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 9 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,170 3,867 4,023
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.65% 11.67% 10.35%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.36% 35.50% 33.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,444 2,670 2,954
10th Percentile £355 £331 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £749
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +0.86% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 72 49
10th Percentile £23.30 £22.81 £20.12
25th Percentile £33.88 £29.07 £26.25
Median hourly rate £44.50 £38.85 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.56% -2.89% -12.93%
75th Percentile £70.00 £50.00 £53.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £63.75 £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £34.96 £33.93
% change year-on-year +27.31% +3.02% -20.72%

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 14,220 10,893 12,139
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.54% 32.87% 31.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,230 7,312 8,533
10th Percentile £363 £340 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £503 £530
Median % change year-on-year +1.94% -5.14% -3.64%
75th Percentile £616 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £750 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £495 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.17% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 532 267 409
10th Percentile £29.96 £28.11 £27.00
25th Percentile £50.00 £36.00 £45.22
Median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +8.33%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £79.45 £84.70 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +1.56% -1.54% +8.33%

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 9 August 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 9 August 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 9 August 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 4,521 £500 - 2,736
London -6 2,465 £525 -0.71% 1,462
UK excluding London -10 2,165 £469 +0.86% 1,603
Work from Home -3 1,554 £500 - 1,192
North of England -3 594 £464 -1.12% 438
Midlands 0 544 £459 +2.34% 246
South East -9 475 £490 -2.00% 482
West Midlands +4 444 £459 +1.32% 133
North West -4 312 £475 +1.71% 236
Yorkshire -4 244 £474 -0.21% 135
South West -7 222 £500 +17.65% 181
Scotland -10 189 £430 -4.44% 84
East of England -1 119 £475 -5.00% 120
East Midlands -2 96 £463 +23.33% 113
North East -19 49 £413 -10.81% 77
Wales -4 40 £475 +5.56% 45
Northern Ireland -10 16 £375 -26.83% 30

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
1 224 (4.33%) Confluence
2 223 (4.31%) Apache Airflow
3 219 (4.24%) Apache Spark
4 178 (3.44%) Apache
5 119 (2.30%) SAS
6 74 (1.43%) SharePoint
7 45 (0.87%) Oracle Workflow
8 40 (0.77%) IIS
8 40 (0.77%) WebLogic
9 29 (0.56%) Jupyter
10 27 (0.52%) Tomcat
11 24 (0.46%) WebSphere
12 21 (0.41%) nginx
12 21 (0.41%) Palantir Foundry
13 20 (0.39%) Microsoft Exchange
14 19 (0.37%) CMS
15 12 (0.23%) Apache ServiceMix
15 12 (0.23%) ArcGIS
15 12 (0.23%) Camunda
15 12 (0.23%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 333 (6.44%) Microsoft Excel
2 62 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 53 (1.03%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
5 29 (0.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 10 (0.19%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
8 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
8 4 (0.077%) Notion
8 4 (0.077%) Photoshop
9 3 (0.058%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.058%) Microsoft Project
9 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
10 1 (0.019%) Adobe XD
10 1 (0.019%) InDesign
10 1 (0.019%) Mingle
10 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 53 (1.03%) Oracle EBS
2 44 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 29 (0.56%) Aladdin
3 29 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
4 28 (0.54%) Remedy ITSM
5 26 (0.50%) Oracle ERP
6 25 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
7 18 (0.35%) Oracle EBS R12
8 17 (0.33%) Oracle Receivables
9 14 (0.27%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.25%) NEC Housing
11 12 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.21%) Findur
12 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.19%) Finacle
13 10 (0.19%) Oracle Financials
14 9 (0.17%) Elite 3E
14 9 (0.17%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
14 9 (0.17%) Unit4 Business World
15 8 (0.15%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 1,628 (31.49%) Azure
