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 19 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 24 21 18
Rank change year-on-year -3 -3 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 346 256 367
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.16% 7.65% 7.71%
As % of the Programming Languages category 24.30% 29.49% 29.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 253 164 239
10th Percentile £313 £332 £305
25th Percentile £368 £398 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -6.84% -2.56% -1.02%
75th Percentile £500 £567 £588
90th Percentile £635 £638 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 11
10th Percentile £43.13 - £19.44
25th Percentile £53.81 £26.25 £32.16
Median hourly rate £69.38 £46.25 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +50.01% +8.82% -35.61%
75th Percentile £76.07 £65.00 £44.82
90th Percentile £79.33 - £45.88
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +20.69% -12.12%

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 1,424 868 1,254
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 29.46% 25.93% 26.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 992 565 902
10th Percentile £329 £350 £325
25th Percentile £395 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.14% - -9.52%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £575
90th Percentile £625 £638 £650
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 19 62
10th Percentile £41.94 £38.45 £37.70
25th Percentile £52.50 £46.18 £45.88
Median hourly rate £57.50 £65.00 £46.18
Median % change year-on-year -11.54% +40.75% -2.78%
75th Percentile £69.86 £86.00 £59.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £97.71 £73.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.92
% change year-on-year +4.00% +0.94% -4.74%

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 19 January 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 19 January 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 19 January 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 -1 197 £418 -9.73% 213
Yorkshire -23 132 £472 -5.70% 168
North East -15 19 £475 -4.04% 69
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 28 (8.09%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (2.89%) Apache Spark
2 10 (2.89%) Confluence
2 10 (2.89%) SharePoint
3 9 (2.60%) Apache
4 6 (1.73%) SAS
5 5 (1.45%) Apache Pig
6 3 (0.87%) Tomcat
7 2 (0.58%) Mule
7 2 (0.58%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.29%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.29%) CICS
8 1 (0.29%) IIS
8 1 (0.29%) JBoss
8 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.29%) OpenStack
8 1 (0.29%) WebLogic
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere
8 1 (0.29%) WebSphere Application Server
Applications
1 25 (7.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 5 (1.45%) Chatbot
3 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (1.16%) MS Visio
5 1 (0.29%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 9 (2.60%) Advent Geneva
2 2 (0.58%) Oracle Applications
3 1 (0.29%) Elite 3E
3 1 (0.29%) Finacle
3 1 (0.29%) Magento
3 1 (0.29%) Maximo
3 1 (0.29%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.29%) Oracle EBS
Cloud Services
1 122 (35.26%) AWS
2 119 (34.39%) Azure
3 76 (21.97%) Power Platform
4 48 (13.87%) GCP
5 28 (8.09%) Serverless
6 27 (7.80%) GitHub
7 19 (5.49%) Snowflake
8 18 (5.20%) dbt
9 16 (4.62%) Azure Data Factory
10 15 (4.34%) GitHub Actions
11 14 (4.05%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (4.05%) Azure DevOps
11 14 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 9 (2.60%) Amazon EKS
13 8 (2.31%) Amazon S3
13 8 (2.31%) Prefect
13 8 (2.31%) SaaS
14 7 (2.02%) Amazon ECS
14 7 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
