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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,537 3,557 4,214
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.53% 12.13% 9.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.19% 35.53% 33.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,091 2,491 3,048
10th Percentile £350 £355 £357
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% +0.28%
75th Percentile £588 £621 £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 72 61 63
10th Percentile £33.78 £22.48 £23.00
25th Percentile £36.44 £30.00 £27.00
Median hourly rate £54.75 £42.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.82% - -15.00%
75th Percentile £76.25 £65.62 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.98 £77.19 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £33.51 £42.50
% change year-on-year +81.29% -21.15% +4.71%

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 12,892 10,011 12,769
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.07% 34.15% 29.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,507 6,800 9,080
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £418 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £775 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 252 487
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.55 £31.70
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% +3.09%

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 6 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 6 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 6 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 -4 4,001 £500 -3.38% 2,184
London 0 2,252 £520 -5.45% 861
UK excluding London -9 1,833 £469 -0.21% 1,725
Work from Home -5 1,350 £500 -3.85% 1,119
Midlands +6 530 £469 +2.18% 282
North of England -7 481 £450 -5.26% 418
West Midlands +5 425 £463 +0.27% 160
South East -15 334 £495 -1.00% 567
North West -2 263 £450 -5.26% 234
South West -7 201 £475 - 156
Yorkshire -14 194 £465 -4.62% 126
Scotland -6 171 £485 +7.78% 86
East Midlands +5 102 £525 +27.27% 122
East of England -17 90 £500 +8.99% 158
Wales +4 36 £425 +11.48% 58
North East -9 36 £475 +5.56% 60
Northern Ireland -11 13 £415 +1.22% 19

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
1 259 (5.71%) Apache Spark
2 172 (3.79%) Apache
3 169 (3.72%) Apache Airflow
4 153 (3.37%) Confluence
5 102 (2.25%) SAS
6 85 (1.87%) SharePoint
7 44 (0.97%) Tomcat
8 40 (0.88%) WebLogic
9 33 (0.73%) IIS
10 27 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.53%) Apache Geronimo
11 24 (0.53%) Apache ServiceMix
11 24 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
12 23 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
13 17 (0.37%) nginx
14 16 (0.35%) Jupyter
14 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.31%) Mendix
15 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 302 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.18%) Chatbot
6 8 (0.18%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.11%) Notion
9 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.066%) Trello
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) SPSS
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.55%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 23 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
4 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
4 21 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
6 17 (0.37%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
6 17 (0.37%) Oracle General Ledger
7 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.18%) Advent Geneva
12 8 (0.18%) Endur
12 8 (0.18%) Findur
Cloud Services
1 1,553 (34.23%) Azure
2 1,081 (23.83%) AWS
3 873 (19.24%) Power Platform
4 454 (10.01%) Azure DevOps
5 370 (8.16%) Azure Data Factory
6 361 (7.96%) GCP
7 334 (7.36%) GitHub
8 289 (6.37%) Serverless
9 256 (5.64%) Snowflake
10 255 (5.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 247 (5.44%) Amazon S3
12 187 (4.12%) dbt
13 176 (3.88%) GitHub Actions
14 163 (3.59%) AWS Lambda
15 96 (2.12%) Power Automate
16 88 (1.94%) Azure Functions
17 87 (1.92%) SaaS
18 80 (1.76%) Entra ID
19 77 (1.70%) AWS CloudFormation
20 75 (1.65%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.21%) Firewall
2 44 (0.97%) DNS
3 23 (0.51%) Network Security
4 21 (0.46%) TCP/IP
4 21 (0.46%) WAN
