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

6 months to
1 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,661 3,588 4,226
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.52% 12.32% 9.83%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.41% 36.04% 32.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,130 2,527 3,060
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £417
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 £473
% change year-on-year -0.21% -0.53% -3.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 77 65 59
10th Percentile £25.92 £20.44 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.25 £28.31
Median hourly rate £50.00 £38.85 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.72% -8.60% -15.00%
75th Percentile £73.00 £58.75 £55.81
90th Percentile £83.75 £74.75 £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 13,163 9,956 12,927
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.90% 34.17% 30.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,618 6,768 9,170
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £514 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.72% -2.10% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £627 £650
90th Percentile £713 £762 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 564 227 522
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.75 £34.20 £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 £78.53 £85.00 £77.50
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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -4 4,092 £500 -0.10% 2,356
London -1 2,279 £525 -2.33% 1,111
UK excluding London -10 1,913 £469 -0.21% 1,608
Work from Home -6 1,385 £500 - 1,229
Midlands +2 528 £468 +5.22% 215
North of England -8 496 £460 -3.16% 450
West Midlands +5 424 £460 - 125
South East -16 381 £475 -2.56% 481
North West -7 253 £460 -3.16% 267
Yorkshire -13 209 £475 - 116
South West -2 201 £475 - 169
Scotland -5 179 £475 +5.56% 71
East of England -18 102 £495 -1.00% 129
East Midlands -1 100 £525 +34.62% 90
North East -9 46 £438 -5.41% 72
Wales +11 42 £450 +24.14% 51
Northern Ireland -11 12 £430 +1.18% 65

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
1 257 (5.51%) Apache Spark
2 188 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
3 180 (3.86%) Apache
4 167 (3.58%) Confluence
5 104 (2.23%) SAS
6 69 (1.48%) SharePoint
7 41 (0.88%) Tomcat
7 41 (0.88%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.69%) IIS
10 28 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 22 (0.47%) Apache Geronimo
11 22 (0.47%) Apache ServiceMix
11 22 (0.47%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.47%) Red Hat Fuse
12 20 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
13 19 (0.41%) nginx
14 16 (0.34%) Appian
14 16 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.34%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 297 (6.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 46 (0.99%) Microsoft Office
2 46 (0.99%) MS Visio
3 36 (0.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 28 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
5 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
7 6 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.086%) Notion
9 3 (0.064%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.043%) Trello
11 1 (0.021%) InDesign
11 1 (0.021%) Mingle
11 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 31 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.58%) Aladdin
4 25 (0.54%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.47%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.41%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
10 13 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 12 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 11 (0.24%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.19%) Endur
13 9 (0.19%) Findur
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
15 7 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,569 (33.66%) Azure
2 1,133 (24.31%) AWS
3 899 (19.29%) Power Platform
4 460 (9.87%) Azure DevOps
5 381 (8.17%) GCP
6 370 (7.94%) Azure Data Factory
7 356 (7.64%) GitHub
8 289 (6.20%) Serverless
9 284 (6.09%) Snowflake
10 250 (5.36%) Amazon S3
11 237 (5.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 208 (4.46%) dbt
13 189 (4.05%) GitHub Actions
14 173 (3.71%) AWS Lambda
15 94 (2.02%) SaaS
16 84 (1.80%) Power Automate
