SQL Contract Job Trends in the City of London

SQL (Structured Query Language)
Central London > City of London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the City of London requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 7 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 +1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 280 300 311
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.70% 15.99% 15.06%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.62% 41.49% 41.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 193 198 223
10th Percentile £407 £387 £400
25th Percentile £463 £438 £483
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £573 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.93% -4.58% -
75th Percentile £668 £718 £713
90th Percentile £748 £775 £775
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £598
% change year-on-year - -7.95% -0.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 0
10th Percentile £37.50 £20.20 -
25th Percentile £43.12 £25.75 -
Median hourly rate £52.49 £62.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.02% - -
75th Percentile £56.11 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £58.28 £78.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £45.79 £41.50
% change year-on-year +14.64% +10.33% +27.69%

All Programming Languages
City of London

SQL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the City of London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 657 723 745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 27.46% 38.54% 36.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 450 491 511
10th Percentile £368 £400 £406
25th Percentile £456 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £578 £580
Median % change year-on-year -4.84% -0.34% -7.20%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £710
90th Percentile £764 £775 £825
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -8.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 6 0
10th Percentile £26.32 £21.13 -
25th Percentile £32.39 £25.88 -
Median hourly rate £37.50 £45.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% - -
75th Percentile £56.11 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £65.83 £76.25 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £40.26 £41.50
% change year-on-year +30.39% -3.00% -37.36%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the City of London

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

SQL job vacancy trend in the City of London

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the City of London

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

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

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the City of London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the City of London over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the City of London

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the City of London

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

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

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the City of London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the City of London over the 6 months to 30 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the City of London

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the City of London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the City of London region over the 6 months to 30 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
Moorgate - 1 £475 -
SQL
Central London

