SQL Server Contract Job Trends in London

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 15 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 71 45
Rank change year-on-year -32 -26 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 458 447 774
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.79% 3.43% 4.25%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.60% 15.56% 21.10%
Number of daily rates quoted 319 327 554
10th Percentile £363 £363 £375
25th Percentile £413 £433 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -6.78%
75th Percentile £600 £656 £675
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
England median daily rate £488 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -4.88% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 0
10th Percentile - £29.71 -
25th Percentile £66.00 £34.80 -
Median hourly rate £68.00 £43.41 -
Median % change year-on-year +56.65% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £52.14 -
90th Percentile - £57.31 -
England median hourly rate £27.44 £62.12 £40.25
% change year-on-year -55.83% +54.34% -3.59%

All Database & BI Skills
London

SQL Server falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills in London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 3,136 2,872 3,669
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.13% 22.03% 20.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,145 2,040 2,727
10th Percentile £361 £375 £377
25th Percentile £425 £454 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £561 £550
Median % change year-on-year -6.46% +2.05% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £749 £834 £788
England median daily rate £500 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 29 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £25.23 £28.60 £25.90
Median hourly rate £48.25 £41.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.27% -7.78% +3.14%
75th Percentile £65.31 £58.75 £52.31
90th Percentile £89.25 £77.75 £63.98
England median hourly rate £49.36 £33.11 £40.25
% change year-on-year +49.08% -17.74% -32.92%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

SQL Server job vacancy trend in London

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in London over the 6 months to 15 March 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in London

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Contract Job Locations in London

