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

6 months to
25 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,187 3,801 4,130
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.45% 11.52% 10.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.22% 34.94% 33.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,470 2,598 2,899
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £728 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £475
% change year-on-year +0.64% -0.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 84 53
10th Percentile £21.72 £25.90 £19.67
25th Percentile £28.00 £32.50 £25.99
Median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.00% +36.99% -20.44%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £77.00 - £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +66.67% -33.98%

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 14,321 10,880 12,295
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.10% 32.97% 32.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,304 7,189 8,215
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £505 £526
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% -3.90% -4.45%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £496
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.23% -0.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 549 295 344
10th Percentile £26.15 £29.00 £26.06
25th Percentile £46.80 £41.25 £45.62
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £78.75 £78.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 25 September 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 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the UK

SQL
Top 18 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 September 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 4,469 £500 - 6,658
London -6 2,508 £525 - 3,946
UK excluding London -6 2,086 £475 +0.64% 3,366
Work from Home -3 1,524 £500 - 2,870
North of England 0 595 £475 +5.56% 902
Midlands -5 453 £469 +1.41% 538
South East -14 446 £475 -3.06% 821
West Midlands -4 355 £469 -6.20% 331
North West +1 292 £500 +12.99% 522
Yorkshire +6 251 £454 -4.42% 279
South West 0 233 £525 +18.31% 325
Scotland -7 206 £430 -8.02% 287
East of England -10 123 £500 -0.50% 258
East Midlands -6 96 £463 +14.84% 207
North East -9 59 £400 -13.98% 108
Wales -9 37 £475 +4.97% 111
Northern Ireland -8 19 £363 -29.27% 160
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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 (4.95%) Apache Airflow
2 238 (4.59%) Confluence
3 215 (4.14%) Apache Spark
4 173 (3.34%) Apache
5 94 (1.81%) SharePoint
6 90 (1.74%) SAS
7 40 (0.77%) Oracle Workflow
8 37 (0.71%) WebLogic
9 36 (0.69%) IIS
10 30 (0.58%) Jupyter
11 26 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
12 23 (0.44%) Palantir Foundry
13 22 (0.42%) nginx
14 20 (0.39%) CMS
15 19 (0.37%) Camunda
16 16 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 15 (0.29%) ArcGIS
17 15 (0.29%) WebSphere
18 10 (0.19%) Tomcat
19 9 (0.17%) Appian
Applications
1 304 (5.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
3 38 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 36 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
5 24 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 12 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 8 (0.15%) Windchill
8 7 (0.13%) Notepad++
9 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
9 4 (0.077%) Notion
9 4 (0.077%) Photoshop
10 3 (0.058%) CPLEX
10 3 (0.058%) Microsoft Project
11 2 (0.039%) Mingle
12 1 (0.019%) Adobe XD
12 1 (0.019%) Mozilla Thunderbird
12 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 46 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
2 45 (0.87%) Oracle EBS
3 30 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.56%) Aladdin
5 28 (0.54%) Oracle Payables
6 25 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
7 19 (0.37%) Oracle ERP
8 17 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.29%) Oracle EBS R12
9 15 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.25%) Finacle
11 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
11 12 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
12 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
12 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
13 10 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
14 9 (0.17%) Maximo
14 9 (0.17%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,578 (30.42%) Azure
2 1,265 (24.39%) AWS
3 971 (18.72%) Power Platform
4 525 (10.12%) GCP
5 417 (8.04%) Azure DevOps
