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

6 months to
5 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,681 3,551 4,217
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.53% 12.27% 9.83%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.49% 35.94% 32.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,142 2,493 3,052
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% -1.87%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £470
% change year-on-year -0.21% - -3.59%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 66 59
10th Percentile £26.50 £20.87 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.50 £28.31
Median hourly rate £52.49 £38.85 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.13% -8.60% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.84 £57.50 £55.81
90th Percentile £83.75 £74.38 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £52.50 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +54.82% -20.21% -14.26%

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 13,188 9,880 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.85% 34.15% 30.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,621 6,689 9,138
10th Percentile £358 £356 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £625 £650
90th Percentile £713 £757 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £485
% change year-on-year +1.39% -2.06% -3.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 561 229 521
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £34.48 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.00
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.26% -0.80%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.00 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 4,114 £500 - 2,221
London -2 2,284 £523 -2.34% 1,023
UK excluding London -11 1,925 £469 -0.21% 1,524
Work from Home -6 1,390 £500 -0.99% 1,247
Midlands +2 522 £465 +7.89% 224
North of England -9 501 £463 -2.63% 436
West Midlands +5 420 £459 +1.25% 134
South East -15 393 £475 -3.80% 448
North West -5 255 £461 -2.89% 264
Yorkshire -13 211 £475 - 114
South West -3 209 £500 +5.26% 158
Scotland -10 176 £475 +5.56% 67
East of England -14 101 £495 +1.54% 109
East Midlands -2 98 £525 +35.92% 90
North East -7 47 £425 -8.11% 62
Wales +8 42 £450 +9.09% 48
Northern Ireland -13 10 £415 -2.35% 62

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
1 254 (5.43%) Apache Spark
2 192 (4.10%) Apache Airflow
3 179 (3.82%) Apache
4 175 (3.74%) Confluence
5 106 (2.26%) SAS
6 66 (1.41%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.90%) Tomcat
8 32 (0.68%) IIS
8 32 (0.68%) WebLogic
9 31 (0.66%) Oracle Workflow
10 28 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 23 (0.49%) Jupyter
12 22 (0.47%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.47%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.47%) Red Hat Fuse
13 21 (0.45%) Microsoft Exchange
14 20 (0.43%) nginx
15 16 (0.34%) Appian
15 16 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
16 15 (0.32%) CMS
Applications
1 288 (6.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 45 (0.96%) Microsoft Office
3 44 (0.94%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 30 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 6 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.064%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.043%) Notion
10 2 (0.043%) Trello
11 1 (0.021%) InDesign
11 1 (0.021%) Mingle
11 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 44 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.58%) Aladdin
4 24 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
5 21 (0.45%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
7 17 (0.36%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.34%) Oracle Receivables
8 16 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 12 (0.26%) 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
13 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
13 8 (0.17%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,569 (33.52%) Azure
2 1,150 (24.57%) AWS
3 889 (18.99%) Power Platform
4 453 (9.68%) Azure DevOps
5 388 (8.29%) GCP
6 363 (7.75%) Azure Data Factory
7 358 (7.65%) GitHub
8 293 (6.26%) Serverless
9 281 (6.00%) Snowflake
10 256 (5.47%) Amazon S3
11 233 (4.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 213 (4.55%) dbt
13 189 (4.04%) GitHub Actions
