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

6 months to
26 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,600 3,507 4,210
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.48% 12.26% 9.87%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.40% 35.99% 32.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,098 2,468 3,053
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £412 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -6.19% -0.37%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 76 60 60
10th Percentile £26.51 £22.57 £22.74
25th Percentile £35.19 £31.00 £29.72
Median hourly rate £51.25 £38.85 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +31.92% -11.21% -12.50%
75th Percentile £73.42 £63.94 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.34 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.75 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +58.51% -20.21% -12.12%

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 12,994 9,744 12,803
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.77% 34.07% 30.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,493 6,629 9,124
10th Percentile £356 £356 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 215 504
10th Percentile £36.30 £26.39 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.75 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -

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 26 May 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 26 May 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 26 May 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 -5 4,045 £500 -0.50% 2,370
London 0 2,258 £523 -2.43% 909
UK excluding London -11 1,882 £469 -0.21% 1,881
Work from Home -6 1,361 £500 -2.20% 1,509
Midlands +2 529 £469 +5.16% 273
North of England -8 486 £460 -3.16% 525
West Midlands +5 424 £460 - 145
South East -18 371 £483 -0.52% 540
North West -2 257 £460 -3.16% 277
South West -4 205 £475 -1.30% 167
Yorkshire -13 200 £475 -2.56% 159
Scotland -7 173 £473 +5.00% 98
East Midlands -1 101 £525 +35.05% 128
East of England -18 95 £495 +1.54% 145
North East -8 41 £450 -2.44% 95
Wales +7 40 £447 +23.74% 86
Northern Ireland -12 12 £430 +1.18% 67

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
1 255 (5.54%) Apache Spark
2 181 (3.93%) Apache Airflow
3 176 (3.83%) Apache
4 163 (3.54%) Confluence
5 105 (2.28%) SAS
6 70 (1.52%) SharePoint
7 41 (0.89%) Tomcat
8 40 (0.87%) WebLogic
9 33 (0.72%) IIS
10 31 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
11 26 (0.57%) WebSphere
12 22 (0.48%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.48%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.48%) Red Hat Fuse
13 20 (0.43%) Jupyter
14 18 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
15 17 (0.37%) nginx
16 16 (0.35%) Palantir Foundry
16 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
17 15 (0.33%) Appian
Applications
1 292 (6.35%) Microsoft Excel
2 49 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (1.02%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 26 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.11%) Notion
9 3 (0.065%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.065%) Trello
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (1.04%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.61%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.48%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
7 19 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
8 16 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
10 14 (0.30%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.26%) NetSuite
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 12 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 9 (0.20%) Endur
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 8 (0.17%) Findur
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle 11i
Cloud Services
1 1,558 (33.87%) Azure
2 1,120 (24.35%) AWS
3 881 (19.15%) Power Platform
4 459 (9.98%) Azure DevOps
5 375 (8.15%) GCP
6 374 (8.13%) Azure Data Factory
7 353 (7.67%) GitHub
8 290 (6.30%) Serverless
9 268 (5.83%) Snowflake
10 250 (5.43%) Amazon S3
11 245 (5.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 196 (4.26%) dbt
13 188 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
14 170 (3.70%) AWS Lambda
15 91 (1.98%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.89%) SaaS
17 86 (1.87%) Azure Functions
