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

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 16 19
Rank change year-on-year -10 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL 439 303 364
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.58% 9.51% 7.49%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.13% 34.28% 29.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 305 220 245
10th Percentile £338 £350 £281
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year -3.16% +1.06% -6.00%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £550
90th Percentile £650 £646 £610
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 4 11
10th Percentile £37.35 £27.82 £37.63
25th Percentile £56.06 £30.17 £39.44
Median hourly rate £66.75 £32.96 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +102.52% -22.45% -5.72%
75th Percentile £76.07 £43.97 £44.97
90th Percentile £89.15 £61.09 £46.18
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -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 1,618 884 1,231
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.95% 27.75% 25.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,101 632 878
10th Percentile £347 £350 £313
25th Percentile £400 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year - +1.06% -10.48%
75th Percentile £544 £550 £550
90th Percentile £617 £638 £625
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 82 15 58
10th Percentile £42.20 £31.59 £38.16
25th Percentile £52.50 £53.38 £45.88
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £47.75
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +57.07% -1.04%
75th Percentile £74.26 £92.70 £63.75
90th Percentile £85.55 £100.62 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -4.00%

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 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 27 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 27 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 +5 252 £449 -5.58% 248
Yorkshire -22 166 £500 - 149
North East -3 33 £475 +3.26% 66
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 25 (5.69%) Apache Spark
2 24 (5.47%) Apache Airflow
3 19 (4.33%) Apache
3 19 (4.33%) Confluence
4 7 (1.59%) Apache Geronimo
4 7 (1.59%) Apache ServiceMix
4 7 (1.59%) Red Hat Fuse
4 7 (1.59%) Tomcat
4 7 (1.59%) WebSphere
5 6 (1.37%) SAS
5 6 (1.37%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.46%) IIS
7 1 (0.23%) Jupyter
7 1 (0.23%) Mule
7 1 (0.23%) Mule ESB
7 1 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 28 (6.38%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.91%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.46%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.23%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.23%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.82%) Advent Geneva
2 3 (0.68%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.46%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.46%) Elite 3E
3 2 (0.46%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.46%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.46%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.23%) Maximo
4 1 (0.23%) Remedy ITSM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP CRM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 135 (30.75%) Azure
2 127 (28.93%) AWS
3 73 (16.63%) Power Platform
4 47 (10.71%) GCP
5 28 (6.38%) Azure Data Factory
6 27 (6.15%) GitHub
7 26 (5.92%) Serverless
8 21 (4.78%) dbt
9 18 (4.10%) Azure DevOps
10 17 (3.87%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 17 (3.87%) Snowflake
11 15 (3.42%) GitHub Actions
12 11 (2.51%) IaaS
12 11 (2.51%) SaaS
13 10 (2.28%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (2.28%) PaaS
14 9 (2.05%) Amazon EKS
15 7 (1.59%) Amazon ECS
15 7 (1.59%) AWS CloudFormation
