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

6 months to
28 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,505 3,548 4,235
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.59% 12.09% 9.78%
As % of the Programming Languages category 34.95% 35.52% 33.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,066 2,476 3,042
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 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £475 £475
% change year-on-year -1.26% - -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 65 63
10th Percentile £33.78 £22.69 £22.64
25th Percentile £36.44 £30.25 £26.12
Median hourly rate £54.75 £44.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.03% +4.71% -15.00%
75th Percentile £77.80 £65.62 £55.81
90th Percentile £83.98 £76.81 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +79.15% -20.21% +4.71%

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 12,891 9,990 12,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.44% 34.03% 29.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,530 6,768 9,054
10th Percentile £355 £359 £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 £766 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £489
% change year-on-year -0.70% -2.17% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 247 480
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.49 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.07
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.05% -1.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 3,989 £500 -3.38% 1,999
London 0 2,257 £513 -6.82% 888
UK excluding London -9 1,809 £469 -1.26% 1,591
Work from Home -6 1,333 £500 -3.85% 985
Midlands +5 520 £467 +1.60% 260
North of England -9 478 £450 -5.26% 378
West Midlands +7 412 £460 -0.81% 153
South East -17 321 £500 - 548
North West 0 267 £450 -5.26% 227
South West -7 209 £475 -5.00% 144
Yorkshire -18 189 £460 -3.16% 96
Scotland -7 165 £498 +10.56% 78
East Midlands +5 105 £525 +25.00% 107
East of England -16 90 £500 +6.95% 122
Wales +6 36 £400 -5.88% 51
North East -11 33 £475 +4.40% 57
Northern Ireland -8 12 £400 -2.44% 34

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
1 260 (5.77%) Apache Spark
2 177 (3.93%) Apache Airflow
3 174 (3.86%) Apache
4 144 (3.20%) Confluence
5 100 (2.22%) SAS
6 88 (1.95%) SharePoint
7 46 (1.02%) WebLogic
8 44 (0.98%) Tomcat
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%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
12 23 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
13 21 (0.47%) nginx
14 16 (0.36%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.31%) HCL Notes
15 14 (0.31%) Mendix
15 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 301 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.09%) 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 (0.16%) Notepad++
9 3 (0.067%) Notion
9 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.067%) Trello
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) SPSS
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 49 (1.09%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.55%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 23 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
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 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.27%) 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%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,555 (34.52%) Azure
2 1,083 (24.04%) AWS
3 865 (19.20%) Power Platform
4 466 (10.34%) Azure DevOps
5 373 (8.28%) Azure Data Factory
6 356 (7.90%) GCP
7 348 (7.72%) GitHub
8 300 (6.66%) Serverless
9 257 (5.70%) Snowflake
10 254 (5.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 248 (5.50%) Amazon S3
12 183 (4.06%) dbt
13 181 (4.02%) GitHub Actions
14 168 (3.73%) AWS Lambda
15 101 (2.24%) Power Automate
16 95 (2.11%) Azure Functions
17 87 (1.93%) SaaS
18 81 (1.80%) AWS CloudFormation
19 79 (1.75%) Entra ID
19 79 (1.75%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.20%) Firewall
2 41 (0.91%) DNS
3 24 (0.53%) Network Security
