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 29 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,517 3,523 4,236
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.59% 12.08% 9.78%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.02% 35.52% 33.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,079 2,460 3,043
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 £622 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £472 £475
% change year-on-year -0.69% -0.58% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 62 63
10th Percentile £33.78 £22.53 £22.64
25th Percentile £36.44 £30.06 £26.12
Median hourly rate £54.75 £42.66 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +28.35% +0.37% -15.00%
75th Percentile £77.80 £65.46 £55.81
90th Percentile £83.98 £77.10 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £33.51 £42.50
% change year-on-year +81.29% -21.15% +1.08%

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 12,899 9,918 12,750
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.40% 33.99% 29.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,537 6,718 9,057
10th Percentile £355 £359 £350
25th Percentile £413 £419 £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 £769 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £478 £489
% change year-on-year -0.52% -2.35% -2.20%
Number of hourly rates quoted 562 245 480
10th Percentile £41.94 £22.49 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £33.91 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.07
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.05% -1.04%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.88
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -

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 29 April 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 29 April 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 29 April 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 -2.91% 1,631
London 0 2,263 £513 -6.82% 653
UK excluding London -9 1,811 £469 -0.69% 1,347
Work from Home -6 1,334 £500 -3.85% 771
Midlands +4 522 £468 +1.79% 233
North of England -10 477 £450 -5.26% 329
West Midlands +7 413 £460 -0.81% 140
South East -18 320 £500 - 452
North West 0 263 £450 -5.26% 198
South West -7 208 £475 -5.00% 125
Yorkshire -17 192 £460 -3.16% 91
Scotland -5 166 £498 +10.56% 52
East Midlands +6 106 £525 +24.26% 93
East of England -19 91 £500 +6.95% 106
Wales +6 36 £400 -5.88% 35
North East -7 33 £475 +4.40% 42
Northern Ireland -10 12 £400 -2.44% 31

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 (5.76%) Apache Spark
2 175 (3.87%) Apache Airflow
3 171 (3.79%) Apache
4 150 (3.32%) Confluence
5 102 (2.26%) SAS
6 87 (1.93%) SharePoint
7 44 (0.97%) Tomcat
8 43 (0.95%) 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 21 (0.46%) nginx
14 16 (0.35%) Tuxedo
15 14 (0.31%) HCL Notes
15 14 (0.31%) Mendix
15 14 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 304 (6.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 58 (1.28%) Microsoft Office
3 49 (1.08%) MS Visio
4 38 (0.84%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.22%) 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 49 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 25 (0.55%) Aladdin
2 25 (0.55%) NEC Housing
3 23 (0.51%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
4 22 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
4 22 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
5 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
6 18 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
7 17 (0.38%) NetSuite
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
8 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
8 13 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
9 12 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
11 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
12 9 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
12 9 (0.20%) Maximo
13 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,562 (34.58%) Azure
2 1,079 (23.89%) AWS
3 874 (19.35%) Power Platform
4 469 (10.38%) Azure DevOps
5 377 (8.35%) Azure Data Factory
6 360 (7.97%) GCP
7 350 (7.75%) GitHub
8 301 (6.66%) Serverless
9 258 (5.71%) Snowflake
10 253 (5.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 250 (5.53%) Amazon S3
12 186 (4.12%) dbt
13 184 (4.07%) GitHub Actions
14 168 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
