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

6 months to
28 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 12 13
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,664 3,518 4,212
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.55% 12.28% 9.85%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.49% 35.99% 32.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,136 2,478 3,056
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £412 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £530
Median % change year-on-year - -5.66% -0.93%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £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 79 61 60
10th Percentile £25.18 £18.74 £22.74
25th Percentile £34.01 £30.00 £33.04
Median hourly rate £50.00 £38.85 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +28.72% -11.21% -12.50%
75th Percentile £72.25 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £83.75 £76.25 £63.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £50.00 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +47.45% -20.21% -12.12%

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 13,141 9,774 12,842
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 26.91% 34.12% 30.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,582 6,655 9,153
10th Percentile £358 £358 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £630 £650
90th Percentile £713 £763 £763
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £475 £488
% change year-on-year +1.47% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 571 215 505
10th Percentile £36.25 £27.00 £32.25
25th Percentile £53.53 £34.33 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.04% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.75 £70.00
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £65.00 £63.37 £62.50
% change year-on-year +2.57% +1.40% -

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -4 4,098 £500 -0.50% 1,966
London 0 2,284 £523 -2.56% 895
UK excluding London -11 1,914 £469 -0.69% 1,389
Work from Home -6 1,383 £500 - 1,006
Midlands +2 532 £469 +4.22% 193
North of England -9 494 £460 -3.16% 411
West Midlands +6 427 £461 +0.27% 108
South East -16 383 £475 -4.76% 433
North West -4 255 £460 -3.16% 244
Yorkshire -15 207 £475 -2.56% 117
South West -3 205 £475 - 129
Scotland -6 177 £475 +5.56% 59
East Midlands -1 101 £525 +34.27% 85
East of England -15 97 £495 +1.54% 108
North East -9 44 £450 -2.70% 56
Wales +7 43 £450 +24.57% 49
Northern Ireland -11 12 £430 +1.18% 29

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
1 257 (5.51%) Apache Spark
2 184 (3.95%) Apache Airflow
3 178 (3.82%) Apache
4 166 (3.56%) Confluence
5 105 (2.25%) SAS
6 76 (1.63%) SharePoint
7 41 (0.88%) Tomcat
8 40 (0.86%) WebLogic
9 33 (0.71%) IIS
9 33 (0.71%) Oracle Workflow
10 26 (0.56%) WebSphere
11 22 (0.47%) Apache Geronimo
11 22 (0.47%) Apache ServiceMix
11 22 (0.47%) Red Hat Fuse
12 20 (0.43%) Jupyter
12 20 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
13 19 (0.41%) nginx
14 16 (0.34%) Appian
14 16 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
14 16 (0.34%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 300 (6.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 50 (1.07%) Microsoft Office
3 47 (1.01%) MS Visio
4 37 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 28 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.21%) Chatbot
7 7 (0.15%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 5 (0.11%) Notion
9 3 (0.064%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.064%) Trello
10 1 (0.021%) InDesign
10 1 (0.021%) Mingle
10 1 (0.021%) Weka
Business Applications
1 47 (1.01%) Oracle EBS
2 30 (0.64%) Dynamics CRM
3 28 (0.60%) Aladdin
4 26 (0.56%) SAP S/4HANA
5 23 (0.49%) NEC Housing
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle EBS R12
6 20 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
7 19 (0.41%) 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%) NetSuite
11 12 (0.26%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
11 12 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
12 11 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.19%) Endur
13 9 (0.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
14 8 (0.17%) Findur
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle 11i
14 8 (0.17%) Oracle Cash Management
Cloud Services
1 1,578 (33.83%) Azure
