SQL Contract Job Trends in the North West

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North West requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 10 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 25 20
Rank change year-on-year +5 -5 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 302 171 172
As % of all contract jobs in the North West 7.59% 7.78% 7.09%
As % of the Programming Languages category 33.78% 29.79% 32.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 186 140 111
10th Percentile £329 £313 £341
25th Percentile £418 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £433 £450
Median % change year-on-year +15.61% -3.89% -8.86%
75th Percentile £575 £502 £525
90th Percentile £638 £597 £580
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 1 3
10th Percentile £28.50 - £41.80
25th Percentile £29.96 £22.81 £50.50
Median hourly rate £48.40 £24.62 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +96.59% -62.12% +50.80%
75th Percentile £70.67 £26.43 -
90th Percentile £76.10 - -
England median hourly rate £46.80 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -6.40% +25.00% -11.11%

All Programming Languages
North West

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 West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 894 574 528
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 22.48% 26.10% 21.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 563 438 328
10th Percentile £358 £313 £325
25th Percentile £419 £360 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £425 £450
Median % change year-on-year +17.65% -5.56% -10.00%
75th Percentile £588 £500 £548
90th Percentile £650 £612 £611
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 10 19
10th Percentile £29.96 £29.28 £37.55
25th Percentile £55.00 £47.89 £46.18
Median hourly rate £72.00 £68.25 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.49% +39.29% +6.11%
75th Percentile £77.00 £85.63 £73.00
90th Percentile £87.38 £95.23 £90.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% -

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West.

SQL job vacancy trend in the North West

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the North West over the 6 months to 10 October 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the North West

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North West

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the North West over the 6 months to 10 October 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the North West

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the North West

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 West region over the 6 months to 10 October 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
Manchester +4 204 £475 +11.76% 409
Cheshire +1 53 £516 +20.06% 59
Cumbria - 20 £520 - 3
Lancashire -21 14 £525 +16.67% 49
Merseyside -16 9 £575 +17.95% 40
SQL
England