14 180 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
15 92 (1.97%) SaaS
16 83 (1.77%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 80 (1.71%) Power Automate
18 79 (1.69%) Entra ID
19 78 (1.67%) Azure Functions
20 76 (1.62%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.13%) DNS
2 52 (1.11%) Firewall
3 21 (0.45%) SNMP
3 21 (0.45%) WAN
4 20 (0.43%) HTTP
5 19 (0.41%) Network Security
5 19 (0.41%) SSL
6 18 (0.38%) TCP/IP
7 16 (0.34%) Internet
7 16 (0.34%) VPN
8 12 (0.26%) LAN
9 11 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.21%) SAN
11 9 (0.19%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.17%) 3GPP
12 8 (0.17%) HTTPS
12 8 (0.17%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 813 (17.37%) Power BI
2 600 (12.82%) Data Warehouse
3 580 (12.39%) SQL Server
4 319 (6.81%) Data Lake
5 310 (6.62%) Tableau
6 301 (6.43%) PostgreSQL
7 299 (6.39%) Relational Database
8 261 (5.58%) NoSQL
9 241 (5.15%) Metadata
10 236 (5.04%) Azure SQL Database
11 175 (3.74%) Oracle Database
12 166 (3.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 154 (3.29%) Big Data
14 147 (3.14%) BigQuery
15 139 (2.97%) Delta Lake
16 128 (2.73%) Amazon Redshift
17 124 (2.65%) MySQL
18 116 (2.48%) Oracle Reports
19 104 (2.22%) MongoDB
20 100 (2.14%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 501 (10.70%) Git
2 372 (7.95%) JIRA
3 242 (5.17%) Jenkins
4 234 (5.00%) GitLab
5 70 (1.50%) JUnit
6 65 (1.39%) Selenium
7 57 (1.22%) Postman
8 50 (1.07%) Maven
8 50 (1.07%) Mockito
9 44 (0.94%) Cucumber
9 44 (0.94%) Gradle
10 36 (0.77%) MLflow
11 35 (0.75%) SonarQube
12 33 (0.70%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.64%) ERwin
13 30 (0.64%) JMeter
13 30 (0.64%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.58%) Bitbucket
15 26 (0.56%) TeamCity
16 25 (0.53%) Zephyr
General
1 1,214 (25.93%) Finance
2 1,191 (25.44%) Social Skills
3 860 (18.37%) Analytical Skills
4 439 (9.38%) Banking
5 410 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 125 (2.67%) Front Office
7 122 (2.61%) Investment Banking
8 120 (2.56%) Marketing
9 99 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
10 89 (1.90%) Retail
11 78 (1.67%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.28%) Financial Institution
13 59 (1.26%) Legal
14 44 (0.94%) Publishing
15 41 (0.88%) Manufacturing
16 39 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
17 36 (0.77%) Law
18 35 (0.75%) Telecoms
19 34 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
20 33 (0.70%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 980 (20.94%) Data Engineer
2 975 (20.83%) Developer
3 659 (14.08%) Analyst
4 596 (12.73%) Senior
5 318 (6.79%) Lead
6 293 (6.26%) Data Analyst
7 277 (5.92%) Architect
8 220 (4.70%) Consultant
9 203 (4.34%) Business Analyst
10 190 (4.06%) Java Developer
11 175 (3.74%) Senior Data Engineer
12 154 (3.29%) DBA
13 141 (3.01%) Senior Developer
14 135 (2.88%) Software Engineer
15 118 (2.52%) Azure Engineer
16 112 (2.39%) C# Developer
17 110 (2.35%) Data Architect
18 106 (2.26%) Python Developer
19 101 (2.16%) SQL Developer
20 95 (2.03%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 409 (8.74%) .NET
2 370 (7.90%) REST
3 310 (6.62%) PySpark
4 291 (6.22%) Kafka
5 232 (4.96%) Spring
6 222 (4.74%) React
6 222 (4.74%) Spring Boot
7 204 (4.36%) RESTful
8 168 (3.59%) HTML
9 159 (3.40%) JSON
10 148 (3.16%) CSS
11 146 (3.12%) XML
12 132 (2.82%) Pandas
13 115 (2.46%) AngularJS
14 111 (2.37%) SOAP
15 108 (2.31%) Middleware
16 103 (2.20%) Web Services
17 89 (1.90%) .NET Framework
18 88 (1.88%) OAuth
19 79 (1.69%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 317 (6.77%) Cloud Native
2 176 (3.76%) Data Structures
3 159 (3.40%) Legacy Systems
4 141 (3.01%) Product Ownership
5 128 (2.73%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.05%) Management Information System
7 93 (1.99%) Derivative
8 87 (1.86%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 71 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 64 (1.37%) Enterprise Software
12 60 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 59 (1.26%) Clustering
14 58 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 52 (1.11%) Equities
17 49 (1.05%) Fixed Income
18 46 (0.98%) Replication
19 44 (0.94%) NHS
20 42 (0.90%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 324 (6.92%) Linux
2 272 (5.81%) Windows
3 220 (4.70%) Unix
4 102 (2.18%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.51%) AIX
