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

6 months to
1 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 8
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 278 254 297
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 12.92% 14.67% 12.91%
As % of the Programming Languages category 43.85% 36.65% 38.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 188 163 202
10th Percentile £355 £404 £400
25th Percentile £450 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -
75th Percentile £638 £695 £675
90th Percentile £754 £773 £775
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 0 1
10th Percentile £29.70 - -
25th Percentile £34.50 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £48.50
75th Percentile £53.61 - £50.25
90th Percentile £57.28 - -
Central London median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +54.80% -40.06% -7.62%

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 634 693 765
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 29.46% 40.01% 33.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 450 459 540
10th Percentile £350 £413 £412
25th Percentile £428 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -5.93%
75th Percentile £638 £690 £691
90th Percentile £763 £778 £800
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £565
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.77% -5.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 2
10th Percentile £27.86 - £46.30
25th Percentile £29.90 - £46.38
Median hourly rate £38.53 - £48.00
Median % change year-on-year - - -16.52%
75th Percentile £50.56 - £49.88
90th Percentile £56.06 - £50.10
Central London median hourly rate £38.53 £29.07 £48.00
% change year-on-year +32.55% -39.44% -16.52%

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 1 April 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 1 April 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 (7.55%) Apache Airflow
2 17 (6.12%) Apache Spark
3 11 (3.96%) Apache
4 6 (2.16%) Confluence
4 6 (2.16%) SharePoint
5 3 (1.08%) CICS
5 3 (1.08%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.36%) nginx
6 1 (0.36%) SAS
Applications
1 16 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.16%) MS Visio
3 5 (1.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 4 (1.44%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.36%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (2.16%) Oracle EBS
2 4 (1.44%) Aladdin
2 4 (1.44%) Endur
2 4 (1.44%) Oracle EBS R12
3 3 (1.08%) BambooHR
3 3 (1.08%) Bloomberg AIM
3 3 (1.08%) Fidessa
3 3 (1.08%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (1.08%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (1.08%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.72%) Algo Collateral
4 2 (0.72%) BASE24
4 2 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 2 (0.72%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.72%) Payment Gateway
4 2 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.36%) Magento
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.36%) Oracle FAH
Cloud Services
1 96 (34.53%) Azure
2 80 (28.78%) AWS
3 64 (23.02%) Power Platform
4 38 (13.67%) GCP
5 31 (11.15%) Snowflake
6 25 (8.99%) GitHub
7 24 (8.63%) dbt
7 24 (8.63%) Serverless
8 23 (8.27%) Azure Data Factory
9 20 (7.19%) Azure DevOps
10 18 (6.47%) Amazon S3
11 16 (5.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 15 (5.40%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.88%) Azure Functions
13 8 (2.88%) GitHub Actions
13 8 (2.88%) Prefect
13 8 (2.88%) SaaS
14 7 (2.52%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.52%) Amazon SageMaker
14 7 (2.52%) Azure Cosmos DB
