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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,692 3,553 4,230
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.55% 12.31% 9.86%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.42% 36.01% 32.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,150 2,504 3,066
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £410 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -1.96%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £470 £470
% change year-on-year -0.21% - -4.08%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 62 60
10th Percentile £24.97 £19.17 £22.61
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.06 £29.34
Median hourly rate £49.36 £38.85 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +27.07% -8.60% -15.00%
75th Percentile £71.88 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £75.88 £62.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +47.45% -20.21% -13.76%

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 13,246 9,867 12,901
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.95% 34.17% 30.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,666 6,714 9,166
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £650
90th Percentile £713 £760 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £475 £487
% change year-on-year +1.32% -2.41% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 571 220 516
10th Percentile £36.25 £26.93 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.25
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -7.63% -0.40%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -

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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -3 4,119 £500 - 1,694
London 0 2,297 £525 -2.05% 745
UK excluding London -11 1,923 £469 -0.21% 1,284
Work from Home -6 1,390 £500 - 843
Midlands +2 531 £468 +4.82% 176
North of England -9 498 £460 -3.16% 361
West Midlands +5 425 £460 - 98
South East -16 383 £475 -1.76% 425
North West -8 254 £460 -3.16% 210
Yorkshire -15 210 £475 -2.56% 101
South West -4 203 £475 - 117
Scotland -4 179 £475 +5.56% 49
East Midlands -2 102 £525 +34.62% 78
East of England -17 102 £495 +0.25% 97
North East -5 46 £438 -5.41% 55
Wales +10 43 £450 +24.14% 47
Northern Ireland -12 12 £430 +1.18% 32

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
1 258 (5.50%) Apache Spark
2 189 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
3 182 (3.88%) Apache
4 169 (3.60%) Confluence
5 106 (2.26%) SAS
6 74 (1.58%) SharePoint
7 41 (0.87%) Tomcat
7 41 (0.87%) WebLogic
8 33 (0.70%) Oracle Workflow
9 32 (0.68%) IIS
10 28 (0.60%) WebSphere
11 22 (0.47%) Apache Geronimo
11 22 (0.47%) Apache ServiceMix
11 22 (0.47%) Jupyter
11 22 (0.47%) Red Hat Fuse
12 20 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
13 19 (0.40%) nginx
14 16 (0.34%) Appian
14 16 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.34%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 301 (6.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 48 (1.02%) Microsoft Office
3 46 (0.98%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 6 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
9 5 (0.11%) Notion
10 3 (0.064%) Oracle Smart View
11 2 (0.043%) Trello
12 1 (0.021%) InDesign
12 1 (0.021%) Mingle
12 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
2 31 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 27 (0.58%) Aladdin
4 26 (0.55%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.49%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.40%) Oracle Payables
8 16 (0.34%) Remedy ITSM
9 15 (0.32%) Oracle Receivables
10 13 (0.28%) Oracle General Ledger
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 12 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 11 (0.23%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.19%) Endur
13 9 (0.19%) Findur
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
15 7 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,576 (33.59%) Azure
2 1,136 (24.21%) AWS
3 908 (19.35%) Power Platform
4 463 (9.87%) Azure DevOps
5 383 (8.16%) GCP
6 371 (7.91%) Azure Data Factory
7 357 (7.61%) GitHub
8 291 (6.20%) Serverless
9 284 (6.05%) Snowflake
10 251 (5.35%) Amazon S3
11 239 (5.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 207 (4.41%) dbt
13 190 (4.05%) GitHub Actions
14 173 (3.69%) AWS Lambda
15 91 (1.94%) SaaS
