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 29 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 22 19
Rank change year-on-year -6 -3 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL 347 253 368
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 6.94% 7.54% 7.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.37% 28.59% 29.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 253 162 248
10th Percentile £326 £336 £285
25th Percentile £370 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £511 £567 £575
90th Percentile £643 £638 £625
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 12
10th Percentile £39.60 - £20.18
25th Percentile £45.00 £26.25 £34.91
Median hourly rate £64.50 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +96.59% -22.80% -35.61%
75th Percentile £74.26 £65.00 £44.36
90th Percentile £78.60 - £46.18
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -15.00%

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 1,485 885 1,267
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.71% 26.39% 26.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,039 580 913
10th Percentile £334 £350 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £569
90th Percentile £625 £638 £638
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 19 63
10th Percentile £41.94 £30.43 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £45.88
Median hourly rate £60.00 £65.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -7.69% +40.75% -2.78%
75th Percentile £73.82 £86.00 £50.75
90th Percentile £79.95 £97.71 £71.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%

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 29 January 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 29 January 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 29 January 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 +4 196 £423 -8.65% 229
Yorkshire -26 131 £488 -2.50% 157
North East -11 23 £475 -4.52% 62
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 29 (8.36%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (3.46%) Apache Spark
3 11 (3.17%) Confluence
4 9 (2.59%) Apache
4 9 (2.59%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.31%) SAS
6 5 (1.44%) Apache Pig
7 3 (0.86%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.29%) CICS
8 1 (0.29%) IIS
8 1 (0.29%) JBoss
8 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.29%) Mule
8 1 (0.29%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 22 (6.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.73%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.15%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.86%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.29%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.59%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.58%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.29%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.29%) Finacle
3 1 (0.29%) Magento
3 1 (0.29%) Maximo
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 121 (34.87%) AWS
1 121 (34.87%) Azure
2 76 (21.90%) Power Platform
3 46 (13.26%) GCP
4 29 (8.36%) Serverless
5 27 (7.78%) GitHub
6 20 (5.76%) Azure Data Factory
7 19 (5.48%) Snowflake
8 18 (5.19%) dbt
9 16 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
9 16 (4.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 15 (4.32%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (3.75%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (2.59%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (2.59%) SaaS
13 8 (2.31%) Prefect
14 7 (2.02%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.02%) Amazon S3
14 7 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.02%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.19%) Firewall
2 7 (2.02%) TCP/IP
3 6 (1.73%) DNS
4 3 (0.86%) HTTP
4 3 (0.86%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.86%) SSL
5 2 (0.58%) IPsec
5 2 (0.58%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.29%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.29%) FCoE
6 1 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) IP Telephony
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) LAN
6 1 (0.29%) Multicast
6 1 (0.29%) NAS
6 1 (0.29%) SAN
6 1 (0.29%) VoIP
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (21.04%) Power BI
2 48 (13.83%) SQL Server
3 44 (12.68%) NoSQL
4 34 (9.80%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (8.36%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (8.36%) Relational Database
6 24 (6.92%) Data Lake
7 23 (6.63%) MySQL
8 19 (5.48%) Tableau
9 18 (5.19%) Azure SQL Database
10 15 (4.32%) MongoDB
11 14 (4.03%) Power Query
11 14 (4.03%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 13 (3.75%) BigQuery
12 13 (3.75%) Snowflake Schema
13 12 (3.46%) DB2
13 12 (3.46%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.88%) Redis
15 9 (2.59%) Metadata
16 8 (2.31%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 48 (13.83%) JIRA
2 47 (13.54%) Git
3 37 (10.66%) GitLab
4 32 (9.22%) Jenkins
5 14 (4.03%) Cucumber
6 13 (3.75%) REST Assured
6 13 (3.75%) Selenium
7 10 (2.88%) Postman
8 8 (2.31%) Jaeger
9 6 (1.73%) Mocha
9 6 (1.73%) TestRail
10 4 (1.15%) Liquibase
10 4 (1.15%) Mockito
11 3 (0.86%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.58%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.58%) JUnit
12 2 (0.58%) PyCharm
12 2 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
12 2 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
13 1 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
General
1 112 (32.28%) Social Skills
2 102 (29.39%) Finance
3 62 (17.87%) Analytical Skills
3 62 (17.87%) Banking
4 30 (8.65%) Public Sector
5 14 (4.03%) Documentation Skills
6 13 (3.75%) Financial Institution
