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 citing SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 November 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

	6 months to 10 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Rank	23	27	16
Rank change year-on-year	+4	-11	+4
Contract jobs citing SQL	624	312	332
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England	8.16%	6.94%	8.37%
As % of the Programming Languages category	31.77%	23.91%	34.23%
Number of daily rates quoted	383	227	213
10^th Percentile	£350	£313	£331
25^th Percentile	£406	£363	£406
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£475	£450	£488
Median % change year-on-year	+5.56%	-7.69%	-2.50%
75^th Percentile	£538	£525	£550
90^th Percentile	£600	£640	£608
England median daily rate	£500	£500	£525
% change year-on-year	-	-4.76%	-2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted	28	5	8
10^th Percentile	£23.53	£28.09	£26.25
25^th Percentile	£29.60	£36.00	£30.00
Median hourly rate	£52.50	£64.50	£38.00
Median % change year-on-year	-18.60%	+69.74%	+33.85%
75^th Percentile	£70.67	£74.26	£48.13
90^th Percentile	£75.30	£78.60	£65.00
England median hourly rate	£48.00	£50.00	£40.58
% change year-on-year	-4.00%	+23.22%	-9.83%

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 citing coding skills in the North of England.

	6 months to 10 Nov 2026	Same period 2025	Same period 2024
Contract vacancies citing coding skills	1,964	1,305	970
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North of England	25.69%	29.02%	24.46%
Number of daily rates quoted	1,265	903	621
10^th Percentile	£351	£315	£325
25^th Percentile	£413	£375	£400
Median daily rate (50^th Percentile)	£485	£465	£475
Median % change year-on-year	+4.30%	-2.11%	-5.00%
75^th Percentile	£569	£540	£560
90^th Percentile	£638	£644	£638
England median daily rate	£525	£513	£538
% change year-on-year	+2.34%	-4.56%	-2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted	106	22	25
10^th Percentile	£28.50	£36.59	£33.00
25^th Percentile	£57.50	£50.69	£37.50
Median hourly rate	£70.00	£68.25	£46.18
Median % change year-on-year	+2.56%	+47.79%	-
75^th Percentile	£72.92	£74.26	£56.25
90^th Percentile	£77.00	£85.55	£83.50
England median hourly rate	£65.00	£62.50	£65.00
% change year-on-year	+4.00%	-3.85%	+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 Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

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 10 November 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.

SQL Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the North of England over the 6 months to 10 November 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 10 November 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	Job Ads Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate Past 6 Months	Median Daily Rate % Change on Same Period Last Year	Live Jobs
North West	+3	317	£483	+12.33%	378
Yorkshire	+17	259	£475	-	205
North East	+1	57	£413	-17.50%	97
SQL England

SQL Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England

For the 6 months to 10 November 2026, contractor job vacancies citing SQL also mentioned the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the North of England region citing SQL.

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	33.2%	207
2	CI/CD	30.0%	187
3	Analytics	29.5%	184
4	Azure	28.4%	177
5	Data Modelling	27.4%	171
6	Agile	26.9%	168
7	Business Intelligence	23.6%	147
7	Data Quality	23.6%	147
9	AWS	23.1%	144
10	ETL	22.8%	142
11	Microsoft	22.6%	141
12	Power Platform	22.1%	138
13	AI	21.8%	136
14	SQL Server	21.5%	134
15	Data Engineering	20.8%	130
16	Data Pipeline	20.2%	126
17	Power BI	20.0%	125
18	Validation	19.2%	120
19	DevOps	18.8%	117
20	Security Cleared	18.4%	115
21	Problem-Solving	17.6%	110
22	Stakeholder Management	16.5%	103
23	SC Cleared	16.2%	101
24	Java	15.4%	96
25	Migration	14.7%	92
25	Test Automation	14.7%	92
27	Git	14.4%	90
28	Data Warehouse	13.0%	81
29	GCP	12.8%	80
30	Oracle	12.5%	78

SQL Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England by Category

The table below expands on the one above by listing co-occurrences one category at a time. It covers the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences in each category.

Programming Languages

Rank	Skill	Share	Job Ads
1	Python	33.2%	207
2	Java	15.4%	96
3	JavaScript	9.1%	57
4	PowerShell	9.0%	56
5	C#	6.7%	42
6	T-SQL	5.8%	36
7	TypeScript	4.3%	27
8	Bash	3.4%	21
9	Data Analysis Expressions	2.9%	18
9	PL/SQL	2.9%	18
11	Kotlin	2.4%	15
12	Shell Script	2.2%	14
13	Kusto Query Language	1.4%	9
14	Scala	1.1%	7
15	PHP	1.0%	6
16	Gremlin	0.8%	5
16	Search Processing Language	0.8%	5
18	VB	0.6%	4
19	Bicep	0.5%	3
19	Cypher	0.5%	3