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

6 months to
26 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL 268 264 278
As % of all contract jobs in the City of London 11.79% 14.92% 12.51%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.88% 36.92% 37.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 171 191
10th Percentile £355 £406 £404
25th Percentile £450 £478 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £575 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.83% - -
75th Percentile £638 £698 £675
90th Percentile £753 £775 £775
Central London median daily rate £550 £560 £575
% change year-on-year -1.79% -2.61% -
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 640 715 748
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the City of London 28.16% 40.42% 33.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 445 474 533
10th Percentile £351 £413 £413
25th Percentile £425 £467 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £582 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.72% +1.13% -8.00%
75th Percentile £638 £693 £690
90th Percentile £750 £788 £788
Central London median daily rate £525 £575 £565
% change year-on-year -8.70% +1.77% -8.13%
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 26 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 26 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 22 (8.21%) Apache Airflow
2 12 (4.48%) Apache Spark
3 9 (3.36%) Apache
4 6 (2.24%) SharePoint
5 5 (1.87%) Confluence
6 4 (1.49%) CICS
7 3 (1.12%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.37%) nginx
8 1 (0.37%) SAS
Applications
1 14 (5.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 6 (2.24%) MS Visio
3 4 (1.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 6 (2.24%) Oracle EBS
2 5 (1.87%) BambooHR
3 4 (1.49%) Aladdin
3 4 (1.49%) Endur
3 4 (1.49%) 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%) Magento
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.37%) Oracle Retail
6 1 (0.37%) Summit
6 1 (0.37%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 86 (32.09%) Azure
2 72 (26.87%) AWS
3 62 (23.13%) Power Platform
4 35 (13.06%) GCP
5 29 (10.82%) Snowflake
6 24 (8.96%) dbt
7 23 (8.58%) Azure Data Factory
7 23 (8.58%) GitHub
8 22 (8.21%) Serverless
9 17 (6.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 16 (5.97%) Amazon S3
10 16 (5.97%) Azure DevOps
11 15 (5.60%) AWS Lambda
12 11 (4.10%) Prefect
13 8 (2.99%) Dagster
14 7 (2.61%) Amazon EKS
14 7 (2.61%) Amazon SageMaker
14 7 (2.61%) Azure Cosmos DB
14 7 (2.61%) GitHub Actions
14 7 (2.61%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (0.75%) Multicast
2 1 (0.37%) DNS
2 1 (0.37%) LAN
2 1 (0.37%) NetScaler
2 1 (0.37%) SD-WAN
2 1 (0.37%) VPN
2 1 (0.37%) WAN
2 1 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (20.52%) Power BI
2 41 (15.30%) Data Warehouse
3 35 (13.06%) SQL Server
4 33 (12.31%) Tableau
5 21 (7.84%) PostgreSQL
5 21 (7.84%) Relational Database
6 20 (7.46%) Metadata
7 13 (4.85%) Amazon Redshift
7 13 (4.85%) NoSQL
8 11 (4.10%) Data Lake
8 11 (4.10%) Looker
9 10 (3.73%) Big Data
10 9 (3.36%) BigQuery
10 9 (3.36%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 8 (2.99%) DB2
11 8 (2.99%) Snowflake Schema
12 7 (2.61%) Azure SQL Database
12 7 (2.61%) DynamoDB
12 7 (2.61%) Oracle Reports
13 6 (2.24%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 22 (8.21%) Git
2 13 (4.85%) Jenkins
3 11 (4.10%) JIRA
4 9 (3.36%) GitLab
5 4 (1.49%) ERwin
5 4 (1.49%) JUnit
6 3 (1.12%) Cucumber
6 3 (1.12%) Mockito
7 2 (0.75%) ER Studio
7 2 (0.75%) Gatling
7 2 (0.75%) Gradle
7 2 (0.75%) Liquibase
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%) MLflow
8 1 (0.37%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.37%) Robot Framework
8 1 (0.37%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 108 (40.30%) Finance
2 61 (22.76%) Social Skills
3 50 (18.66%) Analytical Skills
4 46 (17.16%) Banking
5 14 (5.22%) Legal
6 12 (4.48%) Front Office
7 10 (3.73%) Investment Banking
8 8 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (2.99%) Marketing
9 7 (2.61%) Financial Institution
10 6 (2.24%) Public Sector
11 5 (1.87%) Pharmaceutical
11 5 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 4 (1.49%) Back Office
12 4 (1.49%) Law
13 3 (1.12%) General Ledger
13 3 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 3 (1.12%) Publishing
