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 13 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 11 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -2 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 252 259 329
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 13.10% 14.18% 13.78%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.71% 37.65% 41.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 176 169 221
10th Percentile £333 £395 £413
25th Percentile £425 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £531 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.61% - -2.54%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £688
90th Percentile £749 £790 £775
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 1
10th Percentile £28.30 - -
25th Percentile £31.00 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £39.50 - £48.50
75th Percentile £50.56 - £50.25
90th Percentile £56.06 - -
Central London median hourly rate £39.50 £41.50 £48.50
% change year-on-year -4.82% -14.43% +142.50%

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 590 688 792
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 30.67% 37.66% 33.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 424 426 581
10th Percentile £355 £412 £413
25th Percentile £425 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.21%
75th Percentile £663 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £788 £825
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -8.70% - -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 3 2
10th Percentile £28.30 £51.80 £46.30
25th Percentile £31.00 £74.38 £46.38
Median hourly rate £39.50 £112.00 £48.00
Median % change year-on-year -64.73% +133.33% +0.52%
75th Percentile £50.56 - £49.88
90th Percentile £56.06 - £50.10
Central London median hourly rate £39.50 £76.75 £48.00
% change year-on-year -48.53% +59.90% +0.52%

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 13 February 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 13 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the City of 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 15 (5.95%) Apache Airflow
1 15 (5.95%) Apache Spark
2 7 (2.78%) Apache
3 5 (1.98%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.59%) Confluence
5 3 (1.19%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.40%) Anypoint
6 1 (0.40%) Mule
6 1 (0.40%) SAS
Applications
1 17 (6.75%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.98%) Microsoft Office
2 5 (1.98%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 5 (1.98%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.79%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.59%) Endur
2 3 (1.19%) Aladdin
2 3 (1.19%) Oracle General Ledger
2 3 (1.19%) Oracle Payables
2 3 (1.19%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
3 2 (0.79%) Algo Collateral
3 2 (0.79%) BASE24
3 2 (0.79%) Bloomberg AIM
3 2 (0.79%) Fidessa
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 2 (0.79%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.79%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.40%) ION MarketView
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle Applications
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle Financials
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle Retail
4 1 (0.40%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 80 (31.75%) Azure
2 74 (29.37%) AWS
3 50 (19.84%) Power Platform
4 31 (12.30%) GCP
5 25 (9.92%) Snowflake
6 22 (8.73%) GitHub
7 21 (8.33%) Serverless
8 17 (6.75%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.75%) Azure Data Factory
8 17 (6.75%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (5.56%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (5.56%) dbt
10 11 (4.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 8 (3.17%) SaaS
12 7 (2.78%) Amazon EKS
12 7 (2.78%) Amazon SageMaker
