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

6 months to
24 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -4 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,897 3,611 4,308
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.62% 12.02% 9.91%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.75% 35.50% 32.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,247 2,535 3,097
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £594 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £474 £475
% change year-on-year -0.95% -0.32% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 70 62
10th Percentile £26.06 £22.57 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.31 £27.19
Median hourly rate £45.90 £39.67 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.70% -6.65% -17.07%
75th Percentile £69.11 £53.26 £53.29
90th Percentile £82.48 £68.00 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £41.96 £40.25
% change year-on-year +6.07% +4.24% -18.80%

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 13,697 10,171 13,188
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.91% 33.87% 30.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,913 6,897 9,255
10th Percentile £358 £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 £608 £625 £650
90th Percentile £720 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £475 £490
% change year-on-year +3.58% -3.06% -2.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 555 239 553
10th Percentile £35.00 £25.65 £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% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £83.27 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +5.69% -5.38% +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 24 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 24 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 24 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 4,288 £500 - 1,387
London -5 2,325 £525 -1.87% 516
UK excluding London -10 2,080 £469 -0.95% 1,221
Work from Home -6 1,463 £500 -1.96% 735
North of England -6 546 £460 -3.16% 325
Midlands +3 543 £463 +8.06% 188
West Midlands +4 448 £459 +2.00% 99
South East -10 428 £475 -5.00% 424
North West -3 290 £463 -2.63% 197
South West -6 229 £500 +5.26% 104
Yorkshire -12 216 £475 - 84
Scotland -7 199 £460 +2.22% 42
East of England -13 108 £495 +1.54% 96
East Midlands 0 91 £525 +40.00% 89
North East -13 52 £425 -8.36% 49
Wales +9 45 £450 +5.88% 32
Northern Ireland -14 12 £388 -22.50% 36

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
1 242 (4.94%) Apache Spark
2 201 (4.10%) Confluence
3 200 (4.08%) Apache Airflow
4 177 (3.61%) Apache
5 112 (2.29%) SAS
6 60 (1.23%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.86%) Tomcat
8 36 (0.74%) Oracle Workflow
9 34 (0.69%) IIS
9 34 (0.69%) WebLogic
10 33 (0.67%) 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 21 (0.43%) nginx
14 19 (0.39%) Appian
14 19 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
14 19 (0.39%) Palantir Foundry
15 16 (0.33%) CMS
Applications
1 307 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 32 (0.65%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.10%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.061%) Acrobat
9 3 (0.061%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.061%) Photoshop
10 2 (0.041%) Notion
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.020%) InDesign
11 1 (0.020%) Mingle
11 1 (0.020%) Trello
11 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 41 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
2 36 (0.74%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.59%) SAP S/4HANA
4 25 (0.51%) Aladdin
5 23 (0.47%) Oracle Payables
6 22 (0.45%) 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 (0.22%) Findur
10 11 (0.22%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 10 (0.20%) Elite 3E
11 10 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.20%) Payment Gateway
11 10 (0.20%) Siebel CRM
12 9 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,586 (32.39%) Azure
2 1,195 (24.40%) AWS
3 928 (18.95%) Power Platform
4 449 (9.17%) Azure DevOps
5 399 (8.15%) GCP
6 355 (7.25%) GitHub
7 352 (7.19%) Azure Data Factory
8 314 (6.41%) Serverless
9 296 (6.04%) Snowflake
10 271 (5.53%) Amazon S3
11 230 (4.70%) dbt
12 226 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 196 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
14 187 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
15 90 (1.84%) Power Automate
16 89 (1.82%) SaaS
17 87 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 81 (1.65%) Entra ID
19 79 (1.61%) Azure Functions
19 79 (1.61%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.10%) DNS
2 44 (0.90%) Firewall
3 23 (0.47%) WAN
4 22 (0.45%) HTTP
4 22 (0.45%) Network Security
4 22 (0.45%) SNMP
5 19 (0.39%) SSL
6 18 (0.37%) Internet
7 17 (0.35%) VPN
8 12 (0.25%) TCP/IP
9 11 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.20%) LAN
10 10 (0.20%) SAN
11 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
11 9 (0.18%) WinSCP
11 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.14%) Kerberos
13 7 (0.14%) NAS
13 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 853 (17.42%) Power BI
2 636 (12.99%) Data Warehouse
3 593 (12.11%) SQL Server
4 332 (6.78%) Relational Database
5 318 (6.49%) Data Lake
6 316 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
7 314 (6.41%) Tableau
8 261 (5.33%) NoSQL
9 248 (5.06%) Metadata
10 227 (4.64%) Azure SQL Database
11 190 (3.88%) Oracle Database
12 161 (3.29%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 152 (3.10%) BigQuery
14 143 (2.92%) Amazon Redshift
14 143 (2.92%) Big Data
15 138 (2.82%) Delta Lake
16 123 (2.51%) MySQL
17 118 (2.41%) Oracle Reports
18 113 (2.31%) MongoDB
19 107 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 535 (10.93%) Git
2 395 (8.07%) JIRA
3 252 (5.15%) Jenkins
4 229 (4.68%) GitLab
5 75 (1.53%) JUnit
6 58 (1.18%) Selenium
7 56 (1.14%) Maven
8 55 (1.12%) Postman
9 53 (1.08%) Mockito
10 50 (1.02%) Gradle
11 39 (0.80%) Oracle Forms
12 38 (0.78%) Visual Studio
13 36 (0.74%) Cucumber
14 35 (0.71%) MLflow
15 33 (0.67%) JMeter
15 33 (0.67%) SonarQube
16 29 (0.59%) Bitbucket
17 28 (0.57%) ERwin
17 28 (0.57%) Liquibase
18 27 (0.55%) REST Assured
General
1 1,261 (25.75%) Finance
2 1,257 (25.67%) Social Skills
3 918 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
4 463 (9.45%) Banking
5 451 (9.21%) Public Sector
6 137 (2.80%) Front Office
7 129 (2.63%) Investment Banking
8 123 (2.51%) Marketing
9 108 (2.21%) Retail
10 103 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
11 91 (1.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.23%) Legal
13 56 (1.14%) Financial Institution
14 51 (1.04%) Manufacturing
14 51 (1.04%) Presentation Skills
15 43 (0.88%) Publishing
16 37 (0.76%) Back Office
17 35 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
18 34 (0.69%) Telecoms
19 31 (0.63%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,027 (20.97%) Developer
2 1,004 (20.50%) Data Engineer
3 711 (14.52%) Analyst
4 641 (13.09%) Senior
5 337 (6.88%) Lead
6 304 (6.21%) Data Analyst
7 277 (5.66%) Architect
8 235 (4.80%) Consultant
9 218 (4.45%) Business Analyst
10 206 (4.21%) Java Developer
11 188 (3.84%) Senior Data Engineer
12 171 (3.49%) DBA
13 149 (3.04%) Senior Developer
14 148 (3.02%) Software Engineer
15 120 (2.45%) Azure Engineer
16 111 (2.27%) SQL Developer
17 109 (2.23%) Python Developer
18 107 (2.19%) C# Developer
19 104 (2.12%) Data Architect
20 96 (1.96%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 397 (8.11%) .NET
2 365 (7.45%) REST
3 312 (6.37%) PySpark
4 299 (6.11%) Kafka
5 257 (5.25%) Spring
6 248 (5.06%) Spring Boot
7 233 (4.76%) React
8 217 (4.43%) RESTful
9 178 (3.63%) JSON
10 159 (3.25%) XML
11 154 (3.14%) HTML
12 139 (2.84%) CSS
13 123 (2.51%) Pandas
14 122 (2.49%) AngularJS
15 117 (2.39%) Middleware
16 115 (2.35%) SOAP
16 115 (2.35%) Web Services
17 93 (1.90%) .NET Framework
18 84 (1.72%) OAuth
19 77 (1.57%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 322 (6.58%) Cloud Native
2 203 (4.15%) Data Structures
3 177 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
4 159 (3.25%) Product Ownership
5 144 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (1.94%) Derivative
7 93 (1.90%) Onboarding
8 91 (1.86%) Management Information System
9 76 (1.55%) Data Protection Act
10 74 (1.51%) Enterprise Software
11 72 (1.47%) Analytical Mindset
12 69 (1.41%) Self-Motivation
13 66 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 60 (1.23%) Clustering
15 54 (1.10%) Greenfield Project
16 52 (1.06%) Equities
16 52 (1.06%) Replication
17 48 (0.98%) Fixed Income
18 46 (0.94%) Low-Code
18 46 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 318 (6.49%) Linux
2 282 (5.76%) Windows
3 224 (4.57%) Unix
4 107 (2.19%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.49%) AIX
7 17 (0.35%) Solaris
7 17 (0.35%) Windows Server 2019
8 12 (0.25%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
