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 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 24 17
Rank change year-on-year +2 -7 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 596 305 353
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.81% 7.37% 8.48%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.24% 24.90% 33.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 223 227
10th Percentile £322 £313 £343
25th Percentile £406 £363 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £485
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -7.22% -3.00%
75th Percentile £538 £537 £546
90th Percentile £600 £612 £608
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 2 8
10th Percentile £23.38 £24.13 £26.25
25th Percentile £28.87 £26.11 £30.00
Median hourly rate £43.15 £30.31 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +42.36% -20.24% +32.87%
75th Percentile £66.25 £33.61 £48.13
90th Percentile £76.00 £35.04 £65.00
England median hourly rate £46.80 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -6.40% +25.00% -11.11%

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 1,908 1,225 1,044
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 25.00% 29.62% 25.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,210 860 678
10th Percentile £350 £315 £328
25th Percentile £413 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £450 £485
Median % change year-on-year +8.33% -7.22% -3.00%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £568
90th Percentile £650 £625 £638
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 13 30
10th Percentile £28.50 £31.20 £35.20
25th Percentile £55.00 £41.94 £37.55
Median hourly rate £70.00 £66.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +44.00% -
75th Percentile £75.00 £84.50 £64.69
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.20 £80.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% -

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 10 October 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 10 October 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 10 October 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 +5 302 £500 +15.61% 463
Yorkshire +10 241 £475 - 222
North East -4 63 £406 -9.72% 116
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 50 (8.39%) Confluence
2 25 (4.19%) Apache
2 25 (4.19%) Apache Spark
3 22 (3.69%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (2.01%) SAS
5 11 (1.85%) SharePoint
6 9 (1.51%) Jupyter
7 7 (1.17%) Palantir Foundry
8 6 (1.01%) Camunda
9 4 (0.67%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.50%) CMS
11 2 (0.34%) nginx
11 2 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
11 2 (0.34%) WordPress
12 1 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.17%) Apache Pulsar
12 1 (0.17%) IIS
Applications
1 30 (5.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.67%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.17%) Chatbot
3 1 (0.17%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 7 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
3 5 (0.84%) Infor LN
3 5 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.50%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.34%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.34%) Elite 3E
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.17%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.17%) Infor M3
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.17%) Sage 200
6 1 (0.17%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 161 (27.01%) Azure
2 128 (21.48%) AWS
3 124 (20.81%) Power Platform
4 72 (12.08%) GCP
5 61 (10.23%) GitHub
6 44 (7.38%) Azure DevOps
7 39 (6.54%) Serverless
8 26 (4.36%) Snowflake
9 24 (4.03%) Amazon S3
10 21 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
10 21 (3.52%) Azure Data Factory
11 20 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (3.19%) Azure Monitor
12 19 (3.19%) dbt
12 19 (3.19%) Google Analytics