17 82 (1.76%) Azure Functions
18 79 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 78 (1.67%) Entra ID
20 70 (1.50%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.16%) Firewall
2 52 (1.12%) DNS
3 21 (0.45%) WAN
4 20 (0.43%) SNMP
5 19 (0.41%) Network Security
5 19 (0.41%) SSL
5 19 (0.41%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.39%) HTTP
7 15 (0.32%) Internet
8 14 (0.30%) VPN
9 12 (0.26%) LAN
10 11 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.19%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.19%) SAN
11 9 (0.19%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.17%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.15%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 823 (17.66%) Power BI
2 595 (12.77%) Data Warehouse
3 576 (12.36%) SQL Server
4 320 (6.87%) Data Lake
5 318 (6.82%) Tableau
6 306 (6.57%) PostgreSQL
7 299 (6.41%) Relational Database
8 262 (5.62%) NoSQL
9 244 (5.23%) Metadata
10 239 (5.13%) Azure SQL Database
11 176 (3.78%) Oracle Database
12 168 (3.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 153 (3.28%) Big Data
14 149 (3.20%) BigQuery
15 137 (2.94%) Delta Lake
16 123 (2.64%) Amazon Redshift
17 121 (2.60%) MySQL
18 112 (2.40%) Oracle Reports
19 108 (2.32%) MongoDB
20 105 (2.25%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 488 (10.47%) Git
2 363 (7.79%) JIRA
3 234 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 229 (4.91%) GitLab
5 67 (1.44%) JUnit
6 64 (1.37%) Selenium
7 56 (1.20%) Postman
8 50 (1.07%) Maven
8 50 (1.07%) Mockito
9 44 (0.94%) Cucumber
10 42 (0.90%) Gradle
11 36 (0.77%) MLflow
12 35 (0.75%) SonarQube
13 34 (0.73%) Visual Studio
14 31 (0.67%) REST Assured
15 30 (0.64%) ERwin
15 30 (0.64%) JMeter
16 26 (0.56%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.54%) Liquibase
17 25 (0.54%) TeamCity
General
1 1,204 (25.83%) Finance
2 1,191 (25.55%) Social Skills
3 851 (18.26%) Analytical Skills
4 432 (9.27%) Banking
5 408 (8.75%) Public Sector
6 121 (2.60%) Front Office
6 121 (2.60%) Investment Banking
7 118 (2.53%) Marketing
8 96 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
9 86 (1.85%) Retail
10 79 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 62 (1.33%) Financial Institution
12 58 (1.24%) Legal
13 43 (0.92%) Publishing
14 41 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
15 40 (0.86%) Manufacturing
16 37 (0.79%) Law
17 35 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 33 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
19 31 (0.67%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 976 (20.94%) Data Engineer
2 967 (20.75%) Developer
3 662 (14.20%) Analyst
4 587 (12.59%) Senior
5 315 (6.76%) Lead
6 297 (6.37%) Data Analyst
7 276 (5.92%) Architect
8 214 (4.59%) Consultant
9 207 (4.44%) Business Analyst
10 186 (3.99%) Java Developer
11 171 (3.67%) Senior Data Engineer
12 154 (3.30%) DBA
13 137 (2.94%) Senior Developer
14 135 (2.90%) Software Engineer
15 121 (2.60%) Azure Engineer
16 112 (2.40%) C# Developer
17 111 (2.38%) Data Architect
18 107 (2.30%) Python Developer
19 100 (2.15%) Data Scientist
20 97 (2.08%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 406 (8.71%) .NET
2 369 (7.92%) REST
3 306 (6.57%) PySpark
4 291 (6.24%) Kafka
5 230 (4.93%) Spring
6 224 (4.81%) React
7 218 (4.68%) Spring Boot
8 203 (4.36%) RESTful
9 162 (3.48%) HTML
10 159 (3.41%) JSON
11 148 (3.18%) XML
12 139 (2.98%) CSS
13 134 (2.87%) Pandas
14 112 (2.40%) AngularJS
15 108 (2.32%) SOAP
16 105 (2.25%) Middleware
17 98 (2.10%) Web Services
18 90 (1.93%) .NET Framework
19 87 (1.87%) OAuth
20 82 (1.76%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 312 (6.69%) Cloud Native
2 177 (3.80%) Data Structures
3 155 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 139 (2.98%) Product Ownership
5 128 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.06%) Management Information System
7 93 (2.00%) Derivative
8 88 (1.89%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.69%) Data Protection Act
10 69 (1.48%) Analytical Mindset
11 65 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 60 (1.29%) Self-Motivation
13 59 (1.27%) Clustering
14 58 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.14%) Equities
15 53 (1.14%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (1.07%) Fixed Income
17 48 (1.03%) Replication
18 45 (0.97%) Low-Code
19 43 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 323 (6.93%) Linux