4 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.44%) WAN
6 18 (0.40%) HTTP
7 16 (0.36%) Internet
8 15 (0.33%) LAN
8 15 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.27%) VPN
10 11 (0.24%) SNMP
11 9 (0.20%) DHCP
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.16%) NAS
12 7 (0.16%) PuTTY
12 7 (0.16%) SAN
12 7 (0.16%) VLAN
12 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 787 (17.47%) Power BI
2 574 (12.74%) Data Warehouse
3 548 (12.16%) SQL Server
4 306 (6.79%) Tableau
5 305 (6.77%) PostgreSQL
6 297 (6.59%) Data Lake
7 282 (6.26%) Relational Database
8 280 (6.22%) NoSQL
9 248 (5.50%) Metadata
10 246 (5.46%) Azure SQL Database
11 163 (3.62%) Oracle Database
12 156 (3.46%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 147 (3.26%) Big Data
14 133 (2.95%) MySQL
15 131 (2.91%) Amazon Redshift
16 129 (2.86%) BigQuery
16 129 (2.86%) Delta Lake
17 114 (2.53%) MongoDB
18 110 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
19 104 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 481 (10.68%) Git
2 351 (7.79%) JIRA
3 228 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 189 (4.20%) GitLab
5 70 (1.55%) Selenium
6 62 (1.38%) JUnit
7 53 (1.18%) Postman
8 42 (0.93%) MLflow
9 41 (0.91%) Cucumber
9 41 (0.91%) Maven
10 40 (0.89%) Mockito
11 32 (0.71%) Bitbucket
11 32 (0.71%) Visual Studio
12 31 (0.69%) Oracle APEX
12 31 (0.69%) REST Assured
13 30 (0.67%) ERwin
14 29 (0.64%) JMeter
15 28 (0.62%) SonarQube
16 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
17 25 (0.55%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,217 (27.01%) Social Skills
2 1,185 (26.30%) Finance
3 840 (18.65%) Analytical Skills
4 419 (9.30%) Banking
5 404 (8.97%) Public Sector
6 115 (2.55%) Investment Banking
7 109 (2.42%) Front Office
8 102 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
9 99 (2.20%) Marketing
10 74 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 74 (1.64%) Retail
11 57 (1.27%) Legal
12 56 (1.24%) Financial Institution
13 39 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 38 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 36 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 35 (0.78%) Publishing
17 33 (0.73%) Local Government
17 33 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 32 (0.71%) Law
Job Titles
1 981 (21.78%) Developer
2 890 (19.76%) Data Engineer
3 668 (14.83%) Analyst
4 559 (12.41%) Senior
5 311 (6.90%) Lead
6 284 (6.30%) Data Analyst
7 270 (5.99%) Architect
8 219 (4.86%) Business Analyst
9 209 (4.64%) Consultant
10 170 (3.77%) Java Developer
11 145 (3.22%) Senior Data Engineer
12 144 (3.20%) DBA
13 133 (2.95%) Senior Developer
14 127 (2.82%) Azure Engineer
15 123 (2.73%) Software Engineer
16 115 (2.55%) C# Developer
17 109 (2.42%) Data Architect
18 102 (2.26%) Python Developer
19 100 (2.22%) Data Scientist
20 98 (2.18%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 394 (8.75%) .NET
2 345 (7.66%) REST
3 288 (6.39%) PySpark
4 275 (6.10%) Kafka
5 217 (4.82%) React
6 206 (4.57%) Spring
7 195 (4.33%) Spring Boot
8 191 (4.24%) RESTful
9 157 (3.49%) HTML
10 149 (3.31%) XML
11 145 (3.22%) JSON
12 138 (3.06%) CSS
13 130 (2.89%) Pandas
14 117 (2.60%) AngularJS
15 110 (2.44%) Middleware
16 93 (2.06%) SOAP
17 92 (2.04%) .NET Framework
17 92 (2.04%) Node.js
18 83 (1.84%) Web Services
19 76 (1.69%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 288 (6.39%) Cloud Native
2 173 (3.84%) Data Structures
3 156 (3.46%) Legacy Systems
4 140 (3.11%) Product Ownership
5 107 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
6 98 (2.18%) Management Information System
7 84 (1.86%) Derivative
8 79 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 76 (1.69%) Onboarding
10 64 (1.42%) Analytical Mindset
11 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
13 56 (1.24%) Fixed Income
14 54 (1.20%) Equities
15 53 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
16 51 (1.13%) Clustering
17 44 (0.98%) Replication
18 43 (0.95%) NHS
19 41 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 41 (0.91%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.08%) Linux
2 270 (5.99%) Windows
3 215 (4.77%) Unix
