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 19 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 22 16
Rank change year-on-year -1 -6 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 594 311 356
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.78% 7.77% 8.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.56% 26.65% 34.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 359 225 238
10th Percentile £321 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £363 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £525 £550
90th Percentile £606 £600 £614
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 2 6
10th Percentile £23.15 £24.13 £28.75
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.11 £32.44
Median hourly rate £39.50 £30.31 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.32% -20.24% +26.67%
75th Percentile £62.50 £33.61 £42.50
90th Percentile £76.00 £35.04 £53.75
England median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.16
% change year-on-year -18.00% +21.49% -10.30%

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 1,882 1,167 1,033
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 24.66% 29.16% 24.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,209 823 701
10th Percentile £350 £315 £341
25th Percentile £413 £379 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +9.33% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £650 £613 £638
England median daily rate £525 £513 £545
% change year-on-year +2.44% -5.96% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 12 28
10th Percentile £28.50 £30.60 £35.89
25th Percentile £47.15 £40.46 £37.55
Median hourly rate £70.00 £66.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% +44.00% -
75th Percentile £72.83 £85.56 £63.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £94.38 £75.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.04% -13.08% -

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 19 September 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 19 September 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 19 September 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 0 291 £500 +13.96% 453
Yorkshire +6 254 £467 -1.68% 224
North East -16 56 £406 -12.63% 98
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 47 (7.91%) Confluence
2 21 (3.54%) Apache Airflow
3 20 (3.37%) Apache Spark
4 19 (3.20%) Apache
5 11 (1.85%) SharePoint
6 10 (1.68%) SAS
7 9 (1.52%) Jupyter
8 7 (1.18%) Palantir Foundry
9 4 (0.67%) Camunda
9 4 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.67%) WebSphere
10 3 (0.51%) CMS
11 2 (0.34%) nginx
11 2 (0.34%) WordPress
12 1 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.17%) IIS
12 1 (0.17%) JBoss
12 1 (0.17%) Mule
12 1 (0.17%) Mule ESB
12 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 29 (4.88%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.67%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 10 (1.68%) Oracle EBS
3 7 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.84%) Infor LN
5 3 (0.51%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.51%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.34%) Elite 3E
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%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 159 (26.77%) Azure
2 129 (21.72%) AWS
3 121 (20.37%) Power Platform
4 57 (9.60%) GCP
5 52 (8.75%) GitHub
6 41 (6.90%) Azure DevOps
7 40 (6.73%) Serverless
8 28 (4.71%) Azure Data Factory
9 23 (3.87%) Amazon S3
9 23 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
9 23 (3.87%) Snowflake
10 22 (3.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 18 (3.03%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (2.86%) Azure Monitor
12 17 (2.86%) SaaS
13 16 (2.69%) dbt
13 16 (2.69%) Google Analytics
14 15 (2.53%) Amazon EMR
15 14 (2.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
