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

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 8 8
Rank change year-on-year -7 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 254 278 288
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 10.99% 16.01% 13.30%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.71% 40.17% 38.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 171 177 195
10th Percentile £355 £407 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £540 £550 £588
Median % change year-on-year -1.82% -6.38% -2.08%
75th Percentile £651 £725 £675
90th Percentile £749 £810 £775
Central London median daily rate £545 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -0.91% -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £37.50 - -
25th Percentile £43.12 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £52.49 - £48.50
75th Percentile £56.11 - £50.25
90th Percentile £58.28 - -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +80.56% -40.06% +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 609 692 756
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 26.34% 39.86% 34.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 427 455 529
10th Percentile £355 £413 £400
25th Percentile £450 £475 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £698 £695
90th Percentile £750 £800 £800
Central London median daily rate £538 £575 £552
% change year-on-year -6.52% +4.21% -11.72%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 0 1
10th Percentile £26.32 - -
25th Percentile £32.39 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 - £48.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -11.82%
75th Percentile £56.11 - £50.25
90th Percentile £65.83 - -
Central London median hourly rate £37.50 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +29.00% -40.06% -11.82%

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 20 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 20 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 20 (7.87%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (3.94%) Apache Spark
3 7 (2.76%) Apache
4 6 (2.36%) Confluence
5 5 (1.97%) SharePoint
6 4 (1.57%) CICS
7 3 (1.18%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.39%) nginx
8 1 (0.39%) SAS
Applications
1 12 (4.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.36%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
5 2 (0.79%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (2.36%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.97%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.57%) Endur
3 4 (1.57%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (1.18%) Aladdin
4 3 (1.18%) Bloomberg AIM
4 3 (1.18%) Fidessa
4 3 (1.18%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.18%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (1.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 3 (1.18%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.79%) BASE24
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.79%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.79%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.39%) Magento
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.39%) Summit
6 1 (0.39%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 82 (32.28%) Azure
2 63 (24.80%) AWS
3 57 (22.44%) Power Platform
4 31 (12.20%) GCP
5 29 (11.42%) Snowflake
6 25 (9.84%) Azure Data Factory
7 22 (8.66%) GitHub
7 22 (8.66%) Serverless
8 21 (8.27%) dbt
9 17 (6.69%) Azure DevOps
10 15 (5.91%) AWS Lambda
10 15 (5.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 14 (5.51%) Amazon S3
12 9 (3.54%) Prefect
13 7 (2.76%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 7 (2.76%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (2.36%) Amazon EKS
14 6 (2.36%) Amazon SageMaker
14 6 (2.36%) Dagster
15 5 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.79%) 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 50 (19.69%) Power BI
2 38 (14.96%) Data Warehouse
3 33 (12.99%) SQL Server
3 33 (12.99%) Tableau
4 21 (8.27%) Metadata
5 19 (7.48%) Relational Database
6 17 (6.69%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (5.12%) Amazon Redshift
7 13 (5.12%) NoSQL
8 12 (4.72%) Looker
9 11 (4.33%) BigQuery
10 9 (3.54%) Data Lake
10 9 (3.54%) Snowflake Schema
11 8 (3.15%) Big Data
11 8 (3.15%) DB2
11 8 (3.15%) DynamoDB
11 8 (3.15%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (2.36%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (2.36%) Oracle Database
12 6 (2.36%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 19 (7.48%) Git
2 12 (4.72%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.94%) JIRA
4 8 (3.15%) GitLab
5 4 (1.57%) ERwin
5 4 (1.57%) JUnit
6 3 (1.18%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.18%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.18%) Mockito
7 2 (0.79%) ER Studio
7 2 (0.79%) Gatling
7 2 (0.79%) Gradle
7 2 (0.79%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.79%) Selenium
7 2 (0.79%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.79%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.79%) Toad
8 1 (0.39%) MLflow
8 1 (0.39%) Postman
8 1 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 102 (40.16%) Finance
2 58 (22.83%) Social Skills
3 44 (17.32%) Banking
4 43 (16.93%) Analytical Skills
5 14 (5.51%) Front Office
6 13 (5.12%) Legal
7 9 (3.54%) Investment Banking
