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

6 months to
8 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,036 3,800 4,357
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.65% 11.90% 10.10%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.85% 35.45% 32.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,323 2,647 3,148
10th Percentile £350 £350 £350
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -2.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 90 73 62
10th Percentile £26.35 £23.09 £21.65
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.47 £27.19
Median hourly rate £44.75 £42.82 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.52% +0.74% -17.07%
75th Percentile £67.75 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £82.33 £67.20 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +25.00% -17.29%

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 14,047 10,718 13,269
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.92% 33.55% 30.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,125 7,225 9,322
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £512 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.04% -2.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £606 £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 536 254 532
10th Percentile £34.01 £27.12 £31.25
25th Percentile £53.46 £35.00 £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 £79.00 £78.34 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +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 8 July 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 8 July 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 8 July 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 -3 4,400 £500 - 2,017
London -6 2,356 £525 -0.94% 901
UK excluding London -10 2,159 £469 -0.21% 1,434
Work from Home -6 1,498 £500 -1.96% 1,226
North of England -4 575 £463 -2.63% 370
Midlands +3 567 £460 +8.24% 237
West Midlands +5 466 £459 +2.00% 116
South East -11 453 £483 -3.50% 454
North West 0 303 £475 +1.06% 213
Yorkshire -5 234 £475 - 106
South West -5 233 £500 +14.29% 147
Scotland -9 192 £450 - 56
East of England -9 106 £491 +0.77% 111
East Midlands -1 97 £525 +38.16% 121
North East -16 50 £419 -9.70% 56
Wales +4 48 £450 +5.88% 38
Northern Ireland -9 15 £375 -25.93% 48

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
1 238 (4.73%) Apache Spark
2 216 (4.29%) Confluence
3 205 (4.07%) Apache Airflow
4 178 (3.53%) Apache
5 114 (2.26%) SAS
6 59 (1.17%) SharePoint
7 42 (0.83%) Tomcat
8 39 (0.77%) IIS
8 39 (0.77%) Oracle Workflow
9 38 (0.75%) WebLogic
10 32 (0.64%) WebSphere
11 25 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 22 (0.44%) Apache Geronimo
12 22 (0.44%) Apache ServiceMix
12 22 (0.44%) Red Hat Fuse
13 21 (0.42%) CMS
13 21 (0.42%) nginx
14 20 (0.40%) Palantir Foundry
15 18 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
16 17 (0.34%) Appian
Applications
1 316 (6.27%) Microsoft Excel
2 66 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
3 54 (1.07%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.73%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.079%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.079%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.060%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.060%) Notion
9 3 (0.060%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
10 1 (0.020%) InDesign
10 1 (0.020%) Mingle
10 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 43 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
2 39 (0.77%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.58%) Aladdin
3 29 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 24 (0.48%) Oracle ERP
5 21 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
6 19 (0.38%) NEC Housing
7 17 (0.34%) Oracle EBS R12
7 17 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
8 13 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
9 11 (0.22%) Findur
9 11 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
9 11 (0.22%) Siebel CRM
10 10 (0.20%) Elite 3E
10 10 (0.20%) Finacle
11 9 (0.18%) Fidessa
11 9 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
12 8 (0.16%) NetSuite
12 8 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
12 8 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,607 (31.91%) Azure
2 1,218 (24.19%) AWS
3 932 (18.51%) Power Platform
4 450 (8.94%) Azure DevOps
5 420 (8.34%) GCP
6 360 (7.15%) GitHub
7 344 (6.83%) Azure Data Factory
8 311 (6.18%) Serverless
8 311 (6.18%) Snowflake
9 270 (5.36%) Amazon S3
10 250 (4.96%) dbt
