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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,527 3,548 4,238
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.55% 12.11% 9.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.10% 35.47% 33.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,091 2,483 3,057
10th Percentile £350 £355 £356
25th Percentile £413 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year - -6.98% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -0.21% -1.05% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 61 62
10th Percentile £33.78 £22.48 £22.88
25th Percentile £36.44 £30.00 £26.63
Median hourly rate £54.75 £42.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.82% - -15.00%
75th Percentile £76.25 £65.62 £56.66
90th Percentile £83.98 £77.19 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £33.51 £42.50
% change year-on-year +81.29% -21.15% +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 12,896 10,004 12,825
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.21% 34.16% 29.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,532 6,796 9,114
10th Percentile £355 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £416 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £638 £650
90th Percentile £713 £774 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 560 249 486
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.50 £31.63
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% +2.67%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £79.59
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.87 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.77% +2.20% +2.97%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -5 3,998 £500 -3.15% 2,180
London 0 2,254 £513 -6.82% 949
UK excluding London -9 1,822 £469 -0.21% 1,566
Work from Home -5 1,345 £500 -3.85% 1,050
Midlands +5 521 £469 +2.18% 273
North of England -8 480 £450 -5.26% 413
West Midlands +7 414 £463 +0.27% 159
South East -18 330 £495 -0.75% 522
North West -1 263 £450 -5.26% 235
South West -9 204 £475 -1.30% 149
Yorkshire -15 193 £463 -2.63% 131
Scotland -7 169 £485 +7.78% 62
East Midlands +3 104 £525 +24.26% 114
East of England -15 92 £500 +8.99% 116
North East -11 36 £475 +5.56% 49
Wales +8 35 £413 +8.20% 42
Northern Ireland -10 12 £400 -2.44% 7

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
1 260 (5.74%) Apache Spark
2 174 (3.84%) Apache
3 170 (3.76%) Apache Airflow
4 147 (3.25%) Confluence
5 102 (2.25%) SAS
6 86 (1.90%) SharePoint
7 44 (0.97%) Tomcat
8 41 (0.91%) WebLogic
9 34 (0.75%) IIS
10 27 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 24 (0.53%) Apache Geronimo
11 24 (0.53%) Apache ServiceMix
11 24 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 24 (0.53%) Red Hat Fuse
12 23 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
13 18 (0.40%) nginx
14 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
15 15 (0.33%) Jupyter
16 14 (0.31%) Mendix
16 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 300 (6.63%) Microsoft Excel
2 59 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.08%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
7 8 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
9 5 (0.11%) Notion
10 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
10 3 (0.066%) Trello
11 1 (0.022%) InDesign
11 1 (0.022%) Mingle
11 1 (0.022%) SPSS
11 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (1.06%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 24 (0.53%) Aladdin
4 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
6 21 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
6 21 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
7 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
8 17 (0.38%) NetSuite
8 17 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
8 17 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
9 14 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
10 13 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
11 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
13 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
14 9 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
15 8 (0.18%) Maximo
15 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,558 (34.42%) Azure
2 1,073 (23.70%) AWS
3 874 (19.31%) Power Platform
4 459 (10.14%) Azure DevOps
5 372 (8.22%) Azure Data Factory
6 363 (8.02%) GCP
