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

6 months to
21 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 13
Rank change year-on-year -5 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,056 3,812 4,163
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.59% 11.70% 10.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.89% 35.34% 32.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,345 2,643 3,078
10th Percentile £353 £341 £350
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £613 £630
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +0.54% -2.11% -3.80%
Number of hourly rates quoted 98 70 49
10th Percentile £24.81 £22.40 £23.55
25th Percentile £34.01 £31.31 £30.00
Median hourly rate £45.00 £39.67 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.43% -6.65% -13.26%
75th Percentile £69.33 £53.26 £51.91
90th Percentile £82.25 £66.00 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £41.96 £40.00
% change year-on-year +7.26% +4.89% -11.11%

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 14,088 10,788 12,726
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.72% 33.10% 30.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,132 7,246 8,989
10th Percentile £360 £350 £350
25th Percentile £421 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £490 £475 £494
% change year-on-year +3.16% -3.89% -1.15%
Number of hourly rates quoted 525 260 462
10th Percentile £34.01 £28.16 £30.69
25th Percentile £51.25 £36.25 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -9.20% +3.09%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £80.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.96% -1.92% +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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -4 4,391 £500 - 1,875
London -6 2,342 £525 - 914
UK excluding London -9 2,164 £468 +0.54% 1,213
Work from Home -6 1,520 £500 - 862
North of England -3 581 £463 -2.63% 326
Midlands +2 552 £459 +7.37% 206
South East -10 459 £475 -5.00% 381
West Midlands +3 452 £459 +2.00% 105
North West -1 309 £475 - 175
Yorkshire -7 235 £470 -1.05% 102
South West -7 234 £500 +14.29% 132
Scotland -7 199 £450 - 48
East of England -8 115 £488 -2.50% 90
East Midlands -3 96 £525 +32.74% 101
North East -16 52 £425 -8.11% 57
Wales 0 45 £468 +5.06% 37
Northern Ireland -11 15 £375 -26.83% 18

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
1 231 (4.57%) Apache Spark
2 214 (4.23%) Apache Airflow
3 213 (4.21%) Confluence
4 186 (3.68%) Apache
5 116 (2.29%) SAS
6 64 (1.27%) SharePoint
7 47 (0.93%) Oracle Workflow
8 42 (0.83%) Tomcat
9 41 (0.81%) IIS
10 38 (0.75%) WebLogic
11 32 (0.63%) WebSphere
12 25 (0.49%) Jupyter
13 23 (0.45%) nginx
14 22 (0.44%) Apache Geronimo
14 22 (0.44%) Apache ServiceMix
14 22 (0.44%) Red Hat Fuse
15 21 (0.42%) CMS
16 19 (0.38%) Palantir Foundry
17 16 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
18 13 (0.26%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 320 (6.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 67 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.05%) MS Visio
4 40 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
5 34 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.20%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.079%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.079%) Notion
8 4 (0.079%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.059%) Oracle Smart View
10 2 (0.040%) Microsoft Project
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) CPLEX
11 1 (0.020%) InDesign
11 1 (0.020%) Mingle
11 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 51 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 41 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 31 (0.61%) Aladdin
4 29 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
5 27 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 25 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
7 21 (0.42%) Remedy ITSM
8 19 (0.38%) Oracle EBS R12
8 19 (0.38%) Oracle Receivables
9 16 (0.32%) NEC Housing
10 13 (0.26%) Oracle Assets
10 13 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
11 11 (0.22%) Findur
11 11 (0.22%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.20%) Fidessa
12 10 (0.20%) Finacle
12 10 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.18%) Elite 3E
14 8 (0.16%) Infor LN
14 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,586 (31.37%) Azure
2 1,216 (24.05%) AWS
3 934 (18.47%) Power Platform
4 444 (8.78%) GCP
5 432 (8.54%) Azure DevOps
6 357 (7.06%) GitHub
7 340 (6.72%) Azure Data Factory
8 333 (6.59%) Snowflake
9 304 (6.01%) Serverless
10 271 (5.36%) Amazon S3
