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 27 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 19 19
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL 401 272 362
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.46% 8.26% 7.49%
As % of the Programming Languages category 25.19% 31.01% 28.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 289 189 247
10th Percentile £313 £334 £275
25th Percentile £372 £393 £384
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £476
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -0.11% -4.90%
75th Percentile £538 £567 £575
90th Percentile £650 £646 £615
England median daily rate £500 £523 £550
% change year-on-year -4.31% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 12
10th Percentile £41.60 - £27.86
25th Percentile £52.38 £26.25 £37.63
Median hourly rate £69.44 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +111.64% -22.80% -23.20%
75th Percentile £77.88 £65.00 £44.36
90th Percentile £84.90 - £46.18
England median hourly rate £46.50 £52.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -11.85% +24.12% -15.84%

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 1,592 877 1,277
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.62% 26.65% 26.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,090 597 911
10th Percentile £340 £336 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £470 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% -9.52%
75th Percentile £544 £563 £551
90th Percentile £625 £638 £625
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 70 17 63
10th Percentile £41.94 £29.38 £37.78
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £45.88
Median hourly rate £64.57 £65.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.43% +37.89% +1.49%
75th Percentile £75.57 £86.00 £65.63
90th Percentile £86.40 £98.79 £74.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -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 27 February 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 27 February 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 27 February 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 +3 225 £425 -10.05% 206
Yorkshire -24 155 £500 -1.96% 113
North East -8 29 £475 +2.70% 50
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 30 (7.48%) Apache Airflow
2 21 (5.24%) Apache Spark
3 16 (3.99%) Confluence
4 15 (3.74%) Apache
5 6 (1.50%) SAS
5 6 (1.50%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.25%) Apache Geronimo
6 5 (1.25%) Apache ServiceMix
6 5 (1.25%) Red Hat Fuse
6 5 (1.25%) Tomcat
6 5 (1.25%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.75%) Apache Pig
8 1 (0.25%) IIS
8 1 (0.25%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.25%) Mule
8 1 (0.25%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 21 (5.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (1.00%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.75%) Chatbot
5 2 (0.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.25%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.24%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.50%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.50%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.50%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.25%) Dynamics CRM
3 1 (0.25%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.25%) Maximo
3 1 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 132 (32.92%) Azure
2 128 (31.92%) AWS
3 72 (17.96%) Power Platform
4 54 (13.47%) GCP
5 32 (7.98%) Serverless
6 27 (6.73%) GitHub
7 22 (5.49%) dbt
8 21 (5.24%) Azure Data Factory
9 18 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (4.49%) Snowflake
10 16 (3.99%) GitHub Actions
11 15 (3.74%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 13 (3.24%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (2.74%) IaaS
13 11 (2.74%) SaaS
14 10 (2.49%) PaaS
15 9 (2.24%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (2.24%) Prefect
