SQL Server Contract Job Trends in Central London

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
London > Central London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Central London requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 3 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 77 64 33
Rank change year-on-year -13 -31 +5
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 74 70 124
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 2.96% 3.56% 5.42%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 17.17% 16.51% 25.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 50 92
10th Percentile £353 £404 £384
25th Percentile £425 £424 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £538 £538
Median % change year-on-year +2.33% - -10.42%
75th Percentile £668 £670 £675
90th Percentile £698 £725 £738
London median daily rate £525 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 - -
75th Percentile £19.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
London median hourly rate £36.00 £26.32 £100.00
% change year-on-year +36.78% -73.68% +80.18%

All Database & BI Skills
Central London

SQL Server falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills in Central London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 431 424 493
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 17.27% 21.58% 21.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 311 284 359
10th Percentile £375 £382 £405
25th Percentile £463 £425 £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £575 £588
Median % change year-on-year - -2.13% -2.08%
75th Percentile £657 £676 £710
90th Percentile £750 £800 £790
London median daily rate £530 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -3.73% -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 0
10th Percentile £20.43 £25.80 -
25th Percentile £22.20 £32.25 -
Median hourly rate £25.78 £34.65 -
Median % change year-on-year -25.59% - -
75th Percentile £29.76 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £31.76 £78.25 -
London median hourly rate £34.03 £52.50 £50.25
% change year-on-year -35.18% +4.48% -12.61%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in Central London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London.

SQL Server job vacancy trend in Central London

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing SQL Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in Central London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in Central London over the 6 months to 3 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in Central London

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in Central London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing SQL Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Central London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Contract Job Locations in Central London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL Server within the Central London region over the 6 months to 3 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
City of London -24 64 £550 - 22
West End of London -5 4 £475 - 1
City of Westminster -6 3 £630 - 3
SQL Server
London

