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

6 months to
5 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -3 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 290 262 325
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 13.41% 15.16% 15.35%
As % of the Programming Languages category 45.45% 41.52% 44.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 213 185 226
10th Percentile £375 £360 £400
25th Percentile £438 £441 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £585 £600
Median % change year-on-year -5.98% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £668 £700 £710
90th Percentile £738 £825 £781
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £591
% change year-on-year -4.35% -2.71% -1.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 6 0
10th Percentile - £21.13 -
25th Percentile £33.75 £27.44 -
Median hourly rate £37.50 £48.25 -
Median % change year-on-year -22.28% - -
75th Percentile £41.25 £63.75 -
90th Percentile - £76.25 -
Central London median hourly rate £37.50 £48.25 £41.50
% change year-on-year -22.28% +16.27% +232.00%

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 638 631 729
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 29.50% 36.52% 34.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 454 452 474
10th Percentile £400 £385 £400
25th Percentile £453 £463 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £556 £600 £592
Median % change year-on-year -7.29% +1.39% -3.39%
75th Percentile £675 £688 £711
90th Percentile £775 £775 £825
Central London median daily rate £550 £577 £580
% change year-on-year -4.60% -0.60% -5.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 7 3
10th Percentile £13.70 £22.05 £51.80
25th Percentile £19.25 £26.00 £74.38
Median hourly rate £37.50 £34.00 £112.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.29% -69.64% +796.00%
75th Percentile £41.25 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £61.50 £73.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £37.50 £42.72 £41.50
% change year-on-year -12.22% +2.94% +232.00%

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 5 October 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
Contract Job Locations in the City of London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the City of London region over the 6 months to 5 October 2026. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Contract
IT Job Ads
Median
Daily Rate
Past 6 Months
Median Daily Rate
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Moorgate - 1 £475 -
SQL
Central 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 18 (6.21%) Apache Airflow
2 15 (5.17%) Apache Spark
3 12 (4.14%) Confluence
4 8 (2.76%) Apache
5 6 (2.07%) SharePoint
6 4 (1.38%) IIS
7 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.69%) Exchange Server 2013
8 2 (0.69%) MQSeries
8 2 (0.69%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.34%) CICS
9 1 (0.34%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.34%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 12 (4.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 2 (0.69%) Chatbot
2 2 (0.69%) Microsoft Office
2 2 (0.69%) MS Visio
3 1 (0.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 1 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
3 1 (0.34%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 5 (1.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.38%) Aladdin
3 3 (1.03%) Oracle Payables
3 3 (1.03%) Oracle Receivables
3 3 (1.03%) Remedy ITSM
4 2 (0.69%) BambooHR
4 2 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
4 2 (0.69%) Oracle Financials
4 2 (0.69%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.69%) SAP MDG
4 2 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.34%) Maximo
5 1 (0.34%) OneSumX
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle Assets
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle Internet Expenses
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle iProcurement
