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

6 months to
29 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 55 31
Rank change year-on-year -21 -24 +9
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 73 81 146
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 2.82% 3.94% 6.36%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 16.86% 17.76% 28.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 56 101
10th Percentile £353 £404 £363
25th Percentile £425 £424 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £505
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% +8.91% -15.83%
75th Percentile £668 £675 £675
90th Percentile £730 £738 £775
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 £19.50 £26.32 £100.00
% change year-on-year -25.91% -73.68% +90.48%

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 433 456 512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 16.71% 22.20% 22.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 295 302 359
10th Percentile £355 £400 £400
25th Percentile £466 £450 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £560 £564 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.65% -1.97% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £690 £711
90th Percentile £750 £775 £788
London median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 7 0
10th Percentile £21.61 £24.04 -
25th Percentile £25.14 £30.54 -
Median hourly rate £32.07 £34.65 -
Median % change year-on-year -7.46% - -
75th Percentile £46.41 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £54.40 £78.25 -
London median hourly rate £39.50 £52.50 £50.50
% change year-on-year -24.76% +3.96% -12.17%

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 29 July 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 29 July 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 -23 64 £575 +4.55% 26
City of Westminster -5 5 £630 - 3
West End of London -3 4 £650 - 1
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 10 (13.70%) SharePoint
2 4 (5.48%) Apache
2 4 (5.48%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (4.11%) Apache Spark
3 3 (4.11%) IIS
4 2 (2.74%) Confluence
5 1 (1.37%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (2.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (1.37%) Microsoft Office
2 1 (1.37%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 6 (8.22%) Dynamics AX
2 2 (2.74%) Remedy ITSM
Cloud Services
1 40 (54.79%) Azure
2 18 (24.66%) Power Platform
3 11 (15.07%) Azure Data Factory
3 11 (15.07%) Azure DevOps
4 10 (13.70%) AWS
4 10 (13.70%) Power Automate
5 9 (12.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 8 (10.96%) Dynamics 365
7 6 (8.22%) GitHub
7 6 (8.22%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (5.48%) Azure AKS
8 4 (5.48%) Azure Monitor
8 4 (5.48%) PowerApps
9 3 (4.11%) SaaS
9 3 (4.11%) Snowflake
10 2 (2.74%) Amazon S3
10 2 (2.74%) Azure Key Vault
10 2 (2.74%) Microsoft 365
11 1 (1.37%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 1 (1.37%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 4 (5.48%) DNS
2 3 (4.11%) DHCP
3 2 (2.74%) Internet
3 2 (2.74%) Intranet
3 2 (2.74%) TCP/IP
4 1 (1.37%) Firewall
4 1 (1.37%) Multicast
4 1 (1.37%) NetScaler
4 1 (1.37%) SSH
4 1 (1.37%) VLAN
4 1 (1.37%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (19.18%) Power BI
2 12 (16.44%) Data Warehouse
3 10 (13.70%) Azure SQL Database
3 10 (13.70%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 8 (10.96%) Relational Database
5 7 (9.59%) PostgreSQL
6 5 (6.85%) Oracle Database
6 5 (6.85%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 5 (6.85%) Star Schema
7 4 (5.48%) MongoDB
7 4 (5.48%) NoSQL
7 4 (5.48%) Redis
7 4 (5.48%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 3 (4.11%) Power Query
8 3 (4.11%) RDBMS
9 2 (2.74%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
9 2 (2.74%) Data Lake
9 2 (2.74%) Delta Lake
9 2 (2.74%) Semantic Layer
9 2 (2.74%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 7 (9.59%) Git
2 6 (8.22%) JIRA
3 5 (6.85%) Jenkins
4 4 (5.48%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 4 (5.48%) TeamCity
5 3 (4.11%) Artifactory
5 3 (4.11%) Bitbucket
6 2 (2.74%) Octopus Deploy
6 2 (2.74%) Visual Studio
7 1 (1.37%) Claude Code
7 1 (1.37%) GitLab
7 1 (1.37%) JUnit
7 1 (1.37%) Maven
7 1 (1.37%) Mockito
7 1 (1.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 26 (35.62%) Finance
2 17 (23.29%) Social Skills
3 15 (20.55%) Banking
4 9 (12.33%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (6.85%) Front Office
6 4 (5.48%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (2.74%) Investment Banking
7 2 (2.74%) Public Sector
7 2 (2.74%) Retail
8 1 (1.37%) Back Office