14 7 (2.02%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 17 (4.91%) Firewall
2 7 (2.02%) TCP/IP
3 6 (1.73%) DNS
4 3 (0.87%) HTTP
4 3 (0.87%) HTTPS
5 2 (0.58%) SSL
6 1 (0.29%) Cisco Nexus
6 1 (0.29%) FCoE
6 1 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (0.29%) Internet
6 1 (0.29%) IP Telephony
6 1 (0.29%) IPsec
6 1 (0.29%) iSCSI
6 1 (0.29%) Kerberos
6 1 (0.29%) LAN
6 1 (0.29%) Multicast
6 1 (0.29%) NAS
6 1 (0.29%) SAN
6 1 (0.29%) VoIP
6 1 (0.29%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (21.39%) Power BI
2 45 (13.01%) SQL Server
3 44 (12.72%) NoSQL
4 30 (8.67%) Data Warehouse
5 29 (8.38%) PostgreSQL
6 28 (8.09%) Relational Database
7 23 (6.65%) MySQL
8 22 (6.36%) Data Lake
9 18 (5.20%) Tableau
10 16 (4.62%) MongoDB
10 16 (4.62%) Power Query
11 14 (4.05%) Azure SQL Database
11 14 (4.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 13 (3.76%) BigQuery
12 13 (3.76%) Snowflake Schema
13 11 (3.18%) DB2
14 10 (2.89%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.89%) Redis
15 9 (2.60%) Hadoop
16 8 (2.31%) PowerPivot
Development Applications
1 46 (13.29%) JIRA
2 45 (13.01%) Git
3 37 (10.69%) GitLab
4 34 (9.83%) Jenkins
5 14 (4.05%) Cucumber
6 13 (3.76%) REST Assured
6 13 (3.76%) Selenium
7 10 (2.89%) Postman
8 7 (2.02%) Jaeger
9 6 (1.73%) Mocha
9 6 (1.73%) TestRail
10 5 (1.45%) Mockito
11 4 (1.16%) Liquibase
12 3 (0.87%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.87%) JUnit
13 2 (0.58%) Cypress.io
13 2 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
13 2 (0.58%) PyCharm
13 2 (0.58%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.58%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 111 (32.08%) Social Skills
2 104 (30.06%) Finance
3 65 (18.79%) Analytical Skills
4 59 (17.05%) Banking
5 32 (9.25%) Public Sector
6 14 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
7 12 (3.47%) Financial Institution
8 11 (3.18%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (2.02%) Law
9 7 (2.02%) Local Government
10 6 (1.73%) Marketing
10 6 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
10 6 (1.73%) Retail
11 5 (1.45%) Legal
11 5 (1.45%) Manufacturing
12 4 (1.16%) Billing
12 4 (1.16%) Wholesale Banking
13 3 (0.87%) Health Technology
14 2 (0.58%) Retail Banking
14 2 (0.58%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 99 (28.61%) Developer
2 68 (19.65%) Analyst
3 53 (15.32%) Data Engineer
4 47 (13.58%) Senior
5 32 (9.25%) Data Analyst
6 24 (6.94%) Lead
7 23 (6.65%) Java Developer
8 18 (5.20%) Business Analyst
9 17 (4.91%) Software Engineer
10 14 (4.05%) Senior Developer
11 12 (3.47%) AWS Engineer
11 12 (3.47%) Test Engineer
12 11 (3.18%) DevOps Engineer
13 10 (2.89%) Architect
13 10 (2.89%) Azure Engineer
13 10 (2.89%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 10 (2.89%) Data Scientist
13 10 (2.89%) Test Automation Engineer
14 9 (2.60%) DBA
15 8 (2.31%) Senior Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 48 (13.87%) REST
2 39 (11.27%) .NET
3 36 (10.40%) Spring Boot
4 32 (9.25%) Spring
5 31 (8.96%) Kafka
6 18 (5.20%) React
7 16 (4.62%) RESTful
8 15 (4.34%) HTML
8 15 (4.34%) PySpark
8 15 (4.34%) XML
9 14 (4.05%) CSS
9 14 (4.05%) JMS
9 14 (4.05%) JSON
9 14 (4.05%) Middleware
10 12 (3.47%) LDAP
10 12 (3.47%) Node.js
10 12 (3.47%) OAuth
10 12 (3.47%) OpenID
11 11 (3.18%) SailPoint
12 8 (2.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 35 (10.12%) Cloud Native
2 16 (4.62%) Distributed Systems
3 15 (4.34%) Data Protection Act
4 13 (3.76%) SWIFT Messaging Network
5 12 (3.47%) Clustering
6 11 (3.18%) Data Centre
6 11 (3.18%) Product Ownership
7 10 (2.89%) Data Structures
8 9 (2.60%) Algorithms
8 9 (2.60%) Management Information System
9 8 (2.31%) Onboarding
9 8 (2.31%) Virtual Team
10 7 (2.02%) Distributed Computing
10 7 (2.02%) Mainframe