15 14 (2.36%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.53%) SSL
2 11 (1.85%) DNS
2 11 (1.85%) Network Security
3 8 (1.35%) Firewall
4 6 (1.01%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.01%) RTP
4 6 (1.01%) Wireshark
5 4 (0.67%) BGP
5 4 (0.67%) DHCP
5 4 (0.67%) HTTP
5 4 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
6 3 (0.51%) Internet
6 3 (0.51%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.51%) LAN
7 2 (0.34%) PABX
7 2 (0.34%) VLAN
7 2 (0.34%) VoIP
7 2 (0.34%) VPN
8 1 (0.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 1 (0.17%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 138 (23.23%) SQL Server
2 112 (18.86%) Power BI
3 89 (14.98%) Data Warehouse
4 47 (7.91%) PostgreSQL
5 40 (6.73%) Metadata
6 37 (6.23%) MySQL
7 34 (5.72%) Relational Database
8 32 (5.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 32 (5.39%) Tableau
9 31 (5.22%) NoSQL
10 28 (4.71%) Data Lake
11 24 (4.04%) Oracle Database
12 23 (3.87%) BigQuery
13 21 (3.54%) Amazon Redshift
14 19 (3.20%) SQL Server Reporting Services
15 18 (3.03%) Looker
16 17 (2.86%) Amazon Athena
17 16 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
17 16 (2.69%) MongoDB
18 15 (2.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 72 (12.12%) Git
2 52 (8.75%) Jenkins
2 52 (8.75%) JIRA
3 36 (6.06%) GitLab
4 15 (2.53%) Gradle
5 12 (2.02%) Bitbucket
6 11 (1.85%) JUnit
6 11 (1.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (1.68%) Maven
8 9 (1.52%) Mockito
9 8 (1.35%) Postman
10 7 (1.18%) REST Assured
10 7 (1.18%) Selenium
10 7 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
11 6 (1.01%) Claude Code
11 6 (1.01%) Cucumber
11 6 (1.01%) Oracle Forms
11 6 (1.01%) TeamCity
12 5 (0.84%) Toad
13 4 (0.67%) SonarQube
General
1 191 (32.15%) Social Skills
2 117 (19.70%) Finance
3 103 (17.34%) Analytical Skills
4 70 (11.78%) Public Sector
5 55 (9.26%) Banking
6 21 (3.54%) Manufacturing
7 15 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 15 (2.53%) Retail
8 10 (1.68%) Marketing
9 7 (1.18%) Law
9 7 (1.18%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.01%) Games
10 6 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
10 6 (1.01%) Publishing
11 5 (0.84%) Aviation
11 5 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (0.84%) Investment Banking
11 5 (0.84%) Military
11 5 (0.84%) Police
Job Titles
1 133 (22.39%) Developer
2 85 (14.31%) Analyst
3 83 (13.97%) Data Engineer
4 77 (12.96%) Senior
5 74 (12.46%) DBA
6 49 (8.25%) Lead
7 46 (7.74%) SQL DBA
8 33 (5.56%) Data Analyst
9 31 (5.22%) Administrator
10 27 (4.55%) Senior Data Engineer
11 26 (4.38%) Software Engineer
12 25 (4.21%) Java Developer
12 25 (4.21%) Senior Developer
12 25 (4.21%) SQL Developer
13 22 (3.70%) Consultant
13 22 (3.70%) Oracle DBA
14 18 (3.03%) Architect
15 17 (2.86%) Performance Analyst
16 14 (2.36%) Python Developer
16 14 (2.36%) Software Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 59 (9.93%) Terraform
2 50 (8.42%) REST
3 49 (8.25%) Kafka
4 42 (7.07%) PySpark
5 39 (6.57%) Spring Boot
6 36 (6.06%) .NET
7 35 (5.89%) Spring
8 29 (4.88%) HTML
9 25 (4.21%) React
10 20 (3.37%) CSS
11 19 (3.20%) RESTful
11 19 (3.20%) Web Services
12 18 (3.03%) JSON
13 15 (2.53%) AngularJS
14 14 (2.36%) .NET Core
15 13 (2.19%) Hibernate
16 12 (2.02%) JPA
16 12 (2.02%) Redux
16 12 (2.02%) XML
17 10 (1.68%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 52 (8.75%) Data Structures
2 40 (6.73%) Cloud Native
3 27 (4.55%) Product Ownership
4 25 (4.21%) Data Protection Act
5 23 (3.87%) Replication
6 19 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
6 19 (3.20%) NHS
7 18 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
9 16 (2.69%) AI Agents
9 16 (2.69%) Clustering
10 15 (2.53%) Self-Motivation
11 10 (1.68%) Onboarding
12 7 (1.18%) Algorithms
12 7 (1.18%) Low-Code
12 7 (1.18%) Robotics
12 7 (1.18%) Virtual Team
13 4 (0.67%) Credit Risk