7 336 (7.42%) GitHub
8 287 (6.34%) Serverless
9 256 (5.65%) Snowflake
10 255 (5.63%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 244 (5.39%) Amazon S3
12 184 (4.06%) dbt
13 178 (3.93%) GitHub Actions
14 158 (3.49%) AWS Lambda
15 97 (2.14%) Power Automate
16 91 (2.01%) Azure Functions
17 86 (1.90%) SaaS
18 80 (1.77%) Entra ID
19 78 (1.72%) AWS CloudFormation
20 75 (1.66%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.21%) Firewall
2 43 (0.95%) DNS
3 24 (0.53%) Network Security
4 21 (0.46%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.44%) WAN
6 19 (0.42%) HTTP
7 16 (0.35%) Internet
8 15 (0.33%) LAN
8 15 (0.33%) SNMP
8 15 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.27%) VPN
10 10 (0.22%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.20%) DHCP
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 8 (0.18%) SAN
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) VLAN
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
13 7 (0.15%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 798 (17.63%) Power BI
2 575 (12.70%) Data Warehouse
3 562 (12.41%) SQL Server
4 309 (6.83%) Tableau
5 308 (6.80%) Data Lake
6 296 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
7 292 (6.45%) Relational Database
8 271 (5.99%) NoSQL
9 250 (5.52%) Metadata
10 249 (5.50%) Azure SQL Database
11 162 (3.58%) Oracle Database
12 154 (3.40%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 147 (3.25%) Big Data
14 134 (2.96%) BigQuery
15 131 (2.89%) MySQL
16 130 (2.87%) Delta Lake
17 129 (2.85%) Amazon Redshift
18 112 (2.47%) MongoDB
19 110 (2.43%) Oracle Reports
20 100 (2.21%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 483 (10.67%) Git
2 351 (7.75%) JIRA
3 224 (4.95%) Jenkins
4 189 (4.17%) GitLab
5 66 (1.46%) Selenium
6 56 (1.24%) JUnit
7 52 (1.15%) Postman
8 42 (0.93%) Maven
8 42 (0.93%) MLflow
9 40 (0.88%) Cucumber
10 39 (0.86%) Mockito
11 32 (0.71%) ERwin
12 31 (0.68%) Visual Studio
13 30 (0.66%) Gradle
13 30 (0.66%) REST Assured
14 29 (0.64%) JMeter
15 28 (0.62%) Bitbucket
15 28 (0.62%) SonarQube
16 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
17 24 (0.53%) TeamCity
General
1 1,196 (26.42%) Social Skills
2 1,193 (26.35%) Finance
3 842 (18.60%) Analytical Skills
4 420 (9.28%) Banking
5 406 (8.97%) Public Sector
6 113 (2.50%) Investment Banking
7 111 (2.45%) Front Office
8 104 (2.30%) Marketing
9 102 (2.25%) Documentation Skills
10 75 (1.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 72 (1.59%) Retail
12 59 (1.30%) Financial Institution
12 59 (1.30%) Legal
13 39 (0.86%) Presentation Skills
14 38 (0.84%) Telecoms
15 37 (0.82%) Publishing
16 35 (0.77%) Organisational Skills
17 34 (0.75%) Law
18 31 (0.68%) Local Government
18 31 (0.68%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 974 (21.52%) Developer
2 909 (20.08%) Data Engineer
3 671 (14.82%) Analyst
4 569 (12.57%) Senior
5 315 (6.96%) Lead
6 284 (6.27%) Data Analyst
7 273 (6.03%) Architect
8 221 (4.88%) Business Analyst
9 210 (4.64%) Consultant
10 167 (3.69%) Java Developer
11 154 (3.40%) Senior Data Engineer
12 143 (3.16%) DBA
13 135 (2.98%) Senior Developer
14 126 (2.78%) Azure Engineer
15 125 (2.76%) Software Engineer
16 112 (2.47%) C# Developer
17 110 (2.43%) Data Architect
18 104 (2.30%) Python Developer
19 101 (2.23%) Data Scientist
20 93 (2.05%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 399 (8.81%) .NET
2 346 (7.64%) REST
3 287 (6.34%) PySpark
4 279 (6.16%) Kafka
5 213 (4.71%) React
6 208 (4.59%) Spring
7 200 (4.42%) Spring Boot
8 188 (4.15%) RESTful
9 150 (3.31%) HTML
10 145 (3.20%) JSON
11 141 (3.11%) XML
12 132 (2.92%) Pandas
13 129 (2.85%) CSS
14 113 (2.50%) AngularJS
15 111 (2.45%) Middleware
16 94 (2.08%) SOAP
17 93 (2.05%) .NET Framework
18 85 (1.88%) Node.js
18 85 (1.88%) Web Services
19 79 (1.75%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 292 (6.45%) Cloud Native
2 177 (3.91%) Data Structures
3 156 (3.45%) Legacy Systems
4 138 (3.05%) Product Ownership
5 108 (2.39%) Distributed Systems
6 99 (2.19%) Management Information System
7 87 (1.92%) Derivative
8 82 (1.81%) Data Protection Act
9 81 (1.79%) Onboarding
10 70 (1.55%) Analytical Mindset
11 60 (1.33%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
13 56 (1.24%) Fixed Income
14 55 (1.21%) Equities
15 52 (1.15%) Clustering
16 51 (1.13%) Self-Motivation
17 44 (0.97%) Greenfield Project
17 44 (0.97%) Replication
18 43 (0.95%) NHS
