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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 28 23 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 -6 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 350 257 378
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 6.96% 7.63% 7.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 23.38% 28.84% 29.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 165 257
10th Percentile £316 £337 £287
25th Percentile £369 £400 £404
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.58% - -5.00%
75th Percentile £512 £567 £575
90th Percentile £638 £638 £625
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 5 13
10th Percentile £39.60 - £20.91
25th Percentile £45.00 £26.25 £37.63
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 £43.75
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 1,497 891 1,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.77% 26.44% 26.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,041 581 936
10th Percentile £331 £341 £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 £567
90th Percentile £625 £638 £629
England median daily rate £513 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -4.38% -2.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 54 19 65
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 £50.00
90th Percentile £79.95 £97.71 £71.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -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 31 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 31 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 31 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 0 197 £420 -9.19% 204
Yorkshire -21 134 £475 -5.94% 116
North East -13 23 £475 -4.52% 48
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 (8.29%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (3.43%) Apache Spark
3 10 (2.86%) Confluence
4 9 (2.57%) Apache
4 9 (2.57%) SharePoint
5 8 (2.29%) SAS
6 5 (1.43%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.57%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.29%) CICS
8 1 (0.29%) IIS
8 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 23 (6.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.14%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.86%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.29%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.57%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.57%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.57%) 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 (34.57%) AWS
1 121 (34.57%) Azure
2 76 (21.71%) Power Platform
3 45 (12.86%) GCP
4 28 (8.00%) Serverless
5 27 (7.71%) GitHub
6 20 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
7 19 (5.43%) Snowflake
8 18 (5.14%) dbt
9 16 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
9 16 (4.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 15 (4.29%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (3.71%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (2.57%) Amazon EKS
12 9 (2.57%) SaaS
13 8 (2.29%) Prefect
14 7 (2.00%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.00%) Amazon S3
14 7 (2.00%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.00%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (5.14%) Firewall
2 7 (2.00%) TCP/IP
3 6 (1.71%) DNS
4 3 (0.86%) HTTP
4 3 (0.86%) HTTPS
4 3 (0.86%) SSL
5 2 (0.57%) IPsec
5 2 (0.57%) 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 (20.86%) Power BI
2 52 (14.86%) SQL Server
3 44 (12.57%) NoSQL
4 35 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (8.29%) Relational Database
6 28 (8.00%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (6.86%) Data Lake
8 23 (6.57%) MySQL
9 20 (5.71%) Tableau
10 17 (4.86%) Azure SQL Database
11 15 (4.29%) MongoDB
11 15 (4.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (4.00%) DB2
12 14 (4.00%) Power Query
13 13 (3.71%) Snowflake Schema
14 12 (3.43%) BigQuery
14 12 (3.43%) Delta Lake
15 10 (2.86%) Redis
16 9 (2.57%) Metadata
17 8 (2.29%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 48 (13.71%) JIRA
2 47 (13.43%) Git
3 37 (10.57%) GitLab
4 32 (9.14%) Jenkins
5 13 (3.71%) Cucumber
5 13 (3.71%) REST Assured
5 13 (3.71%) Selenium
6 10 (2.86%) Postman
7 8 (2.29%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.71%) Mocha
8 6 (1.71%) TestRail
9 4 (1.14%) Liquibase
9 4 (1.14%) Mockito
10 3 (0.86%) CircleCI
11 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
11 2 (0.57%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.57%) Sonatype Nexus
11 2 (0.57%) Visual Studio Code
12 1 (0.29%) Rational DOORS
12 1 (0.29%) SoapUI
General
1 113 (32.29%) Social Skills
2 100 (28.57%) Finance
3 62 (17.71%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (17.14%) Banking
5 32 (9.14%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.71%) Financial Institution
8 9 (2.57%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (2.00%) Law
10 6 (1.71%) Local Government
10 6 (1.71%) Marketing
10 6 (1.71%) Organisational Skills
11 5 (1.43%) Retail
12 4 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 4 (1.14%) Legal
12 4 (1.14%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.14%) Wholesale Banking
13 3 (0.86%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.86%) Retail Banking
14 2 (0.57%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 102 (29.14%) Developer
2 63 (18.00%) Analyst
