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

6 months to
17 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 18 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -9 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 257 281 309
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 10.62% 16.28% 14.25%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.86% 40.78% 39.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 170 183 219
10th Percentile £357 £404 £413
25th Percentile £442 £472 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £725 £675
90th Percentile £717 £775 £775
Central London median daily rate £530 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -3.64% -4.35% -4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 3 1
10th Percentile £37.50 £25.45 -
25th Percentile £43.12 £38.88 £46.75
Median hourly rate £52.49 £62.50 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.02% +28.87% +49.23%
75th Percentile £56.11 £76.25 £50.25
90th Percentile £58.28 £83.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £45.79 £48.50
% change year-on-year +14.64% -5.60% +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 629 689 791
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 26.00% 39.92% 36.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 426 463 557
10th Percentile £360 £404 £406
25th Percentile £450 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.52% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £649 £700 £688
90th Percentile £763 £798 £800
Central London median daily rate £550 £551 £563
% change year-on-year -0.18% -2.04% -10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 3 1
10th Percentile £26.32 £25.45 -
25th Percentile £32.39 £38.88 £46.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £62.50 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% +28.87% -7.62%
75th Percentile £56.11 £76.25 £50.25
90th Percentile £65.83 £83.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £51.44 £48.50
% change year-on-year +2.04% +6.06% -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 17 June 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 17 June 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 (7.78%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (3.89%) Apache Spark
3 7 (2.72%) Apache
4 6 (2.33%) Confluence
5 4 (1.56%) CICS
5 4 (1.56%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.78%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.39%) IIS
7 1 (0.39%) nginx
Applications
1 10 (3.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.33%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.78%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.78%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 5 (1.95%) BambooHR
1 5 (1.95%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.56%) Endur
2 4 (1.56%) Oracle EBS R12
2 4 (1.56%) Oracle General Ledger
2 4 (1.56%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (1.17%) Aladdin
3 3 (1.17%) Bloomberg AIM
3 3 (1.17%) Fidessa
3 3 (1.17%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.17%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.78%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.78%) Oracle Financials
5 1 (0.39%) Magento
5 1 (0.39%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.39%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.39%) Summit
5 1 (0.39%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 80 (31.13%) Azure
2 61 (23.74%) Power Platform
3 59 (22.96%) AWS
4 29 (11.28%) GCP
5 28 (10.89%) Snowflake
6 24 (9.34%) Azure Data Factory
6 24 (9.34%) Serverless
7 21 (8.17%) dbt
8 19 (7.39%) GitHub
9 17 (6.61%) AWS Lambda
10 16 (6.23%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.84%) Azure DevOps
12 13 (5.06%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 9 (3.50%) Prefect
14 7 (2.72%) GitHub Actions
15 6 (2.33%) Azure Cosmos DB
15 6 (2.33%) Dagster
15 6 (2.33%) SaaS
16 5 (1.95%) Amazon SageMaker
16 5 (1.95%) OCI
Communications & Networking
1 3 (1.17%) Multicast
2 1 (0.39%) DNS
2 1 (0.39%) Firewall
2 1 (0.39%) Internet
2 1 (0.39%) Intranet
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
4 29 (11.28%) Tableau
5 19 (7.39%) Relational Database
6 18 (7.00%) Metadata
7 15 (5.84%) Amazon Redshift
8 12 (4.67%) BigQuery
8 12 (4.67%) NoSQL
9 11 (4.28%) Looker
9 11 (4.28%) PostgreSQL
10 10 (3.89%) Data Lake
10 10 (3.89%) Oracle Database
11 9 (3.50%) Db2
11 9 (3.50%) DynamoDB
11 9 (3.50%) Snowflake Schema
12 8 (3.11%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 7 (2.72%) Big Data
14 6 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
14 6 (2.33%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 20 (7.78%) Git
2 13 (5.06%) Jenkins
3 10 (3.89%) JIRA
4 7 (2.72%) GitLab
5 4 (1.56%) JUnit
5 4 (1.56%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 3 (1.17%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.17%) Eclipse
6 3 (1.17%) Gradle
6 3 (1.17%) Mockito
7 2 (0.78%) Artifactory
7 2 (0.78%) ERwin
7 2 (0.78%) Gatling
7 2 (0.78%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.78%) TeamCity
7 2 (0.78%) Visual Studio
8 1 (0.39%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.39%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.39%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (0.39%) Zephyr
General
1 105 (40.86%) Finance
2 63 (24.51%) Social Skills
3 52 (20.23%) Banking
4 49 (19.07%) Analytical Skills
5 15 (5.84%) Front Office
6 12 (4.67%) Legal
7 10 (3.89%) Marketing