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West 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 18 (5.96%) Confluence
2 11 (3.64%) SAS
3 6 (1.99%) Apache
3 6 (1.99%) Camunda
4 5 (1.66%) Apache Airflow
4 5 (1.66%) Apache Spark
4 5 (1.66%) SharePoint
5 2 (0.66%) Oracle Workflow
6 1 (0.33%) Adobe Experience Manager
6 1 (0.33%) Apache Pulsar
6 1 (0.33%) IIS
6 1 (0.33%) Jupyter
6 1 (0.33%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (4.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 1 (0.33%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 7 (2.32%) Oracle Payables
2 5 (1.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.99%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.66%) Elite 3E
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle Cash Management
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.66%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.66%) Remedy ITSM
5 1 (0.33%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.33%) FIS Private Capital Suite
5 1 (0.33%) IBM Planning Analytics
5 1 (0.33%) Infor M3
5 1 (0.33%) Sage 200
5 1 (0.33%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 87 (28.81%) Azure
2 63 (20.86%) Power Platform
3 60 (19.87%) AWS
4 26 (8.61%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (7.28%) GCP
6 20 (6.62%) Snowflake
7 18 (5.96%) Serverless
8 17 (5.63%) SaaS
9 15 (4.97%) dbt
10 14 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (4.30%) Power Automate
12 12 (3.97%) PowerApps
13 11 (3.64%) Azure Data Factory
13 11 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
13 11 (3.64%) GitHub
14 9 (2.98%) Amazon S3
14 9 (2.98%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (2.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 8 (2.65%) Azure Machine Learning
16 7 (2.32%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 11 (3.64%) SSL
2 7 (2.32%) Firewall
3 5 (1.66%) Network Security
4 3 (0.99%) DHCP
4 3 (0.99%) DNS
4 3 (0.99%) LAN
5 2 (0.66%) Internet
5 2 (0.66%) PABX
5 2 (0.66%) VLAN
5 2 (0.66%) VoIP
5 2 (0.66%) VPN
6 1 (0.33%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.33%) WAN
6 1 (0.33%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 86 (28.48%) SQL Server
2 58 (19.21%) Power BI
3 44 (14.57%) Data Warehouse
4 33 (10.93%) MySQL
5 28 (9.27%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 25 (8.28%) PostgreSQL
7 19 (6.29%) Metadata
8 18 (5.96%) Data Lake
8 18 (5.96%) NoSQL
8 18 (5.96%) Relational Database
9 15 (4.97%) BigQuery
10 13 (4.30%) Amazon Redshift
10 13 (4.30%) Oracle Database
10 13 (4.30%) Tableau
11 12 (3.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 9 (2.98%) Looker
12 9 (2.98%) MongoDB
13 8 (2.65%) DynamoDB
14 7 (2.32%) Snowflake Schema
14 7 (2.32%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 37 (12.25%) Git
2 21 (6.95%) Jenkins
3 19 (6.29%) GitLab
4 16 (5.30%) JIRA
5 9 (2.98%) JUnit
5 9 (2.98%) Mockito
6 8 (2.65%) Claude Code
7 7 (2.32%) REST Assured
8 5 (1.66%) Gradle
8 5 (1.66%) Maven
8 5 (1.66%) Postman
8 5 (1.66%) SonarQube
8 5 (1.66%) Sonatype Nexus
9 4 (1.32%) Bitbucket Server
9 4 (1.32%) ClearCase
10 3 (0.99%) Selenium
10 3 (0.99%) Toad
11 2 (0.66%) Eclipse
11 2 (0.66%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 2 (0.66%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 92 (30.46%) Social Skills
2 78 (25.83%) Finance
3 51 (16.89%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (11.92%) Banking
5 18 (5.96%) Manufacturing
5 18 (5.96%) Public Sector
6 10 (3.31%) Marketing
7 9 (2.98%) Retail
8 8 (2.65%) Military
9 6 (1.99%) Law
10 4 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.99%) Games
11 3 (0.99%) General Ledger
11 3 (0.99%) Investment Banking
11 3 (0.99%) Organisational Skills
11 3 (0.99%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
12 1 (0.33%) Billing
12 1 (0.33%) Legal
12 1 (0.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 58 (19.21%) DBA
2 43 (14.24%) Developer
3 41 (13.58%) SQL DBA
4 37 (12.25%) Data Engineer
5 34 (11.26%) Senior
6 33 (10.93%) Analyst
7 31 (10.26%) Administrator
8 16 (5.30%) Data Analyst
8 16 (5.30%) Lead
9 15 (4.97%) Oracle DBA
9 15 (4.97%) Software Engineer
10 13 (4.30%) Data Manager
11 12 (3.97%) Consultant
12 11 (3.64%) Java Engineer
12 11 (3.64%) Senior Data Engineer
13 10 (3.31%) Architect
13 10 (3.31%) SC Cleared DBA
14 9 (2.98%) Business Analyst
14 9 (2.98%) Java Software Engineer
15 8 (2.65%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (8.61%) Kafka
2 24 (7.95%) PySpark
3 22 (7.28%) Terraform
4 19 (6.29%) REST
5 18 (5.96%) Spring Boot
6 14 (4.64%) Spring
7 11 (3.64%) .NET
7 11 (3.64%) JSON
7 11 (3.64%) React
8 8 (2.65%) HTML
