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 16 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 79 62 32
Rank change year-on-year -17 -30 +5
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 75 77 138
As % of all contract jobs in Central London 2.92% 3.74% 6.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 17.24% 17.07% 27.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 52 99
10th Percentile £353 £404 £363
25th Percentile £425 £419 £444
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £550 £510
Median % change year-on-year +4.55% +7.84% -12.07%
75th Percentile £668 £675 £675
90th Percentile £730 £725 £740
London median daily rate £525 £554 £525
% change year-on-year -5.23% +5.52% -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% +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 435 451 503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Central London 16.96% 21.88% 21.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 305 297 366
10th Percentile £363 £398 £403
25th Percentile £463 £434 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £588
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% -2.13% -2.08%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £710
90th Percentile £755 £780 £785
London median daily rate £525 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 0
10th Percentile £20.43 £24.04 -
25th Percentile £22.20 £30.54 -
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 £36.00 £48.00 £50.25
% change year-on-year -25.00% -4.48% -16.25%

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 16 August 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 16 August 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 -11 66 £563 +2.27% 33
West End of London -5 3 £475 -
City of Westminster -6 3 £630 - 5
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 (13.33%) SharePoint
2 4 (5.33%) Apache
2 4 (5.33%) Apache Airflow
3 3 (4.00%) Apache Spark
3 3 (4.00%) Confluence
3 3 (4.00%) IIS
4 1 (1.33%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 6 (8.00%) Dynamics AX
2 3 (4.00%) Remedy ITSM
3 1 (1.33%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 45 (60.00%) Azure
2 21 (28.00%) Power Platform
3 13 (17.33%) Azure Data Factory
4 11 (14.67%) Azure DevOps
4 11 (14.67%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 10 (13.33%) Power Automate
6 8 (10.67%) AWS
7 7 (9.33%) Dynamics 365
7 7 (9.33%) GitHub
7 7 (9.33%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (8.00%) Azure AKS
8 6 (8.00%) Azure Monitor
9 4 (5.33%) PowerApps
9 4 (5.33%) SaaS
10 3 (4.00%) Snowflake
11 2 (2.67%) Azure Key Vault
12 1 (1.33%) Azure Functions
12 1 (1.33%) Azure Logic Apps
12 1 (1.33%) Azure Stack
12 1 (1.33%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 6 (8.00%) DNS
2 4 (5.33%) DHCP
3 3 (4.00%) TCP/IP
3 3 (4.00%) VLAN
3 3 (4.00%) VPN
4 2 (2.67%) Firewall
4 2 (2.67%) Internet
4 2 (2.67%) Intranet
5 1 (1.33%) Multicast
5 1 (1.33%) SAN
5 1 (1.33%) SSH
5 1 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (21.33%) Power BI
2 13 (17.33%) Data Warehouse
3 12 (16.00%) Azure SQL Database
4 8 (10.67%) Relational Database
4 8 (10.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 7 (9.33%) Star Schema
6 6 (8.00%) Power Query
6 6 (8.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 5 (6.67%) Oracle Database
7 5 (6.67%) PostgreSQL
8 4 (5.33%) MongoDB
8 4 (5.33%) NoSQL
8 4 (5.33%) Redis
8 4 (5.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 3 (4.00%) RDBMS
10 2 (2.67%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
10 2 (2.67%) Delta Lake
10 2 (2.67%) Semantic Layer
10 2 (2.67%) Spark SQL
11 1 (1.33%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 8 (10.67%) JIRA
2 7 (9.33%) Git
3 6 (8.00%) Jenkins
4 5 (6.67%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 4 (5.33%) Artifactory
5 4 (5.33%) Bitbucket
5 4 (5.33%) TeamCity
6 3 (4.00%) Visual Studio
7 2 (2.67%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (1.33%) Claude Code
8 1 (1.33%) GitLab
8 1 (1.33%) JUnit
8 1 (1.33%) Maven
8 1 (1.33%) Mockito
8 1 (1.33%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 29 (38.67%) Finance
2 20 (26.67%) Social Skills
3 16 (21.33%) Banking
4 9 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
5 5 (6.67%) Front Office
6 4 (5.33%) Retail
7 3 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
8 2 (2.67%) Investment Banking
