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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,076 3,824 4,249
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.65% 11.78% 9.94%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.86% 35.52% 32.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,368 2,661 3,123
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £627
90th Percentile £688 £750 £747
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 92 72 56
10th Percentile £26.50 £22.83 £21.69
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.00 £29.06
Median hourly rate £45.00 £39.67 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.43% -5.54% -15.64%
75th Percentile £64.00 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £66.00 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £33.91 £40.00
% change year-on-year +31.23% -15.23% -12.09%

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 14,155 10,767 13,141
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.90% 33.18% 30.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,201 7,257 9,267
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £511 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.14% -3.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.05% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 539 266 519
10th Percentile £34.01 £27.45 £31.25
25th Percentile £52.25 £35.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +2.77% -2.69% +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 15 July 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 15 July 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 15 July 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 -4 4,410 £500 - 2,420
London -6 2,362 £525 - 817
UK excluding London -10 2,166 £469 -0.21% 2,162
Work from Home -6 1,525 £500 - 1,780
North of England -3 586 £463 -2.63% 528
Midlands +2 551 £460 +5.02% 339
South East -10 455 £475 -5.00% 551
West Midlands +4 452 £459 +2.00% 158
North West 0 313 £475 +0.53% 264
Yorkshire -9 235 £475 - 182
South West -4 233 £500 +12.68% 204
Scotland -8 202 £450 - 194
East of England -13 111 £488 -1.27% 222
East Midlands -1 95 £525 +35.05% 181
North East -15 52 £425 -8.11% 87
Wales +4 45 £468 +5.06% 93
Northern Ireland -11 15 £375 -25.00% 73

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
1 238 (4.69%) Apache Spark
2 216 (4.26%) Confluence
3 212 (4.18%) Apache Airflow
4 186 (3.66%) Apache
5 115 (2.27%) SAS
6 64 (1.26%) SharePoint
7 47 (0.93%) Oracle Workflow
8 44 (0.87%) IIS
8 44 (0.87%) Tomcat
9 38 (0.75%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.63%) WebSphere
11 25 (0.49%) Jupyter
12 23 (0.45%) CMS
12 23 (0.45%) nginx
13 22 (0.43%) Apache Geronimo
13 22 (0.43%) Apache ServiceMix
13 22 (0.43%) Red Hat Fuse
14 20 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
15 16 (0.32%) Appian
15 16 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 317 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 70 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.04%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 9 (0.18%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.079%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.079%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.059%) Notion
9 3 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.039%) Microsoft Project
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.020%) InDesign
11 1 (0.020%) Mingle
11 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 51 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
2 41 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.57%) Aladdin
5 27 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 24 (0.47%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.37%) NEC Housing
7 19 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
7 19 (0.37%) Oracle Receivables
7 19 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
9 11 (0.22%) Findur
9 11 (0.22%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.20%) Elite 3E
10 10 (0.20%) Finacle
10 10 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
11 8 (0.16%) Oracle Financials
11 8 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,599 (31.50%) Azure
2 1,222 (24.07%) AWS
3 936 (18.44%) Power Platform
4 444 (8.75%) Azure DevOps
5 438 (8.63%) GCP
6 359 (7.07%) GitHub
7 339 (6.68%) Azure Data Factory
8 324 (6.38%) Snowflake
9 310 (6.11%) Serverless
10 271 (5.34%) Amazon S3
11 261 (5.14%) dbt
12 213 (4.20%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 199 (3.92%) AWS Lambda
14 183 (3.61%) GitHub Actions