2 278 (5.96%) Windows
3 222 (4.76%) Unix
4 100 (2.15%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.51%) AIX
7 19 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 12 (0.26%) Solaris
10 11 (0.24%) VMS
10 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
11 9 (0.19%) zOS
12 8 (0.17%) Apple iOS
13 7 (0.15%) Android
13 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.086%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.043%) HPUX
16 2 (0.043%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,275 (27.35%) CI/CD
2 1,180 (25.32%) Data Modelling
3 1,170 (25.10%) Analytics
4 1,146 (24.59%) Agile
5 1,095 (23.49%) ETL
6 1,037 (22.25%) Business Intelligence
7 1,020 (21.88%) DevOps
8 904 (19.39%) Data Pipeline
8 904 (19.39%) Problem-Solving
9 753 (16.16%) Data Engineering
10 627 (13.45%) AI
11 608 (13.04%) Migration
12 549 (11.78%) Validation
13 545 (11.69%) Data Governance
14 468 (10.04%) Test Automation
15 450 (9.65%) Decision-Making
16 440 (9.44%) Data Analysis
17 427 (9.16%) Performance Tuning
18 422 (9.05%) Microservices
19 407 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,761 (37.78%) Python
2 634 (13.60%) Java
3 491 (10.53%) C#
4 341 (7.32%) JavaScript
5 329 (7.06%) PL/SQL
6 236 (5.06%) T-SQL
7 224 (4.81%) PowerShell
8 156 (3.35%) TypeScript
9 134 (2.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 122 (2.62%) R
11 118 (2.53%) Shell Script
12 93 (2.00%) Bash
13 84 (1.80%) C++
14 82 (1.76%) Scala
15 61 (1.31%) Bicep
16 45 (0.97%) VBA
17 37 (0.79%) Perl
18 30 (0.64%) VB
19 27 (0.58%) C
20 26 (0.56%) Go
Qualifications
1 980 (21.03%) Security Cleared
2 795 (17.06%) SC Cleared
3 368 (7.90%) Degree
4 116 (2.49%) Computer Science Degree
5 112 (2.40%) BPSS Clearance
6 81 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 78 (1.67%) Azure Certification
8 66 (1.42%) Master's Degree
9 50 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 38 (0.82%) Microsoft Certification
11 25 (0.54%) AWS Certification
12 20 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.36%) PhD
14 12 (0.26%) CISSP
15 11 (0.24%) CBAP
15 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 11 (0.24%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.21%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 849 (18.21%) Data Quality
2 357 (7.66%) QA
3 192 (4.12%) GDPR
4 55 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 46 (0.99%) SLA
6 34 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 31 (0.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.51%) PMO
9 21 (0.45%) NIST
10 19 (0.41%) 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
13 15 (0.32%) MiFID
14 14 (0.30%) HIPAA
15 12 (0.26%) HL7
15 12 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.26%) WCAG
16 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 536 (11.50%) Docker
2 107 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
3 35 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
5 22 (0.47%) Hyper-V
6 18 (0.39%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.21%) KVM
7 10 (0.21%) VMware NSX
8 9 (0.19%) Postfix
8 9 (0.19%) vCloud
9 8 (0.17%) HDFS
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 5 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
12 4 (0.086%) Ceph
12 4 (0.086%) XenApp
12 4 (0.086%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.064%) Oracle Clusterware
13 3 (0.064%) Squid
14 2 (0.043%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 428 (9.18%) Kubernetes
2 375 (8.05%) Terraform
3 124 (2.66%) Grafana
4 84 (1.80%) Ansible
5 66 (1.42%) Prometheus
6 49 (1.05%) Oracle RMAN
7 36 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.41%) Kibana
8 19 (0.41%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.32%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.30%) Nagios
11 14 (0.30%) Netcool
11 14 (0.30%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.28%) Control-M
12 13 (0.28%) OpenView
12 13 (0.28%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.21%) SCCM
14 10 (0.21%) SCOM
Vendors
1 780 (16.73%) Oracle
2 720 (15.45%) Microsoft
3 584 (12.53%) Databricks
4 172 (3.69%) Google
5 168 (3.60%) Informatica
6 140 (3.00%) ServiceNow
7 137 (2.94%) Talend
8 116 (2.49%) SAP
9 94 (2.02%) Splunk
10 79 (1.69%) IBM
11 69 (1.48%) Denodo
12 55 (1.18%) Salesforce
12 55 (1.18%) VMware
13 46 (0.99%) Citrix
14 39 (0.84%) Dynatrace
15 32 (0.69%) MuleSoft
15 32 (0.69%) OpenAI
15 32 (0.69%) Sybase
16 31 (0.67%) Bloomberg
17 30 (0.64%) HP