13 4 (0.67%) Data Centre
13 4 (0.67%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
Operating Systems
1 42 (7.07%) Linux
2 30 (5.05%) Windows
3 25 (4.21%) Unix
4 22 (3.70%) Windows Server
5 17 (2.86%) Solaris
6 4 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.34%) AIX
7 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.34%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.17%) Oracle Linux
8 1 (0.17%) VMS
8 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 159 (26.77%) CI/CD
2 156 (26.26%) Analytics
3 153 (25.76%) Agile
4 148 (24.92%) Data Modelling
5 135 (22.73%) Business Intelligence
6 122 (20.54%) ETL
7 118 (19.87%) Data Pipeline
8 110 (18.52%) DevOps
9 105 (17.68%) Problem-Solving
10 97 (16.33%) AI
11 91 (15.32%) Migration
12 89 (14.98%) Validation
13 86 (14.48%) Data Engineering
14 78 (13.13%) Performance Tuning
15 75 (12.63%) Stakeholder Management
16 66 (11.11%) Data Analysis
16 66 (11.11%) Test Automation
17 64 (10.77%) Infrastructure as Code
18 63 (10.61%) Data Governance
19 61 (10.27%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 180 (30.30%) Python
2 87 (14.65%) Java
3 55 (9.26%) PowerShell
4 44 (7.41%) T-SQL
5 41 (6.90%) C#
6 40 (6.73%) JavaScript
7 29 (4.88%) PL/SQL
8 20 (3.37%) Bash
9 16 (2.69%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 15 (2.53%) TypeScript
11 14 (2.36%) Shell Script
12 13 (2.19%) Kotlin
13 9 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (1.35%) R
15 7 (1.18%) Scala
16 5 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
17 4 (0.67%) Bicep
17 4 (0.67%) VB
18 3 (0.51%) VB6
19 2 (0.34%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 108 (18.18%) Security Cleared
2 97 (16.33%) SC Cleared
3 48 (8.08%) Degree
4 26 (4.38%) Microsoft Certification
5 25 (4.21%) BPSS Clearance
6 17 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.02%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.18%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.01%) CISSP
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%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 1 (0.17%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 132 (22.22%) Data Quality
2 32 (5.39%) QA
3 19 (3.20%) GDPR
4 7 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
6 4 (0.67%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.67%) GRC
7 3 (0.51%) PMO
7 3 (0.51%) SLA
8 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.34%) ISO 20022
8 2 (0.34%) MiFID
8 2 (0.34%) NIST
9 1 (0.17%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 1 (0.17%) Solvency II
9 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 69 (11.62%) Docker
2 22 (3.70%) Active Directory
3 14 (2.36%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.67%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.67%) KVM
5 4 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.17%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 49 (8.25%) Kubernetes
2 35 (5.89%) Ansible
3 15 (2.53%) Grafana
4 14 (2.36%) Data Guard
4 14 (2.36%) Prometheus
5 11 (1.85%) Control-M
5 11 (1.85%) SCOM
6 9 (1.52%) Oracle RMAN
7 6 (1.01%) Progress Chef
8 5 (0.84%) Argo
8 5 (0.84%) CASB
9 2 (0.34%) Consul
9 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
9 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.34%) Nagios
9 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 2 (0.34%) Zipkin
10 1 (0.17%) Forefront Identity Manager
10 1 (0.17%) HAProxy
10 1 (0.17%) SCCM
Vendors
1 133 (22.39%) Microsoft
2 88 (14.81%) Oracle
3 58 (9.76%) Databricks
4 35 (5.89%) Google
5 26 (4.38%) SAP
6 25 (4.21%) Splunk
7 21 (3.54%) ServiceNow
8 11 (1.85%) Alteryx
8 11 (1.85%) IBM
8 11 (1.85%) Teradata
9 8 (1.35%) Foundry
9 8 (1.35%) Informatica
9 8 (1.35%) OpenAI
9 8 (1.35%) Palantir
9 8 (1.35%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.35%) UiPath
10 7 (1.18%) Adobe
10 7 (1.18%) CyberArk
11 6 (1.01%) Centrify
11 6 (1.01%) Sybase