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

6 months to
8 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 8 8
Rank change year-on-year -8 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 262 272 280
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.45% 15.67% 12.89%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.05% 39.02% 37.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 177 173 191
10th Percentile £355 £404 £413
25th Percentile £450 £475 £484
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.27% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £650 £720 £675
90th Percentile £755 £788 £775
Central London median daily rate £540 £550 £575
% change year-on-year -1.82% -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% -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 623 697 744
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 27.23% 40.15% 34.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 434 458 528
10th Percentile £355 £412 £400
25th Percentile £450 £463 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -8.70% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £696 £700
90th Percentile £750 £796 £800
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £563
% change year-on-year -8.70% +2.22% -8.57%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 0 1
10th Percentile £25.14 - -
25th Percentile £31.71 - £46.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 - £48.50
Median % change year-on-year - - -15.65%
75th Percentile £57.91 - £50.25
90th Percentile £67.36 - -
Central London median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £48.50
% change year-on-year +54.78% -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 8 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 8 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 19 (7.25%) Apache Airflow
2 11 (4.20%) Apache Spark
3 6 (2.29%) Apache
3 6 (2.29%) Confluence
3 6 (2.29%) SharePoint
4 4 (1.53%) CICS
5 3 (1.15%) Palantir Foundry
6 1 (0.38%) nginx
6 1 (0.38%) SAS
Applications
1 14 (5.34%) Microsoft Excel
2 7 (2.67%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.38%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 6 (2.29%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.91%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.53%) Endur
3 4 (1.53%) Oracle EBS R12
4 3 (1.15%) Aladdin
4 3 (1.15%) Bloomberg AIM
4 3 (1.15%) Fidessa
4 3 (1.15%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.15%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (1.15%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 3 (1.15%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 2 (0.76%) BASE24
5 2 (0.76%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 2 (0.76%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.76%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.38%) Algo Collateral
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.38%) Oracle Financials
6 1 (0.38%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 85 (32.44%) Azure
2 67 (25.57%) AWS
3 57 (21.76%) Power Platform
4 34 (12.98%) GCP
5 28 (10.69%) Snowflake
6 24 (9.16%) Azure Data Factory
7 23 (8.78%) GitHub
8 22 (8.40%) dbt
8 22 (8.40%) Serverless
9 17 (6.49%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (6.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 15 (5.73%) Amazon S3
11 15 (5.73%) AWS Lambda
12 9 (3.44%) Prefect
13 7 (2.67%) Amazon EKS
13 7 (2.67%) Azure Cosmos DB
13 7 (2.67%) GitHub Actions
14 6 (2.29%) Amazon SageMaker
14 6 (2.29%) Dagster
15 5 (1.91%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.76%) Multicast
2 1 (0.38%) DNS
2 1 (0.38%) LAN
2 1 (0.38%) NetScaler
2 1 (0.38%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.38%) VPN
2 1 (0.38%) WAN
2 1 (0.38%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 50 (19.08%) Power BI
2 41 (15.65%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (12.98%) SQL Server
4 29 (11.07%) Tableau
5 22 (8.40%) Metadata
6 19 (7.25%) Relational Database
7 18 (6.87%) PostgreSQL
8 13 (4.96%) Amazon Redshift
8 13 (4.96%) NoSQL
9 11 (4.20%) Looker
10 10 (3.82%) Big Data
10 10 (3.82%) Snowflake Schema
11 9 (3.44%) BigQuery
12 8 (3.05%) Data Lake
12 8 (3.05%) DB2
12 8 (3.05%) DynamoDB
12 8 (3.05%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 7 (2.67%) Azure SQL Database
13 7 (2.67%) Oracle Reports
14 5 (1.91%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 22 (8.40%) Git
2 13 (4.96%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.20%) JIRA
4 9 (3.44%) GitLab
5 4 (1.53%) ERwin
5 4 (1.53%) JUnit
6 3 (1.15%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.15%) Mockito
7 2 (0.76%) Eclipse
7 2 (0.76%) ER Studio
7 2 (0.76%) Gatling
7 2 (0.76%) Gradle
7 2 (0.76%) Liquibase
7 2 (0.76%) Selenium
7 2 (0.76%) SonarQube
7 2 (0.76%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 2 (0.76%) Toad
8 1 (0.38%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.38%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.38%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 108 (41.22%) Finance
2 63 (24.05%) Social Skills
3 47 (17.94%) Analytical Skills
4 45 (17.18%) Banking
5 14 (5.34%) Legal
6 13 (4.96%) Front Office
7 10 (3.82%) Investment Banking
8 8 (3.05%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (3.05%) Marketing
9 7 (2.67%) Financial Institution
10 5 (1.91%) Back Office
10 5 (1.91%) Law
10 5 (1.91%) Public Sector
10 5 (1.91%) Telecoms
11 4 (1.53%) General Ledger
11 4 (1.53%) Pharmaceutical
12 3 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 3 (1.15%) Publishing
