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

6 months to
29 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 91 46 39
Rank change year-on-year -45 -7 -14
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 34 77 111
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 1.81% 4.10% 4.61%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.21% 20.10% 22.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 54 78
10th Percentile £369 £465 £421
25th Percentile £440 £512 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £583 £590
Median % change year-on-year -14.16% -1.27% +2.61%
75th Percentile £600 £675 £688
90th Percentile £638 £688 £825
Central London median daily rate £500 £583 £585
% change year-on-year -14.16% -0.43% +1.74%

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 333 383 494
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 17.75% 20.38% 20.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 248 248 349
10th Percentile £324 £406 £413
25th Percentile £408 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £595
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% -3.36% -0.83%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £741 £783 £825
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £600
% change year-on-year -8.70% -4.17% +3.23%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 2
10th Percentile - - £38.88
25th Percentile £32.50 £36.75 £40.19
Median hourly rate £34.00 £38.50 £43.25
Median % change year-on-year -11.69% -10.98% -48.57%
75th Percentile £35.50 £40.25 £47.19
90th Percentile - - £49.03
Central London median hourly rate £34.00 £40.00 £43.25
% change year-on-year -15.00% -7.51% -48.57%

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 29 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 (5.88%) Apache Airflow
2 1 (2.94%) Apache
2 1 (2.94%) SharePoint
Applications
1 4 (11.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (5.88%) MS Visio
3 1 (2.94%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Cloud Services
1 15 (44.12%) Azure
2 10 (29.41%) AWS
3 7 (20.59%) Azure DevOps
4 5 (14.71%) GitHub
5 4 (11.76%) Power Platform
6 2 (5.88%) GCP
7 1 (2.94%) Amazon S3
7 1 (2.94%) Azure Event Grid
7 1 (2.94%) Azure Functions
7 1 (2.94%) Azure Service Bus
7 1 (2.94%) Cloud Computing
7 1 (2.94%) Copilot Studio
7 1 (2.94%) dbt
7 1 (2.94%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (2.94%) GitHub Actions
7 1 (2.94%) IaaS
7 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Copilot
7 1 (2.94%) Power Automate
7 1 (2.94%) PowerApps
7 1 (2.94%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.94%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (20.59%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (11.76%) MySQL
2 4 (11.76%) Redis
2 4 (11.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 3 (8.82%) Power BI
4 2 (5.88%) Data Lake
4 2 (5.88%) Data Warehouse
4 2 (5.88%) OLAP
4 2 (5.88%) Relational Database
5 1 (2.94%) Amazon Athena
5 1 (2.94%) Data Vault
5 1 (2.94%) Delta Lake
5 1 (2.94%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
5 1 (2.94%) Informix
5 1 (2.94%) Metadata
5 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Analysis Services
5 1 (2.94%) MongoDB
5 1 (2.94%) Oracle OLAP
5 1 (2.94%) RDBMS
5 1 (2.94%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 4 (11.76%) Octopus Deploy
2 3 (8.82%) Git
2 3 (8.82%) Jenkins
2 3 (8.82%) Maven
3 2 (5.88%) JUnit
3 2 (5.88%) Sonatype Nexus
4 1 (2.94%) ERwin
4 1 (2.94%) JIRA
4 1 (2.94%) jMock
4 1 (2.94%) Mockito
General
1 14 (41.18%) Finance
2 12 (35.29%) Social Skills