16 89 (1.90%) Power Automate
17 83 (1.77%) Azure Functions
18 79 (1.68%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 78 (1.66%) Entra ID
20 76 (1.62%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.17%) Firewall
2 53 (1.13%) DNS
3 22 (0.47%) WAN
4 21 (0.45%) SNMP
5 19 (0.40%) Network Security
5 19 (0.40%) SSL
5 19 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 18 (0.38%) HTTP
7 15 (0.32%) Internet
8 14 (0.30%) VPN
9 13 (0.28%) LAN
10 11 (0.23%) Wi-Fi
11 9 (0.19%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.19%) SAN
11 9 (0.19%) Wireshark
12 8 (0.17%) 3GPP
13 7 (0.15%) HTTPS
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 831 (17.71%) Power BI
2 598 (12.75%) Data Warehouse
3 579 (12.34%) SQL Server
4 323 (6.88%) Data Lake
4 323 (6.88%) Tableau
5 307 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
6 298 (6.35%) Relational Database
7 266 (5.67%) NoSQL
8 246 (5.24%) Metadata
9 241 (5.14%) Azure SQL Database
10 176 (3.75%) Oracle Database
11 168 (3.58%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 153 (3.26%) Big Data
12 153 (3.26%) BigQuery
13 136 (2.90%) Delta Lake
14 123 (2.62%) Amazon Redshift
15 122 (2.60%) MySQL
16 112 (2.39%) Oracle Reports
17 111 (2.37%) MongoDB
18 106 (2.26%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 495 (10.55%) Git
2 364 (7.76%) JIRA
3 236 (5.03%) Jenkins
4 230 (4.90%) GitLab
5 68 (1.45%) JUnit
6 65 (1.39%) Selenium
7 56 (1.19%) Postman
8 51 (1.09%) Mockito
9 50 (1.07%) Maven
10 44 (0.94%) Cucumber
11 42 (0.90%) Gradle
12 36 (0.77%) MLflow
13 35 (0.75%) SonarQube
14 34 (0.72%) Visual Studio
15 32 (0.68%) REST Assured
16 30 (0.64%) ERwin
16 30 (0.64%) JMeter
17 27 (0.58%) Bitbucket
18 25 (0.53%) Liquibase
18 25 (0.53%) TeamCity
General
1 1,211 (25.81%) Finance
2 1,207 (25.72%) Social Skills
3 854 (18.20%) Analytical Skills
4 437 (9.31%) Banking
5 411 (8.76%) Public Sector
6 122 (2.60%) Front Office
6 122 (2.60%) Investment Banking
7 117 (2.49%) Marketing
8 98 (2.09%) Documentation Skills
9 85 (1.81%) Retail
10 79 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 63 (1.34%) Financial Institution
12 58 (1.24%) Legal
13 43 (0.92%) Publishing
14 41 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
15 40 (0.85%) Manufacturing
16 36 (0.77%) Law
17 35 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 34 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
19 31 (0.66%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 981 (20.91%) Data Engineer
2 974 (20.76%) Developer
3 668 (14.24%) Analyst
4 590 (12.57%) Senior
5 316 (6.73%) Lead
6 301 (6.42%) Data Analyst
7 278 (5.92%) Architect
8 216 (4.60%) Consultant
9 208 (4.43%) Business Analyst
10 188 (4.01%) Java Developer
11 170 (3.62%) Senior Data Engineer
12 155 (3.30%) DBA
13 138 (2.94%) Senior Developer
14 136 (2.90%) Software Engineer
15 122 (2.60%) Azure Engineer
16 113 (2.41%) C# Developer
16 113 (2.41%) Data Architect
17 107 (2.28%) Python Developer
18 102 (2.17%) Data Scientist
19 99 (2.11%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 406 (8.65%) .NET
2 371 (7.91%) REST
3 306 (6.52%) PySpark
4 293 (6.24%) Kafka
5 231 (4.92%) Spring
6 225 (4.80%) React
7 219 (4.67%) Spring Boot
8 203 (4.33%) RESTful
9 164 (3.50%) HTML
10 159 (3.39%) JSON
11 148 (3.15%) XML
12 141 (3.01%) CSS
13 136 (2.90%) Pandas
14 113 (2.41%) AngularJS
15 108 (2.30%) SOAP
16 106 (2.26%) Middleware
17 98 (2.09%) Web Services
18 90 (1.92%) .NET Framework
19 87 (1.85%) OAuth
20 83 (1.77%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 314 (6.69%) Cloud Native
2 180 (3.84%) Data Structures
3 157 (3.35%) Legacy Systems
4 139 (2.96%) Product Ownership
5 129 (2.75%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.05%) Management Information System
7 93 (1.98%) Derivative
8 87 (1.85%) Onboarding
9 79 (1.68%) Data Protection Act
10 70 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
11 65 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 60 (1.28%) Self-Motivation
13 59 (1.26%) Clustering
14 58 (1.24%) Algorithms
15 53 (1.13%) Equities
15 53 (1.13%) Greenfield Project
16 50 (1.07%) Fixed Income
17 48 (1.02%) Replication
18 45 (0.96%) Low-Code
19 43 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 324 (6.91%) Linux
2 280 (5.97%) Windows
3 222 (4.73%) Unix
4 102 (2.17%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.64%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 24 (0.51%) AIX
