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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 19 17
Rank change year-on-year -1 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 594 328 350
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.86% 8.31% 8.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.92% 29.10% 34.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 240 232
10th Percentile £322 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £380 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £459 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.60% -3.47% -5.00%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £546
90th Percentile £615 £600 £620
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -7.06% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 4 4
10th Percentile £23.38 £25.50 £32.68
25th Percentile £28.87 £29.52 £34.81
Median hourly rate £43.15 £34.56 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.87% -9.07% +32.87%
75th Percentile £68.44 £45.13 £42.50
90th Percentile £76.50 £61.55 -
England median hourly rate £43.75 £50.00 £42.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +19.05% +5.00%

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 1,861 1,127 1,026
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 24.62% 28.56% 24.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,189 803 703
10th Percentile £350 £313 £341
25th Percentile £413 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £650 £600 £638
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 13 29
10th Percentile £28.50 £30.35 £37.20
25th Percentile £46.98 £36.00 £37.55
Median hourly rate £68.50 £66.50 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +3.01% +35.71% +6.11%
75th Percentile £70.00 £84.50 £63.75
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.75 £75.43
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 3 September 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 3 September 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 3 September 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 0 300 £478 +2.80% 360
Yorkshire +6 253 £475 +5.56% 154
North East -15 50 £413 -11.29% 92
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 44 (7.41%) Confluence
2 20 (3.37%) Apache
2 20 (3.37%) Apache Airflow
2 20 (3.37%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.68%) SAS
3 10 (1.68%) SharePoint
4 9 (1.52%) Jupyter
5 5 (0.84%) Oracle Workflow
5 5 (0.84%) WebSphere
6 4 (0.67%) Camunda
6 4 (0.67%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.34%) CMS
7 2 (0.34%) IIS
7 2 (0.34%) nginx
7 2 (0.34%) WordPress
8 1 (0.17%) Apache Geronimo
8 1 (0.17%) JBoss
8 1 (0.17%) Mule
8 1 (0.17%) Tomcat
8 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 34 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.67%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.67%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.85%) Oracle EBS
1 11 (1.85%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.01%) Oracle Payables
3 5 (0.84%) Infor LN
4 3 (0.51%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
4 3 (0.51%) 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%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.17%) Sage 200
6 1 (0.17%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 164 (27.61%) Azure
2 130 (21.89%) AWS
3 120 (20.20%) Power Platform
4 49 (8.25%) GitHub
5 46 (7.74%) GCP
6 41 (6.90%) Azure DevOps
7 39 (6.57%) Serverless
8 30 (5.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 25 (4.21%) Snowflake
10 23 (3.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 22 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
12 20 (3.37%) Amazon S3
13 17 (2.86%) dbt
13 17 (2.86%) SaaS
14 16 (2.69%) GitHub Actions
14 16 (2.69%) Power Automate
15 15 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
15 15 (2.53%) PowerApps
16 14 (2.36%) Google Analytics
16 14 (2.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.53%) SSL