16 8 (2.00%) Amazon S3
17 7 (1.75%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 18 (4.49%) Firewall
2 9 (2.24%) DNS
3 6 (1.50%) SSL
3 6 (1.50%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.25%) IPsec
4 5 (1.25%) Kerberos
5 3 (0.75%) HTTP
5 3 (0.75%) HTTPS
6 2 (0.50%) VPN
7 1 (0.25%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (16.46%) Power BI
2 57 (14.21%) SQL Server
3 50 (12.47%) NoSQL
4 44 (10.97%) Data Warehouse
5 31 (7.73%) Relational Database
6 30 (7.48%) PostgreSQL
7 24 (5.99%) Data Lake
8 22 (5.49%) MySQL
9 20 (4.99%) Tableau
10 17 (4.24%) DB2
10 17 (4.24%) Hadoop
11 16 (3.99%) Metadata
11 16 (3.99%) Snowflake Schema
11 16 (3.99%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 14 (3.49%) Delta Lake
12 14 (3.49%) MongoDB
13 12 (2.99%) BigQuery
14 11 (2.74%) Azure SQL Database
14 11 (2.74%) Power Query
15 10 (2.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 49 (12.22%) Git
2 48 (11.97%) JIRA
3 39 (9.73%) GitLab
4 37 (9.23%) Jenkins
5 15 (3.74%) Cucumber
5 15 (3.74%) REST Assured
5 15 (3.74%) Selenium
6 12 (2.99%) Postman
7 8 (2.00%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.50%) Liquibase
8 6 (1.50%) Mocha
8 6 (1.50%) TestRail
9 3 (0.75%) CircleCI
9 3 (0.75%) Cypress.io
9 3 (0.75%) SoapUI
10 2 (0.50%) JUnit
10 2 (0.50%) Mockito
10 2 (0.50%) PyCharm
10 2 (0.50%) Visual Studio Code
11 1 (0.25%) Visual Studio
General
1 133 (33.17%) Social Skills
2 107 (26.68%) Finance
3 79 (19.70%) Analytical Skills
4 60 (14.96%) Banking
5 37 (9.23%) Public Sector
6 16 (3.99%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.24%) Financial Institution
8 9 (2.24%) Presentation Skills
9 8 (2.00%) Law
10 7 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 7 (1.75%) Marketing
11 6 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.50%) Retail
12 5 (1.25%) Legal
13 4 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
13 4 (1.00%) Local Government
13 4 (1.00%) Manufacturing
13 4 (1.00%) Military
14 3 (0.75%) Health Technology
14 3 (0.75%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 93 (23.19%) Developer
2 75 (18.70%) Analyst
3 64 (15.96%) Data Engineer
4 55 (13.72%) Senior
5 39 (9.73%) Lead
6 29 (7.23%) Data Analyst
7 20 (4.99%) Business Analyst
8 19 (4.74%) Software Engineer
9 17 (4.24%) Architect
10 16 (3.99%) Java Developer
11 14 (3.49%) Senior Developer
12 13 (3.24%) DBA
12 13 (3.24%) Test Engineer
13 12 (2.99%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (2.49%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.49%) Senior Software Engineer
14 10 (2.49%) SQL DBA
14 10 (2.49%) Test Automation Engineer
15 9 (2.24%) Azure Engineer
15 9 (2.24%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 49 (12.22%) REST
2 46 (11.47%) .NET
3 32 (7.98%) Kafka
4 29 (7.23%) Spring Boot
5 23 (5.74%) Spring
6 22 (5.49%) RESTful
7 20 (4.99%) React
8 19 (4.74%) XML
9 18 (4.49%) Middleware
10 17 (4.24%) OpenID
10 17 (4.24%) PySpark
11 16 (3.99%) HTML
11 16 (3.99%) OAuth
12 14 (3.49%) JSON
13 13 (3.24%) CSS
14 12 (2.99%) LDAP
14 12 (2.99%) SailPoint
15 11 (2.74%) Node.js
16 10 (2.49%) SOAP
17 9 (2.24%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 37 (9.23%) Cloud Native
2 20 (4.99%) Clustering
3 19 (4.74%) Product Ownership
4 17 (4.24%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.49%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (3.49%) Management Information System
6 12 (2.99%) Data Structures
7 11 (2.74%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (2.24%) Security Posture
9 8 (2.00%) Public Cloud
9 8 (2.00%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 8 (2.00%) Virtual Team
10 7 (1.75%) Algorithms
10 7 (1.75%) Distributed Computing
10 7 (1.75%) Replication
11 6 (1.50%) Credit Risk
11 6 (1.50%) Data Centre
11 6 (1.50%) Legacy Systems
11 6 (1.50%) NHS
11 6 (1.50%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 38 (9.48%) Linux
2 19 (4.74%) Windows
3 13 (3.24%) Unix
4 9 (2.24%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.50%) AIX