18 78 (1.70%) Entra ID
19 77 (1.67%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 77 (1.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.17%) Firewall
2 50 (1.09%) DNS
3 22 (0.48%) WAN
4 21 (0.46%) SNMP
5 19 (0.41%) HTTP
5 19 (0.41%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.39%) Network Security
6 18 (0.39%) SSL
7 16 (0.35%) Internet
8 13 (0.28%) LAN
9 12 (0.26%) VPN
10 11 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.20%) SAN
12 8 (0.17%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.15%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.15%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 805 (17.50%) Power BI
2 580 (12.61%) Data Warehouse
3 565 (12.28%) SQL Server
4 319 (6.93%) Data Lake
5 317 (6.89%) Tableau
6 301 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
7 295 (6.41%) Relational Database
8 266 (5.78%) NoSQL
9 250 (5.43%) Metadata
10 240 (5.22%) Azure SQL Database
11 171 (3.72%) Oracle Database
12 160 (3.48%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 150 (3.26%) BigQuery
14 149 (3.24%) Big Data
15 137 (2.98%) Delta Lake
16 123 (2.67%) MySQL
17 122 (2.65%) Amazon Redshift
18 113 (2.46%) MongoDB
19 111 (2.41%) Oracle Reports
20 105 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 482 (10.48%) Git
2 356 (7.74%) JIRA
3 232 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 219 (4.76%) GitLab
5 65 (1.41%) JUnit
6 63 (1.37%) Selenium
7 54 (1.17%) Postman
8 49 (1.07%) Maven
9 48 (1.04%) Mockito
10 42 (0.91%) Cucumber
11 39 (0.85%) Gradle
12 37 (0.80%) MLflow
13 35 (0.76%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.74%) SonarQube
15 31 (0.67%) ERwin
15 31 (0.67%) REST Assured
16 29 (0.63%) JMeter
17 26 (0.57%) Oracle Forms
18 25 (0.54%) Bitbucket
19 24 (0.52%) TeamCity
General
1 1,183 (25.72%) Finance
2 1,176 (25.57%) Social Skills
3 833 (18.11%) Analytical Skills
4 426 (9.26%) Banking
5 407 (8.85%) Public Sector
6 121 (2.63%) Investment Banking
7 118 (2.57%) Front Office
8 109 (2.37%) Marketing
9 97 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
10 78 (1.70%) Retail
11 77 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 57 (1.24%) Financial Institution
12 57 (1.24%) Legal
13 41 (0.89%) Publishing
14 39 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
15 37 (0.80%) Manufacturing
16 35 (0.76%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.72%) Law
17 33 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
18 29 (0.63%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 963 (20.93%) Data Engineer
2 957 (20.80%) Developer
3 660 (14.35%) Analyst
4 581 (12.63%) Senior
5 316 (6.87%) Lead
6 296 (6.43%) Data Analyst
7 274 (5.96%) Architect
8 209 (4.54%) Business Analyst
8 209 (4.54%) Consultant
9 188 (4.09%) Java Developer
10 168 (3.65%) Senior Data Engineer
11 152 (3.30%) DBA
12 136 (2.96%) Senior Developer
13 135 (2.93%) Software Engineer
14 127 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
15 112 (2.43%) C# Developer
16 111 (2.41%) Data Architect
17 108 (2.35%) Python Developer
18 104 (2.26%) Data Scientist
19 95 (2.07%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (8.63%) .NET
2 357 (7.76%) REST
3 306 (6.65%) PySpark
4 294 (6.39%) Kafka
5 226 (4.91%) Spring
6 221 (4.80%) React
7 216 (4.70%) Spring Boot
8 197 (4.28%) RESTful
9 161 (3.50%) HTML
10 156 (3.39%) JSON
11 144 (3.13%) XML
12 135 (2.93%) CSS
13 134 (2.91%) Pandas
14 114 (2.48%) AngularJS
15 106 (2.30%) Middleware
15 106 (2.30%) SOAP
16 93 (2.02%) Web Services
17 89 (1.93%) .NET Framework
18 84 (1.83%) OAuth
19 82 (1.78%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 302 (6.57%) Cloud Native
2 174 (3.78%) Data Structures
3 153 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 140 (3.04%) Product Ownership
5 123 (2.67%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (2.07%) Management Information System
7 93 (2.02%) Derivative
8 86 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
10 70 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 62 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
12 61 (1.33%) Algorithms
13 56 (1.22%) Self-Motivation
14 55 (1.20%) Clustering
15 53 (1.15%) Equities
15 53 (1.15%) Fixed Income
15 53 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
16 47 (1.02%) Replication
17 44 (0.96%) Low-Code
18 43 (0.93%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 323 (7.02%) Linux
2 275 (5.98%) Windows
3 222 (4.83%) Unix
