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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 19 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,173 3,793 4,148
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.43% 11.51% 10.77%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.28% 35.00% 33.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,473 2,591 2,940
10th Percentile £356 £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 £735 £748
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £472 £475
% change year-on-year +0.64% -0.63% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 94 85 49
10th Percentile £22.15 £27.35 £19.92
25th Percentile £28.50 £33.91 £25.99
Median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.00% +25.00% -12.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £77.00 - £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £31.25
% change year-on-year -11.00% +60.00% -31.89%

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 14,259 10,836 12,360
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 25.99% 32.89% 32.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,267 7,163 8,335
10th Percentile £363 £344 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £503 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.98% -4.29% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 554 294 347
10th Percentile £26.51 £29.00 £27.00
25th Percentile £46.38 £41.25 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.50 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £79.63 £78.00
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 19 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 19 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 19 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 -5 4,459 £500 - 6,314
London -6 2,501 £525 - 3,953
UK excluding London -7 2,084 £475 +0.64% 2,945
Work from Home -4 1,529 £500 - 2,636
North of England -1 594 £475 +5.56% 766
Midlands -5 452 £469 +2.74% 480
South East -14 451 £475 -3.06% 743
West Midlands -3 351 £469 -6.20% 290
North West 0 291 £500 +13.96% 448
Yorkshire +6 254 £467 -1.68% 225
South West -3 235 £513 +17.14% 300
Scotland -7 205 £430 -8.51% 259
East of England -5 118 £498 -1.00% 225
East Midlands -5 99 £465 +15.85% 190
North East -16 56 £406 -12.63% 97
Wales -7 36 £475 +6.15% 88
Northern Ireland -9 19 £363 -29.78% 108
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 5

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 (4.89%) Apache Airflow
2 227 (4.39%) Confluence
3 211 (4.08%) Apache Spark
4 169 (3.27%) Apache
5 93 (1.80%) SharePoint
6 90 (1.74%) SAS
7 41 (0.79%) Oracle Workflow
8 38 (0.73%) IIS
9 37 (0.72%) WebLogic
10 29 (0.56%) Jupyter
11 26 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
12 22 (0.43%) nginx
12 22 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.39%) CMS
14 18 (0.35%) Camunda
15 16 (0.31%) ArcGIS
15 16 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 15 (0.29%) WebSphere
17 10 (0.19%) Tomcat
18 8 (0.15%) Appian
Applications
1 303 (5.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.26%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.77%) Spreadsheet
4 39 (0.75%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.097%) Windchill
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 51 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
2 46 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.60%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 28 (0.54%) Aladdin
6 25 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
7 21 (0.41%) Oracle ERP
8 19 (0.37%) Oracle EBS R12
9 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
10 17 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
11 13 (0.25%) Finacle
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
13 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
13 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
13 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
15 9 (0.17%) FLEXCUBE
15 9 (0.17%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 1,575 (30.45%) Azure
2 1,267 (24.49%) AWS
3 960 (18.56%) Power Platform
4 521 (10.07%) GCP
5 414 (8.00%) Azure DevOps
6 396 (7.66%) Snowflake
7 362 (7.00%) GitHub
8 326 (6.30%) Azure Data Factory
9 312 (6.03%) Serverless
10 311 (6.01%) dbt
11 264 (5.10%) Amazon S3
12 208 (4.02%) AWS Lambda
13 203 (3.92%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 174 (3.36%) GitHub Actions
15 112 (2.17%) SaaS
16 110 (2.13%) Power Automate
17 101 (1.95%) Entra ID