11 222 (4.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 200 (3.97%) AWS Lambda
13 187 (3.71%) GitHub Actions
14 95 (1.89%) SaaS
15 89 (1.77%) Entra ID
16 86 (1.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 85 (1.69%) Power Automate
18 79 (1.57%) PowerApps
19 78 (1.55%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.05%) DNS
2 41 (0.81%) Firewall
3 26 (0.52%) SSL
4 25 (0.50%) HTTP
5 22 (0.44%) Network Security
5 22 (0.44%) SNMP
6 20 (0.40%) Internet
6 20 (0.40%) WAN
7 18 (0.36%) VPN
8 12 (0.24%) TCP/IP
9 10 (0.20%) SAN
10 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
10 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.18%) WinSCP
10 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
11 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
11 8 (0.16%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.14%) LAN
12 7 (0.14%) NAS
12 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
Database & Business Intelligence
1 855 (16.98%) Power BI
2 653 (12.97%) Data Warehouse
3 635 (12.61%) SQL Server
4 342 (6.79%) Relational Database
5 326 (6.47%) Tableau
6 320 (6.35%) PostgreSQL
7 308 (6.12%) Data Lake
8 259 (5.14%) NoSQL
9 255 (5.06%) Metadata
10 217 (4.31%) Azure SQL Database
11 197 (3.91%) Oracle Database
12 166 (3.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 163 (3.24%) BigQuery
14 149 (2.96%) Amazon Redshift
15 144 (2.86%) Delta Lake
16 143 (2.84%) Big Data
17 123 (2.44%) MySQL
18 119 (2.36%) Oracle Reports
19 115 (2.28%) MongoDB
20 111 (2.20%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 547 (10.86%) Git
2 402 (7.98%) JIRA
3 267 (5.30%) Jenkins
4 227 (4.51%) GitLab
5 78 (1.55%) JUnit
6 59 (1.17%) Selenium
7 58 (1.15%) Maven
8 57 (1.13%) Postman
9 52 (1.03%) Mockito
10 50 (0.99%) Gradle
11 43 (0.85%) Oracle Forms
12 37 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 35 (0.69%) MLflow
14 34 (0.68%) Cucumber
15 33 (0.66%) Bitbucket
15 33 (0.66%) SonarQube
16 32 (0.64%) JMeter
17 28 (0.56%) ERwin
17 28 (0.56%) Liquibase
17 28 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 1,291 (25.64%) Social Skills
2 1,281 (25.44%) Finance
3 962 (19.10%) Analytical Skills
4 470 (9.33%) Banking
5 463 (9.19%) Public Sector
6 138 (2.74%) Front Office
7 134 (2.66%) Marketing
8 126 (2.50%) Investment Banking
9 123 (2.44%) Retail
10 108 (2.14%) Documentation Skills
11 93 (1.85%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 60 (1.19%) Legal
12 60 (1.19%) Manufacturing
13 57 (1.13%) Financial Institution
14 54 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 42 (0.83%) Publishing
16 40 (0.79%) Back Office
17 37 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
18 36 (0.71%) Telecoms
19 31 (0.62%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,076 (21.37%) Developer
2 1,012 (20.10%) Data Engineer
3 733 (14.56%) Analyst
4 663 (13.17%) Senior
5 350 (6.95%) Lead
6 314 (6.24%) Data Analyst
7 285 (5.66%) Architect
8 240 (4.77%) Consultant
9 232 (4.61%) Business Analyst
10 209 (4.15%) Java Developer
11 197 (3.91%) Senior Data Engineer
12 183 (3.63%) DBA
13 154 (3.06%) Senior Developer
14 141 (2.80%) Software Engineer
15 124 (2.46%) Azure Engineer
16 119 (2.36%) SQL Developer
17 115 (2.28%) SQL DBA
18 112 (2.22%) C# Developer
19 110 (2.18%) Python Developer
20 108 (2.14%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 414 (8.22%) .NET
2 382 (7.59%) REST
3 312 (6.20%) PySpark
4 306 (6.08%) Kafka
5 262 (5.20%) Spring
6 251 (4.98%) Spring Boot
7 230 (4.57%) React
8 218 (4.33%) RESTful
9 186 (3.69%) JSON
10 168 (3.34%) XML
11 159 (3.16%) HTML
12 137 (2.72%) CSS
13 131 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 130 (2.58%) Web Services
15 127 (2.52%) Pandas
16 119 (2.36%) Middleware
17 118 (2.34%) SOAP
18 99 (1.97%) .NET Framework
19 79 (1.57%) Node.js
20 74 (1.47%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 333 (6.61%) Cloud Native
2 216 (4.29%) Data Structures
3 182 (3.61%) Legacy Systems
4 174 (3.46%) Product Ownership
5 143 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
6 97 (1.93%) Derivative
7 96 (1.91%) Onboarding
8 88 (1.75%) Management Information System
9 86 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
10 77 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
10 77 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 76 (1.51%) Self-Motivation
12 71 (1.41%) Algorithms
13 65 (1.29%) Clustering
14 59 (1.17%) Replication
15 55 (1.09%) Equities
15 55 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
16 52 (1.03%) Fixed Income
17 47 (0.93%) NHS
18 43 (0.85%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 331 (6.57%) Linux
2 298 (5.92%) Windows
3 236 (4.69%) Unix
