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 9 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,750 3,580 4,247
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.56% 12.23% 9.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.60% 35.86% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,183 2,508 3,075
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 69 60
10th Percentile £26.50 £22.15 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.25 £29.34
Median hourly rate £50.00 £38.85 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.72% -8.60% -22.73%
75th Percentile £73.00 £58.75 £54.97
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.44 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +54.82% -20.21% -15.00%

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 13,341 9,984 13,032
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.85% 34.11% 30.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,712 6,756 9,198
10th Percentile £358 £356 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £502 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.08% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £715 £760 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £484 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.95% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 231 528
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £31.95
25th Percentile £54.28 £34.20 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.15 £85.00 £76.63
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +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 9 June 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 9 June 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 9 June 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 4,174 £500 - 1,769
London -2 2,311 £523 -1.42% 731
UK excluding London -10 1,963 £469 -0.21% 1,342
Work from Home -5 1,407 £500 -2.44% 1,004
Midlands +3 524 £465 +7.89% 211
North of England -6 519 £460 -3.16% 385
West Midlands +4 422 £459 +1.25% 129
South East -15 399 £475 -5.00% 428
North West -2 267 £460 -3.16% 235
South West -2 214 £500 +5.26% 133
Yorkshire -14 214 £475 - 100
Scotland -9 178 £475 +5.56% 49
East of England -19 103 £495 +1.54% 101
East Midlands -1 98 £525 +36.36% 82
North East -7 50 £425 -8.11% 53
Wales +15 43 £450 +5.88% 31
Northern Ireland -12 13 £400 -5.88% 31

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
1 253 (5.33%) Apache Spark
2 195 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 181 (3.81%) Confluence
4 179 (3.77%) Apache
5 108 (2.27%) SAS
6 67 (1.41%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.88%) Tomcat
8 31 (0.65%) IIS
8 31 (0.65%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.65%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.61%) WebSphere
10 23 (0.48%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.46%) Apache Geronimo
11 22 (0.46%) Apache ServiceMix
11 22 (0.46%) Red Hat Fuse
12 21 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
13 20 (0.42%) nginx
14 18 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
15 16 (0.34%) Appian
16 14 (0.29%) CMS
Applications
1 295 (6.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 47 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 36 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
7 6 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.063%) Oracle Smart View
9 2 (0.042%) Notion
9 2 (0.042%) Trello
10 1 (0.021%) Acrobat
10 1 (0.021%) InDesign
10 1 (0.021%) Mingle
10 1 (0.021%) Photoshop
10 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 43 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
2 28 (0.59%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.57%) Aladdin
4 25 (0.53%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
6 21 (0.44%) NEC Housing
6 21 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
7 17 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 12 (0.25%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.21%) Findur
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.19%) Endur
12 9 (0.19%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,580 (33.26%) Azure
2 1,171 (24.65%) AWS
3 903 (19.01%) Power Platform
4 458 (9.64%) Azure DevOps
5 395 (8.32%) GCP
6 365 (7.68%) Azure Data Factory
7 362 (7.62%) GitHub
8 307 (6.46%) Serverless
9 286 (6.02%) Snowflake
10 265 (5.58%) Amazon S3
11 235 (4.95%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 219 (4.61%) dbt
13 193 (4.06%) GitHub Actions
14 191 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
15 92 (1.94%) SaaS