5 1 (0.34%) Salesforce CRM
Cloud Services
1 96 (33.10%) Azure
2 66 (22.76%) Power Platform
3 56 (19.31%) AWS
4 37 (12.76%) Azure Data Factory
5 31 (10.69%) Azure DevOps
6 30 (10.34%) Snowflake
7 23 (7.93%) dbt
7 23 (7.93%) GCP
7 23 (7.93%) GitHub
8 22 (7.59%) Serverless
9 18 (6.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 17 (5.86%) Amazon S3
10 17 (5.86%) AWS Lambda
11 11 (3.79%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (3.10%) Azure Databricks
12 9 (3.10%) PowerApps
13 8 (2.76%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 7 (2.41%) AWS Step Functions
14 7 (2.41%) Dynamics 365
14 7 (2.41%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 6 (2.07%) VPN
2 5 (1.72%) Firewall
3 4 (1.38%) DNS
3 4 (1.38%) Multicast
3 4 (1.38%) SSL
4 3 (1.03%) Network Security
5 2 (0.69%) Internet
5 2 (0.69%) Intranet
5 2 (0.69%) Reverse Proxy
5 2 (0.69%) SSH
6 1 (0.34%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (18.97%) Power BI
2 48 (16.55%) SQL Server
3 43 (14.83%) Data Warehouse
4 23 (7.93%) Relational Database
5 20 (6.90%) Metadata
6 18 (6.21%) Data Lake
7 15 (5.17%) Amazon Athena
7 15 (5.17%) Azure SQL Database
7 15 (5.17%) PostgreSQL
8 14 (4.83%) Tableau
9 12 (4.14%) Oracle Database
10 11 (3.79%) Amazon RDS
10 11 (3.79%) BigQuery
11 10 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (3.45%) Looker
11 10 (3.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 9 (3.10%) Star Schema
13 8 (2.76%) MongoDB
13 8 (2.76%) Semantic Layer
14 7 (2.41%) Delta Lake
Development Applications
1 26 (8.97%) Git
2 21 (7.24%) JIRA
3 11 (3.79%) GitLab
4 10 (3.45%) Bitbucket
4 10 (3.45%) Jenkins
5 6 (2.07%) Visual Studio
6 5 (1.72%) Gradle
6 5 (1.72%) JUnit
6 5 (1.72%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 4 (1.38%) Selenium
8 3 (1.03%) Artifactory
8 3 (1.03%) Eclipse
8 3 (1.03%) eggPlant
8 3 (1.03%) LoadRunner
8 3 (1.03%) Maven
8 3 (1.03%) Postman
8 3 (1.03%) Visual Studio Code
8 3 (1.03%) Zephyr
9 2 (0.69%) JMeter
9 2 (0.69%) SonarQube
General
1 132 (45.52%) Finance
2 88 (30.34%) Social Skills
3 68 (23.45%) Banking
4 67 (23.10%) Analytical Skills
5 18 (6.21%) Front Office
6 15 (5.17%) Investment Banking
7 13 (4.48%) Back Office
8 12 (4.14%) Marketing
9 10 (3.45%) Retail
10 5 (1.72%) Documentation Skills
10 5 (1.72%) Public Sector
11 4 (1.38%) Corporate Banking
11 4 (1.38%) Law
11 4 (1.38%) Legal
11 4 (1.38%) Pharmaceutical
11 4 (1.38%) Retail Banking
12 3 (1.03%) Billing
12 3 (1.03%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (1.03%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.69%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 64 (22.07%) Analyst
2 58 (20.00%) Data Engineer
3 52 (17.93%) Developer
4 49 (16.90%) Senior
5 33 (11.38%) Data Analyst
6 20 (6.90%) Architect
6 20 (6.90%) Business Analyst
7 17 (5.86%) Lead
7 17 (5.86%) Senior Data Engineer
8 14 (4.83%) Consultant
8 14 (4.83%) Senior Developer
9 13 (4.48%) C# Developer
10 11 (3.79%) AWS Engineer
10 11 (3.79%) Data Architect
11 9 (3.10%) Applications Support
12 8 (2.76%) AWS Data Engineer
13 7 (2.41%) Java Developer
14 6 (2.07%) Business Intelligence Analyst
14 6 (2.07%) Databricks Engineer
14 6 (2.07%) Senior C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (12.76%) .NET
2 30 (10.34%) Terraform
3 28 (9.66%) PySpark
4 25 (8.62%) REST
5 19 (6.55%) Kafka
6 16 (5.52%) XML
7 15 (5.17%) Spring
8 14 (4.83%) Spring Boot
9 13 (4.48%) JSON
9 13 (4.48%) Middleware
10 12 (4.14%) Web Services
11 10 (3.45%) .NET Framework
11 10 (3.45%) AngularJS
12 9 (3.10%) HTML
12 9 (3.10%) SOAP
13 7 (2.41%) ActiveMQ
13 7 (2.41%) RabbitMQ
13 7 (2.41%) RESTful
14 6 (2.07%) .NET Core
14 6 (2.07%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 32 (11.03%) Cloud Native
2 17 (5.86%) Data Structures
3 16 (5.52%) Product Ownership
4 12 (4.14%) Onboarding
5 11 (3.79%) Enterprise Software
5 11 (3.79%) Legacy Systems
6 8 (2.76%) Derivative
6 8 (2.76%) Distributed Systems
6 8 (2.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 8 (2.76%) Self-Motivation
