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 7 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 17 19
Rank change year-on-year -10 +2 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL 414 290 372
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.50% 8.59% 7.53%
As % of the Programming Languages category 25.97% 31.94% 28.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 291 205 257
10th Percentile £315 £350 £275
25th Percentile £375 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £495 £475
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% +4.21% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £563
90th Percentile £638 £648 £614
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 5 11
10th Percentile £36.35 - £37.63
25th Percentile £48.69 £26.25 £39.44
Median hourly rate £66.75 £32.81 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +103.44% -22.80% -19.79%
75th Percentile £73.57 £65.00 £44.97
90th Percentile £82.35 - £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.00 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -3.23% +9.41% -17.87%

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 1,594 908 1,293
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 28.89% 26.89% 26.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,081 626 927
10th Percentile £340 £348 £312
25th Percentile £400 £400 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £622 £643 £625
England median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 16 62
10th Percentile £41.94 £28.86 £38.55
25th Percentile £52.50 £45.01 £45.88
Median hourly rate £64.50 £65.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.53% +37.89% -
75th Percentile £74.26 £86.38 £65.94
90th Percentile £86.00 £99.32 £74.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 7 March 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 7 March 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 7 March 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 0 235 £425 -10.53% 232
Yorkshire -25 157 £500 -4.08% 128
North East -2 31 £475 +2.98% 57
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 (7.25%) Apache Airflow
2 24 (5.80%) Apache Spark
3 19 (4.59%) Apache
4 17 (4.11%) Confluence
5 6 (1.45%) Apache Geronimo
5 6 (1.45%) Apache ServiceMix
5 6 (1.45%) Red Hat Fuse
5 6 (1.45%) SAS
5 6 (1.45%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.45%) Tomcat
5 6 (1.45%) WebSphere
6 2 (0.48%) Apache Pig
7 1 (0.24%) IIS
7 1 (0.24%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.24%) Mule
7 1 (0.24%) Mule ESB
Applications
1 23 (5.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
3 4 (0.97%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.48%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.48%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.24%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.17%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
2 2 (0.48%) Elite 3E
2 2 (0.48%) NEC Housing
2 2 (0.48%) Oracle Applications
2 2 (0.48%) Salesforce CRM
3 1 (0.24%) Maximo
3 1 (0.24%) Oracle EBS
3 1 (0.24%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 132 (31.88%) Azure
2 126 (30.43%) AWS
3 69 (16.67%) Power Platform
4 52 (12.56%) GCP
5 30 (7.25%) Serverless
6 27 (6.52%) GitHub
7 26 (6.28%) Azure Data Factory
8 22 (5.31%) dbt
9 19 (4.59%) Snowflake
10 18 (4.35%) Azure DevOps
11 16 (3.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 16 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
12 12 (2.90%) AWS Lambda
13 11 (2.66%) IaaS
13 11 (2.66%) SaaS
14 10 (2.42%) PaaS
15 9 (2.17%) Amazon EKS
15 9 (2.17%) Prefect
16 8 (1.93%) Amazon S3
17 7 (1.69%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 17 (4.11%) Firewall
2 9 (2.17%) DNS