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL Server within the London region over the 6 months to 15 March 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
Central London -42 50 £550 -5.17% 38
South London -8 7 £530 -26.90% 2
West London -15 3 £463 -7.50% 9
East London -7 1 £630 +57.50% 5
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in 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 21 (4.59%) SharePoint
2 19 (4.15%) IIS
3 14 (3.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 13 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
5 11 (2.40%) Confluence
5 11 (2.40%) WebSphere
6 8 (1.75%) Appian
7 7 (1.53%) Apache
7 7 (1.53%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.53%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
9 3 (0.66%) Camunda
10 2 (0.44%) CMS
11 1 (0.22%) ArcGIS
11 1 (0.22%) ColdFusion
11 1 (0.22%) JBoss
11 1 (0.22%) OpenEdge
11 1 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
11 1 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
11 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
Applications
1 28 (6.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.62%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.53%) BusinessWorks
1 7 (1.53%) Dynamics CRM
2 5 (1.09%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.44%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.44%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.44%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 1 (0.22%) Endur
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.22%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.22%) RMDS
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
5 1 (0.22%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 221 (48.25%) Azure
2 100 (21.83%) AWS
3 84 (18.34%) Power Platform
4 78 (17.03%) Azure DevOps
5 54 (11.79%) Azure Data Factory
6 47 (10.26%) GitHub
7 31 (6.77%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 31 (6.77%) GCP
8 24 (5.24%) SaaS
9 20 (4.37%) Amazon S3
9 20 (4.37%) GitHub Actions
10 19 (4.15%) Microsoft 365
11 18 (3.93%) Amazon EC2
11 18 (3.93%) Snowflake
12 15 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
12 15 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
12 15 (3.28%) IaaS
12 15 (3.28%) Power Automate
13 14 (3.06%) Serverless
14 11 (2.40%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.40%) DNS
1 11 (2.40%) Internet
2 10 (2.18%) Firewall
3 7 (1.53%) DHCP
3 7 (1.53%) VPN
4 6 (1.31%) NetScaler
4 6 (1.31%) SAN
5 5 (1.09%) VLAN
5 5 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.87%) FTP
6 4 (0.87%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.66%) HTTP
8 2 (0.44%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.44%) VSAN
9 1 (0.22%) BGP
9 1 (0.22%) DMZ
9 1 (0.22%) Ethernet VPN
9 1 (0.22%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.22%) SSL
9 1 (0.22%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (16.16%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 67 (14.63%) PostgreSQL
2 67 (14.63%) Power BI
3 57 (12.45%) Data Warehouse
4 54 (11.79%) Relational Database
5 41 (8.95%) Oracle Database
6 37 (8.08%) Data Lake
7 31 (6.77%) Azure SQL Database
8 27 (5.90%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 25 (5.46%) MongoDB
10 23 (5.02%) NoSQL
11 18 (3.93%) Delta Lake
12 17 (3.71%) Big Data
12 17 (3.71%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 13 (2.84%) Metadata
13 13 (2.84%) RDBMS
13 13 (2.84%) Redis
14 12 (2.62%) Amazon RDS
14 12 (2.62%) BigQuery
15 11 (2.40%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 39 (8.52%) Git
2 31 (6.77%) JIRA
3 19 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.93%) Visual Studio
5 11 (2.40%) TeamCity
6 9 (1.97%) ERwin
6 9 (1.97%) Octopus Deploy
7 8 (1.75%) GitLab
7 8 (1.75%) JUnit
7 8 (1.75%) MLflow
8 7 (1.53%) Mockito
8 7 (1.53%) SpecFlow
8 7 (1.53%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.31%) Chocolatey
10 5 (1.09%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.09%) MSTest
10 5 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 4 (0.87%) Maven
12 3 (0.66%) Mocha
12 3 (0.66%) NUnit
General
1 156 (34.06%) Finance
2 126 (27.51%) Social Skills
3 88 (19.21%) Banking
4 59 (12.88%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.68%) Public Sector
6 21 (4.59%) Investment Banking
7 16 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (3.28%) Front Office
9 14 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 12 (2.62%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.97%) Retail
12 6 (1.31%) Local Government
13 4 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.66%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.66%) Law
14 3 (0.66%) Legal
14 3 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.44%) Japanese Language
Job Titles
1 170 (37.12%) Developer
2 80 (17.47%) Data Engineer
3 78 (17.03%) Senior
4 71 (15.50%) C# Developer
5 42 (9.17%) .NET Developer
6 33 (7.21%) Architect
7 29 (6.33%) DBA
8 27 (5.90%) Senior Data Engineer
9 25 (5.46%) Senior Developer
10 24 (5.24%) SQL DBA
11 22 (4.80%) Azure Engineer
12 21 (4.59%) Lead
13 20 (4.37%) C# .NET Developer
14 19 (4.15%) Analyst
15 16 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
16 14 (3.06%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (3.06%) SQL Developer
17 13 (2.84%) Software Engineer
