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

6 months to
23 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 13 12
Rank change year-on-year -5 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 5,180 3,770 4,054
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.44% 11.53% 10.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 36.29% 35.04% 33.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,467 2,573 2,863
10th Percentile £350 £325 £350
25th Percentile £413 £404 £415
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -4.76% -
75th Percentile £600 £600 £638
90th Percentile £688 £725 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +1.06% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 95 84 50
10th Percentile £21.79 £27.08 £19.59
25th Percentile £28.25 £33.56 £25.99
Median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year -11.00% +31.58% -17.28%
75th Percentile £70.00 £57.50 £53.25
90th Percentile £77.00 - £60.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £44.50 £50.00 £30.00
% change year-on-year -11.00% +66.67% -34.61%

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 14,273 10,758 12,082
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.02% 32.90% 32.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 9,265 7,103 8,116
10th Percentile £363 £343 £350
25th Percentile £425 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £523 £505 £526
Median % change year-on-year +3.47% -3.90% -4.45%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £650
90th Percentile £725 £738 £775
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £497
% change year-on-year +5.26% -4.50% -0.53%
Number of hourly rates quoted 558 290 340
10th Percentile £26.25 £29.00 £26.93
25th Percentile £45.50 £40.31 £46.18
Median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
Median % change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.59%
75th Percentile £70.00 £67.25 £70.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £78.88 £78.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -5 4,465 £500 - 5,882
London -6 2,501 £525 - 3,275
UK excluding London -7 2,090 £475 +1.06% 3,237
Work from Home -2 1,524 £500 - 2,667
North of England -3 593 £475 +5.56% 867
Midlands -5 455 £469 +1.68% 535
South East -14 451 £475 -2.06% 773
West Midlands -4 352 £469 -6.20% 334
North West +1 289 £500 +12.99% 511
Yorkshire +3 253 £459 -3.42% 265
South West -2 237 £525 +20.00% 321
Scotland -5 204 £430 -8.02% 266
East of England -7 120 £495 -1.49% 238
East Midlands -5 101 £464 +15.54% 201
North East -7 58 £406 -12.63% 96
Wales -7 37 £475 +5.56% 103
Northern Ireland -8 19 £363 -29.27% 161
Channel Islands - 1 £450 -

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
1 255 (4.92%) Apache Airflow
2 228 (4.40%) Confluence
3 212 (4.09%) Apache Spark
4 170 (3.28%) Apache
5 94 (1.81%) SharePoint
6 89 (1.72%) SAS
7 40 (0.77%) Oracle Workflow
8 37 (0.71%) IIS
8 37 (0.71%) WebLogic
9 31 (0.60%) Jupyter
10 26 (0.50%) Microsoft Exchange
11 22 (0.42%) nginx
11 22 (0.42%) Palantir Foundry
12 20 (0.39%) CMS
13 18 (0.35%) Camunda
14 16 (0.31%) ArcGIS
14 16 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 15 (0.29%) WebSphere
16 10 (0.19%) Tomcat
17 9 (0.17%) Appian
Applications
1 305 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 65 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
3 39 (0.75%) Spreadsheet
4 38 (0.73%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 11 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.14%) Notepad++
7 7 (0.14%) Windchill
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
10 2 (0.039%) Mingle
11 1 (0.019%) Adobe XD
11 1 (0.019%) Mozilla Thunderbird
11 1 (0.019%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
2 46 (0.89%) Dynamics CRM
3 30 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
4 29 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 28 (0.54%) Aladdin
6 25 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
7 20 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
8 18 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
9 17 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
10 16 (0.31%) Oracle EBS R12
11 13 (0.25%) Finacle
12 12 (0.23%) Oracle Financials
13 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
13 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
13 11 (0.21%) Oracle Assets
13 11 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
13 11 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
14 10 (0.19%) Oracle FAH
15 9 (0.17%) Maximo
15 9 (0.17%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,582 (30.54%) Azure
