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

6 months to
24 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 14
Rank change year-on-year -5 +2 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 4,520 3,564 4,258
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 9.73% 12.07% 9.75%
As % of the Programming Languages category 35.17% 35.47% 33.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,078 2,485 3,058
10th Percentile £350 £354 £355
25th Percentile £412 £410 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £535
Median % change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.47%
75th Percentile £588 £620 £638
90th Percentile £688 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £469 £472 £475
% change year-on-year -0.53% -0.74% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 75 64 65
10th Percentile £30.73 £22.64 £22.61
25th Percentile £36.38 £30.19 £26.25
Median hourly rate £52.50 £45.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.38% +7.06% -16.26%
75th Percentile £75.84 £65.71 £54.13
90th Percentile £83.90 £76.91 £62.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £60.75 £33.91 £42.50
% change year-on-year +79.15% -20.21% +4.71%

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 12,852 10,048 12,818
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 27.66% 34.02% 29.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 8,516 6,802 9,113
10th Percentile £352 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £418 £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 £763 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £488
% change year-on-year - -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 556 244 481
10th Percentile £41.76 £22.49 £31.25
25th Percentile £54.55 £34.73 £46.25
Median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -1.54%
75th Percentile £70.00 £68.00 £68.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £85.00 £78.75
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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -4 4,004 £500 -2.91% 1,720
London 0 2,275 £513 -6.82% 654
UK excluding London -8 1,804 £469 -0.53% 1,467
Work from Home -6 1,333 £500 -3.85% 1,136
Midlands +7 517 £465 +2.57% 238
North of England -8 473 £450 -5.26% 342
West Midlands +8 409 £460 -0.65% 136
South East -18 321 £500 - 506
North West -1 263 £450 -5.26% 194
South West -6 217 £475 -5.00% 142
Yorkshire -18 188 £463 -5.13% 102
Scotland -3 161 £485 +7.78% 54
East Midlands +4 105 £525 +32.74% 102
East of England -17 89 £503 +11.67% 132
Wales +5 36 £400 -5.88% 31
North East -7 33 £475 +4.40% 49
Northern Ireland -9 13 £400 -2.44% 35

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 (5.75%) Apache Spark
2 182 (4.03%) Apache Airflow
3 179 (3.96%) Apache
4 138 (3.05%) Confluence
5 95 (2.10%) SAS
6 88 (1.95%) SharePoint
7 49 (1.08%) WebLogic
8 44 (0.97%) Tomcat
9 33 (0.73%) 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 22 (0.49%) 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
1 298 (6.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 60 (1.33%) Microsoft Office
3 48 (1.06%) MS Visio
4 39 (0.86%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 24 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
6 10 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
7 7 (0.15%) Notepad++
8 6 (0.13%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.066%) Notion
9 3 (0.066%) Oracle Smart View
9 3 (0.066%) Trello
10 1 (0.022%) InDesign
10 1 (0.022%) Mingle
10 1 (0.022%) SPSS
10 1 (0.022%) Weka
Business Applications
1 49 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 27 (0.60%) Aladdin
3 24 (0.53%) NEC Housing
4 23 (0.51%) SAP S/4HANA
5 22 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
5 22 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
5 22 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
6 20 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
7 17 (0.38%) Oracle General Ledger
8 16 (0.35%) NetSuite
8 16 (0.35%) Oracle ERP
9 13 (0.29%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
10 12 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
10 12 (0.27%) Remedy ITSM
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle 11i
12 10 (0.22%) Oracle Cash Management