4 91 (2.02%) Windows Server
5 31 (0.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) AIX
7 17 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.31%) 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 (0.16%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) Apple iOS
13 5 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.089%) Android
15 2 (0.044%) CentOS
15 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,207 (26.79%) CI/CD
2 1,163 (25.82%) Agile
3 1,149 (25.50%) Analytics
4 1,123 (24.93%) Data Modelling
5 1,046 (23.22%) ETL
6 1,023 (22.71%) DevOps
7 1,022 (22.69%) Business Intelligence
8 922 (20.47%) Problem-Solving
9 836 (18.56%) Data Pipeline
10 706 (15.67%) Data Engineering
11 566 (12.56%) Data Governance
12 564 (12.52%) Migration
13 551 (12.23%) AI
14 533 (11.83%) Validation
15 437 (9.70%) Decision-Making
16 424 (9.41%) Test Automation
17 410 (9.10%) Performance Tuning
18 407 (9.03%) Data Analysis
19 393 (8.72%) Microservices
20 380 (8.44%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,715 (38.07%) Python
2 621 (13.78%) Java
3 481 (10.68%) C#
4 342 (7.59%) JavaScript
5 334 (7.41%) PL/SQL
6 204 (4.53%) T-SQL
7 197 (4.37%) PowerShell
8 148 (3.29%) TypeScript
9 134 (2.97%) R
10 131 (2.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 131 (2.91%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.06%) Scala
12 83 (1.84%) Bash
13 80 (1.78%) C++
14 63 (1.40%) Bicep
15 60 (1.33%) VBA
16 46 (1.02%) Perl
17 30 (0.67%) Go
17 30 (0.67%) VB
18 23 (0.51%) PHP
Qualifications
1 962 (21.35%) Security Cleared
2 786 (17.45%) SC Cleared
3 361 (8.01%) Degree
4 124 (2.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 104 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
6 73 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 67 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 58 (1.29%) DV Cleared
9 52 (1.15%) ISTQB
10 45 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 32 (0.71%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) PhD
13 17 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
14 16 (0.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.31%) CBAP
16 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
17 12 (0.27%) CISSP
18 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
18 10 (0.22%) PMP
19 9 (0.20%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 816 (18.11%) Data Quality
2 355 (7.88%) QA
3 201 (4.46%) GDPR
4 59 (1.31%) Accessibility
5 39 (0.87%) SLA
6 34 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (0.62%) PMO
8 19 (0.42%) NIST
9 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 18 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.36%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) WCAG
12 14 (0.31%) HL7
12 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.29%) IFRS
14 11 (0.24%) DICOM
14 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 527 (11.70%) Docker
2 109 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.78%) 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 (0.067%) Ceph
12 3 (0.067%) Oracle Clusterware
13 2 (0.044%) GridGain
13 2 (0.044%) Squid
13 2 (0.044%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 441 (9.79%) Kubernetes
2 378 (8.39%) Terraform
3 117 (2.60%) Grafana
4 81 (1.80%) Ansible
5 67 (1.49%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.42%) Kibana
10 17 (0.38%) Progress Chef
10 17 (0.38%) SCCM
11 14 (0.31%) Control-M
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 11 (0.24%) ZABBIX
13 10 (0.22%) Nagios
13 10 (0.22%) Netcool
13 10 (0.22%) OpenView
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 753 (16.71%) Oracle
2 729 (16.18%) Microsoft
3 555 (12.32%) Databricks
4 169 (3.75%) Google
5 155 (3.44%) Informatica
6 136 (3.02%) ServiceNow
7 120 (2.66%) SAP
8 118 (2.62%) Talend
9 90 (2.00%) Splunk
10 80 (1.78%) IBM
11 70 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 53 (1.18%) Citrix
13 52 (1.15%) Denodo
14 46 (1.02%) VMware
15 43 (0.95%) OpenAI
16 38 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 34 (0.75%) MuleSoft
18 33 (0.73%) Bloomberg
19 29 (0.64%) HP
19 29 (0.64%) Sage