2 1,216 (23.52%) AWS
3 973 (18.82%) Power Platform
4 460 (8.90%) Azure DevOps
4 460 (8.90%) GCP
5 367 (7.10%) GitHub
6 352 (6.81%) Azure Data Factory
6 352 (6.81%) Snowflake
7 309 (5.98%) Serverless
8 277 (5.36%) dbt
9 252 (4.87%) Amazon S3
10 218 (4.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 202 (3.91%) AWS Lambda
12 184 (3.56%) GitHub Actions
13 101 (1.95%) Entra ID
14 98 (1.90%) Power Automate
14 98 (1.90%) SaaS
15 94 (1.82%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 92 (1.78%) PowerApps
17 78 (1.51%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 66 (1.28%) DNS
2 47 (0.91%) Firewall
3 30 (0.58%) SSL
4 28 (0.54%) HTTP
5 27 (0.52%) Network Security
6 24 (0.46%) VPN
7 22 (0.43%) SNMP
8 21 (0.41%) TCP/IP
9 20 (0.39%) Internet
10 19 (0.37%) WAN
11 13 (0.25%) Broadband
12 12 (0.23%) DHCP
13 10 (0.19%) SSH
13 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
13 10 (0.19%) Wireshark
14 9 (0.17%) HTTPS
14 9 (0.17%) SAN
14 9 (0.17%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.15%) Kerberos
15 8 (0.15%) LAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 895 (17.31%) Power BI
2 723 (13.98%) Data Warehouse
3 642 (12.42%) SQL Server
4 333 (6.44%) Relational Database
5 321 (6.21%) PostgreSQL
6 318 (6.15%) Data Lake
7 316 (6.11%) Tableau
8 276 (5.34%) Metadata
9 260 (5.03%) NoSQL
10 222 (4.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 211 (4.08%) Oracle Database
12 178 (3.44%) BigQuery
13 171 (3.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 154 (2.98%) Amazon Redshift
15 142 (2.75%) Delta Lake
16 131 (2.53%) Oracle Reports
17 127 (2.46%) Big Data
18 118 (2.28%) MongoDB
19 114 (2.21%) MySQL
20 105 (2.03%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 613 (11.86%) Git
2 411 (7.95%) JIRA
3 296 (5.73%) Jenkins
4 236 (4.56%) GitLab
5 83 (1.61%) JUnit
6 73 (1.41%) Maven
7 68 (1.32%) Selenium
8 67 (1.30%) Gradle
9 62 (1.20%) Postman
10 55 (1.06%) Mockito
11 49 (0.95%) Oracle Forms
12 40 (0.77%) Bitbucket
12 40 (0.77%) SonarQube
13 39 (0.75%) Visual Studio
14 33 (0.64%) Zephyr
15 32 (0.62%) MLflow
16 31 (0.60%) ERwin
16 31 (0.60%) JMeter
16 31 (0.60%) Team Foundation Server
17 30 (0.58%) Liquibase
General
1 1,348 (26.07%) Social Skills
2 1,289 (24.93%) Finance
3 1,043 (20.17%) Analytical Skills
4 497 (9.61%) Banking
5 490 (9.48%) Public Sector
6 147 (2.84%) Marketing
7 141 (2.73%) Front Office
8 139 (2.69%) Retail
9 125 (2.42%) Investment Banking
10 100 (1.93%) Documentation Skills
11 90 (1.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 79 (1.53%) Manufacturing
13 57 (1.10%) Financial Institution
13 57 (1.10%) Legal
13 57 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 47 (0.91%) Telecoms
15 46 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
16 43 (0.83%) Publishing
17 41 (0.79%) Back Office
18 38 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,128 (21.82%) Developer
2 1,005 (19.44%) Data Engineer
3 764 (14.78%) Analyst
4 689 (13.33%) Senior
5 365 (7.06%) Lead
6 326 (6.31%) Data Analyst
7 271 (5.24%) Architect
8 260 (5.03%) Consultant
9 257 (4.97%) Business Analyst
10 212 (4.10%) DBA
10 212 (4.10%) Java Developer
11 196 (3.79%) Senior Data Engineer
12 172 (3.33%) Senior Developer
13 141 (2.73%) Software Engineer
14 135 (2.61%) SQL DBA
15 131 (2.53%) SQL Developer
16 119 (2.30%) Azure Engineer
17 115 (2.22%) Full-Stack Developer
18 111 (2.15%) Python Developer
18 111 (2.15%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 427 (8.26%) .NET
1 427 (8.26%) REST
2 330 (6.38%) PySpark
3 319 (6.17%) Kafka
4 271 (5.24%) Spring
5 254 (4.91%) Spring Boot
6 227 (4.39%) React
7 219 (4.24%) RESTful
8 203 (3.93%) JSON
9 189 (3.66%) XML
10 176 (3.40%) HTML
11 145 (2.80%) AngularJS
12 143 (2.77%) CSS
13 128 (2.48%) Web Services
14 121 (2.34%) Pandas
15 115 (2.22%) SOAP
16 111 (2.15%) Middleware
17 102 (1.97%) .NET Framework
18 84 (1.62%) Node.js
19 74 (1.43%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 346 (6.69%) Cloud Native
2 253 (4.89%) Data Structures
3 206 (3.98%) Product Ownership
4 180 (3.48%) Legacy Systems
5 148 (2.86%) Distributed Systems
6 120 (2.32%) Onboarding
7 106 (2.05%) Enterprise Software
8 96 (1.86%) Derivative
8 96 (1.86%) Management Information System
9 86 (1.66%) Self-Motivation
10 76 (1.47%) Replication
11 75 (1.45%) Analytical Mindset
11 75 (1.45%) Data Protection Act
12 70 (1.35%) Clustering
13 66 (1.28%) Algorithms
14 55 (1.06%) AI Agents
15 53 (1.03%) Fixed Income
15 53 (1.03%) Greenfield Project
16 51 (0.99%) Reference Data
17 50 (0.97%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 359 (6.94%) Linux
2 315 (6.09%) Windows
3 239 (4.62%) Unix
4 121 (2.34%) Windows Server