11 267 (5.28%) dbt
12 214 (4.23%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 200 (3.96%) AWS Lambda
14 180 (3.56%) GitHub Actions
15 96 (1.90%) SaaS
16 90 (1.78%) Entra ID
17 86 (1.70%) Amazon CloudWatch
18 81 (1.60%) Power Automate
19 78 (1.54%) PowerApps
20 74 (1.46%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 52 (1.03%) DNS
2 41 (0.81%) Firewall
3 28 (0.55%) SSL
4 27 (0.53%) HTTP
5 22 (0.44%) Network Security
5 22 (0.44%) SNMP
6 20 (0.40%) Internet
7 19 (0.38%) VPN
8 18 (0.36%) WAN
9 15 (0.30%) TCP/IP
10 11 (0.22%) Kerberos
10 11 (0.22%) SAN
11 10 (0.20%) WinSCP
11 10 (0.20%) Wireshark
12 9 (0.18%) HTTPS
12 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.16%) 3GPP
13 8 (0.16%) Broadband
14 7 (0.14%) PuTTY
14 7 (0.14%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 859 (16.99%) Power BI
2 690 (13.65%) Data Warehouse
3 644 (12.74%) SQL Server
4 334 (6.61%) Relational Database
5 328 (6.49%) Tableau
6 326 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
7 316 (6.25%) Data Lake
8 276 (5.46%) Metadata
9 251 (4.96%) NoSQL
10 215 (4.25%) Azure SQL Database
11 209 (4.13%) Oracle Database
12 173 (3.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 172 (3.40%) BigQuery
14 151 (2.99%) Amazon Redshift
15 140 (2.77%) Big Data
16 135 (2.67%) Delta Lake
17 131 (2.59%) Oracle Reports
18 119 (2.35%) MySQL
19 110 (2.18%) MongoDB
19 110 (2.18%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 566 (11.19%) Git
2 396 (7.83%) JIRA
3 269 (5.32%) Jenkins
4 214 (4.23%) GitLab
5 77 (1.52%) JUnit
6 66 (1.31%) Maven
7 61 (1.21%) Gradle
8 58 (1.15%) Selenium
9 54 (1.07%) Postman
10 52 (1.03%) Oracle Forms
11 50 (0.99%) Mockito
12 41 (0.81%) Visual Studio
13 36 (0.71%) Bitbucket
14 35 (0.69%) SonarQube
15 34 (0.67%) Team Foundation Server
16 31 (0.61%) MLflow
17 30 (0.59%) Cucumber
17 30 (0.59%) JMeter
18 28 (0.55%) Liquibase
18 28 (0.55%) TeamCity
General
1 1,286 (25.44%) Social Skills
2 1,262 (24.96%) Finance
3 989 (19.56%) Analytical Skills
4 490 (9.69%) Public Sector
5 464 (9.18%) Banking
6 140 (2.77%) Marketing
7 139 (2.75%) Front Office
8 120 (2.37%) Retail
9 118 (2.33%) Investment Banking
10 104 (2.06%) Documentation Skills
11 89 (1.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 65 (1.29%) Manufacturing
13 58 (1.15%) Legal
14 57 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
15 51 (1.01%) Financial Institution
16 43 (0.85%) Organisational Skills
16 43 (0.85%) Publishing
17 41 (0.81%) Back Office
18 37 (0.73%) Telecoms
19 35 (0.69%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 1,105 (21.86%) Developer
2 992 (19.62%) Data Engineer
3 732 (14.48%) Analyst
4 672 (13.29%) Senior
5 358 (7.08%) Lead
6 321 (6.35%) Data Analyst
7 286 (5.66%) Architect
8 247 (4.89%) Consultant
9 229 (4.53%) Business Analyst
10 216 (4.27%) Java Developer
11 197 (3.90%) DBA
12 196 (3.88%) Senior Data Engineer
13 166 (3.28%) Senior Developer
14 137 (2.71%) Software Engineer
15 129 (2.55%) SQL Developer
16 126 (2.49%) SQL DBA
17 122 (2.41%) Azure Engineer
18 116 (2.29%) Data Architect
19 113 (2.23%) C# Developer
20 106 (2.10%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 416 (8.23%) .NET
2 388 (7.67%) REST
3 310 (6.13%) PySpark
4 307 (6.07%) Kafka
5 264 (5.22%) Spring
6 251 (4.96%) Spring Boot
7 226 (4.47%) React
8 214 (4.23%) RESTful
9 198 (3.92%) JSON
10 186 (3.68%) XML
11 166 (3.28%) HTML
12 140 (2.77%) CSS
13 137 (2.71%) AngularJS
14 129 (2.55%) Web Services
15 123 (2.43%) Pandas
16 118 (2.33%) SOAP
17 117 (2.31%) Middleware
18 101 (2.00%) .NET Framework
19 81 (1.60%) Node.js
20 72 (1.42%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 336 (6.65%) Cloud Native
2 231 (4.57%) Data Structures
3 187 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
4 185 (3.66%) Product Ownership
5 149 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
6 109 (2.16%) Onboarding
7 93 (1.84%) Derivative
7 93 (1.84%) Management Information System
8 91 (1.80%) Enterprise Software
9 79 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
10 77 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 74 (1.46%) Data Protection Act
12 73 (1.44%) Replication
13 72 (1.42%) Algorithms
14 69 (1.36%) Clustering
15 53 (1.05%) Fixed Income
15 53 (1.05%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (0.99%) Equities
17 48 (0.95%) NHS
18 42 (0.83%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 339 (6.70%) Linux
2 307 (6.07%) Windows
3 238 (4.71%) Unix
4 120 (2.37%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.47%) AIX
7 20 (0.40%) Solaris
8 15 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
9 11 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.20%) VMS
