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

6 months to
13 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 16 16
Rank change year-on-year -7 0 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 526 323 436
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.75% 9.40% 9.00%
As % of the Programming Languages category 28.71% 33.06% 35.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 332 237 291
10th Percentile £313 £325 £319
25th Percentile £400 £393 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £566
90th Percentile £625 £625 £615
England median daily rate £500 £500 £539
% change year-on-year - -7.28% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 3 10
10th Percentile £23.38 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £31.22 £31.62 £41.25
Median hourly rate £45.90 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +38.63% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £68.02 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £80.50 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £46.80 £41.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +12.34% -1.98% -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 1,832 977 1,244
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.00% 28.44% 25.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,200 721 855
10th Percentile £350 £333 £319
25th Percentile £413 £388 £403
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £463 £475
Median % change year-on-year +2.92% -2.63% -9.52%
75th Percentile £560 £538 £575
90th Percentile £638 £603 £625
England median daily rate £513 £523 £540
% change year-on-year -1.91% -3.24% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 9 54
10th Percentile £30.05 £31.70 £37.55
25th Percentile £49.38 £52.00 £42.41
Median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £47.75
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +46.60% +0.53%
75th Percentile £74.70 £88.75 £68.75
90th Percentile £80.65 £95.71 £73.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -

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 13 June 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 13 June 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 13 June 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 -2 272 £460 -3.16% 250
Yorkshire -10 213 £475 - 90
North East -9 53 £425 -8.36% 52
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 32 (6.08%) Apache Spark
2 26 (4.94%) Apache
2 26 (4.94%) Confluence
3 24 (4.56%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (1.90%) SharePoint
5 8 (1.52%) Jupyter
5 8 (1.52%) WebSphere
6 7 (1.33%) Apache Geronimo
6 7 (1.33%) Apache ServiceMix
6 7 (1.33%) Red Hat Fuse
6 7 (1.33%) Tomcat
7 6 (1.14%) SAS
8 5 (0.95%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.38%) IIS
9 2 (0.38%) Mule
9 2 (0.38%) Mule ESB
9 2 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 1 (0.19%) Camunda
10 1 (0.19%) JBoss
Applications
1 36 (6.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.76%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.19%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (2.09%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.14%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.76%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.57%) Infor LN
4 3 (0.57%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.57%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.57%) Remedy ITSM
4 3 (0.57%) Salesforce CRM
5 2 (0.38%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.38%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.19%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.19%) NEC Housing
6 1 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.19%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 163 (30.99%) Azure
2 127 (24.14%) AWS
3 91 (17.30%) Power Platform
4 55 (10.46%) GCP
5 37 (7.03%) GitHub
6 35 (6.65%) Azure Data Factory
7 32 (6.08%) Serverless
8 24 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
8 24 (4.56%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 22 (4.18%) dbt
10 16 (3.04%) GitHub Actions
10 16 (3.04%) Snowflake