13 18 (3.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 17 (2.85%) SaaS
15 16 (2.68%) OpenShift
15 16 (2.68%) PowerApps
16 15 (2.52%) Amazon EMR
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.52%) SSL
2 12 (2.01%) DNS
3 11 (1.85%) Network Security
4 7 (1.17%) Firewall
5 5 (0.84%) DHCP
6 4 (0.67%) 3GPP
6 4 (0.67%) BGP
6 4 (0.67%) HTTP
6 4 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
6 4 (0.67%) RTP
6 4 (0.67%) Wireshark
7 3 (0.50%) Internet
7 3 (0.50%) Kerberos
7 3 (0.50%) LAN
8 2 (0.34%) PABX
8 2 (0.34%) VLAN
8 2 (0.34%) VoIP
8 2 (0.34%) VPN
9 1 (0.17%) BIG-IP
9 1 (0.17%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 137 (22.99%) SQL Server
2 112 (18.79%) Power BI
3 84 (14.09%) Data Warehouse
4 45 (7.55%) PostgreSQL
5 42 (7.05%) Metadata
6 37 (6.21%) MySQL
7 35 (5.87%) Relational Database
8 33 (5.54%) Tableau
9 32 (5.37%) BigQuery
10 30 (5.03%) NoSQL
10 30 (5.03%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 26 (4.36%) Data Lake
12 23 (3.86%) Oracle Database
13 21 (3.52%) Amazon Redshift
14 19 (3.19%) Looker
15 18 (3.02%) MongoDB
16 15 (2.52%) Azure SQL Database
16 15 (2.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 13 (2.18%) Amazon Athena
17 13 (2.18%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 73 (12.25%) Git
2 55 (9.23%) JIRA
3 53 (8.89%) Jenkins
4 38 (6.38%) GitLab
5 16 (2.68%) Bitbucket
6 15 (2.52%) Gradle
7 12 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (1.85%) JUnit
8 11 (1.85%) Mockito
9 10 (1.68%) Maven
10 9 (1.51%) REST Assured
11 8 (1.34%) Claude Code
11 8 (1.34%) Postman
11 8 (1.34%) Team Foundation Server
12 6 (1.01%) Selenium
13 5 (0.84%) Cucumber
13 5 (0.84%) SonarQube
13 5 (0.84%) TeamCity
13 5 (0.84%) Toad
14 4 (0.67%) Snyk
General
1 192 (32.21%) Social Skills
2 121 (20.30%) Finance
3 105 (17.62%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (11.91%) Public Sector
5 59 (9.90%) Banking
6 21 (3.52%) Manufacturing
7 16 (2.68%) Retail
8 15 (2.52%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 10 (1.68%) Law
9 10 (1.68%) Marketing
10 8 (1.34%) Military
11 7 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
11 7 (1.17%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.17%) Publishing
12 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.01%) Games
13 4 (0.67%) Legal
14 3 (0.50%) Billing
14 3 (0.50%) Corporate Banking
14 3 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 129 (21.64%) Developer
2 87 (14.60%) Data Engineer
3 79 (13.26%) Senior
4 78 (13.09%) Analyst
5 70 (11.74%) DBA
6 53 (8.89%) Lead
7 45 (7.55%) SQL DBA
8 35 (5.87%) Data Analyst
9 33 (5.54%) Administrator
10 26 (4.36%) Senior Data Engineer
10 26 (4.36%) Senior Developer
10 26 (4.36%) Software Engineer
11 22 (3.69%) Java Developer
12 21 (3.52%) SQL Developer
13 19 (3.19%) Architect
14 18 (3.02%) Consultant
14 18 (3.02%) Oracle DBA
15 17 (2.85%) Performance Analyst
16 15 (2.52%) Data Manager
16 15 (2.52%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 64 (10.74%) Terraform
2 56 (9.40%) REST
3 54 (9.06%) Kafka
4 46 (7.72%) PySpark
5 39 (6.54%) Spring Boot
6 35 (5.87%) .NET
7 34 (5.70%) Spring
8 32 (5.37%) HTML
9 26 (4.36%) React
10 19 (3.19%) CSS
10 19 (3.19%) JSON
11 18 (3.02%) Web Services
12 15 (2.52%) Hibernate
12 15 (2.52%) RESTful
13 14 (2.35%) JPA
13 14 (2.35%) Redux
14 12 (2.01%) .NET Core
15 11 (1.85%) AngularJS
15 11 (1.85%) Vue
15 11 (1.85%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.22%) Data Structures
2 42 (7.05%) Cloud Native
3 25 (4.19%) Data Protection Act
3 25 (4.19%) Product Ownership
4 24 (4.03%) Replication
5 22 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
6 19 (3.19%) AI Agents
7 17 (2.85%) Clustering
8 16 (2.68%) Distributed Systems
9 15 (2.52%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (2.35%) Onboarding
11 13 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
12 11 (1.85%) NHS
13 8 (1.34%) Algorithms
14 6 (1.01%) Data Centre
14 6 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 5 (0.84%) Linux Command Line
15 5 (0.84%) Low-Code
