26.94%) Azure
2 129 (21.72%) AWS
3 100 (16.84%) Power Platform
4 53 (8.92%) GCP
5 44 (7.41%) GitHub
6 38 (6.40%) Serverless
7 30 (5.05%) Azure Data Factory
8 29 (4.88%) Azure DevOps
9 23 (3.87%) Snowflake
10 22 (3.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 22 (3.70%) dbt
11 19 (3.20%) AWS Lambda
12 18 (3.03%) Amazon S3
13 16 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
13 16 (2.69%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 16 (2.69%) OpenShift
13 16 (2.69%) SaaS
14 14 (2.36%) Google Analytics
14 14 (2.36%) Power Automate
14 14 (2.36%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 14 (2.36%) SSL
2 12 (2.02%) DNS
3 7 (1.18%) Firewall
3 7 (1.18%) Network Security
4 6 (1.01%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.01%) Kerberos
4 6 (1.01%) RTP
4 6 (1.01%) Wireshark
5 5 (0.84%) DHCP
6 4 (0.67%) BGP
6 4 (0.67%) HTTP
6 4 (0.67%) LAN
6 4 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
6 4 (0.67%) VPN
7 3 (0.51%) IPsec
8 2 (0.34%) Internet
8 2 (0.34%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.34%) VoIP
8 2 (0.34%) WAN
8 2 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 132 (22.22%) SQL Server
2 91 (15.32%) Power BI
3 83 (13.97%) Data Warehouse
4 44 (7.41%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (6.73%) NoSQL
6 37 (6.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 35 (5.89%) Tableau
8 33 (5.56%) Relational Database
9 30 (5.05%) Metadata
10 27 (4.55%) MySQL
10 27 (4.55%) Oracle Database
11 25 (4.21%) Data Lake
12 23 (3.87%) MongoDB
13 20 (3.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 18 (3.03%) Azure SQL Database
14 18 (3.03%) Looker
15 15 (2.53%) BigQuery
16 14 (2.36%) Hadoop
17 13 (2.19%) Amazon Redshift
17 13 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 71 (11.95%) Git
2 50 (8.42%) Jenkins
3 42 (7.07%) JIRA
4 32 (5.39%) GitLab
5 11 (1.85%) Gradle
6 10 (1.68%) Bitbucket
7 8 (1.35%) Flyway
7 8 (1.35%) JUnit
7 8 (1.35%) Selenium
8 7 (1.18%) Cucumber
8 7 (1.18%) Postman
8 7 (1.18%) Sonatype Nexus
8 7 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.01%) Claude Code
9 6 (1.01%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.01%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (1.01%) TeamCity
10 5 (0.84%) Maven
10 5 (0.84%) Mockito
10 5 (0.84%) REST Assured
General
1 163 (27.44%) Social Skills
2 110 (18.52%) Finance
3 107 (18.01%) Analytical Skills
4 62 (10.44%) Public Sector
5 44 (7.41%) Banking
6 18 (3.03%) Manufacturing
7 13 (2.19%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 13 (2.19%) Retail
8 9 (1.52%) Organisational Skills
9 8 (1.35%) Influencing Skills
9 8 (1.35%) Legal
9 8 (1.35%) Marketing
10 7 (1.18%) Games
10 7 (1.18%) Law
10 7 (1.18%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (0.84%) Aviation
12 5 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (0.84%) Military
12 5 (0.84%) Police
Job Titles
1 125 (21.04%) Developer
2 87 (14.65%) Analyst
3 74 (12.46%) Data Engineer
4 66 (11.11%) Senior
5 63 (10.61%) DBA
6 56 (9.43%) Lead
7 39 (6.57%) SQL DBA
8 35 (5.89%) Data Analyst
9 31 (5.22%) Consultant
10 26 (4.38%) Architect
10 26 (4.38%) Software Engineer
11 24 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 24 (4.04%) Oracle DBA
11 24 (4.04%) Senior Developer
12 23 (3.87%) Administrator
13 20 (3.37%) SQL Developer
14 19 (3.20%) Software Developer
15 18 (3.03%) Senior Data Engineer
16 16 (2.69%) Performance Analyst
17 14 (2.36%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 47 (7.91%) Kafka
2 45 (7.58%) REST
3 40 (6.73%) .NET
3 40 (6.73%) PySpark
4 36 (6.06%) Spring
4 36 (6.06%) Spring Boot
5 26 (4.38%) RESTful
5 26 (4.38%) XML
6 21 (3.54%) HTML
7 20 (3.37%) JSON
7 20 (3.37%) React
8 16 (2.69%) Web Services
9 14 (2.36%) CSS
10 13 (2.19%) Middleware
11 12 (2.02%) .NET Core
11 12 (2.02%) AngularJS
11 12 (2.02%) OAuth
12 11 (1.85%) OAuth2
12 11 (1.85%) Pandas
13 10 (1.68%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 41 (6.90%) Cloud Native
2 38 (6.40%) Data Structures
3 30 (5.05%) Product Ownership
4 25 (4.21%) Replication
5 22 (3.70%) Data Protection Act
6 20 (3.37%) Clustering
7 17 (2.86%) Enterprise Software
8 16 (2.69%) Legacy Systems
9 15 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (2.53%) NHS