15 99 (2.19%) Power Automate
16 95 (2.10%) Azure Functions
17 85 (1.88%) SaaS
18 81 (1.79%) AWS CloudFormation
19 80 (1.77%) Entra ID
20 77 (1.70%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 53 (1.17%) Firewall
2 41 (0.91%) DNS
3 24 (0.53%) Network Security
4 21 (0.46%) TCP/IP
5 20 (0.44%) WAN
6 18 (0.40%) HTTP
7 16 (0.35%) Internet
8 15 (0.33%) LAN
8 15 (0.33%) SSL
9 12 (0.27%) VPN
10 11 (0.24%) SNMP
11 9 (0.20%) DHCP
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
11 9 (0.20%) Wi-Fi
12 7 (0.15%) NAS
12 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
12 7 (0.15%) SAN
12 7 (0.15%) VLAN
12 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
12 7 (0.15%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 796 (17.62%) Power BI
2 573 (12.69%) Data Warehouse
3 551 (12.20%) SQL Server
4 308 (6.82%) Tableau
5 304 (6.73%) PostgreSQL
6 301 (6.66%) Data Lake
7 285 (6.31%) Relational Database
8 275 (6.09%) NoSQL
9 249 (5.51%) Azure SQL Database
10 246 (5.45%) Metadata
11 163 (3.61%) Oracle Database
12 156 (3.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 147 (3.25%) Big Data
14 132 (2.92%) MySQL
15 131 (2.90%) BigQuery
16 130 (2.88%) Amazon Redshift
16 130 (2.88%) Delta Lake
17 113 (2.50%) MongoDB
18 110 (2.44%) Oracle Reports
19 106 (2.35%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 487 (10.78%) Git
2 356 (7.88%) JIRA
3 229 (5.07%) Jenkins
4 193 (4.27%) GitLab
5 69 (1.53%) Selenium
6 61 (1.35%) JUnit
7 53 (1.17%) Postman
8 42 (0.93%) Maven
8 42 (0.93%) MLflow
9 41 (0.91%) Cucumber
10 40 (0.89%) Mockito
11 32 (0.71%) Bitbucket
11 32 (0.71%) Visual Studio
12 31 (0.69%) REST Assured
13 30 (0.66%) ERwin
14 29 (0.64%) JMeter
14 29 (0.64%) Oracle APEX
15 28 (0.62%) SonarQube
16 27 (0.60%) Gradle
16 27 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
General
1 1,216 (26.92%) Social Skills
2 1,190 (26.34%) Finance
3 839 (18.57%) Analytical Skills
4 419 (9.28%) Banking
5 403 (8.92%) Public Sector
6 111 (2.46%) Investment Banking
7 110 (2.44%) Front Office
8 103 (2.28%) Documentation Skills
9 100 (2.21%) Marketing
10 74 (1.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 74 (1.64%) Retail
11 58 (1.28%) Legal
12 56 (1.24%) Financial Institution
13 39 (0.86%) Telecoms
14 38 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 36 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 35 (0.77%) Publishing
17 33 (0.73%) Manufacturing
18 32 (0.71%) Law
18 32 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 983 (21.76%) Developer
2 903 (19.99%) Data Engineer
3 669 (14.81%) Analyst
4 565 (12.51%) Senior
5 314 (6.95%) Lead
6 285 (6.31%) Data Analyst
7 269 (5.96%) Architect
8 221 (4.89%) Business Analyst
9 210 (4.65%) Consultant
10 168 (3.72%) Java Developer
11 150 (3.32%) Senior Data Engineer
12 143 (3.17%) DBA
13 136 (3.01%) Senior Developer
14 128 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
15 124 (2.75%) Software Engineer
16 116 (2.57%) C# Developer
17 108 (2.39%) Data Architect
18 104 (2.30%) Python Developer
19 100 (2.21%) Data Scientist
19 100 (2.21%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 395 (8.74%) .NET
2 342 (7.57%) REST
3 289 (6.40%) PySpark
4 273 (6.04%) Kafka
5 222 (4.91%) React
6 206 (4.56%) Spring
7 198 (4.38%) Spring Boot
8 195 (4.32%) RESTful
9 154 (3.41%) HTML
10 145 (3.21%) JSON
10 145 (3.21%) XML
11 136 (3.01%) CSS
12 131 (2.90%) Pandas
13 119 (2.63%) AngularJS
14 111 (2.46%) Middleware
15 93 (2.06%) .NET Framework
16 92 (2.04%) SOAP
17 90 (1.99%) Node.js
18 83 (1.84%) Web Services
19 79 (1.75%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 290 (6.42%) Cloud Native
2 174 (3.85%) Data Structures
3 157 (3.48%) Legacy Systems
4 140 (3.10%) Product Ownership
5 107 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
6 95 (2.10%) Management Information System
7 84 (1.86%) Derivative
8 79 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
8 79 (1.75%) Onboarding
9 65 (1.44%) Analytical Mindset
10 58 (1.28%) Algorithms
11 57 (1.26%) Enterprise Software
12 55 (1.22%) Fixed Income
13 53 (1.17%) Equities
14 52 (1.15%) Self-Motivation
15 50 (1.11%) Clustering
16 44 (0.97%) Replication
17 43 (0.95%) NHS
18 42 (0.93%) Greenfield Project
19 41 (0.91%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 316 (7.00%) Linux
2 265 (5.87%) Windows
3 214 (4.74%) Unix
4 91 (2.01%) Windows Server
5 30 (0.66%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 23 (0.51%) AIX
7 17 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