13 2 (0.76%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.76%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 51 (19.47%) Data Engineer
2 46 (17.56%) Developer
3 41 (15.65%) Analyst
4 29 (11.07%) Senior
5 19 (7.25%) Data Analyst
6 18 (6.87%) Lead
7 15 (5.73%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 15 (5.73%) Snowflake Engineer
8 12 (4.58%) DBA
9 11 (4.20%) Architect
9 11 (4.20%) Consultant
10 10 (3.82%) Business Analyst
10 10 (3.82%) Java Developer
10 10 (3.82%) Software Engineer
11 9 (3.44%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.44%) SQL DBA
12 8 (3.05%) Data Scientist
13 6 (2.29%) Administrator
13 6 (2.29%) Oracle Consultant
13 6 (2.29%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (9.16%) Kafka
2 16 (6.11%) JSON
3 15 (5.73%) .NET
4 14 (5.34%) PySpark
4 14 (5.34%) React
4 14 (5.34%) REST
5 11 (4.20%) RESTful
5 11 (4.20%) Spring
6 10 (3.82%) PyTorch
6 10 (3.82%) XML
7 9 (3.44%) AngularJS
7 9 (3.44%) Pandas
7 9 (3.44%) scikit-learn
7 9 (3.44%) Spring Boot
7 9 (3.44%) TensorFlow
8 8 (3.05%) Middleware
8 8 (3.05%) SOAP
8 8 (3.05%) Web Services
9 7 (2.67%) HTML
10 5 (1.91%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 18 (6.87%) Cloud Native
2 14 (5.34%) Derivative
3 13 (4.96%) Fixed Income
4 12 (4.58%) Equities
4 12 (4.58%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 11 (4.20%) Data Structures
6 8 (3.05%) Algorithms
6 8 (3.05%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.29%) Clustering
9 5 (1.91%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.91%) Mainframe
9 5 (1.91%) Market Risk
10 4 (1.53%) Analytical Mindset
10 4 (1.53%) DataPower
10 4 (1.53%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.53%) Management Information System
10 4 (1.53%) Onboarding
10 4 (1.53%) Online Banking
10 4 (1.53%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.73%) Linux
2 10 (3.82%) Unix
2 10 (3.82%) Windows
3 4 (1.53%) zOS
4 3 (1.15%) Android
4 3 (1.15%) Apple iOS
4 3 (1.15%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.38%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2016
5 1 (0.38%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 80 (30.53%) Analytics
2 63 (24.05%) Data Modelling
3 61 (23.28%) ETL
4 60 (22.90%) AI
5 56 (21.37%) Data Engineering
6 55 (20.99%) Business Intelligence
7 50 (19.08%) CI/CD
8 49 (18.70%) DevOps
9 47 (17.94%) Data Pipeline
10 44 (16.79%) Problem-Solving
11 40 (15.27%) Performance Tuning
11 40 (15.27%) Validation
12 38 (14.50%) Agile
12 38 (14.50%) Migration
13 33 (12.60%) Data Governance
14 31 (11.83%) Machine Learning
14 31 (11.83%) Test Automation
15 29 (11.07%) Data Science
16 28 (10.69%) Data Analysis
16 28 (10.69%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 132 (50.38%) Python
2 36 (13.74%) Java
3 17 (6.49%) C#
4 15 (5.73%) PL/SQL
5 12 (4.58%) JavaScript
6 10 (3.82%) TypeScript
7 9 (3.44%) Shell Script
8 8 (3.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 7 (2.67%) R
10 4 (1.53%) C++
10 4 (1.53%) JCL
10 4 (1.53%) Perl
10 4 (1.53%) Scala
10 4 (1.53%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.15%) Bicep
11 3 (1.15%) C
11 3 (1.15%) PHP
11 3 (1.15%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.76%) ProC
13 1 (0.38%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 21 (8.02%) Degree
2 17 (6.49%) Security Cleared
3 12 (4.58%) SC Cleared
4 9 (3.44%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.67%) BPSS Clearance
6 3 (1.15%) DBS Check
6 3 (1.15%) PhD
6 3 (1.15%) PMI Certification
6 3 (1.15%) PMP
7 2 (0.76%) AWS Certification
7 2 (0.76%) CISM
7 2 (0.76%) CISSP
7 2 (0.76%) Master's Degree
7 2 (0.76%) SnowPro
8 1 (0.38%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
8 1 (0.38%) AWS Certified Developer
8 1 (0.38%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
8 1 (0.38%) CCA
8 1 (0.38%) Citrix Certification
8 1 (0.38%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 54 (20.61%) Data Quality
2 18 (6.87%) QA
3 16 (6.11%) GDPR
4 4 (1.53%) ISO 8583
4 4 (1.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.15%) Basel III
5 3 (1.15%) GAAP
5 3 (1.15%) IFRS
5 3 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.76%) EMIR
6 2 (0.76%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.76%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.76%) MiFID
6 2 (0.76%) NIST
6 2 (0.76%) PSD2
6 2 (0.76%) SEPA
7 1 (0.38%) DICOM
7 1 (0.38%) HL7
7 1 (0.38%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.38%) Solvency II
System Software
1 26 (9.92%) Docker
2 2 (0.76%) Active Directory
2 2 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.38%) GridGain
3 1 (0.38%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.38%) Varnish
3 1 (0.38%) XenApp
3 1 (0.38%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 23 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 16 (6.11%) Terraform
3 7 (2.67%) Ansible
4 6 (2.29%) Grafana
5 4 (1.53%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.15%) ITRS Geneos
7 2 (0.76%) Argo
8 1 (0.38%) Control-M
8 1 (0.38%) Istio
8 1 (0.38%) SCCM
8 1 (0.38%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 49 (18.70%) Microsoft
2 35 (13.36%) Oracle
3 29 (11.07%) Databricks
4 15 (5.73%) Google
5 10 (3.82%) Informatica
5 10 (3.82%) SAP
5 10 (3.82%) Workday
6 7 (2.67%) Splunk
7 5 (1.91%) AppDynamics
7 5 (1.91%) Bloomberg
7 5 (1.91%) IBM
7 5 (1.91%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.53%) Amplitude
8 4 (1.53%) Charles River
8 4 (1.53%) Salesforce
9 3 (1.15%) Foundry
9 3 (1.15%) OpenAI
9 3 (1.15%) Palantir
9 3 (1.15%) Sparx
10 2 (0.76%) Confluent