7 19 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 12 (0.26%) Solaris
10 11 (0.23%) VMS
10 11 (0.23%) Windows Server 2008
11 9 (0.19%) zOS
12 8 (0.17%) Apple iOS
13 7 (0.15%) Android
13 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
14 4 (0.085%) Oracle Linux
15 3 (0.064%) Windows Server 2012
16 2 (0.043%) Data ONTAP
16 2 (0.043%) HPUX
16 2 (0.043%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,282 (27.32%) CI/CD
2 1,190 (25.36%) Data Modelling
3 1,181 (25.17%) Analytics
4 1,157 (24.66%) Agile
5 1,102 (23.49%) ETL
6 1,046 (22.29%) Business Intelligence
7 1,024 (21.82%) DevOps
8 912 (19.44%) Problem-Solving
9 905 (19.29%) Data Pipeline
10 756 (16.11%) Data Engineering
11 626 (13.34%) AI
12 610 (13.00%) Migration
13 554 (11.81%) Validation
14 550 (11.72%) Data Governance
15 469 (10.00%) Test Automation
16 458 (9.76%) Decision-Making
17 443 (9.44%) Data Analysis
18 429 (9.14%) Performance Tuning
19 426 (9.08%) Microservices
20 409 (8.72%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,775 (37.83%) Python
2 639 (13.62%) Java
3 495 (10.55%) C#
4 343 (7.31%) JavaScript
5 330 (7.03%) PL/SQL
6 237 (5.05%) T-SQL
7 225 (4.80%) PowerShell
8 157 (3.35%) TypeScript
9 138 (2.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 128 (2.73%) R
11 118 (2.51%) Shell Script
12 94 (2.00%) Bash
13 84 (1.79%) C++
14 82 (1.75%) Scala
15 61 (1.30%) Bicep
16 46 (0.98%) VBA
17 37 (0.79%) Perl
18 30 (0.64%) VB
19 27 (0.58%) C
20 26 (0.55%) Go
Qualifications
1 983 (20.95%) Security Cleared
2 796 (16.97%) SC Cleared
3 372 (7.93%) Degree
4 118 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 113 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
6 81 (1.73%) DV Cleared
7 78 (1.66%) Azure Certification
8 67 (1.43%) Master's Degree
9 50 (1.07%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (0.55%) AWS Certification
12 20 (0.43%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.36%) PhD
14 12 (0.26%) CBAP
14 12 (0.26%) CISSP
15 11 (0.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 11 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
16 10 (0.21%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMI Certification
16 10 (0.21%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 851 (18.14%) Data Quality
2 358 (7.63%) QA
3 196 (4.18%) GDPR
4 55 (1.17%) Accessibility
5 46 (0.98%) SLA
6 34 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 31 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.51%) PMO
9 21 (0.45%) NIST
10 19 (0.40%) PCI DSS
11 17 (0.36%) IFRS
12 16 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
12 16 (0.34%) MiFID
13 15 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
13 15 (0.32%) HIPAA
13 15 (0.32%) ISO 20022
14 14 (0.30%) HL7
15 12 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.26%) WCAG
16 11 (0.23%) NCSC
System Software
1 538 (11.47%) Docker
2 108 (2.30%) Active Directory
3 36 (0.77%) VMware Infrastructure
4 35 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
5 34 (0.72%) Oracle RAC
6 22 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 18 (0.38%) VMware ESXi
8 10 (0.21%) KVM
8 10 (0.21%) VMware NSX
9 9 (0.19%) Postfix
9 9 (0.19%) vCloud
10 8 (0.17%) HDFS
11 6 (0.13%) RACF
12 5 (0.11%) Virtual Desktop
13 4 (0.085%) Ceph
13 4 (0.085%) XenApp
13 4 (0.085%) XenDesktop
14 3 (0.064%) Oracle Clusterware
14 3 (0.064%) Squid
15 2 (0.043%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 431 (9.19%) Kubernetes
2 376 (8.01%) Terraform
3 124 (2.64%) Grafana
4 84 (1.79%) Ansible
5 66 (1.41%) Prometheus
6 49 (1.04%) Oracle RMAN
7 36 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 19 (0.40%) Kibana
8 19 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.36%) vCenter Server
10 15 (0.32%) ZABBIX
11 14 (0.30%) Nagios
11 14 (0.30%) Netcool
11 14 (0.30%) Tivoli
12 13 (0.28%) Control-M
12 13 (0.28%) OpenView
12 13 (0.28%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 11 (0.23%) Progress Chef
13 11 (0.23%) SCOM
14 10 (0.21%) SCCM
Vendors
1 783 (16.69%) Oracle
2 731 (15.58%) Microsoft
3 586 (12.49%) Databricks
4 174 (3.71%) Google
5 170 (3.62%) Informatica
6 141 (3.01%) ServiceNow
7 137 (2.92%) Talend
8 117 (2.49%) SAP
9 94 (2.00%) Splunk
10 79 (1.68%) IBM
11 69 (1.47%) Denodo
12 56 (1.19%) Salesforce
12 56 (1.19%) VMware
13 46 (0.98%) Citrix
14 39 (0.83%) Dynatrace
15 32 (0.68%) OpenAI
15 32 (0.68%) Sybase
16 31 (0.66%) Bloomberg
16 31 (0.66%) MuleSoft
17 30 (0.64%) HP