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 11 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,135 3,840 4,034
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.61% 11.66% 10.36%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.38% 35.51% 33.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,421 2,650 2,950
10th Percentile £356 £335 £350
25th Percentile £413 £405 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +0.86% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 71 49
10th Percentile £23.30 £22.84 £20.12
25th Percentile £33.88 £29.66 £30.00
Median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £41.16
Median % change year-on-year +14.56% -5.61% -10.30%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £36.00 £34.97
% change year-on-year +23.61% +2.96% -13.86%

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 14,116 10,814 12,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.43% 32.84% 31.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,182 7,261 8,531
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £503 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.99% -5.19% -3.64%
75th Percentile £616 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.21% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 526 265 407
10th Percentile £30.25 £28.18 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £36.00 £45.61
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.25 £84.80 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +8.33%

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 11 August 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 11 August 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 11 August 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 4,489 £500 - 2,762
London -6 2,446 £525 - 1,486
UK excluding London -10 2,152 £469 +0.86% 1,617
Work from Home -5 1,538 £500 - 1,222
North of England -3 590 £468 -0.32% 446
Midlands 0 548 £459 +2.68% 247
South East -10 470 £475 -5.00% 491
West Midlands +4 450 £459 +1.32% 134
North West -3 303 £478 +2.36% 250
Yorkshire -2 248 £474 -0.21% 128
South West -4 218 £500 +17.65% 181
Scotland -11 184 £429 -7.30% 84
East of England -3 118 £478 -4.50% 114
East Midlands -4 94 £465 +24.00% 113
North East -16 50 £413 -10.81% 78
Wales -1 40 £475 +5.56% 49
Northern Ireland -9 17 £375 -26.83% 30

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
1 224 (4.36%) Apache Airflow
2 220 (4.28%) Confluence
3 214 (4.17%) Apache Spark
4 175 (3.41%) Apache
5 119 (2.32%) SAS
6 75 (1.46%) SharePoint
7 45 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
8 39 (0.76%) IIS
8 39 (0.76%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.56%) Jupyter
10 24 (0.47%) Tomcat
11 22 (0.43%) WebSphere
12 21 (0.41%) nginx
12 21 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
14 19 (0.37%) CMS
15 12 (0.23%) Camunda
15 12 (0.23%) Tuxedo
16 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
17 10 (0.19%) Red Hat Fuse
Applications
1 329 (6.41%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (0.95%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 26 (0.51%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.078%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.078%) Notion
8 4 (0.078%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.058%) Microsoft Project
10 2 (0.039%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.019%) InDesign
11 1 (0.019%) Mingle
11 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 52 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 44 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 28 (0.55%) Aladdin
5 26 (0.51%) Remedy ITSM
6 25 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
8 18 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
9 16 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
10 13 (0.25%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.23%) NEC Housing
12 11 (0.21%) Findur
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.19%) Finacle
13 10 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
14 9 (0.18%) Elite 3E
14 9 (0.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 9 (0.18%) Unit4 Business World
15 8 (0.16%) Infor LN
Cloud Services
1 1,612 (31.39%) Azure
2 1,214 (23.64%) AWS
3 957 (18.64%) Power Platform
4 459 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
5 456 (8.88%) GCP
6 364 (7.09%) GitHub
7 351 (6.84%) Snowflake
8 347 (6.76%) Azure Data Factory
9 309 (6.02%) Serverless
10 274 (5.34%) dbt