11 15 (2.85%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 14 (2.66%) Amazon S3
12 14 (2.66%) AWS Lambda
12 14 (2.66%) SaaS
13 11 (2.09%) IaaS
14 10 (1.90%) OpenShift
14 10 (1.90%) PaaS
15 9 (1.71%) Google Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.85%) DNS
1 15 (2.85%) Firewall
2 9 (1.71%) SSL
3 7 (1.33%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.14%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.14%) RTP
4 6 (1.14%) Wireshark
5 5 (0.95%) IPsec
5 5 (0.95%) Kerberos
6 4 (0.76%) BGP
6 4 (0.76%) HTTP
6 4 (0.76%) Network Security
6 4 (0.76%) Reverse Proxy
7 3 (0.57%) DHCP
8 2 (0.38%) Internet
8 2 (0.38%) LAN
8 2 (0.38%) VPN
8 2 (0.38%) WAN
8 2 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
9 1 (0.19%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 86 (16.35%) SQL Server
2 85 (16.16%) Power BI
3 73 (13.88%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (7.79%) NoSQL
5 38 (7.22%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (6.08%) Tableau
7 30 (5.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 26 (4.94%) Data Lake
9 25 (4.75%) Metadata
9 25 (4.75%) Relational Database
10 23 (4.37%) Azure SQL Database
11 19 (3.61%) MongoDB
11 19 (3.61%) Oracle Database
11 19 (3.61%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 16 (3.04%) Delta Lake
12 16 (3.04%) Hadoop
13 13 (2.47%) Big Data
13 13 (2.47%) Snowflake Schema
14 12 (2.28%) Amazon Athena
15 11 (2.09%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 63 (11.98%) Git
2 48 (9.13%) JIRA
3 36 (6.84%) GitLab
4 35 (6.65%) Jenkins
5 12 (2.28%) Cucumber
6 11 (2.09%) Selenium
7 10 (1.90%) REST Assured
8 8 (1.52%) Flyway
9 7 (1.33%) Bitbucket
9 7 (1.33%) Jaeger
9 7 (1.33%) Postman
10 6 (1.14%) Gradle
10 6 (1.14%) Liquibase
10 6 (1.14%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (1.14%) TeamCity
11 5 (0.95%) JUnit
11 5 (0.95%) Maven
12 4 (0.76%) ERwin
12 4 (0.76%) Snyk
13 3 (0.57%) SoapUI
General
1 150 (28.52%) Social Skills
2 120 (22.81%) Finance
3 95 (18.06%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (10.08%) Public Sector
5 49 (9.32%) Banking
6 13 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 11 (2.09%) Law
7 11 (2.09%) Legal
7 11 (2.09%) Manufacturing
7 11 (2.09%) Retail
8 9 (1.71%) Marketing
9 7 (1.33%) Documentation Skills
10 6 (1.14%) Financial Institution
10 6 (1.14%) Presentation Skills
11 5 (0.95%) Aviation
11 5 (0.95%) Fire and Rescue
11 5 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
11 5 (0.95%) Police
12 4 (0.76%) Games
12 4 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 104 (19.77%) Developer
2 90 (17.11%) Analyst
3 72 (13.69%) Data Engineer
4 62 (11.79%) Senior
5 47 (8.94%) Lead
6 31 (5.89%) Data Analyst
6 31 (5.89%) DBA
7 28 (5.32%) Java Developer
8 27 (5.13%) Consultant
9 24 (4.56%) Architect
10 20 (3.80%) Senior Developer
11 19 (3.61%) SQL DBA
12 18 (3.42%) Software Engineer
13 15 (2.85%) Senior Data Engineer
13 15 (2.85%) Software Developer
14 14 (2.66%) Business Analyst
15 13 (2.47%) Performance Analyst
15 13 (2.47%) Test Engineer
16 12 (2.28%) Technical Analyst
17 11 (2.09%) Oracle Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (7.22%) REST
2 37 (7.03%) PySpark
2 37 (7.03%) Spring Boot
3 32 (6.08%) Kafka
4 30 (5.70%) Spring
5 29 (5.51%) .NET
6 28 (5.32%) XML
7 27 (5.13%) RESTful
8 19 (3.61%) Middleware
9 17 (3.23%) HTML
10 15 (2.85%) JSON
10 15 (2.85%) OAuth
11 14 (2.66%) React
12 13 (2.47%) CSS
12 13 (2.47%) OpenTelemetry
13 12 (2.28%) OpenID
13 12 (2.28%) SOAP
13 12 (2.28%) Web Services
14 11 (2.09%) OAuth2
14 11 (2.09%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 38 (7.22%) Cloud Native
2 33 (6.27%) Product Ownership
3 22 (4.18%) Data Structures
4 20 (3.80%) Data Protection Act
5 19 (3.61%) Clustering
6 16 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
7 15 (2.85%) Replication
8 14 (2.66%) NHS
9 13 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
10 12 (2.28%) Linux Command Line
10 12 (2.28%) Management Information System
11 9 (1.71%) AI Agents
11 9 (1.71%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
11 9 (1.71%) Onboarding
12 7 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