5 19 (0.42%) HTTP
6 15 (0.33%) Internet
6 15 (0.33%) LAN
6 15 (0.33%) SNMP
6 15 (0.33%) SSL
7 12 (0.26%) VPN
8 10 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.20%) DHCP
9 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 7 (0.15%) NAS
11 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
11 7 (0.15%) VLAN
11 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
11 7 (0.15%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 797 (17.57%) Power BI
2 574 (12.65%) Data Warehouse
3 562 (12.39%) SQL Server
4 311 (6.85%) Data Lake
5 306 (6.74%) Tableau
6 295 (6.50%) Relational Database
7 294 (6.48%) PostgreSQL
8 268 (5.91%) NoSQL
9 253 (5.58%) Metadata
10 247 (5.44%) Azure SQL Database
11 162 (3.57%) Oracle Database
12 155 (3.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 147 (3.24%) Big Data
14 134 (2.95%) BigQuery
15 132 (2.91%) Delta Lake
16 130 (2.87%) Amazon Redshift
17 128 (2.82%) MySQL
18 111 (2.45%) MongoDB
18 111 (2.45%) Oracle Reports
19 100 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 476 (10.49%) Git
2 354 (7.80%) JIRA
3 224 (4.94%) Jenkins
4 196 (4.32%) GitLab
5 66 (1.45%) Selenium
6 56 (1.23%) JUnit
7 52 (1.15%) Postman
8 42 (0.93%) MLflow
9 41 (0.90%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.90%) Maven
10 40 (0.88%) Mockito
11 33 (0.73%) ERwin
12 31 (0.68%) Gradle
12 31 (0.68%) REST Assured
12 31 (0.68%) Visual Studio
13 29 (0.64%) JMeter
14 28 (0.62%) SonarQube
15 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
16 26 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 23 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 1,193 (26.29%) Social Skills
2 1,192 (26.27%) Finance
3 847 (18.67%) Analytical Skills
4 420 (9.26%) Banking
5 406 (8.95%) Public Sector
6 112 (2.47%) Front Office
6 112 (2.47%) Investment Banking
7 104 (2.29%) Marketing
8 98 (2.16%) Documentation Skills
9 73 (1.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 73 (1.61%) Retail
10 62 (1.37%) Legal
11 59 (1.30%) Financial Institution
12 40 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
13 37 (0.82%) Publishing
13 37 (0.82%) Telecoms
14 36 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
15 35 (0.77%) Law
16 30 (0.66%) Local Government
16 30 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 963 (21.23%) Developer
2 917 (20.21%) Data Engineer
3 663 (14.61%) Analyst
4 565 (12.45%) Senior
5 316 (6.96%) Lead
6 282 (6.22%) Data Analyst
7 277 (6.11%) Architect
8 216 (4.76%) Business Analyst
9 210 (4.63%) Consultant
10 167 (3.68%) Java Developer
11 155 (3.42%) Senior Data Engineer
12 144 (3.17%) DBA
13 130 (2.87%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.84%) Software Engineer
15 126 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
16 110 (2.42%) Data Architect
17 109 (2.40%) C# Developer
18 103 (2.27%) Python Developer
19 101 (2.23%) Data Scientist
20 92 (2.03%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (8.79%) .NET
2 343 (7.56%) REST
3 291 (6.41%) PySpark
4 285 (6.28%) Kafka
5 215 (4.74%) React
6 208 (4.58%) Spring
7 200 (4.41%) Spring Boot
8 186 (4.10%) RESTful
9 152 (3.35%) HTML
10 144 (3.17%) JSON
11 139 (3.06%) XML
12 131 (2.89%) CSS
12 131 (2.89%) Pandas
13 113 (2.49%) AngularJS
13 113 (2.49%) Middleware
14 94 (2.07%) SOAP
15 91 (2.01%) .NET Framework
16 86 (1.90%) Web Services
17 83 (1.83%) Node.js
18 80 (1.76%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 295 (6.50%) Cloud Native
2 178 (3.92%) Data Structures
3 155 (3.42%) Legacy Systems
4 140 (3.09%) Product Ownership
5 108 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
6 98 (2.16%) Management Information System
7 88 (1.94%) Derivative
8 83 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 82 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
10 69 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 61 (1.34%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 55 (1.21%) Equities
13 55 (1.21%) Fixed Income
14 52 (1.15%) Clustering
14 52 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
15 46 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
16 45 (0.99%) NHS
16 45 (0.99%) Replication
17 39 (0.86%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 315 (6.94%) Linux
2 273 (6.02%) Windows
3 215 (4.74%) Unix
4 95 (2.09%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (0.60%) AIX