16 6 (1.37%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.87%) Firewall
2 10 (2.28%) DNS
3 7 (1.59%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.37%) SSL
5 5 (1.14%) IPsec
5 5 (1.14%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.46%) VPN
7 1 (0.23%) DHCP
7 1 (0.23%) HTTP
7 1 (0.23%) HTTPS
7 1 (0.23%) Internet
7 1 (0.23%) LAN
7 1 (0.23%) WAN
7 1 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 76 (17.31%) SQL Server
2 66 (15.03%) Power BI
3 51 (11.62%) NoSQL
4 50 (11.39%) Data Warehouse
5 38 (8.66%) PostgreSQL
6 26 (5.92%) Data Lake
6 26 (5.92%) Relational Database
7 25 (5.69%) MySQL
8 22 (5.01%) Tableau
9 20 (4.56%) MongoDB
10 19 (4.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 18 (4.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 17 (3.87%) Azure SQL Database
13 16 (3.64%) DB2
13 16 (3.64%) Hadoop
13 16 (3.64%) Metadata
14 15 (3.42%) Oracle Database
15 14 (3.19%) Delta Lake
15 14 (3.19%) Power Query
15 14 (3.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 49 (11.16%) Git
2 46 (10.48%) JIRA
3 38 (8.66%) GitLab
4 36 (8.20%) Jenkins
5 14 (3.19%) Cucumber
5 14 (3.19%) REST Assured
5 14 (3.19%) Selenium
6 10 (2.28%) Postman
7 8 (1.82%) Jaeger
8 6 (1.37%) Liquibase
8 6 (1.37%) Mocha
8 6 (1.37%) TestRail
9 5 (1.14%) Flyway
10 4 (0.91%) ERwin
11 3 (0.68%) CircleCI
12 2 (0.46%) Cypress.io
12 2 (0.46%) Oracle Forms
12 2 (0.46%) PyCharm
12 2 (0.46%) SoapUI
12 2 (0.46%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 134 (30.52%) Social Skills
2 106 (24.15%) Finance
3 88 (20.05%) Analytical Skills
4 54 (12.30%) Banking
5 41 (9.34%) Public Sector
6 14 (3.19%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.28%) Financial Institution
7 10 (2.28%) Legal
8 9 (2.05%) Law
9 7 (1.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 7 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
9 7 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.59%) Retail
10 4 (0.91%) Influencing Skills
10 4 (0.91%) Local Government
10 4 (0.91%) Manufacturing
10 4 (0.91%) Marketing
10 4 (0.91%) Military
11 3 (0.68%) Health Technology
12 2 (0.46%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 95 (21.64%) Developer
2 82 (18.68%) Analyst
3 65 (14.81%) Data Engineer
4 47 (10.71%) Lead
4 47 (10.71%) Senior
5 25 (5.69%) Data Analyst
6 24 (5.47%) DBA
7 19 (4.33%) Architect
8 18 (4.10%) Business Analyst
9 16 (3.64%) Software Engineer
10 14 (3.19%) Consultant
11 13 (2.96%) Java Developer
11 13 (2.96%) Test Engineer
12 12 (2.73%) SQL DBA
13 11 (2.51%) .NET Developer
13 11 (2.51%) AWS Engineer
13 11 (2.51%) Azure Engineer
13 11 (2.51%) Senior Developer
14 10 (2.28%) DevOps Engineer
14 10 (2.28%) Technical Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (10.25%) .NET
1 45 (10.25%) REST
2 30 (6.83%) Kafka
3 29 (6.61%) Spring Boot
3 29 (6.61%) XML
4 24 (5.47%) RESTful
4 24 (5.47%) Spring
5 20 (4.56%) Middleware
6 17 (3.87%) OpenID
7 16 (3.64%) HTML
7 16 (3.64%) JSON
7 16 (3.64%) PySpark
7 16 (3.64%) React
8 15 (3.42%) OAuth
9 13 (2.96%) CSS
10 12 (2.73%) LDAP
10 12 (2.73%) SailPoint
11 11 (2.51%) Node.js
11 11 (2.51%) SOAP
12 10 (2.28%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.97%) Cloud Native
2 25 (5.69%) Product Ownership
3 20 (4.56%) Clustering
4 16 (3.64%) Data Protection Act
4 16 (3.64%) Distributed Systems
5 14 (3.19%) Management Information System
6 12 (2.73%) Data Structures
6 12 (2.73%) Replication
7 11 (2.51%) Linux Command Line
8 9 (2.05%) Onboarding
8 9 (2.05%) Virtual Team
9 8 (1.82%) Legacy Systems
9 8 (1.82%) NHS
10 7 (1.59%) Security Posture
10 7 (1.59%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 6 (1.37%) Public Cloud
12 5 (1.14%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
12 5 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
13 4 (0.91%) Analytical Mindset
13 4 (0.91%) Cloud Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 40 (9.11%) Linux
