SQL Contract Job Trends

SQL (Structured Query Language)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,950 3,654 4,340
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.65% 11.94% 10.05%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.83% 35.37% 32.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,265 2,550 3,117
10th Percentile £350 £353 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £593 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £744
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 72 60
10th Percentile £26.35 £23.05 £22.52
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.42 £29.06
Median hourly rate £44.75 £41.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.42% -1.98% -15.00%
75th Percentile £67.75 £53.75 £52.37
90th Percentile £82.33 £67.35 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.25
% change year-on-year -11.00% +24.22% -15.67%

All Programming Languages
UK

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.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 13,814 10,330 13,186
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.92% 33.76% 30.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,966 6,970 9,253
10th Percentile £359 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% -2.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 546 249 540
10th Percentile £34.07 £26.21 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.48 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +1.46%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.75 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.42% -4.23% +4.00%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend

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

SQL job vacancy trend in the UK

SQL
Daily Rate Trend

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the UK citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL over the 6 months to 30 June 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 17 Contract Job Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the UK over the 6 months to 30 June 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
England -3 4,332 £500 - 1,556
London -5 2,335 £525 -1.87% 620
UK excluding London -10 2,110 £469 -0.21% 1,252
Work from Home -6 1,467 £500 -2.20% 743
North of England -5 564 £460 -3.16% 344
Midlands +3 546 £460 +8.24% 219
West Midlands +5 448 £459 +2.00% 119
South East -10 438 £490 -2.00% 418
North West -2 298 £463 -2.63% 202
South West -3 231 £500 +7.53% 116
Yorkshire -11 228 £475 - 94
Scotland -9 195 £450 - 37
East of England -10 107 £491 +0.77% 100
East Midlands -3 94 £525 +40.00% 100
North East -13 50 £419 -9.70% 52
Wales +5 44 £450 +5.88% 35
Northern Ireland -10 15 £388 -22.50% 9