6 413 (7.96%) Snowflake
7 359 (6.92%) GitHub
8 326 (6.28%) Azure Data Factory
9 321 (6.19%) dbt
10 309 (5.96%) Serverless
11 270 (5.21%) Amazon S3
12 205 (3.95%) AWS Lambda
13 203 (3.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 173 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
15 112 (2.16%) SaaS
16 111 (2.14%) Power Automate
17 102 (1.97%) PowerApps
18 98 (1.89%) Entra ID
19 92 (1.77%) Azure Databricks
20 90 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 65 (1.25%) DNS
2 42 (0.81%) Firewall
3 37 (0.71%) HTTP
4 30 (0.58%) SSL
5 22 (0.42%) Broadband
5 22 (0.42%) Internet
5 22 (0.42%) Network Security
6 21 (0.40%) TCP/IP
7 19 (0.37%) VPN
8 15 (0.29%) DHCP
8 15 (0.29%) SNMP
9 14 (0.27%) SSH
10 12 (0.23%) WAN
11 11 (0.21%) Kerberos
12 10 (0.19%) SAN
12 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
13 8 (0.15%) Reverse Proxy
13 8 (0.15%) RTP
14 7 (0.13%) HTTPS
14 7 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 892 (17.20%) Power BI
2 718 (13.84%) Data Warehouse
3 653 (12.59%) SQL Server
4 348 (6.71%) Relational Database
5 338 (6.52%) PostgreSQL
6 324 (6.25%) Data Lake
7 292 (5.63%) Metadata
8 286 (5.51%) Tableau
9 249 (4.80%) NoSQL
10 242 (4.67%) Oracle Database
11 216 (4.16%) BigQuery
12 191 (3.68%) Azure SQL Database
13 155 (2.99%) Amazon Redshift
14 143 (2.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 142 (2.74%) Delta Lake
16 133 (2.56%) MySQL
17 124 (2.39%) Amazon Athena
18 120 (2.31%) Big Data
18 120 (2.31%) MongoDB
19 106 (2.04%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 689 (13.28%) Git
2 428 (8.25%) JIRA
3 294 (5.67%) Jenkins
4 255 (4.92%) GitLab
5 103 (1.99%) Selenium
6 95 (1.83%) JUnit
7 87 (1.68%) Maven
8 85 (1.64%) Gradle
9 70 (1.35%) Postman
10 58 (1.12%) Mockito
11 49 (0.94%) Oracle Forms
11 49 (0.94%) SonarQube
12 43 (0.83%) Bitbucket
13 36 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.67%) Zephyr
15 30 (0.58%) REST Assured
16 29 (0.56%) MLflow
16 29 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
17 28 (0.54%) Artifactory
18 27 (0.52%) JMeter
General
1 1,410 (27.18%) Social Skills
2 1,363 (26.28%) Finance
3 1,066 (20.55%) Analytical Skills
4 600 (11.57%) Banking
5 470 (9.06%) Public Sector
6 156 (3.01%) Marketing
7 153 (2.95%) Retail
8 143 (2.76%) Front Office
8 143 (2.76%) Investment Banking
9 107 (2.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 89 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
11 86 (1.66%) Manufacturing
12 60 (1.16%) Legal
13 55 (1.06%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
15 48 (0.93%) Local Government
16 46 (0.89%) Back Office
17 43 (0.83%) Influencing Skills
17 43 (0.83%) Law
18 41 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,138 (21.94%) Developer
2 966 (18.62%) Data Engineer
3 773 (14.90%) Analyst
4 747 (14.40%) Senior
5 372 (7.17%) Lead
6 329 (6.34%) Data Analyst
7 261 (5.03%) Architect
8 252 (4.86%) Business Analyst
9 222 (4.28%) Senior Data Engineer
10 219 (4.22%) Consultant
11 203 (3.91%) DBA
12 202 (3.89%) Java Developer
13 185 (3.57%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.43%) SQL Developer
15 124 (2.39%) Data Architect
15 124 (2.39%) Python Developer
15 124 (2.39%) Software Engineer
16 121 (2.33%) Python Engineer
16 121 (2.33%) SQL DBA
17 120 (2.31%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 502 (9.68%) REST
2 441 (8.50%) .NET
3 410 (7.90%) Terraform
4 349 (6.73%) Kafka
5 346 (6.67%) PySpark
6 283 (5.46%) Spring
7 277 (5.34%) Spring Boot
8 238 (4.59%) React
9 209 (4.03%) RESTful
10 208 (4.01%) HTML
11 203 (3.91%) JSON
12 179 (3.45%) XML
13 176 (3.39%) CSS
14 141 (2.72%) Web Services
15 133 (2.56%) SOAP
16 125 (2.41%) AngularJS
17 113 (2.18%) Middleware
18 103 (1.99%) Pandas
19 93 (1.79%) .NET Framework
20 88 (1.70%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 334 (6.44%) Cloud Native
2 279 (5.38%) Data Structures
3 255 (4.92%) Product Ownership
4 169 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
5 147 (2.83%) Onboarding
6 144 (2.78%) Distributed Systems
7 137 (2.64%) Enterprise Software
8 113 (2.18%) Management Information System
9 96 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 86 (1.66%) Derivative
10 86 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
11 77 (1.48%) Replication
12 72 (1.39%) Data Protection Act
13 67 (1.29%) Analytical Mindset
14 64 (1.23%) Clustering
15 62 (1.20%) Reference Data
16 58 (1.12%) Algorithms
17 54 (1.04%) Greenfield Project
18 49 (0.94%) Data Centre
18 49 (0.94%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 379 (7.31%) Linux
2 317 (6.11%) Windows