10 10 (0.20%) Windows Server 2016
11 8 (0.16%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.16%) zOS
12 7 (0.14%) Android
13 5 (0.099%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.079%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.079%) Ubuntu
15 3 (0.059%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.040%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.040%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,315 (26.01%) CI/CD
2 1,311 (25.93%) Agile
3 1,302 (25.75%) Data Modelling
4 1,281 (25.34%) Analytics
5 1,145 (22.65%) ETL
6 1,104 (21.84%) Business Intelligence
7 1,007 (19.92%) DevOps
8 993 (19.64%) Data Pipeline
9 970 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
10 842 (16.65%) Data Engineering
11 709 (14.02%) AI
12 701 (13.86%) Migration
13 662 (13.09%) Validation
14 584 (11.55%) Data Governance
15 517 (10.23%) Test Automation
16 502 (9.93%) Decision-Making
17 501 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
18 490 (9.69%) Data Analysis
19 483 (9.55%) Continuous Improvement
20 460 (9.10%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,800 (35.60%) Python
2 669 (13.23%) Java
3 489 (9.67%) C#
4 413 (8.17%) PL/SQL
5 340 (6.72%) JavaScript
6 272 (5.38%) T-SQL
7 249 (4.92%) PowerShell
8 180 (3.56%) TypeScript
9 143 (2.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 136 (2.69%) Shell Script
11 111 (2.20%) R
12 98 (1.94%) Bash
13 78 (1.54%) Scala
14 67 (1.33%) C++
15 54 (1.07%) VBA
16 45 (0.89%) Bicep
17 36 (0.71%) C
18 32 (0.63%) VB
19 30 (0.59%) Perl
20 25 (0.49%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 1,107 (21.89%) Security Cleared
2 892 (17.64%) SC Cleared
3 364 (7.20%) Degree
4 139 (2.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 112 (2.22%) Computer Science Degree
6 107 (2.12%) DV Cleared
7 74 (1.46%) Azure Certification
8 62 (1.23%) Master's Degree
9 55 (1.09%) ISTQB
10 39 (0.77%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (0.69%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.36%) DBS Check
13 15 (0.30%) CISSP
14 14 (0.28%) ISEB
14 14 (0.28%) PhD
15 12 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 11 (0.22%) SnowPro
17 10 (0.20%) CISM
18 9 (0.18%) CIMA
18 9 (0.18%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 924 (18.28%) Data Quality
2 384 (7.59%) QA
3 179 (3.54%) GDPR
4 66 (1.31%) Accessibility
5 45 (0.89%) SLA
6 24 (0.47%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 22 (0.44%) PMO
8 21 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 20 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 19 (0.38%) ISO 20022
11 18 (0.36%) NIST
12 16 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 15 (0.30%) IFRS
14 13 (0.26%) GMP
14 13 (0.26%) HIPAA
14 13 (0.26%) MiFID
15 11 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
15 11 (0.22%) HL7
15 11 (0.22%) NCSC
15 11 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 495 (9.79%) Docker
2 117 (2.31%) Active Directory
3 46 (0.91%) Virtual Machines
4 39 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
4 39 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
5 21 (0.42%) Hyper-V
6 20 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
7 14 (0.28%) VMware NSX
8 13 (0.26%) vCloud
9 10 (0.20%) KVM
10 9 (0.18%) Postfix
10 9 (0.18%) Virtual Desktop
11 5 (0.099%) RACF
12 4 (0.079%) Ceph
12 4 (0.079%) HDFS
13 3 (0.059%) Squid
14 2 (0.040%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.040%) GridGain
15 1 (0.020%) Microsoft App-V
15 1 (0.020%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 414 (8.19%) Kubernetes
2 376 (7.44%) Terraform
3 107 (2.12%) Grafana
4 90 (1.78%) Ansible
5 50 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 46 (0.91%) Oracle RMAN
7 41 (0.81%) Data Guard
8 28 (0.55%) Control-M
9 21 (0.42%) SCOM
10 20 (0.40%) Kibana
10 20 (0.40%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.32%) Nagios
11 16 (0.32%) Netcool
11 16 (0.32%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.30%) Single Sign-On
12 15 (0.30%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.26%) OpenView
13 13 (0.26%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.22%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 918 (18.16%) Oracle
2 792 (15.66%) Microsoft
3 574 (11.35%) Databricks
4 195 (3.86%) Google
5 189 (3.74%) Informatica
6 142 (2.81%) Talend
7 137 (2.71%) SAP
8 136 (2.69%) ServiceNow
9 96 (1.90%) IBM
10 88 (1.74%) Splunk
11 69 (1.36%) Denodo
12 62 (1.23%) Salesforce
12 62 (1.23%) VMware
13 42 (0.83%) Citrix
13 42 (0.83%) Dynatrace
14 38 (0.75%) Bloomberg
15 37 (0.73%) Sybase
16 35 (0.69%) Alteryx
16 35 (0.69%) SolarWinds
17 34 (0.67%) Murex