17 101 (1.95%) PowerApps
18 91 (1.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 89 (1.72%) Azure Databricks
Communications & Networking
1 68 (1.31%) DNS
2 40 (0.77%) Firewall
3 37 (0.72%) HTTP
4 33 (0.64%) SSL
5 23 (0.44%) Network Security
6 22 (0.43%) Broadband
6 22 (0.43%) Internet
7 21 (0.41%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.37%) VPN
9 17 (0.33%) SSH
10 16 (0.31%) SNMP
11 15 (0.29%) DHCP
12 12 (0.23%) WAN
13 11 (0.21%) Kerberos
14 10 (0.19%) HTTPS
14 10 (0.19%) SAN
14 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
15 8 (0.15%) Reverse Proxy
15 8 (0.15%) RTP
16 7 (0.14%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 881 (17.03%) Power BI
2 718 (13.88%) Data Warehouse
3 657 (12.70%) SQL Server
4 353 (6.82%) Relational Database
5 344 (6.65%) PostgreSQL
6 324 (6.26%) Data Lake
7 293 (5.66%) Metadata
8 283 (5.47%) Tableau
9 250 (4.83%) NoSQL
10 244 (4.72%) Oracle Database
11 209 (4.04%) BigQuery
12 195 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
13 154 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
14 148 (2.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 145 (2.80%) Delta Lake
16 133 (2.57%) MySQL
17 125 (2.42%) MongoDB
18 121 (2.34%) Amazon Athena
19 118 (2.28%) Big Data
20 112 (2.17%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 675 (13.05%) Git
2 421 (8.14%) JIRA
3 294 (5.68%) Jenkins
4 253 (4.89%) GitLab
5 101 (1.95%) Selenium
6 92 (1.78%) JUnit
7 85 (1.64%) Gradle
7 85 (1.64%) Maven
8 67 (1.30%) Postman
9 57 (1.10%) Mockito
10 52 (1.01%) Oracle Forms
11 48 (0.93%) SonarQube
12 44 (0.85%) Bitbucket
13 35 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 34 (0.66%) Zephyr
15 29 (0.56%) MLflow
16 27 (0.52%) Artifactory
16 27 (0.52%) JMeter
16 27 (0.52%) REST Assured
16 27 (0.52%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,407 (27.20%) Social Skills
2 1,361 (26.31%) Finance
3 1,071 (20.70%) Analytical Skills
4 589 (11.39%) Banking
5 465 (8.99%) Public Sector
6 159 (3.07%) Marketing
7 148 (2.86%) Retail
8 146 (2.82%) Front Office
8 146 (2.82%) Investment Banking
9 109 (2.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 89 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
11 84 (1.62%) Manufacturing
12 59 (1.14%) Legal
13 53 (1.02%) Financial Institution
14 52 (1.01%) Presentation Skills
15 46 (0.89%) Back Office
16 44 (0.85%) Local Government
17 41 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
18 40 (0.77%) Law
18 40 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 1,133 (21.90%) Developer
2 961 (18.58%) Data Engineer
3 775 (14.98%) Analyst
4 743 (14.36%) Senior
5 360 (6.96%) Lead
6 328 (6.34%) Data Analyst
7 263 (5.08%) Architect
8 255 (4.93%) Business Analyst
9 226 (4.37%) Consultant
10 220 (4.25%) Senior Data Engineer
11 210 (4.06%) Java Developer
12 208 (4.02%) DBA
13 183 (3.54%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.47%) Software Engineer
15 122 (2.36%) Data Architect
15 122 (2.36%) Python Developer
15 122 (2.36%) SQL DBA
15 122 (2.36%) SQL Developer
16 120 (2.32%) Full-Stack Developer
17 119 (2.30%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 497 (9.61%) REST
2 443 (8.56%) .NET
3 405 (7.83%) Terraform
4 348 (6.73%) PySpark
5 344 (6.65%) Kafka
6 290 (5.61%) Spring
7 284 (5.49%) Spring Boot
8 246 (4.76%) React
9 215 (4.16%) HTML
10 213 (4.12%) RESTful
11 202 (3.90%) JSON
12 183 (3.54%) CSS
13 173 (3.34%) XML
14 139 (2.69%) Web Services
15 128 (2.47%) SOAP
16 123 (2.38%) AngularJS
17 114 (2.20%) Middleware
18 104 (2.01%) Pandas
19 93 (1.80%) .NET Framework
20 88 (1.70%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 332 (6.42%) Cloud Native
2 280 (5.41%) Data Structures
3 248 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 168 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
5 147 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
6 144 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 136 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
8 110 (2.13%) Management Information System
9 96 (1.86%) AI Agents
10 87 (1.68%) Derivative
10 87 (1.68%) Self-Motivation
11 82 (1.59%) Replication
12 68 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
13 67 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
14 64 (1.24%) Clustering
15 62 (1.20%) Reference Data
16 59 (1.14%) Algorithms
17 52 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
18 51 (0.99%) Linux Command Line
19 48 (0.93%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 376 (7.27%) Linux
2 320 (6.19%) Windows
3 254 (4.91%) Unix
