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 17 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,508 3,541 4,321
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.80% 12.06% 9.85%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.14% 35.40% 33.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,093 2,458 3,102
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.33%
75th Percentile £588 £620 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.26% - -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 62 65
10th Percentile £26.52 £23.23 £22.08
25th Percentile £36.38 £30.56 £25.99
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +17.02% +10.59% -15.00%
75th Percentile £77.44 £65.90 £53.75
90th Percentile £84.00 £77.10 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £64.00 £43.46 £41.38
% change year-on-year +47.28% +5.03% +2.68%

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 12,828 10,002 12,852
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.88% 34.07% 29.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,540 6,762 9,133
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £477 £488
% change year-on-year -0.42% -2.15% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 547 241 476
10th Percentile £42.28 £22.50 £30.94
25th Percentile £55.00 £35.00 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 17 April 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 17 April 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 17 April 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 3,985 £500 -2.82% 2,127
London 0 2,277 £513 -5.09% 843
UK excluding London -8 1,781 £469 -1.26% 1,641
Work from Home -4 1,340 £500 -3.85% 985
Midlands +7 521 £465 +1.09% 296
North of England -11 458 £450 -5.26% 431
West Midlands +8 415 £460 -3.16% 164
South East -18 309 £500 - 490
North West -3 259 £450 -5.26% 250
South West -7 217 £475 -5.00% 172
Yorkshire -19 180 £465 -4.62% 129
Scotland -6 161 £475 +5.56% 79
East Midlands +1 104 £525 +34.27% 132
East of England -14 90 £503 +9.54% 138
Wales +5 34 £413 - 43
North East -14 30 £475 +4.40% 57
Northern Ireland -9 14 £400 - 14

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
1 258 (5.72%) Apache Spark
2 180 (3.99%) Apache Airflow
3 177 (3.93%) Apache
4 140 (3.11%) Confluence
5 105 (2.33%) SAS
6 87 (1.93%) SharePoint
7 49 (1.09%) WebLogic
8 44 (0.98%) Tomcat
9 31 (0.69%) 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 22 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
13 21 (0.47%) nginx
14 19 (0.42%) Jupyter
15 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
16 15 (0.33%) Palantir Foundry
17 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 301 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 51 (1.13%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.89%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 22 (0.49%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.16%) Notepad++
8 6 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.067%) Notion
9 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.067%) 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 29 (0.64%) Aladdin
3 22 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.49%) NEC Housing
3 22 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
3 22 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
4 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
5 18 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 17 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
7 16 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
9 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.24%) Advent Geneva
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 11 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
13 8 (0.18%) Endur
13 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,562 (34.65%) Azure
2 1,101 (24.42%) AWS
3 861 (19.10%) Power Platform
4 472 (10.47%) Azure DevOps
5 370 (8.21%) Azure Data Factory
6 351 (7.79%) GCP
6 351 (7.79%) GitHub
7 311 (6.90%) Serverless
8 269 (5.97%) Snowflake
9 261 (5.79%) Amazon S3
10 254 (5.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 191 (4.24%) dbt
12 188 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
13 175 (3.88%) AWS Lambda
14 100 (2.22%) Power Automate
15 99 (2.20%) Azure Functions
16 92 (2.04%) SaaS
17 86 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
18 79 (1.75%) Entra ID