2 1,128 (24.19%) AWS
3 906 (19.43%) Power Platform
4 464 (9.95%) Azure DevOps
5 381 (8.17%) GCP
6 375 (8.04%) Azure Data Factory
7 354 (7.59%) GitHub
8 290 (6.22%) Serverless
9 280 (6.00%) Snowflake
10 249 (5.34%) Amazon S3
11 243 (5.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 203 (4.35%) dbt
13 188 (4.03%) GitHub Actions
14 170 (3.64%) AWS Lambda
15 92 (1.97%) Power Automate
16 90 (1.93%) SaaS
17 85 (1.82%) Azure Functions
18 79 (1.69%) Entra ID
18 79 (1.69%) PowerApps
19 77 (1.65%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 55 (1.18%) Firewall
2 51 (1.09%) DNS
3 22 (0.47%) WAN
4 21 (0.45%) SNMP
5 19 (0.41%) HTTP
5 19 (0.41%) Network Security
5 19 (0.41%) SSL
5 19 (0.41%) TCP/IP
6 16 (0.34%) Internet
7 14 (0.30%) VPN
8 13 (0.28%) LAN
9 11 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
10 9 (0.19%) Kerberos
10 9 (0.19%) SAN
10 9 (0.19%) Wireshark
11 8 (0.17%) 3GPP
12 7 (0.15%) HTTPS
12 7 (0.15%) NAS
12 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
12 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 829 (17.77%) Power BI
2 596 (12.78%) Data Warehouse
3 579 (12.41%) SQL Server
4 324 (6.95%) Data Lake
4 324 (6.95%) Tableau
5 301 (6.45%) PostgreSQL
6 297 (6.37%) Relational Database
7 271 (5.81%) NoSQL
8 249 (5.34%) Metadata
9 245 (5.25%) Azure SQL Database
10 174 (3.73%) Oracle Database
11 164 (3.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 153 (3.28%) BigQuery
13 151 (3.24%) Big Data
14 134 (2.87%) Delta Lake
15 123 (2.64%) Amazon Redshift
15 123 (2.64%) MySQL
16 112 (2.40%) MongoDB
17 111 (2.38%) Oracle Reports
18 105 (2.25%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 494 (10.59%) Git
2 357 (7.65%) JIRA
3 236 (5.06%) Jenkins
4 222 (4.76%) GitLab
5 66 (1.42%) JUnit
6 65 (1.39%) Selenium
7 56 (1.20%) Postman
8 50 (1.07%) Maven
8 50 (1.07%) Mockito
9 43 (0.92%) Cucumber
10 41 (0.88%) Gradle
11 36 (0.77%) MLflow
11 36 (0.77%) SonarQube
12 34 (0.73%) Visual Studio
13 32 (0.69%) REST Assured
14 31 (0.66%) ERwin
15 29 (0.62%) JMeter
16 26 (0.56%) Bitbucket
17 25 (0.54%) Oracle Forms
17 25 (0.54%) TeamCity
General
1 1,202 (25.77%) Social Skills
2 1,200 (25.73%) Finance
3 852 (18.27%) Analytical Skills
4 431 (9.24%) Banking
5 412 (8.83%) Public Sector
6 120 (2.57%) Front Office
6 120 (2.57%) Investment Banking
7 115 (2.47%) Marketing
8 97 (2.08%) Documentation Skills
9 81 (1.74%) Retail
10 79 (1.69%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 59 (1.27%) Financial Institution
12 57 (1.22%) Legal
13 42 (0.90%) Publishing
14 39 (0.84%) Manufacturing
14 39 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 35 (0.75%) Law
15 35 (0.75%) Organisational Skills
15 35 (0.75%) Telecoms
16 29 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 972 (20.84%) Data Engineer
2 968 (20.75%) Developer
3 666 (14.28%) Analyst
4 594 (12.74%) Senior
5 315 (6.75%) Lead
6 300 (6.43%) Data Analyst
7 280 (6.00%) Architect
8 212 (4.55%) Consultant
9 208 (4.46%) Business Analyst
10 189 (4.05%) Java Developer
11 169 (3.62%) Senior Data Engineer
12 153 (3.28%) DBA
13 138 (2.96%) Senior Developer
14 137 (2.94%) Software Engineer
15 123 (2.64%) Azure Engineer
16 112 (2.40%) Data Architect
17 111 (2.38%) C# Developer
18 106 (2.27%) Python Developer
19 102 (2.19%) Data Scientist
20 97 (2.08%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 406 (8.70%) .NET
2 367 (7.87%) REST
3 307 (6.58%) PySpark
4 294 (6.30%) Kafka
5 232 (4.97%) Spring
6 224 (4.80%) React
7 220 (4.72%) Spring Boot
8 199 (4.27%) RESTful
9 164 (3.52%) HTML
10 157 (3.37%) JSON
11 146 (3.13%) XML
12 140 (3.00%) CSS
13 135 (2.89%) Pandas
14 115 (2.47%) AngularJS
15 110 (2.36%) SOAP
16 105 (2.25%) Middleware
17 96 (2.06%) Web Services
18 89 (1.91%) .NET Framework
19 87 (1.87%) OAuth
20 79 (1.69%) Node.js
Miscellaneous
1 308 (6.60%) Cloud Native
2 180 (3.86%) Data Structures
3 156 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
4 141 (3.02%) Product Ownership
5 126 (2.70%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.06%) Management Information System
7 93 (1.99%) Derivative
8 87 (1.87%) Onboarding
9 80 (1.72%) Data Protection Act
10 71 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
11 65 (1.39%) Enterprise Software
12 58 (1.24%) Algorithms
12 58 (1.24%) Self-Motivation
13 57 (1.22%) Clustering
14 55 (1.18%) Greenfield Project
15 52 (1.11%) Equities
16 50 (1.07%) Fixed Income
17 47 (1.01%) Replication
18 45 (0.96%) Low-Code
