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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 20 16
Rank change year-on-year -2 -4 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 592 337 349
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.74% 8.46% 8.52%
As % of the Programming Languages category 31.57% 29.15% 34.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 358 248 231
10th Percentile £322 £313 £350
25th Percentile £406 £367 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £537 £550
90th Percentile £607 £612 £622
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -7.06% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 4 5
10th Percentile £23.30 £25.50 £28.25
25th Percentile £28.50 £29.52 £31.25
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.56 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.31% -4.01% +25.87%
75th Percentile £70.00 £45.13 £42.50
90th Percentile £76.60 £61.55 -
England median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -15.00% +20.48% +3.33%

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 1,875 1,156 1,015
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 24.51% 29.02% 24.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,211 824 694
10th Percentile £350 £315 £350
25th Percentile £413 £377 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £450 £488
Median % change year-on-year +9.33% -7.69% -2.50%
75th Percentile £575 £538 £575
90th Percentile £650 £605 £638
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 13 26
10th Percentile £28.50 £30.35 £35.82
25th Percentile £46.80 £36.00 £37.55
Median hourly rate £69.50 £66.50 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year +4.51% +44.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £84.50 £62.19
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.75 £76.84
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +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 10 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 10 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 10 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 0 297 £483 +7.33% 229
Yorkshire +4 253 £474 +5.33% 111
North East -17 51 £406 -12.63% 55
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 46 (7.77%) Confluence
2 20 (3.38%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (3.21%) Apache Spark
4 17 (2.87%) Apache
5 10 (1.69%) SAS
5 10 (1.69%) SharePoint
6 9 (1.52%) Jupyter
7 5 (0.84%) Oracle Workflow
8 4 (0.68%) Camunda
8 4 (0.68%) Palantir Foundry
8 4 (0.68%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.51%) CMS
10 2 (0.34%) IIS
10 2 (0.34%) nginx
10 2 (0.34%) WordPress
11 1 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 1 (0.17%) JBoss
11 1 (0.17%) Mule
11 1 (0.17%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 32 (5.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.68%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.68%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (1.86%) Oracle EBS
2 10 (1.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 5 (0.84%) Infor LN
5 3 (0.51%) NetSuite
5 3 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
5 3 (0.51%) Salesforce CRM
6 2 (0.34%) Elite 3E
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 2 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 2 (0.34%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.17%) Dynamics CRM
7 1 (0.17%) FIS Private Capital Suite
7 1 (0.17%) Oracle Applications
7 1 (0.17%) Sage 200
Cloud Services
1 161 (27.20%) Azure
2 128 (21.62%) AWS
3 118 (19.93%) Power Platform
4 49 (8.28%) GCP
4 49 (8.28%) GitHub
5 40 (6.76%) Azure DevOps
6 39 (6.59%) Serverless
7 27 (4.56%) Azure Data Factory