11 251 (4.89%) Amazon S3
12 216 (4.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 202 (3.93%) AWS Lambda
14 186 (3.62%) GitHub Actions
15 100 (1.95%) Entra ID
16 98 (1.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 98 (1.91%) SaaS
17 95 (1.85%) Power Automate
18 90 (1.75%) PowerApps
19 75 (1.46%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 66 (1.29%) DNS
2 47 (0.92%) Firewall
3 30 (0.58%) SSL
4 28 (0.55%) HTTP
5 27 (0.53%) Network Security
6 24 (0.47%) VPN
7 22 (0.43%) SNMP
8 20 (0.39%) Internet
8 20 (0.39%) TCP/IP
9 19 (0.37%) WAN
10 13 (0.25%) Broadband
11 12 (0.23%) DHCP
12 10 (0.19%) SAN
12 10 (0.19%) SSH
12 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
12 10 (0.19%) Wireshark
13 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
13 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
13 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
14 8 (0.16%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 880 (17.14%) Power BI
2 718 (13.98%) Data Warehouse
3 637 (12.41%) SQL Server
4 334 (6.50%) Relational Database
5 319 (6.21%) Data Lake
6 318 (6.19%) PostgreSQL
7 307 (5.98%) Tableau
8 276 (5.37%) Metadata
9 254 (4.95%) NoSQL
10 217 (4.23%) Azure SQL Database
11 211 (4.11%) Oracle Database
12 177 (3.45%) BigQuery
13 165 (3.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 151 (2.94%) Amazon Redshift
15 141 (2.75%) Delta Lake
16 129 (2.51%) Oracle Reports
17 125 (2.43%) Big Data
18 119 (2.32%) MongoDB
19 116 (2.26%) MySQL
20 104 (2.03%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 620 (12.07%) Git
2 414 (8.06%) JIRA
3 299 (5.82%) Jenkins
4 238 (4.63%) GitLab
5 82 (1.60%) JUnit
6 75 (1.46%) Maven
7 68 (1.32%) Gradle
7 68 (1.32%) Postman
7 68 (1.32%) Selenium
8 55 (1.07%) Mockito
9 48 (0.93%) Oracle Forms
10 42 (0.82%) SonarQube
11 40 (0.78%) Bitbucket
11 40 (0.78%) Visual Studio
12 37 (0.72%) Zephyr
13 33 (0.64%) JMeter
14 32 (0.62%) MLflow
15 30 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
16 29 (0.56%) ERwin
16 29 (0.56%) Liquibase
General
1 1,343 (26.15%) Social Skills
2 1,279 (24.91%) Finance
3 1,035 (20.16%) Analytical Skills
4 498 (9.70%) Banking
5 497 (9.68%) Public Sector
6 146 (2.84%) Marketing
7 145 (2.82%) Front Office
8 136 (2.65%) Retail
9 128 (2.49%) Investment Banking
10 97 (1.89%) Documentation Skills
11 92 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 76 (1.48%) Manufacturing
13 58 (1.13%) Legal
14 55 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 54 (1.05%) Financial Institution
16 46 (0.90%) Organisational Skills
16 46 (0.90%) Telecoms
17 41 (0.80%) Back Office
18 40 (0.78%) Publishing
19 37 (0.72%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,122 (21.85%) Developer
2 993 (19.34%) Data Engineer
3 759 (14.78%) Analyst
4 688 (13.40%) Senior
5 364 (7.09%) Lead
6 322 (6.27%) Data Analyst
7 269 (5.24%) Architect
8 258 (5.02%) Consultant
9 254 (4.95%) Business Analyst
10 212 (4.13%) Java Developer
11 209 (4.07%) DBA
12 196 (3.82%) Senior Data Engineer
13 171 (3.33%) Senior Developer
14 140 (2.73%) Software Engineer
15 131 (2.55%) SQL DBA
16 128 (2.49%) SQL Developer
17 117 (2.28%) Azure Engineer
18 114 (2.22%) Full-Stack Developer
19 111 (2.16%) Data Architect
19 111 (2.16%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 427 (8.32%) .NET
2 425 (8.28%) REST
3 328 (6.39%) PySpark
4 320 (6.23%) Kafka
5 272 (5.30%) Spring
6 255 (4.97%) Spring Boot
7 226 (4.40%) React
8 217 (4.23%) RESTful
9 202 (3.93%) JSON
10 191 (3.72%) XML
11 177 (3.45%) HTML
12 143 (2.78%) AngularJS
12 143 (2.78%) CSS
13 130 (2.53%) Web Services
14 118 (2.30%) Pandas
15 114 (2.22%) SOAP
16 110 (2.14%) Middleware
17 100 (1.95%) .NET Framework
18 84 (1.64%) Node.js
19 72 (1.40%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 343 (6.68%) Cloud Native
2 248 (4.83%) Data Structures
3 206 (4.01%) Product Ownership
4 177 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
5 148 (2.88%) Distributed Systems
6 119 (2.32%) Onboarding
7 108 (2.10%) Enterprise Software
8 97 (1.89%) Management Information System
9 96 (1.87%) Derivative
10 86 (1.67%) Self-Motivation
11 75 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 74 (1.44%) Replication
13 72 (1.40%) Analytical Mindset
14 65 (1.27%) Algorithms
14 65 (1.27%) Clustering
15 57 (1.11%) AI Agents
16 56 (1.09%) Fixed Income
17 53 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
18 52 (1.01%) Reference Data
19 51 (0.99%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 361 (7.03%) Linux
2 313 (6.10%) Windows