16 83 (1.75%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 83 (1.75%) Power Automate
17 80 (1.68%) Azure Functions
18 79 (1.66%) Entra ID
19 74 (1.56%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.12%) DNS
2 52 (1.09%) Firewall
3 21 (0.44%) SNMP
3 21 (0.44%) WAN
4 20 (0.42%) HTTP
5 19 (0.40%) Network Security
5 19 (0.40%) SSL
6 18 (0.38%) TCP/IP
7 17 (0.36%) Internet
8 16 (0.34%) VPN
9 12 (0.25%) LAN
10 11 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (0.21%) SAN
12 9 (0.19%) Wireshark
13 8 (0.17%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.17%) HTTPS
13 8 (0.17%) Kerberos
14 7 (0.15%) NAS
14 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
14 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 830 (17.47%) Power BI
2 614 (12.93%) Data Warehouse
3 590 (12.42%) SQL Server
4 333 (7.01%) Data Lake
5 311 (6.55%) Tableau
6 308 (6.48%) Relational Database
7 303 (6.38%) PostgreSQL
8 261 (5.49%) NoSQL
9 243 (5.12%) Metadata
10 237 (4.99%) Azure SQL Database
11 178 (3.75%) Oracle Database
12 169 (3.56%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 155 (3.26%) Big Data
14 147 (3.09%) BigQuery
15 138 (2.91%) Amazon Redshift
15 138 (2.91%) Delta Lake
16 124 (2.61%) MySQL
17 115 (2.42%) Oracle Reports
18 108 (2.27%) MongoDB
19 103 (2.17%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 514 (10.82%) Git
2 381 (8.02%) JIRA
3 244 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 235 (4.95%) GitLab
5 70 (1.47%) JUnit
6 66 (1.39%) Selenium
7 60 (1.26%) Postman
8 50 (1.05%) Maven
8 50 (1.05%) Mockito
9 45 (0.95%) Gradle
10 44 (0.93%) Cucumber
11 36 (0.76%) MLflow
11 36 (0.76%) Visual Studio
12 34 (0.72%) SonarQube
13 32 (0.67%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.63%) ERwin
14 30 (0.63%) JMeter
15 28 (0.59%) Oracle Forms
16 27 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.53%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,225 (25.79%) Finance
2 1,219 (25.66%) Social Skills
3 871 (18.34%) Analytical Skills
4 448 (9.43%) Banking
5 426 (8.97%) Public Sector
6 128 (2.69%) Front Office
7 126 (2.65%) Investment Banking
8 122 (2.57%) Marketing
9 103 (2.17%) Documentation Skills
10 90 (1.89%) Retail
11 83 (1.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.26%) Financial Institution
13 59 (1.24%) Legal
14 45 (0.95%) Publishing
15 42 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 41 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
17 36 (0.76%) Law
18 35 (0.74%) Telecoms
19 34 (0.72%) Back Office
19 34 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 993 (20.91%) Data Engineer
2 986 (20.76%) Developer
3 673 (14.17%) Analyst
4 603 (12.69%) Senior
5 328 (6.91%) Lead
6 292 (6.15%) Data Analyst
7 276 (5.81%) Architect
8 222 (4.67%) Consultant
9 209 (4.40%) Business Analyst
10 192 (4.04%) Java Developer
11 179 (3.77%) Senior Data Engineer
12 157 (3.31%) DBA
13 141 (2.97%) Senior Developer
14 139 (2.93%) Software Engineer
15 118 (2.48%) Azure Engineer
16 112 (2.36%) C# Developer
17 109 (2.29%) Data Architect
18 106 (2.23%) SQL Developer
19 105 (2.21%) Python Developer
20 97 (2.04%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (8.59%) .NET
2 373 (7.85%) REST
3 311 (6.55%) PySpark
4 293 (6.17%) Kafka
5 237 (4.99%) Spring
6 227 (4.78%) Spring Boot
7 221 (4.65%) React
8 207 (4.36%) RESTful
9 166 (3.49%) HTML
10 165 (3.47%) JSON
11 149 (3.14%) XML
12 147 (3.09%) CSS
13 132 (2.78%) Pandas
14 114 (2.40%) AngularJS
15 111 (2.34%) SOAP
16 109 (2.29%) Middleware
17 108 (2.27%) Web Services
18 89 (1.87%) .NET Framework
19 88 (1.85%) OAuth
20 79 (1.66%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 317 (6.67%) Cloud Native
2 181 (3.81%) Data Structures
3 163 (3.43%) Legacy Systems
4 144 (3.03%) Product Ownership
5 129 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.02%) Management Information System
7 94 (1.98%) Derivative
8 87 (1.83%) Onboarding
9 80 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
10 71 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
11 64 (1.35%) Enterprise Software
12 60 (1.26%) Self-Motivation
13 59 (1.24%) Clustering
14 57 (1.20%) Algorithms
15 55 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
16 54 (1.14%) Equities
17 51 (1.07%) Fixed Income
18 47 (0.99%) Replication
19 45 (0.95%) Low-Code
19 45 (0.95%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 322 (6.78%) Linux
2 274 (5.77%) Windows
3 223 (4.69%) Unix
4 102 (2.15%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.51%) AIX
7 18 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 13 (0.27%) Solaris
8 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.23%) VMS
9 11 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