8 25 (4.22%) Snowflake
9 22 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
9 22 (3.72%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 20 (3.38%) Amazon S3
11 17 (2.87%) SaaS
12 16 (2.70%) Azure Monitor
12 16 (2.70%) dbt
12 16 (2.70%) GitHub Actions
13 15 (2.53%) Google Analytics
13 15 (2.53%) Power Automate
13 15 (2.53%) PowerApps
14 14 (2.36%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 15 (2.53%) SSL
2 12 (2.03%) DNS
3 11 (1.86%) 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 (0.68%) BGP
7 4 (0.68%) HTTP
7 4 (0.68%) LAN
7 4 (0.68%) 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
1 143 (24.16%) SQL Server
2 109 (18.41%) Power BI
3 90 (15.20%) Data Warehouse
4 50 (8.45%) PostgreSQL
5 38 (6.42%) MySQL
6 35 (5.91%) Metadata
6 35 (5.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 34 (5.74%) Relational Database
8 33 (5.57%) NoSQL
9 30 (5.07%) Tableau
10 28 (4.73%) Oracle Database
11 26 (4.39%) Data Lake
12 21 (3.55%) MongoDB
13 20 (3.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
14 19 (3.21%) Amazon Redshift
15 18 (3.04%) BigQuery
15 18 (3.04%) Looker
16 16 (2.70%) Azure SQL Database
17 15 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
17 15 (2.53%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 68 (11.49%) Git
2 53 (8.95%) Jenkins
3 48 (8.11%) JIRA
4 37 (6.25%) GitLab
5 15 (2.53%) Gradle
6 11 (1.86%) Bitbucket
6 11 (1.86%) JUnit
6 11 (1.86%) Sonatype Nexus
7 10 (1.69%) 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
1 187 (31.59%) Social Skills
2 115 (19.43%) Finance
3 109 (18.41%) Analytical Skills
4 71 (11.99%) Public Sector
5 52 (8.78%) Banking
6 21 (3.55%) Manufacturing
7 16 (2.70%) Retail
8 15 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 10 (1.69%) Marketing
10 8 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
11 7 (1.18%) Games
11 7 (1.18%) Legal
12 6 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
12 6 (1.01%) Influencing Skills
12 6 (1.01%) Law
13 5 (0.84%) Aviation
13 5 (0.84%) Fire and Rescue
13 5 (0.84%) Investment Banking
13 5 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
13 5 (0.84%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 137 (23.14%) Developer
2 91 (15.37%) Analyst
3 76 (12.84%) DBA
4 72 (12.16%) Data Engineer
4 72 (12.16%) Senior
5 50 (8.45%) Lead
6 47 (7.94%) SQL DBA
7 35 (5.91%) Data Analyst
8 29 (4.90%) Administrator
9 26 (4.39%) Senior Developer
10 25 (4.22%) Java Developer
10 25 (4.22%) Oracle DBA
10 25 (4.22%) SQL Developer
11 23 (3.89%) Consultant
11 23 (3.89%) Senior Data Engineer
11 23 (3.89%) Software Engineer
12 19 (3.21%) Architect
13 18 (3.04%) Software Developer
14 16 (2.70%) Performance Analyst
15 15 (2.53%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 58 (9.80%) Terraform
2 52 (8.78%) Kafka
3 46 (7.77%) REST
4 41 (6.93%) Spring Boot
5 40 (6.76%) PySpark
6 38 (6.42%) .NET
6 38 (6.42%) Spring
7 28 (4.73%) HTML
8 24 (4.05%) React
9 23 (3.89%) RESTful
10 21 (3.55%) JSON
11 20 (3.38%) CSS
12 18 (3.04%) Web Services
13 17 (2.87%) XML
14 15 (2.53%) AngularJS
15 14 (2.36%) .NET Core
16 13 (2.20%) Hibernate
17 12 (2.03%) JPA
17 12 (2.03%) Redux
18 10 (1.69%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 48 (8.11%) Data Structures
2 35 (5.91%) Cloud Native
3 27 (4.56%) Product Ownership
4 24 (4.05%) Replication
5 23 (3.89%) Data Protection Act
6 20 (3.38%) NHS
7 19 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
8 18 (3.04%) Distributed Systems
9 17 (2.87%) Clustering
9 17 (2.87%) Legacy Systems
10 14 (2.36%) Self-Motivation
11 13 (2.20%) AI Agents
12 10 (1.69%) Onboarding
13 8 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 7 (1.18%) Low-Code
14 7 (1.18%) Robotics
14 7 (1.18%) Virtual Team
15 5 (0.84%) Distributed Computing
