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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 -3
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,383 3,511 4,418
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.97% 12.08% 9.98%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.68% 35.41% 34.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,007 2,436 3,145
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £408 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £588 £615 £638
90th Percentile £700 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 64 61 65
10th Percentile £25.60 £23.00 £21.64
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.00 £25.79
Median hourly rate £48.11 £47.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.28% +11.76% -15.00%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.62 £53.75
90th Percentile £83.30 £77.19 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £63.25 £43.06 £40.25
% change year-on-year +46.91% +6.97% +5.11%

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 12,638 9,914 12,919
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 28.74% 34.11% 29.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,394 6,649 9,142
10th Percentile £353 £356 £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 £715 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £483 £488
% change year-on-year -1.66% -0.92% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 509 243 485
10th Percentile £41.25 £22.04 £30.88
25th Percentile £53.75 £32.51 £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 £68.25 £67.50
90th Percentile £77.00 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £61.60
% change year-on-year +1.56% +3.90% -4.31%

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 March 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 March 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 March 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 3,849 £500 -2.44% 2,193
London 0 2,253 £512 -4.78% 840
UK excluding London -7 1,686 £475 - 1,697
Work from Home -5 1,329 £500 - 1,097
Midlands +2 471 £470 +2.17% 280
North of England -11 437 £450 -5.26% 459
West Midlands +6 374 £465 -2.31% 157
South East -19 295 £500 - 526
North West +2 250 £447 -5.89% 248
South West -6 204 £475 -5.94% 165
Yorkshire -23 166 £500 - 149
Scotland -6 161 £470 +4.44% 85
East Midlands -4 95 £537 +37.34% 123
East of England -24 80 £500 +6.95% 147
Wales +4 42 £425 +6.25% 46
North East -1 33 £475 +5.56% 66
Northern Ireland -5 21 £400 - 15

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
1 239 (5.45%) Apache Spark
2 178 (4.06%) Apache Airflow
3 164 (3.74%) Apache
4 137 (3.13%) Confluence
5 85 (1.94%) SAS
6 82 (1.87%) SharePoint
7 50 (1.14%) WebLogic
8 43 (0.98%) Tomcat
9 29 (0.66%) IIS
10 28 (0.64%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.55%) Apache Geronimo
11 24 (0.55%) Apache ServiceMix
11 24 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.55%) Red Hat Fuse
12 20 (0.46%) Jupyter
13 17 (0.39%) CMS
13 17 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
13 17 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.37%) Tuxedo
15 15 (0.34%) nginx
Applications
1 292 (6.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.41%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 42 (0.96%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 19 (0.43%) Spreadsheet
6 11 (0.25%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.14%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.068%) Notion
8 3 (0.068%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.068%) Trello
9 1 (0.023%) InDesign
9 1 (0.023%) Mingle
9 1 (0.023%) SPSS
9 1 (0.023%) Weka
Business Applications
1 38 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.66%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.59%) Oracle Payables
4 24 (0.55%) Oracle Receivables
5 21 (0.48%) NEC Housing
5 21 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
6 19 (0.43%) Dynamics CRM
6 19 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
7 16 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.37%) SAP S/4HANA
8 15 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
9 14 (0.32%) NetSuite
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Cash Management
11 11 (0.25%) Advent Geneva
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle 11i
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 11 (0.25%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 11 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
12 10 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
13 8 (0.18%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,560 (35.59%) Azure
2 1,080 (24.64%) AWS
3 827 (18.87%) Power Platform
4 464 (10.59%) Azure DevOps