12 7 (2.78%) Azure Functions
13 6 (2.38%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 6 (2.38%) GitHub Actions
13 6 (2.38%) Microsoft Purview
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.40%) 2G
1 1 (0.40%) 4G
1 1 (0.40%) 5G
1 1 (0.40%) DNS
1 1 (0.40%) HTTP
1 1 (0.40%) LAN
1 1 (0.40%) NetScaler
1 1 (0.40%) Radio Access Network
1 1 (0.40%) SD-WAN
1 1 (0.40%) SNMP
1 1 (0.40%) WAN
1 1 (0.40%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 48 (19.05%) Power BI
2 34 (13.49%) Data Warehouse
3 30 (11.90%) Tableau
4 22 (8.73%) SQL Server
5 18 (7.14%) Relational Database
6 17 (6.75%) Metadata
7 16 (6.35%) PostgreSQL
8 13 (5.16%) NoSQL
9 11 (4.37%) Data Lake
10 7 (2.78%) Amazon Redshift
10 7 (2.78%) Big Data
10 7 (2.78%) Looker
11 6 (2.38%) MySQL
11 6 (2.38%) Snowflake Schema
11 6 (2.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 5 (1.98%) BigQuery
12 5 (1.98%) Delta Lake
12 5 (1.98%) Mixpanel
12 5 (1.98%) MongoDB
12 5 (1.98%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 24 (9.52%) Git
2 10 (3.97%) Jenkins
2 10 (3.97%) JIRA
3 4 (1.59%) Cucumber
4 3 (1.19%) ERwin
4 3 (1.19%) GitLab
4 3 (1.19%) Visual Website Optimizer
5 2 (0.79%) ER Studio
5 2 (0.79%) Gatling
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Forms
5 2 (0.79%) Postman
5 2 (0.79%) SonarQube
5 2 (0.79%) SpecFlow
5 2 (0.79%) Team Foundation Server
5 2 (0.79%) Toad
6 1 (0.40%) Bitbucket
6 1 (0.40%) Cypress.io
6 1 (0.40%) LoadRunner
6 1 (0.40%) MLflow
6 1 (0.40%) MSTest
General
1 92 (36.51%) Finance
2 72 (28.57%) Social Skills
3 58 (23.02%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (17.86%) Banking
5 17 (6.75%) Front Office
6 14 (5.56%) Investment Banking
7 10 (3.97%) Legal
7 10 (3.97%) Public Sector
8 7 (2.78%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.38%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (2.38%) Marketing
10 5 (1.98%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.98%) Law
10 5 (1.98%) Retail
11 4 (1.59%) General Ledger
11 4 (1.59%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.19%) Back Office
12 3 (1.19%) Organisational Skills
12 3 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.79%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 53 (21.03%) Developer
2 46 (18.25%) Analyst
3 42 (16.67%) Data Engineer
4 28 (11.11%) Senior
5 23 (9.13%) Lead
6 18 (7.14%) Data Analyst
7 13 (5.16%) Business Analyst
8 12 (4.76%) Consultant
9 11 (4.37%) Architect
10 8 (3.17%) Data Scientist
10 8 (3.17%) Java Developer
10 8 (3.17%) Senior Analyst
11 7 (2.78%) Senior Data Engineer
12 6 (2.38%) Oracle Developer
12 6 (2.38%) Python Developer
12 6 (2.38%) Senior Developer
12 6 (2.38%) Snowflake Data Engineer
12 6 (2.38%) Snowflake Engineer
13 5 (1.98%) Data Modeller
13 5 (1.98%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.52%) .NET
2 17 (6.75%) Kafka
3 15 (5.95%) XML
4 14 (5.56%) PySpark
5 13 (5.16%) React
5 13 (5.16%) REST
6 10 (3.97%) HTML
6 10 (3.97%) JSON
7 9 (3.57%) AngularJS
7 9 (3.57%) PyTorch
7 9 (3.57%) scikit-learn
8 8 (3.17%) Pandas
8 8 (3.17%) TensorFlow
9 7 (2.78%) CSS
9 7 (2.78%) jQuery
9 7 (2.78%) Node.js
9 7 (2.78%) Web Services
10 6 (2.38%) Middleware
10 6 (2.38%) NumPy
11 5 (1.98%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 22 (8.73%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.95%) Derivative
3 11 (4.37%) Algorithms
4 10 (3.97%) Data Structures
4 10 (3.97%) Fixed Income
4 10 (3.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 9 (3.57%) Analytical Mindset
5 9 (3.57%) Equities
6 5 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
6 5 (1.98%) Management Information System
6 5 (1.98%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.98%) Reference Data
7 4 (1.59%) AI Agents
7 4 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
7 4 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
7 4 (1.59%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.19%) Hybrid Cloud
