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

6 months to
1 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -4 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,140 3,794 4,078
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.58% 11.59% 10.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.63% 35.27% 33.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,443 2,605 2,941
10th Percentile £357 £329 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £473 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.75% -1.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 93 94 46
10th Percentile £23.00 £28.30 £20.12
25th Percentile £28.50 £31.95 £30.09
Median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £41.33
Median % change year-on-year -11.00% +20.98% -8.16%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £81.20 £63.38 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £35.50
% change year-on-year -11.00% +40.85% -11.25%

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 14,032 10,758 12,213
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.15% 32.85% 31.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,117 7,162 8,420
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £501 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.90% -4.67% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £745 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 524 299 357
10th Percentile £28.15 £29.00 £30.00
25th Percentile £48.75 £36.69 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.38 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.53 £79.00 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.84% -4.62% +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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -4 4,467 £500 - 4,896
London -6 2,493 £525 - 3,130
UK excluding London -8 2,094 £473 +0.75% 2,468
Work from Home -3 1,525 £500 - 2,035
North of England -1 595 £475 +2.43% 634
Midlands -4 468 £469 +4.22% 342
South East -8 465 £490 -2.00% 656
West Midlands -3 365 £469 -1.26% 193
North West 0 301 £478 +2.80% 375
Yorkshire +4 253 £475 +5.56% 163
South West -4 228 £509 +19.71% 294
Scotland -5 192 £425 -8.11% 191
East of England -8 119 £495 -1.49% 180
East Midlands -5 100 £465 +20.00% 148
North East -17 51 £406 -12.63% 100
Wales -7 40 £475 +6.74% 69
Northern Ireland -13 16 £348 -32.05% 127
Channel Islands - 1 £450 - 2

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
1 234 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
2 215 (4.18%) Confluence
3 210 (4.09%) Apache Spark
4 174 (3.39%) Apache
5 92 (1.79%) SAS
6 89 (1.73%) SharePoint
7 45 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
8 37 (0.72%) IIS
9 29 (0.56%) Jupyter
9 29 (0.56%) WebLogic
10 25 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
11 22 (0.43%) nginx
11 22 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
12 19 (0.37%) CMS
12 19 (0.37%) WebSphere
13 18 (0.35%) Camunda
14 16 (0.31%) Tomcat
15 14 (0.27%) ArcGIS
16 9 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 8 (0.16%) Appian
Applications
1 312 (6.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 63 (1.23%) Microsoft Office
3 40 (0.78%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.76%) Spreadsheet
5 27 (0.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.078%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.078%) Microsoft Project
8 4 (0.078%) Notion
8 4 (0.078%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.058%) Windchill
10 2 (0.039%) Mingle
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.019%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.019%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (0.93%) Oracle EBS
2 47 (0.91%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.56%) Aladdin
5 26 (0.51%) Oracle Payables
6 25 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
8 17 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 14 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
9 14 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 12 (0.23%) Finacle
11 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
11 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
11 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
12 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.19%) Salesforce CRM
13 9 (0.18%) Elite 3E
13 9 (0.18%) Oracle Financials
14 8 (0.16%) Infor LN
14 8 (0.16%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,622 (31.56%) Azure
2 1,226 (23.85%) AWS
3 958 (18.64%) Power Platform
4 464 (9.03%) GCP
5 457 (8.89%) Azure DevOps
6 371 (7.22%) GitHub
6 371 (7.22%) Snowflake
7 334 (6.50%) Azure Data Factory
8 316 (6.15%) Serverless