SQL
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 20 (7.14%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (4.29%) Apache Spark
3 11 (3.93%) Apache
4 9 (3.21%) Confluence
5 4 (1.43%) CICS
5 4 (1.43%) SharePoint
6 2 (0.71%) IIS
6 2 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.36%) Exchange Server 2013
7 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Exchange
7 1 (0.36%) nginx
7 1 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 12 (4.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.79%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.71%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.71%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.14%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.79%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.43%) Aladdin
3 4 (1.43%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (1.43%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (1.07%) Oracle Financials
4 3 (1.07%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.07%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.71%) Bloomberg AIM
5 2 (0.71%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.71%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.71%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 2 (0.71%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.71%) Remedy ITSM
5 2 (0.71%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.71%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.36%) Magento
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.36%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.36%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 85 (30.36%) Azure
2 64 (22.86%) Power Platform
3 58 (20.71%) AWS
4 33 (11.79%) Snowflake
5 30 (10.71%) Azure Data Factory
6 28 (10.00%) GCP
7 24 (8.57%) dbt
8 20 (7.14%) GitHub
8 20 (7.14%) Serverless
9 19 (6.79%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (5.71%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (5.36%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.36%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 10 (3.57%) Prefect
13 7 (2.50%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (2.50%) Dagster
14 6 (2.14%) Amazon Kinesis
14 6 (2.14%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (2.14%) SaaS
15 5 (1.79%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.79%) Multicast
2 3 (1.07%) VPN
3 2 (0.71%) Firewall
3 2 (0.71%) Internet
3 2 (0.71%) Intranet
4 1 (0.36%) DNS
4 1 (0.36%) NetScaler
4 1 (0.36%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (19.64%) Power BI
2 45 (16.07%) Data Warehouse
3 43 (15.36%) SQL Server
4 24 (8.57%) Tableau
5 18 (6.43%) Relational Database
6 16 (5.71%) Metadata
7 14 (5.00%) Amazon Redshift
7 14 (5.00%) BigQuery
7 14 (5.00%) Oracle Database
8 13 (4.64%) Azure SQL Database
8 13 (4.64%) Data Lake
8 13 (4.64%) NoSQL
9 11 (3.93%) Looker
9 11 (3.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 10 (3.57%) MongoDB
11 9 (3.21%) Db2
11 9 (3.21%) PostgreSQL
11 9 (3.21%) Snowflake Schema
12 8 (2.86%) Star Schema
13 7 (2.50%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 19 (6.79%) Git
2 14 (5.00%) JIRA
3 13 (4.64%) Jenkins
4 11 (3.93%) GitLab
5 6 (2.14%) JUnit
6 5 (1.79%) Bitbucket
7 4 (1.43%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 3 (1.07%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.07%) Eclipse
8 3 (1.07%) Gradle
8 3 (1.07%) Mockito
8 3 (1.07%) TeamCity
9 2 (0.71%) Liquibase
9 2 (0.71%) Selenium
9 2 (0.71%) Visual Studio
9 2 (0.71%) Zephyr
10 1 (0.36%) Karma Test Runner
10 1 (0.36%) Octopus Deploy
10 1 (0.36%) Robot Framework
10 1 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 125 (44.64%) Finance
2 80 (28.57%) Social Skills
3 62 (22.14%) Banking
4 61 (21.79%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.00%) Front Office
6 13 (4.64%) Marketing
7 8 (2.86%) Investment Banking
7 8 (2.86%) Legal
8 7 (2.50%) Retail
9 6 (2.14%) Back Office
10 5 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.79%) Public Sector
11 4 (1.43%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.43%) Telecoms
12 3 (1.07%) Financial Institution
12 3 (1.07%) General Ledger
12 3 (1.07%) Law
12 3 (1.07%) Publishing
13 2 (0.71%) Advertising
13 2 (0.71%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 56 (20.00%) Analyst
2 50 (17.86%) Data Engineer
3 44 (15.71%) Developer
4 38 (13.57%) Senior
5 31 (11.07%) Data Analyst
6 20 (7.14%) Lead
7 14 (5.00%) Architect
7 14 (5.00%) Consultant
7 14 (5.00%) DBA
8 13 (4.64%) Business Analyst
8 13 (4.64%) Senior Developer
9 11 (3.93%) C# Developer
9 11 (3.93%) Snowflake Data Engineer
9 11 (3.93%) Snowflake Engineer
9 11 (3.93%) SQL DBA
10 10 (3.57%) Software Engineer
11 9 (3.21%) Java Developer
12 8 (2.86%) Applications Support
12 8 (2.86%) Data Architect
12 8 (2.86%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (9.29%) .NET
2 21 (7.50%) Kafka