3 257 (4.95%) Unix
4 128 (2.47%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.48%) Solaris
7 12 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 11 (0.21%) AIX
9 10 (0.19%) VMS
9 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.12%) Apple iOS
12 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.12%) zOS
13 5 (0.096%) Windows Server 2012
14 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.058%) CentOS
15 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,405 (27.09%) CI/CD
2 1,404 (27.07%) Agile
3 1,367 (26.35%) Data Modelling
4 1,288 (24.83%) Analytics
5 1,117 (21.53%) ETL
6 1,112 (21.44%) Business Intelligence
7 1,016 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
8 1,000 (19.28%) Data Pipeline
9 986 (19.01%) DevOps
10 867 (16.71%) Data Engineering
11 859 (16.56%) AI
12 810 (15.62%) Validation
13 784 (15.11%) Migration
14 771 (14.86%) Stakeholder Management
15 615 (11.86%) Test Automation
16 612 (11.80%) Data Governance
17 594 (11.45%) Data Analysis
18 580 (11.18%) Continuous Improvement
19 544 (10.49%) Decision-Making
20 442 (8.52%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,855 (35.76%) Python
2 656 (12.65%) Java
3 458 (8.83%) C#
4 414 (7.98%) PL/SQL
5 411 (7.92%) JavaScript
6 263 (5.07%) PowerShell
7 249 (4.80%) T-SQL
8 205 (3.95%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.95%) Shell Script
10 149 (2.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 127 (2.45%) Bash
12 88 (1.70%) R
13 86 (1.66%) Scala
14 48 (0.93%) C++
15 44 (0.85%) VBA
16 38 (0.73%) Bicep
17 30 (0.58%) C
17 30 (0.58%) Go
18 29 (0.56%) VB.NET
19 28 (0.54%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,112 (21.44%) Security Cleared
2 891 (17.18%) SC Cleared
3 363 (7.00%) Degree
4 168 (3.24%) BPSS Clearance
5 132 (2.54%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
7 83 (1.60%) Azure Certification
8 60 (1.16%) ISTQB
9 55 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
10 48 (0.93%) AWS Certification
11 44 (0.85%) Master's Degree
12 19 (0.37%) DBS Check
12 19 (0.37%) ISEB
13 17 (0.33%) ACCA
13 17 (0.33%) CIMA
14 16 (0.31%) CISSP
14 16 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
15 15 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 13 (0.25%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1,041 (20.07%) Data Quality
2 420 (8.10%) QA
3 140 (2.70%) GDPR
4 70 (1.35%) Accessibility
5 52 (1.00%) SLA
6 34 (0.66%) ISO 20022
7 29 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
8 23 (0.44%) IFRS
9 22 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 19 (0.37%) NIST
11 18 (0.35%) MiFID
12 13 (0.25%) Disclosure Scotland
12 13 (0.25%) GMP
12 13 (0.25%) GxP
12 13 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 11 (0.21%) Basel III
13 11 (0.21%) COBIT
13 11 (0.21%) PCI DSS
13 11 (0.21%) PMO
13 11 (0.21%) SEPA
System Software
1 488 (9.41%) Docker
2 125 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 54 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
5 39 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.40%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.31%) vCloud
8 16 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 6 (0.12%) Postfix
11 5 (0.096%) KVM
12 4 (0.077%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 4 (0.077%) NFS
12 4 (0.077%) Squid
13 3 (0.058%) GPFS
14 2 (0.039%) Ceph
14 2 (0.039%) DFS Replication
14 2 (0.039%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.019%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 416 (8.02%) Kubernetes
2 113 (2.18%) Grafana
3 95 (1.83%) Ansible
4 56 (1.08%) Prometheus
5 47 (0.91%) Oracle RMAN
6 44 (0.85%) Control-M
6 44 (0.85%) Data Guard
7 41 (0.79%) SCOM
8 40 (0.77%) Kibana
9 16 (0.31%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 16 (0.31%) vCenter Server
10 13 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
11 12 (0.23%) Istio
11 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
12 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.21%) Netcool
13 10 (0.19%) Argo
13 10 (0.19%) Tivoli
14 9 (0.17%) Nagios
14 9 (0.17%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 920 (17.74%) Oracle
2 870 (16.77%) Microsoft
3 656 (12.65%) Databricks
4 237 (4.57%) Google
5 149 (2.87%) Informatica
6 142 (2.74%) SAP
7 123 (2.37%) Talend
8 114 (2.20%) IBM
9 100 (1.93%) ServiceNow
10 89 (1.72%) Splunk
11 86 (1.66%) Salesforce
12 73 (1.41%) VMware
13 59 (1.14%) Denodo
14 40 (0.77%) Foundry
15 39 (0.75%) Adobe
15 39 (0.75%) Bloomberg
16 37 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.69%) Murex
17 36 (0.69%) Sybase
17 36 (0.69%) UiPath