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

6 months to
7 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 25 17
Rank change year-on-year +2 -8 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 597 301 350
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.77% 7.35% 8.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.19% 24.94% 33.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 363 220 225
10th Percentile £321 £313 £342
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 £545
90th Percentile £601 £613 £604
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 2 7
10th Percentile £23.30 £24.13 £29.25
25th Percentile £28.50 £26.11 £33.63
Median hourly rate £39.50 £30.31 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +30.32% -24.23% +39.86%
75th Percentile £55.00 £33.61 £53.75
90th Percentile £74.66 £35.04 £65.00
England median hourly rate £45.90 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -8.20% +25.00% -11.97%

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 1,914 1,207 1,033
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 24.93% 29.45% 25.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,222 846 674
10th Percentile £350 £315 £330
25th Percentile £413 £378 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £489 £453 £486
Median % change year-on-year +7.89% -6.84% -2.75%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £568
90th Percentile £650 £626 £638
England median daily rate £525 £514 £543
% change year-on-year +2.14% -5.25% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 13 29
10th Percentile £28.50 £31.20 £35.93
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 £65.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.20 £80.84
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 7 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 7 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 7 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 +7 298 £500 +13.64% 513
Yorkshire +7 244 £475 - 245
North East 0 65 £406 -9.72% 130
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 48 (8.04%) Confluence
2 23 (3.85%) Apache
2 23 (3.85%) Apache Spark
3 22 (3.69%) Apache Airflow
4 12 (2.01%) SAS
5 11 (1.84%) 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%) 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 (4.86%) 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 12 (2.01%) 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%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.17%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 165 (27.64%) Azure
2 129 (21.61%) AWS
3 121 (20.27%) Power Platform
4 68 (11.39%) GCP
5 57 (9.55%) GitHub
6 45 (7.54%) Azure DevOps
7 38 (6.37%) Serverless
8 26 (4.36%) Snowflake
9 24 (4.02%) Amazon S3
9 24 (4.02%) Azure Data Factory
10 21 (3.52%) AWS Lambda
11 20 (3.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 20 (3.35%) GitHub Actions
12 19 (3.18%) Azure Monitor
12 19 (3.18%) Google Analytics
13 18 (3.02%) dbt
14 17 (2.85%) SaaS
15 16 (2.68%) OpenShift
16 15 (2.51%) Amazon EMR
16 15 (2.51%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.51%) SSL
2 12 (2.01%) DNS
3 11 (1.84%) Network Security
4 8 (1.34%) Firewall
5 6 (1.01%) 3GPP
5 6 (1.01%) RTP
5 6 (1.01%) Wireshark
6 5 (0.84%) DHCP
7 4 (0.67%) BGP
7 4 (0.67%) HTTP
7 4 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
8 3 (0.50%) Internet
8 3 (0.50%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.50%) LAN
9 2 (0.34%) PABX
9 2 (0.34%) VLAN
9 2 (0.34%) VoIP
9 2 (0.34%) VPN
10 1 (0.17%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 1 (0.17%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 140 (23.45%) SQL Server
2 109 (18.26%) Power BI
3 85 (14.24%) Data Warehouse
4 46 (7.71%) PostgreSQL
5 44 (7.37%) Metadata
6 37 (6.20%) MySQL
7 35 (5.86%) Relational Database
8 32 (5.36%) Tableau
9 31 (5.19%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 30 (5.03%) BigQuery
11 29 (4.86%) NoSQL
12 27 (4.52%) Data Lake
13 23 (3.85%) Oracle Database
14 21 (3.52%) Amazon Redshift
15 18 (3.02%) Looker
15 18 (3.02%) MongoDB
16 17 (2.85%) Azure SQL Database
16 17 (2.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
17 14 (2.35%) Amazon Athena
18 13 (2.18%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 73 (12.23%) Git
2 53 (8.88%) JIRA
3 52 (8.71%) Jenkins
4 38 (6.37%) GitLab
5 15 (2.51%) Gradle
6 14 (2.35%) Bitbucket
7 12 (2.01%) JUnit
7 12 (2.01%) Sonatype Nexus
8 11 (1.84%) Mockito
9 10 (1.68%) Maven
10 9 (1.51%) REST Assured
11 8 (1.34%) Postman
11 8 (1.34%) Team Foundation Server
12 7 (1.17%) Claude Code
12 7 (1.17%) TeamCity
13 6 (1.01%) Cucumber
13 6 (1.01%) Selenium
14 5 (0.84%) SonarQube
14 5 (0.84%) Toad
15 4 (0.67%) Visual Studio
General
1 194 (32.50%) Social Skills
2 120 (20.10%) Finance
3 107 (17.92%) Analytical Skills
4 76 (12.73%) Public Sector
5 57 (9.55%) Banking
6 20 (3.35%) Manufacturing
7 16 (2.68%) Retail
8 15 (2.51%) 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
12 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.01%) Games
12 6 (1.01%) Publishing