9 292 (5.68%) dbt
10 244 (4.75%) Amazon S3
11 212 (4.12%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 205 (3.99%) AWS Lambda
13 182 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
14 113 (2.20%) SaaS
15 107 (2.08%) Power Automate
16 100 (1.95%) PowerApps
17 93 (1.81%) Azure Databricks
18 92 (1.79%) Entra ID
19 89 (1.73%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 70 (1.36%) DNS
2 48 (0.93%) Firewall
3 35 (0.68%) HTTP
4 32 (0.62%) SSL
5 24 (0.47%) Network Security
6 23 (0.45%) TCP/IP
7 21 (0.41%) SNMP
8 20 (0.39%) VPN
9 19 (0.37%) Internet
10 18 (0.35%) Broadband
11 17 (0.33%) DHCP
11 17 (0.33%) WAN
12 16 (0.31%) SSH
13 11 (0.21%) HTTPS
14 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
15 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
15 9 (0.18%) SAN
15 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
15 9 (0.18%) Wireshark
16 8 (0.16%) RTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 880 (17.12%) Power BI
2 721 (14.03%) Data Warehouse
3 650 (12.65%) SQL Server
4 353 (6.87%) Relational Database
5 324 (6.30%) Data Lake
6 322 (6.26%) PostgreSQL
7 297 (5.78%) Tableau
8 290 (5.64%) Metadata
9 256 (4.98%) NoSQL
10 228 (4.44%) Oracle Database
11 209 (4.07%) Azure SQL Database
12 186 (3.62%) BigQuery
13 158 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
14 152 (2.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 148 (2.88%) Delta Lake
16 126 (2.45%) MySQL
17 123 (2.39%) Big Data
18 119 (2.32%) MongoDB
19 112 (2.18%) Amazon Athena
19 112 (2.18%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 617 (12.00%) Git
2 400 (7.78%) JIRA
3 292 (5.68%) Jenkins
4 240 (4.67%) GitLab
5 93 (1.81%) Selenium
6 88 (1.71%) JUnit
7 78 (1.52%) Gradle
8 75 (1.46%) Maven
9 65 (1.26%) Postman
10 56 (1.09%) Mockito
11 50 (0.97%) Oracle Forms
12 45 (0.88%) SonarQube
13 41 (0.80%) Visual Studio
14 40 (0.78%) JMeter
15 39 (0.76%) Bitbucket
16 32 (0.62%) MLflow
17 31 (0.60%) Zephyr
18 29 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
19 27 (0.53%) Artifactory
19 27 (0.53%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 1,385 (26.95%) Social Skills
2 1,310 (25.49%) Finance
3 1,065 (20.72%) Analytical Skills
4 535 (10.41%) Banking
5 473 (9.20%) Public Sector
6 153 (2.98%) Marketing
7 148 (2.88%) Front Office
8 144 (2.80%) Retail
9 139 (2.70%) Investment Banking
10 101 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 92 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
12 75 (1.46%) Manufacturing
13 57 (1.11%) Legal
14 56 (1.09%) Financial Institution
15 55 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
16 46 (0.89%) Telecoms
17 45 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
18 42 (0.82%) Local Government
19 40 (0.78%) Back Office
19 40 (0.78%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,118 (21.75%) Developer
2 952 (18.52%) Data Engineer
3 775 (15.08%) Analyst
4 715 (13.91%) Senior
5 365 (7.10%) Lead
6 329 (6.40%) Data Analyst
7 275 (5.35%) Architect
8 252 (4.90%) Consultant
9 251 (4.88%) Business Analyst
10 215 (4.18%) DBA
11 206 (4.01%) Senior Data Engineer
12 202 (3.93%) Java Developer
13 176 (3.42%) Senior Developer
14 133 (2.59%) Software Engineer
15 130 (2.53%) SQL DBA
16 126 (2.45%) Data Architect
16 126 (2.45%) SQL Developer
17 123 (2.39%) Python Engineer
18 119 (2.32%) Full-Stack Developer
19 117 (2.28%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 469 (9.12%) REST
2 444 (8.64%) .NET
3 397 (7.72%) Terraform
4 352 (6.85%) PySpark
5 342 (6.65%) Kafka
6 277 (5.39%) Spring
7 265 (5.16%) Spring Boot
8 249 (4.84%) React
9 218 (4.24%) RESTful
10 211 (4.11%) JSON
11 203 (3.95%) HTML
12 190 (3.70%) XML
13 173 (3.37%) CSS
14 136 (2.65%) Web Services
15 125 (2.43%) AngularJS
16 117 (2.28%) SOAP
17 116 (2.26%) Middleware
18 109 (2.12%) Pandas
19 94 (1.83%) .NET Framework
20 91 (1.77%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 337 (6.56%) Cloud Native
2 262 (5.10%) Data Structures
3 225 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 170 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
5 147 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 133 (2.59%) Onboarding
7 117 (2.28%) Enterprise Software
8 105 (2.04%) Management Information System
9 90 (1.75%) Derivative
10 84 (1.63%) Self-Motivation
11 77 (1.50%) AI Agents
12 76 (1.48%) Replication
13 69 (1.34%) Analytical Mindset
14 67 (1.30%) Data Protection Act
15 63 (1.23%) Clustering
16 59 (1.15%) Algorithms
17 58 (1.13%) Reference Data
18 56 (1.09%) Fixed Income
19 51 (0.99%) Greenfield Project
20 49 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 373 (7.26%) Linux
2 316 (6.15%) Windows
3 244 (4.75%) Unix
4 128 (2.49%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 18 (0.35%) Solaris