3 239 (4.65%) Unix
4 122 (2.38%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.41%) AIX
7 17 (0.33%) Solaris
8 14 (0.27%) VMS
9 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
10 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.14%) Ubuntu
11 7 (0.14%) zOS
12 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2016
14 4 (0.078%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.078%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.058%) Android
15 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,384 (26.95%) Agile
2 1,357 (26.43%) CI/CD
3 1,350 (26.29%) Data Modelling
4 1,284 (25.00%) Analytics
5 1,160 (22.59%) ETL
6 1,122 (21.85%) Business Intelligence
7 1,049 (20.43%) DevOps
8 1,003 (19.53%) Data Pipeline
9 993 (19.34%) Problem-Solving
10 841 (16.38%) Data Engineering
11 745 (14.51%) Migration
12 729 (14.20%) AI
13 706 (13.75%) Validation
14 586 (11.41%) Data Governance
15 575 (11.20%) Stakeholder Management
16 551 (10.73%) Test Automation
17 523 (10.19%) Decision-Making
18 520 (10.13%) Data Analysis
19 517 (10.07%) Continuous Improvement
20 449 (8.74%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,803 (35.11%) Python
2 664 (12.93%) Java
3 491 (9.56%) C#
4 423 (8.24%) PL/SQL
5 373 (7.26%) JavaScript
6 274 (5.34%) T-SQL
7 261 (5.08%) PowerShell
8 177 (3.45%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 141 (2.75%) Shell Script
11 120 (2.34%) Bash
12 92 (1.79%) R
13 74 (1.44%) Scala
14 61 (1.19%) C++
15 53 (1.03%) VBA
16 51 (0.99%) Bicep
17 31 (0.60%) C
18 29 (0.56%) Perl
19 28 (0.55%) VB
20 25 (0.49%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 1,161 (22.61%) Security Cleared
2 947 (18.44%) SC Cleared
3 345 (6.72%) Degree
4 140 (2.73%) BPSS Clearance
5 123 (2.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 110 (2.14%) DV Cleared
7 76 (1.48%) Azure Certification
8 69 (1.34%) ISTQB
9 48 (0.93%) Master's Degree
10 44 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
11 38 (0.74%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.35%) CISSP
13 16 (0.31%) DBS Check
13 16 (0.31%) ISEB
13 16 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 12 (0.23%) FFIEC
14 12 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
14 12 (0.23%) PhD
15 10 (0.19%) ACCA
15 10 (0.19%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 950 (18.50%) Data Quality
2 398 (7.75%) QA
3 172 (3.35%) GDPR
4 65 (1.27%) Accessibility
5 45 (0.88%) SLA
6 27 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 26 (0.51%) ISO 20022
8 24 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.47%) PMO
9 22 (0.43%) NIST
10 20 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.31%) IFRS
12 15 (0.29%) MiFID
13 14 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 14 (0.27%) Solvency II
14 12 (0.23%) COBIT
14 12 (0.23%) GMP
14 12 (0.23%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.21%) NCSC
15 11 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 510 (9.93%) Docker
2 139 (2.71%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.41%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.25%) vCloud
10 11 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 7 (0.14%) KVM
13 5 (0.097%) Ceph
14 4 (0.078%) Squid
15 3 (0.058%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 3 (0.058%) HDFS
16 2 (0.039%) GridGain
17 1 (0.019%) RACF
17 1 (0.019%) Varnish
17 1 (0.019%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 438 (8.53%) Kubernetes
2 394 (7.67%) Terraform
3 110 (2.14%) Grafana
4 99 (1.93%) Ansible
5 50 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
5 50 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 46 (0.90%) Data Guard
7 34 (0.66%) Control-M
8 28 (0.55%) SCOM
9 19 (0.37%) Kibana
10 17 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.31%) Nagios
11 16 (0.31%) Netcool
11 16 (0.31%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.29%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.25%) OpenView
13 13 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
14 11 (0.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 906 (17.64%) Oracle
2 838 (16.32%) Microsoft
3 591 (11.51%) Databricks
4 195 (3.80%) Google
5 184 (3.58%) Informatica
6 144 (2.80%) Talend
7 139 (2.71%) SAP
8 128 (2.49%) ServiceNow
9 94 (1.83%) IBM
10 86 (1.67%) Splunk
11 75 (1.46%) Denodo
12 71 (1.38%) VMware
13 70 (1.36%) Salesforce
14 42 (0.82%) Dynatrace
15 39 (0.76%) Bloomberg
15 39 (0.76%) Citrix
16 38 (0.74%) BMC
17 37 (0.72%) Sybase
18 36 (0.70%) Murex
19 35 (0.68%) Adobe