SQL Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Central London 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 9 (12.16%) SharePoint
2 3 (4.05%) Apache
2 3 (4.05%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (4.05%) Confluence
2 3 (4.05%) IIS
3 2 (2.70%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.35%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (2.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.35%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 4 (5.41%) Dynamics AX
2 3 (4.05%) Remedy ITSM
3 2 (2.70%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 45 (60.81%) Azure
2 23 (31.08%) Power Platform
3 14 (18.92%) Azure Data Factory
4 12 (16.22%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 9 (12.16%) Azure DevOps
6 8 (10.81%) Power Automate
7 7 (9.46%) AWS
8 6 (8.11%) Azure AKS
8 6 (8.11%) Azure Monitor
8 6 (8.11%) Dynamics 365
8 6 (8.11%) GitHub
8 6 (8.11%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (6.76%) PowerApps
10 4 (5.41%) SaaS
11 2 (2.70%) Azure Databricks
11 2 (2.70%) Azure Key Vault
11 2 (2.70%) Azure Logic Apps
11 2 (2.70%) Snowflake
12 1 (1.35%) Dagster
12 1 (1.35%) Prefect
Communications & Networking
1 6 (8.11%) DNS
2 4 (5.41%) DHCP
3 3 (4.05%) TCP/IP
3 3 (4.05%) VLAN
3 3 (4.05%) VPN
4 2 (2.70%) Firewall
4 2 (2.70%) Internet
4 2 (2.70%) Intranet
5 1 (1.35%) Multicast
5 1 (1.35%) SAN
5 1 (1.35%) SSH
5 1 (1.35%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 17 (22.97%) Power BI
2 13 (17.57%) Azure SQL Database
2 13 (17.57%) Data Warehouse
3 9 (12.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (10.81%) Star Schema
5 7 (9.46%) Power Query
5 7 (9.46%) Relational Database
5 7 (9.46%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 5 (6.76%) Oracle Database
7 4 (5.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 3 (4.05%) PostgreSQL
8 3 (4.05%) Redis
9 2 (2.70%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (2.70%) ClickHouse
9 2 (2.70%) Delta Lake
9 2 (2.70%) MongoDB
9 2 (2.70%) NoSQL
9 2 (2.70%) RDBMS
9 2 (2.70%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (2.70%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 9 (12.16%) JIRA
2 8 (10.81%) Git
3 5 (6.76%) Jenkins
3 5 (6.76%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 4 (5.41%) Artifactory
4 4 (5.41%) Bitbucket
5 3 (4.05%) TeamCity
5 3 (4.05%) Visual Studio
6 1 (1.35%) Claude Code
6 1 (1.35%) Maven
6 1 (1.35%) Octopus Deploy
6 1 (1.35%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 29 (39.19%) Finance
2 21 (28.38%) Social Skills
3 15 (20.27%) Banking
4 8 (10.81%) Analytical Skills
5 6 (8.11%) Front Office
6 5 (6.76%) Retail
7 3 (4.05%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.70%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.70%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.35%) Aerospace
9 1 (1.35%) Back Office
9 1 (1.35%) Law
9 1 (1.35%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 19 (25.68%) Developer
2 11 (14.86%) Senior
3 10 (13.51%) C# Developer
4 8 (10.81%) DBA
4 8 (10.81%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 7 (9.46%) Data Engineer
5 7 (9.46%) Senior Developer
6 6 (8.11%) SQL DBA
7 5 (6.76%) Business Intelligence Developer
7 5 (6.76%) Cloud Engineer
7 5 (6.76%) Power BI Developer
7 5 (6.76%) Support Engineer
8 4 (5.41%) Administrator
8 4 (5.41%) Architect
8 4 (5.41%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
8 4 (5.41%) Consultant
8 4 (5.41%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
8 4 (5.41%) Dynamics AX Consultant
8 4 (5.41%) Functional Consultant
8 4 (5.41%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (25.68%) .NET
2 10 (13.51%) Terraform
3 9 (12.16%) .NET Framework
4 6 (8.11%) REST
5 4 (5.41%) XML
6 3 (4.05%) AngularJS
6 3 (4.05%) ASP.NET
6 3 (4.05%) Spring
6 3 (4.05%) Spring Boot
7 2 (2.70%) Ajax
7 2 (2.70%) ASP.NET Web API
7 2 (2.70%) ASP.NET Web Forms
7 2 (2.70%) CSS
7 2 (2.70%) JSON
7 2 (2.70%) Kafka
7 2 (2.70%) Micronaut
7 2 (2.70%) Next.js
7 2 (2.70%) PySpark
7 2 (2.70%) React
7 2 (2.70%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 6 (8.11%) Data Centre
1 6 (8.11%) Self-Motivation
2 5 (6.76%) Clustering
3 4 (5.41%) Cloud Native
4 3 (4.05%) Replication
5 2 (2.70%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.35%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.35%) Analytical Mindset
6 1 (1.35%) Derivative
6 1 (1.35%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.35%) Distributed Systems
6 1 (1.35%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (1.35%) Fixed Income
6 1 (1.35%) Hybrid Cloud
6 1 (1.35%) Legacy Code
6 1 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (1.35%) Market Risk
6 1 (1.35%) Onboarding
6 1 (1.35%) PKI
6 1 (1.35%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 26 (35.14%) Windows
2 15 (20.27%) Windows Server
3 6 (8.11%) Linux
4 4 (5.41%) Unix
5 3 (4.05%) VMS
6 1 (1.35%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (37.84%) DevOps
2 23 (31.08%) CI/CD
3 16 (21.62%) Business Intelligence
3 16 (21.62%) Migration
4 13 (17.57%) Data Modelling
5 12 (16.22%) Analytics
5 12 (16.22%) ETL
6 11 (14.86%) Agile
6 11 (14.86%) Infrastructure as Code
7 10 (13.51%) Disaster Recovery
8 9 (12.16%) Unit Testing
9 8 (10.81%) Infrastructure Engineering
9 8 (10.81%) Performance Tuning
9 8 (10.81%) Project Delivery
10 7 (9.46%) Change Control
10 7 (9.46%) Data Governance
10 7 (9.46%) Problem-Solving
10 7 (9.46%) Root Cause Analysis
10 7 (9.46%) Software Engineering
10 7 (9.46%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 51 (68.92%) SQL
2 25 (33.78%) C#
3 19 (25.68%) PowerShell
4 17 (22.97%) Python
5 10 (13.51%) T-SQL
6 7 (9.46%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 6 (8.11%) Java
7 6 (8.11%) PL/SQL
8 5 (6.76%) JavaScript
9 4 (5.41%) TypeScript
10 2 (2.70%) Bash
10 2 (2.70%) Korn
11 1 (1.35%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 18 (24.32%) Security Cleared
2 15 (20.27%) SC Cleared
3 5 (6.76%) Degree
4 4 (5.41%) DBS Check
5 1 (1.35%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.35%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.35%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.35%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (1.35%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (17.57%) QA
2 4 (5.41%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.70%) SLA
4 1 (1.35%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.35%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 9 (12.16%) Active Directory
2 7 (9.46%) Virtual Machines
2 7 (9.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (1.35%) Docker
3 1 (1.35%) GridGain
3 1 (1.35%) Hyper-V
3 1 (1.35%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (1.35%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 11 (14.86%) Kubernetes
2 4 (5.41%) SCOM
3 3 (4.05%) ITRS Geneos
3 3 (4.05%) Microsoft Clustering
4 2 (2.70%) Grafana
4 2 (2.70%) PowerCLI
5 1 (1.35%) Data Guard
5 1 (1.35%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.35%) Packer
5 1 (1.35%) SCCM
5 1 (1.35%) SCOrch
Vendors
1 21 (28.38%) Microsoft
2 15 (20.27%) Oracle
3 10 (13.51%) VMware
4 7 (9.46%) Databricks
5 6 (8.11%) ServiceNow
6 5 (6.76%) Dynatrace
7 4 (5.41%) Citrix
8 3 (4.05%) BMC
8 3 (4.05%) Commvault
8 3 (4.05%) Remedy
9 2 (2.70%) Cisco
9 2 (2.70%) ION Trading
9 2 (2.70%) Sitecore
9 2 (2.70%) Splunk
10 1 (1.35%) CyberArk
10 1 (1.35%) Dell
10 1 (1.35%) Informatica
10 1 (1.35%) Isilon
10 1 (1.35%) PTC
10 1 (1.35%) RedGate