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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 8 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 0 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 273 298 314
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.36% 15.92% 15.04%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.13% 40.99% 41.26%
Number of daily rates quoted 190 198 224
10th Percentile £404 £404 £391
25th Percentile £466 £449 £480
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £573 £600
Median % change year-on-year -3.93% -4.58% -
75th Percentile £673 £720 £688
90th Percentile £749 £775 £775
Central London median daily rate £550 £550 £578
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.75%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 5 0
10th Percentile £37.50 £20.20 -
25th Percentile £43.12 £25.75 -
Median hourly rate £52.49 £62.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.02% - -
75th Percentile £56.11 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £58.28 £78.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £45.79 £41.50
% change year-on-year +14.64% +10.33% +27.69%

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 648 727 761
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 26.97% 38.84% 36.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 446 491 523
10th Percentile £365 £404 £400
25th Percentile £457 £463 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.35% - -8.00%
75th Percentile £668 £700 £707
90th Percentile £775 £775 £825
Central London median daily rate £550 £575 £575
% change year-on-year -4.35% - -7.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 5 0
10th Percentile £26.32 £20.20 -
25th Percentile £32.39 £25.75 -
Median hourly rate £37.50 £62.50 -
Median % change year-on-year -40.00% - -
75th Percentile £56.11 £63.75 -
90th Percentile £65.83 £78.75 -
Central London median hourly rate £52.49 £51.44 £41.50
% change year-on-year +2.04% +23.95% -37.36%

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 24 July 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 24 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the City of London

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 24 July 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 20 (7.33%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (4.40%) Apache Spark
3 11 (4.03%) Apache
4 8 (2.93%) Confluence
5 4 (1.47%) CICS
6 2 (0.73%) IIS
6 2 (0.73%) Palantir Foundry
6 2 (0.73%) SharePoint
7 1 (0.37%) nginx
7 1 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 9 (3.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.83%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.73%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.20%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.83%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.47%) Aladdin
3 4 (1.47%) Oracle EBS R12
3 4 (1.47%) Oracle Payables
4 3 (1.10%) Oracle Financials
4 3 (1.10%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (1.10%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.73%) Bloomberg AIM
5 2 (0.73%) Fidessa
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle Assets
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle E-Business Tax
5 2 (0.73%) Oracle ERP
5 2 (0.73%) SAP MDG
5 2 (0.73%) SAP S/4HANA
6 1 (0.37%) Magento
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Internet Expenses
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle iProcurement
6 1 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
6 1 (0.37%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 82 (30.04%) Azure
2 60 (21.98%) Power Platform
3 56 (20.51%) AWS
4 32 (11.72%) Snowflake
5 28 (10.26%) Azure Data Factory
5 28 (10.26%) GCP
6 23 (8.42%) dbt