2 21 (4.78%) Windows
3 13 (2.96%) Unix
4 11 (2.51%) Windows Server
5 6 (1.37%) AIX
6 3 (0.68%) Oracle Linux
6 3 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 2 (0.46%) Windows Server 2016
7 2 (0.46%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.23%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.23%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (31.44%) CI/CD
2 119 (27.11%) Agile
3 106 (24.15%) Problem-Solving
4 105 (23.92%) DevOps
5 97 (22.10%) Data Modelling
6 91 (20.73%) Analytics
7 89 (20.27%) ETL
8 85 (19.36%) Business Intelligence
9 67 (15.26%) Data Pipeline
10 59 (13.44%) Microservices
11 53 (12.07%) Data Engineering
12 51 (11.62%) Performance Tuning
13 50 (11.39%) Test Automation
14 49 (11.16%) Data Governance
15 48 (10.93%) Data Analysis
16 39 (8.88%) Stakeholder Management
17 38 (8.66%) Actionable Insight
18 34 (7.74%) Migration
18 34 (7.74%) Visualisation
19 33 (7.52%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 132 (30.07%) Python
2 75 (17.08%) Java
3 31 (7.06%) C#
4 29 (6.61%) JavaScript
5 23 (5.24%) PowerShell
6 21 (4.78%) PL/SQL
7 19 (4.33%) T-SQL
8 16 (3.64%) Bash
8 16 (3.64%) TypeScript
9 12 (2.73%) PHP
10 11 (2.51%) VBA
11 9 (2.05%) Shell Script
12 8 (1.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 8 (1.82%) Go
12 8 (1.82%) Rust
13 6 (1.37%) R
14 4 (0.91%) ProC
14 4 (0.91%) Scala
15 3 (0.68%) C++
15 3 (0.68%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 55 (12.53%) Security Cleared
2 52 (11.85%) Degree
3 37 (8.43%) SC Cleared
4 20 (4.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 14 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
6 13 (2.96%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.91%) MBA
8 3 (0.68%) AWS Certification
8 3 (0.68%) Azure Certification
8 3 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
9 2 (0.46%) CISSP
9 2 (0.46%) ISTQB
10 1 (0.23%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 1 (0.23%) CEH
10 1 (0.23%) CISM
10 1 (0.23%) DBS Check
10 1 (0.23%) DV Cleared
10 1 (0.23%) GIAC
10 1 (0.23%) GWAPT
10 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (12.76%) Data Quality
2 32 (7.29%) QA
3 19 (4.33%) GDPR
4 8 (1.82%) Accessibility
5 7 (1.59%) HIPAA
5 7 (1.59%) ISO 20022
5 7 (1.59%) PSD2
5 7 (1.59%) SEPA
5 7 (1.59%) SLA
5 7 (1.59%) WCAG
6 6 (1.37%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (1.37%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (1.14%) PMO
8 3 (0.68%) GRC
9 2 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.46%) NIST
9 2 (0.46%) Solvency II
10 1 (0.23%) HL7
10 1 (0.23%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.23%) PERC
System Software
1 66 (15.03%) Docker
2 9 (2.05%) Virtual Machines
3 7 (1.59%) Active Directory
4 6 (1.37%) Hyper-V
4 6 (1.37%) KVM
5 5 (1.14%) RACF
6 2 (0.46%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.23%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 56 (12.76%) Kubernetes
2 29 (6.61%) Terraform
3 21 (4.78%) Grafana
4 18 (4.10%) Prometheus
5 16 (3.64%) Ansible
6 11 (2.51%) Oracle RMAN
7 8 (1.82%) Kiali
7 8 (1.82%) Single Sign-On
8 6 (1.37%) IBM BigFix
8 6 (1.37%) vCenter Server
9 5 (1.14%) SCCM
10 3 (0.68%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.68%) Foglight
11 1 (0.23%) AirWatch
11 1 (0.23%) HAProxy
11 1 (0.23%) Kubeflow
11 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.23%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 69 (15.72%) Microsoft
2 60 (13.67%) Oracle
3 40 (9.11%) Databricks
4 29 (6.61%) Splunk
5 28 (6.38%) ServiceNow
6 20 (4.56%) Google
7 9 (2.05%) IBM
8 8 (1.82%) Advent
8 8 (1.82%) SAP
9 7 (1.59%) SolarWinds
9 7 (1.59%) TIBCO
10 6 (1.37%) MuleSoft
10 6 (1.37%) RedGate
10 6 (1.37%) Salesforce
11 5 (1.14%) Varonis
12 3 (0.68%) AppDynamics
12 3 (0.68%) Citrix
12 3 (0.68%) CyberArk
12 3 (0.68%) Dynatrace
12 3 (0.68%) Informatica