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

6 months to
2 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,121 3,767 4,078
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.56% 11.58% 10.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.55% 35.27% 33.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,435 2,586 2,941
10th Percentile £358 £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 £474 £469 £475
% change year-on-year +1.07% -1.26% -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 14,011 10,681 12,215
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.15% 32.84% 31.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,112 7,106 8,422
10th Percentile £363 £341 £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 £742 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 525 298 357
10th Percentile £28.00 £29.00 £30.00
25th Percentile £48.00 £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 £67.44 £70.00
90th Percentile £78.45 £79.13 £78.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% -3.85% +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 2 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 2 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 2 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 4,450 £500 - 4,956
London -6 2,483 £525 - 3,227
UK excluding London -8 2,083 £474 +1.07% 2,397
Work from Home -4 1,518 £500 - 2,031
North of England -1 593 £475 +2.70% 602
South East -9 466 £490 -2.00% 653
Midlands -4 465 £469 +4.22% 325
West Midlands -3 362 £469 -1.26% 179
North West 0 301 £478 +2.80% 358
Yorkshire +4 251 £475 +5.56% 151
South West -2 227 £513 +20.59% 296
Scotland -5 188 £428 -7.57% 190
East of England -5 118 £495 -1.49% 185
East Midlands -5 100 £465 +20.00% 145
North East -18 50 £413 -11.29% 97
Wales -9 39 £475 +6.74% 66
Northern Ireland -13 16 £348 -32.05% 107
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
1 233 (4.55%) Apache Airflow
2 216 (4.22%) Confluence
3 212 (4.14%) Apache Spark
4 176 (3.44%) Apache
5 91 (1.78%) SAS
6 89 (1.74%) SharePoint
7 45 (0.88%) Oracle Workflow
8 38 (0.74%) IIS
9 29 (0.57%) WebLogic
10 28 (0.55%) Jupyter
11 26 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
12 22 (0.43%) nginx
12 22 (0.43%) Palantir Foundry
13 19 (0.37%) CMS
13 19 (0.37%) WebSphere
14 18 (0.35%) Camunda
15 16 (0.31%) Tomcat
16 14 (0.27%) ArcGIS
17 9 (0.18%) Oracle SOA Suite
18 8 (0.16%) Appian
Applications
1 309 (6.03%) 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 (0.20%) 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 (0.059%) CPLEX
9 3 (0.059%) Windchill
10 2 (0.039%) Mingle
11 1 (0.020%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.020%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.020%) Oracle Smart View
11 1 (0.020%) Weka
Business Applications
1 48 (0.94%) Oracle EBS
2 46 (0.90%) Dynamics CRM
3 32 (0.62%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.57%) Aladdin
5 27 (0.53%) Oracle Payables
6 25 (0.49%) Oracle ERP
7 24 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
8 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 15 (0.29%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
11 12 (0.23%) Finacle
11 12 (0.23%) Oracle Assets
12 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
12 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
13 10 (0.20%) NetSuite
13 10 (0.20%) Oracle Financials
13 10 (0.20%) Salesforce CRM
14 8 (0.16%) Findur
14 8 (0.16%) Oracle FAH
14 8 (0.16%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,618 (31.60%) Azure
2 1,227 (23.96%) AWS
3 955 (18.65%) Power Platform
4 469 (9.16%) GCP
5 459 (8.96%) Azure DevOps
6 371 (7.24%) Snowflake
7 369 (7.21%) GitHub
8 336 (6.56%) Azure Data Factory
9 313 (6.11%) Serverless
10 289 (5.64%) dbt
11 244 (4.76%) Amazon S3
12 210 (4.10%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 204 (3.98%) AWS Lambda
14 179 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
15 112 (2.19%) SaaS
16 107 (2.09%) Power Automate
17 100 (1.95%) PowerApps
18 95 (1.86%) Azure Databricks
19 90 (1.76%) Entra ID
20 89 (1.74%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 71 (1.39%) DNS
2 48 (0.94%) Firewall
3 35 (0.68%) HTTP