9 7 (2.32%) CSS
9 7 (2.32%) RESTful
9 7 (2.32%) XML
10 6 (1.99%) JPA
10 6 (1.99%) Pandas
10 6 (1.99%) WPF
11 5 (1.66%) Hibernate
11 5 (1.66%) LangChain
11 5 (1.66%) Playwright
11 5 (1.66%) Redux
Miscellaneous
1 20 (6.62%) Data Structures
2 18 (5.96%) Replication
3 15 (4.97%) AI Agents
3 15 (4.97%) Cloud Native
3 15 (4.97%) Clustering
4 11 (3.64%) Data Protection Act
5 10 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (2.98%) Onboarding
6 9 (2.98%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.65%) Algorithms
8 7 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
9 6 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.32%) Credit Risk
10 4 (1.32%) Low-Code
10 4 (1.32%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 3 (0.99%) Analytical Mindset
11 3 (0.99%) Distributed Computing
11 3 (0.99%) FMCG
11 3 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
11 3 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 17 (5.63%) Windows
2 16 (5.30%) Solaris
2 16 (5.30%) Unix
3 14 (4.64%) Windows Server
4 12 (3.97%) Linux
5 2 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.33%) AIX
6 1 (0.33%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.33%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (28.81%) Data Modelling
2 73 (24.17%) Analytics
3 72 (23.84%) Business Intelligence
4 71 (23.51%) Agile
5 69 (22.85%) CI/CD
6 68 (22.52%) AI
7 66 (21.85%) ETL
8 61 (20.20%) DevOps
9 52 (17.22%) Data Pipeline
10 47 (15.56%) Stakeholder Management
11 45 (14.90%) Performance Tuning
12 44 (14.57%) Data Engineering
12 44 (14.57%) Migration
12 44 (14.57%) Problem-Solving
13 43 (14.24%) Validation
14 36 (11.92%) Test Automation
15 32 (10.60%) Data Analysis
16 31 (10.26%) Software Engineering
17 26 (8.61%) Data Governance
17 26 (8.61%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 87 (28.81%) Python
2 34 (11.26%) PowerShell
3 33 (10.93%) Java
4 28 (9.27%) T-SQL
5 20 (6.62%) C#
6 19 (6.29%) JavaScript
7 9 (2.98%) TypeScript
8 8 (2.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (2.65%) PL/SQL
8 8 (2.65%) Shell Script
9 5 (1.66%) Bash
9 5 (1.66%) Kusto Query Language
9 5 (1.66%) Search Processing Language
10 4 (1.32%) VB
10 4 (1.32%) VB6
11 3 (0.99%) Scala
12 2 (0.66%) Go
12 2 (0.66%) PROC SQL
12 2 (0.66%) R
12 2 (0.66%) VBA
Qualifications
1 70 (23.18%) Security Cleared
2 63 (20.86%) SC Cleared
3 34 (11.26%) Degree
4 26 (8.61%) Microsoft Certification
5 17 (5.63%) BPSS Clearance
6 11 (3.64%) Azure Certification
7 9 (2.98%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.98%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
8 7 (2.32%) CISSP
9 5 (1.66%) GCFA
9 5 (1.66%) GCIH
10 3 (0.99%) DV Cleared
10 3 (0.99%) Oracle Certification
11 2 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.66%) OCP
12 1 (0.33%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
12 1 (0.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
12 1 (0.33%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
12 1 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.33%) Numerate Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (23.18%) Data Quality
2 16 (5.30%) QA
3 10 (3.31%) GDPR
4 6 (1.99%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 5 (1.66%) PCI DSS
6 3 (0.99%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.99%) SEPA
7 2 (0.66%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.66%) GRC
7 2 (0.66%) NIST
8 1 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 1 (0.33%) COBIT
8 1 (0.33%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.33%) SLA
8 1 (0.33%) Solvency II
System Software
1 19 (6.29%) Docker
2 10 (3.31%) Oracle RAC
2 10 (3.31%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (0.99%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 21 (6.95%) Kubernetes
2 19 (6.29%) Ansible
3 11 (3.64%) SCOM
4 10 (3.31%) Data Guard
5 5 (1.66%) CASB
5 5 (1.66%) Progress Chef
6 3 (0.99%) Grafana
7 2 (0.66%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
7 2 (0.66%) Failover Clustering
7 2 (0.66%) Nagios
7 2 (0.66%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 2 (0.66%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.33%) AirWatch
8 1 (0.33%) BladeLogic
8 1 (0.33%) SCCM
Vendors
1 76 (25.17%) Microsoft
2 54 (17.88%) Oracle
3 31 (10.26%) Databricks
4 17 (5.63%) ServiceNow
5 14 (4.64%) IBM
6 11 (3.64%) Google
6 11 (3.64%) Informatica
6 11 (3.64%) Splunk
6 11 (3.64%) Teradata
7 8 (2.65%) OpenAI
7 8 (2.65%) SAP
8 6 (1.99%) Salesforce
9 5 (1.66%) Cribl.io
9 5 (1.66%) Veracode
10 4 (1.32%) Sybase
10 4 (1.32%) UiPath
11 3 (0.99%) Alteryx
11 3 (0.99%) Guidewire
11 3 (0.99%) Remedy
12 2 (0.66%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud