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 25 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,557 3,545 4,212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.41% 12.31% 9.89%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.26% 36.06% 32.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,069 2,493 3,055
10th Percentile £350 £355 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £533
Median % change year-on-year - -6.19% -0.37%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £471 £475
% change year-on-year -0.42% -0.84% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 78 62 60
10th Percentile £26.51 £23.28 £22.74
25th Percentile £35.25 £31.31 £29.72
Median hourly rate £51.25 £39.67 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +29.17% -9.32% -12.50%
75th Percentile £72.63 £64.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £77.10 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £53.75 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +58.51% -20.21% -12.12%

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 12,925 9,832 12,806
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.70% 34.14% 30.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,450 6,691 9,127
10th Percentile £356 £356 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.68% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 560 218 505
10th Percentile £36.25 £26.45 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.12 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.80
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 25 May 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 -6 4,004 £500 -0.50% 1,878
London 0 2,238 £522 -2.38% 797
UK excluding London -12 1,861 £469 -0.42% 1,442
Work from Home -6 1,347 £500 -2.44% 984
Midlands +2 518 £469 +4.92% 203
North of England -7 484 £463 -2.63% 414
West Midlands +4 413 £460 - 110
South East -18 360 £500 +2.56% 446
North West -4 256 £460 -3.16% 238
South West -3 206 £475 -1.30% 134
Yorkshire -14 200 £475 - 126
Scotland -6 172 £470 +4.44% 61
East Midlands +1 101 £525 +35.05% 93
East of England -16 95 £495 +0.25% 105
Wales +7 40 £447 +23.74% 49
North East -11 40 £450 -2.44% 58
Northern Ireland -12 12 £430 +1.18% 51

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
1 253 (5.55%) Apache Spark
2 177 (3.88%) Apache Airflow
3 175 (3.84%) Apache
4 160 (3.51%) Confluence
5 100 (2.19%) SAS
6 69 (1.51%) SharePoint
7 41 (0.90%) Tomcat
8 40 (0.88%) WebLogic
9 33 (0.72%) IIS
10 30 (0.66%) Oracle Workflow
11 26 (0.57%) WebSphere
12 22 (0.48%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.48%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.48%) Red Hat Fuse
13 19 (0.42%) Jupyter
13 19 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
14 17 (0.37%) nginx
15 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
16 15 (0.33%) Appian
17 14 (0.31%) CMS
Applications
1 291 (6.39%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (1.10%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.05%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.11%) Notion
9 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.066%) Trello
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (1.03%) Oracle EBS
2 29 (0.64%) Aladdin
3 28 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
4 23 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.48%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
7 19 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
10 14 (0.31%) Oracle General Ledger
11 13 (0.29%) NetSuite
12 12 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
12 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 12 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
13 9 (0.20%) Endur
14 8 (0.18%) Findur
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle Cash Management
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,542 (33.84%) Azure
2 1,101 (24.16%) AWS
3 875 (19.20%) Power Platform
4 455 (9.98%) Azure DevOps
5 368 (8.08%) Azure Data Factory
5 368 (8.08%) GCP
6 349 (7.66%) GitHub
7 286 (6.28%) Serverless
8 263 (5.77%) Snowflake
9 246 (5.40%) Amazon S3
10 245 (5.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 194 (4.26%) dbt
12 185 (4.06%) GitHub Actions
13 166 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
14 90 (1.97%) Power Automate
15 86 (1.89%) Azure Functions
16 84 (1.84%) SaaS
17 78 (1.71%) Entra ID
18 76 (1.67%) PowerApps
19 74 (1.62%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.18%) Firewall
2 51 (1.12%) DNS
3 22 (0.48%) WAN
4 21 (0.46%) SNMP
5 19 (0.42%) HTTP
5 19 (0.42%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.39%) Network Security
6 18 (0.39%) SSL
7 16 (0.35%) Internet
8 13 (0.29%) LAN
9 12 (0.26%) VPN
10 11 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.20%) SAN
12 8 (0.18%) Wireshark
13 7 (0.15%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.15%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 799 (17.53%) Power BI
2 576 (12.64%) Data Warehouse
3 563 (12.35%) SQL Server
4 316 (6.93%) Data Lake
4 316 (6.93%) Tableau
5 299 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
6 291 (6.39%) Relational Database
7 265 (5.82%) NoSQL
8 248 (5.44%) Metadata
9 236 (5.18%) Azure SQL Database
10 169 (3.71%) Oracle Database
11 160 (3.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 148 (3.25%) Big Data
12 148 (3.25%) BigQuery
13 136 (2.98%) Delta Lake
14 123 (2.70%) MySQL
15 120 (2.63%) Amazon Redshift
16 113 (2.48%) MongoDB
17 109 (2.39%) Oracle Reports
18 104 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 479 (10.51%) Git
2 351 (7.70%) JIRA
3 230 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 208 (4.56%) GitLab
5 64 (1.40%) JUnit
6 63 (1.38%) Selenium
7 53 (1.16%) Postman
8 48 (1.05%) Maven
9 47 (1.03%) Mockito
10 42 (0.92%) Cucumber
11 39 (0.86%) Gradle
12 38 (0.83%) MLflow
13 35 (0.77%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.75%) SonarQube
15 31 (0.68%) ERwin
15 31 (0.68%) REST Assured
16 29 (0.64%) JMeter
17 26 (0.57%) Oracle Forms
18 25 (0.55%) Bitbucket
19 24 (0.53%) TeamCity
General
1 1,172 (25.72%) Finance
2 1,164 (25.54%) Social Skills
3 829 (18.19%) Analytical Skills
4 425 (9.33%) Banking
5 403 (8.84%) Public Sector
6 121 (2.66%) Investment Banking
7 117 (2.57%) Front Office
8 105 (2.30%) Marketing
9 96 (2.11%) Documentation Skills
10 78 (1.71%) Retail
11 77 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 57 (1.25%) Financial Institution
12 57 (1.25%) Legal
13 40 (0.88%) Publishing
14 39 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
15 36 (0.79%) Manufacturing
16 35 (0.77%) Telecoms
17 33 (0.72%) Law
18 32 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
19 28 (0.61%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 949 (20.83%) Data Engineer
2 947 (20.78%) Developer
3 657 (14.42%) Analyst
4 578 (12.68%) Senior
5 314 (6.89%) Lead
6 292 (6.41%) Data Analyst
7 270 (5.92%) Architect
8 207 (4.54%) Business Analyst
8 207 (4.54%) Consultant
9 184 (4.04%) Java Developer
10 166 (3.64%) Senior Data Engineer
11 151 (3.31%) DBA
12 135 (2.96%) Senior Developer
13 134 (2.94%) Software Engineer
14 127 (2.79%) Azure Engineer
15 110 (2.41%) C# Developer
16 109 (2.39%) Data Architect
17 107 (2.35%) Python Developer
18 101 (2.22%) Data Scientist
19 94 (2.06%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 396 (8.69%) .NET
2 352 (7.72%) REST
3 300 (6.58%) PySpark
4 293 (6.43%) Kafka
5 223 (4.89%) Spring
6 219 (4.81%) React
7 214 (4.70%) Spring Boot
8 193 (4.24%) RESTful
9 161 (3.53%) HTML
10 151 (3.31%) JSON
11 141 (3.09%) XML
12 135 (2.96%) CSS
13 131 (2.87%) Pandas
14 113 (2.48%) AngularJS
15 107 (2.35%) Middleware
16 102 (2.24%) SOAP
17 90 (1.97%) Web Services
18 89 (1.95%) .NET Framework
19 84 (1.84%) OAuth
20 82 (1.80%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 298 (6.54%) Cloud Native
2 173 (3.80%) Data Structures
3 153 (3.36%) Legacy Systems
4 137 (3.01%) Product Ownership
5 120 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (2.08%) Management Information System
7 91 (2.00%) Derivative
8 86 (1.89%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
10 70 (1.54%) Analytical Mindset
11 62 (1.36%) Enterprise Software
12 59 (1.29%) Algorithms
13 56 (1.23%) Clustering
13 56 (1.23%) Self-Motivation
14 53 (1.16%) Greenfield Project
15 52 (1.14%) Equities
15 52 (1.14%) Fixed Income
16 47 (1.03%) Replication
17 44 (0.97%) Low-Code
18 43 (0.94%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 323 (7.09%) Linux
2 276 (6.06%) Windows
3 216 (4.74%) Unix
4 101 (2.22%) Windows Server
5 28 (0.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.55%) AIX
7 19 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.24%) Solaris
9 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.22%) VMS
11 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.15%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
13 3 (0.066%) Windows Server 2012
14 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
14 2 (0.044%) Ubuntu
15 1 (0.022%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,233 (27.06%) CI/CD
2 1,149 (25.21%) Data Modelling
3 1,142 (25.06%) Analytics
4 1,117 (24.51%) Agile
5 1,082 (23.74%) ETL
6 1,009 (22.14%) Business Intelligence
7 999 (21.92%) DevOps
8 887 (19.46%) Problem-Solving
9 870 (19.09%) Data Pipeline
10 733 (16.09%) Data Engineering
11 600 (13.17%) AI
12 583 (12.79%) Migration
13 552 (12.11%) Data Governance
14 544 (11.94%) Validation
15 453 (9.94%) Test Automation
16 447 (9.81%) Decision-Making
17 420 (9.22%) Data Analysis
18 418 (9.17%) Performance Tuning
19 411 (9.02%) Microservices
20 389 (8.54%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,738 (38.14%) Python
2 626 (13.74%) Java
3 489 (10.73%) C#
4 338 (7.42%) JavaScript
5 314 (6.89%) PL/SQL
6 224 (4.92%) T-SQL
7 214 (4.70%) PowerShell
8 148 (3.25%) TypeScript
9 136 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 131 (2.87%) R
11 116 (2.55%) Shell Script
12 90 (1.97%) Bash
13 86 (1.89%) Scala
14 82 (1.80%) C++
15 62 (1.36%) Bicep
16 47 (1.03%) VBA
17 41 (0.90%) Perl
18 31 (0.68%) VB
19 27 (0.59%) Go
20 26 (0.57%) C
Qualifications
1 969 (21.26%) Security Cleared
2 780 (17.12%) SC Cleared
3 363 (7.97%) Degree
4 115 (2.52%) Computer Science Degree
5 108 (2.37%) BPSS Clearance
6 80 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 75 (1.65%) Azure Certification
8 66 (1.45%) Master's Degree
9 52 (1.14%) ISTQB
10 40 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (0.57%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.42%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.37%) PhD
14 14 (0.31%) CBAP
15 12 (0.26%) CISSP
15 12 (0.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.26%) Oracle Certification
16 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 837 (18.37%) Data Quality
2 355 (7.79%) QA
3 192 (4.21%) GDPR
4 54 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 45 (0.99%) SLA
6 34 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 30 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.53%) PMO
9 19 (0.42%) NIST
9 19 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.35%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.31%) HL7
13 13 (0.29%) IFRS
14 12 (0.26%) WCAG
15 11 (0.24%) DICOM
15 11 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 521 (11.43%) Docker
2 111 (2.44%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
3 35 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 32 (0.70%) Oracle RAC
5 22 (0.48%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.22%) KVM
8 9 (0.20%) Postfix
8 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.20%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.18%) HDFS
9 8 (0.18%) vCloud
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 4 (0.088%) Ceph
11 4 (0.088%) XenApp
11 4 (0.088%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.066%) Oracle Clusterware
12 3 (0.066%) Squid
13 2 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 425 (9.33%) Kubernetes
2 370 (8.12%) Terraform
3 124 (2.72%) Grafana
4 83 (1.82%) Ansible
5 66 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 47 (1.03%) Oracle RMAN
7 34 (0.75%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.42%) Kibana
8 19 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 16 (0.35%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.33%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.31%) Nagios
11 14 (0.31%) Netcool
11 14 (0.31%) SCCM
11 14 (0.31%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.29%) Control-M
12 13 (0.29%) OpenView
12 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 10 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 748 (16.41%) Oracle
2 708 (15.54%) Microsoft
3 573 (12.57%) Databricks
4 172 (3.77%) Google
5 164 (3.60%) Informatica
6 145 (3.18%) ServiceNow
7 127 (2.79%) Talend
8 113 (2.48%) SAP
9 95 (2.08%) Splunk
10 80 (1.76%) IBM
11 61 (1.34%) Denodo
12 55 (1.21%) Salesforce
12 55 (1.21%) VMware
13 45 (0.99%) Citrix
14 39 (0.86%) Dynatrace
15 33 (0.72%) OpenAI
16 31 (0.68%) Bloomberg
16 31 (0.68%) MuleSoft
17 30 (0.66%) HP
17 30 (0.66%) Sybase