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

6 months to
20 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,865 3,604 4,329
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.61% 12.07% 9.86%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.68% 35.57% 32.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,237 2,533 3,110
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £590 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £472 £475
% change year-on-year -0.69% -0.58% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 89 70 63
10th Percentile £26.21 £22.57 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.31 £28.13
Median hourly rate £47.50 £39.67 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.73% -6.65% -20.93%
75th Percentile £71.50 £53.75 £53.94
90th Percentile £83.15 £72.97 £62.37
UK excluding London median hourly rate £47.15 £41.96 £40.25
% change year-on-year +12.38% +4.24% -19.50%

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 13,634 10,131 13,283
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.92% 33.93% 30.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,886 6,872 9,316
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £510 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.86% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £751 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 235 553
10th Percentile £35.08 £25.45 £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% +3.22%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.93 £84.80 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.84% -4.62% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -3 4,267 £500 - 1,475
London -5 2,315 £525 -1.41% 586
UK excluding London -9 2,067 £469 -0.69% 1,306
Work from Home -6 1,451 £500 -1.96% 793
North of England -6 544 £460 -3.16% 339
Midlands +3 538 £463 +7.31% 188
West Midlands +5 444 £459 +1.32% 98
South East -11 426 £475 -5.00% 431
North West -3 289 £463 -2.63% 215
South West -5 231 £500 +5.26% 107
Yorkshire -9 215 £475 - 79
Scotland -9 193 £465 +3.33% 44
East of England -15 108 £495 +1.54% 95
East Midlands -3 90 £525 +40.00% 90
North East -11 52 £425 -8.36% 50
Wales +10 44 £450 +5.88% 31
Northern Ireland -13 13 £394 -21.25% 99

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
1 244 (5.02%) Apache Spark
2 200 (4.11%) Apache Airflow
2 200 (4.11%) Confluence
3 177 (3.64%) Apache
4 111 (2.28%) SAS
5 62 (1.27%) SharePoint
6 42 (0.86%) Tomcat
7 35 (0.72%) Oracle Workflow
8 34 (0.70%) IIS
9 33 (0.68%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.66%) WebSphere
11 25 (0.51%) Jupyter
12 22 (0.45%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.45%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.45%) Red Hat Fuse
13 20 (0.41%) nginx
14 19 (0.39%) Appian
14 19 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
15 18 (0.37%) Palantir Foundry
16 16 (0.33%) CMS
Applications
1 308 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 57 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 50 (1.03%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.66%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.062%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.041%) Acrobat
10 2 (0.041%) Notion
10 2 (0.041%) Photoshop
11 1 (0.021%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.021%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.021%) InDesign
11 1 (0.021%) Mingle
11 1 (0.021%) Trello
11 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 40 (0.82%) Oracle EBS
2 34 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
4 26 (0.53%) Aladdin
5 23 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
6 21 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.39%) NEC Housing
8 16 (0.33%) Oracle EBS R12
8 16 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.31%) Oracle Receivables
10 11 (0.23%) Findur
10 11 (0.23%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.21%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
12 9 (0.18%) Elite 3E
12 9 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,583 (32.54%) Azure
2 1,199 (24.65%) AWS
3 927 (19.05%) Power Platform
4 447 (9.19%) Azure DevOps
5 401 (8.24%) GCP
6 354 (7.28%) GitHub
7 349 (7.17%) Azure Data Factory
8 320 (6.58%) Serverless
9 294 (6.04%) Snowflake
10 277 (5.69%) Amazon S3
11 228 (4.69%) dbt
12 221 (4.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 200 (4.11%) AWS Lambda
14 185 (3.80%) GitHub Actions
15 89 (1.83%) Power Automate
16 87 (1.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 87 (1.79%) SaaS
17 83 (1.71%) Entra ID
18 80 (1.64%) Azure Functions
