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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 16 17
Rank change year-on-year -8 +1 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 496 319 416
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.53% 9.53% 8.80%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.79% 34.01% 33.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 310 232 282
10th Percentile £313 £348 £307
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% - -4.04%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £569
90th Percentile £625 £625 £615
England median daily rate £500 £501 £545
% change year-on-year -0.10% -8.17% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 3 10
10th Percentile £24.70 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £35.63 £31.62 £41.25
Median hourly rate £46.80 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +41.35% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £66.60 £53.48 £45.57
90th Percentile £83.20 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £47.15 £37.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +27.43% -12.94% -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 1,785 938 1,228
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.10% 28.03% 25.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,172 691 856
10th Percentile £350 £350 £323
25th Percentile £413 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £473 £475
Median % change year-on-year +0.53% -0.53% -9.52%
75th Percentile £550 £538 £575
90th Percentile £625 £610 £625
England median daily rate £513 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.23% -3.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 10 54
10th Percentile £36.30 £31.73 £37.57
25th Percentile £52.50 £55.88 £42.41
Median hourly rate £63.14 £74.50 £47.75
Median % change year-on-year -15.26% +56.02% -0.52%
75th Percentile £74.26 £88.06 £68.75
90th Percentile £80.30 £95.36 £73.90
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% -

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -7 253 £460 -3.16% 268
Yorkshire -13 209 £475 - 119
North East -9 46 £438 -5.41% 65
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 (6.05%) Apache Spark
2 24 (4.84%) Apache
2 24 (4.84%) Confluence
3 20 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
4 10 (2.02%) SharePoint
5 8 (1.61%) WebSphere
6 7 (1.41%) Apache Geronimo
6 7 (1.41%) Apache ServiceMix
6 7 (1.41%) Red Hat Fuse
6 7 (1.41%) Tomcat
7 6 (1.21%) Jupyter
8 5 (1.01%) Oracle Workflow
9 4 (0.81%) SAS
10 3 (0.60%) IIS
11 2 (0.40%) Mule
11 2 (0.40%) Mule ESB
11 2 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
12 1 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 1 (0.20%) Camunda
12 1 (0.20%) WebLogic
Applications
1 34 (6.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 3 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 11 (2.22%) Oracle EBS
2 6 (1.21%) SAP S/4HANA
3 4 (0.81%) Elite 3E
4 3 (0.60%) NetSuite
4 3 (0.60%) Oracle Applications
4 3 (0.60%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.40%) Dynamics CRM
5 2 (0.40%) Infor LN
5 2 (0.40%) NEC Housing
5 2 (0.40%) Oracle Cash Management
5 2 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.40%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.40%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.40%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.20%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 161 (32.46%) Azure
2 126 (25.40%) AWS
3 85 (17.14%) Power Platform
4 54 (10.89%) GCP
5 37 (7.46%) Azure Data Factory
6 36 (7.26%) GitHub
7 27 (5.44%) Serverless
8 23 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 21 (4.23%) Azure DevOps
10 17 (3.43%) dbt
10 17 (3.43%) SaaS
11 16 (3.23%) GitHub Actions
12 14 (2.82%) Snowflake
13 13 (2.62%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 11 (2.22%) Amazon S3
14 11 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
14 11 (2.22%) IaaS
15 10 (2.02%) PaaS
16 9 (1.81%) Power Automate
