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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 26 16 17
Rank change year-on-year -10 +1 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 455 309 373
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 7.60% 9.64% 7.87%
As % of the Programming Languages category 27.73% 34.30% 31.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 306 224 256
10th Percentile £328 £350 £285
25th Percentile £400 £400 £384
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% - -3.55%
75th Percentile £550 £546 £553
90th Percentile £638 £643 £614
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 3 11
10th Percentile £38.20 £31.53 £37.63
25th Percentile £59.75 £31.62 £39.44
Median hourly rate £69.00 £33.11 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +108.40% -22.09% +4.71%
75th Percentile £81.50 £53.48 £44.97
90th Percentile £89.00 £64.89 £46.18
England median hourly rate £51.25 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +2.49% +17.65% -14.63%

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 1,641 901 1,191
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 27.41% 28.10% 25.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,117 654 855
10th Percentile £347 £350 £316
25th Percentile £402 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £470
Median % change year-on-year - +1.06% -10.48%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £550
90th Percentile £621 £638 £625
England median daily rate £501 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.42% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 15 48
10th Percentile £41.94 £35.66 £37.63
25th Percentile £52.50 £58.63 £44.72
Median hourly rate £65.00 £75.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -13.33% +57.89% +1.49%
75th Percentile £74.26 £92.70 £65.00
90th Percentile £85.00 £100.62 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.05
% change year-on-year +4.00% +2.38% -2.32%

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 16 April 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 16 April 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 16 April 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 -2 258 £450 -5.26% 236
Yorkshire -20 178 £465 -2.11% 124
North East -13 30 £475 +4.40% 59
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 24 (5.27%) Apache Spark
2 20 (4.40%) Apache Airflow
2 20 (4.40%) Confluence
3 18 (3.96%) Apache
4 7 (1.54%) Apache Geronimo
4 7 (1.54%) Apache ServiceMix
4 7 (1.54%) Red Hat Fuse
4 7 (1.54%) Tomcat
4 7 (1.54%) WebSphere
5 6 (1.32%) SAS
5 6 (1.32%) SharePoint
6 3 (0.66%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.44%) IIS
7 2 (0.44%) Mule
7 2 (0.44%) Mule ESB
8 1 (0.22%) JBoss
8 1 (0.22%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.22%) WebLogic
Applications
1 29 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Office
2 4 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.22%) SPSS
Business Applications
1 8 (1.76%) Advent Geneva
1 8 (1.76%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.66%) Elite 3E
2 3 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.44%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.44%) NEC Housing
3 2 (0.44%) Oracle Applications
3 2 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (0.44%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.22%) Maximo
4 1 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 1 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
4 1 (0.22%) SAP CRM
Cloud Services
1 135 (29.67%) Azure
2 119 (26.15%) AWS
3 77 (16.92%) Power Platform
4 45 (9.89%) GCP
5 35 (7.69%) Azure Data Factory
6 23 (5.05%) Serverless
7 22 (4.84%) GitHub
8 20 (4.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 19 (4.18%) Azure DevOps
9 19 (4.18%) dbt
10 15 (3.30%) GitHub Actions
10 15 (3.30%) Snowflake
11 11 (2.42%) IaaS
12 10 (2.20%) PaaS
12 10 (2.20%) SaaS