19 77 (1.58%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.13%) DNS
2 45 (0.92%) Firewall
3 23 (0.47%) WAN
4 22 (0.45%) HTTP
4 22 (0.45%) SNMP
5 21 (0.43%) Network Security
6 20 (0.41%) SSL
7 17 (0.35%) Internet
7 17 (0.35%) VPN
8 14 (0.29%) TCP/IP
9 11 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.21%) LAN
10 10 (0.21%) SAN
11 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
12 8 (0.16%) HTTPS
12 8 (0.16%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.14%) NAS
13 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.14%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 853 (17.53%) Power BI
2 630 (12.95%) Data Warehouse
3 593 (12.19%) SQL Server
4 326 (6.70%) Relational Database
5 322 (6.62%) Data Lake
6 319 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
7 316 (6.50%) Tableau
8 263 (5.41%) NoSQL
9 253 (5.20%) Metadata
10 227 (4.67%) Azure SQL Database
11 185 (3.80%) Oracle Database
12 165 (3.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 153 (3.14%) BigQuery
14 145 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
14 145 (2.98%) Big Data
15 134 (2.75%) Delta Lake
16 123 (2.53%) MySQL
17 117 (2.40%) Oracle Reports
18 112 (2.30%) MongoDB
19 106 (2.18%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 530 (10.89%) Git
2 391 (8.04%) JIRA
3 249 (5.12%) Jenkins
4 232 (4.77%) GitLab
5 72 (1.48%) JUnit
6 55 (1.13%) Selenium
7 54 (1.11%) Maven
8 53 (1.09%) Postman
9 51 (1.05%) Mockito
10 50 (1.03%) Gradle
11 39 (0.80%) Visual Studio
12 37 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
13 35 (0.72%) Cucumber
13 35 (0.72%) MLflow
14 33 (0.68%) SonarQube
15 30 (0.62%) JMeter
16 28 (0.58%) Bitbucket
16 28 (0.58%) ERwin
16 28 (0.58%) Liquibase
17 26 (0.53%) Zephyr
General
1 1,254 (25.78%) Finance
2 1,242 (25.53%) Social Skills
3 910 (18.71%) Analytical Skills
4 454 (9.33%) Banking
5 445 (9.15%) Public Sector
6 133 (2.73%) Front Office
7 125 (2.57%) Investment Banking
8 121 (2.49%) Marketing
9 105 (2.16%) Retail
10 104 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
11 87 (1.79%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 57 (1.17%) Legal
13 55 (1.13%) Financial Institution
14 48 (0.99%) Presentation Skills
15 47 (0.97%) Publishing
16 46 (0.95%) Manufacturing
17 35 (0.72%) Back Office
17 35 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
18 34 (0.70%) Telecoms
19 31 (0.64%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,026 (21.09%) Developer
2 1,006 (20.68%) Data Engineer
3 700 (14.39%) Analyst
4 632 (12.99%) Senior
5 328 (6.74%) Lead
6 308 (6.33%) Data Analyst
7 277 (5.69%) Architect
8 233 (4.79%) Consultant
9 211 (4.34%) Business Analyst
10 205 (4.21%) Java Developer
11 187 (3.84%) Senior Data Engineer
12 169 (3.47%) DBA
13 148 (3.04%) Senior Developer
14 147 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 117 (2.40%) Azure Engineer
16 110 (2.26%) SQL Developer
17 109 (2.24%) Python Developer
18 108 (2.22%) C# Developer
19 103 (2.12%) Data Architect
20 95 (1.95%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (8.20%) .NET
2 366 (7.52%) REST
3 308 (6.33%) PySpark
4 296 (6.08%) Kafka
5 256 (5.26%) Spring
6 246 (5.06%) Spring Boot
7 229 (4.71%) React
8 215 (4.42%) RESTful
9 176 (3.62%) JSON
10 156 (3.21%) HTML
10 156 (3.21%) XML
11 140 (2.88%) CSS
12 125 (2.57%) Pandas
13 118 (2.43%) AngularJS
14 115 (2.36%) SOAP
14 115 (2.36%) Web Services
15 114 (2.34%) Middleware
16 92 (1.89%) .NET Framework
17 85 (1.75%) OAuth
18 77 (1.58%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 321 (6.60%) Cloud Native
2 203 (4.17%) Data Structures
3 179 (3.68%) Legacy Systems
4 156 (3.21%) Product Ownership
5 141 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (1.95%) Management Information System
7 94 (1.93%) Derivative
8 92 (1.89%) Onboarding
9 78 (1.60%) Data Protection Act
10 73 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
11 71 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
12 69 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
13 65 (1.34%) Algorithms
14 60 (1.23%) Clustering
15 55 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (1.03%) Equities
16 50 (1.03%) Replication
17 48 (0.99%) Fixed Income
18 45 (0.92%) Low-Code
19 43 (0.88%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 316 (6.50%) Linux
2 279 (5.73%) Windows
3 225 (4.62%) Unix
4 105 (2.16%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.49%) AIX
7 18 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 17 (0.35%) Solaris
9 13 (0.27%) Windows Server 2016
10 11 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
11 10 (0.21%) VMS
12 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