17 8 (1.61%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.43%) Firewall
2 14 (2.82%) DNS
3 8 (1.61%) SSL
3 8 (1.61%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.21%) 3GPP
4 6 (1.21%) RTP
4 6 (1.21%) Wireshark
5 5 (1.01%) IPsec
5 5 (1.01%) Kerberos
6 3 (0.60%) DHCP
7 2 (0.40%) BGP
7 2 (0.40%) HTTP
7 2 (0.40%) Internet
7 2 (0.40%) LAN
7 2 (0.40%) Network Security
7 2 (0.40%) Reverse Proxy
7 2 (0.40%) VPN
7 2 (0.40%) WAN
7 2 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
8 1 (0.20%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 88 (17.74%) SQL Server
2 78 (15.73%) Power BI
3 66 (13.31%) Data Warehouse
4 41 (8.27%) NoSQL
5 36 (7.26%) PostgreSQL
6 32 (6.45%) Tableau
7 29 (5.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 24 (4.84%) Data Lake
8 24 (4.84%) Relational Database
9 23 (4.64%) Azure SQL Database
10 22 (4.44%) Metadata
11 20 (4.03%) MongoDB
11 20 (4.03%) Oracle Database
12 19 (3.83%) SQL Server Reporting Services
13 16 (3.23%) Hadoop
14 15 (3.02%) Delta Lake
14 15 (3.02%) MySQL
15 12 (2.42%) Big Data
15 12 (2.42%) Snowflake Schema
16 11 (2.22%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 58 (11.69%) Git
2 50 (10.08%) JIRA
3 40 (8.06%) GitLab
4 36 (7.26%) Jenkins
5 19 (3.83%) Cucumber
6 16 (3.23%) Selenium
7 15 (3.02%) REST Assured
8 12 (2.42%) Postman
9 9 (1.81%) Jaeger
10 8 (1.61%) Flyway
11 7 (1.41%) Bitbucket
11 7 (1.41%) TestRail
12 6 (1.21%) Gradle
12 6 (1.21%) Liquibase
12 6 (1.21%) Oracle Forms
12 6 (1.21%) TeamCity
13 5 (1.01%) JUnit
13 5 (1.01%) Maven
14 4 (0.81%) ERwin
14 4 (0.81%) Snyk
General
1 141 (28.43%) Social Skills
2 110 (22.18%) Finance
3 90 (18.15%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (9.88%) Public Sector
5 48 (9.68%) Banking
6 13 (2.62%) Law
7 12 (2.42%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 12 (2.42%) Legal
8 11 (2.22%) Retail
9 8 (1.61%) Financial Institution
9 8 (1.61%) Manufacturing
9 8 (1.61%) Marketing
10 7 (1.41%) Presentation Skills
11 6 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
12 5 (1.01%) Aviation
12 5 (1.01%) Fire and Rescue
12 5 (1.01%) Police
13 4 (0.81%) Influencing Skills
13 4 (0.81%) Local Government
13 4 (0.81%) Military
Job Titles
1 99 (19.96%) Developer
2 85 (17.14%) Analyst
3 69 (13.91%) Data Engineer
4 58 (11.69%) Senior
5 51 (10.28%) Lead
6 28 (5.65%) Java Developer
7 27 (5.44%) Data Analyst
7 27 (5.44%) DBA
8 24 (4.84%) Consultant
9 22 (4.44%) Architect
10 18 (3.63%) Senior Developer
10 18 (3.63%) Test Engineer
11 17 (3.43%) SQL DBA
12 14 (2.82%) Business Analyst
12 14 (2.82%) Senior Data Engineer
12 14 (2.82%) Software Engineer
13 13 (2.62%) Performance Analyst
13 13 (2.62%) SQL Developer
14 12 (2.42%) Technical Analyst
14 12 (2.42%) Test Automation Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 41 (8.27%) REST
2 36 (7.26%) .NET
3 34 (6.85%) Spring Boot
4 33 (6.65%) PySpark
5 30 (6.05%) Kafka
5 30 (6.05%) XML
6 28 (5.65%) Spring
7 25 (5.04%) RESTful
8 21 (4.23%) Middleware
9 18 (3.63%) HTML
10 17 (3.43%) OpenID
11 16 (3.23%) JSON
12 15 (3.02%) OAuth
12 15 (3.02%) OpenTelemetry
13 12 (2.42%) React
13 12 (2.42%) SOAP
13 12 (2.42%) Web Services
14 11 (2.22%) OAuth2
14 11 (2.22%) Pandas
14 11 (2.22%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.06%) Cloud Native
2 33 (6.65%) Product Ownership
3 19 (3.83%) Data Structures
4 18 (3.63%) Clustering
4 18 (3.63%) Data Protection Act
5 17 (3.43%) Distributed Systems
6 15 (3.02%) NHS
7 14 (2.82%) Management Information System
8 13 (2.62%) Replication
9 12 (2.42%) Linux Command Line
10 11 (2.22%) Legacy Systems
11 9 (1.81%) Onboarding
12 7 (1.41%) AI Agents
12 7 (1.41%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 7 (1.41%) Robotics
12 7 (1.41%) Security Posture
13 6 (1.21%) Analytical Mindset
13 6 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
13 6 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
14 5 (1.01%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 52 (10.48%) Linux
2 29 (5.85%) Windows
3 17 (3.43%) Unix
4 16 (3.23%) Windows Server