7 19 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 15 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 9 (0.20%) Solaris
10 9 (0.20%) VMS
10 9 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.15%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.022%) CentOS
16 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,213 (26.74%) CI/CD
2 1,156 (25.48%) Analytics
3 1,152 (25.39%) Data Modelling
4 1,149 (25.33%) Agile
5 1,069 (23.56%) ETL
6 1,026 (22.61%) Business Intelligence
7 1,010 (22.26%) DevOps
8 914 (20.15%) Problem-Solving
9 857 (18.89%) Data Pipeline
10 721 (15.89%) Data Engineering
11 578 (12.74%) AI
12 577 (12.72%) Migration
13 566 (12.48%) Data Governance
14 530 (11.68%) Validation
15 444 (9.79%) Decision-Making
16 441 (9.72%) Test Automation
17 420 (9.26%) Data Analysis
18 412 (9.08%) Performance Tuning
19 392 (8.64%) Microservices
20 387 (8.53%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,729 (38.11%) Python
2 624 (13.75%) Java
3 488 (10.76%) C#
4 334 (7.36%) PL/SQL
5 330 (7.27%) JavaScript
6 212 (4.67%) T-SQL
7 205 (4.52%) PowerShell
8 149 (3.28%) TypeScript
9 137 (3.02%) R
10 134 (2.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 125 (2.76%) Shell Script
12 89 (1.96%) Scala
13 84 (1.85%) Bash
14 82 (1.81%) C++
15 62 (1.37%) Bicep
16 55 (1.21%) VBA
17 47 (1.04%) Perl
18 30 (0.66%) Go
19 29 (0.64%) VB
20 24 (0.53%) C
Qualifications
1 970 (21.38%) Security Cleared
2 782 (17.24%) SC Cleared
3 358 (7.89%) Degree
4 120 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 104 (2.29%) BPSS Clearance
6 74 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 72 (1.59%) DV Cleared
8 66 (1.45%) Master's Degree
9 52 (1.15%) ISTQB
10 43 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 27 (0.60%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.37%) Oracle Certification
12 17 (0.37%) PhD
13 15 (0.33%) CBAP
14 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
14 13 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.26%) CISSP
16 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 11 (0.24%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 828 (18.25%) Data Quality
2 356 (7.85%) QA
3 200 (4.41%) GDPR
4 57 (1.26%) Accessibility
5 41 (0.90%) SLA
6 36 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 27 (0.60%) PMO
9 19 (0.42%) MiFID
9 19 (0.42%) NIST
9 19 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
12 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.33%) IFRS
12 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.31%) HL7
13 14 (0.31%) WCAG
14 11 (0.24%) DICOM
14 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 523 (11.53%) Docker
2 110 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 38 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
4 33 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
5 31 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
6 22 (0.48%) Hyper-V
7 12 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.22%) KVM
9 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (0.18%) HDFS
10 8 (0.18%) Postfix
11 6 (0.13%) RACF
12 5 (0.11%) XenApp
12 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.066%) Ceph
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Clusterware
13 3 (0.066%) VMware NSX
14 2 (0.044%) GridGain
14 2 (0.044%) vCloud
14 2 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 433 (9.54%) Kubernetes
2 377 (8.31%) Terraform
3 120 (2.64%) Grafana
4 82 (1.81%) Ansible
5 66 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 43 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.66%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.42%) Kibana
10 18 (0.40%) SCCM
11 16 (0.35%) Progress Chef
12 15 (0.33%) ZABBIX
13 14 (0.31%) Control-M
13 14 (0.31%) Nagios
13 14 (0.31%) Netcool
13 14 (0.31%) Tivoli
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 11 (0.24%) vCenter Server
16 9 (0.20%) Kiali
Vendors
1 754 (16.62%) Oracle
2 724 (15.96%) Microsoft
3 558 (12.30%) Databricks
4 169 (3.72%) Google
5 162 (3.57%) Informatica
6 137 (3.02%) ServiceNow
7 126 (2.78%) Talend
8 115 (2.53%) SAP
9 95 (2.09%) Splunk
10 81 (1.79%) IBM
11 67 (1.48%) Salesforce
12 61 (1.34%) Denodo
13 52 (1.15%) VMware
14 50 (1.10%) Citrix
15 40 (0.88%) Dynatrace
15 40 (0.88%) OpenAI
16 34 (0.75%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.73%) MuleSoft
18 32 (0.71%) HP
19 29 (0.64%) BMC