SQL Server Contract Job Trends in the City of London

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 1 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 85 41 40
Rank change year-on-year -44 -1 -20
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 39 84 121
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 2.12% 4.16% 4.91%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 11.05% 20.29% 24.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 25 57 90
10th Percentile £380 £400 £425
25th Percentile £450 £507 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £580 £600
Median % change year-on-year -9.48% -3.33% +4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £675 £688
90th Percentile £723 £738 £825
Central London median daily rate £525 £580 £600
% change year-on-year -9.48% -3.33% +4.35%

All Database & BI Skills
City of 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 the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 353 414 494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 19.23% 20.52% 20.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 267 344
10th Percentile £335 £406 £383
25th Percentile £413 £484 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -10.26% -2.50% +2.13%
75th Percentile £675 £696 £700
90th Percentile £749 £805 £800
Central London median daily rate £525 £585 £600
% change year-on-year -10.26% -2.50% +4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 1
10th Percentile £35.38 - -
25th Percentile £39.69 £36.75 -
Median hourly rate £48.25 £38.50 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +25.32% +1.32% -49.42%
75th Percentile £56.69 £40.25 -
90th Percentile £60.93 - -
Central London median hourly rate £48.25 £40.00 £38.00
% change year-on-year +20.63% +5.26% -49.42%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

SQL Server job vacancy trend in the City of London

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SQL Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in the City of London over the 6 months to 1 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the City of London

