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

6 months to
12 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,771 3,583 4,310
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.55% 12.17% 9.88%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.52% 35.77% 32.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,181 2,512 3,118
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -0.94%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.26% - -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 70 61
10th Percentile £26.50 £22.57 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.31 £30.00
Median hourly rate £48.75 £39.67 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +22.88% -6.65% -20.93%
75th Percentile £71.88 £58.44 £54.13
90th Percentile £82.40 £76.34 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £48.75 £41.96 £42.50
% change year-on-year +16.20% -1.28% -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 13,433 10,018 13,163
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.88% 34.04% 30.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,762 6,782 9,286
10th Percentile £358 £355 £350
25th Percentile £417 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -1.46% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £601 £625 £650
90th Percentile £717 £751 £765
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +2.63% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 551 231 531
10th Percentile £36.25 £26.32 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% +2.97%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £76.25
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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -5 4,193 £500 - 1,598
London -3 2,302 £524 -1.13% 632
UK excluding London -10 1,996 £469 -1.26% 1,277
Work from Home -6 1,421 £500 -2.44% 786
Midlands +4 532 £463 +3.70% 219
North of England -7 523 £460 -3.16% 359
West Midlands +4 435 £459 +1.17% 133
South East -14 402 £475 -5.00% 409
North West -3 268 £460 -3.16% 229
South West -1 227 £500 +5.26% 123
Yorkshire -12 214 £475 - 84
Scotland -7 186 £475 +5.56% 41
East of England -15 101 £495 +1.54% 100
East Midlands -2 93 £525 +36.36% 86
North East -11 53 £425 -8.60% 48
Wales +8 42 £450 +5.88% 27
Northern Ireland -14 13 £400 -8.57% 28

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
1 251 (5.26%) Apache Spark
2 196 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
3 186 (3.90%) Confluence
4 177 (3.71%) Apache
5 109 (2.28%) SAS
6 61 (1.28%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.88%) Tomcat
8 32 (0.67%) IIS
8 32 (0.67%) Oracle Workflow
9 31 (0.65%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.61%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 22 (0.46%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.46%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.46%) Red Hat Fuse
13 19 (0.40%) Microsoft Exchange
14 18 (0.38%) nginx
14 18 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
15 16 (0.34%) Appian
16 14 (0.29%) CMS
Applications
1 295 (6.18%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.01%) Microsoft Office
2 48 (1.01%) MS Visio
3 36 (0.75%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 31 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
7 5 (0.10%) 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 40 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.54%) Aladdin
3 26 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
4 21 (0.44%) NEC Housing
5 20 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
5 20 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
6 17 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
7 16 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
8 15 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.25%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.23%) Findur
10 11 (0.23%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.21%) Endur
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 9 (0.19%) Payment Gateway
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,567 (32.84%) Azure
2 1,182 (24.77%) AWS
3 904 (18.95%) Power Platform
4 445 (9.33%) Azure DevOps
5 395 (8.28%) GCP
6 359 (7.52%) Azure Data Factory
7 358 (7.50%) GitHub
8 313 (6.56%) Serverless
9 288 (6.04%) Snowflake
10 270 (5.66%) Amazon S3