3 19 (6.79%) PySpark
4 16 (5.71%) REST
5 14 (5.00%) AngularJS
6 13 (4.64%) JSON
7 12 (4.29%) Middleware
7 12 (4.29%) Spring
8 11 (3.93%) Web Services
8 11 (3.93%) XML
9 10 (3.57%) Spring Boot
10 9 (3.21%) RESTful
10 9 (3.21%) SOAP
11 8 (2.86%) HTML
11 8 (2.86%) React
12 7 (2.50%) .NET Framework
12 7 (2.50%) PyTorch
12 7 (2.50%) TensorFlow
13 6 (2.14%) scikit-learn
14 5 (1.79%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 28 (10.00%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.36%) Data Structures
3 13 (4.64%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 12 (4.29%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.57%) Fixed Income
5 10 (3.57%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (3.21%) Derivative
6 9 (3.21%) Equities
6 9 (3.21%) Onboarding
6 9 (3.21%) Product Ownership
7 8 (2.86%) Clustering
8 5 (1.79%) AI Agents
8 5 (1.79%) Data Centre
8 5 (1.79%) Mainframe
8 5 (1.79%) Market Risk
8 5 (1.79%) Reinsurance
8 5 (1.79%) Replication
9 4 (1.43%) DataPower
9 4 (1.43%) Online Banking
9 4 (1.43%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.50%) Linux
2 20 (7.14%) Unix
3 18 (6.43%) Windows
4 7 (2.50%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.43%) zOS
6 3 (1.07%) Android
6 3 (1.07%) Apple iOS
7 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2008
7 2 (0.71%) Windows Server 2019
8 1 (0.36%) OpenVMS
8 1 (0.36%) VMS
8 1 (0.36%) Windows 10
8 1 (0.36%) Windows 7
8 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 103 (36.79%) Analytics
2 84 (30.00%) Data Modelling
3 72 (25.71%) AI
4 68 (24.29%) Business Intelligence
5 66 (23.57%) Data Engineering
6 65 (23.21%) CI/CD
7 61 (21.79%) ETL
8 57 (20.36%) DevOps
9 52 (18.57%) Agile
10 47 (16.79%) Data Pipeline
11 45 (16.07%) Problem-Solving
12 41 (14.64%) Data Governance
13 40 (14.29%) Migration
14 39 (13.93%) Validation
15 37 (13.21%) Decision-Making
16 33 (11.79%) Data Analysis
16 33 (11.79%) Machine Learning
16 33 (11.79%) Stakeholder Management
17 32 (11.43%) Performance Tuning
18 28 (10.00%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 131 (46.79%) Python
2 33 (11.79%) C#
3 32 (11.43%) Java
4 19 (6.79%) PL/SQL
5 13 (4.64%) Data Analysis Expressions
5 13 (4.64%) T-SQL
6 12 (4.29%) JavaScript
6 12 (4.29%) Shell Script
7 10 (3.57%) PowerShell
7 10 (3.57%) R
8 7 (2.50%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.43%) JCL
10 3 (1.07%) C++
10 3 (1.07%) Scala
11 2 (0.71%) Bicep
11 2 (0.71%) C
11 2 (0.71%) Korn
11 2 (0.71%) ProC
12 1 (0.36%) LookML
12 1 (0.36%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 24 (8.57%) Degree
1 24 (8.57%) Security Cleared
2 17 (6.07%) SC Cleared
3 7 (2.50%) Computer Science Degree
4 5 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (1.79%) DBS Check
5 3 (1.07%) AWS Certification
5 3 (1.07%) PhD
6 2 (0.71%) CISM
6 2 (0.71%) CISSP
6 2 (0.71%) SnowPro
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 1 (0.36%) CCA
7 1 (0.36%) Citrix Certification
7 1 (0.36%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.36%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.36%) PMI Certification
7 1 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (20.36%) Data Quality
2 31 (11.07%) QA
3 16 (5.71%) GDPR
4 4 (1.43%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.71%) EMIR
5 2 (0.71%) HIPAA
5 2 (0.71%) MiFID
5 2 (0.71%) PSD2
5 2 (0.71%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.71%) SLA
6 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.36%) GAAP
6 1 (0.36%) GxP
6 1 (0.36%) IFRS
6 1 (0.36%) NIST
6 1 (0.36%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.36%) PERC
6 1 (0.36%) Solvency II
System Software
1 20 (7.14%) Docker
2 6 (2.14%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 1 (0.36%) GridGain
4 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.36%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.36%) Varnish
4 1 (0.36%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.36%) XenApp
4 1 (0.36%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 20 (7.14%) Kubernetes
2 13 (4.64%) Terraform
3 5 (1.79%) ITRS Geneos
4 4 (1.43%) Ansible
5 2 (0.71%) Grafana
5 2 (0.71%) Microsoft Clustering
5 2 (0.71%) SCOM
6 1 (0.36%) Control-M
6 1 (0.36%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.36%) NetBackup
6 1 (0.36%) SCCM
6 1 (0.36%) SCVMM
6 1 (0.36%) WSUS
6 1 (0.36%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 54 (19.29%) Microsoft
2 41 (14.64%) Oracle
3 34 (12.14%) Databricks
4 11 (3.93%) Google
4 11 (3.93%) Informatica
5 7 (2.50%) SAP
6 6 (2.14%) Citrix
6 6 (2.14%) Murex
6 6 (2.14%) Workday
7 5 (1.79%) Amplitude
7 5 (1.79%) IBM
7 5 (1.79%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.79%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.43%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.43%) Sitecore
8 4 (1.43%) Solace
8 4 (1.43%) Splunk
9 3 (1.07%) Adobe
9 3 (1.07%) Guidewire
9 3 (1.07%) Sybase