13 3 (1.12%) Retail
14 2 (0.75%) Influencing Skills
Job Titles
1 54 (20.15%) Data Engineer
2 47 (17.54%) Developer
3 42 (15.67%) Analyst
4 35 (13.06%) Senior
5 19 (7.09%) Data Analyst
6 16 (5.97%) Lead
7 15 (5.60%) Snowflake Data Engineer
7 15 (5.60%) Snowflake Engineer
8 12 (4.48%) Consultant
8 12 (4.48%) DBA
9 11 (4.10%) Architect
9 11 (4.10%) Business Analyst
10 10 (3.73%) Java Developer
10 10 (3.73%) Software Engineer
11 9 (3.36%) Data Scientist
11 9 (3.36%) Senior Developer
11 9 (3.36%) SQL DBA
12 8 (2.99%) Senior Data Engineer
13 7 (2.61%) Senior Analyst
14 6 (2.24%) Oracle Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (8.58%) Kafka
2 16 (5.97%) JSON
3 15 (5.60%) .NET
4 14 (5.22%) React
4 14 (5.22%) REST
5 12 (4.48%) PySpark
6 11 (4.10%) RESTful
6 11 (4.10%) Spring
7 10 (3.73%) Pandas
7 10 (3.73%) scikit-learn
7 10 (3.73%) XML
8 9 (3.36%) AngularJS
8 9 (3.36%) Middleware
8 9 (3.36%) PyTorch
8 9 (3.36%) Spring Boot
9 8 (2.99%) SOAP
9 8 (2.99%) TensorFlow
9 8 (2.99%) Web Services
10 7 (2.61%) HTML
11 6 (2.24%) Matplotlib
Miscellaneous
1 20 (7.46%) Cloud Native
2 15 (5.60%) Derivative
3 13 (4.85%) Fixed Income
4 12 (4.48%) Equities
4 12 (4.48%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 11 (4.10%) Data Structures
6 10 (3.73%) Algorithms
7 7 (2.61%) Distributed Systems
7 7 (2.61%) Legacy Systems
8 6 (2.24%) Clustering
9 5 (1.87%) Mainframe
9 5 (1.87%) Market Risk
10 4 (1.49%) AI Agents
10 4 (1.49%) DataPower
10 4 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
10 4 (1.49%) Online Banking
10 4 (1.49%) Reference Data
11 3 (1.12%) Onboarding
11 3 (1.12%) Product Ownership
11 3 (1.12%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 15 (5.60%) Linux
2 11 (4.10%) Windows
3 10 (3.73%) Unix
4 4 (1.49%) zOS
5 3 (1.12%) Android
5 3 (1.12%) Apple iOS
5 3 (1.12%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.37%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 81 (30.22%) Analytics
2 65 (24.25%) Data Modelling
2 65 (24.25%) ETL
3 61 (22.76%) Business Intelligence
4 58 (21.64%) AI
5 52 (19.40%) Data Engineering
6 49 (18.28%) Data Pipeline
6 49 (18.28%) DevOps
7 48 (17.91%) CI/CD
8 46 (17.16%) Problem-Solving
9 43 (16.04%) Agile
10 42 (15.67%) Performance Tuning
11 40 (14.93%) Validation
12 39 (14.55%) Migration
13 34 (12.69%) Data Governance
14 32 (11.94%) Test Automation
15 31 (11.57%) Machine Learning
15 31 (11.57%) Visualisation
16 30 (11.19%) Data Science
17 28 (10.45%) Data Analysis
Programming Languages
1 135 (50.37%) Python
2 38 (14.18%) Java
3 18 (6.72%) C#
4 15 (5.60%) PL/SQL
5 14 (5.22%) JavaScript
6 12 (4.48%) TypeScript
7 11 (4.10%) Shell Script
8 8 (2.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (2.99%) R
9 5 (1.87%) Scala
10 4 (1.49%) C++
10 4 (1.49%) JCL
10 4 (1.49%) Perl
10 4 (1.49%) PHP
10 4 (1.49%) T-SQL
11 3 (1.12%) Bicep
11 3 (1.12%) C
11 3 (1.12%) PowerShell
11 3 (1.12%) ProC
12 2 (0.75%) Go
Qualifications
1 21 (7.84%) Degree
2 18 (6.72%) Security Cleared
3 13 (4.85%) SC Cleared
4 10 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 7 (2.61%) 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%) 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%) CFA
8 1 (0.37%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (19.03%) Data Quality
2 20 (7.46%) QA
3 16 (5.97%) GDPR
4 4 (1.49%) ISO 8583
4 4 (1.49%) 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%) EMIR
6 2 (0.75%) HIPAA
6 2 (0.75%) ISO 20022
6 2 (0.75%) MiFID
6 2 (0.75%) NIST
6 2 (0.75%) PSD2
6 2 (0.75%) SEPA
7 1 (0.37%) DICOM
7 1 (0.37%) HL7
7 1 (0.37%) PCI DSS
7 1 (0.37%) Solvency II
System Software
1 24 (8.96%) 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 22 (8.21%) Kubernetes
2 17 (6.34%) Terraform
3 7 (2.61%) Ansible
4 6 (2.24%) Grafana
5 4 (1.49%) Prometheus
6 3 (1.12%) ITRS Geneos
7 2 (0.75%) Argo
8 1 (0.37%) Control-M
8 1 (0.37%) Istio
8 1 (0.37%) SCCM
8 1 (0.37%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 50 (18.66%) Microsoft
2 34 (12.69%) Oracle
3 30 (11.19%) Databricks
4 17 (6.34%) Google
5 10 (3.73%) Informatica
5 10 (3.73%) SAP
5 10 (3.73%) Workday
6 6 (2.24%) IBM
6 6 (2.24%) Splunk
7 5 (1.87%) AppDynamics
7 5 (1.87%) Bloomberg
7 5 (1.87%) ServiceNow
8 4 (1.49%) Amplitude
8 4 (1.49%) Charles River
8 4 (1.49%) Salesforce
9 3 (1.12%) Cognos
9 3 (1.12%) Foundry
9 3 (1.12%) Palantir
9 3 (1.12%) Sage
9 3 (1.12%) Sparx