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

6 months to
19 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 18 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 -2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 477 308 398
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.51% 9.30% 8.59%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.83% 33.08% 33.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 313 218 270
10th Percentile £313 £350 £300
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £474 £475
Median % change year-on-year -2.90% -0.26% -1.94%
75th Percentile £550 £545 £553
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 19 3 10
10th Percentile £36.00 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £37.25 £31.62 £41.25
Median hourly rate £50.00 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +51.01% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £70.47 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £86.00 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £48.11 £48.25 £44.25
% change year-on-year -0.29% +9.04% -10.73%

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 1,714 931 1,190
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 26.97% 28.11% 25.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,148 681 842
10th Percentile £350 £350 £325
25th Percentile £411 £400 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £550 £540 £569
90th Percentile £625 £615 £625
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 15 51
10th Percentile £38.62 £35.66 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £58.63 £43.57
Median hourly rate £65.00 £79.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.72% +66.32% -3.62%
75th Percentile £74.26 £91.88 £68.75
90th Percentile £82.60 £100.62 £74.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - -

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 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 19 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 19 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 -3 259 £460 -3.16% 302
Yorkshire -13 192 £467 -1.79% 230
North East -13 38 £463 +2.78% 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 23 (4.82%) Apache Spark
1 23 (4.82%) Confluence
2 19 (3.98%) Apache
3 16 (3.35%) Apache Airflow
4 7 (1.47%) Apache Geronimo
4 7 (1.47%) Apache ServiceMix
4 7 (1.47%) Red Hat Fuse
4 7 (1.47%) Tomcat
4 7 (1.47%) WebSphere
5 6 (1.26%) SAS
6 4 (0.84%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (0.84%) SharePoint
7 3 (0.63%) IIS
8 2 (0.42%) Jupyter
8 2 (0.42%) Mule
8 2 (0.42%) Mule ESB
9 1 (0.21%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.21%) JBoss
9 1 (0.21%) WebLogic
Applications
1 28 (5.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.84%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.63%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 10 (2.10%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.63%) Elite 3E
2 3 (0.63%) Oracle Applications
2 3 (0.63%) Remedy ITSM
2 3 (0.63%) 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
1 146 (30.61%) Azure
2 127 (26.62%) AWS
3 78 (16.35%) Power Platform
4 56 (11.74%) GCP
5 35 (7.34%) Azure Data Factory
6 28 (5.87%) GitHub
7 24 (5.03%) Serverless
8 21 (4.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 19 (3.98%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (3.35%) dbt
11 15 (3.14%) GitHub Actions
12 12 (2.52%) SaaS
12 12 (2.52%) Snowflake
13 11 (2.31%) IaaS
14 10 (2.10%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 10 (2.10%) PaaS
15 9 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
16 8 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
17 7 (1.47%) Apigee
17 7 (1.47%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.56%) Firewall
2 12 (2.52%) DNS
3 8 (1.68%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.26%) SSL
5 5 (1.05%) 3GPP
5 5 (1.05%) IPsec
5 5 (1.05%) Kerberos
5 5 (1.05%) RTP
5 5 (1.05%) Wireshark
6 3 (0.63%) DHCP
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%) BIG-IP
8 1 (0.21%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 1 (0.21%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 85 (17.82%) SQL Server
2 71 (14.88%) Power BI
3 62 (13.00%) Data Warehouse
4 43 (9.01%) NoSQL
5 37 (7.76%) PostgreSQL
6 33 (6.92%) Tableau
7 24 (5.03%) Data Lake
8 23 (4.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 22 (4.61%) Relational Database
10 21 (4.40%) Azure SQL Database
10 21 (4.40%) Metadata
11 20 (4.19%) MongoDB
12 18 (3.77%) Oracle Database
13 17 (3.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 16 (3.35%) Hadoop
14 16 (3.35%) MySQL
15 13 (2.73%) Snowflake Schema
16 12 (2.52%) BigQuery
16 12 (2.52%) Delta Lake
17 10 (2.10%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 56 (11.74%) Git
2 48 (10.06%) JIRA
3 35 (7.34%) Jenkins
4 32 (6.71%) GitLab
5 16 (3.35%) Cucumber
6 15 (3.14%) REST Assured
6 15 (3.14%) Selenium
7 10 (2.10%) Postman
8 9 (1.89%) Jaeger
9 6 (1.26%) Flyway
9 6 (1.26%) Gradle
9 6 (1.26%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (1.26%) TestRail
10 5 (1.05%) Maven
10 5 (1.05%) TeamCity
11 4 (0.84%) Bitbucket
11 4 (0.84%) ERwin
11 4 (0.84%) Liquibase
11 4 (0.84%) Snyk
12 3 (0.63%) CircleCI
General
1 133 (27.88%) Social Skills
2 104 (21.80%) Finance
3 90 (18.87%) Analytical Skills
4 50 (10.48%) Banking
5 46 (9.64%) Public Sector
6 12 (2.52%) Legal
7 11 (2.31%) Law
8 9 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 9 (1.89%) Retail
9 8 (1.68%) Financial Institution
