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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -7 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 257 272 300
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.01% 16.08% 13.91%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.79% 40.12% 39.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 173 177 206
10th Percentile £355 £404 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.64% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £653 £725 £675
90th Percentile £749 £775 £756
Central London median daily rate £534 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -2.95% -4.35% -3.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 1
10th Percentile £37.50 - -
25th Percentile £43.12 £16.50 £46.75
Median hourly rate £52.49 £17.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +208.76% -64.95% +49.23%
75th Percentile £56.11 £17.50 £50.25
90th Percentile £58.28 - -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £23.04 £48.50
% change year-on-year +127.87% -52.51% +49.23%

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 615 678 766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 26.35% 40.07% 35.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 428 459 538
10th Percentile £355 £406 £400
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £639 £700 £688
90th Percentile £750 £795 £791
Central London median daily rate £540 £550 £559
% change year-on-year -1.82% -1.52% -10.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 1 1
10th Percentile £26.32 - -
25th Percentile £32.39 £16.50 £46.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £17.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +120.59% -64.95% -7.62%
75th Percentile £56.11 £17.50 £50.25
90th Percentile £65.83 - -
Central London median hourly rate £37.50 £23.04 £48.50
% change year-on-year +62.80% -52.51% -7.62%

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 May 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 May 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 21 (8.17%) Apache Airflow
2 11 (4.28%) Apache Spark
3 8 (3.11%) Apache
4 5 (1.95%) Confluence
5 4 (1.56%) CICS
6 3 (1.17%) Palantir Foundry
7 2 (0.78%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.39%) nginx
8 1 (0.39%) SAS
Applications
1 10 (3.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.95%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.78%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.33%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.95%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.56%) Endur
3 4 (1.56%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (1.17%) Aladdin
4 3 (1.17%) Bloomberg AIM
4 3 (1.17%) Fidessa
4 3 (1.17%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.17%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (1.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.78%) BASE24
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.78%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.78%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.78%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
6 1 (0.39%) Magento
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle E-Business Tax
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.39%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 84 (32.68%) Azure
2 63 (24.51%) AWS
3 59 (22.96%) Power Platform
4 31 (12.06%) GCP
5 29 (11.28%) Snowflake
6 26 (10.12%) Azure Data Factory
7 22 (8.56%) GitHub
7 22 (8.56%) Serverless
8 21 (8.17%) dbt
9 18 (7.00%) Azure DevOps
10 15 (5.84%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (5.84%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 14 (5.45%) Amazon S3
12 9 (3.50%) Prefect
13 7 (2.72%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 7 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (2.33%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (2.33%) Amazon SageMaker
14 6 (2.33%) Dagster
14 6 (2.33%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.78%) Multicast
2 1 (0.39%) DNS
2 1 (0.39%) LAN
2 1 (0.39%) NetScaler
2 1 (0.39%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.39%) VPN
2 1 (0.39%) WAN
2 1 (0.39%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 52 (20.23%) Power BI
2 39 (15.18%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (13.23%) SQL Server
3 34 (13.23%) Tableau
4 21 (8.17%) Metadata
5 17 (6.61%) PostgreSQL
5 17 (6.61%) Relational Database
6 13 (5.06%) Amazon Redshift
6 13 (5.06%) NoSQL
7 12 (4.67%) Looker
8 11 (4.28%) BigQuery
9 9 (3.50%) Data Lake
9 9 (3.50%) Snowflake Schema
10 8 (3.11%) Big Data
10 8 (3.11%) DB2
10 8 (3.11%) DynamoDB
10 8 (3.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 7 (2.72%) Oracle Database
12 6 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (2.33%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 19 (7.39%) Git
2 11 (4.28%) Jenkins
3 9 (3.50%) JIRA
4 8 (3.11%) GitLab
5 4 (1.56%) JUnit
6 3 (1.17%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.17%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.17%) ERwin
6 3 (1.17%) Mockito
7 2 (0.78%) Gatling
7 2 (0.78%) Gradle
7 2 (0.78%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.78%) Selenium
7 2 (0.78%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.78%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 1 (0.39%) ER Studio
8 1 (0.39%) MLflow
8 1 (0.39%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 106 (41.25%) Finance
2 57 (22.18%) Social Skills
3 48 (18.68%) Banking
4 45 (17.51%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.45%) Front Office
6 12 (4.67%) Legal
7 10 (3.89%) Marketing
8 9 (3.50%) Investment Banking