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SQL Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the City of London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the City of 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 2 (5.13%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (2.56%) Apache
2 1 (2.56%) CICS
2 1 (2.56%) Confluence
2 1 (2.56%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 1 (2.56%) SharePoint
Applications
1 5 (12.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (2.56%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (2.56%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (2.56%) Aladdin
1 1 (2.56%) Fidessa
1 1 (2.56%) Oracle BPM
1 1 (2.56%) thinkFolio
Cloud Services
1 18 (46.15%) Azure
2 10 (25.64%) AWS
3 6 (15.38%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (12.82%) GitHub
4 5 (12.82%) Power Platform
5 3 (7.69%) IaaS
5 3 (7.69%) PaaS
5 3 (7.69%) SaaS
5 3 (7.69%) Serverless
6 2 (5.13%) Amazon S3
6 2 (5.13%) Azure Service Bus
6 2 (5.13%) Cloud Computing
6 2 (5.13%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (2.56%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (2.56%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 1 (2.56%) Azure Event Grid
7 1 (2.56%) Azure Logic Apps
7 1 (2.56%) dbt
7 1 (2.56%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 2 (5.13%) Firewall
2 1 (2.56%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (20.51%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (10.26%) MySQL
2 4 (10.26%) Power BI
2 4 (10.26%) Redis
2 4 (10.26%) Relational Database
2 4 (10.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 3 (7.69%) Azure SQL Database
3 3 (7.69%) Data Lake
4 2 (5.13%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.56%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (2.56%) Apache Cassandra
5 1 (2.56%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.56%) Informix
5 1 (2.56%) Microsoft Analysis Services
5 1 (2.56%) MongoDB
5 1 (2.56%) OLAP
5 1 (2.56%) RDBMS
5 1 (2.56%) SAP Data Services
5 1 (2.56%) SQL Server Analysis Services
5 1 (2.56%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 4 (10.26%) Jenkins
1 4 (10.26%) Octopus Deploy
2 3 (7.69%) Git
2 3 (7.69%) Maven
3 2 (5.13%) JUnit
3 2 (5.13%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (2.56%) Bitbucket
4 1 (2.56%) JIRA
4 1 (2.56%) jMock
4 1 (2.56%) Mockito
General
1 17 (43.59%) Finance
2 14 (35.90%) Social Skills
3 10 (25.64%) Banking
4 6 (15.38%) Investment Banking
5 3 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (5.13%) Financial Institution
6 2 (5.13%) Law
Job Titles
1 14 (35.90%) Developer
2 5 (12.82%) Analyst
2 5 (12.82%) C# Developer
3 4 (10.26%) Senior
4 3 (7.69%) .NET Developer
4 3 (7.69%) Architect
4 3 (7.69%) Data Engineer
4 3 (7.69%) DBA
4 3 (7.69%) Java Developer
4 3 (7.69%) SQL DBA
5 2 (5.13%) Administrator
5 2 (5.13%) Applications Support
5 2 (5.13%) Applications Support Manager
5 2 (5.13%) Business Analyst
5 2 (5.13%) Credit Risk Business Analyst
5 2 (5.13%) Full-Stack Developer
5 2 (5.13%) Risk Business Analyst
5 2 (5.13%) Senior Developer
5 2 (5.13%) Service Manager
5 2 (5.13%) Support Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (17.95%) .NET
2 3 (7.69%) .NET Core
3 2 (5.13%) .NET Framework
3 2 (5.13%) CSS
3 2 (5.13%) FIX Protocol
3 2 (5.13%) HTML
3 2 (5.13%) REST
3 2 (5.13%) Spring
3 2 (5.13%) Spring Boot
4 1 (2.56%) ActiveMQ
4 1 (2.56%) ASP.NET
4 1 (2.56%) Hibernate
4 1 (2.56%) Java Concurrency
4 1 (2.56%) jQuery
4 1 (2.56%) JSON
4 1 (2.56%) JSP
4 1 (2.56%) SOAP
4 1 (2.56%) WinForms
4 1 (2.56%) WPF
4 1 (2.56%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 7 (17.95%) Derivative
2 3 (7.69%) Credit Risk
2 3 (7.69%) Fixed Income
3 2 (5.13%) Cloud Native
3 2 (5.13%) Data Structures
3 2 (5.13%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (5.13%) Product Ownership
3 2 (5.13%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (2.56%) Data Centre
4 1 (2.56%) Distributed Systems
4 1 (2.56%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 1 (2.56%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.56%) Mainframe
4 1 (2.56%) Market Risk
4 1 (2.56%) NHS
4 1 (2.56%) Public Cloud
4 1 (2.56%) State Machine
4 1 (2.56%) VSAM
Operating Systems
1 8 (20.51%) Linux
2 5 (12.82%) Windows
3 3 (7.69%) Unix
4 2 (5.13%) Windows Server
5 1 (2.56%) AIX
5 1 (2.56%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (28.21%) DevOps
2 7 (17.95%) CI/CD
3 6 (15.38%) ETL
3 6 (15.38%) Problem-Solving
3 6 (15.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
4 5 (12.82%) Data Modelling
4 5 (12.82%) Microservices
4 5 (12.82%) Migration
5 4 (10.26%) Analytics
5 4 (10.26%) Business Intelligence
5 4 (10.26%) Continuous Improvement
5 4 (10.26%) Data Analysis
5 4 (10.26%) Test Automation
5 4 (10.26%) Visualisation
6 3 (7.69%) Agile
6 3 (7.69%) AI
6 3 (7.69%) Data Governance
6 3 (7.69%) Process Improvement
6 3 (7.69%) TDD
6 3 (7.69%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 21 (53.85%) SQL
2 8 (20.51%) C#
3 7 (17.95%) Java
3 7 (17.95%) Python
4 2 (5.13%) JavaScript
4 2 (5.13%) PL/SQL
5 1 (2.56%) COBOL
5 1 (2.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 1 (2.56%) PowerShell
5 1 (2.56%) Shell Script
5 1 (2.56%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 8 (20.51%) SC Cleared
1 8 (20.51%) Security Cleared
2 2 (5.13%) BPSS Clearance
2 2 (5.13%) ITIL Certification
2 2 (5.13%) MCITP
2 2 (5.13%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (7.69%) Data Quality
1 3 (7.69%) QA
2 2 (5.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 2 (5.13%) SLA
3 1 (2.56%) MiFID
System Software
1 4 (10.26%) Docker
2 3 (7.69%) Active Directory
3 1 (2.56%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 3 (7.69%) Kubernetes
2 2 (5.13%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (5.13%) SCOM
3 1 (2.56%) Ambari
3 1 (2.56%) Ansible
3 1 (2.56%) Puppet
3 1 (2.56%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 15 (38.46%) Oracle
2 9 (23.08%) Microsoft
3 2 (5.13%) HP
3 2 (5.13%) Informatica
3 2 (5.13%) Intapp
3 2 (5.13%) Solace
3 2 (5.13%) Sybase
3 2 (5.13%) Talend
4 1 (2.56%) ION Trading
4 1 (2.56%) NetApp
4 1 (2.56%) Portware
4 1 (2.56%) SAP