12 7 (0.14%) Windows 10
13 4 (0.082%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.061%) Ubuntu
14 3 (0.061%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.041%) Data ONTAP
15 2 (0.041%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,320 (26.96%) CI/CD
2 1,262 (25.77%) Agile
3 1,237 (25.26%) Analytics
4 1,226 (25.04%) Data Modelling
5 1,112 (22.71%) ETL
6 1,072 (21.89%) Business Intelligence
7 1,016 (20.75%) DevOps
8 967 (19.75%) Problem-Solving
9 956 (19.52%) Data Pipeline
10 808 (16.50%) Data Engineering
11 697 (14.23%) AI
12 659 (13.46%) Migration
13 621 (12.68%) Validation
14 547 (11.17%) Data Governance
15 494 (10.09%) Test Automation
16 489 (9.99%) Decision-Making
17 476 (9.72%) Data Analysis
18 471 (9.62%) Stakeholder Management
19 442 (9.03%) Continuous Improvement
20 439 (8.96%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,793 (36.61%) Python
2 650 (13.27%) Java
3 484 (9.88%) C#
4 370 (7.56%) PL/SQL
5 338 (6.90%) JavaScript
6 252 (5.15%) T-SQL
7 233 (4.76%) PowerShell
8 174 (3.55%) TypeScript
9 141 (2.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 119 (2.43%) Shell Script
11 111 (2.27%) R
12 93 (1.90%) Bash
13 78 (1.59%) C++
13 78 (1.59%) Scala
14 51 (1.04%) Bicep
15 46 (0.94%) VBA
16 35 (0.71%) C
17 34 (0.69%) VB
18 29 (0.59%) Perl
19 26 (0.53%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,049 (21.42%) Security Cleared
2 848 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 364 (7.43%) Degree
4 130 (2.65%) BPSS Clearance
5 113 (2.31%) Computer Science Degree
6 97 (1.98%) DV Cleared
7 76 (1.55%) Azure Certification
8 68 (1.39%) Master's Degree
9 58 (1.18%) ISTQB
10 43 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 37 (0.76%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.37%) DBS Check
12 18 (0.37%) PhD
13 14 (0.29%) CISSP
14 13 (0.27%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
15 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
16 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 10 (0.20%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
17 9 (0.18%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 888 (18.13%) Data Quality
2 379 (7.74%) QA
3 187 (3.82%) GDPR
4 59 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 44 (0.90%) SLA
6 31 (0.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 30 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 26 (0.53%) NIST
9 23 (0.47%) PMO
10 20 (0.41%) ISO 20022
11 18 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
11 18 (0.37%) IFRS
12 16 (0.33%) PCI DSS
13 15 (0.31%) MiFID
13 15 (0.31%) Solvency II
14 14 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 14 (0.29%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.27%) NCSC
16 11 (0.22%) HL7
16 11 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 520 (10.62%) Docker
2 105 (2.14%) Active Directory
3 41 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
4 36 (0.74%) VMware Infrastructure
5 29 (0.59%) Oracle RAC
6 20 (0.41%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
7 13 (0.27%) VMware NSX
8 12 (0.25%) vCloud
9 10 (0.20%) KVM
9 10 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 9 (0.18%) Postfix
11 5 (0.10%) RACF
12 4 (0.082%) Ceph
12 4 (0.082%) HDFS
13 3 (0.061%) Squid
13 3 (0.061%) XenApp
13 3 (0.061%) XenDesktop
14 2 (0.041%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.041%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 423 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 388 (7.92%) Terraform
3 115 (2.35%) Grafana
4 87 (1.78%) Ansible
5 58 (1.18%) Prometheus
6 41 (0.84%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.61%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.47%) Control-M
8 23 (0.47%) Kibana
9 19 (0.39%) vCenter Server
10 16 (0.33%) Single Sign-On
10 16 (0.33%) ZABBIX
11 15 (0.31%) Tivoli
12 14 (0.29%) Nagios
12 14 (0.29%) Netcool
13 13 (0.27%) OpenView
13 13 (0.27%) SCOM
13 13 (0.27%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
15 8 (0.16%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 853 (17.42%) Oracle
2 763 (15.58%) Microsoft
3 574 (11.72%) Databricks
4 184 (3.76%) Informatica
5 178 (3.63%) Google
6 146 (2.98%) Talend
7 135 (2.76%) ServiceNow
8 125 (2.55%) SAP
9 90 (1.84%) Splunk
10 85 (1.74%) IBM
11 72 (1.47%) Denodo
12 59 (1.20%) Salesforce
13 57 (1.16%) VMware
14 44 (0.90%) Citrix
15 41 (0.84%) Dynatrace
16 38 (0.78%) Sybase
17 37 (0.76%) Bloomberg
18 35 (0.71%) Murex
18 35 (0.71%) OpenAI
19 34 (0.69%) MuleSoft