18 79 (1.75%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.22%) Firewall
2 40 (0.89%) DNS
3 30 (0.67%) HTTP
4 25 (0.55%) Network Security
5 19 (0.42%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.38%) WAN
7 16 (0.35%) SSL
8 15 (0.33%) Internet
9 14 (0.31%) LAN
10 12 (0.27%) VPN
11 11 (0.24%) SNMP
12 8 (0.18%) DHCP
12 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.16%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.16%) VLAN
13 7 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
14 6 (0.13%) IPsec
14 6 (0.13%) NAS
14 6 (0.13%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 785 (17.41%) Power BI
2 573 (12.71%) Data Warehouse
3 541 (12.00%) SQL Server
4 314 (6.97%) PostgreSQL
5 302 (6.70%) Tableau
6 290 (6.43%) Relational Database
7 289 (6.41%) Data Lake
7 289 (6.41%) NoSQL
8 261 (5.79%) Azure SQL Database
9 250 (5.55%) Metadata
10 160 (3.55%) Oracle Database
11 153 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 142 (3.15%) Big Data
12 142 (3.15%) MySQL
13 136 (3.02%) BigQuery
14 131 (2.91%) Amazon Redshift
14 131 (2.91%) Delta Lake
15 117 (2.60%) MongoDB
16 110 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
17 106 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 497 (11.02%) Git
2 362 (8.03%) JIRA
3 239 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 188 (4.17%) GitLab
5 72 (1.60%) Selenium
6 69 (1.53%) JUnit
7 57 (1.26%) Postman
8 41 (0.91%) Cucumber
8 41 (0.91%) Maven
8 41 (0.91%) Oracle APEX
9 40 (0.89%) MLflow
9 40 (0.89%) Mockito
10 32 (0.71%) REST Assured
10 32 (0.71%) Visual Studio
11 31 (0.69%) ERwin
12 30 (0.67%) JMeter
13 29 (0.64%) Bitbucket
14 28 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
15 27 (0.60%) SonarQube
16 26 (0.58%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,234 (27.37%) Social Skills
2 1,182 (26.22%) Finance
3 844 (18.72%) Analytical Skills
4 420 (9.32%) Banking
5 409 (9.07%) Public Sector
6 115 (2.55%) Investment Banking
7 111 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
7 111 (2.46%) Front Office
8 96 (2.13%) Marketing
9 75 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 74 (1.64%) Retail
11 57 (1.26%) Financial Institution
11 57 (1.26%) Legal
12 39 (0.87%) Telecoms
13 38 (0.84%) Publishing
14 37 (0.82%) Organisational Skills
14 37 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
15 34 (0.75%) Manufacturing
16 33 (0.73%) Law
17 31 (0.69%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 989 (21.94%) Developer
2 894 (19.83%) Data Engineer
3 676 (15.00%) Analyst
4 563 (12.49%) Senior
5 313 (6.94%) Lead
6 291 (6.46%) Data Analyst
7 264 (5.86%) Architect
8 228 (5.06%) Business Analyst
9 211 (4.68%) Consultant
10 171 (3.79%) Java Developer
11 147 (3.26%) Senior Developer
12 139 (3.08%) Senior Data Engineer
13 138 (3.06%) DBA
14 129 (2.86%) Azure Engineer
15 122 (2.71%) Software Engineer
16 112 (2.48%) C# Developer
17 108 (2.40%) Python Developer
18 107 (2.37%) Data Architect
19 102 (2.26%) Full-Stack Developer
20 99 (2.20%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 387 (8.58%) .NET
2 348 (7.72%) REST
3 297 (6.59%) PySpark
4 272 (6.03%) Kafka
5 219 (4.86%) React
6 204 (4.53%) RESTful
7 202 (4.48%) Spring
8 188 (4.17%) Spring Boot
9 162 (3.59%) HTML
10 155 (3.44%) JSON
10 155 (3.44%) XML
11 141 (3.13%) CSS
12 136 (3.02%) Pandas
13 127 (2.82%) AngularJS
14 107 (2.37%) Middleware
15 104 (2.31%) Node.js
16 93 (2.06%) Web Services
17 89 (1.97%) SOAP
18 88 (1.95%) .NET Framework
19 77 (1.71%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 285 (6.32%) Cloud Native
2 165 (3.66%) Data Structures
3 151 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 135 (2.99%) Product Ownership
5 102 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.13%) Management Information System
7 83 (1.84%) Derivative
8 76 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
8 76 (1.69%) Onboarding
9 67 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
10 64 (1.42%) Algorithms
11 59 (1.31%) Equities
12 58 (1.29%) Fixed Income
13 54 (1.20%) Enterprise Software
14 52 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
15 51 (1.13%) Clustering
16 43 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 42 (0.93%) Replication
18 40 (0.89%) NHS
19 38 (0.84%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 312 (6.92%) Linux
2 262 (5.81%) Windows
3 215 (4.77%) Unix
4 87 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.47%) AIX