8 3 (1.19%) Product Ownership
8 3 (1.19%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.95%) Linux
2 13 (5.16%) Windows
3 9 (3.57%) Unix
4 3 (1.19%) Android
4 3 (1.19%) Apple iOS
5 2 (0.79%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.40%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 70 (27.78%) Analytics
2 58 (23.02%) Data Modelling
3 56 (22.22%) ETL
4 55 (21.83%) Business Intelligence
4 55 (21.83%) Problem-Solving
5 51 (20.24%) Agile
6 45 (17.86%) Data Pipeline
7 37 (14.68%) Migration
8 35 (13.89%) CI/CD
8 35 (13.89%) Data Engineering
9 34 (13.49%) AI
9 34 (13.49%) DevOps
10 33 (13.10%) Visualisation
11 32 (12.70%) Performance Tuning
11 32 (12.70%) Validation
12 31 (12.30%) Data Governance
13 30 (11.90%) Machine Learning
14 28 (11.11%) Data Analysis
15 27 (10.71%) Data Science
16 25 (9.92%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 124 (49.21%) Python
2 40 (15.87%) Java
3 23 (9.13%) JavaScript
4 21 (8.33%) C#
5 13 (5.16%) PL/SQL
6 7 (2.78%) TypeScript
7 6 (2.38%) C++
7 6 (2.38%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 6 (2.38%) PowerShell
8 5 (1.98%) Scala
8 5 (1.98%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.59%) Perl
9 4 (1.59%) PHP
9 4 (1.59%) R
9 4 (1.59%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.19%) Bicep
10 3 (1.19%) C
10 3 (1.19%) Korn
10 3 (1.19%) ProC
10 3 (1.19%) VBA
Qualifications
1 25 (9.92%) Degree
2 21 (8.33%) Security Cleared
3 14 (5.56%) SC Cleared
4 11 (4.37%) Computer Science Degree
5 6 (2.38%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.59%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.19%) ISTQB
7 3 (1.19%) Master's Degree
7 3 (1.19%) PhD
7 3 (1.19%) PMP
8 2 (0.79%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 2 (0.79%) CBAP
8 2 (0.79%) CFA
8 2 (0.79%) ISEB
8 2 (0.79%) PMI Certification
8 2 (0.79%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.40%) DBS Check
9 1 (0.40%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
9 1 (0.40%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.40%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (18.65%) Data Quality
2 18 (7.14%) QA
3 11 (4.37%) GDPR
4 4 (1.59%) ISO 8583
5 3 (1.19%) Basel III
5 3 (1.19%) GAAP
5 3 (1.19%) IFRS
5 3 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
6 2 (0.79%) EMIR
6 2 (0.79%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.79%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.79%) NIST
6 2 (0.79%) PSD2
6 2 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.79%) SEPA
7 1 (0.40%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.40%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.40%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.40%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (6.75%) Docker
2 3 (1.19%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.79%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.40%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.40%) Oracle RAC
4 1 (0.40%) XenApp
4 1 (0.40%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 18 (7.14%) Terraform
2 16 (6.35%) Kubernetes
3 10 (3.97%) Ansible
4 5 (1.98%) Grafana
5 4 (1.59%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.19%) ITRS Geneos
7 2 (0.79%) Argo
8 1 (0.40%) Data Guard
8 1 (0.40%) Istio
8 1 (0.40%) Kibana
8 1 (0.40%) logstash
8 1 (0.40%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
8 1 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.40%) SCCM
8 1 (0.40%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 47 (18.65%) Microsoft
2 37 (14.68%) Oracle
3 31 (12.30%) Databricks
4 16 (6.35%) Google
5 9 (3.57%) SAP
6 6 (2.38%) IBM
6 6 (2.38%) Informatica
7 5 (1.98%) Amplitude
7 5 (1.98%) AppDynamics
7 5 (1.98%) Splunk
7 5 (1.98%) Workday
8 4 (1.59%) Bloomberg
9 3 (1.19%) Charles River
9 3 (1.19%) Cognos
9 3 (1.19%) Confluent
9 3 (1.19%) Foundry
9 3 (1.19%) Hotjar
9 3 (1.19%) Optimizely
9 3 (1.19%) Palantir
9 3 (1.19%) Sage