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities 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
1 240 (4.85%) Apache Spark
2 214 (4.32%) Confluence
3 205 (4.14%) Apache Airflow
4 178 (3.60%) Apache
5 112 (2.26%) SAS
6 59 (1.19%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.85%) Tomcat
8 37 (0.75%) Oracle Workflow
9 36 (0.73%) IIS
10 35 (0.71%) WebLogic
11 33 (0.67%) WebSphere
12 25 (0.51%) Jupyter
13 22 (0.44%) Apache Geronimo
13 22 (0.44%) Apache ServiceMix
13 22 (0.44%) Red Hat Fuse
14 21 (0.42%) nginx
15 19 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
16 18 (0.36%) Appian
16 18 (0.36%) CMS
16 18 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 308 (6.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 55 (1.11%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 34 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.061%) Acrobat
9 3 (0.061%) Notion
9 3 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.061%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Mingle
10 1 (0.020%) Trello
10 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (0.83%) Oracle EBS
2 38 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
4 26 (0.53%) Aladdin
5 23 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
6 22 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
7 19 (0.38%) NEC Housing
8 16 (0.32%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
9 14 (0.28%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.22%) Findur
10 11 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
10 11 (0.22%) Siebel CRM
11 10 (0.20%) Elite 3E
11 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 9 (0.18%) Fidessa
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
12 9 (0.18%) Payment Gateway
13 8 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,589 (32.10%) Azure
2 1,205 (24.34%) AWS
3 928 (18.75%) Power Platform
4 452 (9.13%) Azure DevOps
5 405 (8.18%) GCP
6 364 (7.35%) GitHub
7 347 (7.01%) Azure Data Factory
8 311 (6.28%) Serverless
9 304 (6.14%) Snowflake
10 269 (5.43%) Amazon S3
11 242 (4.89%) dbt
12 223 (4.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 196 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
14 191 (3.86%) GitHub Actions
15 93 (1.88%) SaaS
16 87 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 87 (1.76%) Power Automate
17 85 (1.72%) Entra ID
18 79 (1.60%) PowerApps
19 76 (1.54%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.07%) DNS
2 43 (0.87%) Firewall
3 25 (0.51%) SSL
4 23 (0.46%) Network Security
5 22 (0.44%) HTTP
5 22 (0.44%) SNMP
6 21 (0.42%) WAN
7 19 (0.38%) Internet
8 18 (0.36%) VPN
9 12 (0.24%) TCP/IP
10 10 (0.20%) SAN
11 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
11 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
12 8 (0.16%) LAN
13 7 (0.14%) NAS
13 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 853 (17.23%) Power BI
2 650 (13.13%) Data Warehouse
3 620 (12.53%) SQL Server
4 338 (6.83%) Relational Database
5 320 (6.46%) PostgreSQL
6 319 (6.44%) Tableau
7 317 (6.40%) Data Lake
8 262 (5.29%) NoSQL
9 250 (5.05%) Metadata
10 222 (4.48%) Azure SQL Database
11 190 (3.84%) Oracle Database
12 170 (3.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 158 (3.19%) BigQuery
14 149 (3.01%) Amazon Redshift
15 142 (2.87%) Big Data
16 140 (2.83%) Delta Lake
17 130 (2.63%) MySQL
18 118 (2.38%) MongoDB
19 116 (2.34%) Oracle Reports
20 111 (2.24%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 541 (10.93%) Git
2 400 (8.08%) JIRA
3 266 (5.37%) Jenkins
4 228 (4.61%) GitLab
5 77 (1.56%) JUnit
6 60 (1.21%) Selenium
7 56 (1.13%) Maven
7 56 (1.13%) Postman
8 53 (1.07%) Mockito
9 50 (1.01%) Gradle
10 40 (0.81%) Visual Studio
11 39 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
12 36 (0.73%) Cucumber
12 36 (0.73%) MLflow
13 33 (0.67%) SonarQube
14 32 (0.65%) JMeter
15 29 (0.59%) Bitbucket
16 28 (0.57%) ERwin
16 28 (0.57%) Liquibase
17 27 (0.55%) TeamCity
General
1 1,274 (25.74%) Finance
2 1,268 (25.62%) Social Skills
3 932 (18.83%) Analytical Skills
4 470 (9.49%) Banking
5 450 (9.09%) Public Sector
6 138 (2.79%) Front Office
7 128 (2.59%) Investment Banking
8 126 (2.55%) Marketing
9 119 (2.40%) Retail
10 105 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
11 92 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 62 (1.25%) Legal
13 58 (1.17%) Manufacturing
14 57 (1.15%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
16 43 (0.87%) Publishing
17 38 (0.77%) Back Office
18 35 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
18 35 (0.71%) Telecoms
19 32 (0.65%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,047 (21.15%) Developer
2 1,000 (20.20%) Data Engineer
3 721 (14.57%) Analyst
4 651 (13.15%) Senior
5 341 (6.89%) Lead
6 306 (6.18%) Data Analyst
7 280 (5.66%) Architect
8 239 (4.83%) Consultant
9 229 (4.63%) Business Analyst
10 208 (4.20%) Java Developer
11 189 (3.82%) Senior Data Engineer
12 174 (3.52%) DBA
13 153 (3.09%) Senior Developer
14 147 (2.97%) Software Engineer
15 120 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
16 116 (2.34%) SQL Developer
17 109 (2.20%) C# Developer
17 109 (2.20%) Python Developer
18 106 (2.14%) Data Architect
19 101 (2.04%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (8.32%) .NET
2 373 (7.54%) REST
3 313 (6.32%) PySpark
4 304 (6.14%) Kafka
5 262 (5.29%) Spring
6 252 (5.09%) Spring Boot
7 232 (4.69%) React
8 218 (4.40%) RESTful
9 184 (3.72%) JSON
10 164 (3.31%) XML
11 157 (3.17%) HTML
12 140 (2.83%) CSS
13 128 (2.59%) AngularJS
14 125 (2.53%) Pandas
15 123 (2.48%) Web Services
16 120 (2.42%) Middleware
17 113 (2.28%) SOAP
18 95 (1.92%) .NET Framework
19 81 (1.64%) OAuth
