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

6 months to
23 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 267 261 278
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.89% 14.74% 12.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.78% 36.66% 37.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 178 168 190
10th Percentile £355 £406 £402
25th Percentile £450 £475 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £528 £573 £581
Median % change year-on-year -7.86% -1.51% +1.09%
75th Percentile £638 £691 £675
90th Percentile £750 £775 £775
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £575
% change year-on-year - -4.35% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 0 1
10th Percentile £31.30 - -
25th Percentile £38.50 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £48.75 - £48.50
75th Percentile £54.30 - £50.25
90th Percentile £57.55 - -
Central London median hourly rate £48.75 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +67.68% -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 639 712 745
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 28.45% 40.20% 33.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 444 470 529
10th Percentile £351 £413 £411
25th Percentile £425 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -7.63%
75th Percentile £633 £690 £690
90th Percentile £750 £776 £788
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £565
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.77% -7.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 1
10th Percentile £28.77 - -
25th Percentile £33.90 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £48.75 - £48.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -15.65%
75th Percentile £57.91 - £50.25
90th Percentile £67.36 - -
Central London median hourly rate £48.75 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +67.68% -40.06% -15.65%

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 23 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 23 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 19 (7.12%) Apache Airflow
2 10 (3.75%) Apache Spark
3 9 (3.37%) Apache
4 6 (2.25%) Confluence
4 6 (2.25%) SharePoint
5 4 (1.50%) CICS
6 3 (1.12%) Palantir Foundry
7 1 (0.37%) nginx
7 1 (0.37%) SAS
Applications
1 15 (5.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.25%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.50%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.37%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (2.25%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.87%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.50%) Aladdin
3 4 (1.50%) Endur
3 4 (1.50%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (1.12%) Bloomberg AIM
4 3 (1.12%) Fidessa
4 3 (1.12%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.12%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 3 (1.12%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.75%) Algo Collateral
5 2 (0.75%) BASE24
5 2 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.75%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.75%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.37%) ION MarketView
6 1 (0.37%) Magento
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.37%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 86 (32.21%) Azure
2 72 (26.97%) AWS
3 63 (23.60%) Power Platform
4 35 (13.11%) GCP
5 28 (10.49%) Snowflake
6 23 (8.61%) Azure Data Factory
6 23 (8.61%) GitHub
7 22 (8.24%) dbt
7 22 (8.24%) Serverless
8 17 (6.37%) Amazon S3
8 17 (6.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 16 (5.99%) Azure DevOps
10 15 (5.62%) AWS Lambda
11 10 (3.75%) Prefect
12 8 (3.00%) Dagster
13 7 (2.62%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.62%) Amazon SageMaker
13 7 (2.62%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 7 (2.62%) GitHub Actions
13 7 (2.62%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.37%) DNS
1 1 (0.37%) HTTP
1 1 (0.37%) LAN
1 1 (0.37%) Multicast
1 1 (0.37%) NetScaler
1 1 (0.37%) SD-WAN
1 1 (0.37%) WAN
1 1 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (20.97%) Power BI
2 41 (15.36%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (12.73%) SQL Server
3 34 (12.73%) Tableau
4 21 (7.87%) Relational Database
5 20 (7.49%) Metadata
6 18 (6.74%) PostgreSQL
7 13 (4.87%) Amazon Redshift
7 13 (4.87%) NoSQL
8 11 (4.12%) Data Lake
8 11 (4.12%) Looker
9 10 (3.75%) Big Data
10 9 (3.37%) BigQuery
10 9 (3.37%) DB2
10 9 (3.37%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 8 (3.00%) Snowflake Schema
12 7 (2.62%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (2.62%) DynamoDB
12 7 (2.62%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (2.25%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 23 (8.61%) Git
2 13 (4.87%) Jenkins
3 12 (4.49%) JIRA
4 10 (3.75%) GitLab
5 4 (1.50%) ERwin
6 3 (1.12%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.12%) JUnit
7 2 (0.75%) ER Studio
7 2 (0.75%) Gatling
7 2 (0.75%) Mockito
7 2 (0.75%) Selenium
7 2 (0.75%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.75%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.75%) Toad
8 1 (0.37%) Liquibase
8 1 (0.37%) MLflow
8 1 (0.37%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.37%) Postman
8 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 109 (40.82%) Finance
2 65 (24.34%) Social Skills
3 54 (20.22%) Analytical Skills
4 49 (18.35%) Banking
5 15 (5.62%) Legal
6 13 (4.87%) Front Office
7 12 (4.49%) Investment Banking
8 8 (3.00%) Documentation Skills
9 7 (2.62%) Financial Institution
9 7 (2.62%) Marketing