19 43 (0.92%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 325 (6.97%) Linux
2 275 (5.90%) Windows
3 222 (4.76%) Unix
4 100 (2.14%) Windows Server
5 29 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 25 (0.54%) AIX
7 19 (0.41%) Windows Server 2019
8 14 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 11 (0.24%) Solaris
9 11 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
10 10 (0.21%) VMS
11 9 (0.19%) zOS
12 7 (0.15%) Apple iOS
12 7 (0.15%) Windows 10
13 6 (0.13%) Android
14 4 (0.086%) 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 1,267 (27.17%) CI/CD
2 1,185 (25.41%) Data Modelling
3 1,174 (25.17%) Analytics
4 1,146 (24.57%) Agile
5 1,099 (23.56%) ETL
6 1,042 (22.34%) Business Intelligence
7 1,019 (21.85%) DevOps
8 910 (19.51%) Problem-Solving
9 901 (19.32%) Data Pipeline
10 751 (16.10%) Data Engineering
11 619 (13.27%) AI
12 597 (12.80%) Migration
13 554 (11.88%) Data Governance
14 552 (11.84%) Validation
15 462 (9.91%) Test Automation
16 457 (9.80%) Decision-Making
17 438 (9.39%) Data Analysis
18 426 (9.13%) Microservices
19 424 (9.09%) Performance Tuning
20 405 (8.68%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 1,767 (37.89%) Python
2 643 (13.79%) Java
3 493 (10.57%) C#
4 341 (7.31%) JavaScript
5 325 (6.97%) PL/SQL
6 234 (5.02%) T-SQL
7 218 (4.67%) PowerShell
8 154 (3.30%) TypeScript
9 142 (3.04%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 129 (2.77%) R
11 120 (2.57%) Shell Script
12 92 (1.97%) Bash
13 83 (1.78%) Scala
14 82 (1.76%) C++
15 61 (1.31%) Bicep
16 47 (1.01%) VBA
17 39 (0.84%) Perl
18 31 (0.66%) VB
19 26 (0.56%) C
19 26 (0.56%) Go
Qualifications
1 983 (21.08%) Security Cleared
2 792 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 374 (8.02%) Degree
4 121 (2.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 111 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 82 (1.76%) DV Cleared
7 79 (1.69%) Azure Certification
8 66 (1.42%) Master's Degree
9 52 (1.11%) ISTQB
10 41 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
11 26 (0.56%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.41%) DBS Check
13 17 (0.36%) PhD
14 13 (0.28%) CBAP
15 12 (0.26%) CISSP
16 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
16 11 (0.24%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
16 11 (0.24%) Oracle Certification
17 10 (0.21%) PMI Certification
17 10 (0.21%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 854 (18.31%) Data Quality
2 358 (7.68%) QA
3 196 (4.20%) GDPR
4 55 (1.18%) Accessibility
5 46 (0.99%) SLA
6 34 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 31 (0.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 24 (0.51%) PMO
9 21 (0.45%) NIST
10 19 (0.41%) 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
14 14 (0.30%) HL7
14 14 (0.30%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.26%) Solvency II
15 12 (0.26%) WCAG
16 11 (0.24%) DICOM
System Software
1 532 (11.41%) Docker
2 112 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
3 35 (0.75%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (0.73%) Oracle RAC
5 22 (0.47%) Hyper-V
6 17 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
7 10 (0.21%) KVM
8 9 (0.19%) Postfix
8 9 (0.19%) Virtual Desktop
8 9 (0.19%) VMware NSX
9 8 (0.17%) HDFS
9 8 (0.17%) vCloud
10 6 (0.13%) RACF
11 4 (0.086%) Ceph
11 4 (0.086%) XenApp
11 4 (0.086%) XenDesktop
12 3 (0.064%) Oracle Clusterware
12 3 (0.064%) Squid
13 2 (0.043%) Apache ZooKeeper
Systems Management
1 429 (9.20%) Kubernetes
2 373 (8.00%) Terraform
3 125 (2.68%) Grafana
4 83 (1.78%) Ansible
5 67 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 49 (1.05%) Oracle RMAN
7 36 (0.77%) Data Guard
8 20 (0.43%) Single Sign-On
9 19 (0.41%) Kibana
10 16 (0.34%) vCenter Server
11 15 (0.32%) ZABBIX
12 14 (0.30%) Nagios
12 14 (0.30%) Netcool
12 14 (0.30%) Tivoli
13 13 (0.28%) Control-M
13 13 (0.28%) OpenView
13 13 (0.28%) Tivoli Monitoring
14 12 (0.26%) Progress Chef
15 11 (0.24%) SCCM
16 10 (0.21%) SCOM
Vendors
1 771 (16.53%) Oracle
2 732 (15.69%) Microsoft
3 587 (12.59%) Databricks
4 174 (3.73%) Google
5 170 (3.64%) Informatica
6 142 (3.04%) ServiceNow
7 134 (2.87%) Talend
8 117 (2.51%) SAP
9 94 (2.02%) Splunk
10 78 (1.67%) IBM
11 66 (1.42%) Denodo
12 57 (1.22%) Salesforce
13 55 (1.18%) VMware
14 45 (0.96%) Citrix
15 39 (0.84%) Dynatrace
16 32 (0.69%) MuleSoft
16 32 (0.69%) OpenAI
16 32 (0.69%) Sybase
17 31 (0.66%) Bloomberg
18 30 (0.64%) HP