7 7 (2.41%) AI Agents
7 7 (2.41%) Data Centre
7 7 (2.41%) Fixed Income
8 6 (2.07%) Management Information System
8 6 (2.07%) Reference Data
8 6 (2.07%) Reinsurance
9 5 (1.72%) Clustering
10 4 (1.38%) Equities
10 4 (1.38%) PKI
10 4 (1.38%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 25 (8.62%) Linux
1 25 (8.62%) Unix
2 19 (6.55%) Windows
3 8 (2.76%) Windows Server
4 3 (1.03%) VMS
4 3 (1.03%) Windows Server 2008
5 2 (0.69%) OpenVMS
5 2 (0.69%) Windows 7
5 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2012
5 2 (0.69%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.34%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 99 (34.14%) Analytics
2 90 (31.03%) Data Modelling
3 87 (30.00%) CI/CD
4 72 (24.83%) Agile
5 68 (23.45%) DevOps
6 67 (23.10%) Business Intelligence
7 63 (21.72%) Data Engineering
8 57 (19.66%) ETL
9 56 (19.31%) AI
9 56 (19.31%) Data Pipeline
9 56 (19.31%) Stakeholder Management
10 49 (16.90%) Data Governance
10 49 (16.90%) Migration
11 47 (16.21%) Problem-Solving
12 42 (14.48%) Validation
13 36 (12.41%) Decision-Making
14 35 (12.07%) Data Analysis
15 33 (11.38%) Stakeholder Engagement
16 32 (11.03%) Test Automation
16 32 (11.03%) Translating Business Requirements
Programming Languages
1 128 (44.14%) Python
2 38 (13.10%) C#
3 33 (11.38%) Java
4 19 (6.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 19 (6.55%) JavaScript
5 17 (5.86%) PL/SQL
6 15 (5.17%) PowerShell
7 11 (3.79%) TypeScript
8 10 (3.45%) T-SQL
9 9 (3.10%) Shell Script
10 6 (2.07%) LookML
11 5 (1.72%) Korn
11 5 (1.72%) R
12 3 (1.03%) Bicep
12 3 (1.03%) C
12 3 (1.03%) C++
12 3 (1.03%) Scala
13 2 (0.69%) Bash
13 2 (0.69%) ProC
13 2 (0.69%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 37 (12.76%) Security Cleared
2 26 (8.97%) SC Cleared
3 17 (5.86%) Degree
4 5 (1.72%) DBS Check
5 4 (1.38%) Microsoft Certification
6 3 (1.03%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.03%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (0.69%) CISM
7 2 (0.69%) CISSP
7 2 (0.69%) DV Cleared
7 2 (0.69%) ISTQB
7 2 (0.69%) PMI Certification
7 2 (0.69%) TOGAF Certification
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.34%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.34%) Azure Certification
8 1 (0.34%) ISEB
8 1 (0.34%) PMP
8 1 (0.34%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 72 (24.83%) Data Quality
2 36 (12.41%) QA
3 10 (3.45%) GDPR
4 6 (2.07%) SLA
5 5 (1.72%) Accessibility
6 3 (1.03%) PSD2
7 2 (0.69%) EMIR
7 2 (0.69%) MiFID
7 2 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.34%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.34%) Basel III
8 1 (0.34%) GAAP
8 1 (0.34%) HIPAA
8 1 (0.34%) IFRS
8 1 (0.34%) PERC
8 1 (0.34%) SEPA
System Software
1 15 (5.17%) Docker
2 10 (3.45%) Active Directory
3 6 (2.07%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (0.69%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.34%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.34%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 16 (5.52%) Kubernetes
2 5 (1.72%) ITRS Geneos
3 4 (1.38%) SCOM
4 3 (1.03%) Ansible
4 3 (1.03%) Microsoft Clustering
4 3 (1.03%) Single Sign-On
5 2 (0.69%) HP Fortify
5 2 (0.69%) NetBackup
5 2 (0.69%) WSUS
6 1 (0.34%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.34%) Grafana
6 1 (0.34%) Netcool
6 1 (0.34%) Netcool/OMNIbus
6 1 (0.34%) Packer
6 1 (0.34%) PowerCLI
6 1 (0.34%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.34%) SCOrch
6 1 (0.34%) Tivoli
6 1 (0.34%) Tivoli Monitoring
6 1 (0.34%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 62 (21.38%) Microsoft
2 47 (16.21%) Databricks
3 38 (13.10%) Oracle
4 11 (3.79%) Google
4 11 (3.79%) SAP
5 9 (3.10%) IBM
6 7 (2.41%) Informatica
6 7 (2.41%) Murex
7 6 (2.07%) ServiceNow
7 6 (2.07%) VMware
8 5 (1.72%) Salesforce
9 4 (1.38%) Citrix
9 4 (1.38%) Sitecore
10 3 (1.03%) BMC
10 3 (1.03%) Cisco
10 3 (1.03%) Commvault
10 3 (1.03%) Guidewire
10 3 (1.03%) Remedy
10 3 (1.03%) Solace
10 3 (1.03%) Workday