10 6 (2.25%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.87%) Back Office
11 5 (1.87%) Law
11 5 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 4 (1.50%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
13 3 (1.12%) Publishing
13 3 (1.12%) Retail
14 2 (0.75%) Advertising
Job Titles
1 52 (19.48%) Data Engineer
2 47 (17.60%) Developer
3 44 (16.48%) Analyst
4 36 (13.48%) Senior
5 19 (7.12%) Data Analyst
6 16 (5.99%) Lead
7 15 (5.62%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 15 (5.62%) Snowflake Engineer
8 13 (4.87%) Consultant
9 12 (4.49%) Business Analyst
10 11 (4.12%) Architect
10 11 (4.12%) DBA
11 10 (3.75%) Java Developer
12 9 (3.37%) Data Scientist
12 9 (3.37%) Senior Developer
12 9 (3.37%) Software Engineer
13 8 (3.00%) Senior Analyst
13 8 (3.00%) Senior Data Engineer
13 8 (3.00%) SQL DBA
14 6 (2.25%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (7.87%) Kafka
2 16 (5.99%) JSON
3 15 (5.62%) .NET
4 14 (5.24%) REST
5 13 (4.87%) PySpark
5 13 (4.87%) React
6 11 (4.12%) RESTful
7 10 (3.75%) Pandas
7 10 (3.75%) scikit-learn
7 10 (3.75%) XML
8 9 (3.37%) AngularJS
8 9 (3.37%) PyTorch
9 8 (3.00%) HTML
9 8 (3.00%) Middleware
9 8 (3.00%) SOAP
9 8 (3.00%) Spring
9 8 (3.00%) TensorFlow
9 8 (3.00%) Web Services
10 6 (2.25%) Matplotlib
10 6 (2.25%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 18 (6.74%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.62%) Derivative
3 13 (4.87%) Fixed Income
4 12 (4.49%) Equities
5 11 (4.12%) Data Structures
5 11 (4.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 10 (3.75%) Algorithms
7 7 (2.62%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.62%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.25%) Clustering
9 5 (1.87%) Mainframe
9 5 (1.87%) Market Risk
10 4 (1.50%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.50%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.50%) DataPower
10 4 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.50%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.50%) Online Banking
10 4 (1.50%) Reference Data
11 3 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
Operating Systems
1 14 (5.24%) Linux
2 11 (4.12%) Unix
2 11 (4.12%) Windows
3 4 (1.50%) zOS
4 3 (1.12%) Android
4 3 (1.12%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.12%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.37%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 79 (29.59%) Analytics
2 66 (24.72%) Data Modelling
3 65 (24.34%) ETL
4 62 (23.22%) Business Intelligence
5 57 (21.35%) AI
6 50 (18.73%) Data Engineering
6 50 (18.73%) Data Pipeline
6 50 (18.73%) Problem-Solving
7 47 (17.60%) DevOps
8 46 (17.23%) CI/CD
9 44 (16.48%) Agile
10 41 (15.36%) Performance Tuning
11 39 (14.61%) Migration
11 39 (14.61%) Validation
12 33 (12.36%) Data Governance
12 33 (12.36%) Test Automation
13 31 (11.61%) Data Analysis
13 31 (11.61%) Data Science
13 31 (11.61%) Machine Learning
13 31 (11.61%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 134 (50.19%) Python
2 36 (13.48%) Java
3 18 (6.74%) C#
4 15 (5.62%) JavaScript
4 15 (5.62%) PL/SQL
5 11 (4.12%) TypeScript
6 10 (3.75%) Shell Script
7 8 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (3.00%) R
8 5 (1.87%) Scala
9 4 (1.50%) C++
9 4 (1.50%) JCL
9 4 (1.50%) Perl
9 4 (1.50%) PHP
9 4 (1.50%) T-SQL
10 3 (1.12%) Bicep
10 3 (1.12%) C
10 3 (1.12%) PowerShell
10 3 (1.12%) ProC
11 2 (0.75%) Go
Qualifications
1 23 (8.61%) Degree
2 17 (6.37%) Security Cleared
3 12 (4.49%) SC Cleared
4 10 (3.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.62%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.12%) PhD
6 3 (1.12%) PMP
6 3 (1.12%) SnowPro
7 2 (0.75%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.75%) CFA
7 2 (0.75%) CISM
7 2 (0.75%) CISSP
7 2 (0.75%) DBS Check
7 2 (0.75%) ISTQB
7 2 (0.75%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.75%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.37%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 53 (19.85%) Data Quality
2 21 (7.87%) QA
3 14 (5.24%) GDPR
4 4 (1.50%) ISO 8583
4 4 (1.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.12%) Basel III
5 3 (1.12%) GAAP
5 3 (1.12%) IFRS
5 3 (1.12%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.75%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.75%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.75%) NIST
6 2 (0.75%) PSD2
6 2 (0.75%) SEPA
7 1 (0.37%) DICOM
7 1 (0.37%) GxP
7 1 (0.37%) HL7
7 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.37%) SLA
7 1 (0.37%) Solvency II
System Software
1 21 (7.87%) Docker
2 2 (0.75%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.75%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.37%) GridGain
3 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.37%) Varnish
3 1 (0.37%) XenApp
3 1 (0.37%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 20 (7.49%) Kubernetes
2 17 (6.37%) Terraform
3 7 (2.62%) Ansible
4 6 (2.25%) Grafana
5 4 (1.50%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.75%) Argo
6 2 (0.75%) ITRS Geneos
7 1 (0.37%) Control-M
7 1 (0.37%) Istio
7 1 (0.37%) SCCM
7 1 (0.37%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 50 (18.73%) Microsoft
2 35 (13.11%) Oracle
3 31 (11.61%) Databricks
4 17 (6.37%) Google
5 11 (4.12%) Informatica
6 10 (3.75%) Workday
7 9 (3.37%) SAP
8 7 (2.62%) IBM
9 6 (2.25%) Splunk
10 5 (1.87%) AppDynamics
10 5 (1.87%) Bloomberg
10 5 (1.87%) ServiceNow
11 4 (1.50%) Amplitude
11 4 (1.50%) Charles River
12 3 (1.12%) Cognos
12 3 (1.12%) Confluent
12 3 (1.12%) Foundry
12 3 (1.12%) Palantir
12 3 (1.12%) Sage
12 3 (1.12%) Salesforce