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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,481 3,541 4,194
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.49% 12.22% 9.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.34% 35.90% 33.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,037 2,468 3,041
10th Percentile £350 £355 £356
25th Percentile £413 £412 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% +0.37%
75th Percentile £588 £620 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.27% -1.05% -2.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 59 63
10th Percentile £27.18 £21.73 £23.00
25th Percentile £36.25 £30.13 £32.94
Median hourly rate £52.50 £42.82 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +22.62% -4.86% -10.00%
75th Percentile £75.67 £65.62 £59.24
90th Percentile £83.93 £78.20 £62.99
UK excluding London median hourly rate £57.25 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +68.83% -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 12,679 9,864 12,664
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.86% 34.04% 29.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,340 6,705 9,004
10th Percentile £352 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £414 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £530
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -1.89% -3.64%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £711 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £478 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +0.53% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 559 238 486
10th Percentile £41.25 £25.07 £33.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £35.00 £46.48
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% - +1.07%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +0.78% +3.20% -

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 13 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 13 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 13 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 -4 3,940 £500 -2.44% 1,987
London 0 2,221 £520 -3.70% 846
UK excluding London -10 1,811 £469 -0.27% 1,458
Work from Home -5 1,337 £500 -3.85% 1,000
Midlands +4 513 £468 +4.06% 240
North of England -9 474 £450 -5.26% 382
West Midlands +5 414 £460 - 131
South East -18 337 £475 -5.00% 492
North West +1 262 £450 -5.26% 217
South West -9 198 £470 -2.34% 137
Yorkshire -15 188 £460 -5.64% 115
Scotland -4 172 £475 +5.56% 63
East Midlands 0 96 £525 +32.74% 109
East of England -19 89 £495 +5.88% 108
Wales +9 38 £447 +17.25% 46
North East -12 36 £475 +5.56% 55
Northern Ireland -10 13 £430 +2.99% 12

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
1 252 (5.62%) Apache Spark
2 171 (3.82%) Apache
3 169 (3.77%) Apache Airflow
4 156 (3.48%) Confluence
5 104 (2.32%) SAS
6 81 (1.81%) SharePoint
7 43 (0.96%) Tomcat
8 40 (0.89%) WebLogic
9 31 (0.69%) IIS
10 27 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.54%) Apache Geronimo
11 24 (0.54%) Apache ServiceMix
11 24 (0.54%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.54%) Red Hat Fuse
12 21 (0.47%) Microsoft Exchange
13 17 (0.38%) Jupyter
13 17 (0.38%) nginx
14 16 (0.36%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.31%) Mendix
15 14 (0.31%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 290 (6.47%) Microsoft Excel
2 55 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.85%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.16%) Chatbot
6 7 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.16%) Notepad++
7 5 (0.11%) Notion
8 3 (0.067%) Oracle Smart View
8 3 (0.067%) Trello
9 1 (0.022%) InDesign
9 1 (0.022%) Mingle
9 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
2 26 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 26 (0.58%) NEC Housing
3 23 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
4 21 (0.47%) SAP S/4HANA
5 20 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
5 20 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
6 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
8 15 (0.33%) NetSuite
8 15 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
8 15 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
9 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 9 (0.20%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.18%) Endur
12 8 (0.18%) Findur
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle 11i
12 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,516 (33.83%) Azure
2 1,068 (23.83%) AWS
3 855 (19.08%) Power Platform
4 449 (10.02%) Azure DevOps
