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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 17 15
Rank change year-on-year -8 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 481 313 399
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.49% 9.45% 8.65%
As % of the Programming Languages category 28.03% 33.51% 33.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 311 221 271
10th Percentile £313 £350 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% - -1.94%
75th Percentile £550 £545 £552
90th Percentile £625 £625 £614
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 3 10
10th Percentile £33.80 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £37.06 £31.62 £41.25
Median hourly rate £48.75 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +47.24% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £69.96 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £85.50 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £47.50 £45.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year +4.40% +4.60% -12.62%

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 1,716 934 1,186
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 26.74% 28.19% 25.72%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,138 680 838
10th Percentile £350 £350 £325
25th Percentile £410 £400 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £567
90th Percentile £625 £615 £625
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 14 51
10th Percentile £37.25 £34.68 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.31 £43.57
Median hourly rate £64.07 £74.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.00% +56.84% -3.62%
75th Percentile £74.26 £93.44 £68.75
90th Percentile £82.20 £100.97 £74.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -2 256 £460 -3.16% 227
Yorkshire -13 198 £467 -1.79% 123
North East -10 39 £450 - 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 23 (4.78%) Apache Spark
1 23 (4.78%) Confluence
2 19 (3.95%) Apache
3 16 (3.33%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (1.66%) WebSphere
5 7 (1.46%) Apache Geronimo
5 7 (1.46%) Apache ServiceMix
5 7 (1.46%) Red Hat Fuse
5 7 (1.46%) Tomcat
6 6 (1.25%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.83%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (0.83%) SAS
8 3 (0.62%) IIS
9 2 (0.42%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.42%) Mule
9 2 (0.42%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.21%) JBoss
10 1 (0.21%) WebLogic
Applications
1 30 (6.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.83%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (2.08%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.62%) Elite 3E
2 3 (0.62%) Oracle Applications
2 3 (0.62%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.42%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.42%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.42%) NetSuite
3 2 (0.42%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.42%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.21%) Infor LN
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle Cash Management
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
4 1 (0.21%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 1 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.21%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 148 (30.77%) Azure
2 127 (26.40%) AWS
3 80 (16.63%) Power Platform
4 56 (11.64%) GCP
5 35 (7.28%) Azure Data Factory
6 32 (6.65%) GitHub
7 25 (5.20%) Serverless
8 21 (4.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 19 (3.95%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (3.33%) dbt
11 15 (3.12%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.91%) Snowflake
13 12 (2.49%) SaaS
14 11 (2.29%) IaaS
15 10 (2.08%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 10 (2.08%) PaaS
16 9 (1.87%) AWS CloudFormation
16 9 (1.87%) AWS Lambda
17 7 (1.46%) Apigee
17 7 (1.46%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.53%) Firewall
2 13 (2.70%) DNS