7 9 (2.59%) Presentation Skills
8 7 (2.02%) Law
9 6 (1.73%) Local Government
9 6 (1.73%) Marketing
9 6 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
10 5 (1.44%) Retail
11 4 (1.15%) Legal
11 4 (1.15%) Manufacturing
11 4 (1.15%) Wholesale Banking
12 3 (0.86%) Health Technology
12 3 (0.86%) Retail Banking
13 2 (0.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 2 (0.58%) Military
Job Titles
1 103 (29.68%) Developer
2 62 (17.87%) Analyst
3 52 (14.99%) Data Engineer
4 49 (14.12%) Senior
5 24 (6.92%) Lead
6 23 (6.63%) Data Analyst
7 22 (6.34%) Java Developer
8 19 (5.48%) Business Analyst
9 17 (4.90%) Software Engineer
10 15 (4.32%) Senior Developer
11 12 (3.46%) Test Engineer
12 11 (3.17%) Architect
12 11 (3.17%) AWS Engineer
12 11 (3.17%) Azure Engineer
12 11 (3.17%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 10 (2.88%) DBA
13 10 (2.88%) DevOps Engineer
13 10 (2.88%) Test Automation Engineer
14 9 (2.59%) Power BI Developer
15 8 (2.31%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (14.12%) REST
2 40 (11.53%) .NET
3 38 (10.95%) Spring Boot
4 32 (9.22%) Spring
5 31 (8.93%) Kafka
6 19 (5.48%) React
6 19 (5.48%) RESTful
7 15 (4.32%) HTML
7 15 (4.32%) JMS
7 15 (4.32%) Middleware
7 15 (4.32%) XML
8 14 (4.03%) PySpark
9 13 (3.75%) CSS
9 13 (3.75%) JSON
9 13 (3.75%) OAuth
9 13 (3.75%) OpenID
10 12 (3.46%) LDAP
10 12 (3.46%) Node.js
11 11 (3.17%) SailPoint
12 8 (2.31%) Jest
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.09%) Cloud Native
2 18 (5.19%) Distributed Systems
3 14 (4.03%) SWIFT Messaging Network
4 13 (3.75%) Clustering
4 13 (3.75%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.46%) Product Ownership
6 11 (3.17%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.59%) Algorithms
7 9 (2.59%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.31%) Onboarding
8 8 (2.31%) Virtual Team
9 7 (2.02%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.02%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.73%) Public Cloud
11 5 (1.44%) Credit Risk
11 5 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
11 5 (1.44%) Legacy Systems
11 5 (1.44%) NHS
12 4 (1.15%) Mainframe
12 4 (1.15%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 30 (8.65%) Linux
2 15 (4.32%) Windows
3 9 (2.59%) Unix
4 5 (1.44%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.29%) AIX
7 1 (0.29%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.29%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.29%) MVS
7 1 (0.29%) Solaris
7 1 (0.29%) VMS
7 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 116 (33.43%) CI/CD
2 107 (30.84%) Agile
3 99 (28.53%) DevOps
4 83 (23.92%) Problem-Solving
5 78 (22.48%) Business Intelligence
6 77 (22.19%) Data Modelling
7 69 (19.88%) Analytics
8 57 (16.43%) ETL
9 55 (15.85%) Microservices
10 49 (14.12%) Data Pipeline
11 44 (12.68%) Test Automation
12 43 (12.39%) Data Governance
13 42 (12.10%) Visualisation
14 40 (11.53%) Data Engineering
14 40 (11.53%) Stakeholder Management
15 38 (10.95%) Containerisation
15 38 (10.95%) Data Analysis
16 37 (10.66%) Performance Tuning
17 34 (9.80%) Actionable Insight
18 33 (9.51%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 105 (30.26%) Python
2 84 (24.21%) Java
3 28 (8.07%) JavaScript
4 25 (7.20%) C#
5 18 (5.19%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.75%) PHP
7 11 (3.17%) VBA
8 10 (2.88%) T-SQL
8 10 (2.88%) TypeScript
9 9 (2.59%) Bash
9 9 (2.59%) Scala
10 8 (2.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (2.31%) Go
10 8 (2.31%) Rust
11 7 (2.02%) PowerShell
12 6 (1.73%) Shell Script
13 5 (1.44%) Bicep
14 4 (1.15%) ProC
15 3 (0.86%) Delphi
16 2 (0.58%) C++
Qualifications
1 51 (14.70%) Degree
2 32 (9.22%) Security Cleared
3 23 (6.63%) Computer Science Degree
4 19 (5.48%) SC Cleared
5 15 (4.32%) Master's Degree
6 13 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.02%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.73%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.15%) MBA
10 3 (0.86%) CEH
10 3 (0.86%) GIAC
10 3 (0.86%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.58%) Tableau Certification
12 1 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (11.82%) Data Quality
2 31 (8.93%) QA
3 14 (4.03%) ISO 20022
3 14 (4.03%) PSD2
3 14 (4.03%) SEPA
4 11 (3.17%) Accessibility
5 7 (2.02%) WCAG
6 6 (1.73%) SLA
7 5 (1.44%) GDPR
8 4 (1.15%) PMO
9 2 (0.58%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.58%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.58%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.29%) HL7
10 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.29%) PERC
System Software
1 67 (19.31%) Docker
2 5 (1.44%) Active Directory
2 5 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
3 2 (0.58%) Hyper-V
3 2 (0.58%) KVM
3 2 (0.58%) RACF
4 1 (0.29%) NFS
4 1 (0.29%) SRDF
4 1 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
4 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.29%) vSphere
4 1 (0.29%) Xen
Systems Management
1 59 (17.00%) Kubernetes
2 30 (8.65%) Terraform
3 21 (6.05%) Grafana
4 18 (5.19%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.03%) Ansible
6 8 (2.31%) Kiali
7 6 (1.73%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.15%) SCCM
9 2 (0.58%) Control-M
10 1 (0.29%) IBM BigFix
10 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.29%) Puppet
10 1 (0.29%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 62 (17.87%) Microsoft
2 43 (12.39%) Oracle
3 29 (8.36%) Splunk
4 27 (7.78%) Databricks
5 20 (5.76%) ServiceNow
6 17 (4.90%) Google
7 9 (2.59%) Advent
8 7 (2.02%) MuleSoft
9 6 (1.73%) IBM
10 5 (1.44%) AppDynamics
10 5 (1.44%) Dynatrace
10 5 (1.44%) Salesforce
11 4 (1.15%) Cognos
11 4 (1.15%) F5
11 4 (1.15%) SAP
12 3 (0.86%) Citrix
12 3 (0.86%) Imperva
12 3 (0.86%) Red Hat
12 3 (0.86%) VMware
13 2 (0.58%) Brio