12 7 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
12 7 (1.33%) Robotics
12 7 (1.33%) Security Posture
12 7 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (0.95%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 53 (10.08%) Linux
2 29 (5.51%) Windows
3 21 (3.99%) Unix
4 15 (2.85%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.52%) AIX
6 3 (0.57%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.57%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.38%) Solaris
7 2 (0.38%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.38%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.19%) VMS
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.19%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 165 (31.37%) CI/CD
2 137 (26.05%) Agile
3 121 (23.00%) Analytics
4 117 (22.24%) DevOps
5 110 (20.91%) Data Modelling
6 107 (20.34%) Business Intelligence
6 107 (20.34%) ETL
7 97 (18.44%) Problem-Solving
8 91 (17.30%) Data Pipeline
9 68 (12.93%) Migration
9 68 (12.93%) Validation
10 66 (12.55%) Performance Tuning
11 65 (12.36%) Microservices
12 62 (11.79%) Data Engineering
13 58 (11.03%) Test Automation
14 57 (10.84%) AI
15 56 (10.65%) Data Analysis
16 49 (9.32%) Infrastructure as Code
17 48 (9.13%) Data Governance
18 43 (8.17%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 157 (29.85%) Python
2 85 (16.16%) Java
3 40 (7.60%) PowerShell
4 33 (6.27%) C#
5 31 (5.89%) T-SQL
6 29 (5.51%) PL/SQL
7 25 (4.75%) JavaScript
8 24 (4.56%) Bash
9 15 (2.85%) Shell Script
10 13 (2.47%) TypeScript
11 12 (2.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 12 (2.28%) R
12 6 (1.14%) Kotlin
12 6 (1.14%) Rust
13 5 (0.95%) Go
13 5 (0.95%) Scala
13 5 (0.95%) VBA
14 4 (0.76%) VB
15 3 (0.57%) ProC
15 3 (0.57%) VB6
Qualifications
1 60 (11.41%) Security Cleared
2 53 (10.08%) Degree
3 49 (9.32%) SC Cleared
4 21 (3.99%) Computer Science Degree
5 19 (3.61%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (1.90%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.76%) Azure Certification
7 4 (0.76%) MBA
8 3 (0.57%) CISSP
8 3 (0.57%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.38%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.38%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.19%) CISM
10 1 (0.19%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.19%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (18.06%) Data Quality
2 29 (5.51%) QA
3 22 (4.18%) GDPR
4 9 (1.71%) SLA
5 7 (1.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 7 (1.33%) HIPAA
6 6 (1.14%) GRC
6 6 (1.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.95%) PMO
8 4 (0.76%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.57%) NIST
9 3 (0.57%) PSD2
9 3 (0.57%) SEPA
9 3 (0.57%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.38%) Accessibility
10 2 (0.38%) WCAG
11 1 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 75 (14.26%) Docker
2 10 (1.90%) Hyper-V
2 10 (1.90%) KVM
3 9 (1.71%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (1.52%) Active Directory
5 5 (0.95%) RACF
6 4 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 61 (11.60%) Kubernetes
2 46 (8.75%) Terraform
3 24 (4.56%) Grafana
4 20 (3.80%) Prometheus
5 19 (3.61%) Ansible
6 11 (2.09%) Oracle RMAN
7 7 (1.33%) Kiali
8 6 (1.14%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.14%) vCenter Server
9 5 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
10 4 (0.76%) Argo
10 4 (0.76%) Control-M
11 3 (0.57%) Data Guard
11 3 (0.57%) Foglight
12 2 (0.38%) AirWatch
12 2 (0.38%) Consul
12 2 (0.38%) Failover Clustering
12 2 (0.38%) SCCM
12 2 (0.38%) Zipkin
13 1 (0.19%) Kubeflow
Vendors
1 76 (14.45%) Microsoft
2 68 (12.93%) Oracle
3 51 (9.70%) Databricks
4 32 (6.08%) Splunk
5 26 (4.94%) Google
6 23 (4.37%) ServiceNow
7 16 (3.04%) SAP
8 11 (2.09%) IBM
9 7 (1.33%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.33%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.33%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.14%) RedGate
10 6 (1.14%) Teradata
10 6 (1.14%) Varonis
11 5 (0.95%) MuleSoft
11 5 (0.95%) OpenAI
11 5 (0.95%) SYSPRO
12 4 (0.76%) Adobe
12 4 (0.76%) Atlassian
12 4 (0.76%) VMware