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 20 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 15 18
Rank change year-on-year -10 +3 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 426 305 367
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.48% 9.41% 7.57%
As % of the Programming Languages category 26.53% 34.12% 29.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 298 218 247
10th Percentile £335 £350 £275
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £638 £647 £610
England median daily rate £500 £515 £550
% change year-on-year -2.91% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 5 11
10th Percentile £37.35 £28.34 £37.63
25th Percentile £56.06 £31.47 £39.44
Median hourly rate £66.75 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +101.60% -22.09% -19.79%
75th Percentile £76.07 £65.00 £44.97
90th Percentile £89.15 £69.50 £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.50 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -2.15% +9.41% -15.42%

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 1,606 894 1,246
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.22% 27.59% 25.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,098 635 892
10th Percentile £344 £350 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £473
Median % change year-on-year - +0.48% -9.95%
75th Percentile £539 £559 £550
90th Percentile £617 £638 £625
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.42% -6.03%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 15 60
10th Percentile £41.94 £31.59 £38.31
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.25 £45.88
Median hourly rate £64.50 £70.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.86% +47.37% -1.55%
75th Percentile £74.26 £91.32 £63.75
90th Percentile £86.00 £100.62 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.76%

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 20 March 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 20 March 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 20 March 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 +2 246 £447 -5.89% 234
Yorkshire -24 159 £494 -1.25% 137
North East -2 32 £475 +5.56% 63
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 25 (5.87%) Apache Spark
2 24 (5.63%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (4.46%) Apache
4 18 (4.23%) Confluence
5 7 (1.64%) Apache Geronimo
5 7 (1.64%) Apache ServiceMix
5 7 (1.64%) Red Hat Fuse
5 7 (1.64%) Tomcat
5 7 (1.64%) WebSphere
6 6 (1.41%) SAS
6 6 (1.41%) SharePoint
7 2 (0.47%) IIS
8 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.23%) Mule
8 1 (0.23%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 28 (6.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.94%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.23%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.88%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.47%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.47%) Elite 3E
2 2 (0.47%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.47%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.47%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.23%) Maximo
3 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.23%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 134 (31.46%) Azure
2 125 (29.34%) AWS
3 71 (16.67%) Power Platform
4 47 (11.03%) GCP
5 26 (6.10%) Azure Data Factory
5 26 (6.10%) GitHub
5 26 (6.10%) Serverless
6 21 (4.93%) dbt
7 18 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
8 17 (3.99%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 17 (3.99%) Snowflake
9 14 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
10 11 (2.58%) IaaS
10 11 (2.58%) SaaS
11 10 (2.35%) PaaS
12 9 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (1.88%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (1.64%) Amazon S3
14 7 (1.64%) AWS CloudFormation
15 6 (1.41%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.99%) Firewall
2 10 (2.35%) DNS
3 7 (1.64%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.41%) SSL
5 5 (1.17%) IPsec
5 5 (1.17%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.47%) VPN
7 1 (0.23%) DHCP
7 1 (0.23%) HTTP
7 1 (0.23%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.23%) Internet
7 1 (0.23%) LAN
7 1 (0.23%) WAN
7 1 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (17.61%) SQL Server
2 64 (15.02%) Power BI
3 47 (11.03%) Data Warehouse
3 47 (11.03%) NoSQL
4 35 (8.22%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (6.34%) Relational Database
6 24 (5.63%) Data Lake
7 23 (5.40%) MySQL
8 21 (4.93%) Tableau
9 19 (4.46%) MongoDB
10 18 (4.23%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 18 (4.23%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 17 (3.99%) Metadata
12 16 (3.76%) DB2
12 16 (3.76%) Hadoop
13 15 (3.52%) Azure SQL Database
14 14 (3.29%) Delta Lake
14 14 (3.29%) Snowflake Schema
15 13 (3.05%) Power Query
16 12 (2.82%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 47 (11.03%) Git
2 44 (10.33%) JIRA
3 39 (9.15%) GitLab
4 36 (8.45%) Jenkins
5 14 (3.29%) Cucumber
5 14 (3.29%) REST Assured
5 14 (3.29%) Selenium
6 10 (2.35%) Postman
7 8 (1.88%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.41%) Liquibase
8 6 (1.41%) Mocha
8 6 (1.41%) TestRail
9 5 (1.17%) Flyway
10 3 (0.70%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.70%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.70%) ERwin
11 2 (0.47%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.47%) SoapUI
11 2 (0.47%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 1 (0.23%) ER Studio
General
1 132 (30.99%) Social Skills
2 108 (25.35%) Finance
3 85 (19.95%) Analytical Skills
4 55 (12.91%) Banking
5 41 (9.62%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.29%) Documentation Skills
7 11 (2.58%) Financial Institution
8 10 (2.35%) Legal
9 9 (2.11%) Law
10 7 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (1.64%) Organisational Skills
10 7 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
10 7 (1.64%) Retail
