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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,530 3,525 4,260
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.60% 12.06% 9.77%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.07% 35.46% 33.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,089 2,462 3,063
10th Percentile £350 £355 £356
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -
75th Percentile £588 £620 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £472 £475
% change year-on-year -0.64% -0.63% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 62 63
10th Percentile £33.80 £22.53 £22.64
25th Percentile £36.50 £30.06 £26.12
Median hourly rate £55.00 £42.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.93% +0.37% -15.00%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.46 £55.81
90th Percentile £83.95 £77.10 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £62.00 £33.51 £42.50
% change year-on-year +85.02% -21.15% +1.08%

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 12,918 9,941 12,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.38% 34.02% 29.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,548 6,741 9,130
10th Percentile £355 £360 £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 £713 £769 £760
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £489
% change year-on-year - -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 563 245 485
10th Percentile £42.05 £22.49 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.78 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -0.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.87 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.77% +2.20% -

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 30 April 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 30 April 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 30 April 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 4,007 £500 -2.91% 1,630
London 0 2,265 £513 -6.82% 660
UK excluding London -9 1,819 £469 -0.64% 1,339
Work from Home -5 1,345 £500 -3.85% 801
Midlands +6 525 £468 +1.74% 241
North of England -11 480 £450 -5.26% 329
West Midlands +6 417 £461 -0.27% 143
South East -19 321 £500 - 453
North West -2 264 £450 -5.26% 190
South West -7 207 £475 -3.80% 122
Yorkshire -14 192 £465 -2.11% 98
Scotland -5 168 £485 +7.78% 48
East Midlands +7 105 £525 +24.26% 98
East of England -18 92 £500 +6.95% 96
Wales +6 35 £400 -5.88% 38
North East -8 35 £475 +4.40% 43
Northern Ireland -11 12 £400 -2.44% 29

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
1 264 (5.83%) Apache Spark
2 175 (3.86%) Apache
3 174 (3.84%) Apache Airflow
4 149 (3.29%) Confluence
5 102 (2.25%) SAS
6 86 (1.90%) SharePoint
7 44 (0.97%) Tomcat
8 42 (0.93%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.75%) IIS
10 27 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.53%) Apache Geronimo
11 24 (0.53%) Apache ServiceMix
11 24 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
11 24 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
12 21 (0.46%) nginx
13 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
14 14 (0.31%) HCL Notes
14 14 (0.31%) Mendix
14 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 302 (6.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.32%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.08%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.11%) Notion
10 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
10 3 (0.066%) Trello
11 1 (0.022%) InDesign
11 1 (0.022%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) SPSS
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 49 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.55%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
4 22 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 22 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
4 22 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
6 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.38%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
8 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
12 9 (0.20%) Maximo
13 8 (0.18%) Endur
Cloud Services
1 1,558 (34.39%) Azure
2 1,078 (23.80%) AWS
3 873 (19.27%) Power Platform
4 465 (10.26%) Azure DevOps
5 375 (8.28%) Azure Data Factory
6 360 (7.95%) GCP
7 342 (7.55%) GitHub
8 298 (6.58%) Serverless
9 260 (5.74%) Snowflake
10 254 (5.61%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 250 (5.52%) Amazon S3
12 186 (4.11%) dbt