4 101 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.54%) AIX
7 19 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.24%) Solaris
9 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.22%) VMS
11 9 (0.20%) zOS
12 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.13%) Android
14 3 (0.065%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.065%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.043%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.022%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,245 (27.07%) CI/CD
2 1,169 (25.41%) Data Modelling
3 1,153 (25.07%) Analytics
4 1,130 (24.57%) Agile
5 1,088 (23.65%) ETL
6 1,021 (22.20%) Business Intelligence
7 1,007 (21.89%) DevOps
8 894 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
9 885 (19.24%) Data Pipeline
10 739 (16.07%) Data Engineering
11 608 (13.22%) AI
12 588 (12.78%) Migration
13 556 (12.09%) Data Governance
14 547 (11.89%) Validation
15 456 (9.91%) Test Automation
16 451 (9.80%) Decision-Making
17 426 (9.26%) Data Analysis
18 423 (9.20%) Performance Tuning
19 416 (9.04%) Microservices
20 391 (8.50%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,752 (38.09%) Python
2 630 (13.70%) Java
3 490 (10.65%) C#
4 339 (7.37%) JavaScript
5 323 (7.02%) PL/SQL
6 225 (4.89%) T-SQL
7 215 (4.67%) PowerShell
8 148 (3.22%) TypeScript
9 139 (3.02%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 132 (2.87%) R
11 118 (2.57%) Shell Script
12 90 (1.96%) Bash
13 86 (1.87%) Scala
14 82 (1.78%) C++
15 62 (1.35%) Bicep
16 46 (1.00%) VBA
17 41 (0.89%) Perl
18 31 (0.67%) VB
19 28 (0.61%) Go
20 26 (0.57%) C
Qualifications
1 980 (21.30%) Security Cleared
2 790 (17.17%) SC Cleared
3 364 (7.91%) Degree
4 116 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 110 (2.39%) BPSS Clearance
6 80 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 76 (1.65%) Azure Certification
8 66 (1.43%) Master's Degree
9 51 (1.11%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.89%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.41%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.37%) PhD
14 13 (0.28%) CBAP
15 12 (0.26%) CISSP
15 12 (0.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.26%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 843 (18.33%) Data Quality
2 356 (7.74%) QA
3 194 (4.22%) GDPR
4 54 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 46 (1.00%) SLA
6 34 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 30 (0.65%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.52%) PMO
9 19 (0.41%) NIST
9 19 (0.41%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.35%) IFRS
10 16 (0.35%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.30%) HL7
13 12 (0.26%) Solvency II
13 12 (0.26%) WCAG
14 11 (0.24%) DICOM
System Software
1 522 (11.35%) Docker
2 110 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
3 35 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
5 22 (0.48%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.22%) KVM
8 9 (0.20%) Postfix
8 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.20%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.17%) HDFS
9 8 (0.17%) vCloud
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 4 (0.087%) Ceph
11 4 (0.087%) XenApp
11 4 (0.087%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.065%) Oracle Clusterware
12 3 (0.065%) Squid
13 2 (0.043%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 424 (9.22%) Kubernetes
2 374 (8.13%) Terraform
3 124 (2.70%) Grafana
4 83 (1.80%) Ansible
5 66 (1.43%) Prometheus
6 48 (1.04%) Oracle RMAN
7 35 (0.76%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.41%) Kibana
8 19 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.33%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.30%) Nagios
11 14 (0.30%) Netcool
11 14 (0.30%) SCCM
11 14 (0.30%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.28%) Control-M
12 13 (0.28%) OpenView
12 13 (0.28%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 764 (16.61%) Oracle
2 720 (15.65%) Microsoft
3 580 (12.61%) Databricks
4 174 (3.78%) Google
5 167 (3.63%) Informatica
6 145 (3.15%) ServiceNow
7 134 (2.91%) Talend
8 113 (2.46%) SAP
9 95 (2.07%) Splunk
10 78 (1.70%) IBM
11 65 (1.41%) Denodo
12 57 (1.24%) Salesforce
13 55 (1.20%) VMware
14 45 (0.98%) Citrix
15 39 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.74%) OpenAI
17 32 (0.70%) Bloomberg
17 32 (0.70%) MuleSoft
17 32 (0.70%) Sybase
18 30 (0.65%) HP