7 17 (0.33%) AIX
8 13 (0.25%) VMS
9 10 (0.19%) Ubuntu
9 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
10 9 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
11 7 (0.14%) Windows 10
12 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.097%) zOS
14 4 (0.078%) Android
14 4 (0.078%) Apple iOS
14 4 (0.078%) Oracle Linux
14 4 (0.078%) Windows Server 2016
15 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,380 (26.85%) CI/CD
2 1,376 (26.77%) Agile
3 1,343 (26.13%) Data Modelling
4 1,258 (24.47%) Analytics
5 1,116 (21.71%) ETL
6 1,106 (21.52%) Business Intelligence
7 1,019 (19.82%) DevOps
8 990 (19.26%) Problem-Solving
9 986 (19.18%) Data Pipeline
10 852 (16.58%) Data Engineering
11 784 (15.25%) AI
12 756 (14.71%) Validation
13 753 (14.65%) Migration
14 661 (12.86%) Stakeholder Management
15 590 (11.48%) Data Governance
16 574 (11.17%) Test Automation
17 555 (10.80%) Data Analysis
18 528 (10.27%) Continuous Improvement
19 518 (10.08%) Decision-Making
20 430 (8.37%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,835 (35.70%) Python
2 659 (12.82%) Java
3 474 (9.22%) C#
4 409 (7.96%) PL/SQL
5 397 (7.72%) JavaScript
6 271 (5.27%) PowerShell
7 256 (4.98%) T-SQL
8 201 (3.91%) TypeScript
9 151 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 150 (2.92%) Shell Script
11 114 (2.22%) Bash
12 98 (1.91%) R
13 74 (1.44%) Scala
14 57 (1.11%) C++
15 44 (0.86%) VBA
16 43 (0.84%) Bicep
17 29 (0.56%) C
17 29 (0.56%) VB.NET
18 26 (0.51%) Perl
18 26 (0.51%) VB
Qualifications
1 1,110 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 890 (17.32%) SC Cleared
3 358 (6.96%) Degree
4 153 (2.98%) BPSS Clearance
5 133 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
6 125 (2.43%) DV Cleared
7 79 (1.54%) Azure Certification
8 65 (1.26%) ISTQB
9 48 (0.93%) Microsoft Certification
10 46 (0.89%) Master's Degree
11 43 (0.84%) AWS Certification
12 20 (0.39%) ISEB
13 19 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 18 (0.35%) CISSP
14 18 (0.35%) DBS Check
15 14 (0.27%) ACCA
15 14 (0.27%) CIMA
16 13 (0.25%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
16 13 (0.25%) Oracle Certification
17 12 (0.23%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 978 (19.03%) Data Quality
2 411 (8.00%) QA
3 157 (3.05%) GDPR
4 71 (1.38%) Accessibility
5 47 (0.91%) SLA
6 32 (0.62%) ISO 20022
7 28 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 24 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
9 23 (0.45%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 20 (0.39%) IFRS
11 19 (0.37%) NIST
12 16 (0.31%) MiFID
13 15 (0.29%) PMO
14 13 (0.25%) GMP
14 13 (0.25%) GxP
14 13 (0.25%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.23%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.21%) COBIT
16 11 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
17 10 (0.19%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 495 (9.63%) Docker
2 137 (2.67%) Active Directory
3 59 (1.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
4 42 (0.82%) Virtual Machines
5 24 (0.47%) Hyper-V
6 19 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
7 16 (0.31%) vCloud
7 16 (0.31%) VMware NSX
8 15 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
9 7 (0.14%) Postfix
10 6 (0.12%) Squid
11 5 (0.097%) Ceph
12 4 (0.078%) KVM
13 3 (0.058%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 2 (0.039%) DFS Replication
14 2 (0.039%) Dovecot
14 2 (0.039%) GPFS
14 2 (0.039%) GridGain
15 1 (0.019%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 413 (8.04%) Kubernetes
2 103 (2.00%) Ansible
2 103 (2.00%) Grafana
3 50 (0.97%) Prometheus
4 48 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
5 46 (0.89%) Data Guard
6 43 (0.84%) Control-M
7 38 (0.74%) SCOM
8 22 (0.43%) Kibana
9 16 (0.31%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.29%) Nagios
10 15 (0.29%) Netcool
10 15 (0.29%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.27%) Tivoli
12 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
12 12 (0.23%) OpenView
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
12 12 (0.23%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
14 10 (0.19%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 900 (17.51%) Oracle
2 863 (16.79%) Microsoft
3 635 (12.35%) Databricks
4 198 (3.85%) Google
5 166 (3.23%) Informatica
6 142 (2.76%) SAP
7 124 (2.41%) Talend
8 107 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 103 (2.00%) IBM
10 86 (1.67%) Splunk
11 78 (1.52%) VMware
12 74 (1.44%) Salesforce
13 61 (1.19%) Denodo
14 42 (0.82%) Bloomberg
14 42 (0.82%) Dynatrace
15 41 (0.80%) Sybase
16 39 (0.76%) BMC
17 36 (0.70%) Murex
18 35 (0.68%) Alteryx
18 35 (0.68%) Foundry