3 8 (1.66%) TCP/IP
4 7 (1.46%) SSL
5 5 (1.04%) 3GPP
5 5 (1.04%) IPsec
5 5 (1.04%) Kerberos
5 5 (1.04%) RTP
5 5 (1.04%) Wireshark
6 3 (0.62%) DHCP
7 2 (0.42%) Internet
7 2 (0.42%) LAN
7 2 (0.42%) VPN
7 2 (0.42%) WAN
7 2 (0.42%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.21%) BGP
8 1 (0.21%) BIG-IP
8 1 (0.21%) HTTP
8 1 (0.21%) Network Security
8 1 (0.21%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (17.67%) SQL Server
2 73 (15.18%) Power BI
3 61 (12.68%) Data Warehouse
4 43 (8.94%) NoSQL
5 39 (8.11%) PostgreSQL
6 33 (6.86%) Tableau
7 24 (4.99%) Data Lake
8 23 (4.78%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 22 (4.57%) Relational Database
10 21 (4.37%) Azure SQL Database
10 21 (4.37%) Metadata
11 20 (4.16%) MongoDB
12 18 (3.74%) Oracle Database
13 17 (3.53%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 16 (3.33%) Hadoop
14 16 (3.33%) MySQL
15 14 (2.91%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (2.49%) BigQuery
16 12 (2.49%) Delta Lake
17 10 (2.08%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 57 (11.85%) Git
2 49 (10.19%) JIRA
3 37 (7.69%) Jenkins
4 32 (6.65%) GitLab
5 18 (3.74%) Cucumber
6 15 (3.12%) REST Assured
6 15 (3.12%) Selenium
7 10 (2.08%) Postman
8 9 (1.87%) Jaeger
9 8 (1.66%) Flyway
10 6 (1.25%) Gradle
10 6 (1.25%) Liquibase
10 6 (1.25%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (1.25%) TestRail
11 5 (1.04%) Bitbucket
11 5 (1.04%) JUnit
11 5 (1.04%) Maven
11 5 (1.04%) TeamCity
12 4 (0.83%) ERwin
12 4 (0.83%) Snyk
General
1 135 (28.07%) Social Skills
2 104 (21.62%) Finance
3 89 (18.50%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (10.19%) Banking
5 46 (9.56%) Public Sector
6 13 (2.70%) Law
7 12 (2.49%) Legal
8 11 (2.29%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.87%) Retail
10 8 (1.66%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.66%) Marketing
11 6 (1.25%) Documentation Skills
11 6 (1.25%) Presentation Skills
12 5 (1.04%) Manufacturing
13 4 (0.83%) Aviation
13 4 (0.83%) Fire and Rescue
13 4 (0.83%) Local Government
13 4 (0.83%) Police
14 3 (0.62%) Influencing Skills
14 3 (0.62%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 97 (20.17%) Developer
2 88 (18.30%) Analyst
3 69 (14.35%) Data Engineer
4 58 (12.06%) Senior
5 48 (9.98%) Lead
6 28 (5.82%) Java Developer
7 27 (5.61%) Data Analyst
8 25 (5.20%) DBA
9 23 (4.78%) Consultant
10 20 (4.16%) Architect
11 18 (3.74%) Senior Developer
12 16 (3.33%) Software Engineer
12 16 (3.33%) Test Engineer
13 15 (3.12%) Senior Data Engineer
13 15 (3.12%) SQL DBA
14 13 (2.70%) Business Analyst
15 12 (2.49%) Performance Analyst
15 12 (2.49%) Software Developer
15 12 (2.49%) Technical Analyst
15 12 (2.49%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (8.73%) REST
2 37 (7.69%) .NET
2 37 (7.69%) Spring Boot
3 31 (6.44%) Spring
4 30 (6.24%) Kafka
5 29 (6.03%) XML
6 25 (5.20%) PySpark
6 25 (5.20%) RESTful
7 21 (4.37%) Middleware
8 17 (3.53%) HTML
8 17 (3.53%) OpenID
9 15 (3.12%) OAuth
9 15 (3.12%) OpenTelemetry
10 14 (2.91%) React
11 13 (2.70%) JSON
12 12 (2.49%) SOAP
13 11 (2.29%) LDAP
13 11 (2.29%) OAuth2
13 11 (2.29%) SailPoint
13 11 (2.29%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 31 (6.44%) Product Ownership
2 30 (6.24%) Cloud Native
3 19 (3.95%) Data Protection Act
4 18 (3.74%) Clustering
5 16 (3.33%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (3.12%) Data Structures
6 15 (3.12%) NHS
7 13 (2.70%) Management Information System
7 13 (2.70%) Replication
8 12 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (2.49%) Linux Command Line
9 8 (1.66%) Onboarding
10 7 (1.46%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.25%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.25%) Analytical Mindset
11 6 (1.25%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 6 (1.25%) Robotics
12 5 (1.04%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.04%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 4 (0.83%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 53 (11.02%) Linux
2 31 (6.44%) Windows
3 17 (3.53%) Windows Server