2 1,266 (24.44%) AWS
3 968 (18.69%) Power Platform
4 519 (10.02%) GCP
5 417 (8.05%) Azure DevOps
6 404 (7.80%) Snowflake
7 358 (6.91%) GitHub
8 328 (6.33%) Azure Data Factory
9 316 (6.10%) dbt
10 310 (5.98%) Serverless
11 267 (5.15%) Amazon S3
12 207 (4.00%) AWS Lambda
13 204 (3.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
14 173 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
15 111 (2.14%) SaaS
16 110 (2.12%) Power Automate
17 102 (1.97%) PowerApps
18 98 (1.89%) Entra ID
19 92 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
20 90 (1.74%) Azure Databricks
Communications & Networking
1 65 (1.25%) DNS
2 42 (0.81%) Firewall
3 37 (0.71%) HTTP
4 30 (0.58%) SSL
5 23 (0.44%) Internet
5 23 (0.44%) Network Security
6 22 (0.42%) Broadband
7 21 (0.41%) TCP/IP
8 19 (0.37%) VPN
9 16 (0.31%) SNMP
10 15 (0.29%) DHCP
11 14 (0.27%) SSH
12 12 (0.23%) WAN
13 11 (0.21%) Kerberos
14 10 (0.19%) SAN
14 10 (0.19%) WinSCP
15 8 (0.15%) Reverse Proxy
15 8 (0.15%) RTP
16 7 (0.14%) HTTPS
16 7 (0.14%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 890 (17.18%) Power BI
2 716 (13.82%) Data Warehouse
3 651 (12.57%) SQL Server
4 351 (6.78%) Relational Database
5 340 (6.56%) PostgreSQL
6 326 (6.29%) Data Lake
7 291 (5.62%) Metadata
8 287 (5.54%) Tableau
9 249 (4.81%) NoSQL
10 244 (4.71%) Oracle Database
11 212 (4.09%) BigQuery
12 195 (3.76%) Azure SQL Database
13 154 (2.97%) Amazon Redshift
14 146 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 143 (2.76%) Delta Lake
16 134 (2.59%) MySQL
17 124 (2.39%) Amazon Athena
18 120 (2.32%) MongoDB
19 117 (2.26%) Big Data
20 107 (2.07%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 679 (13.11%) Git
2 419 (8.09%) JIRA
3 296 (5.71%) Jenkins
4 254 (4.90%) GitLab
5 103 (1.99%) Selenium
6 94 (1.81%) JUnit
7 86 (1.66%) Maven
8 84 (1.62%) Gradle
9 70 (1.35%) Postman
10 57 (1.10%) Mockito
11 49 (0.95%) Oracle Forms
11 49 (0.95%) SonarQube
12 43 (0.83%) Bitbucket
13 36 (0.69%) Visual Studio
14 35 (0.68%) Zephyr
15 29 (0.56%) MLflow
15 29 (0.56%) REST Assured
16 28 (0.54%) Artifactory
16 28 (0.54%) Team Foundation Server
17 27 (0.52%) JMeter
General
1 1,409 (27.20%) Social Skills
2 1,359 (26.24%) Finance
3 1,072 (20.69%) Analytical Skills
4 591 (11.41%) Banking
5 470 (9.07%) Public Sector
6 160 (3.09%) Marketing
7 149 (2.88%) Retail
8 144 (2.78%) Front Office
9 142 (2.74%) Investment Banking
10 109 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 89 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
12 86 (1.66%) Manufacturing
13 59 (1.14%) Legal
14 54 (1.04%) Financial Institution
15 52 (1.00%) Presentation Skills
16 48 (0.93%) Local Government
17 46 (0.89%) Back Office
18 42 (0.81%) Law
19 41 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
19 41 (0.79%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 1,138 (21.97%) Developer
2 961 (18.55%) Data Engineer
3 775 (14.96%) Analyst
4 743 (14.34%) Senior
5 363 (7.01%) Lead
6 331 (6.39%) Data Analyst
7 263 (5.08%) Architect
8 254 (4.90%) Business Analyst
9 225 (4.34%) Consultant
10 219 (4.23%) Senior Data Engineer
11 208 (4.02%) Java Developer
12 206 (3.98%) DBA
13 184 (3.55%) Senior Developer
14 125 (2.41%) Software Engineer
15 124 (2.39%) Data Architect
15 124 (2.39%) SQL Developer
16 123 (2.37%) SQL DBA
17 121 (2.34%) Python Developer
17 121 (2.34%) Python Engineer
18 119 (2.30%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 501 (9.67%) REST
2 442 (8.53%) .NET
3 407 (7.86%) Terraform
4 346 (6.68%) Kafka
5 345 (6.66%) PySpark
6 290 (5.60%) Spring
7 283 (5.46%) Spring Boot
8 242 (4.67%) React
9 213 (4.11%) HTML
10 210 (4.05%) RESTful
11 200 (3.86%) JSON
12 181 (3.49%) CSS
13 175 (3.38%) XML
14 140 (2.70%) Web Services
15 128 (2.47%) SOAP
16 124 (2.39%) AngularJS
17 113 (2.18%) Middleware
18 105 (2.03%) Pandas
19 93 (1.80%) .NET Framework
20 87 (1.68%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 330 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 281 (5.42%) Data Structures
3 248 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 169 (3.26%) Legacy Systems
5 145 (2.80%) Distributed Systems
6 144 (2.78%) Onboarding
7 139 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
8 109 (2.10%) Management Information System
9 96 (1.85%) AI Agents
10 86 (1.66%) Derivative
11 85 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
12 78 (1.51%) Replication
13 71 (1.37%) Data Protection Act
14 68 (1.31%) Analytical Mindset
15 63 (1.22%) Clustering
16 62 (1.20%) Reference Data
17 59 (1.14%) Algorithms
18 53 (1.02%) Greenfield Project
19 49 (0.95%) Data Centre