11 5 (1.17%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.94%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (0.94%) Local Government
12 4 (0.94%) Marketing
12 4 (0.94%) Military
13 3 (0.70%) Health Technology
14 2 (0.47%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 92 (21.60%) Developer
2 79 (18.54%) Analyst
3 67 (15.73%) Data Engineer
4 47 (11.03%) Senior
5 46 (10.80%) Lead
6 26 (6.10%) Data Analyst
7 20 (4.69%) DBA
8 19 (4.46%) Business Analyst
9 18 (4.23%) Architect
10 17 (3.99%) Software Engineer
11 13 (3.05%) Test Engineer
12 12 (2.82%) Consultant
13 11 (2.58%) .NET Developer
13 11 (2.58%) Azure Engineer
13 11 (2.58%) Java Developer
13 11 (2.58%) Senior Developer
13 11 (2.58%) SQL DBA
14 10 (2.35%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.35%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (2.35%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 46 (10.80%) REST
2 45 (10.56%) .NET
3 30 (7.04%) Kafka
4 27 (6.34%) Spring Boot
4 27 (6.34%) XML
5 22 (5.16%) Spring
6 21 (4.93%) Middleware
6 21 (4.93%) RESTful
7 17 (3.99%) OpenID
8 16 (3.76%) PySpark
9 15 (3.52%) JSON
9 15 (3.52%) OAuth
10 14 (3.29%) HTML
10 14 (3.29%) React
11 12 (2.82%) LDAP
11 12 (2.82%) Node.js
11 12 (2.82%) SailPoint
12 11 (2.58%) CSS
12 11 (2.58%) SOAP
13 10 (2.35%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 34 (7.98%) Cloud Native
2 21 (4.93%) Product Ownership
3 19 (4.46%) Clustering
4 15 (3.52%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.29%) Management Information System
6 13 (3.05%) Data Protection Act
7 11 (2.58%) Linux Command Line
7 11 (2.58%) Replication
8 10 (2.35%) Data Structures
9 9 (2.11%) Onboarding
10 8 (1.88%) Virtual Team
11 7 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.64%) NHS
11 7 (1.64%) Security Posture
11 7 (1.64%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 6 (1.41%) Public Cloud
13 5 (1.17%) Credit Risk
13 5 (1.17%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
13 5 (1.17%) Greenfield Project
14 4 (0.94%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 38 (8.92%) Linux
2 20 (4.69%) Windows
3 13 (3.05%) Unix
4 10 (2.35%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.41%) AIX
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle Linux
6 2 (0.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.47%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 135 (31.69%) CI/CD
2 118 (27.70%) Agile
3 104 (24.41%) DevOps
4 102 (23.94%) Problem-Solving
5 94 (22.07%) Data Modelling
6 91 (21.36%) Analytics
7 87 (20.42%) ETL
8 82 (19.25%) Business Intelligence
9 67 (15.73%) Data Pipeline
10 54 (12.68%) Data Engineering
10 54 (12.68%) Microservices
11 50 (11.74%) Data Analysis
12 49 (11.50%) Test Automation
13 47 (11.03%) Data Governance
13 47 (11.03%) Performance Tuning
14 39 (9.15%) Stakeholder Management
15 36 (8.45%) Actionable Insight
15 36 (8.45%) Visualisation
16 33 (7.75%) Computer Science
17 32 (7.51%) Migration
Programming Languages
1 132 (30.99%) Python
2 74 (17.37%) Java
3 31 (7.28%) C#
4 27 (6.34%) JavaScript
5 22 (5.16%) PowerShell
6 19 (4.46%) PL/SQL
6 19 (4.46%) T-SQL
7 16 (3.76%) Bash
7 16 (3.76%) TypeScript
8 12 (2.82%) PHP
9 11 (2.58%) VBA
10 9 (2.11%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.88%) Go
11 8 (1.88%) Rust
12 7 (1.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 5 (1.17%) R
14 4 (0.94%) ProC
14 4 (0.94%) Scala
15 3 (0.70%) C++
15 3 (0.70%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 53 (12.44%) Degree
2 52 (12.21%) Security Cleared
3 34 (7.98%) SC Cleared
4 20 (4.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (3.05%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.94%) MBA
8 3 (0.70%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.70%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.47%) CISSP
9 2 (0.47%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.23%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.23%) CEH
10 1 (0.23%) CISM
10 1 (0.23%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.23%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.23%) GIAC
10 1 (0.23%) GWAPT
10 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (13.38%) Data Quality
2 29 (6.81%) QA
3 19 (4.46%) GDPR
4 9 (2.11%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.88%) WCAG
6 7 (1.64%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.64%) ISO 20022
6 7 (1.64%) PSD2
6 7 (1.64%) SEPA
6 7 (1.64%) SLA
7 6 (1.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.94%) PMO
9 2 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.47%) GRC
9 2 (0.47%) NIST
9 2 (0.47%) Solvency II
10 1 (0.23%) HL7
10 1 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.23%) PERC
System Software
1 66 (15.49%) Docker
2 9 (2.11%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (1.64%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.41%) Hyper-V
4 6 (1.41%) KVM
5 5 (1.17%) RACF
6 2 (0.47%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.23%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 56 (13.15%) Kubernetes
2 29 (6.81%) Terraform
3 21 (4.93%) Grafana
4 18 (4.23%) Prometheus
5 16 (3.76%) Ansible
6 8 (1.88%) Kiali
6 8 (1.88%) Oracle RMAN
6 8 (1.88%) Single Sign-On
7 6 (1.41%) IBM BigFix
7 6 (1.41%) vCenter Server
8 5 (1.17%) SCCM
9 3 (0.70%) Foglight
10 2 (0.47%) Data Guard
11 1 (0.23%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.23%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.23%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 66 (15.49%) Microsoft
2 55 (12.91%) Oracle
3 39 (9.15%) Databricks
4 28 (6.57%) Splunk
5 27 (6.34%) ServiceNow
6 20 (4.69%) Google
7 9 (2.11%) IBM
8 8 (1.88%) Advent
9 7 (1.64%) SAP
9 7 (1.64%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.64%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.41%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.41%) RedGate
10 6 (1.41%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.17%) Varonis
12 3 (0.70%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.70%) Citrix
12 3 (0.70%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.70%) Dynatrace
12 3 (0.70%) Informatica