19 40 (0.88%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 315 (6.96%) Linux
2 272 (6.01%) Windows
3 209 (4.62%) Unix
4 94 (2.08%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 27 (0.60%) AIX
7 19 (0.42%) Windows Server 2019
8 15 (0.33%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 9 (0.20%) Solaris
10 9 (0.20%) VMS
10 9 (0.20%) Windows 10
11 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.15%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
13 5 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.066%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
16 1 (0.022%) CentOS
16 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,206 (26.64%) CI/CD
2 1,158 (25.58%) Analytics
3 1,148 (25.36%) Agile
4 1,142 (25.23%) Data Modelling
5 1,064 (23.50%) ETL
6 1,030 (22.75%) Business Intelligence
7 1,017 (22.47%) DevOps
8 912 (20.15%) Problem-Solving
9 852 (18.82%) Data Pipeline
10 717 (15.84%) Data Engineering
11 576 (12.72%) Migration
12 568 (12.55%) Data Governance
13 567 (12.52%) AI
14 536 (11.84%) Validation
15 439 (9.70%) Decision-Making
16 432 (9.54%) Test Automation
17 418 (9.23%) Data Analysis
18 409 (9.03%) Performance Tuning
19 397 (8.77%) Microservices
20 388 (8.57%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,727 (38.15%) Python
2 623 (13.76%) Java
3 487 (10.76%) C#
4 332 (7.33%) JavaScript
5 329 (7.27%) PL/SQL
6 207 (4.57%) T-SQL
7 203 (4.48%) PowerShell
8 148 (3.27%) TypeScript
9 138 (3.05%) R
10 135 (2.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 129 (2.85%) Shell Script
12 90 (1.99%) Scala
13 85 (1.88%) Bash
14 82 (1.81%) C++
15 63 (1.39%) Bicep
16 57 (1.26%) VBA
17 47 (1.04%) Perl
18 30 (0.66%) Go
18 30 (0.66%) VB
19 24 (0.53%) C
Qualifications
1 967 (21.36%) Security Cleared
2 783 (17.30%) SC Cleared
3 360 (7.95%) Degree
4 122 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 74 (1.63%) Azure Certification
7 68 (1.50%) DV Cleared
8 66 (1.46%) Master's Degree
9 52 (1.15%) ISTQB
10 43 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 29 (0.64%) AWS Certification
12 17 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
12 17 (0.38%) PhD
13 14 (0.31%) CBAP
13 14 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
15 12 (0.27%) CISSP
16 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.22%) PMP
17 9 (0.20%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 821 (18.14%) Data Quality
2 361 (7.97%) QA
3 198 (4.37%) GDPR
4 57 (1.26%) Accessibility
5 40 (0.88%) SLA
6 35 (0.77%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (0.62%) PMO
8 19 (0.42%) NIST
8 19 (0.42%) PCI DSS
9 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 18 (0.40%) MiFID
10 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) IFRS
11 15 (0.33%) ISO 20022
12 14 (0.31%) HL7
12 14 (0.31%) WCAG
13 11 (0.24%) DICOM
13 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 525 (11.60%) Docker
2 109 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 37 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
4 31 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
5 30 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
6 22 (0.49%) Hyper-V
7 11 (0.24%) 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%) XenApp
12 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
13 3 (0.066%) Ceph
13 3 (0.066%) Oracle Clusterware
14 2 (0.044%) GridGain
14 2 (0.044%) Squid
14 2 (0.044%) VMware NSX
14 2 (0.044%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 442 (9.76%) Kubernetes
2 378 (8.35%) Terraform
3 120 (2.65%) Grafana
4 83 (1.83%) Ansible
5 66 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 43 (0.95%) Oracle RMAN
7 30 (0.66%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.42%) Kibana
10 18 (0.40%) SCCM
11 16 (0.35%) Progress Chef
12 15 (0.33%) ZABBIX
13 14 (0.31%) Control-M
13 14 (0.31%) Nagios
13 14 (0.31%) Netcool
13 14 (0.31%) Tivoli
14 13 (0.29%) OpenView
14 13 (0.29%) Tivoli Monitoring
15 10 (0.22%) vCenter Server
16 9 (0.20%) Kiali
Vendors
1 751 (16.59%) Oracle
2 729 (16.10%) Microsoft
3 555 (12.26%) Databricks
4 171 (3.78%) Google
5 162 (3.58%) Informatica
6 137 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 117 (2.58%) Talend
8 116 (2.56%) SAP
9 93 (2.05%) Splunk
10 81 (1.79%) IBM
11 68 (1.50%) Salesforce
12 54 (1.19%) Denodo
13 52 (1.15%) Citrix
14 49 (1.08%) VMware
15 42 (0.93%) OpenAI
16 38 (0.84%) Dynatrace
17 34 (0.75%) Bloomberg
18 33 (0.73%) MuleSoft
19 32 (0.71%) HP
20 29 (0.64%) Sage