18 11 (2.40%) Automation Engineer
18 11 (2.40%) Java Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (28.82%) .NET
2 67 (14.63%) .NET Framework
3 48 (10.48%) REST
4 36 (7.86%) AngularJS
5 35 (7.64%) RESTful
6 33 (7.21%) HTML
6 33 (7.21%) React
7 29 (6.33%) .NET Core
8 28 (6.11%) Kafka
8 28 (6.11%) XML
9 25 (5.46%) Web Services
10 24 (5.24%) CSS
11 20 (4.37%) WPF
12 19 (4.15%) OAuth
13 18 (3.93%) ASP.NET
13 18 (3.93%) WinForms
14 16 (3.49%) Spring
15 15 (3.28%) Spring Boot
16 14 (3.06%) SOAP
17 13 (2.84%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 39 (8.52%) Legacy Systems
2 25 (5.46%) Cloud Native
3 15 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
3 15 (3.28%) Replication
4 14 (3.06%) Data Structures
5 13 (2.84%) Onboarding
6 11 (2.40%) Reinsurance
6 11 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (2.18%) Credit Risk
7 10 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 10 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.97%) Derivative
8 9 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.97%) Low-Code
8 9 (1.97%) Management Information System
9 8 (1.75%) Data Protection Act
10 7 (1.53%) Market Risk
11 6 (1.31%) Clustering
11 6 (1.31%) Cyber Threat
12 5 (1.09%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 86 (18.78%) Windows
2 36 (7.86%) Linux
3 33 (7.21%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (1.09%) Unix
5 5 (1.09%) Windows 10
5 5 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.22%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 125 (27.29%) CI/CD
2 122 (26.64%) DevOps
3 107 (23.36%) ETL
4 100 (21.83%) Agile
5 95 (20.74%) Business Intelligence
6 92 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
7 89 (19.43%) Data Modelling
8 80 (17.47%) Migration
9 65 (14.19%) Analytics
10 61 (13.32%) Data Engineering
11 54 (11.79%) Data Analysis
11 54 (11.79%) Data Pipeline
12 50 (10.92%) Disaster Recovery
12 50 (10.92%) Performance Tuning
13 46 (10.04%) Test Automation
14 45 (9.83%) AI
15 43 (9.39%) Microservices
16 42 (9.17%) Containerisation
17 41 (8.95%) Data Migration
18 37 (8.08%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 292 (63.76%) SQL
2 140 (30.57%) C#
3 121 (26.42%) Python
4 74 (16.16%) T-SQL
5 51 (11.14%) PL/SQL
6 41 (8.95%) Java
7 37 (8.08%) JavaScript
8 31 (6.77%) PowerShell
9 26 (5.68%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 13 (2.84%) VB
12 12 (2.62%) Bash
12 12 (2.62%) VBA
13 9 (1.97%) Bicep
14 7 (1.53%) XPath
15 5 (1.09%) Scala
16 3 (0.66%) R
17 2 (0.44%) C
17 2 (0.44%) C++
17 2 (0.44%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 63 (13.76%) Security Cleared
2 47 (10.26%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.61%) Degree
4 19 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 15 (3.28%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.62%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.75%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.09%) CCA
8 5 (1.09%) Citrix Certification
8 5 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.87%) MCITP
9 4 (0.87%) MCTS
10 3 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.44%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.44%) CCNP
11 2 (0.44%) CISSP
11 2 (0.44%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.44%) PMP
12 1 (0.22%) CCSM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (14.19%) Data Quality
2 60 (13.10%) QA
3 9 (1.97%) SLA
4 8 (1.75%) GDPR
5 4 (0.87%) IFRS
6 3 (0.66%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.66%) IFRS 17
6 3 (0.66%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.44%) Basel III
7 2 (0.44%) EMIR
7 2 (0.44%) GAAP
7 2 (0.44%) MiFID
7 2 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.22%) NCSC
8 1 (0.22%) NIST
8 1 (0.22%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.22%) Solvency II
8 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 61 (13.32%) Docker
2 23 (5.02%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.09%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.09%) XenApp
4 5 (1.09%) XenDesktop
5 3 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
6 2 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.44%) VMware NSX
6 2 (0.44%) zsh
7 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 64 (13.97%) Kubernetes
2 36 (7.86%) Terraform
3 12 (2.62%) Ansible
4 11 (2.40%) SCCM
5 10 (2.18%) Grafana
6 8 (1.75%) Puppet
7 7 (1.53%) TIBCO Hawk
8 6 (1.31%) Microsoft Intune
9 5 (1.09%) SCVMM
10 4 (0.87%) Progress Chef
11 3 (0.66%) Control-M
11 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (0.44%) Prometheus
13 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 1 (0.22%) Ambari
13 1 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
13 1 (0.22%) FortiGate
13 1 (0.22%) Oracle Identity Management
13 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
13 1 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 152 (33.19%) Oracle
2 117 (25.55%) Microsoft
3 49 (10.70%) Databricks
4 41 (8.95%) Citrix
5 25 (5.46%) Informatica
6 16 (3.49%) VMware
7 15 (3.28%) SAP
8 14 (3.06%) IBM
9 13 (2.84%) UiPath
10 10 (2.18%) Google
11 9 (1.97%) OpenAI
11 9 (1.97%) ServiceNow
12 8 (1.75%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (1.75%) Dynatrace
13 7 (1.53%) BEA
13 7 (1.53%) TIBCO
14 6 (1.31%) AppDynamics
14 6 (1.31%) PagerDuty
14 6 (1.31%) Sybase
14 6 (1.31%) Tenable