20 76 (1.54%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 327 (6.61%) Cloud Native
2 210 (4.24%) Data Structures
3 182 (3.68%) Legacy Systems
4 166 (3.35%) Product Ownership
5 144 (2.91%) Distributed Systems
6 94 (1.90%) Derivative
7 92 (1.86%) Onboarding
8 88 (1.78%) Management Information System
9 83 (1.68%) Enterprise Software
10 75 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
11 74 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
12 73 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 69 (1.39%) Algorithms
14 64 (1.29%) Clustering
15 57 (1.15%) Replication
16 55 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
17 54 (1.09%) Equities
18 52 (1.05%) Fixed Income
19 45 (0.91%) Low-Code
19 45 (0.91%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 318 (6.42%) Linux
2 289 (5.84%) Windows
3 225 (4.55%) Unix
4 110 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.48%) AIX
7 17 (0.34%) Solaris
7 17 (0.34%) Windows Server 2019
8 12 (0.24%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
12 7 (0.14%) Windows 10
13 4 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.081%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.061%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.040%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.040%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,331 (26.89%) CI/CD
2 1,276 (25.78%) Agile
3 1,257 (25.39%) Analytics
4 1,235 (24.95%) Data Modelling
5 1,119 (22.61%) ETL
6 1,077 (21.76%) Business Intelligence
7 1,021 (20.63%) DevOps
8 972 (19.64%) Problem-Solving
9 960 (19.39%) Data Pipeline
10 816 (16.48%) Data Engineering
11 710 (14.34%) AI
12 669 (13.52%) Migration
13 621 (12.55%) Validation
14 552 (11.15%) Data Governance
15 503 (10.16%) Test Automation
16 496 (10.02%) Decision-Making
17 488 (9.86%) Data Analysis
18 474 (9.58%) Stakeholder Management
19 447 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
20 440 (8.89%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,805 (36.46%) Python
2 656 (13.25%) Java
3 493 (9.96%) C#
4 374 (7.56%) PL/SQL
5 335 (6.77%) JavaScript
6 262 (5.29%) T-SQL
7 240 (4.85%) PowerShell
8 177 (3.58%) TypeScript
9 141 (2.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 121 (2.44%) Shell Script
11 113 (2.28%) R
12 93 (1.88%) Bash
13 81 (1.64%) Scala
14 76 (1.54%) C++
15 49 (0.99%) Bicep
16 46 (0.93%) VBA
17 37 (0.75%) C
18 34 (0.69%) VB
19 28 (0.57%) Perl
20 26 (0.53%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,056 (21.33%) Security Cleared
2 855 (17.27%) SC Cleared
3 379 (7.66%) Degree
4 128 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
5 117 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 98 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 75 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 66 (1.33%) Master's Degree
9 56 (1.13%) ISTQB
10 44 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (0.73%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 18 (0.36%) PhD
13 14 (0.28%) CISSP
14 11 (0.22%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
15 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.18%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
16 9 (0.18%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 890 (17.98%) Data Quality
2 387 (7.82%) QA
3 188 (3.80%) GDPR
4 60 (1.21%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.89%) SLA
6 30 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 25 (0.51%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 23 (0.46%) NIST
9 21 (0.42%) PMO
10 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
11 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 17 (0.34%) IFRS
12 16 (0.32%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 15 (0.30%) MiFID
13 15 (0.30%) Solvency II
14 14 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 12 (0.24%) NCSC
16 11 (0.22%) HL7
17 10 (0.20%) WCAG
System Software
1 520 (10.51%) Docker
2 112 (2.26%) Active Directory
3 46 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
4 36 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
5 28 (0.57%) Oracle RAC
6 20 (0.40%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.26%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.24%) vCloud
9 10 (0.20%) KVM
10 9 (0.18%) Postfix
10 9 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.10%) RACF
12 4 (0.081%) Ceph
12 4 (0.081%) HDFS
13 3 (0.061%) Squid
13 3 (0.061%) XenApp
13 3 (0.061%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.040%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.040%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 425 (8.59%) Kubernetes
2 391 (7.90%) Terraform
3 114 (2.30%) Grafana
4 93 (1.88%) Ansible
5 56 (1.13%) Prometheus
6 40 (0.81%) Oracle RMAN
7 29 (0.59%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.46%) Kibana
9 22 (0.44%) Control-M
10 19 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 18 (0.36%) SCOM
12 17 (0.34%) Single Sign-On
13 16 (0.32%) ZABBIX
14 15 (0.30%) Tivoli
15 14 (0.28%) Nagios
15 14 (0.28%) Netcool
16 13 (0.26%) OpenView
16 13 (0.26%) Tivoli Monitoring
17 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
18 8 (0.16%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 858 (17.33%) Oracle
2 776 (15.68%) Microsoft
3 583 (11.78%) Databricks
4 184 (3.72%) Informatica
5 182 (3.68%) Google
6 146 (2.95%) Talend
7 140 (2.83%) ServiceNow
8 126 (2.55%) SAP
9 89 (1.80%) Splunk
10 88 (1.78%) IBM
11 71 (1.43%) Denodo
12 61 (1.23%) Salesforce
13 56 (1.13%) VMware
14 44 (0.89%) Citrix
15 42 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 38 (0.77%) Bloomberg
16 38 (0.77%) Sybase
17 36 (0.73%) Murex
18 33 (0.67%) OpenAI
19 32 (0.65%) SolarWinds