3 53 (15.14%) Data Engineer
4 50 (14.29%) Senior
5 24 (6.86%) Lead
6 23 (6.57%) Data Analyst
7 22 (6.29%) Java Developer
8 19 (5.43%) Business Analyst
9 16 (4.57%) Software Engineer
10 15 (4.29%) Senior Developer
11 12 (3.43%) Test Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Architect
12 11 (3.14%) AWS Engineer
12 11 (3.14%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 11 (3.14%) DBA
13 10 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
13 10 (2.86%) DevOps Engineer
13 10 (2.86%) Test Automation Engineer
14 9 (2.57%) Power BI Developer
15 8 (2.29%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (14.00%) REST
2 40 (11.43%) .NET
3 37 (10.57%) Spring Boot
4 31 (8.86%) Kafka
4 31 (8.86%) Spring
5 19 (5.43%) RESTful
6 18 (5.14%) React
7 15 (4.29%) HTML
7 15 (4.29%) JMS
8 14 (4.00%) Middleware
8 14 (4.00%) PySpark
8 14 (4.00%) XML
9 13 (3.71%) CSS
9 13 (3.71%) OAuth
9 13 (3.71%) OpenID
10 12 (3.43%) JSON
10 12 (3.43%) LDAP
10 12 (3.43%) Node.js
11 11 (3.14%) SailPoint
12 8 (2.29%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 34 (9.71%) Cloud Native
2 17 (4.86%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (4.29%) Clustering
4 14 (4.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 12 (3.43%) Data Protection Act
5 12 (3.43%) Product Ownership
6 11 (3.14%) Data Structures
7 9 (2.57%) Algorithms
7 9 (2.57%) Management Information System
8 8 (2.29%) Onboarding
8 8 (2.29%) Virtual Team
9 7 (2.00%) Data Centre
9 7 (2.00%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.71%) NHS
10 6 (1.71%) Public Cloud
10 6 (1.71%) Replication
11 5 (1.43%) Credit Risk
11 5 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
12 4 (1.14%) Legacy Code
12 4 (1.14%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 32 (9.14%) Linux
2 17 (4.86%) Windows
3 11 (3.14%) Unix
4 7 (2.00%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.86%) AIX
5 3 (0.86%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.57%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.57%) Windows Server 2019
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
1 115 (32.86%) CI/CD
2 105 (30.00%) Agile
3 98 (28.00%) DevOps
4 82 (23.43%) Problem-Solving
5 78 (22.29%) Business Intelligence
5 78 (22.29%) Data Modelling
6 69 (19.71%) Analytics
7 58 (16.57%) ETL
8 54 (15.43%) Microservices
9 49 (14.00%) Data Pipeline
10 44 (12.57%) Test Automation
11 43 (12.29%) Data Governance
12 42 (12.00%) Visualisation
13 41 (11.71%) Data Engineering
14 40 (11.43%) Stakeholder Management
15 39 (11.14%) Data Analysis
16 38 (10.86%) Containerisation
17 37 (10.57%) Performance Tuning
18 34 (9.71%) Actionable Insight
19 33 (9.43%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 105 (30.00%) Python
2 83 (23.71%) Java
3 27 (7.71%) JavaScript
4 25 (7.14%) C#
5 17 (4.86%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.71%) PHP
7 11 (3.14%) Bash
7 11 (3.14%) PowerShell
7 11 (3.14%) VBA
8 10 (2.86%) TypeScript
9 9 (2.57%) Scala
9 9 (2.57%) T-SQL
10 8 (2.29%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (2.29%) Go
10 8 (2.29%) Rust
11 6 (1.71%) Shell Script
12 4 (1.14%) Bicep
12 4 (1.14%) ProC
13 3 (0.86%) Delphi
14 2 (0.57%) C++
Qualifications
1 51 (14.57%) Degree
2 34 (9.71%) Security Cleared
3 23 (6.57%) Computer Science Degree
4 21 (6.00%) SC Cleared
5 15 (4.29%) Master's Degree
6 13 (3.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (2.00%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.71%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.14%) MBA
10 3 (0.86%) CEH
10 3 (0.86%) GIAC
10 3 (0.86%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.86%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.57%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.57%) Tableau Certification
12 1 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 41 (11.71%) Data Quality
2 31 (8.86%) QA
3 14 (4.00%) ISO 20022
3 14 (4.00%) PSD2
3 14 (4.00%) SEPA
4 11 (3.14%) Accessibility
5 7 (2.00%) WCAG
6 6 (1.71%) SLA
7 5 (1.43%) GDPR
8 4 (1.14%) PMO
9 2 (0.57%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.57%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.57%) 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 66 (18.86%) Docker
2 7 (2.00%) Virtual Machines
3 5 (1.43%) Active Directory
4 4 (1.14%) Hyper-V
4 4 (1.14%) KVM
5 2 (0.57%) RACF
6 1 (0.29%) NFS
6 1 (0.29%) SRDF
6 1 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
6 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
6 1 (0.29%) vSphere
6 1 (0.29%) Xen
Systems Management
1 57 (16.29%) Kubernetes
2 29 (8.29%) Terraform
3 21 (6.00%) Grafana
4 18 (5.14%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.00%) Ansible
6 8 (2.29%) Kiali
7 6 (1.71%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.14%) SCCM
9 3 (0.86%) IBM BigFix
9 3 (0.86%) vCenter Server
10 2 (0.57%) Control-M
11 1 (0.29%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.29%) Oracle Identity Manager
11 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
11 1 (0.29%) Puppet
Vendors
1 62 (17.71%) Microsoft
2 42 (12.00%) Oracle
3 28 (8.00%) Splunk
4 27 (7.71%) Databricks
5 20 (5.71%) ServiceNow
6 16 (4.57%) Google
7 9 (2.57%) Advent
8 8 (2.29%) IBM
9 6 (1.71%) MuleSoft
10 5 (1.43%) Salesforce
11 4 (1.14%) AppDynamics
11 4 (1.14%) Cognos
11 4 (1.14%) Dynatrace
11 4 (1.14%) F5
11 4 (1.14%) SAP
11 4 (1.14%) SolarWinds
12 3 (0.86%) Citrix
12 3 (0.86%) Imperva
12 3 (0.86%) Red Hat
12 3 (0.86%) RedGate