3 9 (26.47%) Banking
4 5 (14.71%) Investment Banking
5 2 (5.88%) Law
6 1 (2.94%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (2.94%) Financial Institution
6 1 (2.94%) Retail
Job Titles
1 14 (41.18%) Developer
2 4 (11.76%) Analyst
2 4 (11.76%) C# Developer
2 4 (11.76%) Senior
3 3 (8.82%) Data Engineer
3 3 (8.82%) DBA
3 3 (8.82%) Java Developer
3 3 (8.82%) SQL DBA
4 2 (5.88%) .NET Developer
4 2 (5.88%) Administrator
4 2 (5.88%) Applications Analyst
4 2 (5.88%) Applications Manager
4 2 (5.88%) Applications Support
4 2 (5.88%) Applications Support Manager
4 2 (5.88%) Business Analyst
4 2 (5.88%) Credit Risk Business Analyst
4 2 (5.88%) Full-Stack Developer
4 2 (5.88%) Risk Business Analyst
4 2 (5.88%) Senior Developer
4 2 (5.88%) Support Manager
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (14.71%) .NET
2 2 (5.88%) Spring
2 2 (5.88%) Spring Boot
3 1 (2.94%) .NET Core
3 1 (2.94%) .NET Framework
3 1 (2.94%) AngularJS
3 1 (2.94%) ASP.NET Core
3 1 (2.94%) FIX Protocol
3 1 (2.94%) HTML
3 1 (2.94%) Java Concurrency
3 1 (2.94%) JPA
3 1 (2.94%) jQuery
3 1 (2.94%) JSON
3 1 (2.94%) MyBatis
3 1 (2.94%) Next.js
3 1 (2.94%) PySpark
3 1 (2.94%) REST
3 1 (2.94%) RESTful
3 1 (2.94%) Spring Batch
3 1 (2.94%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 6 (17.65%) Derivative
2 3 (8.82%) Credit Risk
2 3 (8.82%) Data Structures
3 2 (5.88%) Enterprise Software
3 2 (5.88%) Fixed Income
3 2 (5.88%) Public Cloud
4 1 (2.94%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (2.94%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (2.94%) Management Information System
4 1 (2.94%) Market Risk
4 1 (2.94%) NHS
4 1 (2.94%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.94%) Reinsurance
4 1 (2.94%) Self-Motivation
4 1 (2.94%) State Machine
Operating Systems
1 6 (17.65%) Linux
2 3 (8.82%) Windows
3 2 (5.88%) Unix
4 1 (2.94%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (23.53%) DevOps
1 8 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (20.59%) ETL
3 6 (17.65%) CI/CD
3 6 (17.65%) Data Modelling
4 5 (14.71%) Migration
4 5 (14.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
5 4 (11.76%) Analytics
5 4 (11.76%) Business Intelligence
5 4 (11.76%) Continuous Improvement
5 4 (11.76%) Data Analysis
5 4 (11.76%) Data Migration
5 4 (11.76%) Microservices
5 4 (11.76%) Visualisation
6 3 (8.82%) Data Governance
6 3 (8.82%) Performance Tuning
6 3 (8.82%) Process Improvement
6 3 (8.82%) Roadmaps
6 3 (8.82%) Test Automation
6 3 (8.82%) Test Strategy
Programming Languages
1 20 (58.82%) SQL
2 7 (20.59%) Java
2 7 (20.59%) Python
3 6 (17.65%) C#
4 2 (5.88%) JavaScript
4 2 (5.88%) PL/SQL
5 1 (2.94%) PowerShell
5 1 (2.94%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 5 (14.71%) SC Cleared
1 5 (14.71%) Security Cleared
2 1 (2.94%) BPSS Clearance
2 1 (2.94%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (2.94%) Degree
2 1 (2.94%) ITIL Certification
2 1 (2.94%) MCITP
2 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (14.71%) Data Quality
2 3 (8.82%) QA
3 1 (2.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
3 1 (2.94%) SLA
System Software
1 4 (11.76%) Docker
2 1 (2.94%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.94%) GridGain
Systems Management
1 3 (8.82%) Kubernetes
2 1 (2.94%) Ansible
2 1 (2.94%) Microsoft Intune
2 1 (2.94%) SCOM
Vendors
1 13 (38.24%) Oracle
2 8 (23.53%) Microsoft
3 3 (8.82%) Informatica
4 2 (5.88%) Intapp
4 2 (5.88%) Solace
4 2 (5.88%) Sybase
4 2 (5.88%) Talend
5 1 (2.94%) Databricks
5 1 (2.94%) Google
5 1 (2.94%) HP
5 1 (2.94%) ION Trading
5 1 (2.94%) SAP