7 19 (6.96%) GitHub
7 19 (6.96%) Serverless
8 18 (6.59%) Azure DevOps
9 15 (5.49%) AWS Lambda
10 14 (5.13%) Amazon S3
11 13 (4.76%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 10 (3.66%) Prefect
13 7 (2.56%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 7 (2.56%) Dagster
14 6 (2.20%) Amazon Kinesis
14 6 (2.20%) GitHub Actions
15 5 (1.83%) GitHub Copilot
15 5 (1.83%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.83%) Multicast
2 3 (1.10%) VPN
3 2 (0.73%) Firewall
3 2 (0.73%) Internet
3 2 (0.73%) Intranet
4 1 (0.37%) NetScaler
4 1 (0.37%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 51 (18.68%) Power BI
2 42 (15.38%) Data Warehouse
3 40 (14.65%) SQL Server
4 23 (8.42%) Tableau
5 18 (6.59%) Relational Database
6 16 (5.86%) Metadata
7 14 (5.13%) Amazon Redshift
7 14 (5.13%) BigQuery
7 14 (5.13%) Oracle Database
8 13 (4.76%) Data Lake
8 13 (4.76%) NoSQL
9 11 (4.03%) Azure SQL Database
9 11 (4.03%) Looker
10 10 (3.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 9 (3.30%) Db2
11 9 (3.30%) MongoDB
11 9 (3.30%) PostgreSQL
11 9 (3.30%) Snowflake Schema
12 7 (2.56%) DynamoDB
13 6 (2.20%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 19 (6.96%) Git
2 12 (4.40%) Jenkins
2 12 (4.40%) JIRA
3 11 (4.03%) GitLab
4 6 (2.20%) JUnit
5 5 (1.83%) Bitbucket
6 4 (1.47%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 3 (1.10%) Artifactory
7 3 (1.10%) Eclipse
7 3 (1.10%) Gradle
7 3 (1.10%) Mockito
7 3 (1.10%) TeamCity
8 2 (0.73%) Liquibase
8 2 (0.73%) Selenium
8 2 (0.73%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.73%) Zephyr
9 1 (0.37%) Karma Test Runner
9 1 (0.37%) Octopus Deploy
9 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 120 (43.96%) Finance
2 77 (28.21%) Social Skills
3 61 (22.34%) Analytical Skills
3 61 (22.34%) Banking
4 14 (5.13%) Front Office
5 12 (4.40%) Marketing
6 9 (3.30%) Legal
7 7 (2.56%) Investment Banking
8 6 (2.20%) Back Office
9 5 (1.83%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.83%) Public Sector
10 4 (1.47%) Law
10 4 (1.47%) Pharmaceutical
10 4 (1.47%) Retail
10 4 (1.47%) Telecoms
11 3 (1.10%) Financial Institution
11 3 (1.10%) General Ledger
11 3 (1.10%) Publishing
12 2 (0.73%) Advertising
12 2 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 52 (19.05%) Analyst
2 51 (18.68%) Data Engineer
3 42 (15.38%) Developer
4 36 (13.19%) Senior
5 28 (10.26%) Data Analyst
6 20 (7.33%) Lead
7 14 (5.13%) Architect
7 14 (5.13%) Consultant
8 13 (4.76%) Business Analyst
8 13 (4.76%) DBA
9 12 (4.40%) Snowflake Data Engineer
9 12 (4.40%) Snowflake Engineer
10 11 (4.03%) C# Developer
10 11 (4.03%) Senior Developer
11 10 (3.66%) Software Engineer
11 10 (3.66%) SQL DBA
12 9 (3.30%) Java Developer
13 8 (2.93%) Applications Support
13 8 (2.93%) Data Architect
13 8 (2.93%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (9.16%) .NET
2 21 (7.69%) Kafka
3 19 (6.96%) PySpark
4 16 (5.86%) REST
5 14 (5.13%) JSON
6 13 (4.76%) AngularJS
7 12 (4.40%) Middleware
7 12 (4.40%) Spring
7 12 (4.40%) Web Services
7 12 (4.40%) XML
8 10 (3.66%) RESTful
8 10 (3.66%) SOAP
8 10 (3.66%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.93%) React
10 7 (2.56%) .NET Framework
10 7 (2.56%) HTML
10 7 (2.56%) PyTorch
10 7 (2.56%) TensorFlow
11 6 (2.20%) scikit-learn
12 5 (1.83%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 28 (10.26%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.49%) Data Structures
3 13 (4.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
4 12 (4.40%) Distributed Systems
5 10 (3.66%) Fixed Income
5 10 (3.66%) Legacy Systems
6 9 (3.30%) Equities
6 9 (3.30%) Onboarding
7 8 (2.93%) Derivative
7 8 (2.93%) Product Ownership
8 7 (2.56%) Clustering
9 5 (1.83%) AI Agents
9 5 (1.83%) Mainframe
9 5 (1.83%) Market Risk
9 5 (1.83%) Reinsurance
