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 3 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,960 3,722 4,388
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.63% 11.90% 10.09%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.82% 35.31% 33.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,269 2,596 3,156
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 72 61
10th Percentile £26.35 £23.05 £21.73
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.42 £26.25
Median hourly rate £44.75 £41.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.42% -1.98% -15.00%
75th Percentile £67.75 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.33 £67.35 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.13
% change year-on-year -11.00% +24.61% -15.93%

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 13,848 10,541 13,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.88% 33.71% 30.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,990 7,109 9,334
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.26% -2.60% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £489
% change year-on-year +3.16% -2.86% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 543 254 537
10th Percentile £34.03 £26.52 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.55 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -12.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.90 £79.61 £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 3 July 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 3 July 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 3 July 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 4,342 £500 - 2,177
London -5 2,330 £525 -1.87% 1,000
UK excluding London -10 2,121 £469 -0.21% 1,506
Work from Home -6 1,479 £500 -1.96% 1,066
North of England -5 566 £463 -2.63% 411
Midlands +3 551 £460 +8.24% 243
West Midlands +5 454 £459 +2.00% 121
South East -9 445 £490 -2.00% 484
North West -3 300 £475 +0.53% 246
South West -3 233 £503 +9.84% 143
Yorkshire -8 229 £475 - 105
Scotland -7 190 £450 - 59
East of England -11 106 £491 +0.77% 116
East Midlands -1 93 £525 +38.16% 122
North East -16 49 £413 -11.05% 65
Wales +4 46 £450 +5.88% 39
Northern Ireland -9 14 £375 -25.93% 37

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
1 237 (4.78%) Apache Spark
2 212 (4.27%) Confluence
3 203 (4.09%) Apache Airflow
4 178 (3.59%) Apache
5 113 (2.28%) SAS
6 56 (1.13%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.85%) Tomcat
8 38 (0.77%) IIS
8 38 (0.77%) Oracle Workflow
9 36 (0.73%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.65%) WebSphere
11 25 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 22 (0.44%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.44%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.44%) Red Hat Fuse
13 21 (0.42%) nginx
14 20 (0.40%) CMS
14 20 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
15 17 (0.34%) Appian
15 17 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 309 (6.23%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 35 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.69%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.081%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.081%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.081%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.060%) Notion
9 3 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Mingle
10 1 (0.020%) Trello
10 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 42 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
2 37 (0.75%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 26 (0.52%) Aladdin
5 23 (0.46%) Oracle ERP
6 21 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
7 19 (0.38%) NEC Housing
8 17 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
9 16 (0.32%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.22%) Findur
11 11 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 11 (0.22%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.20%) Elite 3E
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
13 9 (0.18%) Fidessa
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
14 8 (0.16%) NetSuite
14 8 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
14 8 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,584 (31.94%) Azure
2 1,204 (24.27%) AWS
3 922 (18.59%) Power Platform
4 442 (8.91%) Azure DevOps
5 410 (8.27%) GCP
6 353 (7.12%) GitHub
7 343 (6.92%) Azure Data Factory
8 307 (6.19%) Snowflake
9 304 (6.13%) Serverless
10 266 (5.36%) Amazon S3
11 243 (4.90%) dbt