9 8 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.95%) Back Office
10 5 (1.95%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.95%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.56%) Financial Institution
11 4 (1.56%) Public Sector
12 3 (1.17%) Law
12 3 (1.17%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (1.17%) Publishing
13 2 (0.78%) Billing
13 2 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.78%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 55 (21.40%) Data Engineer
2 41 (15.95%) Analyst
2 41 (15.95%) Developer
3 26 (10.12%) Senior
4 22 (8.56%) Data Analyst
5 21 (8.17%) Lead
6 14 (5.45%) Snowflake Data Engineer
6 14 (5.45%) Snowflake Engineer
7 12 (4.67%) Architect
7 12 (4.67%) DBA
8 11 (4.28%) Consultant
9 10 (3.89%) Java Developer
9 10 (3.89%) Software Engineer
10 9 (3.50%) Senior Developer
10 9 (3.50%) SQL DBA
11 8 (3.11%) Business Analyst
11 8 (3.11%) Data Scientist
12 7 (2.72%) Python Engineer
13 6 (2.33%) Azure Data Engineer
13 6 (2.33%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (9.73%) Kafka
2 17 (6.61%) .NET
3 16 (6.23%) PySpark
4 15 (5.84%) REST
5 14 (5.45%) JSON
5 14 (5.45%) React
6 11 (4.28%) Spring
7 10 (3.89%) PyTorch
7 10 (3.89%) RESTful
8 9 (3.50%) AngularJS
8 9 (3.50%) Pandas
8 9 (3.50%) Spring Boot
8 9 (3.50%) TensorFlow
8 9 (3.50%) Web Services
8 9 (3.50%) XML
9 8 (3.11%) Middleware
9 8 (3.11%) scikit-learn
9 8 (3.11%) SOAP
10 7 (2.72%) HTML
11 5 (1.95%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.17%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.45%) Equities
3 11 (4.28%) Data Structures
3 11 (4.28%) Derivative
3 11 (4.28%) Fixed Income
3 11 (4.28%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 8 (3.11%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (2.72%) Algorithms
5 7 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
6 6 (2.33%) AI Agents
6 6 (2.33%) Clustering
6 6 (2.33%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.95%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.95%) Mainframe
8 4 (1.56%) DataPower
8 4 (1.56%) Market Risk
8 4 (1.56%) Online Banking
9 3 (1.17%) Enterprise Software
9 3 (1.17%) Management Information System
9 3 (1.17%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.45%) Linux
2 11 (4.28%) Windows
3 7 (2.72%) Unix
4 5 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.56%) zOS
6 3 (1.17%) Android
6 3 (1.17%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 87 (33.85%) Analytics
2 66 (25.68%) Data Modelling
3 65 (25.29%) AI
4 64 (24.90%) ETL
5 60 (23.35%) Data Engineering
6 57 (22.18%) Business Intelligence
7 51 (19.84%) CI/CD
7 51 (19.84%) Data Pipeline
8 47 (18.29%) DevOps
9 40 (15.56%) Validation
10 39 (15.18%) Migration
10 39 (15.18%) Problem-Solving
11 36 (14.01%) Agile
12 35 (13.62%) Data Governance
13 33 (12.84%) Performance Tuning
14 31 (12.06%) Data Analysis
14 31 (12.06%) Data Science
14 31 (12.06%) Machine Learning
15 29 (11.28%) Test Automation
16 28 (10.89%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 135 (52.53%) Python
2 35 (13.62%) Java
3 18 (7.00%) C#
4 15 (5.84%) PL/SQL
5 13 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 9 (3.50%) R
6 9 (3.50%) TypeScript
7 8 (3.11%) T-SQL
8 7 (2.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 7 (2.72%) Shell Script
9 4 (1.56%) C++
9 4 (1.56%) JCL
9 4 (1.56%) Scala
10 3 (1.17%) Bicep
10 3 (1.17%) C
10 3 (1.17%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.78%) ProC
12 1 (0.39%) COBOL
12 1 (0.39%) PHP
12 1 (0.39%) VB
Qualifications
1 23 (8.95%) Degree
2 19 (7.39%) Security Cleared
3 14 (5.45%) SC Cleared
4 9 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.72%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (1.95%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.17%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.17%) PhD
7 3 (1.17%) PMI Certification
7 3 (1.17%) PMP
8 2 (0.78%) CISM
8 2 (0.78%) CISSP
8 2 (0.78%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.78%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
9 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.39%) CCA
9 1 (0.39%) Citrix Certification
9 1 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (21.01%) Data Quality
2 19 (7.39%) QA
3 17 (6.61%) GDPR
4 4 (1.56%) GAAP
4 4 (1.56%) IFRS
4 4 (1.56%) ISO 8583
4 4 (1.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.17%) Basel III
5 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.78%) EMIR
6 2 (0.78%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.78%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.78%) MiFID
6 2 (0.78%) NIST
6 2 (0.78%) PSD2
6 2 (0.78%) SEPA
7 1 (0.39%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.39%) PMO
System Software
1 27 (10.51%) Docker
2 2 (0.78%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.39%) GridGain
3 1 (0.39%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.39%) Varnish
3 1 (0.39%) XenApp
3 1 (0.39%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 23 (8.95%) Kubernetes
2 13 (5.06%) Terraform
3 5 (1.95%) Ansible
3 5 (1.95%) Grafana
4 3 (1.17%) Prometheus
5 2 (0.78%) Argo
6 1 (0.39%) Control-M
6 1 (0.39%) ITRS Geneos
6 1 (0.39%) SCCM
6 1 (0.39%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 48 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 37 (14.40%) Oracle
3 32 (12.45%) Databricks
4 14 (5.45%) Google
5 10 (3.89%) Informatica
5 10 (3.89%) SAP
5 10 (3.89%) Workday
6 5 (1.95%) Amplitude
6 5 (1.95%) IBM
6 5 (1.95%) Salesforce
6 5 (1.95%) ServiceNow
6 5 (1.95%) Splunk
7 4 (1.56%) Charles River
7 4 (1.56%) Citrix
8 3 (1.17%) AppDynamics
8 3 (1.17%) Bloomberg
8 3 (1.17%) Foundry
8 3 (1.17%) Guidewire
8 3 (1.17%) OpenAI
8 3 (1.17%) Palantir