13 9 (0.20%) Advent Geneva
13 9 (0.20%) Maximo
14 8 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
Cloud Services
1 1,563 (34.58%) Azure
2 1,095 (24.23%) AWS
3 867 (19.18%) Power Platform
4 468 (10.35%) Azure DevOps
5 375 (8.30%) Azure Data Factory
6 358 (7.92%) GCP
7 346 (7.65%) GitHub
8 302 (6.68%) Serverless
9 262 (5.80%) Snowflake
10 253 (5.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 251 (5.55%) Amazon S3
12 189 (4.18%) dbt
13 180 (3.98%) GitHub Actions
14 168 (3.72%) AWS Lambda
15 102 (2.26%) Power Automate
16 96 (2.12%) Azure Functions
17 88 (1.95%) SaaS
18 83 (1.84%) AWS CloudFormation
19 82 (1.81%) Entra ID
20 81 (1.79%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 54 (1.19%) Firewall
2 41 (0.91%) DNS
3 25 (0.55%) Network Security
4 22 (0.49%) HTTP
5 21 (0.46%) TCP/IP
6 20 (0.44%) WAN
7 15 (0.33%) Internet
7 15 (0.33%) LAN
8 14 (0.31%) SSL
9 12 (0.27%) VPN
10 11 (0.24%) SNMP
11 9 (0.20%) DHCP
11 9 (0.20%) Kerberos
12 8 (0.18%) Wi-Fi
13 7 (0.15%) NAS
13 7 (0.15%) PuTTY
13 7 (0.15%) SAN
13 7 (0.15%) VLAN
13 7 (0.15%) WinSCP
14 6 (0.13%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 791 (17.50%) Power BI
2 572 (12.65%) Data Warehouse
3 547 (12.10%) SQL Server
4 311 (6.88%) Tableau
5 305 (6.75%) PostgreSQL
6 295 (6.53%) Data Lake
7 286 (6.33%) Relational Database
8 282 (6.24%) NoSQL
9 249 (5.51%) Azure SQL Database
10 245 (5.42%) Metadata
11 161 (3.56%) Oracle Database
12 156 (3.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 148 (3.27%) Big Data
14 138 (3.05%) MySQL
15 132 (2.92%) Amazon Redshift
16 131 (2.90%) BigQuery
17 128 (2.83%) Delta Lake
18 117 (2.59%) MongoDB
19 109 (2.41%) Oracle Reports
20 101 (2.23%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 487 (10.77%) Git
2 351 (7.77%) JIRA
3 227 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 187 (4.14%) GitLab
5 70 (1.55%) Selenium
6 63 (1.39%) JUnit
7 53 (1.17%) Postman
8 41 (0.91%) Maven
8 41 (0.91%) MLflow
9 40 (0.88%) Cucumber
10 38 (0.84%) Mockito
11 37 (0.82%) Oracle APEX
12 32 (0.71%) Visual Studio
13 31 (0.69%) Bitbucket
13 31 (0.69%) ERwin
13 31 (0.69%) REST Assured
14 29 (0.64%) JMeter
15 27 (0.60%) SonarQube
16 26 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
17 25 (0.55%) Cypress.io
General
1 1,232 (27.26%) Social Skills
2 1,187 (26.26%) Finance
3 846 (18.72%) Analytical Skills
4 416 (9.20%) Banking
5 404 (8.94%) Public Sector
6 114 (2.52%) Investment Banking
7 111 (2.46%) Front Office
8 106 (2.35%) Documentation Skills
9 100 (2.21%) Marketing
10 76 (1.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 73 (1.62%) Retail
12 57 (1.26%) Financial Institution
12 57 (1.26%) Legal
13 40 (0.88%) Telecoms
14 38 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
15 36 (0.80%) Organisational Skills
16 35 (0.77%) Publishing
17 34 (0.75%) Manufacturing
18 33 (0.73%) Law
19 32 (0.71%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 983 (21.75%) Developer
2 897 (19.85%) Data Engineer
3 670 (14.82%) Analyst
4 564 (12.48%) Senior
5 311 (6.88%) Lead
6 287 (6.35%) Data Analyst
7 271 (6.00%) Architect
8 223 (4.93%) Business Analyst
9 213 (4.71%) Consultant
10 169 (3.74%) Java Developer
11 144 (3.19%) Senior Data Engineer
12 142 (3.14%) DBA
13 139 (3.08%) Senior Developer
14 129 (2.85%) Azure Engineer
15 125 (2.77%) Software Engineer
16 115 (2.54%) C# Developer
17 108 (2.39%) Data Architect
18 106 (2.35%) Python Developer
19 100 (2.21%) Full-Stack Developer
20 98 (2.17%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 392 (8.67%) .NET
2 348 (7.70%) REST
3 287 (6.35%) PySpark
4 271 (6.00%) Kafka
5 218 (4.82%) React
6 203 (4.49%) Spring
7 198 (4.38%) RESTful
8 190 (4.20%) Spring Boot
9 161 (3.56%) HTML
10 157 (3.47%) XML
11 147 (3.25%) JSON
12 141 (3.12%) CSS
13 130 (2.88%) Pandas
14 119 (2.63%) AngularJS
15 109 (2.41%) Middleware
16 96 (2.12%) SOAP
17 93 (2.06%) Node.js
18 89 (1.97%) .NET Framework
19 84 (1.86%) Web Services
20 78 (1.73%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 284 (6.28%) Cloud Native
2 173 (3.83%) Data Structures
3 158 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
4 137 (3.03%) Product Ownership
5 107 (2.37%) Distributed Systems
6 96 (2.12%) Management Information System
7 85 (1.88%) Derivative