12 8 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 8 (0.16%) zOS
13 7 (0.14%) Android
14 4 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.062%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.041%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.041%) HPUX
16 2 (0.041%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,316 (27.05%) CI/CD
2 1,239 (25.47%) Agile
3 1,230 (25.28%) Analytics
4 1,228 (25.24%) Data Modelling
5 1,116 (22.94%) ETL
6 1,077 (22.14%) Business Intelligence
7 1,011 (20.78%) DevOps
8 959 (19.71%) Problem-Solving
9 947 (19.47%) Data Pipeline
10 798 (16.40%) Data Engineering
11 693 (14.24%) AI
12 650 (13.36%) Migration
13 610 (12.54%) Validation
14 545 (11.20%) Data Governance
15 489 (10.05%) Test Automation
16 487 (10.01%) Decision-Making
17 469 (9.64%) Data Analysis
18 459 (9.43%) Stakeholder Management
19 439 (9.02%) Continuous Improvement
19 439 (9.02%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,791 (36.81%) Python
2 643 (13.22%) Java
3 489 (10.05%) C#
4 364 (7.48%) PL/SQL
5 336 (6.91%) JavaScript
6 251 (5.16%) T-SQL
7 230 (4.73%) PowerShell
8 171 (3.51%) TypeScript
9 141 (2.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 118 (2.43%) Shell Script
11 113 (2.32%) R
12 92 (1.89%) Bash
13 79 (1.62%) C++
14 77 (1.58%) Scala
15 50 (1.03%) Bicep
16 46 (0.95%) VBA
17 36 (0.74%) C
18 35 (0.72%) VB
19 33 (0.68%) Perl
20 25 (0.51%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,045 (21.48%) Security Cleared
2 849 (17.45%) SC Cleared
3 363 (7.46%) Degree
4 124 (2.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 113 (2.32%) Computer Science Degree
6 94 (1.93%) DV Cleared
7 74 (1.52%) Azure Certification
8 67 (1.38%) Master's Degree
9 58 (1.19%) ISTQB
10 43 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.37%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.35%) PhD
14 14 (0.29%) CISSP
15 13 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 10 (0.21%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 10 (0.21%) SnowPro
16 10 (0.21%) TOGAF Certification
17 9 (0.18%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
17 9 (0.18%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 890 (18.29%) Data Quality
2 374 (7.69%) QA
3 185 (3.80%) GDPR
4 58 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.90%) SLA
6 31 (0.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 30 (0.62%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 26 (0.53%) NIST
9 23 (0.47%) PMO
10 19 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 17 (0.35%) IFRS
12 16 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 16 (0.33%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.31%) Solvency II
14 14 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 14 (0.29%) MiFID
15 13 (0.27%) NCSC
16 11 (0.23%) HL7
16 11 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 524 (10.77%) Docker
2 107 (2.20%) Active Directory
3 40 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 36 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
5 29 (0.60%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.43%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
8 12 (0.25%) VMware NSX
9 11 (0.23%) vCloud
10 10 (0.21%) KVM
10 10 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 6 (0.12%) RACF
13 4 (0.082%) Ceph
13 4 (0.082%) HDFS
13 4 (0.082%) XenApp
13 4 (0.082%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.062%) Squid
15 2 (0.041%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.041%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 420 (8.63%) Kubernetes
2 387 (7.95%) Terraform
3 118 (2.43%) Grafana
4 88 (1.81%) Ansible
5 59 (1.21%) Prometheus
6 41 (0.84%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.62%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.47%) Control-M
9 22 (0.45%) Kibana
10 20 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
11 18 (0.37%) vCenter Server
12 16 (0.33%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.31%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.29%) Nagios
14 14 (0.29%) Netcool
15 13 (0.27%) OpenView
15 13 (0.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 12 (0.25%) SCOM
17 9 (0.18%) SCCM
18 8 (0.16%) WMI
Vendors
1 844 (17.35%) Oracle
2 758 (15.58%) Microsoft
3 570 (11.72%) Databricks
4 184 (3.78%) Informatica
5 180 (3.70%) Google
6 146 (3.00%) Talend
7 136 (2.80%) ServiceNow
8 124 (2.55%) SAP
9 90 (1.85%) Splunk
10 85 (1.75%) IBM
11 72 (1.48%) Denodo
12 57 (1.17%) Salesforce
13 56 (1.15%) VMware
14 45 (0.92%) Citrix
15 39 (0.80%) Dynatrace
16 37 (0.76%) Sybase
17 36 (0.74%) Bloomberg
18 34 (0.70%) MuleSoft
18 34 (0.70%) Murex
18 34 (0.70%) OpenAI