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.36%) 2G
1 1 (0.36%) 4G
1 1 (0.36%) 5G
1 1 (0.36%) DNS
1 1 (0.36%) HTTP
1 1 (0.36%) LAN
1 1 (0.36%) Multicast
1 1 (0.36%) NetScaler
1 1 (0.36%) Radio Access Network
1 1 (0.36%) SD-WAN
1 1 (0.36%) WAN
1 1 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 57 (20.50%) Power BI
2 43 (15.47%) Data Warehouse
3 35 (12.59%) Tableau
4 33 (11.87%) SQL Server
5 21 (7.55%) Metadata
6 20 (7.19%) Relational Database
7 17 (6.12%) PostgreSQL
8 14 (5.04%) NoSQL
9 13 (4.68%) Data Lake
10 12 (4.32%) Big Data
11 11 (3.96%) Amazon Redshift
12 10 (3.60%) Looker
13 9 (3.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 8 (2.88%) BigQuery
14 8 (2.88%) DB2
14 8 (2.88%) Oracle Reports
14 8 (2.88%) Snowflake Schema
15 6 (2.16%) MySQL
15 6 (2.16%) Oracle Database
15 6 (2.16%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 26 (9.35%) Git
2 16 (5.76%) Jenkins
3 13 (4.68%) JIRA
4 9 (3.24%) GitLab
5 3 (1.08%) Cucumber
5 3 (1.08%) ERwin
6 2 (0.72%) ER Studio
6 2 (0.72%) Gatling
6 2 (0.72%) JUnit
6 2 (0.72%) Oracle Forms
6 2 (0.72%) Postman
6 2 (0.72%) Selenium
6 2 (0.72%) SonarQube
6 2 (0.72%) Toad
7 1 (0.36%) MLflow
7 1 (0.36%) Octopus Deploy
7 1 (0.36%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (0.36%) SpecFlow
7 1 (0.36%) TeamCity
General
1 108 (38.85%) Finance
2 68 (24.46%) Social Skills
3 54 (19.42%) Analytical Skills
4 52 (18.71%) Banking
5 14 (5.04%) Front Office
6 12 (4.32%) Investment Banking
6 12 (4.32%) Legal
7 8 (2.88%) Public Sector
8 7 (2.52%) Documentation Skills
8 7 (2.52%) Financial Institution
9 6 (2.16%) Marketing
10 5 (1.80%) Back Office
10 5 (1.80%) Law
10 5 (1.80%) Pharmaceutical
10 5 (1.80%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.44%) General Ledger
11 4 (1.44%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 4 (1.44%) Retail
12 3 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (1.08%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 54 (19.42%) Data Engineer
2 50 (17.99%) Developer
3 44 (15.83%) Analyst
4 36 (12.95%) Senior
5 20 (7.19%) Lead
6 17 (6.12%) Consultant
6 17 (6.12%) Data Analyst
7 14 (5.04%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 14 (5.04%) Snowflake Engineer
8 13 (4.68%) Business Analyst
9 11 (3.96%) Architect
9 11 (3.96%) DBA
10 10 (3.60%) Software Engineer
11 9 (3.24%) Data Scientist
11 9 (3.24%) Java Developer
11 9 (3.24%) Senior Analyst
11 9 (3.24%) Senior Developer
12 8 (2.88%) Senior Data Engineer
12 8 (2.88%) SQL DBA
13 7 (2.52%) Oracle Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (8.63%) Kafka
2 18 (6.47%) .NET
3 15 (5.40%) JSON
3 15 (5.40%) PySpark
4 14 (5.04%) REST
5 12 (4.32%) React
5 12 (4.32%) XML
6 11 (3.96%) scikit-learn
7 10 (3.60%) Pandas
7 10 (3.60%) PyTorch
7 10 (3.60%) RESTful
8 9 (3.24%) AngularJS
8 9 (3.24%) TensorFlow
9 8 (2.88%) HTML
9 8 (2.88%) Middleware
10 7 (2.52%) Spring
10 7 (2.52%) Web Services
11 6 (2.16%) Matplotlib
11 6 (2.16%) NumPy
11 6 (2.16%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 22 (7.91%) Cloud Native
2 16 (5.76%) Derivative
3 13 (4.68%) Fixed Income
4 12 (4.32%) Equities
5 11 (3.96%) Algorithms
5 11 (3.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 10 (3.60%) Data Structures
7 7 (2.52%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.52%) Legacy Systems
8 5 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
8 5 (1.80%) Clustering
8 5 (1.80%) Market Risk
9 4 (1.44%) AI Agents
9 4 (1.44%) Enterprise Software
9 4 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
9 4 (1.44%) Mainframe
9 4 (1.44%) Management Information System
9 4 (1.44%) Product Ownership
9 4 (1.44%) Reference Data
10 3 (1.08%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.04%) Linux