5 363 (8.10%) Azure Data Factory
6 355 (7.92%) GCP
7 330 (7.36%) GitHub
8 283 (6.32%) Serverless
9 254 (5.67%) Snowflake
10 250 (5.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 239 (5.33%) Amazon S3
12 192 (4.28%) dbt
13 175 (3.91%) GitHub Actions
14 162 (3.62%) AWS Lambda
15 88 (1.96%) Power Automate
16 86 (1.92%) SaaS
17 84 (1.87%) Azure Functions
18 78 (1.74%) Entra ID
19 73 (1.63%) AWS CloudFormation
20 71 (1.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 57 (1.27%) Firewall
2 48 (1.07%) DNS
3 22 (0.49%) WAN
4 21 (0.47%) Network Security
4 21 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 17 (0.38%) HTTP
6 15 (0.33%) Internet
6 15 (0.33%) LAN
6 15 (0.33%) SNMP
6 15 (0.33%) SSL
7 12 (0.27%) VPN
8 11 (0.25%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.20%) DHCP
9 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
10 8 (0.18%) SAN
11 7 (0.16%) NAS
11 7 (0.16%) PuTTY
11 7 (0.16%) VLAN
11 7 (0.16%) WinSCP
11 7 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 782 (17.45%) Power BI
2 576 (12.85%) Data Warehouse
3 549 (12.25%) SQL Server
4 307 (6.85%) Data Lake
5 303 (6.76%) Tableau
6 292 (6.52%) Relational Database
7 290 (6.47%) PostgreSQL
8 259 (5.78%) NoSQL
9 246 (5.49%) Metadata
10 240 (5.36%) Azure SQL Database
11 163 (3.64%) Oracle Database
12 154 (3.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 146 (3.26%) Big Data
14 141 (3.15%) BigQuery
15 131 (2.92%) Delta Lake
16 124 (2.77%) Amazon Redshift
17 120 (2.68%) MySQL
18 108 (2.41%) MongoDB
19 107 (2.39%) Oracle Reports
20 102 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 472 (10.53%) Git
2 353 (7.88%) JIRA
3 223 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 199 (4.44%) GitLab
5 63 (1.41%) Selenium
6 56 (1.25%) JUnit
7 47 (1.05%) Postman
8 45 (1.00%) Maven
9 42 (0.94%) MLflow
9 42 (0.94%) Mockito
10 40 (0.89%) Cucumber
11 37 (0.83%) Gradle
12 32 (0.71%) ERwin
13 31 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 30 (0.67%) REST Assured
14 30 (0.67%) SonarQube
15 27 (0.60%) JMeter
16 25 (0.56%) Bitbucket
16 25 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
17 23 (0.51%) TeamCity
General
1 1,171 (26.13%) Finance
2 1,145 (25.55%) Social Skills
3 826 (18.43%) Analytical Skills
4 416 (9.28%) Banking
5 403 (8.99%) Public Sector
6 113 (2.52%) Investment Banking
7 111 (2.48%) Front Office
8 101 (2.25%) Marketing
9 94 (2.10%) Documentation Skills
10 76 (1.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 73 (1.63%) Retail
12 59 (1.32%) Legal
13 57 (1.27%) Financial Institution
14 39 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
15 38 (0.85%) Publishing
16 37 (0.83%) Telecoms
17 32 (0.71%) Law
17 32 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
18 30 (0.67%) Local Government
18 30 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 928 (20.71%) Data Engineer
2 925 (20.64%) Developer
3 655 (14.62%) Analyst
4 559 (12.47%) Senior
5 312 (6.96%) Lead
6 280 (6.25%) Data Analyst
7 270 (6.03%) Architect
8 211 (4.71%) Consultant
9 210 (4.69%) Business Analyst
10 171 (3.82%) Java Developer
11 161 (3.59%) Senior Data Engineer
12 147 (3.28%) DBA
13 133 (2.97%) Software Engineer
14 131 (2.92%) Azure Engineer
15 124 (2.77%) Senior Developer
16 107 (2.39%) C# Developer
16 107 (2.39%) Data Architect
17 102 (2.28%) Python Developer
18 99 (2.21%) Data Scientist
19 92 (2.05%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 386 (8.61%) .NET
2 335 (7.48%) REST
3 293 (6.54%) PySpark
4 277 (6.18%) Kafka
5 215 (4.80%) React
6 210 (4.69%) Spring
7 202 (4.51%) Spring Boot
8 181 (4.04%) RESTful
9 153 (3.41%) HTML
10 137 (3.06%) JSON
11 136 (3.04%) XML
12 129 (2.88%) CSS
13 125 (2.79%) Pandas
14 111 (2.48%) Middleware
15 106 (2.37%) AngularJS
16 90 (2.01%) SOAP
17 84 (1.87%) .NET Framework
17 84 (1.87%) Web Services
18 81 (1.81%) Node.js
19 78 (1.74%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 290 (6.47%) Cloud Native
2 175 (3.91%) Data Structures
3 149 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
4 129 (2.88%) Product Ownership
5 109 (2.43%) Distributed Systems
6 94 (2.10%) Management Information System
7 87 (1.94%) Derivative
8 81 (1.81%) Onboarding
9 80 (1.79%) Data Protection Act
10 67 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
11 58 (1.29%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.27%) Enterprise Software
13 55 (1.23%) Clustering
14 53 (1.18%) Equities
14 53 (1.18%) Fixed Income
15 50 (1.12%) Self-Motivation
16 47 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
17 45 (1.00%) Replication
18 42 (0.94%) NHS
19 39 (0.87%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 315 (7.03%) Linux