9 8 (1.68%) Marketing
10 7 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.26%) Documentation Skills
12 4 (0.84%) Aviation
12 4 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
12 4 (0.84%) Local Government
12 4 (0.84%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.84%) Police
13 3 (0.63%) Games
13 3 (0.63%) Military
Job Titles
1 96 (20.13%) Developer
2 87 (18.24%) Analyst
3 67 (14.05%) Data Engineer
4 55 (11.53%) Senior
5 47 (9.85%) Lead
6 26 (5.45%) Data Analyst
6 26 (5.45%) DBA
7 25 (5.24%) Java Developer
8 23 (4.82%) Consultant
9 21 (4.40%) Architect
10 16 (3.35%) Senior Developer
10 16 (3.35%) Software Engineer
10 16 (3.35%) Test Engineer
11 14 (2.94%) Senior Data Engineer
11 14 (2.94%) SQL DBA
12 13 (2.73%) Business Analyst
13 12 (2.52%) Performance Analyst
13 12 (2.52%) Software Developer
13 12 (2.52%) Technical Analyst
13 12 (2.52%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (8.18%) REST
2 38 (7.97%) .NET
3 35 (7.34%) Spring Boot
4 30 (6.29%) Kafka
5 29 (6.08%) Spring
5 29 (6.08%) XML
6 25 (5.24%) PySpark
7 23 (4.82%) RESTful
8 21 (4.40%) Middleware
9 17 (3.56%) OpenID
10 16 (3.35%) HTML
11 14 (2.94%) React
12 13 (2.73%) JSON
12 13 (2.73%) OAuth
12 13 (2.73%) OpenTelemetry
13 11 (2.31%) LDAP
13 11 (2.31%) Pandas
13 11 (2.31%) SailPoint
13 11 (2.31%) SOAP
13 11 (2.31%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 30 (6.29%) Cloud Native
1 30 (6.29%) Product Ownership
2 19 (3.98%) Data Protection Act
3 18 (3.77%) Clustering
4 17 (3.56%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (3.14%) NHS
6 14 (2.94%) Data Structures
7 13 (2.73%) Management Information System
7 13 (2.73%) Replication
8 12 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 12 (2.52%) Linux Command Line
9 8 (1.68%) Onboarding
10 7 (1.47%) Security Posture
11 6 (1.26%) AI Agents
11 6 (1.26%) Robotics
12 5 (1.05%) Analytical Mindset
12 5 (1.05%) Cloud Security Posture
12 5 (1.05%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (1.05%) SWIFT Messaging Network
13 4 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 52 (10.90%) Linux
2 30 (6.29%) Windows
3 16 (3.35%) Windows Server
4 15 (3.14%) Unix
5 8 (1.68%) AIX
6 3 (0.63%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.42%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.21%) VMS
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 142 (29.77%) CI/CD
2 127 (26.62%) Agile
3 103 (21.59%) DevOps
4 102 (21.38%) ETL
5 101 (21.17%) Analytics
6 99 (20.75%) Problem-Solving
7 97 (20.34%) Data Modelling
8 90 (18.87%) Business Intelligence
9 76 (15.93%) Data Pipeline
10 60 (12.58%) Microservices
11 57 (11.95%) Test Automation
12 56 (11.74%) Performance Tuning
13 53 (11.11%) Migration
14 50 (10.48%) Data Engineering
15 46 (9.64%) Validation
16 45 (9.43%) Data Analysis
17 44 (9.22%) Data Governance
18 40 (8.39%) AI
19 39 (8.18%) Actionable Insight
20 36 (7.55%) Decision-Making
Programming Languages
1 142 (29.77%) Python
2 86 (18.03%) Java
3 37 (7.76%) C#
4 29 (6.08%) JavaScript
4 29 (6.08%) PowerShell
5 27 (5.66%) PL/SQL
6 26 (5.45%) T-SQL
7 18 (3.77%) Bash
8 15 (3.14%) TypeScript
9 13 (2.73%) R
10 12 (2.52%) PHP
10 12 (2.52%) Shell Script
11 8 (1.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 8 (1.68%) Rust
12 6 (1.26%) Go
13 5 (1.05%) Scala
13 5 (1.05%) VBA
14 4 (0.84%) Kotlin
14 4 (0.84%) ProC
15 3 (0.63%) VB
Qualifications
1 54 (11.32%) Degree
1 54 (11.32%) Security Cleared
2 43 (9.01%) SC Cleared
3 18 (3.77%) BPSS Clearance
4 16 (3.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (2.31%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.84%) Azure Certification
6 4 (0.84%) MBA
7 3 (0.63%) 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 82 (17.19%) Data Quality
2 33 (6.92%) QA
3 21 (4.40%) GDPR
4 10 (2.10%) SLA
5 8 (1.68%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.47%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 5 (1.05%) GRC
8 5 (1.05%) ISO 20022
8 5 (1.05%) PMO
9 4 (0.84%) PSD2
9 4 (0.84%) SEPA
10 3 (0.63%) Accessibility
10 3 (0.63%) 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 66 (13.84%) Docker
2 10 (2.10%) Hyper-V
2 10 (2.10%) KVM
3 9 (1.89%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.68%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.05%) RACF
6 4 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.42%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.21%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 56 (11.74%) Kubernetes
2 31 (6.50%) Terraform
3 20 (4.19%) Grafana
4 18 (3.77%) Prometheus
5 13 (2.73%) Ansible
6 11 (2.31%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (1.89%) Kiali
8 6 (1.26%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.26%) SCCM
8 6 (1.26%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.26%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.84%) Argo
10 3 (0.63%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.63%) Foglight
11 2 (0.42%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.21%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.21%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 67 (14.05%) Oracle
2 65 (13.63%) Microsoft
3 39 (8.18%) Databricks
4 33 (6.92%) Splunk
5 29 (6.08%) ServiceNow
6 24 (5.03%) Google
7 11 (2.31%) IBM
7 11 (2.31%) SAP
8 7 (1.47%) SolarWinds
8 7 (1.47%) TIBCO
9 6 (1.26%) RedGate
9 6 (1.26%) Varonis
10 5 (1.05%) Teradata
10 5 (1.05%) VMware
11 4 (0.84%) Adobe
11 4 (0.84%) AppDynamics
11 4 (0.84%) Salesforce
12 3 (0.63%) Alteryx
12 3 (0.63%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.63%) MuleSoft