4 128 (2.47%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.48%) Solaris
7 12 (0.23%) AIX
7 12 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.19%) VMS
8 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
10 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
10 6 (0.12%) zOS
11 5 (0.097%) Android
11 5 (0.097%) Apple iOS
11 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
12 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
13 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
14 2 (0.039%) CentOS
14 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,402 (27.10%) CI/CD
2 1,400 (27.06%) Agile
3 1,358 (26.25%) Data Modelling
4 1,273 (24.61%) Analytics
5 1,112 (21.50%) ETL
6 1,101 (21.28%) Business Intelligence
7 1,021 (19.74%) Problem-Solving
8 998 (19.29%) Data Pipeline
9 995 (19.23%) DevOps
10 859 (16.61%) Data Engineering
11 849 (16.41%) AI
12 805 (15.56%) Validation
13 770 (14.88%) Migration
14 745 (14.40%) Stakeholder Management
15 608 (11.75%) Data Governance
16 607 (11.73%) Test Automation
17 587 (11.35%) Data Analysis
18 576 (11.13%) Continuous Improvement
19 529 (10.23%) Decision-Making
20 443 (8.56%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,854 (35.84%) Python
2 663 (12.82%) Java
3 464 (8.97%) C#
4 423 (8.18%) PL/SQL
5 410 (7.93%) JavaScript
6 265 (5.12%) PowerShell
7 249 (4.81%) T-SQL
8 203 (3.92%) TypeScript
9 153 (2.96%) Shell Script
10 147 (2.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 121 (2.34%) Bash
12 88 (1.70%) R
13 85 (1.64%) Scala
14 51 (0.99%) C++
15 44 (0.85%) VBA
16 38 (0.73%) Bicep
17 29 (0.56%) C
17 29 (0.56%) Go
17 29 (0.56%) VB.NET
18 28 (0.54%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 1,114 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 889 (17.19%) SC Cleared
3 362 (7.00%) Degree
4 161 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
5 135 (2.61%) DV Cleared
6 128 (2.47%) Computer Science Degree
7 84 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 62 (1.20%) ISTQB
9 55 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
10 48 (0.93%) AWS Certification
11 43 (0.83%) Master's Degree
12 19 (0.37%) ISEB
13 18 (0.35%) CISSP
13 18 (0.35%) DBS Check
14 17 (0.33%) ACCA
14 17 (0.33%) CIMA
15 16 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 16 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
16 14 (0.27%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
17 12 (0.23%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1,028 (19.87%) Data Quality
2 420 (8.12%) QA
3 142 (2.75%) GDPR
4 71 (1.37%) Accessibility
5 48 (0.93%) SLA
6 34 (0.66%) ISO 20022
7 28 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
8 25 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 23 (0.44%) IFRS
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
12 13 (0.25%) PMO
13 11 (0.21%) COBIT
13 11 (0.21%) HIPAA
13 11 (0.21%) PCI DSS
14 10 (0.19%) Basel III
System Software
1 490 (9.47%) Docker
2 129 (2.49%) Active Directory
3 57 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
5 38 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
6 24 (0.46%) 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 7 (0.14%) Postfix
11 6 (0.12%) Squid
12 5 (0.097%) Ceph
12 5 (0.097%) KVM
13 4 (0.077%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 3 (0.058%) GPFS
15 2 (0.039%) DFS Replication
15 2 (0.039%) Dovecot
15 2 (0.039%) NFS
16 1 (0.019%) RACF
Systems Management
1 413 (7.98%) Kubernetes
2 115 (2.22%) Grafana
3 101 (1.95%) Ansible
4 57 (1.10%) Prometheus
5 48 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
6 45 (0.87%) Data Guard
7 44 (0.85%) Control-M
8 41 (0.79%) SCOM
9 36 (0.70%) Kibana
10 16 (0.31%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 16 (0.31%) vCenter Server
11 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
11 12 (0.23%) Single Sign-On
12 10 (0.19%) Argo
12 10 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
12 10 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
12 10 (0.19%) Nagios
12 10 (0.19%) Netcool
12 10 (0.19%) ZABBIX
13 9 (0.17%) WMI
Vendors
1 927 (17.92%) Oracle
2 865 (16.72%) Microsoft
3 650 (12.57%) Databricks
4 232 (4.48%) Google
5 157 (3.03%) Informatica
6 146 (2.82%) SAP
7 124 (2.40%) Talend
8 109 (2.11%) IBM
9 98 (1.89%) ServiceNow
10 87 (1.68%) Splunk
11 84 (1.62%) Salesforce
12 76 (1.47%) VMware
13 59 (1.14%) Denodo
14 39 (0.75%) Adobe
14 39 (0.75%) Bloomberg
14 39 (0.75%) Sybase
15 38 (0.73%) Foundry
16 37 (0.72%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.70%) Alteryx
18 35 (0.68%) Murex