5 27 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 21 (0.41%) AIX
7 17 (0.33%) Solaris
8 14 (0.27%) VMS
8 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
9 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.14%) Ubuntu
10 7 (0.14%) Windows 10
10 7 (0.14%) zOS
11 6 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 6 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 5 (0.097%) Android
13 4 (0.077%) Oracle Linux
14 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
15 2 (0.039%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,377 (26.63%) Agile
2 1,366 (26.42%) Data Modelling
3 1,358 (26.27%) CI/CD
4 1,306 (25.26%) Analytics
5 1,157 (22.38%) ETL
6 1,142 (22.09%) Business Intelligence
7 1,054 (20.39%) DevOps
8 1,007 (19.48%) Data Pipeline
9 992 (19.19%) Problem-Solving
10 858 (16.60%) Data Engineering
11 745 (14.41%) Migration
12 731 (14.14%) AI
13 708 (13.69%) Validation
14 595 (11.51%) Data Governance
15 579 (11.20%) Stakeholder Management
16 545 (10.54%) Test Automation
17 523 (10.12%) Decision-Making
18 522 (10.10%) Data Analysis
19 516 (9.98%) Continuous Improvement
20 459 (8.88%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,828 (35.36%) Python
2 663 (12.82%) Java
3 495 (9.57%) C#
4 424 (8.20%) PL/SQL
5 369 (7.14%) JavaScript
6 276 (5.34%) T-SQL
7 264 (5.11%) PowerShell
8 177 (3.42%) TypeScript
9 155 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 142 (2.75%) Shell Script
11 120 (2.32%) Bash
12 99 (1.91%) R
13 76 (1.47%) Scala
14 59 (1.14%) C++
15 51 (0.99%) Bicep
15 51 (0.99%) VBA
16 33 (0.64%) C
17 29 (0.56%) Perl
18 28 (0.54%) VB
19 25 (0.48%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 1,161 (22.46%) Security Cleared
2 943 (18.24%) SC Cleared
3 351 (6.79%) Degree
4 143 (2.77%) BPSS Clearance
5 122 (2.36%) Computer Science Degree
6 110 (2.13%) DV Cleared
7 79 (1.53%) Azure Certification
8 63 (1.22%) ISTQB
9 49 (0.95%) Master's Degree
10 44 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (0.68%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.35%) CISSP
13 17 (0.33%) DBS Check
14 15 (0.29%) ISEB
14 15 (0.29%) PhD
15 12 (0.23%) FFIEC
15 12 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 12 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.19%) ACCA
16 10 (0.19%) CIMA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 962 (18.61%) Data Quality
2 392 (7.58%) QA
3 175 (3.38%) GDPR
4 66 (1.28%) Accessibility
5 46 (0.89%) SLA
6 26 (0.50%) ISO 20022
6 26 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 25 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 23 (0.44%) NIST
8 23 (0.44%) PMO
9 21 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
10 16 (0.31%) IFRS
10 16 (0.31%) Solvency II
11 15 (0.29%) MiFID
12 13 (0.25%) COBIT
12 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
13 12 (0.23%) GMP
13 12 (0.23%) PCI DSS
14 11 (0.21%) NCSC
14 11 (0.21%) WCAG
System Software
1 510 (9.86%) Docker
2 139 (2.69%) Active Directory
3 53 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.87%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
6 21 (0.41%) Hyper-V
7 17 (0.33%) VMware ESXi
8 14 (0.27%) VMware NSX
9 13 (0.25%) vCloud
10 11 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
11 9 (0.17%) Postfix
12 7 (0.14%) KVM
13 5 (0.097%) Ceph
14 4 (0.077%) HDFS
14 4 (0.077%) Squid
15 2 (0.039%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.039%) GridGain
16 1 (0.019%) GPFS
16 1 (0.019%) Slurm Workload Manager
16 1 (0.019%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 438 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 392 (7.58%) Terraform
3 108 (2.09%) Grafana
4 101 (1.95%) Ansible
5 50 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
5 50 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 46 (0.89%) Data Guard
7 33 (0.64%) Control-M
8 28 (0.54%) SCOM
9 19 (0.37%) Kibana
10 17 (0.33%) vCenter Server
11 16 (0.31%) Nagios
11 16 (0.31%) Netcool
11 16 (0.31%) ZABBIX
12 15 (0.29%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.25%) OpenView
13 13 (0.25%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Clustering
14 11 (0.21%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
15 10 (0.19%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 909 (17.58%) Oracle
2 839 (16.23%) Microsoft
3 602 (11.64%) Databricks
4 195 (3.77%) Google
5 182 (3.52%) Informatica
6 144 (2.79%) Talend
7 141 (2.73%) SAP
8 131 (2.53%) ServiceNow
9 93 (1.80%) IBM
10 87 (1.68%) Splunk
11 75 (1.45%) Denodo
12 72 (1.39%) VMware
13 70 (1.35%) Salesforce
14 42 (0.81%) Dynatrace
15 40 (0.77%) Citrix
16 39 (0.75%) BMC
17 38 (0.74%) Bloomberg
18 36 (0.70%) Murex
19 35 (0.68%) Adobe
19 35 (0.68%) Sybase