11 224 (4.70%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 220 (4.61%) dbt
13 195 (4.09%) AWS Lambda
14 187 (3.92%) GitHub Actions
15 88 (1.84%) SaaS
16 86 (1.80%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 84 (1.76%) Power Automate
18 80 (1.68%) Entra ID
19 79 (1.66%) Azure Functions
20 74 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 56 (1.17%) DNS
2 48 (1.01%) Firewall
3 23 (0.48%) WAN
4 21 (0.44%) HTTP
4 21 (0.44%) SNMP
5 20 (0.42%) SSL
6 19 (0.40%) Network Security
7 18 (0.38%) TCP/IP
8 16 (0.34%) Internet
9 15 (0.31%) VPN
10 11 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (0.21%) LAN
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
1 832 (17.44%) Power BI
2 615 (12.89%) Data Warehouse
3 591 (12.39%) SQL Server
4 330 (6.92%) Data Lake
5 314 (6.58%) Relational Database
6 313 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
7 310 (6.50%) Tableau
8 262 (5.49%) NoSQL
9 249 (5.22%) Metadata
10 229 (4.80%) Azure SQL Database
11 178 (3.73%) Oracle Database
12 169 (3.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 152 (3.19%) Big Data
14 150 (3.14%) BigQuery
15 142 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
16 136 (2.85%) Delta Lake
17 124 (2.60%) MySQL
18 114 (2.39%) Oracle Reports
19 108 (2.26%) MongoDB
20 102 (2.14%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 525 (11.00%) Git
2 386 (8.09%) JIRA
3 245 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 236 (4.95%) GitLab
5 70 (1.47%) JUnit
6 62 (1.30%) Selenium
7 58 (1.22%) Postman
8 50 (1.05%) Maven
8 50 (1.05%) Mockito
9 45 (0.94%) Gradle
10 41 (0.86%) Cucumber
11 38 (0.80%) Visual Studio
12 36 (0.75%) MLflow
13 33 (0.69%) SonarQube
14 30 (0.63%) JMeter
14 30 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
15 29 (0.61%) REST Assured
16 28 (0.59%) Liquibase
17 27 (0.57%) Bitbucket
17 27 (0.57%) ERwin
General
1 1,228 (25.74%) Finance
2 1,205 (25.26%) Social Skills
3 872 (18.28%) Analytical Skills
4 443 (9.29%) Banking
5 436 (9.14%) Public Sector
6 130 (2.72%) Front Office
7 124 (2.60%) Investment Banking
8 121 (2.54%) Marketing
9 101 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
10 93 (1.95%) Retail
11 84 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 58 (1.22%) Legal
13 56 (1.17%) Financial Institution
14 46 (0.96%) Publishing
15 43 (0.90%) Manufacturing
16 39 (0.82%) Presentation Skills
17 35 (0.73%) Law
17 35 (0.73%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.69%) Back Office
18 33 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 997 (20.90%) Data Engineer
2 991 (20.77%) Developer
3 683 (14.32%) Analyst
4 621 (13.02%) Senior
5 323 (6.77%) Lead
6 296 (6.20%) Data Analyst
7 271 (5.68%) Architect
8 226 (4.74%) Consultant
9 210 (4.40%) Business Analyst
10 195 (4.09%) Java Developer
11 186 (3.90%) Senior Data Engineer
12 159 (3.33%) DBA
13 146 (3.06%) Senior Developer
14 144 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 119 (2.49%) Azure Engineer
16 110 (2.31%) C# Developer
17 109 (2.28%) SQL Developer
18 107 (2.24%) Python Developer
19 105 (2.20%) Data Architect
20 95 (1.99%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 402 (8.43%) .NET
2 367 (7.69%) REST
3 307 (6.43%) PySpark
4 293 (6.14%) Kafka
5 243 (5.09%) Spring
6 233 (4.88%) Spring Boot
7 222 (4.65%) React
8 210 (4.40%) RESTful
9 167 (3.50%) JSON
10 166 (3.48%) HTML
11 149 (3.12%) XML
12 148 (3.10%) CSS
13 131 (2.75%) Pandas
14 114 (2.39%) AngularJS
15 111 (2.33%) SOAP
16 109 (2.28%) Web Services
17 108 (2.26%) Middleware
18 90 (1.89%) .NET Framework
19 85 (1.78%) OAuth
20 79 (1.66%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 317 (6.64%) Cloud Native
2 188 (3.94%) Data Structures
3 172 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
4 142 (2.98%) Product Ownership
5 136 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
6 94 (1.97%) Derivative
6 94 (1.97%) Management Information System
7 91 (1.91%) Onboarding
8 79 (1.66%) Data Protection Act
9 69 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
10 67 (1.40%) Enterprise Software
11 64 (1.34%) Self-Motivation
12 60 (1.26%) Algorithms
13 59 (1.24%) Clustering
14 55 (1.15%) Greenfield Project
15 52 (1.09%) Equities
16 50 (1.05%) Fixed Income
17 46 (0.96%) Low-Code
17 46 (0.96%) NHS
17 46 (0.96%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 319 (6.69%) Linux