5 8 (1.61%) AIX
6 3 (0.60%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 3 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
7 2 (0.40%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.40%) Windows 10
7 2 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
8 1 (0.20%) Solaris
8 1 (0.20%) VMS
8 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2008
8 1 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 158 (31.85%) CI/CD
2 131 (26.41%) Agile
3 117 (23.59%) DevOps
4 106 (21.37%) Analytics
5 104 (20.97%) ETL
6 98 (19.76%) Data Modelling
7 97 (19.56%) Business Intelligence
8 94 (18.95%) Problem-Solving
9 83 (16.73%) Data Pipeline
10 62 (12.50%) Microservices
10 62 (12.50%) Migration
11 61 (12.30%) Performance Tuning
12 60 (12.10%) Test Automation
13 55 (11.09%) Data Engineering
13 55 (11.09%) Validation
14 50 (10.08%) AI
14 50 (10.08%) Data Analysis
15 44 (8.87%) Data Governance
15 44 (8.87%) Infrastructure as Code
16 39 (7.86%) Actionable Insight
Programming Languages
1 149 (30.04%) Python
2 90 (18.15%) Java
3 38 (7.66%) PowerShell
4 35 (7.06%) C#
5 31 (6.25%) JavaScript
6 30 (6.05%) T-SQL
7 28 (5.65%) PL/SQL
8 22 (4.44%) Bash
9 14 (2.82%) Shell Script
9 14 (2.82%) TypeScript
10 12 (2.42%) R
11 9 (1.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 9 (1.81%) PHP
12 8 (1.61%) Rust
13 6 (1.21%) Kotlin
14 5 (1.01%) Go
14 5 (1.01%) Scala
14 5 (1.01%) VBA
15 4 (0.81%) ProC
16 3 (0.60%) VB
Qualifications
1 58 (11.69%) Degree
2 57 (11.49%) Security Cleared
3 47 (9.48%) SC Cleared
4 21 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.43%) BPSS Clearance
6 10 (2.02%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.81%) Azure Certification
7 4 (0.81%) MBA
8 3 (0.60%) CISSP
9 2 (0.40%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.40%) DV Cleared
9 2 (0.40%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.40%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.20%) CISM
10 1 (0.20%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.20%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.20%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (17.14%) Data Quality
2 32 (6.45%) QA
3 22 (4.44%) GDPR
4 9 (1.81%) SLA
5 7 (1.41%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 7 (1.41%) HIPAA
6 6 (1.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (1.01%) GRC
7 5 (1.01%) PMO
8 4 (0.81%) ISO 20022
9 3 (0.60%) Accessibility
9 3 (0.60%) NIST
9 3 (0.60%) PSD2
9 3 (0.60%) SEPA
9 3 (0.60%) Solvency II
10 2 (0.40%) WCAG
11 1 (0.20%) HL7
11 1 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 71 (14.31%) Docker
2 10 (2.02%) Hyper-V
2 10 (2.02%) KVM
3 9 (1.81%) Active Directory
3 9 (1.81%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.01%) RACF
5 4 (0.81%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.20%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 58 (11.69%) Kubernetes
2 41 (8.27%) Terraform
3 24 (4.84%) Grafana
4 21 (4.23%) Prometheus
5 17 (3.43%) Ansible
6 11 (2.22%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (1.81%) Kiali
8 6 (1.21%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.21%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.21%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.81%) Argo
10 3 (0.60%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.60%) Foglight
10 3 (0.60%) SCCM
11 2 (0.40%) AirWatch
11 2 (0.40%) Consul
11 2 (0.40%) Failover Clustering
11 2 (0.40%) Zipkin
12 1 (0.20%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
Vendors
1 69 (13.91%) Microsoft
2 68 (13.71%) Oracle
3 47 (9.48%) Databricks
4 32 (6.45%) Splunk
5 25 (5.04%) ServiceNow
6 22 (4.44%) Google
7 15 (3.02%) SAP
8 10 (2.02%) IBM
9 7 (1.41%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.41%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.21%) RedGate
10 6 (1.21%) Varonis
11 5 (1.01%) MuleSoft
11 5 (1.01%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.01%) SYSPRO
11 5 (1.01%) Teradata
11 5 (1.01%) VMware
12 4 (0.81%) Adobe
12 4 (0.81%) AppDynamics
12 4 (0.81%) Informatica