13 5 (0.84%) Aviation
13 5 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
13 5 (0.84%) Police
14 4 (0.67%) Legal
Job Titles
1 131 (21.94%) Developer
2 86 (14.41%) Data Engineer
3 80 (13.40%) Analyst
3 80 (13.40%) Senior
4 70 (11.73%) DBA
5 53 (8.88%) Lead
6 45 (7.54%) SQL DBA
7 35 (5.86%) Data Analyst
8 32 (5.36%) Administrator
9 27 (4.52%) Senior Data Engineer
9 27 (4.52%) Software Engineer
10 26 (4.36%) Senior Developer
11 23 (3.85%) Java Developer
12 21 (3.52%) SQL Developer
13 19 (3.18%) Architect
14 18 (3.02%) Consultant
14 18 (3.02%) Oracle DBA
14 18 (3.02%) Performance Analyst
15 16 (2.68%) Data Manager
16 15 (2.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 62 (10.39%) Terraform
2 54 (9.05%) REST
3 53 (8.88%) Kafka
4 44 (7.37%) PySpark
5 39 (6.53%) Spring Boot
6 36 (6.03%) .NET
7 34 (5.70%) Spring
8 30 (5.03%) HTML
9 25 (4.19%) React
10 20 (3.35%) JSON
11 19 (3.18%) CSS
11 19 (3.18%) Web Services
12 15 (2.51%) Hibernate
12 15 (2.51%) RESTful
13 14 (2.35%) .NET Core
13 14 (2.35%) JPA
13 14 (2.35%) Redux
14 12 (2.01%) AngularJS
14 12 (2.01%) XML
15 10 (1.68%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.21%) Data Structures
2 42 (7.04%) Cloud Native
3 26 (4.36%) Data Protection Act
4 25 (4.19%) Product Ownership
5 24 (4.02%) Replication
6 21 (3.52%) Enterprise Software
7 18 (3.02%) AI Agents
8 17 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
9 16 (2.68%) Clustering
10 15 (2.51%) Self-Motivation
11 14 (2.35%) Legacy Systems
11 14 (2.35%) Onboarding
12 13 (2.18%) NHS
13 8 (1.34%) Algorithms
14 7 (1.17%) Robotics
15 6 (1.01%) Data Centre
15 6 (1.01%) Virtual Team
16 5 (0.84%) Low-Code
17 4 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
17 4 (0.67%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 40 (6.70%) Linux
2 31 (5.19%) Windows
3 25 (4.19%) Unix
4 23 (3.85%) Windows Server
5 18 (3.02%) Solaris
6 4 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.34%) AIX
7 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 1 (0.17%) CentOS
8 1 (0.17%) VMS
8 1 (0.17%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 167 (27.97%) CI/CD
2 165 (27.64%) Agile
3 164 (27.47%) Analytics
4 154 (25.80%) Data Modelling
5 131 (21.94%) Business Intelligence
6 130 (21.78%) ETL
7 121 (20.27%) Data Pipeline
8 116 (19.43%) DevOps
9 103 (17.25%) AI
10 100 (16.75%) Problem-Solving
11 99 (16.58%) Data Engineering
12 98 (16.42%) Validation
13 86 (14.41%) Migration
14 85 (14.24%) Stakeholder Management
15 76 (12.73%) Test Automation
16 75 (12.56%) Performance Tuning
17 70 (11.73%) Infrastructure as Code
18 68 (11.39%) Data Governance
19 67 (11.22%) Data Analysis
20 63 (10.55%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 189 (31.66%) Python
2 89 (14.91%) Java
3 57 (9.55%) PowerShell
4 45 (7.54%) JavaScript
5 43 (7.20%) C#
6 40 (6.70%) T-SQL
7 24 (4.02%) PL/SQL
8 21 (3.52%) Bash
9 20 (3.35%) TypeScript
10 15 (2.51%) Kotlin
11 14 (2.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 13 (2.18%) Shell Script
13 9 (1.51%) Kusto Query Language
14 8 (1.34%) R
14 8 (1.34%) Scala
15 5 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
15 5 (0.84%) VB
16 4 (0.67%) Bicep
16 4 (0.67%) PHP
16 4 (0.67%) VB6
Qualifications
1 116 (19.43%) Security Cleared
2 102 (17.09%) SC Cleared
3 48 (8.04%) Degree
4 27 (4.52%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (4.36%) BPSS Clearance
6 18 (3.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.01%) 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%) CISM
13 1 (0.17%) CRISC
13 1 (0.17%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 138 (23.12%) Data Quality
2 29 (4.86%) QA
3 18 (3.02%) GDPR
4 7 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 6 (1.01%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 3 (0.50%) GRC
7 3 (0.50%) NIST
7 3 (0.50%) SLA
8 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 2 (0.34%) MiFID
8 2 (0.34%) SEPA
9 1 (0.17%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 1 (0.17%) COBIT
9 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.17%) ISO 20022
9 1 (0.17%) Solvency II
9 1 (0.17%) WCAG
System Software
1 68 (11.39%) Docker
2 25 (4.19%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.51%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (1.84%) 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 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 36 (6.03%) Ansible
3 16 (2.68%) Grafana
3 16 (2.68%) Prometheus
4 13 (2.18%) Data Guard
5 11 (1.84%) Control-M
5 11 (1.84%) 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%) Forefront Identity Manager
9 1 (0.17%) Kiali
Vendors
1 135 (22.61%) Microsoft
2 89 (14.91%) Oracle
3 61 (10.22%) Databricks
4 43 (7.20%) Google
5 27 (4.52%) SAP
6 23 (3.85%) Splunk
7 19 (3.18%) ServiceNow
8 14 (2.35%) IBM
8 14 (2.35%) Informatica
9 11 (1.84%) Teradata
10 9 (1.51%) Alteryx
11 8 (1.34%) Foundry
11 8 (1.34%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.34%) Palantir
11 8 (1.34%) Salesforce
11 8 (1.34%) UiPath
12 7 (1.17%) Adobe
12 7 (1.17%) CyberArk
13 6 (1.01%) Centrify
14 5 (0.84%) Cribl.io