9 10 (0.22%) Windows 10
9 10 (0.22%) Windows Server 2008
10 9 (0.20%) Solaris
10 9 (0.20%) VMS
11 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
11 7 (0.15%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Android
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.044%) CentOS
14 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.022%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,215 (26.90%) CI/CD
2 1,166 (25.81%) Agile
3 1,155 (25.57%) Analytics
4 1,132 (25.06%) Data Modelling
5 1,054 (23.33%) ETL
6 1,030 (22.80%) Business Intelligence
7 1,026 (22.71%) DevOps
8 917 (20.30%) Problem-Solving
9 845 (18.71%) Data Pipeline
10 711 (15.74%) Data Engineering
11 569 (12.60%) Data Governance
12 568 (12.57%) Migration
13 561 (12.42%) AI
14 536 (11.87%) Validation
15 437 (9.67%) Decision-Making
16 424 (9.39%) Test Automation
17 410 (9.08%) Data Analysis
17 410 (9.08%) Performance Tuning
18 393 (8.70%) Microservices
19 383 (8.48%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,727 (38.23%) Python
2 620 (13.73%) Java
3 485 (10.74%) C#
4 339 (7.50%) JavaScript
5 333 (7.37%) PL/SQL
6 205 (4.54%) T-SQL
7 197 (4.36%) PowerShell
8 150 (3.32%) TypeScript
9 134 (2.97%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 134 (2.97%) R
10 131 (2.90%) Shell Script
11 93 (2.06%) Scala
12 84 (1.86%) Bash
13 79 (1.75%) C++
14 65 (1.44%) Bicep
15 60 (1.33%) VBA
16 46 (1.02%) Perl
17 30 (0.66%) Go
17 30 (0.66%) VB
18 24 (0.53%) C
Qualifications
1 968 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 789 (17.47%) SC Cleared
3 358 (7.93%) Degree
4 121 (2.68%) Computer Science Degree
5 103 (2.28%) BPSS Clearance
6 75 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 67 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 58 (1.28%) DV Cleared
9 51 (1.13%) ISTQB
10 45 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 31 (0.69%) AWS Certification
12 18 (0.40%) PhD
13 17 (0.38%) Oracle Certification
14 15 (0.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 14 (0.31%) CBAP
16 13 (0.29%) DBS Check
17 12 (0.27%) CISSP
18 10 (0.22%) PMI Certification
18 10 (0.22%) PMP
19 9 (0.20%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 821 (18.18%) Data Quality
2 357 (7.90%) QA
3 202 (4.47%) GDPR
4 59 (1.31%) Accessibility
5 39 (0.86%) SLA
6 34 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 28 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 28 (0.62%) PMO
8 19 (0.42%) NIST
9 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 18 (0.40%) PCI DSS
10 16 (0.35%) HIPAA
11 15 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 15 (0.33%) MiFID
11 15 (0.33%) WCAG
12 14 (0.31%) HL7
12 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
13 13 (0.29%) IFRS
14 11 (0.24%) DICOM
14 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 527 (11.67%) Docker
2 109 (2.41%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 32 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
5 27 (0.60%) VMware Infrastructure
6 22 (0.49%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.22%) KVM
7 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
9 8 (0.18%) HDFS
9 8 (0.18%) Postfix
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 5 (0.11%) XenApp
11 5 (0.11%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.066%) Ceph
12 3 (0.066%) Oracle Clusterware
13 2 (0.044%) GridGain
13 2 (0.044%) Squid
13 2 (0.044%) vSphere
14 1 (0.022%) GPFS
Systems Management
1 443 (9.81%) Kubernetes
2 382 (8.46%) Terraform
3 121 (2.68%) Grafana
4 82 (1.82%) Ansible
5 68 (1.51%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.42%) Kibana
10 17 (0.38%) Progress Chef
10 17 (0.38%) SCCM
11 14 (0.31%) Control-M
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
13 10 (0.22%) Nagios
13 10 (0.22%) Netcool
13 10 (0.22%) OpenView
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
13 10 (0.22%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 10 (0.22%) ZABBIX
14 9 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 753 (16.67%) Oracle
2 729 (16.14%) Microsoft
3 559 (12.38%) Databricks
4 170 (3.76%) Google
5 159 (3.52%) Informatica
6 136 (3.01%) ServiceNow
7 118 (2.61%) SAP
7 118 (2.61%) Talend
8 89 (1.97%) Splunk
9 80 (1.77%) IBM
10 70 (1.55%) Salesforce
11 54 (1.20%) Denodo
12 52 (1.15%) Citrix
13 46 (1.02%) VMware
14 43 (0.95%) OpenAI
15 39 (0.86%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.75%) Bloomberg
16 34 (0.75%) MuleSoft
17 29 (0.64%) HP
17 29 (0.64%) Sage