16 4 (0.68%) Data Fabric
16 4 (0.68%) Sports Betting
Operating Systems
1 42 (7.09%) Linux
2 30 (5.07%) Windows
3 23 (3.89%) Unix
4 22 (3.72%) Windows Server
5 15 (2.53%) Solaris
6 4 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise 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%) Oracle Linux
9 1 (0.17%) VMS
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
9 1 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 155 (26.18%) CI/CD
2 152 (25.68%) Agile
3 147 (24.83%) Analytics
4 140 (23.65%) Data Modelling
5 135 (22.80%) Business Intelligence
6 116 (19.59%) ETL
7 111 (18.75%) DevOps
8 110 (18.58%) Data Pipeline
9 106 (17.91%) Problem-Solving
10 94 (15.88%) Migration
11 86 (14.53%) Validation
12 84 (14.19%) AI
13 78 (13.18%) Performance Tuning
14 75 (12.67%) Data Engineering
15 74 (12.50%) Stakeholder Management
16 69 (11.66%) Data Analysis
17 65 (10.98%) Test Automation
18 64 (10.81%) Microservices
19 62 (10.47%) Infrastructure as Code
20 57 (9.63%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 172 (29.05%) Python
2 87 (14.70%) Java
3 55 (9.29%) PowerShell
4 46 (7.77%) T-SQL
5 42 (7.09%) C#
6 36 (6.08%) JavaScript
7 31 (5.24%) PL/SQL
8 20 (3.38%) Bash
9 15 (2.53%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 15 (2.53%) TypeScript
10 13 (2.20%) Shell Script
11 12 (2.03%) Kotlin
12 9 (1.52%) Kusto Query Language
12 9 (1.52%) R
12 9 (1.52%) Scala
13 5 (0.84%) Search Processing Language
14 4 (0.68%) Bicep
14 4 (0.68%) VB
15 3 (0.51%) VB6
16 2 (0.34%) PromQL
Qualifications
1 106 (17.91%) Security Cleared
2 93 (15.71%) SC Cleared
3 50 (8.45%) Degree
4 25 (4.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 24 (4.05%) Microsoft Certification
6 18 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
7 12 (2.03%) Azure Certification
8 9 (1.52%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
9 7 (1.18%) DV Cleared
10 6 (1.01%) CISSP
10 6 (1.01%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.84%) GCFA
11 5 (0.84%) GCIH
11 5 (0.84%) OCP
12 2 (0.34%) AWS Certification
12 2 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.17%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 1 (0.17%) DBS Check
13 1 (0.17%) Master's Degree
13 1 (0.17%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 127 (21.45%) Data Quality
2 33 (5.57%) QA
3 22 (3.72%) GDPR
4 8 (1.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 6 (1.01%) GRC
6 5 (0.84%) PCI DSS
7 4 (0.68%) 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 72 (12.16%) Docker
2 23 (3.89%) Active Directory
3 15 (2.53%) Oracle RAC
4 11 (1.86%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.68%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.68%) KVM
5 4 (0.68%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 51 (8.61%) Kubernetes
2 36 (6.08%) Ansible
3 15 (2.53%) Data Guard
3 15 (2.53%) Grafana
4 14 (2.36%) Prometheus
5 13 (2.20%) Oracle RMAN
6 11 (1.86%) Control-M
6 11 (1.86%) SCOM
7 6 (1.01%) Progress Chef
8 5 (0.84%) Argo
8 5 (0.84%) CASB
9 2 (0.34%) AirWatch
9 2 (0.34%) Consul
9 2 (0.34%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
9 2 (0.34%) Failover Clustering
9 2 (0.34%) Nagios
9 2 (0.34%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 2 (0.34%) SCCM
9 2 (0.34%) Zipkin
10 1 (0.17%) Foglight
Vendors
1 133 (22.47%) Microsoft
2 94 (15.88%) Oracle
3 59 (9.97%) Databricks
4 31 (5.24%) Google
5 26 (4.39%) SAP
6 25 (4.22%) ServiceNow
7 22 (3.72%) Splunk
8 11 (1.86%) Alteryx
8 11 (1.86%) IBM
8 11 (1.86%) Teradata
9 8 (1.35%) OpenAI
9 8 (1.35%) Salesforce
9 8 (1.35%) UiPath
10 7 (1.18%) CyberArk
10 7 (1.18%) Informatica
11 6 (1.01%) Adobe
11 6 (1.01%) Centrify
11 6 (1.01%) Sybase
12 5 (0.84%) Cribl.io
12 5 (0.84%) Remedy