15 94 (1.85%) SaaS
16 88 (1.73%) Entra ID
17 86 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 84 (1.65%) Power Automate
19 79 (1.56%) PowerApps
20 75 (1.48%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.02%) DNS
2 42 (0.83%) Firewall
3 27 (0.53%) HTTP
4 26 (0.51%) SSL
5 22 (0.43%) Network Security
5 22 (0.43%) SNMP
6 20 (0.39%) Internet
7 19 (0.37%) WAN
8 18 (0.35%) VPN
9 13 (0.26%) TCP/IP
10 11 (0.22%) SAN
11 10 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 10 (0.20%) WinSCP
12 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
12 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
13 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
14 7 (0.14%) LAN
14 7 (0.14%) NAS
14 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 860 (16.94%) Power BI
2 679 (13.38%) Data Warehouse
3 651 (12.83%) SQL Server
4 347 (6.84%) Relational Database
5 333 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
6 323 (6.36%) Tableau
7 314 (6.19%) Data Lake
8 265 (5.22%) Metadata
9 251 (4.94%) NoSQL
10 218 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 205 (4.04%) Oracle Database
12 171 (3.37%) BigQuery
13 170 (3.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 154 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
15 144 (2.84%) Big Data
16 137 (2.70%) Delta Lake
17 130 (2.56%) Oracle Reports
18 125 (2.46%) MySQL
19 111 (2.19%) MongoDB
19 111 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 567 (11.17%) Git
2 398 (7.84%) JIRA
3 270 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 220 (4.33%) GitLab
5 76 (1.50%) JUnit
6 66 (1.30%) Maven
7 61 (1.20%) Gradle
8 59 (1.16%) Selenium
9 56 (1.10%) Postman
10 53 (1.04%) Oracle Forms
11 50 (0.99%) Mockito
12 42 (0.83%) Visual Studio
13 34 (0.67%) Bitbucket
13 34 (0.67%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
14 32 (0.63%) Cucumber
14 32 (0.63%) JMeter
14 32 (0.63%) MLflow
15 28 (0.55%) Liquibase
16 27 (0.53%) Zephyr
General
1 1,285 (25.32%) Social Skills
2 1,273 (25.08%) Finance
3 981 (19.33%) Analytical Skills
4 477 (9.40%) Public Sector
5 470 (9.26%) Banking
6 139 (2.74%) Marketing
7 138 (2.72%) Front Office
8 125 (2.46%) Retail
9 123 (2.42%) Investment Banking
10 104 (2.05%) Documentation Skills
11 93 (1.83%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 62 (1.22%) Manufacturing
13 60 (1.18%) Legal
14 57 (1.12%) Presentation Skills
15 56 (1.10%) Financial Institution
16 43 (0.85%) Publishing
17 42 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
18 41 (0.81%) Back Office
19 37 (0.73%) Telecoms
20 35 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,112 (21.91%) Developer
2 999 (19.68%) Data Engineer
3 738 (14.54%) Analyst
4 670 (13.20%) Senior
5 357 (7.03%) Lead
6 321 (6.32%) Data Analyst
7 282 (5.56%) Architect
8 244 (4.81%) Consultant
9 236 (4.65%) Business Analyst
10 214 (4.22%) Java Developer
11 197 (3.88%) Senior Data Engineer
12 193 (3.80%) DBA
13 159 (3.13%) Senior Developer
14 141 (2.78%) Software Engineer
15 127 (2.50%) SQL Developer
16 123 (2.42%) Azure Engineer
17 122 (2.40%) SQL DBA
18 114 (2.25%) C# Developer
19 111 (2.19%) Data Architect
20 107 (2.11%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 424 (8.35%) .NET
2 394 (7.76%) REST
3 311 (6.13%) PySpark
4 305 (6.01%) Kafka
5 267 (5.26%) Spring
6 256 (5.04%) Spring Boot
7 233 (4.59%) React
8 219 (4.31%) RESTful
9 195 (3.84%) JSON
10 184 (3.62%) XML
11 167 (3.29%) HTML
12 140 (2.76%) CSS
13 133 (2.62%) AngularJS
14 129 (2.54%) Pandas
14 129 (2.54%) Web Services
15 120 (2.36%) SOAP
16 119 (2.34%) Middleware
17 101 (1.99%) .NET Framework
18 81 (1.60%) Node.js
19 72 (1.42%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 343 (6.76%) Cloud Native
2 226 (4.45%) Data Structures
3 183 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
4 176 (3.47%) Product Ownership
5 146 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
6 102 (2.01%) Onboarding
7 97 (1.91%) Derivative
8 89 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
8 89 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 79 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
10 77 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
11 75 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
12 71 (1.40%) Algorithms
13 70 (1.38%) Replication
14 66 (1.30%) Clustering
15 54 (1.06%) Fixed Income
16 53 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
17 52 (1.02%) Equities
18 47 (0.93%) NHS
19 43 (0.85%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 337 (6.64%) Linux
2 303 (5.97%) Windows
3 238 (4.69%) Unix
4 120 (2.36%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.47%) AIX