8 79 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
9 74 (1.64%) Onboarding
10 66 (1.46%) Analytical Mindset
11 58 (1.28%) Algorithms
12 57 (1.26%) Equities
13 56 (1.24%) Enterprise Software
13 56 (1.24%) Fixed Income
14 53 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
15 51 (1.13%) Clustering
16 43 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 43 (0.95%) NHS
17 41 (0.91%) Low-Code
17 41 (0.91%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 319 (7.06%) Linux
2 269 (5.95%) Windows
3 216 (4.78%) Unix
4 90 (1.99%) Windows Server
5 31 (0.69%) 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%) zOS
12 6 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
13 5 (0.11%) Android
13 5 (0.11%) Apple iOS
13 5 (0.11%) Oracle Linux
14 2 (0.044%) CentOS
14 2 (0.044%) Data ONTAP
15 1 (0.022%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,202 (26.59%) CI/CD
2 1,170 (25.88%) Agile
3 1,150 (25.44%) Analytics
4 1,120 (24.78%) Data Modelling
5 1,046 (23.14%) ETL
6 1,033 (22.85%) Business Intelligence
7 1,026 (22.70%) DevOps
8 928 (20.53%) Problem-Solving
9 830 (18.36%) Data Pipeline
10 705 (15.60%) Data Engineering
11 567 (12.54%) Migration
12 566 (12.52%) Data Governance
13 547 (12.10%) AI
14 541 (11.97%) Validation
15 434 (9.60%) Decision-Making
16 425 (9.40%) Test Automation
17 415 (9.18%) Data Analysis
18 409 (9.05%) Performance Tuning
19 392 (8.67%) Microservices
20 382 (8.45%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,717 (37.99%) Python
2 621 (13.74%) Java
3 483 (10.69%) C#
4 352 (7.79%) JavaScript
5 337 (7.46%) PL/SQL
6 200 (4.42%) T-SQL
7 195 (4.31%) PowerShell
8 149 (3.30%) TypeScript
9 134 (2.96%) R
10 131 (2.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 130 (2.88%) Shell Script
12 96 (2.12%) Scala
13 83 (1.84%) Bash
14 81 (1.79%) C++
15 64 (1.42%) Bicep
16 60 (1.33%) VBA
17 47 (1.04%) Perl
18 31 (0.69%) Go
19 29 (0.64%) VB
20 23 (0.51%) PHP
Qualifications
1 967 (21.39%) Security Cleared
2 791 (17.50%) SC Cleared
3 365 (8.08%) Degree
4 126 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 105 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 73 (1.62%) Azure Certification
7 67 (1.48%) Master's Degree
8 58 (1.28%) DV Cleared
9 54 (1.19%) ISTQB
10 45 (1.00%) Microsoft Certification
11 35 (0.77%) AWS Certification
12 19 (0.42%) Oracle Certification
13 18 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 17 (0.38%) PhD
15 13 (0.29%) CBAP
16 12 (0.27%) CISSP
16 12 (0.27%) DBS Check
17 10 (0.22%) PMP
18 9 (0.20%) ISEB
18 9 (0.20%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 818 (18.10%) Data Quality
2 354 (7.83%) QA
3 203 (4.49%) GDPR
4 58 (1.28%) 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 18 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
9 17 (0.38%) NIST
9 17 (0.38%) 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%) IFRS
12 14 (0.31%) ISO 20022
13 11 (0.24%) DICOM
13 11 (0.24%) NCSC
System Software
1 526 (11.64%) Docker
2 112 (2.48%) Active Directory
3 35 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
4 32 (0.71%) Oracle RAC
5 26 (0.58%) VMware Infrastructure
6 21 (0.46%) Hyper-V
7 10 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 9 (0.20%) KVM
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%) Varnish
Systems Management
1 441 (9.76%) Kubernetes
2 379 (8.38%) Terraform
3 112 (2.48%) Grafana
4 81 (1.79%) Ansible
5 66 (1.46%) Prometheus
6 42 (0.93%) Oracle RMAN
7 31 (0.69%) Data Guard
8 21 (0.46%) Single Sign-On
9 17 (0.38%) Kibana
9 17 (0.38%) Progress Chef
9 17 (0.38%) SCCM
10 14 (0.31%) Control-M
11 11 (0.24%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
11 11 (0.24%) ZABBIX
12 10 (0.22%) Nagios
12 10 (0.22%) Netcool
12 10 (0.22%) OpenView
12 10 (0.22%) Tivoli
12 10 (0.22%) Tivoli Monitoring
13 9 (0.20%) WSUS
Vendors
1 757 (16.75%) Oracle
2 732 (16.19%) Microsoft
3 561 (12.41%) Databricks
4 171 (3.78%) Google
5 150 (3.32%) Informatica
6 137 (3.03%) ServiceNow
7 121 (2.68%) SAP
8 119 (2.63%) Talend
9 90 (1.99%) Splunk
10 77 (1.70%) IBM
11 70 (1.55%) Salesforce
12 52 (1.15%) Citrix
13 48 (1.06%) Denodo
14 45 (1.00%) VMware
15 44 (0.97%) OpenAI
16 34 (0.75%) Dynatrace
16 34 (0.75%) MuleSoft
17 32 (0.71%) Bloomberg
18 29 (0.64%) HP
18 29 (0.64%) Sage