5 364 (8.30%) GitHub
6 363 (8.28%) GCP
7 349 (7.96%) Azure Data Factory
8 311 (7.10%) Serverless
9 284 (6.48%) Snowflake
10 245 (5.59%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 234 (5.34%) Amazon S3
12 189 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
13 183 (4.18%) dbt
14 159 (3.63%) AWS Lambda
15 110 (2.51%) Azure Functions
16 101 (2.30%) SaaS
17 96 (2.19%) Power Automate
18 80 (1.83%) AWS CloudFormation
18 80 (1.83%) Entra ID
19 76 (1.73%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 61 (1.39%) Firewall
2 44 (1.00%) DNS
3 29 (0.66%) HTTP
4 27 (0.62%) Network Security
5 20 (0.46%) SSL
5 20 (0.46%) TCP/IP
6 17 (0.39%) WAN
7 15 (0.34%) Internet
7 15 (0.34%) VPN
8 14 (0.32%) LAN
9 13 (0.30%) 5G
10 10 (0.23%) 4G
10 10 (0.23%) DHCP
11 9 (0.21%) 2G
11 9 (0.21%) Radio Access Network
12 8 (0.18%) Kerberos
12 8 (0.18%) SNMP
13 7 (0.16%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.16%) SAN
13 7 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 751 (17.13%) Power BI
2 546 (12.46%) Data Warehouse
3 520 (11.86%) SQL Server
4 309 (7.05%) PostgreSQL
5 294 (6.71%) Relational Database
6 291 (6.64%) NoSQL
7 288 (6.57%) Tableau
8 286 (6.53%) Data Lake
9 260 (5.93%) Azure SQL Database
10 227 (5.18%) Metadata
11 156 (3.56%) Oracle Database
12 150 (3.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 136 (3.10%) Big Data
13 136 (3.10%) MySQL
14 130 (2.97%) BigQuery
15 125 (2.85%) Delta Lake
16 115 (2.62%) Amazon Redshift
17 110 (2.51%) MongoDB
18 105 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
19 99 (2.26%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 473 (10.79%) Git
2 338 (7.71%) JIRA
3 227 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 180 (4.11%) GitLab
5 71 (1.62%) Selenium
6 68 (1.55%) JUnit
7 50 (1.14%) Postman
8 41 (0.94%) Oracle APEX
9 40 (0.91%) Cucumber
9 40 (0.91%) MLflow
10 38 (0.87%) Visual Studio
11 35 (0.80%) Maven
12 34 (0.78%) ERwin
12 34 (0.78%) JMeter
12 34 (0.78%) Mockito
13 31 (0.71%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.62%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.59%) Cypress.io
16 23 (0.52%) Oracle Forms
16 23 (0.52%) SpecFlow
General
1 1,237 (28.22%) Social Skills
2 1,164 (26.56%) Finance
3 813 (18.55%) Analytical Skills
4 434 (9.90%) Banking
5 404 (9.22%) Public Sector
6 116 (2.65%) Investment Banking
7 108 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
8 107 (2.44%) Front Office
9 89 (2.03%) Marketing
10 76 (1.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 75 (1.71%) Retail
12 58 (1.32%) Financial Institution
13 54 (1.23%) Legal
14 40 (0.91%) Publishing
15 38 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
15 38 (0.87%) Telecoms
16 37 (0.84%) Manufacturing
16 37 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
17 32 (0.73%) Law
18 27 (0.62%) Billing
Job Titles
1 993 (22.66%) Developer
2 805 (18.37%) Data Engineer
3 660 (15.06%) Analyst
4 561 (12.80%) Senior
5 305 (6.96%) Lead
6 290 (6.62%) Data Analyst
7 254 (5.80%) Architect
8 224 (5.11%) Business Analyst
9 209 (4.77%) Consultant
10 155 (3.54%) Java Developer
11 152 (3.47%) Senior Developer
12 125 (2.85%) DBA
13 122 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
14 121 (2.76%) Senior Data Engineer
14 121 (2.76%) Software Engineer
15 112 (2.56%) C# Developer
16 104 (2.37%) Data Architect
17 101 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
18 98 (2.24%) Data Scientist
19 96 (2.19%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 389 (8.88%) .NET
2 349 (7.96%) REST
3 287 (6.55%) PySpark
4 275 (6.27%) Kafka
5 215 (4.91%) React
6 205 (4.68%) RESTful
7 185 (4.22%) Spring
8 168 (3.83%) Spring Boot
9 159 (3.63%) XML
10 154 (3.51%) HTML
11 152 (3.47%) JSON
12 134 (3.06%) CSS
13 133 (3.03%) Pandas
14 126 (2.87%) AngularJS
15 104 (2.37%) Node.js
16 95 (2.17%) Middleware
17 93 (2.12%) .NET Framework
18 91 (2.08%) Web Services
19 88 (2.01%) SOAP
20 79 (1.80%) NumPy
Miscellaneous
1 296 (6.75%) Cloud Native
2 155 (3.54%) Data Structures
3 147 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 130 (2.97%) Product Ownership
5 94 (2.14%) Management Information System
6 92 (2.10%) Distributed Systems
7 81 (1.85%) Derivative
8 79 (1.80%) Data Protection Act
9 75 (1.71%) Algorithms
10 74 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
11 68 (1.55%) Equities
11 68 (1.55%) Onboarding
12 62 (1.41%) Fixed Income
13 52 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
13 52 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
14 47 (1.07%) Replication
15 46 (1.05%) Clustering
15 46 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 37 (0.84%) Virtual Team
17 36 (0.82%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 314 (7.16%) Linux
2 259 (5.91%) Windows
3 197 (4.49%) Unix