9 5 (1.83%) Replication
10 4 (1.47%) Data Centre
10 4 (1.47%) DataPower
10 4 (1.47%) Online Banking
10 4 (1.47%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 21 (7.69%) Linux
2 20 (7.33%) Unix
3 15 (5.49%) Windows
4 6 (2.20%) Windows Server
5 4 (1.47%) zOS
6 3 (1.10%) Android
6 3 (1.10%) Apple iOS
7 1 (0.37%) Windows 10
7 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
7 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 101 (37.00%) Analytics
2 81 (29.67%) Data Modelling
3 70 (25.64%) AI
4 67 (24.54%) Data Engineering
5 64 (23.44%) Business Intelligence
6 62 (22.71%) CI/CD
7 59 (21.61%) ETL
8 56 (20.51%) DevOps
9 50 (18.32%) Agile
10 48 (17.58%) Data Pipeline
11 44 (16.12%) Problem-Solving
12 41 (15.02%) Data Governance
13 40 (14.65%) Validation
14 38 (13.92%) Migration
15 33 (12.09%) Data Analysis
15 33 (12.09%) Decision-Making
16 32 (11.72%) Machine Learning
16 32 (11.72%) Performance Tuning
17 31 (11.36%) Stakeholder Management
18 28 (10.26%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 130 (47.62%) Python
2 32 (11.72%) C#
2 32 (11.72%) Java
3 19 (6.96%) PL/SQL
4 13 (4.76%) T-SQL
5 12 (4.40%) JavaScript
5 12 (4.40%) Shell Script
6 11 (4.03%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 10 (3.66%) R
8 8 (2.93%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.56%) TypeScript
10 4 (1.47%) JCL
11 3 (1.10%) C++
11 3 (1.10%) Scala
12 2 (0.73%) Bicep
12 2 (0.73%) C
12 2 (0.73%) ProC
13 1 (0.37%) Cypher
13 1 (0.37%) LookML
13 1 (0.37%) SOQL
Qualifications
1 24 (8.79%) Degree
2 23 (8.42%) Security Cleared
3 17 (6.23%) SC Cleared
4 7 (2.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 5 (1.83%) BPSS Clearance
5 5 (1.83%) DBS Check
6 3 (1.10%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.10%) PhD
7 2 (0.73%) CISM
7 2 (0.73%) CISSP
7 2 (0.73%) SnowPro
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%) CBAP
8 1 (0.37%) CCA
8 1 (0.37%) Citrix Certification
8 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Certification
8 1 (0.37%) PMI Certification
8 1 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 56 (20.51%) Data Quality
2 30 (10.99%) QA
3 16 (5.86%) GDPR
4 3 (1.10%) Accessibility
5 2 (0.73%) EMIR
5 2 (0.73%) HIPAA
5 2 (0.73%) MiFID
5 2 (0.73%) PSD2
5 2 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.73%) SLA
6 1 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
6 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials
6 1 (0.37%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
6 1 (0.37%) GAAP
6 1 (0.37%) GxP
6 1 (0.37%) IFRS
6 1 (0.37%) NIST
6 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.37%) PMO
6 1 (0.37%) Solvency II
System Software
1 20 (7.33%) Docker
2 4 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 1 (0.37%) GridGain
3 1 (0.37%) Hyper-V
3 1 (0.37%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (0.37%) Varnish
3 1 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (0.37%) VMware Infrastructure
3 1 (0.37%) XenApp
3 1 (0.37%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 20 (7.33%) Kubernetes
2 12 (4.40%) Terraform
3 5 (1.83%) ITRS Geneos
4 3 (1.10%) Ansible
5 2 (0.73%) Grafana
6 1 (0.37%) Control-M
6 1 (0.37%) Data Guard
6 1 (0.37%) Microsoft Clustering
6 1 (0.37%) SCCM
6 1 (0.37%) SCOM
6 1 (0.37%) SCVMM
6 1 (0.37%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 51 (18.68%) Microsoft
2 40 (14.65%) Oracle
3 33 (12.09%) Databricks
4 11 (4.03%) Google
4 11 (4.03%) Informatica
5 7 (2.56%) SAP
5 7 (2.56%) Workday
6 6 (2.20%) Citrix
6 6 (2.20%) Murex
7 5 (1.83%) Amplitude
7 5 (1.83%) IBM
7 5 (1.83%) Salesforce
7 5 (1.83%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.47%) Bloomberg
8 4 (1.47%) Sitecore
8 4 (1.47%) Solace
8 4 (1.47%) Splunk
9 3 (1.10%) Adobe
9 3 (1.10%) Guidewire
9 3 (1.10%) Sybase