7 9 (3.54%) Marketing
8 8 (3.15%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.97%) Back Office
9 5 (1.97%) Financial Institution
9 5 (1.97%) Telecoms
10 4 (1.57%) General Ledger
10 4 (1.57%) Public Sector
11 3 (1.18%) Law
11 3 (1.18%) Pharmaceutical
11 3 (1.18%) Publishing
12 2 (0.79%) Billing
12 2 (0.79%) Influencing Skills
12 2 (0.79%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 52 (20.47%) Data Engineer
2 41 (16.14%) Developer
3 38 (14.96%) Analyst
4 26 (10.24%) Senior
5 20 (7.87%) Data Analyst
6 19 (7.48%) Lead
7 14 (5.51%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 14 (5.51%) Snowflake Engineer
8 12 (4.72%) Architect
8 12 (4.72%) DBA
9 11 (4.33%) Consultant
10 10 (3.94%) Java Developer
10 10 (3.94%) Software Engineer
11 9 (3.54%) SQL DBA
12 8 (3.15%) Business Analyst
12 8 (3.15%) Data Scientist
12 8 (3.15%) Senior Developer
13 7 (2.76%) Python Engineer
14 6 (2.36%) Azure Data Engineer
14 6 (2.36%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.45%) Kafka
2 15 (5.91%) .NET
2 15 (5.91%) JSON
2 15 (5.91%) PySpark
2 15 (5.91%) REST
3 14 (5.51%) React
4 11 (4.33%) Spring
5 10 (3.94%) PyTorch
5 10 (3.94%) RESTful
6 9 (3.54%) AngularJS
6 9 (3.54%) Pandas
6 9 (3.54%) Spring Boot
6 9 (3.54%) TensorFlow
6 9 (3.54%) XML
7 8 (3.15%) Middleware
7 8 (3.15%) scikit-learn
7 8 (3.15%) SOAP
7 8 (3.15%) Web Services
8 7 (2.76%) HTML
9 5 (1.97%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 18 (7.09%) Cloud Native
2 12 (4.72%) Equities
3 11 (4.33%) Data Structures
3 11 (4.33%) Derivative
3 11 (4.33%) Fixed Income
3 11 (4.33%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 8 (3.15%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (2.76%) Algorithms
6 6 (2.36%) AI Agents
6 6 (2.36%) Clustering
6 6 (2.36%) Onboarding
7 5 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
7 5 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
7 5 (1.97%) Mainframe
8 4 (1.57%) DataPower
8 4 (1.57%) Market Risk
8 4 (1.57%) Online Banking
8 4 (1.57%) Reference Data
9 3 (1.18%) Hybrid Cloud
9 3 (1.18%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.91%) Linux
2 10 (3.94%) Unix
2 10 (3.94%) Windows
3 4 (1.57%) Windows Server
3 4 (1.57%) zOS
4 3 (1.18%) Android
4 3 (1.18%) Apple iOS
5 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (31.50%) Analytics
2 64 (25.20%) AI
3 62 (24.41%) ETL
4 61 (24.02%) Data Modelling
5 56 (22.05%) Data Engineering
6 54 (21.26%) Business Intelligence
7 49 (19.29%) Data Pipeline
8 48 (18.90%) CI/CD
9 45 (17.72%) DevOps
10 39 (15.35%) Problem-Solving
11 38 (14.96%) Migration
12 37 (14.57%) Performance Tuning
12 37 (14.57%) Validation
13 35 (13.78%) Agile
14 34 (13.39%) Data Governance
15 31 (12.20%) Data Science
16 30 (11.81%) Machine Learning
17 29 (11.42%) Test Automation
18 27 (10.63%) Data Analysis
19 26 (10.24%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 131 (51.57%) Python
2 35 (13.78%) Java
3 16 (6.30%) C#
3 16 (6.30%) PL/SQL
4 12 (4.72%) JavaScript
5 10 (3.94%) TypeScript
6 9 (3.54%) R
6 9 (3.54%) Shell Script
7 7 (2.76%) T-SQL
8 6 (2.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 4 (1.57%) JCL
9 4 (1.57%) Scala
10 3 (1.18%) Bicep
10 3 (1.18%) C
10 3 (1.18%) C++
10 3 (1.18%) Perl
10 3 (1.18%) PHP
10 3 (1.18%) PowerShell
11 2 (0.79%) ProC
12 1 (0.39%) Korn
Qualifications
1 21 (8.27%) Degree
2 18 (7.09%) Security Cleared
3 13 (5.12%) SC Cleared
4 9 (3.54%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (1.57%) DBS Check
7 3 (1.18%) AWS Certification
7 3 (1.18%) PhD
7 3 (1.18%) PMI Certification
7 3 (1.18%) PMP
8 2 (0.79%) CISM
8 2 (0.79%) CISSP
8 2 (0.79%) Master's Degree
8 2 (0.79%) SnowPro
9 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Developer
9 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
9 1 (0.39%) CBAP
9 1 (0.39%) CFA
9 1 (0.39%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 1 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (20.47%) Data Quality
2 18 (7.09%) QA
3 17 (6.69%) GDPR
4 4 (1.57%) ISO 8583
4 4 (1.57%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.18%) Basel III
5 3 (1.18%) GAAP
5 3 (1.18%) IFRS
5 3 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.79%) EMIR
6 2 (0.79%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.79%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.79%) MiFID
6 2 (0.79%) NIST
6 2 (0.79%) PSD2
6 2 (0.79%) SEPA
7 1 (0.39%) DICOM
7 1 (0.39%) GxP
7 1 (0.39%) HL7
7 1 (0.39%) PCI DSS
System Software
1 27 (10.63%) Docker
2 2 (0.79%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.79%) 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 (9.06%) Kubernetes
2 13 (5.12%) Terraform
3 6 (2.36%) Ansible
4 5 (1.97%) Grafana
5 3 (1.18%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.79%) Argo
6 2 (0.79%) ITRS Geneos
7 1 (0.39%) Control-M
7 1 (0.39%) SCCM
7 1 (0.39%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 49 (19.29%) Microsoft
2 35 (13.78%) Oracle
3 28 (11.02%) Databricks
4 14 (5.51%) Google
5 10 (3.94%) Informatica
5 10 (3.94%) SAP
5 10 (3.94%) Workday
6 6 (2.36%) Splunk
7 5 (1.97%) Amplitude
7 5 (1.97%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.97%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.57%) AppDynamics
8 4 (1.57%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.57%) Charles River
8 4 (1.57%) IBM
9 3 (1.18%) Citrix
9 3 (1.18%) Foundry
9 3 (1.18%) Guidewire
9 3 (1.18%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.18%) Palantir