2 12 (2.02%) DNS
3 11 (1.85%) Network Security
4 9 (1.52%) 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%) LAN
7 4 (0.67%) Reverse Proxy
8 3 (0.51%) Internet
8 3 (0.51%) Kerberos
9 2 (0.34%) TCP/IP
9 2 (0.34%) VLAN
9 2 (0.34%) VoIP
9 2 (0.34%) VPN
9 2 (0.34%) WAN
9 2 (0.34%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 142 (23.91%) SQL Server
2 110 (18.52%) Power BI
3 89 (14.98%) Data Warehouse
4 46 (7.74%) PostgreSQL
5 39 (6.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 35 (5.89%) Relational Database
7 33 (5.56%) Metadata
7 33 (5.56%) MySQL
7 33 (5.56%) NoSQL
8 31 (5.22%) Tableau
9 28 (4.71%) Oracle Database
10 27 (4.55%) Data Lake
11 21 (3.54%) MongoDB
12 20 (3.37%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 19 (3.20%) Amazon Redshift
13 19 (3.20%) Looker
14 16 (2.69%) Azure SQL Database
14 16 (2.69%) BigQuery
15 15 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
15 15 (2.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 69 (11.62%) Git
2 53 (8.92%) Jenkins
3 46 (7.74%) JIRA
4 37 (6.23%) GitLab
5 15 (2.53%) Gradle
6 11 (1.85%) Bitbucket
6 11 (1.85%) JUnit
6 11 (1.85%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (1.68%) Maven
8 9 (1.52%) Mockito
9 7 (1.18%) Postman
9 7 (1.18%) Selenium
9 7 (1.18%) Team Foundation Server
10 6 (1.01%) Claude Code
10 6 (1.01%) Oracle Forms
10 6 (1.01%) REST Assured
10 6 (1.01%) TeamCity
11 5 (0.84%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.84%) SonarQube
11 5 (0.84%) Toad
General
1 181 (30.47%) Social Skills
2 117 (19.70%) Finance
3 108 (18.18%) Analytical Skills
4 69 (11.62%) Public Sector
5 51 (8.59%) Banking
6 21 (3.54%) Manufacturing
7 16 (2.69%) Retail
8 15 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (1.52%) Marketing
10 8 (1.35%) Legal
10 8 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.18%) Games
11 7 (1.18%) Law
12 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
13 5 (0.84%) Aviation
13 5 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
13 5 (0.84%) Investment Banking
13 5 (0.84%) Police
13 5 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 138 (23.23%) Developer
2 89 (14.98%) Analyst
3 73 (12.29%) DBA
4 71 (11.95%) Data Engineer
4 71 (11.95%) Senior
5 51 (8.59%) Lead
6 44 (7.41%) SQL DBA
7 35 (5.89%) Data Analyst
8 27 (4.55%) SQL Developer
9 26 (4.38%) Consultant
9 26 (4.38%) Senior Developer
10 25 (4.21%) Administrator
10 25 (4.21%) Java Developer
10 25 (4.21%) Oracle DBA
10 25 (4.21%) Software Engineer
11 23 (3.87%) Senior Data Engineer
12 20 (3.37%) Architect
13 18 (3.03%) Software Developer
14 15 (2.53%) Business Analyst
14 15 (2.53%) Performance Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 57 (9.60%) Terraform
2 51 (8.59%) Kafka
3 48 (8.08%) REST
4 43 (7.24%) Spring Boot
5 41 (6.90%) PySpark
6 40 (6.73%) Spring
7 38 (6.40%) .NET
8 28 (4.71%) HTML
9 24 (4.04%) React
10 23 (3.87%) RESTful
11 21 (3.54%) JSON
12 20 (3.37%) CSS
12 20 (3.37%) XML
13 18 (3.03%) Web Services
14 15 (2.53%) AngularJS
15 14 (2.36%) .NET Core
16 13 (2.19%) Hibernate
17 12 (2.02%) JPA
17 12 (2.02%) Redux
18 10 (1.68%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 49 (8.25%) Data Structures
2 35 (5.89%) Cloud Native
3 26 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 24 (4.04%) Replication
5 23 (3.87%) Data Protection Act
6 19 (3.20%) Enterprise Software
6 19 (3.20%) NHS
7 18 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
8 17 (2.86%) Clustering
8 17 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
9 14 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
10 13 (2.19%) AI Agents
11 11 (1.85%) Onboarding
12 8 (1.35%) Algorithms
13 7 (1.18%) Low-Code
13 7 (1.18%) Robotics
14 6 (1.01%) Virtual Team
15 5 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
16 4 (0.67%) Analytical Mindset
16 4 (0.67%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 43 (7.24%) Linux
2 28 (4.71%) Windows
3 21 (3.54%) Windows Server