12 217 (4.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 195 (3.93%) AWS Lambda
14 184 (3.71%) GitHub Actions
15 93 (1.88%) SaaS
16 86 (1.73%) Entra ID
17 84 (1.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 84 (1.69%) Power Automate
18 78 (1.57%) PowerApps
19 76 (1.53%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 51 (1.03%) DNS
2 41 (0.83%) Firewall
3 25 (0.50%) SSL
4 24 (0.48%) HTTP
5 22 (0.44%) Network Security
5 22 (0.44%) SNMP
6 20 (0.40%) Internet
6 20 (0.40%) WAN
7 18 (0.36%) VPN
8 12 (0.24%) TCP/IP
9 10 (0.20%) SAN
10 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
10 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.18%) WinSCP
10 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
11 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.14%) LAN
12 7 (0.14%) NAS
12 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 847 (17.08%) Power BI
2 648 (13.06%) Data Warehouse
3 620 (12.50%) SQL Server
4 338 (6.81%) Relational Database
5 321 (6.47%) Tableau
6 318 (6.41%) PostgreSQL
7 307 (6.19%) Data Lake
8 258 (5.20%) NoSQL
9 247 (4.98%) Metadata
10 217 (4.38%) Azure SQL Database
11 195 (3.93%) Oracle Database
12 165 (3.33%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 159 (3.21%) BigQuery
14 149 (3.00%) Amazon Redshift
15 142 (2.86%) Big Data
15 142 (2.86%) Delta Lake
16 125 (2.52%) MySQL
17 118 (2.38%) Oracle Reports
18 117 (2.36%) MongoDB
19 110 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 539 (10.87%) Git
2 398 (8.02%) JIRA
3 262 (5.28%) Jenkins
4 222 (4.48%) GitLab
5 77 (1.55%) JUnit
6 59 (1.19%) Selenium
7 56 (1.13%) Postman
8 55 (1.11%) Maven
9 52 (1.05%) Mockito
10 49 (0.99%) Gradle
11 42 (0.85%) Oracle Forms
12 36 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.71%) MLflow
14 34 (0.69%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.67%) JMeter
15 33 (0.67%) SonarQube
16 29 (0.58%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.56%) ERwin
17 28 (0.56%) Liquibase
18 27 (0.54%) Zephyr
General
1 1,272 (25.65%) Social Skills
2 1,268 (25.56%) Finance
3 945 (19.05%) Analytical Skills
4 468 (9.44%) Banking
5 450 (9.07%) Public Sector
6 136 (2.74%) Front Office
7 128 (2.58%) Marketing
8 127 (2.56%) Investment Banking
9 121 (2.44%) Retail
10 105 (2.12%) Documentation Skills
11 92 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.21%) Legal
13 58 (1.17%) Manufacturing
14 57 (1.15%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
16 42 (0.85%) Publishing
17 38 (0.77%) Back Office
18 36 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
19 35 (0.71%) Telecoms
20 31 (0.63%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,056 (21.29%) Developer
2 995 (20.06%) Data Engineer
3 726 (14.64%) Analyst
4 647 (13.04%) Senior
5 345 (6.96%) Lead
6 311 (6.27%) Data Analyst
7 278 (5.60%) Architect
8 238 (4.80%) Consultant
9 235 (4.74%) Business Analyst
10 207 (4.17%) Java Developer
11 188 (3.79%) Senior Data Engineer
12 180 (3.63%) DBA
13 152 (3.06%) Senior Developer
14 144 (2.90%) Software Engineer
15 119 (2.40%) Azure Engineer
16 117 (2.36%) SQL Developer
17 111 (2.24%) C# Developer
18 109 (2.20%) Python Developer
18 109 (2.20%) SQL DBA
19 106 (2.14%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 408 (8.23%) .NET
2 371 (7.48%) REST
3 313 (6.31%) PySpark
4 301 (6.07%) Kafka
5 258 (5.20%) Spring
6 246 (4.96%) Spring Boot
7 228 (4.60%) React
8 216 (4.35%) RESTful
9 182 (3.67%) JSON
10 165 (3.33%) XML
11 152 (3.06%) HTML
12 135 (2.72%) CSS
13 129 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 125 (2.52%) Pandas
14 125 (2.52%) Web Services
15 118 (2.38%) Middleware
16 115 (2.32%) SOAP
17 98 (1.98%) .NET Framework
18 76 (1.53%) Node.js
19 73 (1.47%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 325 (6.55%) Cloud Native
2 210 (4.23%) Data Structures
3 178 (3.59%) Legacy Systems
4 170 (3.43%) Product Ownership
5 142 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (1.92%) Derivative
7 93 (1.88%) Onboarding
8 87 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 84 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
10 76 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
11 75 (1.51%) Data Protection Act
12 73 (1.47%) Self-Motivation
13 70 (1.41%) Algorithms
14 63 (1.27%) Clustering
15 57 (1.15%) Replication
16 55 (1.11%) Greenfield Project
17 53 (1.07%) Equities
18 51 (1.03%) Fixed Income
19 46 (0.93%) NHS
20 43 (0.87%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 322 (6.49%) Linux
2 293 (5.91%) Windows
3 229 (4.62%) Unix
4 115 (2.32%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.48%) AIX
7 18 (0.36%) Solaris
8 16 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