15 5 (0.84%) Robotics
15 5 (0.84%) SWIFT Messaging Network
Operating Systems
1 38 (6.38%) Linux
2 31 (5.20%) Windows
3 26 (4.36%) Unix
4 23 (3.86%) Windows Server
5 18 (3.02%) Solaris
6 4 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.50%) AIX
8 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
9 1 (0.17%) CentOS
9 1 (0.17%) VMS
9 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (27.85%) CI/CD
2 162 (27.18%) Agile
3 160 (26.85%) Analytics
4 154 (25.84%) Data Modelling
5 134 (22.48%) Business Intelligence
6 129 (21.64%) ETL
7 120 (20.13%) Data Pipeline
8 113 (18.96%) DevOps
9 103 (17.28%) AI
9 103 (17.28%) Data Engineering
10 101 (16.95%) Validation
11 98 (16.44%) Problem-Solving
12 87 (14.60%) Stakeholder Management
13 86 (14.43%) Migration
14 77 (12.92%) Test Automation
15 76 (12.75%) Performance Tuning
16 72 (12.08%) Infrastructure as Code
17 67 (11.24%) Data Governance
18 66 (11.07%) Data Analysis
19 64 (10.74%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 189 (31.71%) Python
2 92 (15.44%) Java
3 56 (9.40%) PowerShell
4 49 (8.22%) JavaScript
5 42 (7.05%) C#
6 39 (6.54%) T-SQL
7 23 (3.86%) PL/SQL
8 21 (3.52%) Bash
8 21 (3.52%) TypeScript
9 17 (2.85%) Kotlin
10 15 (2.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 13 (2.18%) Shell Script
12 9 (1.51%) Kusto Query Language
13 8 (1.34%) R
13 8 (1.34%) Scala
14 5 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
14 5 (0.84%) VB
15 4 (0.67%) Bicep
15 4 (0.67%) PHP
15 4 (0.67%) VB6
Qualifications
1 115 (19.30%) Security Cleared
2 102 (17.11%) SC Cleared
3 43 (7.21%) Degree
4 26 (4.36%) Microsoft Certification
5 25 (4.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 16 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
7 11 (1.85%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.51%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.17%) CISSP
9 7 (1.17%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.84%) GCFA
11 5 (0.84%) GCIH
11 5 (0.84%) OCP
12 2 (0.34%) AWS Certification
13 1 (0.17%) CISA
13 1 (0.17%) CRISC
13 1 (0.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
13 1 (0.17%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
13 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 134 (22.48%) Data Quality
2 29 (4.87%) QA
3 17 (2.85%) GDPR
4 6 (1.01%) Accessibility
4 6 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.50%) GRC
6 3 (0.50%) NIST
6 3 (0.50%) SEPA
6 3 (0.50%) SLA
7 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.34%) MiFID
8 1 (0.17%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.17%) COBIT
8 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
8 1 (0.17%) Solvency II
System Software
1 66 (11.07%) Docker
2 25 (4.19%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.52%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (0.50%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.50%) KVM
5 3 (0.50%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 51 (8.56%) Kubernetes
2 37 (6.21%) Ansible
3 16 (2.68%) Grafana
3 16 (2.68%) Prometheus
4 13 (2.18%) Data Guard
5 11 (1.85%) Control-M
5 11 (1.85%) SCOM
6 6 (1.01%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.84%) Argo
7 5 (0.84%) CASB
7 5 (0.84%) Oracle RMAN
8 2 (0.34%) Consul
8 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
8 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
8 2 (0.34%) Kibana
8 2 (0.34%) Nagios
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 2 (0.34%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.17%) AirWatch
9 1 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
Vendors
1 133 (22.32%) Microsoft
2 88 (14.77%) Oracle
3 61 (10.23%) Databricks
4 47 (7.89%) Google
5 27 (4.53%) SAP
6 22 (3.69%) Splunk
7 20 (3.36%) ServiceNow
8 16 (2.68%) IBM
9 14 (2.35%) Informatica
10 11 (1.85%) Teradata
11 9 (1.51%) Alteryx
11 9 (1.51%) OpenAI
12 8 (1.34%) Foundry
12 8 (1.34%) Palantir
12 8 (1.34%) Salesforce
12 8 (1.34%) UiPath
13 7 (1.17%) CyberArk
14 6 (1.01%) Adobe
14 6 (1.01%) Centrify
14 6 (1.01%) Infor