4 91 (2.08%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.41%) AIX
7 17 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
8 13 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.23%) VMS
9 10 (0.23%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.16%) Solaris
10 7 (0.16%) Windows Server 2008
11 6 (0.14%) Android
11 6 (0.14%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.14%) zOS
12 4 (0.091%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.068%) CentOS
14 2 (0.046%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.046%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,170 (26.69%) Agile
2 1,158 (26.42%) CI/CD
3 1,136 (25.92%) Analytics
4 1,088 (24.82%) Data Modelling
5 1,026 (23.41%) DevOps
6 998 (22.77%) Business Intelligence
7 991 (22.61%) ETL
8 931 (21.24%) Problem-Solving
9 761 (17.36%) Data Pipeline
10 670 (15.29%) Data Engineering
11 539 (12.30%) Data Governance
12 529 (12.07%) Migration
13 520 (11.86%) AI
14 492 (11.23%) Validation
15 426 (9.72%) Data Analysis
16 407 (9.29%) Test Automation
17 396 (9.03%) Decision-Making
18 395 (9.01%) Performance Tuning
18 395 (9.01%) Visualisation
19 385 (8.78%) Data Science
Programming Languages
1 1,651 (37.67%) Python
2 609 (13.89%) Java
3 479 (10.93%) C#
4 349 (7.96%) JavaScript
5 312 (7.12%) PL/SQL
6 183 (4.18%) PowerShell
7 179 (4.08%) T-SQL
8 162 (3.70%) TypeScript
9 123 (2.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 123 (2.81%) R
10 120 (2.74%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.12%) Scala
12 78 (1.78%) C++
13 76 (1.73%) Bash
14 65 (1.48%) Bicep
15 59 (1.35%) VBA
16 47 (1.07%) Perl
17 37 (0.84%) VB
18 35 (0.80%) Go
19 24 (0.55%) PHP
Qualifications
1 890 (20.31%) Security Cleared
2 696 (15.88%) SC Cleared
3 375 (8.56%) Degree
4 126 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
5 99 (2.26%) BPSS Clearance
6 73 (1.67%) Master's Degree
7 72 (1.64%) Azure Certification
8 58 (1.32%) ISTQB
9 56 (1.28%) DV Cleared
10 45 (1.03%) Microsoft Certification
11 41 (0.94%) AWS Certification
12 28 (0.64%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 16 (0.37%) CBAP
13 16 (0.37%) PhD
14 15 (0.34%) Oracle Certification
15 11 (0.25%) ISEB
16 10 (0.23%) CTC Cleared
16 10 (0.23%) DBS Check
16 10 (0.23%) PMP
17 9 (0.21%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 791 (18.05%) Data Quality
2 334 (7.62%) QA
3 192 (4.38%) GDPR
4 73 (1.67%) Accessibility
5 34 (0.78%) SLA
6 33 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 31 (0.71%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 28 (0.64%) PMO
9 20 (0.46%) Actionable Recommendations
10 19 (0.43%) MiFID
10 19 (0.43%) WCAG
11 18 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 17 (0.39%) NIST
13 16 (0.37%) PCI DSS
14 14 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 12 (0.27%) IFRS
15 12 (0.27%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.27%) SEPA
16 11 (0.25%) EMIR
16 11 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 516 (11.77%) Docker
2 112 (2.56%) Active Directory
3 33 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
4 24 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
5 23 (0.52%) VMware Infrastructure
6 17 (0.39%) Hyper-V
7 8 (0.18%) HDFS
7 8 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
7 8 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
8 6 (0.14%) KVM
9 5 (0.11%) Postfix
9 5 (0.11%) RACF
9 5 (0.11%) XenApp
9 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.068%) Ceph
10 3 (0.068%) Oracle Clusterware
11 2 (0.046%) GridGain
11 2 (0.046%) NetIQ eDirectory
11 2 (0.046%) Squid
11 2 (0.046%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 448 (10.22%) Kubernetes
2 353 (8.05%) Terraform
3 94 (2.14%) Grafana
4 82 (1.87%) Ansible
5 66 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 30 (0.68%) Oracle RMAN
7 23 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
8 22 (0.50%) Data Guard
9 20 (0.46%) Progress Chef
10 16 (0.37%) SCCM
11 13 (0.30%) Control-M
11 13 (0.30%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 12 (0.27%) Kibana
13 10 (0.23%) WSUS
14 9 (0.21%) Puppet
14 9 (0.21%) vCenter Server
15 8 (0.18%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 8 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
15 8 (0.18%) Kiali
15 8 (0.18%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 722 (16.47%) Oracle
2 711 (16.22%) Microsoft
3 540 (12.32%) Databricks
4 181 (4.13%) Google
5 134 (3.06%) Informatica
6 131 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 109 (2.49%) Talend
8 104 (2.37%) SAP
9 72 (1.64%) IBM
9 72 (1.64%) Splunk
10 66 (1.51%) Salesforce
11 49 (1.12%) Citrix
12 44 (1.00%) OpenAI
13 42 (0.96%) Denodo
13 42 (0.96%) VMware
14 40 (0.91%) MuleSoft
15 34 (0.78%) Bloomberg
16 31 (0.71%) TIBCO
17 30 (0.68%) Foundry
18 28 (0.64%) Dynatrace