13 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.081%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.081%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.040%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.040%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,327 (26.75%) CI/CD
2 1,280 (25.81%) Agile
3 1,261 (25.42%) Analytics
4 1,238 (24.96%) Data Modelling
5 1,114 (22.46%) ETL
6 1,071 (21.59%) Business Intelligence
7 1,011 (20.38%) DevOps
8 975 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
9 960 (19.35%) Data Pipeline
10 815 (16.43%) Data Engineering
11 711 (14.33%) AI
12 668 (13.47%) Migration
13 630 (12.70%) Validation
14 554 (11.17%) Data Governance
15 508 (10.24%) Test Automation
16 501 (10.10%) Decision-Making
17 495 (9.98%) Data Analysis
18 480 (9.68%) Stakeholder Management
19 459 (9.25%) Continuous Improvement
20 440 (8.87%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,804 (36.37%) Python
2 652 (13.15%) Java
3 489 (9.86%) C#
4 379 (7.64%) PL/SQL
5 330 (6.65%) JavaScript
6 266 (5.36%) T-SQL
7 243 (4.90%) PowerShell
8 176 (3.55%) TypeScript
9 145 (2.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 122 (2.46%) Shell Script
11 114 (2.30%) R
12 94 (1.90%) Bash
13 83 (1.67%) Scala
14 72 (1.45%) C++
15 47 (0.95%) Bicep
16 46 (0.93%) VBA
17 38 (0.77%) C
18 33 (0.67%) VB
19 27 (0.54%) Perl
20 26 (0.52%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,057 (21.31%) Security Cleared
2 854 (17.22%) SC Cleared
3 381 (7.68%) Degree
4 130 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
5 118 (2.38%) Computer Science Degree
6 100 (2.02%) DV Cleared
7 74 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 64 (1.29%) Master's Degree
9 55 (1.11%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.83%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (0.73%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 18 (0.36%) PhD
13 15 (0.30%) CISSP
14 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
15 10 (0.20%) CISM
15 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.18%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 891 (17.96%) Data Quality
2 386 (7.78%) QA
3 187 (3.77%) GDPR
4 61 (1.23%) Accessibility
5 47 (0.95%) SLA
6 27 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 20 (0.40%) NIST
8 20 (0.40%) PMO
9 19 (0.38%) ISO 20022
10 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 16 (0.32%) IFRS
11 16 (0.32%) Solvency II
12 15 (0.30%) MiFID
13 14 (0.28%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 14 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.22%) HL7
15 11 (0.22%) NCSC
15 11 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 506 (10.20%) Docker
2 114 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 46 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
4 37 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
5 32 (0.65%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 20 (0.40%) Hyper-V
8 14 (0.28%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.26%) vCloud
10 10 (0.20%) KVM
11 9 (0.18%) Postfix
12 8 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
13 5 (0.10%) RACF
14 4 (0.081%) Ceph
14 4 (0.081%) HDFS
15 3 (0.060%) Squid
16 2 (0.040%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 2 (0.040%) GridGain
16 2 (0.040%) XenApp
16 2 (0.040%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 414 (8.35%) Kubernetes
2 385 (7.76%) Terraform
3 113 (2.28%) Grafana
4 91 (1.83%) Ansible
5 54 (1.09%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.85%) Oracle RMAN
7 33 (0.67%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.46%) Kibana
9 22 (0.44%) Control-M
10 20 (0.40%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.38%) SCOM
12 16 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.32%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.30%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.28%) Nagios
14 14 (0.28%) Netcool
15 13 (0.26%) OpenView
15 13 (0.26%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.18%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
16 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 867 (17.48%) Oracle
2 775 (15.63%) Microsoft
3 583 (11.75%) Databricks
4 186 (3.75%) Google
5 183 (3.69%) Informatica
6 145 (2.92%) Talend
7 138 (2.78%) ServiceNow
8 124 (2.50%) SAP
9 89 (1.79%) IBM
9 89 (1.79%) Splunk
10 71 (1.43%) Denodo
11 60 (1.21%) Salesforce
12 58 (1.17%) VMware
13 45 (0.91%) Citrix
14 43 (0.87%) Dynatrace
15 41 (0.83%) Bloomberg
16 39 (0.79%) Sybase
17 37 (0.75%) Murex
18 33 (0.67%) MuleSoft
19 32 (0.65%) Alteryx