13 181 (4.00%) GitHub Actions
14 167 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
15 97 (2.14%) Power Automate
16 93 (2.05%) Azure Functions
17 86 (1.90%) SaaS
18 80 (1.77%) AWS CloudFormation
18 80 (1.77%) Entra ID
19 75 (1.66%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.17%) Firewall
2 41 (0.91%) DNS
3 24 (0.53%) Network Security
4 21 (0.46%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.44%) WAN
6 19 (0.42%) HTTP
7 16 (0.35%) Internet
8 15 (0.33%) LAN
8 15 (0.33%) SSL
9 13 (0.29%) SNMP
10 12 (0.26%) VPN
11 10 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
12 9 (0.20%) DHCP
12 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
13 8 (0.18%) SAN
14 7 (0.15%) NAS
14 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
14 7 (0.15%) VLAN
14 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
14 7 (0.15%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 797 (17.59%) Power BI
2 574 (12.67%) Data Warehouse
3 555 (12.25%) SQL Server
4 309 (6.82%) Tableau
5 305 (6.73%) Data Lake
6 303 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
7 288 (6.36%) Relational Database
8 273 (6.03%) NoSQL
9 248 (5.47%) Azure SQL Database
10 247 (5.45%) Metadata
11 164 (3.62%) Oracle Database
12 156 (3.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 149 (3.29%) Big Data
14 132 (2.91%) MySQL
15 130 (2.87%) BigQuery
15 130 (2.87%) Delta Lake
16 128 (2.83%) Amazon Redshift
17 113 (2.49%) MongoDB
18 111 (2.45%) Oracle Reports
19 105 (2.32%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 488 (10.77%) Git
2 354 (7.81%) JIRA
3 227 (5.01%) Jenkins
4 193 (4.26%) GitLab
5 68 (1.50%) Selenium
6 59 (1.30%) JUnit
7 52 (1.15%) Postman
8 42 (0.93%) Maven
8 42 (0.93%) MLflow
9 41 (0.91%) Cucumber
10 40 (0.88%) Mockito
11 32 (0.71%) Bitbucket
11 32 (0.71%) Visual Studio
12 31 (0.68%) REST Assured
13 30 (0.66%) ERwin
13 30 (0.66%) Gradle
14 29 (0.64%) JMeter
15 28 (0.62%) Oracle Forms
15 28 (0.62%) SonarQube
16 27 (0.60%) Oracle APEX
General
1 1,215 (26.82%) Social Skills
2 1,201 (26.51%) Finance
3 843 (18.61%) Analytical Skills
4 420 (9.27%) Banking
5 401 (8.85%) Public Sector
6 112 (2.47%) Investment Banking
7 111 (2.45%) Front Office
8 103 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
9 100 (2.21%) Marketing
10 77 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 74 (1.63%) Retail
12 59 (1.30%) Legal
13 57 (1.26%) Financial Institution
14 39 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 39 (0.86%) Telecoms
15 37 (0.82%) Publishing
16 36 (0.79%) Organisational Skills
17 33 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 32 (0.71%) Law
18 32 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 981 (21.66%) Developer
2 907 (20.02%) Data Engineer
3 672 (14.83%) Analyst
4 571 (12.60%) Senior
5 315 (6.95%) Lead
6 285 (6.29%) Data Analyst
7 271 (5.98%) Architect
8 221 (4.88%) Business Analyst
9 210 (4.64%) Consultant
10 168 (3.71%) Java Developer
11 153 (3.38%) Senior Data Engineer
12 143 (3.16%) DBA
13 137 (3.02%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
15 125 (2.76%) Software Engineer
16 114 (2.52%) C# Developer
17 108 (2.38%) Data Architect
18 105 (2.32%) Python Developer
19 102 (2.25%) Data Scientist
20 94 (2.08%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 390 (8.61%) .NET
2 345 (7.62%) REST
3 292 (6.45%) PySpark
4 276 (6.09%) Kafka
5 216 (4.77%) React
6 208 (4.59%) Spring
7 199 (4.39%) Spring Boot
8 189 (4.17%) RESTful
9 150 (3.31%) HTML
10 145 (3.20%) JSON
11 144 (3.18%) XML
12 132 (2.91%) CSS
12 132 (2.91%) Pandas
13 112 (2.47%) AngularJS
14 111 (2.45%) Middleware
15 93 (2.05%) SOAP
16 91 (2.01%) .NET Framework
17 89 (1.96%) Node.js
18 82 (1.81%) Web Services
19 78 (1.72%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 292 (6.45%) Cloud Native
2 176 (3.89%) Data Structures
3 156 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
4 139 (3.07%) Product Ownership
5 109 (2.41%) Distributed Systems
6 99 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 85 (1.88%) Derivative
8 81 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
8 81 (1.79%) Onboarding
9 69 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
10 61 (1.35%) Algorithms
11 56 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
12 55 (1.21%) Fixed Income
13 54 (1.19%) Equities
14 51 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
15 50 (1.10%) Clustering
16 44 (0.97%) Replication
17 43 (0.95%) NHS
18 42 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 41 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.04%) Linux