7 18 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 13 (0.28%) Solaris
8 13 (0.28%) 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 (0.085%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.043%) HPUX
14 2 (0.043%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,289 (27.54%) CI/CD
2 1,188 (25.38%) Data Modelling
3 1,171 (25.02%) Analytics
4 1,157 (24.72%) Agile
5 1,107 (23.65%) ETL
6 1,026 (21.92%) Business Intelligence
7 1,015 (21.68%) DevOps
8 909 (19.42%) Data Pipeline
9 900 (19.23%) Problem-Solving
10 755 (16.13%) Data Engineering
11 636 (13.59%) AI
12 619 (13.22%) Migration
13 555 (11.86%) Validation
14 545 (11.64%) Data Governance
15 479 (10.23%) Test Automation
16 450 (9.61%) Decision-Making
17 436 (9.31%) Data Analysis
18 424 (9.06%) Microservices
19 421 (8.99%) Performance Tuning
20 414 (8.84%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,755 (37.49%) Python
2 636 (13.59%) Java
3 491 (10.49%) C#
4 342 (7.31%) JavaScript
5 335 (7.16%) PL/SQL
6 238 (5.08%) T-SQL
7 230 (4.91%) PowerShell
8 155 (3.31%) TypeScript
9 130 (2.78%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 123 (2.63%) Shell Script
11 117 (2.50%) R
12 90 (1.92%) Bash
13 82 (1.75%) C++
14 81 (1.73%) Scala
15 60 (1.28%) Bicep
16 43 (0.92%) VBA
17 35 (0.75%) Perl
18 31 (0.66%) VB
19 28 (0.60%) C
20 27 (0.58%) Go
Qualifications
1 991 (21.17%) Security Cleared
2 802 (17.13%) SC Cleared
3 365 (7.80%) Degree
4 114 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
4 114 (2.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 85 (1.82%) DV Cleared
6 76 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 66 (1.41%) Master's Degree
8 55 (1.17%) ISTQB
9 36 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
10 30 (0.64%) AWS Certification
11 19 (0.41%) DBS Check
12 17 (0.36%) PhD
13 12 (0.26%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
14 11 (0.23%) CISSP
14 11 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.21%) Oracle Certification
15 10 (0.21%) PMI Certification
15 10 (0.21%) PMP
16 9 (0.19%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 855 (18.27%) Data Quality
2 362 (7.73%) QA
3 190 (4.06%) GDPR
4 54 (1.15%) Accessibility
5 47 (1.00%) SLA
6 34 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 32 (0.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.51%) PMO
9 22 (0.47%) 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
14 14 (0.30%) HIPAA
14 14 (0.30%) MiFID
15 12 (0.26%) HL7
15 12 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.26%) WCAG
16 11 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 533 (11.39%) Docker
2 108 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 36 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
3 36 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (0.64%) Oracle RAC
5 22 (0.47%) Hyper-V
6 19 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 11 (0.23%) VMware NSX
8 10 (0.21%) KVM
8 10 (0.21%) vCloud
9 9 (0.19%) Postfix
10 7 (0.15%) HDFS
11 6 (0.13%) RACF
12 5 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.085%) Ceph
13 4 (0.085%) XenApp
13 4 (0.085%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.064%) Oracle Clusterware
14 3 (0.064%) Squid
15 2 (0.043%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 422 (9.02%) Kubernetes
2 375 (8.01%) Terraform
3 122 (2.61%) Grafana
4 80 (1.71%) Ansible
5 65 (1.39%) Prometheus
6 45 (0.96%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.73%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.41%) Kibana
8 19 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 18 (0.38%) vCenter Server
10 17 (0.36%) Control-M
11 15 (0.32%) ZABBIX
12 14 (0.30%) Nagios
12 14 (0.30%) Netcool
12 14 (0.30%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.28%) OpenView
13 13 (0.28%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.23%) SCOM
15 9 (0.19%) Progress Chef
15 9 (0.19%) SCCM
Vendors
1 792 (16.92%) Oracle
2 720 (15.38%) Microsoft
3 582 (12.43%) Databricks
4 173 (3.70%) Google
5 171 (3.65%) Informatica
6 142 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 139 (2.97%) Talend
8 117 (2.50%) SAP
9 93 (1.99%) Splunk
10 81 (1.73%) IBM
11 71 (1.52%) Denodo
12 57 (1.22%) VMware
13 55 (1.17%) Salesforce
14 43 (0.92%) Citrix
15 40 (0.85%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.73%) Sybase
17 33 (0.70%) Bloomberg
17 33 (0.70%) MuleSoft
18 32 (0.68%) Murex
18 32 (0.68%) OpenAI