4 118 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 26 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.48%) AIX
7 19 (0.38%) Solaris
8 16 (0.32%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
13 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.079%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.079%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.060%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.040%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.040%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,340 (26.61%) CI/CD
2 1,294 (25.69%) Agile
3 1,283 (25.48%) Analytics
4 1,260 (25.02%) Data Modelling
5 1,127 (22.38%) ETL
6 1,084 (21.53%) Business Intelligence
7 1,024 (20.33%) DevOps
8 988 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
9 979 (19.44%) Data Pipeline
10 830 (16.48%) Data Engineering
11 720 (14.30%) AI
12 679 (13.48%) Migration
13 641 (12.73%) Validation
14 563 (11.18%) Data Governance
15 518 (10.29%) Test Automation
16 509 (10.11%) Decision-Making
17 501 (9.95%) Data Analysis
18 484 (9.61%) Stakeholder Management
19 469 (9.31%) Continuous Improvement
20 450 (8.94%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,832 (36.38%) Python
2 661 (13.13%) Java
3 494 (9.81%) C#
4 382 (7.59%) PL/SQL
5 336 (6.67%) JavaScript
6 267 (5.30%) T-SQL
7 245 (4.86%) PowerShell
8 178 (3.53%) TypeScript
9 145 (2.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 124 (2.46%) Shell Script
11 114 (2.26%) R
12 95 (1.89%) Bash
13 82 (1.63%) Scala
14 72 (1.43%) C++
15 49 (0.97%) Bicep
16 48 (0.95%) VBA
17 38 (0.75%) C
18 33 (0.66%) VB
19 27 (0.54%) Perl
20 26 (0.52%) Go
Qualifications
1 1,078 (21.41%) Security Cleared
2 876 (17.39%) SC Cleared
3 382 (7.59%) Degree
4 138 (2.74%) BPSS Clearance
5 119 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 100 (1.99%) DV Cleared
7 75 (1.49%) Azure Certification
8 65 (1.29%) Master's Degree
9 54 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.81%) Microsoft Certification
11 36 (0.71%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.36%) DBS Check
12 18 (0.36%) PhD
13 15 (0.30%) CISSP
14 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
15 10 (0.20%) CISM
15 10 (0.20%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 10 (0.20%) TOGAF Certification
16 9 (0.18%) ACCA
16 9 (0.18%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 903 (17.93%) Data Quality
2 390 (7.74%) QA
3 188 (3.73%) GDPR
4 63 (1.25%) Accessibility
5 47 (0.93%) SLA
6 27 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 23 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 21 (0.42%) PMO
9 20 (0.40%) ISO 20022
10 19 (0.38%) NIST
11 17 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
11 17 (0.34%) IFRS
11 17 (0.34%) Solvency II
12 15 (0.30%) MiFID
13 14 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
14 13 (0.26%) PCI DSS
15 11 (0.22%) HL7
15 11 (0.22%) NCSC
15 11 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 508 (10.09%) Docker
2 118 (2.34%) Active Directory
3 45 (0.89%) Virtual Machines
4 37 (0.73%) VMware Infrastructure
5 34 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.42%) Hyper-V
6 21 (0.42%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.26%) vCloud
9 10 (0.20%) KVM
10 9 (0.18%) Postfix
11 8 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
12 5 (0.099%) RACF
13 4 (0.079%) Ceph
13 4 (0.079%) HDFS
14 3 (0.060%) Squid
15 2 (0.040%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.040%) GridGain
15 2 (0.040%) XenApp
15 2 (0.040%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 422 (8.38%) Kubernetes
2 393 (7.80%) Terraform
3 115 (2.28%) Grafana
4 93 (1.85%) Ansible
5 56 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.83%) Oracle RMAN
7 35 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 23 (0.46%) Kibana
9 22 (0.44%) Control-M
10 20 (0.40%) vCenter Server
11 19 (0.38%) SCOM
12 16 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
12 16 (0.32%) ZABBIX
13 15 (0.30%) Tivoli
14 14 (0.28%) Nagios
14 14 (0.28%) Netcool
15 13 (0.26%) OpenView
15 13 (0.26%) Tivoli Monitoring
16 9 (0.18%) HP Quality Center
16 9 (0.18%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 887 (17.61%) Oracle
2 789 (15.67%) Microsoft
3 584 (11.60%) Databricks
4 188 (3.73%) Google
5 186 (3.69%) Informatica
6 147 (2.92%) Talend
7 138 (2.74%) ServiceNow
8 124 (2.46%) SAP
9 92 (1.83%) IBM
10 90 (1.79%) Splunk
11 71 (1.41%) Denodo
12 61 (1.21%) Salesforce
13 58 (1.15%) VMware
14 44 (0.87%) Citrix
14 44 (0.87%) Dynatrace
15 40 (0.79%) Bloomberg
15 40 (0.79%) Sybase
16 39 (0.77%) Murex
17 34 (0.68%) MuleSoft
18 33 (0.66%) Alteryx