6 2 (0.50%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.50%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.25%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 134 (33.42%) CI/CD
2 119 (29.68%) Agile
3 107 (26.68%) DevOps
4 96 (23.94%) Problem-Solving
5 89 (22.19%) Analytics
6 88 (21.95%) Data Modelling
7 77 (19.20%) Business Intelligence
8 70 (17.46%) ETL
9 61 (15.21%) Data Pipeline
10 60 (14.96%) Microservices
11 55 (13.72%) Data Engineering
12 49 (12.22%) Test Automation
13 46 (11.47%) Data Analysis
14 45 (11.22%) Data Governance
15 42 (10.47%) Performance Tuning
16 41 (10.22%) Stakeholder Management
16 41 (10.22%) Visualisation
17 38 (9.48%) Actionable Insight
18 37 (9.23%) Containerisation
19 34 (8.48%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 133 (33.17%) Python
2 79 (19.70%) Java
3 31 (7.73%) C#
4 29 (7.23%) JavaScript
5 20 (4.99%) PL/SQL
5 20 (4.99%) PowerShell
6 15 (3.74%) Bash
7 12 (2.99%) PHP
7 12 (2.99%) TypeScript
8 11 (2.74%) VBA
9 10 (2.49%) Go
10 9 (2.24%) T-SQL
11 8 (2.00%) Rust
11 8 (2.00%) Shell Script
12 7 (1.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 5 (1.25%) Scala
14 4 (1.00%) ProC
14 4 (1.00%) R
15 3 (0.75%) C++
15 3 (0.75%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 55 (13.72%) Degree
2 43 (10.72%) Security Cleared
3 28 (6.98%) SC Cleared
4 22 (5.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (3.99%) Master's Degree
6 15 (3.74%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.75%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.50%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.00%) MBA
10 3 (0.75%) CEH
10 3 (0.75%) GIAC
10 3 (0.75%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.75%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.50%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.50%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.50%) CISSP
11 2 (0.50%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.50%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 1 (0.25%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (13.47%) Data Quality
2 27 (6.73%) QA
3 13 (3.24%) GDPR
4 11 (2.74%) Accessibility
5 8 (2.00%) ISO 20022
5 8 (2.00%) PSD2
5 8 (2.00%) SEPA
6 7 (1.75%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.75%) WCAG
7 6 (1.50%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.50%) SLA
8 4 (1.00%) PMO
9 2 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.50%) NIST
9 2 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 1 (0.25%) HL7
10 1 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.25%) PERC
10 1 (0.25%) Solvency II
System Software
1 67 (16.71%) Docker
2 9 (2.24%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.50%) Hyper-V
3 6 (1.50%) KVM
4 5 (1.25%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.25%) RACF
5 1 (0.25%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 57 (14.21%) Kubernetes
2 32 (7.98%) Terraform
3 23 (5.74%) Grafana
4 20 (4.99%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.74%) Ansible
6 9 (2.24%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (2.00%) Kiali
8 6 (1.50%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.50%) vCenter Server
9 4 (1.00%) SCCM
10 2 (0.50%) Control-M
11 1 (0.25%) Foglight
11 1 (0.25%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.25%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.25%) Oracle Identity Manager
11 1 (0.25%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 60 (14.96%) Microsoft
2 46 (11.47%) Oracle
3 35 (8.73%) Databricks
4 32 (7.98%) Splunk
5 23 (5.74%) Google
6 22 (5.49%) ServiceNow
7 9 (2.24%) Advent
7 9 (2.24%) IBM
8 8 (2.00%) Salesforce
9 7 (1.75%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.50%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.50%) RedGate
11 5 (1.25%) SAP
11 5 (1.25%) TIBCO
11 5 (1.25%) Varonis
12 3 (0.75%) Citrix
12 3 (0.75%) F5
12 3 (0.75%) Imperva
12 3 (0.75%) Informatica
12 3 (0.75%) Teradata