3 6 (1.45%) SSL
3 6 (1.45%) TCP/IP
4 5 (1.21%) IPsec
4 5 (1.21%) Kerberos
5 2 (0.48%) HTTP
5 2 (0.48%) HTTPS
5 2 (0.48%) VPN
6 1 (0.24%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (14.98%) Power BI
2 61 (14.73%) SQL Server
3 51 (12.32%) NoSQL
4 44 (10.63%) Data Warehouse
5 30 (7.25%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (7.25%) Relational Database
6 23 (5.56%) Data Lake
7 22 (5.31%) MySQL
8 19 (4.59%) Tableau
9 18 (4.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 17 (4.11%) DB2
10 17 (4.11%) Hadoop
10 17 (4.11%) Metadata
11 16 (3.86%) Snowflake Schema
12 15 (3.62%) Azure SQL Database
12 15 (3.62%) MongoDB
12 15 (3.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 14 (3.38%) Delta Lake
14 13 (3.14%) BigQuery
15 11 (2.66%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 53 (12.80%) Git
2 47 (11.35%) JIRA
3 40 (9.66%) GitLab
4 37 (8.94%) Jenkins
5 15 (3.62%) Cucumber
5 15 (3.62%) REST Assured
5 15 (3.62%) Selenium
6 12 (2.90%) Postman
7 8 (1.93%) Jaeger
8 7 (1.69%) Liquibase
9 6 (1.45%) Mocha
9 6 (1.45%) TestRail
10 3 (0.72%) CircleCI
10 3 (0.72%) Cypress.io
10 3 (0.72%) Flyway
10 3 (0.72%) SoapUI
11 2 (0.48%) Mockito
11 2 (0.48%) PyCharm
11 2 (0.48%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.48%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 131 (31.64%) Social Skills
2 110 (26.57%) Finance
3 79 (19.08%) Analytical Skills
4 58 (14.01%) Banking
5 38 (9.18%) Public Sector
6 15 (3.62%) Documentation Skills
7 13 (3.14%) Financial Institution
8 8 (1.93%) Law
9 7 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.69%) Presentation Skills
10 6 (1.45%) Legal
10 6 (1.45%) Marketing
10 6 (1.45%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.45%) Retail
11 4 (0.97%) Influencing Skills
11 4 (0.97%) Local Government
11 4 (0.97%) Manufacturing
11 4 (0.97%) Military
12 3 (0.72%) Retail Banking
12 3 (0.72%) Wholesale Banking
Job Titles
1 93 (22.46%) Developer
2 76 (18.36%) Analyst
3 69 (16.67%) Data Engineer
4 54 (13.04%) Senior
5 41 (9.90%) Lead
6 28 (6.76%) Data Analyst
7 20 (4.83%) Software Engineer
8 19 (4.59%) Business Analyst
9 17 (4.11%) Architect
10 15 (3.62%) Java Developer
11 14 (3.38%) DBA
12 13 (3.14%) Senior Developer
12 13 (3.14%) Test Engineer
13 12 (2.90%) DevOps Engineer
14 11 (2.66%) AWS Engineer
15 10 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
15 10 (2.42%) Senior Software Engineer
15 10 (2.42%) SQL DBA
15 10 (2.42%) Test Automation Engineer
16 9 (2.17%) .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (12.08%) REST
2 45 (10.87%) .NET
3 31 (7.49%) Kafka
3 31 (7.49%) Spring Boot
4 25 (6.04%) Spring
5 22 (5.31%) RESTful
6 20 (4.83%) Middleware
6 20 (4.83%) React
6 20 (4.83%) XML
7 17 (4.11%) OpenID
7 17 (4.11%) PySpark
8 16 (3.86%) HTML
8 16 (3.86%) OAuth
9 13 (3.14%) CSS
9 13 (3.14%) JSON
9 13 (3.14%) Node.js
10 12 (2.90%) LDAP
10 12 (2.90%) SailPoint
10 12 (2.90%) SOAP
11 9 (2.17%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 37 (8.94%) Cloud Native
2 21 (5.07%) Clustering
2 21 (5.07%) Product Ownership
3 17 (4.11%) Distributed Systems
4 16 (3.86%) Data Protection Act
5 14 (3.38%) Management Information System
6 12 (2.90%) Data Structures
7 11 (2.66%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (2.17%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.17%) Replication
9 8 (1.93%) Public Cloud
9 8 (1.93%) Security Posture
9 8 (1.93%) SWIFT Messaging Network
9 8 (1.93%) Virtual Team
10 6 (1.45%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.45%) Credit Risk
10 6 (1.45%) Data Centre
10 6 (1.45%) Distributed Computing
10 6 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
10 6 (1.45%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 38 (9.18%) Linux
2 19 (4.59%) Windows