2 272 (5.70%) Windows
3 224 (4.70%) Unix
4 102 (2.14%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.50%) 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 1,307 (27.39%) CI/CD
2 1,209 (25.34%) Data Modelling
3 1,201 (25.17%) Analytics
4 1,197 (25.09%) Agile
5 1,115 (23.37%) ETL
6 1,056 (22.13%) Business Intelligence
7 1,004 (21.04%) DevOps
8 941 (19.72%) Data Pipeline
9 927 (19.43%) Problem-Solving
10 787 (16.50%) Data Engineering
11 675 (14.15%) AI
12 638 (13.37%) Migration
13 591 (12.39%) Validation
14 545 (11.42%) Data Governance
15 489 (10.25%) Test Automation
16 473 (9.91%) Decision-Making
17 446 (9.35%) Data Analysis
18 435 (9.12%) Stakeholder Management
19 430 (9.01%) Performance Tuning
20 418 (8.76%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,788 (37.48%) Python
2 639 (13.39%) Java
3 489 (10.25%) C#
4 351 (7.36%) PL/SQL
5 338 (7.08%) JavaScript
6 247 (5.18%) T-SQL
7 233 (4.88%) PowerShell
8 164 (3.44%) TypeScript
9 139 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 118 (2.47%) Shell Script
11 117 (2.45%) R
12 91 (1.91%) Bash
13 82 (1.72%) C++
14 81 (1.70%) Scala
15 53 (1.11%) Bicep
16 42 (0.88%) VBA
17 35 (0.73%) VB
18 34 (0.71%) Perl
19 32 (0.67%) C
20 27 (0.57%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,019 (21.36%) Security Cleared
2 828 (17.35%) SC Cleared
3 360 (7.55%) Degree
4 123 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
5 111 (2.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 90 (1.89%) DV Cleared
7 73 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 65 (1.36%) Master's Degree
9 56 (1.17%) ISTQB
10 40 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
11 33 (0.69%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.36%) PhD
13 13 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.23%) CISSP
14 11 (0.23%) PMI Certification
15 10 (0.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 9 (0.19%) CISM
16 9 (0.19%) PMP
16 9 (0.19%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 878 (18.40%) Data Quality
2 374 (7.84%) QA
3 187 (3.92%) GDPR
4 55 (1.15%) Accessibility
5 48 (1.01%) SLA
6 32 (0.67%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 30 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.50%) PMO
9 23 (0.48%) NIST
10 17 (0.36%) IFRS
11 16 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.34%) PCI DSS
12 15 (0.31%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 15 (0.31%) ISO 20022
12 15 (0.31%) MiFID
13 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.27%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.25%) NCSC
15 12 (0.25%) WCAG
16 11 (0.23%) HL7
System Software
1 528 (11.07%) Docker
2 104 (2.18%) Active Directory
3 39 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 36 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 30 (0.63%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.44%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
8 11 (0.23%) VMware NSX
9 10 (0.21%) KVM
9 10 (0.21%) vCloud
10 9 (0.19%) Postfix
10 9 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
11 7 (0.15%) HDFS
12 6 (0.13%) RACF
13 4 (0.084%) Ceph
13 4 (0.084%) XenApp
13 4 (0.084%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.063%) Squid
15 2 (0.042%) GridGain
15 2 (0.042%) Oracle Clusterware
Systems Management
1 418 (8.76%) Kubernetes
2 389 (8.15%) Terraform
3 122 (2.56%) Grafana
4 82 (1.72%) Ansible
5 62 (1.30%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.88%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.65%) Data Guard
8 21 (0.44%) Kibana
9 20 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 18 (0.38%) Control-M
11 17 (0.36%) vCenter Server
12 15 (0.31%) 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 8 (0.17%) HP Quality Center
16 8 (0.17%) SCCM
Vendors
1 818 (17.15%) Oracle
2 731 (15.32%) Microsoft
3 580 (12.16%) Databricks
4 179 (3.75%) Google
5 177 (3.71%) Informatica
6 143 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 141 (2.96%) Talend
8 123 (2.58%) SAP
9 91 (1.91%) Splunk
10 83 (1.74%) IBM
11 71 (1.49%) Denodo
12 56 (1.17%) Salesforce
13 55 (1.15%) VMware
14 43 (0.90%) Citrix
15 38 (0.80%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.73%) Sybase
17 33 (0.69%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.69%) MuleSoft
18 32 (0.67%) OpenAI
19 31 (0.65%) Murex