13 9 (1.98%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (1.76%) Amazon EKS
14 8 (1.76%) AWS CloudFormation
15 7 (1.54%) Dynamics 365
15 7 (1.54%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 17 (3.74%) Firewall
2 10 (2.20%) DNS
3 7 (1.54%) TCP/IP
4 6 (1.32%) SSL
5 5 (1.10%) IPsec
5 5 (1.10%) Kerberos
6 2 (0.44%) 3GPP
6 2 (0.44%) RTP
6 2 (0.44%) VPN
6 2 (0.44%) Wireshark
7 1 (0.22%) DHCP
7 1 (0.22%) Internet
7 1 (0.22%) LAN
7 1 (0.22%) WAN
7 1 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 88 (19.34%) SQL Server
2 70 (15.38%) Power BI
3 58 (12.75%) Data Warehouse
4 45 (9.89%) NoSQL
5 36 (7.91%) PostgreSQL
6 24 (5.27%) MySQL
7 23 (5.05%) Data Lake
7 23 (5.05%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 23 (5.05%) Tableau
8 22 (4.84%) Relational Database
8 22 (4.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 19 (4.18%) Azure SQL Database
9 19 (4.18%) Metadata
10 18 (3.96%) MongoDB
11 15 (3.30%) DB2
11 15 (3.30%) Hadoop
11 15 (3.30%) Oracle Database
11 15 (3.30%) Snowflake Schema
12 14 (3.08%) Power Query
13 12 (2.64%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 49 (10.77%) Git
2 47 (10.33%) JIRA
3 32 (7.03%) Jenkins
4 31 (6.81%) GitLab
5 16 (3.52%) Cucumber
6 15 (3.30%) REST Assured
6 15 (3.30%) Selenium
7 11 (2.42%) Postman
8 9 (1.98%) Jaeger
9 6 (1.32%) Oracle Forms
9 6 (1.32%) TestRail
10 5 (1.10%) Flyway
10 5 (1.10%) Liquibase
11 4 (0.88%) ERwin
12 3 (0.66%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.66%) JUnit
12 3 (0.66%) SoapUI
13 2 (0.44%) TeamCity
14 1 (0.22%) Cypress.io
14 1 (0.22%) TestNG
General
1 135 (29.67%) Social Skills
2 111 (24.40%) Finance
3 92 (20.22%) Analytical Skills
4 53 (11.65%) Banking
5 42 (9.23%) Public Sector
6 13 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
7 10 (2.20%) Law
7 10 (2.20%) Legal
8 9 (1.98%) Financial Institution
9 7 (1.54%) Presentation Skills
9 7 (1.54%) Retail
10 6 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 6 (1.32%) Local Government
11 5 (1.10%) Marketing
11 5 (1.10%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.88%) Influencing Skills
12 4 (0.88%) Manufacturing
12 4 (0.88%) Military
13 3 (0.66%) Health Technology
13 3 (0.66%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 89 (19.56%) Analyst
1 89 (19.56%) Developer
2 67 (14.73%) Data Engineer
3 46 (10.11%) Lead
3 46 (10.11%) Senior
4 26 (5.71%) Data Analyst
5 25 (5.49%) DBA
6 21 (4.62%) Architect
7 20 (4.40%) Consultant
8 19 (4.18%) Business Analyst
9 16 (3.52%) Java Developer
10 15 (3.30%) Software Engineer
11 14 (3.08%) Test Engineer
12 13 (2.86%) SQL DBA
13 12 (2.64%) Technical Analyst
14 11 (2.42%) .NET Developer
14 11 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
14 11 (2.42%) SQL Developer
14 11 (2.42%) Test Automation Engineer
15 10 (2.20%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (9.89%) .NET
2 43 (9.45%) REST
3 30 (6.59%) Spring Boot
3 30 (6.59%) XML
4 28 (6.15%) Kafka
5 24 (5.27%) RESTful
6 23 (5.05%) Spring
7 20 (4.40%) Middleware
8 17 (3.74%) OpenID
8 17 (3.74%) PySpark
9 16 (3.52%) JSON
10 15 (3.30%) OAuth
11 13 (2.86%) React
12 12 (2.64%) LDAP
12 12 (2.64%) SailPoint
12 12 (2.64%) SOAP
13 11 (2.42%) HTML
14 9 (1.98%) OpenTelemetry
14 9 (1.98%) Pandas
15 8 (1.76%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.03%) Cloud Native
2 27 (5.93%) Product Ownership
3 20 (4.40%) Clustering
4 17 (3.74%) Data Protection Act
4 17 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
5 15 (3.30%) Data Structures
6 14 (3.08%) Management Information System
6 14 (3.08%) NHS
7 13 (2.86%) Replication
8 11 (2.42%) Linux Command Line
9 10 (2.20%) Legacy Systems
10 9 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 7 (1.54%) Onboarding
11 7 (1.54%) SWIFT Messaging Network
12 6 (1.32%) Security Posture
13 5 (1.10%) Distributed Denial-of-Service
14 4 (0.88%) Data Centre
14 4 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
14 4 (0.88%) IoT