11 6 (1.73%) NHS
11 6 (1.73%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.45%) Greenfield Project
12 5 (1.45%) Self-Motivation
13 4 (1.16%) Legacy Code
13 4 (1.16%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 28 (8.09%) Linux
2 13 (3.76%) Windows
3 7 (2.02%) Unix
4 4 (1.16%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.87%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (0.58%) Windows Server 2019
7 1 (0.29%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.29%) Mac OS X
7 1 (0.29%) MVS
7 1 (0.29%) Solaris
7 1 (0.29%) VMS
7 1 (0.29%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 110 (31.79%) CI/CD
2 101 (29.19%) Agile
3 94 (27.17%) DevOps
4 82 (23.70%) Business Intelligence
5 80 (23.12%) Problem-Solving
6 73 (21.10%) Data Modelling
7 72 (20.81%) Analytics
8 54 (15.61%) Microservices
9 53 (15.32%) ETL
10 45 (13.01%) Data Pipeline
10 45 (13.01%) Visualisation
11 43 (12.43%) Test Automation
12 42 (12.14%) Data Analysis
13 41 (11.85%) Data Governance
14 40 (11.56%) Data Engineering
15 38 (10.98%) Containerisation
15 38 (10.98%) Stakeholder Management
16 34 (9.83%) Actionable Insight
17 33 (9.54%) Performance Tuning
18 32 (9.25%) Data Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 108 (31.21%) Python
2 84 (24.28%) Java
3 27 (7.80%) JavaScript
4 23 (6.65%) C#
5 19 (5.49%) PL/SQL
6 13 (3.76%) PHP
7 10 (2.89%) T-SQL
7 10 (2.89%) TypeScript
7 10 (2.89%) VBA
8 9 (2.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (2.31%) Bash
9 8 (2.31%) Go
9 8 (2.31%) Scala
10 7 (2.02%) Rust
11 6 (1.73%) Shell Script
12 5 (1.45%) Bicep
12 5 (1.45%) R
13 4 (1.16%) PowerShell
14 3 (0.87%) Delphi
14 3 (0.87%) ProC
Qualifications
1 50 (14.45%) Degree
2 26 (7.51%) Security Cleared
3 23 (6.65%) Computer Science Degree
4 15 (4.34%) Master's Degree
5 13 (3.76%) SC Cleared
6 11 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 6 (1.73%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.45%) AWS Certification
9 4 (1.16%) MBA
10 3 (0.87%) CEH
10 3 (0.87%) GIAC
10 3 (0.87%) GWAPT
10 3 (0.87%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.58%) ITIL Certification
11 2 (0.58%) MCP
12 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.29%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 45 (13.01%) Data Quality
2 30 (8.67%) QA
3 13 (3.76%) ISO 20022
3 13 (3.76%) PSD2
3 13 (3.76%) SEPA
4 11 (3.18%) Accessibility
5 7 (2.02%) WCAG
6 6 (1.73%) SLA
7 4 (1.16%) GDPR
7 4 (1.16%) PMO
8 3 (0.87%) Actionable Recommendations
9 1 (0.29%) HIPAA
9 1 (0.29%) HL7
9 1 (0.29%) PERC
9 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 65 (18.79%) Docker
2 4 (1.16%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.29%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.29%) KVM
4 1 (0.29%) NFS
4 1 (0.29%) RACF
4 1 (0.29%) SRDF
4 1 (0.29%) Veritas Cluster Server
4 1 (0.29%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.29%) vSphere
4 1 (0.29%) Xen
Systems Management
1 55 (15.90%) Kubernetes
2 31 (8.96%) Terraform
3 20 (5.78%) Grafana
4 17 (4.91%) Prometheus
5 14 (4.05%) Ansible
6 7 (2.02%) Kiali
7 5 (1.45%) Single Sign-On
8 4 (1.16%) SCCM
9 2 (0.58%) Control-M
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle Identity Manager
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle RMAN
10 1 (0.29%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.29%) Puppet
Vendors
1 59 (17.05%) Microsoft
2 43 (12.43%) Oracle
3 28 (8.09%) Databricks
3 28 (8.09%) Splunk
4 20 (5.78%) Google
4 20 (5.78%) ServiceNow
5 9 (2.60%) Advent
6 7 (2.02%) MuleSoft
7 6 (1.73%) AppDynamics
7 6 (1.73%) Dynatrace
8 5 (1.45%) IBM
8 5 (1.45%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.16%) Cognos
9 4 (1.16%) F5
9 4 (1.16%) SAP
10 3 (0.87%) Citrix
10 3 (0.87%) Imperva
10 3 (0.87%) Red Hat
10 3 (0.87%) VMware
11 2 (0.58%) Capita