19 49 (0.95%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 377 (7.28%) Linux
2 320 (6.18%) Windows
3 255 (4.92%) Unix
4 130 (2.51%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.48%) Solaris
7 12 (0.23%) AIX
7 12 (0.23%) Ubuntu
8 10 (0.19%) VMS
8 10 (0.19%) Windows Server 2019
9 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
10 7 (0.14%) Android
11 6 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 6 (0.12%) Windows 10
11 6 (0.12%) zOS
12 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
13 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2016
14 3 (0.058%) CentOS
14 3 (0.058%) OpenVMS
15 2 (0.039%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,407 (27.16%) Agile
2 1,398 (26.99%) CI/CD
3 1,364 (26.33%) Data Modelling
4 1,283 (24.77%) Analytics
5 1,116 (21.54%) ETL
6 1,109 (21.41%) Business Intelligence
7 1,015 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
8 1,000 (19.31%) Data Pipeline
9 985 (19.02%) DevOps
10 863 (16.66%) Data Engineering
11 846 (16.33%) AI
12 813 (15.69%) Validation
13 776 (14.98%) Migration
14 754 (14.56%) Stakeholder Management
15 611 (11.80%) Test Automation
16 609 (11.76%) Data Governance
17 593 (11.45%) Data Analysis
18 581 (11.22%) Continuous Improvement
19 541 (10.44%) Decision-Making
20 443 (8.55%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,849 (35.69%) Python
2 661 (12.76%) Java
3 460 (8.88%) C#
4 417 (8.05%) PL/SQL
5 414 (7.99%) JavaScript
6 263 (5.08%) PowerShell
7 250 (4.83%) T-SQL
8 201 (3.88%) TypeScript
9 154 (2.97%) Shell Script
10 150 (2.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 122 (2.36%) Bash
12 89 (1.72%) R
13 85 (1.64%) Scala
14 49 (0.95%) C++
15 44 (0.85%) VBA
16 38 (0.73%) Bicep
17 30 (0.58%) Go
18 29 (0.56%) C
18 29 (0.56%) VB.NET
19 28 (0.54%) VB
Qualifications
1 1,110 (21.43%) Security Cleared
2 885 (17.08%) SC Cleared
3 361 (6.97%) Degree
4 167 (3.22%) BPSS Clearance
5 133 (2.57%) DV Cleared
6 126 (2.43%) Computer Science Degree
7 84 (1.62%) Azure Certification
8 60 (1.16%) ISTQB
9 55 (1.06%) Microsoft Certification
10 48 (0.93%) AWS Certification
11 44 (0.85%) Master's Degree
12 19 (0.37%) DBS Check
12 19 (0.37%) ISEB
13 17 (0.33%) ACCA
13 17 (0.33%) CIMA
14 16 (0.31%) CISSP
14 16 (0.31%) Oracle Certification
15 15 (0.29%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
15 15 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 12 (0.23%) FFIEC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1,035 (19.98%) Data Quality
2 420 (8.11%) QA
3 140 (2.70%) GDPR
4 71 (1.37%) Accessibility
5 50 (0.97%) SLA
6 34 (0.66%) ISO 20022
7 28 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
8 23 (0.44%) IFRS
9 22 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 19 (0.37%) NIST
11 18 (0.35%) MiFID
12 13 (0.25%) GMP
12 13 (0.25%) GxP
12 13 (0.25%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 13 (0.25%) PMO
13 12 (0.23%) Disclosure Scotland
14 11 (0.21%) Basel III
14 11 (0.21%) COBIT
14 11 (0.21%) PCI DSS
15 10 (0.19%) 21 CFR Part 11
System Software
1 488 (9.42%) Docker
2 126 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 54 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) Oracle RAC
5 39 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
6 21 (0.41%) 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 5 (0.097%) KVM
12 4 (0.077%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 4 (0.077%) Squid
13 3 (0.058%) GPFS
13 3 (0.058%) NFS
14 2 (0.039%) Ceph
14 2 (0.039%) DFS Replication
14 2 (0.039%) Dovecot
15 1 (0.019%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 416 (8.03%) Kubernetes
2 117 (2.26%) Grafana
3 97 (1.87%) Ansible
4 59 (1.14%) Prometheus
5 48 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
6 45 (0.87%) Data Guard
7 42 (0.81%) Control-M
8 41 (0.79%) SCOM
9 39 (0.75%) Kibana
10 16 (0.31%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
10 16 (0.31%) vCenter Server
11 13 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
12 12 (0.23%) Microsoft Clustering
13 11 (0.21%) Microsoft Intune
13 11 (0.21%) Netcool
14 10 (0.19%) Argo
14 10 (0.19%) Nagios
14 10 (0.19%) Tivoli
14 10 (0.19%) ZABBIX
15 9 (0.17%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 922 (17.80%) Oracle
2 866 (16.72%) Microsoft
3 651 (12.57%) Databricks
4 234 (4.52%) Google
5 152 (2.93%) Informatica
6 144 (2.78%) SAP
7 123 (2.37%) Talend
8 112 (2.16%) IBM
9 96 (1.85%) ServiceNow
10 89 (1.72%) Splunk
11 85 (1.64%) Salesforce
12 73 (1.41%) VMware
13 58 (1.12%) Denodo
14 40 (0.77%) Adobe
15 39 (0.75%) Bloomberg
15 39 (0.75%) Foundry
16 37 (0.71%) OpenAI
17 36 (0.69%) Alteryx
17 36 (0.69%) Dynatrace
17 36 (0.69%) Sybase