14 4 (0.88%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 42 (9.23%) Linux
2 24 (5.27%) Windows
3 13 (2.86%) Unix
3 13 (2.86%) Windows Server
4 6 (1.32%) AIX
5 3 (0.66%) Oracle Linux
5 3 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
6 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.22%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
7 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 141 (30.99%) CI/CD
2 120 (26.37%) Agile
3 109 (23.96%) Problem-Solving
4 102 (22.42%) DevOps
5 101 (22.20%) Analytics
6 100 (21.98%) Data Modelling
7 92 (20.22%) ETL
8 87 (19.12%) Business Intelligence
9 67 (14.73%) Data Pipeline
10 54 (11.87%) Microservices
10 54 (11.87%) Performance Tuning
11 53 (11.65%) Data Engineering
12 48 (10.55%) Data Governance
12 48 (10.55%) Test Automation
13 46 (10.11%) Data Analysis
13 46 (10.11%) Migration
14 40 (8.79%) Stakeholder Management
15 37 (8.13%) Actionable Insight
16 34 (7.47%) AI
17 32 (7.03%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 134 (29.45%) Python
2 74 (16.26%) Java
3 34 (7.47%) C#
4 26 (5.71%) PL/SQL
4 26 (5.71%) PowerShell
4 26 (5.71%) T-SQL
5 24 (5.27%) JavaScript
6 16 (3.52%) Bash
7 12 (2.64%) PHP
7 12 (2.64%) TypeScript
8 11 (2.42%) VBA
9 9 (1.98%) Shell Script
10 8 (1.76%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 8 (1.76%) Rust
11 7 (1.54%) Go
11 7 (1.54%) R
12 4 (0.88%) ProC
12 4 (0.88%) Scala
13 3 (0.66%) C++
13 3 (0.66%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 55 (12.09%) Degree
1 55 (12.09%) Security Cleared
2 40 (8.79%) SC Cleared
3 20 (4.40%) Computer Science Degree
4 14 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
5 12 (2.64%) Master's Degree
6 4 (0.88%) Azure Certification
6 4 (0.88%) MBA
7 3 (0.66%) AWS Certification
7 3 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
8 2 (0.44%) CISSP
8 2 (0.44%) DV Cleared
8 2 (0.44%) ISTQB
8 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
9 1 (0.22%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.22%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 1 (0.22%) CISM
9 1 (0.22%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.22%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (15.16%) Data Quality
2 33 (7.25%) QA
3 20 (4.40%) GDPR
4 8 (1.76%) SLA
5 7 (1.54%) HIPAA
5 7 (1.54%) ISO 20022
5 7 (1.54%) PMO
6 6 (1.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 6 (1.32%) PSD2
6 6 (1.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 6 (1.32%) SEPA
7 4 (0.88%) GRC
8 3 (0.66%) Accessibility
9 2 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
9 2 (0.44%) NIST
9 2 (0.44%) Solvency II
9 2 (0.44%) WCAG
10 1 (0.22%) HL7
10 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 1 (0.22%) PERC
System Software
1 65 (14.29%) Docker
2 9 (1.98%) Virtual Machines
3 8 (1.76%) Hyper-V
3 8 (1.76%) KVM
4 6 (1.32%) Active Directory
5 5 (1.10%) RACF
6 2 (0.44%) Oracle RAC
6 2 (0.44%) VMware Infrastructure
7 1 (0.22%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 58 (12.75%) Kubernetes
2 27 (5.93%) Terraform
3 20 (4.40%) Grafana
4 17 (3.74%) Prometheus
5 13 (2.86%) Ansible
6 11 (2.42%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (1.98%) Kiali
8 8 (1.76%) Single Sign-On
9 6 (1.32%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (1.32%) vCenter Server
10 5 (1.10%) SCCM
11 3 (0.66%) Data Guard
11 3 (0.66%) Foglight
12 1 (0.22%) AirWatch
12 1 (0.22%) HAProxy
12 1 (0.22%) Kubeflow
12 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.22%) Oracle Identity Manager
Vendors
1 76 (16.70%) Microsoft
2 64 (14.07%) Oracle
3 38 (8.35%) Databricks
4 34 (7.47%) Splunk
5 29 (6.37%) ServiceNow
6 19 (4.18%) Google
7 10 (2.20%) SAP
8 9 (1.98%) IBM
9 8 (1.76%) Advent
10 7 (1.54%) SolarWinds
10 7 (1.54%) TIBCO
11 6 (1.32%) MuleSoft
11 6 (1.32%) RedGate
11 6 (1.32%) Salesforce
12 5 (1.10%) Varonis
13 4 (0.88%) Alteryx
13 4 (0.88%) AppDynamics
14 3 (0.66%) Atlassian
14 3 (0.66%) CyberArk
14 3 (0.66%) Dynatrace