4 20 (3.37%) Unix
5 11 (1.85%) Solaris
6 6 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 3 (0.51%) Oracle Linux
7 3 (0.51%) Windows Server 2012
8 2 (0.34%) AIX
8 2 (0.34%) Ubuntu
8 2 (0.34%) Windows 10
9 1 (0.17%) VMS
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (25.93%) CI/CD
2 150 (25.25%) Agile
3 145 (24.41%) Analytics
4 140 (23.57%) Data Modelling
5 137 (23.06%) Business Intelligence
6 123 (20.71%) ETL
7 112 (18.86%) DevOps
8 108 (18.18%) Data Pipeline
9 104 (17.51%) Problem-Solving
10 95 (15.99%) Migration
11 86 (14.48%) Validation
12 84 (14.14%) AI
13 82 (13.80%) Performance Tuning
14 74 (12.46%) Data Engineering
15 72 (12.12%) Stakeholder Management
16 71 (11.95%) Data Analysis
17 63 (10.61%) Infrastructure as Code
17 63 (10.61%) Microservices
18 62 (10.44%) Test Automation
19 56 (9.43%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 171 (28.79%) Python
2 90 (15.15%) Java
3 54 (9.09%) PowerShell
4 51 (8.59%) T-SQL
5 42 (7.07%) C#
6 37 (6.23%) JavaScript
7 31 (5.22%) PL/SQL
8 20 (3.37%) Bash
9 17 (2.86%) TypeScript
10 15 (2.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 13 (2.19%) Shell Script
12 12 (2.02%) Kotlin
13 9 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
13 9 (1.52%) R
13 9 (1.52%) Scala
14 5 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
15 4 (0.67%) Bicep
15 4 (0.67%) VB
16 3 (0.51%) VB6
17 2 (0.34%) Perl
Qualifications
1 102 (17.17%) Security Cleared
2 89 (14.98%) SC Cleared
3 50 (8.42%) Degree
4 24 (4.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 20 (3.37%) Microsoft Certification
6 18 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.02%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.18%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.01%) CISSP
11 5 (0.84%) GCFA
11 5 (0.84%) GCIH
12 4 (0.67%) Oracle Certification
13 3 (0.51%) OCP
14 2 (0.34%) AWS Certification
14 2 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
15 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 1 (0.17%) DBS Check
15 1 (0.17%) Master's Degree
15 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 129 (21.72%) Data Quality
2 34 (5.72%) QA
3 24 (4.04%) GDPR
4 10 (1.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.01%) GRC
6 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.67%) SLA
8 3 (0.51%) Accessibility
8 3 (0.51%) PMO
9 2 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.34%) ISO 20022
9 2 (0.34%) MiFID
9 2 (0.34%) NIST
9 2 (0.34%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.34%) WCAG
10 1 (0.17%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 1 (0.17%) HIPAA
10 1 (0.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 74 (12.46%) Docker
2 22 (3.70%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.53%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (1.85%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.67%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.67%) KVM
5 4 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 53 (8.92%) Kubernetes
2 36 (6.06%) Ansible
3 15 (2.53%) Data Guard
3 15 (2.53%) Grafana
3 15 (2.53%) Oracle RMAN
4 14 (2.36%) Prometheus
5 11 (1.85%) Control-M
5 11 (1.85%) SCOM
6 6 (1.01%) Progress Chef
7 5 (0.84%) Argo
7 5 (0.84%) CASB
8 2 (0.34%) AirWatch
8 2 (0.34%) Consul
8 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
8 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
8 2 (0.34%) Nagios
8 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 2 (0.34%) SCCM
8 2 (0.34%) Zipkin
9 1 (0.17%) Foglight
Vendors
1 132 (22.22%) Microsoft
2 93 (15.66%) Oracle
3 59 (9.93%) Databricks
4 28 (4.71%) Google
4 28 (4.71%) SAP
5 25 (4.21%) ServiceNow
6 21 (3.54%) Splunk
7 12 (2.02%) Alteryx
8 11 (1.85%) IBM
8 11 (1.85%) Teradata
9 8 (1.35%) OpenAI
9 8 (1.35%) UiPath
10 7 (1.18%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.18%) Informatica
10 7 (1.18%) Salesforce
11 6 (1.01%) Centrify
11 6 (1.01%) Sybase
12 5 (0.84%) Adobe
12 5 (0.84%) Remedy
12 5 (0.84%) SYSPRO