2 268 (5.92%) Windows
3 216 (4.77%) Unix
4 92 (2.03%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.55%) AIX
7 18 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
8 15 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 9 (0.20%) Solaris
10 9 (0.20%) VMS
11 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.15%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.044%) CentOS
14 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,210 (26.71%) CI/CD
2 1,159 (25.58%) Agile
3 1,157 (25.54%) Analytics
4 1,139 (25.14%) Data Modelling
5 1,060 (23.40%) ETL
6 1,031 (22.76%) Business Intelligence
7 1,023 (22.58%) DevOps
8 921 (20.33%) Problem-Solving
9 850 (18.76%) Data Pipeline
10 711 (15.70%) Data Engineering
11 574 (12.67%) Migration
12 572 (12.63%) Data Governance
13 559 (12.34%) AI
14 544 (12.01%) Validation
15 436 (9.62%) Decision-Making
16 429 (9.47%) Test Automation
17 415 (9.16%) Data Analysis
18 410 (9.05%) Performance Tuning
19 394 (8.70%) Microservices
20 386 (8.52%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,733 (38.26%) Python
2 625 (13.80%) Java
3 484 (10.68%) C#
4 336 (7.42%) JavaScript
5 333 (7.35%) PL/SQL
6 205 (4.53%) T-SQL
7 199 (4.39%) PowerShell
8 151 (3.33%) TypeScript
9 136 (3.00%) R
10 134 (2.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 132 (2.91%) Shell Script
12 92 (2.03%) Scala
13 88 (1.94%) Bash
14 80 (1.77%) C++
15 64 (1.41%) Bicep
16 59 (1.30%) VBA
17 47 (1.04%) Perl
18 30 (0.66%) Go
18 30 (0.66%) VB
19 24 (0.53%) C
Qualifications
1 971 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 791 (17.46%) SC Cleared
3 361 (7.97%) Degree
4 122 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (2.27%) BPSS Clearance
6 75 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 67 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 60 (1.32%) DV Cleared
9 50 (1.10%) ISTQB
10 44 (0.97%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.68%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) PhD
13 17 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
14 14 (0.31%) CBAP
14 14 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
16 12 (0.26%) CISSP
17 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
18 9 (0.20%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 823 (18.17%) Data Quality
2 359 (7.92%) QA
3 203 (4.48%) GDPR
4 58 (1.28%) Accessibility
5 39 (0.86%) SLA
6 35 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (0.62%) PMO
8 19 (0.42%) NIST
8 19 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
10 16 (0.35%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.31%) HL7
12 14 (0.31%) IFRS
12 14 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.24%) DICOM
13 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 528 (11.66%) Docker
2 108 (2.38%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 32 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
5 27 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
6 22 (0.49%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.22%) KVM
7 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.18%) HDFS
9 8 (0.18%) Postfix
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 5 (0.11%) XenApp
11 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.066%) Ceph
12 3 (0.066%) Oracle Clusterware
13 2 (0.044%) GridGain
13 2 (0.044%) Squid
13 2 (0.044%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 444 (9.80%) Kubernetes
2 381 (8.41%) Terraform
3 120 (2.65%) Grafana
4 83 (1.83%) Ansible
5 67 (1.48%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.68%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.42%) Kibana
10 18 (0.40%) SCCM
11 17 (0.38%) Progress Chef
12 14 (0.31%) Control-M
13 12 (0.26%) Nagios
13 12 (0.26%) Netcool
13 12 (0.26%) Tivoli
13 12 (0.26%) ZABBIX
14 11 (0.24%) OpenView
14 11 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
14 11 (0.24%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 9 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 753 (16.62%) Oracle
2 730 (16.11%) Microsoft
3 558 (12.32%) Databricks
4 170 (3.75%) Google
5 160 (3.53%) Informatica
6 136 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 118 (2.60%) Talend
8 116 (2.56%) SAP
9 91 (2.01%) Splunk
10 82 (1.81%) IBM
11 70 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 54 (1.19%) Denodo
13 52 (1.15%) Citrix
14 46 (1.02%) VMware
15 42 (0.93%) OpenAI
16 39 (0.86%) Dynatrace
17 34 (0.75%) Bloomberg
17 34 (0.75%) MuleSoft
18 30 (0.66%) HP
19 29 (0.64%) Sage