8 1 (1.37%) Law
8 1 (1.37%) Local Government
8 1 (1.37%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 17 (23.29%) Developer
2 11 (15.07%) Senior
3 10 (13.70%) C# Developer
3 10 (13.70%) Data Engineer
3 10 (13.70%) DBA
4 7 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 7 (9.59%) SQL DBA
5 6 (8.22%) Consultant
5 6 (8.22%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
5 6 (8.22%) Dynamics AX Consultant
5 6 (8.22%) Functional Consultant
5 6 (8.22%) Senior Developer
6 4 (5.48%) Administrator
6 4 (5.48%) Cloud Engineer
6 4 (5.48%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
6 4 (5.48%) Support Engineer
7 2 (2.74%) Applications Developer
7 2 (2.74%) Applications Support
7 2 (2.74%) Engineering Manager
7 2 (2.74%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 15 (20.55%) .NET
2 8 (10.96%) .NET Framework
3 6 (8.22%) REST
4 5 (6.85%) AngularJS
5 4 (5.48%) Kafka
5 4 (5.48%) React
5 4 (5.48%) Spring
5 4 (5.48%) Spring Boot
6 3 (4.11%) ASP.NET
6 3 (4.11%) XML
7 2 (2.74%) ADO.NET
7 2 (2.74%) Ajax
7 2 (2.74%) ASP.NET Web Forms
7 2 (2.74%) HTML5 Canvas
7 2 (2.74%) Micronaut
7 2 (2.74%) Next.js
7 2 (2.74%) SOAP
7 2 (2.74%) Web Services
7 2 (2.74%) XSL
7 2 (2.74%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 5 (6.85%) Cloud Native
2 4 (5.48%) Clustering
2 4 (5.48%) Data Centre
3 3 (4.11%) Replication
4 2 (2.74%) Algorithms
4 2 (2.74%) Data Structures
4 2 (2.74%) Derivative
4 2 (2.74%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 2 (2.74%) Market Risk
4 2 (2.74%) Self-Motivation
5 1 (1.37%) AI Agents
5 1 (1.37%) Distributed Architecture
5 1 (1.37%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (1.37%) Enterprise Cloud
5 1 (1.37%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.37%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.37%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.37%) Onboarding
5 1 (1.37%) Product Ownership
5 1 (1.37%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 21 (28.77%) Windows
2 13 (17.81%) Windows Server
3 5 (6.85%) Linux
4 3 (4.11%) Unix
5 2 (2.74%) VMS
6 1 (1.37%) Windows 10
6 1 (1.37%) Windows Server 2008
6 1 (1.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (1.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (35.62%) DevOps
2 19 (26.03%) CI/CD
3 14 (19.18%) Analytics
4 13 (17.81%) Business Intelligence
5 12 (16.44%) Migration
6 11 (15.07%) Data Modelling
6 11 (15.07%) Disaster Recovery
6 11 (15.07%) ETL
6 11 (15.07%) Performance Tuning
7 10 (13.70%) Agile
7 10 (13.70%) Data Pipeline
7 10 (13.70%) Infrastructure as Code
8 9 (12.33%) Data Engineering
8 9 (12.33%) Problem-Solving
8 9 (12.33%) Unit Testing
9 7 (9.59%) AI
9 7 (9.59%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 6 (8.22%) Knowledge Transfer
10 6 (8.22%) Microservices
10 6 (8.22%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 47 (64.38%) SQL
2 22 (30.14%) C#
3 15 (20.55%) Python
4 14 (19.18%) PowerShell
5 10 (13.70%) T-SQL
6 7 (9.59%) PL/SQL
7 6 (8.22%) Java
8 5 (6.85%) JavaScript
9 3 (4.11%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 3 (4.11%) TypeScript
10 2 (2.74%) Korn
11 1 (1.37%) Bash
11 1 (1.37%) Bicep
11 1 (1.37%) Go
11 1 (1.37%) Scala
11 1 (1.37%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 12 (16.44%) Security Cleared
2 11 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.48%) DBS Check
3 4 (5.48%) Degree
4 1 (1.37%) CCA
4 1 (1.37%) Citrix Certification
4 1 (1.37%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (1.37%) DV Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 14 (19.18%) QA
2 6 (8.22%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.37%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.37%) Government Security Classifications
System Software
1 6 (8.22%) Active Directory
2 5 (6.85%) Virtual Machines
2 5 (6.85%) VMware Infrastructure
3 4 (5.48%) Docker
4 1 (1.37%) GridGain
4 1 (1.37%) Hyper-V
4 1 (1.37%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (1.37%) XenApp
4 1 (1.37%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 12 (16.44%) Kubernetes
2 9 (12.33%) Terraform
3 2 (2.74%) ITRS Geneos
3 2 (2.74%) Microsoft Clustering
3 2 (2.74%) SCOM
4 1 (1.37%) Data Guard
4 1 (1.37%) Grafana
4 1 (1.37%) PowerCLI
4 1 (1.37%) SCCM
4 1 (1.37%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 18 (24.66%) Microsoft
2 14 (19.18%) Oracle
3 7 (9.59%) VMware
4 6 (8.22%) Citrix
5 5 (6.85%) Databricks
6 4 (5.48%) Dynatrace
6 4 (5.48%) ServiceNow
7 2 (2.74%) BMC
7 2 (2.74%) Cisco
7 2 (2.74%) Commvault
7 2 (2.74%) Informatica
7 2 (2.74%) Remedy
7 2 (2.74%) Sitecore
8 1 (1.37%) Dell
8 1 (1.37%) EMC
8 1 (1.37%) ION Trading
8 1 (1.37%) Isilon
8 1 (1.37%) RedGate
8 1 (1.37%) Splunk
8 1 (1.37%) Sybase