4 15 (3.12%) Unix
5 8 (1.66%) AIX
6 3 (0.62%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.62%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.42%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.42%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.21%) VMS
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (29.94%) CI/CD
2 127 (26.40%) Agile
3 105 (21.83%) DevOps
4 102 (21.21%) ETL
5 101 (21.00%) Analytics
6 98 (20.37%) Problem-Solving
7 97 (20.17%) Data Modelling
8 91 (18.92%) Business Intelligence
9 76 (15.80%) Data Pipeline
10 62 (12.89%) Microservices
11 59 (12.27%) Performance Tuning
12 57 (11.85%) Test Automation
13 56 (11.64%) Migration
14 52 (10.81%) Data Engineering
15 47 (9.77%) Validation
16 44 (9.15%) AI
16 44 (9.15%) Data Analysis
17 42 (8.73%) Data Governance
18 40 (8.32%) Actionable Insight
19 38 (7.90%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 142 (29.52%) Python
2 89 (18.50%) Java
3 36 (7.48%) C#
4 30 (6.24%) JavaScript
4 30 (6.24%) PowerShell
5 27 (5.61%) PL/SQL
6 25 (5.20%) T-SQL
7 18 (3.74%) Bash
8 15 (3.12%) TypeScript
9 12 (2.49%) PHP
9 12 (2.49%) R
9 12 (2.49%) Shell Script
10 9 (1.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.66%) Rust
12 6 (1.25%) Go
13 5 (1.04%) Kotlin
13 5 (1.04%) Scala
13 5 (1.04%) VBA
14 4 (0.83%) ProC
15 3 (0.62%) VB
Qualifications
1 54 (11.23%) Degree
1 54 (11.23%) Security Cleared
2 43 (8.94%) SC Cleared
3 17 (3.53%) BPSS Clearance
4 16 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.08%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.83%) Azure Certification
6 4 (0.83%) MBA
7 3 (0.62%) CISSP
8 2 (0.42%) AWS Certification
8 2 (0.42%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.42%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.42%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.21%) CISM
9 1 (0.21%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.21%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 83 (17.26%) Data Quality
2 34 (7.07%) QA
3 21 (4.37%) GDPR
4 10 (2.08%) SLA
5 8 (1.66%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.46%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (1.04%) GRC
8 5 (1.04%) ISO 20022
8 5 (1.04%) PMO
9 4 (0.83%) PSD2
9 4 (0.83%) SEPA
10 3 (0.62%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.62%) NIST
11 2 (0.42%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.42%) WCAG
12 1 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.21%) HL7
12 1 (0.21%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 1 (0.21%) PERC
System Software
1 68 (14.14%) Docker
2 10 (2.08%) Hyper-V
2 10 (2.08%) KVM
3 9 (1.87%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.87%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.04%) RACF
5 4 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.21%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 58 (12.06%) Kubernetes
2 31 (6.44%) Terraform
3 23 (4.78%) Grafana
4 20 (4.16%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.12%) Ansible
6 11 (2.29%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (1.87%) Kiali
8 6 (1.25%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.25%) SCCM
8 6 (1.25%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.25%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.83%) Argo
10 3 (0.62%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.62%) Foglight
11 2 (0.42%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.42%) Consul
11 2 (0.42%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.21%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.21%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 67 (13.93%) Oracle
2 64 (13.31%) Microsoft
3 39 (8.11%) Databricks
4 32 (6.65%) Splunk
5 29 (6.03%) ServiceNow
6 24 (4.99%) Google
7 11 (2.29%) IBM
7 11 (2.29%) SAP
8 7 (1.46%) SolarWinds
8 7 (1.46%) TIBCO
9 6 (1.25%) RedGate
9 6 (1.25%) Varonis
10 5 (1.04%) Teradata
10 5 (1.04%) VMware
11 4 (0.83%) Adobe
11 4 (0.83%) AppDynamics
11 4 (0.83%) Salesforce
11 4 (0.83%) SYSPRO
12 3 (0.62%) Dynatrace
12 3 (0.62%) MuleSoft