8 2 (2.67%) Public Sector
9 1 (1.33%) Back Office
9 1 (1.33%) Law
Job Titles
1 18 (24.00%) Developer
2 10 (13.33%) C# Developer
2 10 (13.33%) Senior
3 9 (12.00%) DBA
4 8 (10.67%) Data Engineer
4 8 (10.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
5 6 (8.00%) Consultant
5 6 (8.00%) Dynamics 365 Consultant
5 6 (8.00%) Dynamics AX Consultant
5 6 (8.00%) Functional Consultant
5 6 (8.00%) SQL DBA
6 5 (6.67%) Cloud Engineer
6 5 (6.67%) Senior Developer
6 5 (6.67%) Support Engineer
7 4 (5.33%) Administrator
7 4 (5.33%) Business Intelligence Developer
7 4 (5.33%) Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
7 4 (5.33%) Power BI Developer
8 3 (4.00%) Applications Support Engineer
8 3 (4.00%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (22.67%) .NET
2 9 (12.00%) .NET Framework
3 6 (8.00%) REST
4 5 (6.67%) AngularJS
5 4 (5.33%) Kafka
5 4 (5.33%) React
5 4 (5.33%) Spring
5 4 (5.33%) Spring Boot
6 3 (4.00%) ASP.NET
6 3 (4.00%) XML
7 2 (2.67%) ADO.NET
7 2 (2.67%) Ajax
7 2 (2.67%) ASP.NET Web Forms
7 2 (2.67%) Micronaut
7 2 (2.67%) Next.js
7 2 (2.67%) PySpark
7 2 (2.67%) SOAP
7 2 (2.67%) Web Services
7 2 (2.67%) XSL
7 2 (2.67%) XSLT
Miscellaneous
1 5 (6.67%) Clustering
1 5 (6.67%) Data Centre
1 5 (6.67%) Self-Motivation
2 4 (5.33%) Cloud Native
3 3 (4.00%) Replication
4 2 (2.67%) Derivative
4 2 (2.67%) Market Risk
5 1 (1.33%) AI Agents
5 1 (1.33%) Algorithms
5 1 (1.33%) Analytical Mindset
5 1 (1.33%) Data Structures
5 1 (1.33%) Enterprise Cloud
5 1 (1.33%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.33%) Enterprise Storage
5 1 (1.33%) Fixed Income
5 1 (1.33%) Hybrid Cloud
5 1 (1.33%) Legacy Code
5 1 (1.33%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (1.33%) PKI
5 1 (1.33%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 25 (33.33%) Windows
2 15 (20.00%) Windows Server
3 6 (8.00%) Linux
4 3 (4.00%) Unix
4 3 (4.00%) VMS
5 1 (1.33%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 29 (38.67%) DevOps
2 22 (29.33%) CI/CD
3 15 (20.00%) Analytics
3 15 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
4 14 (18.67%) Migration
5 12 (16.00%) Data Modelling
5 12 (16.00%) ETL
6 11 (14.67%) Disaster Recovery
6 11 (14.67%) Infrastructure as Code
7 10 (13.33%) Performance Tuning
7 10 (13.33%) Unit Testing
8 9 (12.00%) Agile
9 8 (10.67%) Data Pipeline
9 8 (10.67%) Infrastructure Engineering
10 7 (9.33%) AI
10 7 (9.33%) Change Control
10 7 (9.33%) Data Engineering
10 7 (9.33%) Problem-Solving
11 6 (8.00%) Data Governance
11 6 (8.00%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 50 (66.67%) SQL
2 24 (32.00%) C#
3 17 (22.67%) PowerShell
4 15 (20.00%) Python
5 10 (13.33%) T-SQL
6 7 (9.33%) Java
6 7 (9.33%) PL/SQL
7 6 (8.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 4 (5.33%) JavaScript
8 4 (5.33%) TypeScript
9 2 (2.67%) Bash
9 2 (2.67%) Korn
10 1 (1.33%) Scala
10 1 (1.33%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 16 (21.33%) Security Cleared
2 14 (18.67%) SC Cleared
3 4 (5.33%) DBS Check
4 3 (4.00%) Degree
5 1 (1.33%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.33%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.33%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.33%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 15 (20.00%) QA
2 6 (8.00%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.33%) Accessibility
3 1 (1.33%) Government Security Classifications
3 1 (1.33%) SLA
System Software
1 8 (10.67%) Active Directory
2 7 (9.33%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (8.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (4.00%) Docker
5 1 (1.33%) GridGain
5 1 (1.33%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (1.33%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 13 (17.33%) Kubernetes
2 10 (13.33%) Terraform
3 3 (4.00%) ITRS Geneos
3 3 (4.00%) Microsoft Clustering
3 3 (4.00%) SCOM
4 2 (2.67%) Grafana
5 1 (1.33%) Data Guard
5 1 (1.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (1.33%) Packer
5 1 (1.33%) PowerCLI
5 1 (1.33%) SCCM
Vendors
1 19 (25.33%) Microsoft
2 15 (20.00%) Oracle
3 9 (12.00%) VMware
4 7 (9.33%) Databricks
5 5 (6.67%) Citrix
5 5 (6.67%) Dynatrace
5 5 (6.67%) ServiceNow
6 3 (4.00%) BMC
6 3 (4.00%) Commvault
6 3 (4.00%) Remedy
7 2 (2.67%) Cisco
7 2 (2.67%) Informatica
7 2 (2.67%) ION Trading
7 2 (2.67%) Sitecore
7 2 (2.67%) Splunk
8 1 (1.33%) CyberArk
8 1 (1.33%) Dell
8 1 (1.33%) EMC
8 1 (1.33%) Isilon
8 1 (1.33%) RedGate