10 13 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
11 12 (2.02%) AI Agents
12 9 (1.52%) Linux Command Line
12 9 (1.52%) Onboarding
13 8 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 7 (1.18%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 7 (1.18%) Low-Code
14 7 (1.18%) Management Information System
14 7 (1.18%) Robotics
14 7 (1.18%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 44 (7.41%) Linux
2 28 (4.71%) Windows
3 20 (3.37%) Windows Server
4 17 (2.86%) Unix
5 6 (1.01%) Solaris
6 5 (0.84%) AIX
6 5 (0.84%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.51%) Oracle Linux
7 3 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.17%) VMS
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 162 (27.27%) CI/CD
2 154 (25.93%) Agile
3 145 (24.41%) Analytics
4 134 (22.56%) Data Modelling
5 125 (21.04%) Business Intelligence
6 120 (20.20%) ETL
7 112 (18.86%) DevOps
8 106 (17.85%) Problem-Solving
9 101 (17.00%) Data Pipeline
10 88 (14.81%) Migration
11 77 (12.96%) AI
11 77 (12.96%) Validation
12 76 (12.79%) Performance Tuning
13 69 (11.62%) Data Engineering
14 66 (11.11%) Data Analysis
15 64 (10.77%) Microservices
16 62 (10.44%) Stakeholder Management
17 61 (10.27%) Test Automation
18 56 (9.43%) Data Governance
19 55 (9.26%) Infrastructure as Code
Programming Languages
1 171 (28.79%) Python
2 81 (13.64%) Java
3 47 (7.91%) PowerShell
4 45 (7.58%) T-SQL
5 42 (7.07%) C#
6 34 (5.72%) PL/SQL
7 30 (5.05%) JavaScript
8 20 (3.37%) Bash
9 16 (2.69%) TypeScript
10 13 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 12 (2.02%) Shell Script
12 11 (1.85%) Kotlin
12 11 (1.85%) R
13 8 (1.35%) Scala
14 4 (0.67%) Bicep
14 4 (0.67%) VB
15 3 (0.51%) VB6
16 2 (0.34%) Perl
16 2 (0.34%) PHP
16 2 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 93 (15.66%) Security Cleared
2 79 (13.30%) SC Cleared
3 48 (8.08%) Degree
4 20 (3.37%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 12 (2.02%) Microsoft Certification
7 8 (1.35%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.01%) DV Cleared
9 5 (0.84%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
10 4 (0.67%) CISSP
10 4 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
11 3 (0.51%) Master's Degree
11 3 (0.51%) OCP
12 2 (0.34%) AWS Certification
12 2 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.17%) CISM
13 1 (0.17%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.17%) GCFA
13 1 (0.17%) GCIH
13 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (20.03%) Data Quality
2 30 (5.05%) QA
3 24 (4.04%) GDPR
4 6 (1.01%) California Consumer Privacy Act
4 6 (1.01%) GRC
4 6 (1.01%) HIPAA
4 6 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 4 (0.67%) SLA
6 3 (0.51%) NIST
6 3 (0.51%) PMO
6 3 (0.51%) Solvency II
7 2 (0.34%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.34%) ISO 20022
7 2 (0.34%) WCAG
8 1 (0.17%) MiFID
8 1 (0.17%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 75 (12.63%) Docker
2 19 (3.20%) Active Directory
3 16 (2.69%) Oracle RAC
4 10 (1.68%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (1.18%) Hyper-V
5 7 (1.18%) KVM
6 4 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.51%) RACF
Systems Management
1 54 (9.09%) Terraform
2 52 (8.75%) Kubernetes
3 32 (5.39%) Ansible
4 16 (2.69%) Data Guard
4 16 (2.69%) Oracle RMAN
5 14 (2.36%) Grafana
6 13 (2.19%) Prometheus
7 11 (1.85%) Control-M
8 7 (1.18%) SCOM
9 4 (0.67%) Argo
9 4 (0.67%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.51%) Foglight
10 3 (0.51%) IBM BigFix
10 3 (0.51%) vCenter Server
11 2 (0.34%) Consul
11 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
11 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.34%) Nagios
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 2 (0.34%) SCCM
Vendors
1 113 (19.02%) Microsoft
2 88 (14.81%) Oracle
3 57 (9.60%) Databricks
4 33 (5.56%) Google
5 25 (4.21%) SAP
6 24 (4.04%) ServiceNow
7 21 (3.54%) Splunk
8 12 (2.02%) Alteryx
9 9 (1.52%) IBM
9 9 (1.52%) Salesforce
10 7 (1.18%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.18%) Informatica
10 7 (1.18%) OpenAI
11 6 (1.01%) Sybase
11 6 (1.01%) Teradata
11 6 (1.01%) TIBCO
11 6 (1.01%) Varonis
12 5 (0.84%) Adobe
12 5 (0.84%) Infor
12 5 (0.84%) Remedy