7 20 (0.39%) Solaris
8 15 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
13 5 (0.099%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.079%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.079%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.039%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,328 (26.16%) CI/CD
2 1,309 (25.79%) Agile
3 1,285 (25.32%) Data Modelling
4 1,284 (25.30%) Analytics
5 1,140 (22.46%) ETL
6 1,100 (21.67%) Business Intelligence
7 1,020 (20.09%) DevOps
8 989 (19.48%) Data Pipeline
9 985 (19.41%) Problem-Solving
10 831 (16.37%) Data Engineering
11 716 (14.11%) AI
12 700 (13.79%) Migration
13 654 (12.88%) Validation
14 576 (11.35%) Data Governance
15 521 (10.26%) Test Automation
16 507 (9.99%) Decision-Making
17 500 (9.85%) Data Analysis
18 496 (9.77%) Stakeholder Management
19 486 (9.57%) Continuous Improvement
20 464 (9.14%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,823 (35.91%) Python
2 675 (13.30%) Java
3 497 (9.79%) C#
4 407 (8.02%) PL/SQL
5 341 (6.72%) JavaScript
6 274 (5.40%) T-SQL
7 252 (4.96%) PowerShell
8 179 (3.53%) TypeScript
9 143 (2.82%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 132 (2.60%) Shell Script
11 113 (2.23%) R
12 99 (1.95%) Bash
13 82 (1.62%) Scala
14 68 (1.34%) C++
15 53 (1.04%) VBA
16 46 (0.91%) Bicep
17 37 (0.73%) C
18 34 (0.67%) VB
19 30 (0.59%) Perl
20 26 (0.51%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,099 (21.65%) Security Cleared
2 890 (17.53%) SC Cleared
3 373 (7.35%) Degree
4 141 (2.78%) BPSS Clearance
5 115 (2.27%) Computer Science Degree
6 107 (2.11%) DV Cleared
7 75 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 63 (1.24%) Master's Degree
9 53 (1.04%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (0.69%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.35%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.33%) PhD
14 15 (0.30%) CISSP
15 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
16 10 (0.20%) CISM
16 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
17 9 (0.18%) CIMA
17 9 (0.18%) ISEB
17 9 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 914 (18.01%) Data Quality
2 395 (7.78%) QA
3 186 (3.66%) GDPR
4 64 (1.26%) Accessibility
5 46 (0.91%) SLA
6 25 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (0.43%) PMO
7 22 (0.43%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 21 (0.41%) ISO 20022
9 20 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
10 18 (0.35%) NIST
11 16 (0.32%) IFRS
11 16 (0.32%) Solvency II
12 14 (0.28%) GMP
12 14 (0.28%) HIPAA
12 14 (0.28%) MiFID
13 13 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 11 (0.22%) HL7
14 11 (0.22%) NCSC
14 11 (0.22%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 502 (9.89%) Docker
2 114 (2.25%) Active Directory
3 46 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
4 39 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
5 38 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
6 21 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 20 (0.39%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.26%) vCloud
10 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 8 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.099%) RACF
14 4 (0.079%) Ceph
14 4 (0.079%) HDFS
15 3 (0.059%) Squid
16 2 (0.039%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 2 (0.039%) GridGain
17 1 (0.020%) Microsoft App-V
17 1 (0.020%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 418 (8.23%) Kubernetes
2 383 (7.55%) Terraform
3 113 (2.23%) Grafana
4 91 (1.79%) Ansible
5 54 (1.06%) Prometheus
6 46 (0.91%) Oracle RMAN
7 41 (0.81%) Data Guard
8 27 (0.53%) Control-M
9 21 (0.41%) Kibana
10 20 (0.39%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.37%) SCOM
12 16 (0.32%) Nagios
12 16 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.32%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.30%) Netcool
13 15 (0.30%) Tivoli
14 13 (0.26%) OpenView
14 13 (0.26%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 11 (0.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 9 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 920 (18.12%) Oracle
2 790 (15.56%) Microsoft
3 575 (11.33%) Databricks
4 196 (3.86%) Google
5 185 (3.64%) Informatica
6 142 (2.80%) Talend
7 138 (2.72%) ServiceNow
8 129 (2.54%) SAP
9 96 (1.89%) IBM
10 89 (1.75%) Splunk
11 70 (1.38%) Denodo
12 60 (1.18%) Salesforce
12 60 (1.18%) VMware
13 43 (0.85%) Citrix
14 41 (0.81%) Dynatrace
15 39 (0.77%) Bloomberg
16 37 (0.73%) Murex
17 36 (0.71%) Sybase
18 35 (0.69%) Alteryx
19 33 (0.65%) MuleSoft