8 8 (3.11%) Documentation Skills
9 6 (2.33%) Investment Banking
10 5 (1.95%) General Ledger
10 5 (1.95%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.56%) Back Office
11 4 (1.56%) Public Sector
12 3 (1.17%) Financial Institution
12 3 (1.17%) Law
12 3 (1.17%) Publishing
13 2 (0.78%) Billing
13 2 (0.78%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.78%) Pharmaceutical
13 2 (0.78%) Retail
Job Titles
1 54 (21.01%) Data Engineer
2 43 (16.73%) Analyst
3 40 (15.56%) Developer
4 26 (10.12%) Senior
5 24 (9.34%) Lead
6 22 (8.56%) Data Analyst
7 14 (5.45%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 14 (5.45%) Snowflake Engineer
8 13 (5.06%) Consultant
9 12 (4.67%) Architect
10 11 (4.28%) DBA
10 11 (4.28%) Java Developer
11 10 (3.89%) Business Analyst
11 10 (3.89%) Software Engineer
12 8 (3.11%) SQL DBA
13 7 (2.72%) C# Developer
13 7 (2.72%) Data Scientist
13 7 (2.72%) Oracle Consultant
13 7 (2.72%) Python Engineer
13 7 (2.72%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.34%) Kafka
2 22 (8.56%) .NET
3 18 (7.00%) REST
4 17 (6.61%) PySpark
5 14 (5.45%) JSON
6 13 (5.06%) React
7 12 (4.67%) Spring
8 10 (3.89%) AngularJS
8 10 (3.89%) Middleware
8 10 (3.89%) Spring Boot
8 10 (3.89%) Web Services
8 10 (3.89%) XML
9 9 (3.50%) RESTful
9 9 (3.50%) SOAP
10 8 (3.11%) Pandas
11 7 (2.72%) HTML
11 7 (2.72%) PyTorch
12 6 (2.33%) scikit-learn
12 6 (2.33%) TensorFlow
13 5 (1.95%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 21 (8.17%) Cloud Native
2 12 (4.67%) Equities
2 12 (4.67%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
3 10 (3.89%) Data Structures
3 10 (3.89%) Derivative
3 10 (3.89%) Fixed Income
4 8 (3.11%) Distributed Systems
4 8 (3.11%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (2.33%) Clustering
5 6 (2.33%) Onboarding
6 5 (1.95%) AI Agents
6 5 (1.95%) Algorithms
6 5 (1.95%) Mainframe
6 5 (1.95%) Market Risk
6 5 (1.95%) Reinsurance
7 4 (1.56%) DataPower
7 4 (1.56%) Online Banking
7 4 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (1.17%) Credit Risk
8 3 (1.17%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.84%) Linux
2 12 (4.67%) Unix
2 12 (4.67%) Windows
3 5 (1.95%) Windows Server
4 4 (1.56%) zOS
5 3 (1.17%) Android
5 3 (1.17%) Apple iOS
6 1 (0.39%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (33.46%) Analytics
2 67 (26.07%) AI
2 67 (26.07%) Data Modelling
3 62 (24.12%) Data Engineering
4 60 (23.35%) ETL
5 57 (22.18%) Business Intelligence
6 54 (21.01%) CI/CD
7 50 (19.46%) Data Pipeline
8 46 (17.90%) DevOps
9 45 (17.51%) Agile
10 42 (16.34%) Problem-Solving
11 38 (14.79%) Migration
12 37 (14.40%) Validation
13 34 (13.23%) Data Governance
14 32 (12.45%) Performance Tuning
15 30 (11.67%) Data Analysis
16 29 (11.28%) Decision-Making
16 29 (11.28%) Machine Learning
17 27 (10.51%) Data Science
17 27 (10.51%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 132 (51.36%) Python
2 33 (12.84%) Java
3 22 (8.56%) C#
4 16 (6.23%) PL/SQL
5 13 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 11 (4.28%) T-SQL
7 9 (3.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (3.50%) R
8 8 (3.11%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.11%) TypeScript
9 4 (1.56%) JCL
9 4 (1.56%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.17%) Bicep
10 3 (1.17%) Scala
11 2 (0.78%) C++
12 1 (0.39%) C
12 1 (0.39%) Groovy
12 1 (0.39%) PHP
12 1 (0.39%) ProC
12 1 (0.39%) VBA
Qualifications
1 20 (7.78%) Degree
1 20 (7.78%) Security Cleared
2 14 (5.45%) SC Cleared
3 7 (2.72%) Computer Science Degree
4 6 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.95%) DBS Check
6 3 (1.17%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.17%) PhD
6 3 (1.17%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.17%) PMP
7 2 (0.78%) CISM
7 2 (0.78%) CISSP
7 2 (0.78%) SnowPro
8 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.39%) CCA
8 1 (0.39%) Citrix Certification
8 1 (0.39%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.39%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (20.23%) Data Quality
2 23 (8.95%) QA
3 17 (6.61%) GDPR
4 4 (1.56%) GAAP
4 4 (1.56%) IFRS
4 4 (1.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.17%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.78%) Basel III
6 2 (0.78%) EMIR
6 2 (0.78%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.78%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.78%) ISO 8583
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%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 22 (8.56%) Docker
2 3 (1.17%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.78%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (0.39%) GridGain
4 1 (0.39%) Hyper-V
4 1 (0.39%) Varnish
4 1 (0.39%) XenApp
4 1 (0.39%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 21 (8.17%) Kubernetes
2 12 (4.67%) Terraform
3 6 (2.33%) Ansible
4 5 (1.95%) Grafana
5 2 (0.78%) Argo
5 2 (0.78%) ITRS Geneos
5 2 (0.78%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.39%) Control-M
6 1 (0.39%) SCCM
6 1 (0.39%) SCVMM
6 1 (0.39%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 46 (17.90%) Microsoft
2 37 (14.40%) Oracle
3 35 (13.62%) Databricks
4 13 (5.06%) Google
5 10 (3.89%) Informatica
5 10 (3.89%) SAP
5 10 (3.89%) Workday
6 7 (2.72%) Murex
7 5 (1.95%) Amplitude
7 5 (1.95%) Citrix
7 5 (1.95%) IBM
7 5 (1.95%) ServiceNow
7 5 (1.95%) Splunk
8 4 (1.56%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.56%) Charles River
8 4 (1.56%) Foundry
8 4 (1.56%) OpenAI
8 4 (1.56%) Palantir
8 4 (1.56%) Salesforce
9 3 (1.17%) Adobe