2 11 (3.96%) Unix
3 10 (3.60%) Windows
4 3 (1.08%) Android
4 3 (1.08%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.08%) zOS
5 2 (0.72%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.36%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.36%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 83 (29.86%) Analytics
2 68 (24.46%) Data Modelling
2 68 (24.46%) ETL
3 63 (22.66%) Business Intelligence
4 58 (20.86%) AI
5 54 (19.42%) Data Engineering
5 54 (19.42%) Data Pipeline
6 52 (18.71%) CI/CD
7 50 (17.99%) DevOps
7 50 (17.99%) Problem-Solving
8 45 (16.19%) Agile
9 43 (15.47%) Performance Tuning
10 38 (13.67%) Migration
11 36 (12.95%) Machine Learning
11 36 (12.95%) Validation
12 35 (12.59%) Data Governance
13 34 (12.23%) Data Science
13 34 (12.23%) Visualisation
14 32 (11.51%) Test Automation
15 31 (11.15%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 139 (50.00%) Python
2 36 (12.95%) Java
3 21 (7.55%) C#
4 16 (5.76%) JavaScript
4 16 (5.76%) PL/SQL
5 10 (3.60%) TypeScript
6 9 (3.24%) Shell Script
7 8 (2.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.88%) R
8 7 (2.52%) Scala
9 4 (1.44%) C++
9 4 (1.44%) Perl
9 4 (1.44%) PHP
9 4 (1.44%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.08%) Bicep
10 3 (1.08%) C
10 3 (1.08%) JCL
10 3 (1.08%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.08%) ProC
11 2 (0.72%) Go
Qualifications
1 24 (8.63%) Degree
2 19 (6.83%) Security Cleared
3 14 (5.04%) SC Cleared
4 11 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.52%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.08%) ISTQB
6 3 (1.08%) PhD
6 3 (1.08%) PMP
6 3 (1.08%) SnowPro
7 2 (0.72%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.72%) CFA
7 2 (0.72%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.72%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.36%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.36%) CBAP
8 1 (0.36%) DBS Check
8 1 (0.36%) ISTQB Advanced Certification
8 1 (0.36%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 58 (20.86%) Data Quality
2 23 (8.27%) QA
3 11 (3.96%) GDPR
4 4 (1.44%) ISO 8583
5 3 (1.08%) Basel III
5 3 (1.08%) GAAP
5 3 (1.08%) IFRS
5 3 (1.08%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (1.08%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.72%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.72%) NIST
6 2 (0.72%) PSD2
6 2 (0.72%) SEPA
7 1 (0.36%) Accessibility
7 1 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials
7 1 (0.36%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
7 1 (0.36%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.36%) PMO
7 1 (0.36%) Solvency II
System Software
1 21 (7.55%) Docker
2 2 (0.72%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.36%) GridGain
3 1 (0.36%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.36%) Varnish
3 1 (0.36%) XenApp
3 1 (0.36%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 21 (7.55%) Terraform
2 20 (7.19%) Kubernetes
3 7 (2.52%) Ansible
4 6 (2.16%) Grafana
5 4 (1.44%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.72%) Argo
6 2 (0.72%) ITRS Geneos
7 1 (0.36%) Control-M
7 1 (0.36%) Istio
7 1 (0.36%) SCCM
7 1 (0.36%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 50 (17.99%) Microsoft
2 39 (14.03%) Oracle
3 36 (12.95%) Databricks
4 18 (6.47%) Google
5 11 (3.96%) Informatica
6 9 (3.24%) SAP
7 7 (2.52%) Workday
8 6 (2.16%) IBM
8 6 (2.16%) Splunk
9 5 (1.80%) AppDynamics
9 5 (1.80%) Bloomberg
10 4 (1.44%) Amplitude
10 4 (1.44%) Charles River
10 4 (1.44%) ServiceNow
11 3 (1.08%) Cognos
11 3 (1.08%) Confluent
11 3 (1.08%) Foundry
11 3 (1.08%) Palantir
11 3 (1.08%) Sage
11 3 (1.08%) Salesforce