10 8 (0.17%) Apple iOS
10 8 (0.17%) zOS
11 7 (0.15%) Android
11 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
12 4 (0.084%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.063%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.042%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.042%) HPUX
14 2 (0.042%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,313 (27.64%) CI/CD
2 1,205 (25.37%) Data Modelling
3 1,199 (25.24%) Analytics
4 1,179 (24.82%) Agile
5 1,118 (23.54%) ETL
6 1,054 (22.19%) Business Intelligence
7 1,020 (21.47%) DevOps
8 932 (19.62%) Data Pipeline
9 920 (19.37%) Problem-Solving
10 781 (16.44%) Data Engineering
11 661 (13.92%) AI
12 632 (13.31%) Migration
13 574 (12.08%) Validation
14 549 (11.56%) Data Governance
15 483 (10.17%) Test Automation
16 457 (9.62%) Decision-Making
17 446 (9.39%) Data Analysis
18 429 (9.03%) Microservices
19 426 (8.97%) Stakeholder Management
20 425 (8.95%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,785 (37.58%) Python
2 642 (13.52%) Java
3 493 (10.38%) C#
4 342 (7.20%) JavaScript
4 342 (7.20%) PL/SQL
5 243 (5.12%) T-SQL
6 232 (4.88%) PowerShell
7 157 (3.31%) TypeScript
8 135 (2.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 122 (2.57%) Shell Script
10 118 (2.48%) R
11 90 (1.89%) Bash
12 82 (1.73%) C++
13 81 (1.71%) Scala
14 60 (1.26%) Bicep
15 44 (0.93%) VBA
16 35 (0.74%) Perl
17 33 (0.69%) VB
18 30 (0.63%) C
19 27 (0.57%) Go
Qualifications
1 999 (21.03%) Security Cleared
2 808 (17.01%) SC Cleared
3 369 (7.77%) Degree
4 118 (2.48%) BPSS Clearance
5 116 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (1.89%) DV Cleared
7 76 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 67 (1.41%) Master's Degree
9 56 (1.18%) ISTQB
10 37 (0.78%) Microsoft Certification
11 30 (0.63%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.40%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.36%) PhD
14 13 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 11 (0.23%) CISSP
15 11 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMP
17 9 (0.19%) CISM
17 9 (0.19%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 872 (18.36%) Data Quality
2 370 (7.79%) QA
3 190 (4.00%) GDPR
4 55 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 48 (1.01%) SLA
6 34 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 32 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.51%) PMO
9 23 (0.48%) NIST
10 18 (0.38%) PCI DSS
11 17 (0.36%) IFRS
12 16 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
13 15 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 15 (0.32%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.32%) MiFID
14 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.27%) Solvency II
15 13 (0.27%) WCAG
16 11 (0.23%) GRC
16 11 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 537 (11.31%) Docker
2 109 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 37 (0.78%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
5 31 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
6 22 (0.46%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.23%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.21%) KVM
9 10 (0.21%) vCloud
10 9 (0.19%) Postfix
11 7 (0.15%) HDFS
12 6 (0.13%) RACF
13 5 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
14 4 (0.084%) Ceph
14 4 (0.084%) XenApp
14 4 (0.084%) XenDesktop
15 3 (0.063%) Oracle Clusterware
15 3 (0.063%) Squid
16 2 (0.042%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 426 (8.97%) Kubernetes
2 390 (8.21%) Terraform
3 125 (2.63%) Grafana
4 81 (1.71%) Ansible
5 67 (1.41%) Prometheus
6 44 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 33 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.42%) Kibana
9 19 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 18 (0.38%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.34%) Control-M
12 15 (0.32%) ZABBIX
13 14 (0.29%) Nagios
13 14 (0.29%) Netcool
13 14 (0.29%) Tivoli
14 13 (0.27%) OpenView
14 13 (0.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 11 (0.23%) SCOM
16 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
16 9 (0.19%) SCCM
Vendors
1 804 (16.93%) Oracle
2 726 (15.28%) Microsoft
3 590 (12.42%) Databricks
4 177 (3.73%) Google
5 171 (3.60%) Informatica
6 144 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 139 (2.93%) Talend
8 118 (2.48%) SAP
9 94 (1.98%) Splunk
10 83 (1.75%) IBM
11 71 (1.49%) Denodo
12 58 (1.22%) VMware
13 56 (1.18%) Salesforce
14 43 (0.91%) Citrix
15 40 (0.84%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.74%) MuleSoft
16 35 (0.74%) Sybase
17 33 (0.69%) Bloomberg
18 32 (0.67%) Murex
18 32 (0.67%) OpenAI