3 12 (2.90%) Unix
4 9 (2.17%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.45%) AIX
6 2 (0.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.24%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (33.33%) CI/CD
2 119 (28.74%) Agile
3 104 (25.12%) DevOps
4 98 (23.67%) Problem-Solving
5 93 (22.46%) Analytics
6 90 (21.74%) Data Modelling
7 79 (19.08%) ETL
8 78 (18.84%) Business Intelligence
9 65 (15.70%) Data Pipeline
10 58 (14.01%) Microservices
11 57 (13.77%) Data Engineering
12 49 (11.84%) Test Automation
13 47 (11.35%) Data Analysis
14 45 (10.87%) Data Governance
14 45 (10.87%) Performance Tuning
15 41 (9.90%) Stakeholder Management
16 36 (8.70%) Actionable Insight
16 36 (8.70%) Containerisation
16 36 (8.70%) Visualisation
17 34 (8.21%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 134 (32.37%) Python
2 79 (19.08%) Java
3 30 (7.25%) C#
4 29 (7.00%) JavaScript
5 21 (5.07%) PL/SQL
5 21 (5.07%) PowerShell
6 16 (3.86%) Bash
7 15 (3.62%) TypeScript
8 12 (2.90%) PHP
8 12 (2.90%) T-SQL
9 11 (2.66%) VBA
10 10 (2.42%) Go
11 8 (1.93%) Rust
11 8 (1.93%) Shell Script
12 6 (1.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 4 (0.97%) ProC
13 4 (0.97%) R
13 4 (0.97%) Scala
14 3 (0.72%) Bicep
14 3 (0.72%) C++
Qualifications
1 55 (13.29%) Degree
2 46 (11.11%) Security Cleared
3 30 (7.25%) SC Cleared
4 22 (5.31%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (3.86%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (3.62%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.45%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.97%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.97%) MBA
9 3 (0.72%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.48%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.48%) CEH
10 2 (0.48%) CISSP
10 2 (0.48%) GIAC
10 2 (0.48%) GWAPT
10 2 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.24%) CISM
11 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.24%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 55 (13.29%) Data Quality
2 26 (6.28%) QA
3 15 (3.62%) GDPR
4 10 (2.42%) Accessibility
5 8 (1.93%) ISO 20022
5 8 (1.93%) PSD2
5 8 (1.93%) SEPA
6 7 (1.69%) HIPAA
6 7 (1.69%) WCAG
7 6 (1.45%) California Consumer Privacy Act
7 6 (1.45%) SLA
8 4 (0.97%) PMO
8 4 (0.97%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 2 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.48%) NIST
10 1 (0.24%) HL7
10 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.24%) PERC
10 1 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 68 (16.43%) Docker
2 9 (2.17%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.45%) Hyper-V
3 6 (1.45%) KVM
4 5 (1.21%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.21%) RACF
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.24%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 58 (14.01%) Kubernetes
2 33 (7.97%) Terraform
3 23 (5.56%) Grafana
4 20 (4.83%) Prometheus
5 16 (3.86%) Ansible
6 9 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
7 8 (1.93%) Kiali
8 6 (1.45%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.45%) vCenter Server
9 4 (0.97%) SCCM
10 3 (0.72%) Oracle RMAN
11 2 (0.48%) Control-M
11 2 (0.48%) Foglight
12 1 (0.24%) Data Guard
12 1 (0.24%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.24%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 64 (15.46%) Microsoft
2 48 (11.59%) Oracle
3 34 (8.21%) Databricks
4 32 (7.73%) Splunk
5 23 (5.56%) Google
5 23 (5.56%) ServiceNow
6 9 (2.17%) Advent
6 9 (2.17%) IBM
7 7 (1.69%) Salesforce
7 7 (1.69%) SolarWinds
8 6 (1.45%) MuleSoft
8 6 (1.45%) RedGate
8 6 (1.45%) SAP
8 6 (1.45%) TIBCO
9 5 (1.21%) Varonis
10 3 (0.72%) AppDynamics
10 3 (0.72%) Citrix
10 3 (0.72%) CyberArk
10 3 (0.72%) Dynatrace
10 3 (0.72%) Informatica