7 17 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 9 (0.20%) Solaris
10 9 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 8 (0.18%) VMS
12 7 (0.16%) zOS
13 6 (0.13%) Android
14 5 (0.11%) Apple iOS
14 5 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.044%) CentOS
15 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.022%) VME
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,218 (27.02%) CI/CD
2 1,189 (26.38%) Agile
3 1,155 (25.62%) Analytics
4 1,135 (25.18%) Data Modelling
5 1,051 (23.31%) ETL
6 1,039 (23.05%) Business Intelligence
7 1,036 (22.98%) DevOps
8 946 (20.98%) Problem-Solving
9 822 (18.23%) Data Pipeline
10 699 (15.51%) Data Engineering
11 570 (12.64%) Migration
12 566 (12.56%) Data Governance
13 539 (11.96%) AI
14 535 (11.87%) Validation
15 434 (9.63%) Test Automation
16 422 (9.36%) Decision-Making
17 419 (9.29%) Data Analysis
18 412 (9.14%) Performance Tuning
19 396 (8.78%) Microservices
20 392 (8.70%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,707 (37.87%) Python
2 625 (13.86%) Java
3 473 (10.49%) C#
4 351 (7.79%) JavaScript
5 339 (7.52%) PL/SQL
6 201 (4.46%) T-SQL
7 192 (4.26%) PowerShell
8 162 (3.59%) TypeScript
9 129 (2.86%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 129 (2.86%) R
10 125 (2.77%) Shell Script
11 102 (2.26%) Scala
12 82 (1.82%) Bash
13 81 (1.80%) C++
14 63 (1.40%) Bicep
14 63 (1.40%) VBA
15 47 (1.04%) Perl
16 31 (0.69%) Go
17 26 (0.58%) VB
18 23 (0.51%) C
Qualifications
1 969 (21.50%) Security Cleared
2 784 (17.39%) SC Cleared
3 363 (8.05%) Degree
4 124 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 105 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
6 72 (1.60%) Azure Certification
7 67 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 57 (1.26%) ISTQB
9 56 (1.24%) DV Cleared
10 45 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (0.80%) AWS Certification
12 21 (0.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 18 (0.40%) Oracle Certification
14 17 (0.38%) PhD
15 13 (0.29%) CBAP
16 11 (0.24%) DBS Check
17 10 (0.22%) CTC Cleared
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
18 9 (0.20%) ISEB
18 9 (0.20%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 829 (18.39%) Data Quality
2 357 (7.92%) QA
3 196 (4.35%) GDPR
4 68 (1.51%) Accessibility
5 36 (0.80%) SLA
6 31 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 30 (0.67%) PMO
8 29 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 17 (0.38%) NIST
10 17 (0.38%) PCI DSS
11 16 (0.35%) WCAG
12 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 14 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
13 14 (0.31%) MiFID
14 13 (0.29%) HL7
14 13 (0.29%) IFRS
15 10 (0.22%) SEPA
15 10 (0.22%) Solvency II
System Software
1 533 (11.82%) Docker
2 107 (2.37%) Active Directory
3 33 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
4 30 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
5 24 (0.53%) VMware Infrastructure
6 19 (0.42%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.18%) HDFS
9 8 (0.18%) KVM
9 8 (0.18%) Postfix
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 5 (0.11%) XenApp
11 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.067%) Ceph
12 3 (0.067%) Oracle Clusterware
13 2 (0.044%) GridGain
13 2 (0.044%) Squid
13 2 (0.044%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) NetIQ eDirectory
Systems Management
1 447 (9.92%) Kubernetes
2 373 (8.27%) Terraform
3 110 (2.44%) Grafana
4 80 (1.77%) Ansible
5 65 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 39 (0.87%) Oracle RMAN
7 28 (0.62%) Data Guard
8 21 (0.47%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.38%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.35%) Kibana
10 16 (0.35%) SCCM
11 14 (0.31%) Control-M
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 11 (0.24%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.22%) Nagios
13 10 (0.22%) Netcool
13 10 (0.22%) OpenView
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 762 (16.90%) Oracle
2 737 (16.35%) Microsoft
3 563 (12.49%) Databricks
4 173 (3.84%) Google
5 147 (3.26%) Informatica
6 138 (3.06%) ServiceNow
7 126 (2.80%) Talend
8 109 (2.42%) SAP
9 89 (1.97%) Splunk
10 74 (1.64%) IBM
11 70 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 59 (1.31%) Denodo
13 52 (1.15%) Citrix
14 45 (1.00%) OpenAI
15 43 (0.95%) VMware
16 33 (0.73%) MuleSoft
17 32 (0.71%) Dynatrace
18 31 (0.69%) Bloomberg
19 28 (0.62%) HP
19 28 (0.62%) Sybase