4 33 (0.64%) SSL
5 24 (0.47%) Network Security
6 23 (0.45%) TCP/IP
7 21 (0.41%) SNMP
8 20 (0.39%) Internet
8 20 (0.39%) VPN
9 18 (0.35%) Broadband
9 18 (0.35%) DHCP
10 17 (0.33%) WAN
11 16 (0.31%) SSH
12 11 (0.21%) HTTPS
13 10 (0.20%) WinSCP
14 9 (0.18%) Kerberos
14 9 (0.18%) SAN
14 9 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
15 8 (0.16%) RTP
15 8 (0.16%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 877 (17.13%) Power BI
2 719 (14.04%) Data Warehouse
3 650 (12.69%) SQL Server
4 352 (6.87%) Relational Database
5 325 (6.35%) PostgreSQL
6 322 (6.29%) Data Lake
7 294 (5.74%) Tableau
8 290 (5.66%) Metadata
9 254 (4.96%) NoSQL
10 232 (4.53%) Oracle Database
11 207 (4.04%) Azure SQL Database
12 186 (3.63%) BigQuery
13 157 (3.07%) Amazon Redshift
14 152 (2.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 148 (2.89%) Delta Lake
16 128 (2.50%) MySQL
17 123 (2.40%) Big Data
18 120 (2.34%) MongoDB
19 113 (2.21%) Oracle Reports
20 109 (2.13%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 621 (12.13%) Git
2 401 (7.83%) JIRA
3 291 (5.68%) Jenkins
4 239 (4.67%) GitLab
5 93 (1.82%) Selenium
6 87 (1.70%) JUnit
7 79 (1.54%) Gradle
8 75 (1.46%) Maven
9 64 (1.25%) Postman
10 56 (1.09%) Mockito
11 51 (1.00%) Oracle Forms
12 45 (0.88%) SonarQube
13 41 (0.80%) Visual Studio
14 40 (0.78%) JMeter
15 39 (0.76%) Bitbucket
16 34 (0.66%) MLflow
17 32 (0.62%) Zephyr
18 29 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
19 28 (0.55%) Liquibase
20 26 (0.51%) Artifactory
General
1 1,386 (27.07%) Social Skills
2 1,301 (25.41%) Finance
3 1,070 (20.89%) Analytical Skills
4 537 (10.49%) Banking
5 471 (9.20%) Public Sector
6 153 (2.99%) Marketing
7 148 (2.89%) Front Office
8 141 (2.75%) Retail
9 140 (2.73%) Investment Banking
10 101 (1.97%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 92 (1.80%) Documentation Skills
12 74 (1.45%) Manufacturing
13 56 (1.09%) Financial Institution
14 55 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 54 (1.05%) Legal
16 44 (0.86%) Telecoms
17 43 (0.84%) Local Government
17 43 (0.84%) Organisational Skills
18 40 (0.78%) Back Office
18 40 (0.78%) Law
Job Titles
1 1,113 (21.73%) Developer
2 953 (18.61%) Data Engineer
3 772 (15.08%) Analyst
4 718 (14.02%) Senior
5 365 (7.13%) Lead
6 331 (6.46%) Data Analyst
7 273 (5.33%) Architect
8 250 (4.88%) Business Analyst
8 250 (4.88%) Consultant
9 211 (4.12%) DBA
10 206 (4.02%) Senior Data Engineer
11 200 (3.91%) Java Developer
12 177 (3.46%) Senior Developer
13 134 (2.62%) Software Engineer
14 127 (2.48%) SQL DBA
15 124 (2.42%) Data Architect
15 124 (2.42%) Python Engineer
15 124 (2.42%) SQL Developer
16 119 (2.32%) Full-Stack Developer
17 116 (2.27%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 466 (9.10%) REST
2 444 (8.67%) .NET
3 393 (7.67%) Terraform
4 351 (6.85%) PySpark
5 344 (6.72%) Kafka
6 277 (5.41%) Spring
7 267 (5.21%) Spring Boot
8 249 (4.86%) React
9 214 (4.18%) RESTful
10 209 (4.08%) JSON
11 202 (3.94%) HTML
12 189 (3.69%) XML
13 172 (3.36%) CSS
14 137 (2.68%) Web Services
15 123 (2.40%) AngularJS
16 117 (2.28%) SOAP
17 116 (2.27%) Middleware
18 111 (2.17%) Pandas
19 95 (1.86%) .NET Framework
20 89 (1.74%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 334 (6.52%) Cloud Native
2 268 (5.23%) Data Structures
3 224 (4.37%) Product Ownership
4 172 (3.36%) Legacy Systems
5 146 (2.85%) Distributed Systems
6 131 (2.56%) Onboarding
7 120 (2.34%) Enterprise Software
8 105 (2.05%) Management Information System
9 89 (1.74%) Derivative
10 82 (1.60%) Self-Motivation
11 78 (1.52%) AI Agents
11 78 (1.52%) Replication
12 69 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
13 67 (1.31%) Data Protection Act
14 63 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 60 (1.17%) Clustering
16 58 (1.13%) Reference Data
17 56 (1.09%) Fixed Income
18 51 (1.00%) Greenfield Project
19 50 (0.98%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 370 (7.23%) Linux
2 317 (6.19%) Windows
3 247 (4.82%) Unix
4 127 (2.48%) Windows Server
5 25 (0.49%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 19 (0.37%) Solaris
7 17 (0.33%) AIX
8 13 (0.25%) VMS
9 10 (0.20%) Ubuntu