2 269 (6.00%) Windows
3 211 (4.71%) Unix
4 100 (2.23%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.65%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.54%) AIX
7 19 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.25%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.22%) Solaris
11 9 (0.20%) VMS
12 7 (0.16%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.16%) Windows 10
12 7 (0.16%) zOS
13 6 (0.13%) Android
14 3 (0.067%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.067%) Windows Server 2012
15 2 (0.045%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.022%) HPUX
16 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,203 (26.85%) CI/CD
2 1,145 (25.55%) Data Modelling
3 1,134 (25.31%) Analytics
4 1,110 (24.77%) Agile
5 1,072 (23.92%) ETL
6 1,003 (22.38%) Business Intelligence
7 988 (22.05%) DevOps
8 893 (19.93%) Problem-Solving
9 859 (19.17%) Data Pipeline
10 722 (16.11%) Data Engineering
11 573 (12.79%) AI
12 570 (12.72%) Migration
13 545 (12.16%) Data Governance
14 523 (11.67%) Validation
15 438 (9.77%) Test Automation
16 437 (9.75%) Decision-Making
17 416 (9.28%) Performance Tuning
18 407 (9.08%) Data Analysis
19 396 (8.84%) Microservices
20 379 (8.46%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,714 (38.25%) Python
2 608 (13.57%) Java
3 485 (10.82%) C#
4 321 (7.16%) JavaScript
5 317 (7.07%) PL/SQL
6 222 (4.95%) T-SQL
7 209 (4.66%) PowerShell
8 144 (3.21%) TypeScript
9 135 (3.01%) R
10 134 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 120 (2.68%) Shell Script
12 89 (1.99%) Scala
13 86 (1.92%) Bash
14 82 (1.83%) C++
15 63 (1.41%) Bicep
16 50 (1.12%) VBA
17 44 (0.98%) Perl
18 31 (0.69%) VB
19 29 (0.65%) Go
20 25 (0.56%) C
Qualifications
1 953 (21.27%) Security Cleared
2 765 (17.07%) SC Cleared
3 357 (7.97%) Degree
4 119 (2.66%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
6 74 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 73 (1.63%) DV Cleared
8 67 (1.50%) Master's Degree
9 50 (1.12%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 24 (0.54%) AWS Certification
12 16 (0.36%) Oracle Certification
12 16 (0.36%) PhD
13 15 (0.33%) CBAP
14 14 (0.31%) DBS Check
15 12 (0.27%) CISSP
15 12 (0.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 11 (0.25%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 11 (0.25%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 826 (18.43%) Data Quality
2 353 (7.88%) QA
3 194 (4.33%) GDPR
4 52 (1.16%) Accessibility
5 41 (0.91%) SLA
6 33 (0.74%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 26 (0.58%) PMO
9 19 (0.42%) NIST
9 19 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 17 (0.38%) MiFID
12 16 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.31%) HL7
14 14 (0.31%) IFRS
15 13 (0.29%) WCAG
16 11 (0.25%) DICOM
16 11 (0.25%) NCSC
System Software
1 516 (11.52%) Docker
2 111 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 37 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
4 34 (0.76%) VMware Infrastructure
5 31 (0.69%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 14 (0.31%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.22%) KVM
9 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
10 8 (0.18%) HDFS
10 8 (0.18%) Postfix
11 6 (0.13%) RACF
12 5 (0.11%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.089%) vCloud
13 4 (0.089%) XenApp
13 4 (0.089%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.067%) Ceph
14 3 (0.067%) Oracle Clusterware
15 2 (0.045%) GridGain
15 2 (0.045%) Squid
Systems Management
1 424 (9.46%) Kubernetes
2 370 (8.26%) Terraform
3 119 (2.66%) Grafana
4 80 (1.79%) Ansible
5 65 (1.45%) Prometheus
6 44 (0.98%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.42%) Kibana
8 19 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.38%) SCCM
10 15 (0.33%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.31%) Control-M
11 14 (0.31%) Nagios
11 14 (0.31%) Netcool
11 14 (0.31%) Progress Chef
11 14 (0.31%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.29%) OpenView
12 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
12 13 (0.29%) vCenter Server
13 9 (0.20%) Kiali
Vendors
1 734 (16.38%) Oracle
2 702 (15.67%) Microsoft
3 560 (12.50%) Databricks
4 169 (3.77%) Google
5 159 (3.55%) Informatica
6 134 (2.99%) ServiceNow
7 126 (2.81%) Talend
8 113 (2.52%) SAP
9 93 (2.08%) Splunk
10 77 (1.72%) IBM
11 63 (1.41%) Denodo
12 56 (1.25%) Salesforce
13 54 (1.21%) VMware
14 47 (1.05%) Citrix
15 40 (0.89%) Dynatrace
16 35 (0.78%) Bloomberg
16 35 (0.78%) OpenAI
17 32 (0.71%) HP
17 32 (0.71%) MuleSoft
18 30 (0.67%) BMC