9 10 (0.20%) 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 (0.098%) 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 (0.059%) OpenVMS
16 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,379 (26.93%) CI/CD
2 1,375 (26.85%) Agile
3 1,339 (26.15%) Data Modelling
4 1,247 (24.35%) Analytics
5 1,115 (21.77%) ETL
6 1,102 (21.52%) Business Intelligence
7 1,019 (19.90%) DevOps
8 986 (19.25%) Problem-Solving
9 985 (19.23%) Data Pipeline
10 846 (16.52%) Data Engineering
11 789 (15.41%) AI
12 762 (14.88%) Validation
13 753 (14.70%) Migration
14 665 (12.99%) Stakeholder Management
15 592 (11.56%) Data Governance
16 572 (11.17%) Test Automation
17 554 (10.82%) Data Analysis
18 530 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
19 515 (10.06%) Decision-Making
20 428 (8.36%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,833 (35.79%) Python
2 659 (12.87%) Java
3 473 (9.24%) C#
4 411 (8.03%) PL/SQL
5 398 (7.77%) JavaScript
6 271 (5.29%) PowerShell
7 257 (5.02%) T-SQL
8 202 (3.94%) TypeScript
9 151 (2.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 150 (2.93%) Shell Script
11 115 (2.25%) Bash
12 98 (1.91%) R
13 75 (1.46%) Scala
14 57 (1.11%) C++
15 44 (0.86%) VBA
16 43 (0.84%) Bicep
17 28 (0.55%) C
17 28 (0.55%) VB.NET
18 27 (0.53%) VB
19 26 (0.51%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,104 (21.56%) Security Cleared
2 889 (17.36%) SC Cleared
3 359 (7.01%) Degree
4 153 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
5 133 (2.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 126 (2.46%) DV Cleared
7 80 (1.56%) Azure Certification
8 65 (1.27%) ISTQB
9 48 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
10 46 (0.90%) Master's Degree
11 42 (0.82%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.37%) ISEB
12 19 (0.37%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 18 (0.35%) CISSP
13 18 (0.35%) DBS Check
14 14 (0.27%) ACCA
14 14 (0.27%) CIMA
14 14 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
15 12 (0.23%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 12 (0.23%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 984 (19.21%) Data Quality
2 410 (8.01%) QA
3 157 (3.07%) GDPR
4 68 (1.33%) Accessibility
5 47 (0.92%) SLA
6 32 (0.62%) ISO 20022
7 28 (0.55%) 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 17 (0.33%) MiFID
13 15 (0.29%) PMO
14 13 (0.25%) GMP
14 13 (0.25%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.23%) GxP
15 12 (0.23%) PCI DSS
16 11 (0.21%) COBIT
16 11 (0.21%) Disclosure Scotland
17 10 (0.20%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 493 (9.63%) Docker
2 133 (2.60%) Active Directory
3 60 (1.17%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
5 42 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
6 24 (0.47%) Hyper-V
7 19 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
8 16 (0.31%) vCloud
8 16 (0.31%) VMware NSX
9 15 (0.29%) Virtual Desktop
10 7 (0.14%) Postfix
11 6 (0.12%) Squid
12 5 (0.098%) Ceph
13 4 (0.078%) KVM
14 3 (0.059%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 2 (0.039%) DFS Replication
15 2 (0.039%) Dovecot
15 2 (0.039%) GPFS
15 2 (0.039%) GridGain
16 1 (0.020%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 408 (7.97%) Kubernetes
2 104 (2.03%) Grafana
3 103 (2.01%) Ansible
4 50 (0.98%) Prometheus
5 48 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
6 46 (0.90%) Data Guard
7 43 (0.84%) Control-M
8 40 (0.78%) SCOM
9 23 (0.45%) Kibana
10 16 (0.31%) vCenter Server
11 15 (0.29%) Nagios
11 15 (0.29%) Netcool
11 15 (0.29%) ZABBIX
12 14 (0.27%) Tivoli
13 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
13 12 (0.23%) OpenView
13 12 (0.23%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 12 (0.23%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
15 10 (0.20%) ITRS Geneos
Vendors
1 908 (17.73%) Oracle
2 862 (16.83%) Microsoft
3 634 (12.38%) Databricks
4 197 (3.85%) Google
5 166 (3.24%) Informatica
6 142 (2.77%) SAP
7 124 (2.42%) Talend
8 105 (2.05%) ServiceNow
9 103 (2.01%) IBM
10 85 (1.66%) Splunk
11 79 (1.54%) VMware
12 76 (1.48%) Salesforce
13 61 (1.19%) Denodo
14 41 (0.80%) Bloomberg
14 41 (0.80%) Dynatrace
15 39 (0.76%) BMC
15 39 (0.76%) Sybase
16 36 (0.70%) Foundry
16 36 (0.70%) Murex
17 35 (0.68%) Alteryx