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

6 months to
31 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 105 76 42
Rank change year-on-year -29 -34 +4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 480 420 830
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.60% 3.43% 4.76%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.40% 15.48% 21.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 344 306 580
10th Percentile £363 £378 £363
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £538
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.98% -6.52%
75th Percentile £638 £690 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
England median daily rate £488 £519 £513
% change year-on-year -6.02% +1.22% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 £26.32 -
Median % change year-on-year -25.91% - -
75th Percentile £19.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £29.48 £26.32 £40.00
% change year-on-year +12.01% -34.20% -2.44%

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 3,334 2,713 3,875
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.05% 22.13% 22.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,277 1,896 2,877
10th Percentile £363 £385 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £551
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -0.18% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £713 £700
90th Percentile £750 £825 £850
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 26 31 33
10th Percentile £17.94 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £26.52 £25.67 £25.00
Median hourly rate £47.25 £35.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +35.00% -27.84% -7.62%
75th Percentile £61.19 £54.38 £54.13
90th Percentile £82.50 £77.50 £71.40
England median hourly rate £39.75 £31.85 £40.00
% change year-on-year +24.82% -20.39% -33.33%

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 31 May 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 31 May 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 -34 60 £525 -8.30% 20
East London -8 3 £630 +44.00% 4
West London -29 3 £463 -29.06% 4
South London -11 1 £600 -14.29% 2
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 35 (7.29%) SharePoint
2 22 (4.58%) IIS
3 15 (3.13%) Apache Airflow
4 13 (2.71%) Apache
4 13 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
5 12 (2.50%) Apache Spark
5 12 (2.50%) Appian
6 10 (2.08%) Camunda
7 9 (1.88%) Confluence
8 7 (1.46%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 5 (1.04%) Oracle Workflow
9 5 (1.04%) WebSphere
10 2 (0.42%) ArcGIS
10 2 (0.42%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.21%) CMS
11 1 (0.21%) ColdFusion
11 1 (0.21%) Mule
11 1 (0.21%) OpenEdge
11 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
11 1 (0.21%) Tomcat
Applications
1 24 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 10 (2.08%) MS Visio
3 5 (1.04%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 8 (1.67%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (1.25%) Dynamics AX
3 5 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.63%) OpenText MBPM
4 3 (0.63%) Oracle BPM
4 3 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
4 3 (0.63%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
4 3 (0.63%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 2 (0.42%) BusinessWorks
5 2 (0.42%) Loan IQ
5 2 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.42%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 1 (0.21%) Aladdin
6 1 (0.21%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.21%) Endur
6 1 (0.21%) Findur
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.21%) SAP CRM
6 1 (0.21%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 227 (47.29%) Azure
2 105 (21.88%) AWS
3 93 (19.38%) Power Platform
4 78 (16.25%) Azure DevOps
5 65 (13.54%) Azure Data Factory
6 54 (11.25%) GitHub
7 40 (8.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 28 (5.83%) Power Automate
9 25 (5.21%) Serverless
10 24 (5.00%) GCP
10 24 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
11 23 (4.79%) GitHub Actions
12 20 (4.17%) Amazon S3
12 20 (4.17%) Snowflake
13 17 (3.54%) SaaS
14 16 (3.33%) Amazon EC2
14 16 (3.33%) AWS Lambda
14 16 (3.33%) Dynamics 365
15 13 (2.71%) Datadog
15 13 (2.71%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 19 (3.96%) DNS
2 14 (2.92%) DHCP
3 11 (2.29%) Internet
4 10 (2.08%) Firewall
5 8 (1.67%) VPN
6 7 (1.46%) SAN
7 6 (1.25%) VLAN
7 6 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
8 4 (0.83%) NetScaler
8 4 (0.83%) TCP/IP
9 3 (0.63%) FTP
10 1 (0.21%) Kerberos
10 1 (0.21%) MQTT
10 1 (0.21%) Multicast
10 1 (0.21%) Remote Desktop
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (15.00%) Power BI
2 68 (14.17%) PostgreSQL
3 67 (13.96%) Data Warehouse
4 62 (12.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 54 (11.25%) Relational Database
6 45 (9.38%) Oracle Database
7 40 (8.33%) Data Lake
8 31 (6.46%) Azure SQL Database
8 31 (6.46%) MongoDB
9 26 (5.42%) NoSQL
10 21 (4.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 19 (3.96%) Delta Lake
12 18 (3.75%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 15 (3.13%) Metadata
13 15 (3.13%) Redis
14 13 (2.71%) MySQL
14 13 (2.71%) Tableau
15 12 (2.50%) BigQuery
16 11 (2.29%) DataStage
17 10 (2.08%) Spark SQL
Development Applications
1 40 (8.33%) Git
2 29 (6.04%) JIRA
3 18 (3.75%) TeamCity
4 16 (3.33%) Jenkins
5 15 (3.13%) Visual Studio
6 11 (2.29%) Octopus Deploy
7 9 (1.88%) GitLab
8 8 (1.67%) ERwin
8 8 (1.67%) MLflow
9 7 (1.46%) Chocolatey
9 7 (1.46%) Cucumber
9 7 (1.46%) MSTest
9 7 (1.46%) Team Foundation Server
10 6 (1.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 5 (1.04%) JUnit
11 5 (1.04%) Mocha
11 5 (1.04%) Mockito
11 5 (1.04%) tSQLt
12 4 (0.83%) Maven
12 4 (0.83%) NUnit
General
1 178 (37.08%) Finance
2 129 (26.88%) Social Skills
3 97 (20.21%) Banking
4 77 (16.04%) Analytical Skills
5 31 (6.46%) Front Office
6 24 (5.00%) Public Sector
7 20 (4.17%) Investment Banking
8 14 (2.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 11 (2.29%) Documentation Skills
10 9 (1.88%) Financial Institution
11 7 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
12 6 (1.25%) Back Office
13 5 (1.04%) Retail
14 4 (0.83%) Law
14 4 (0.83%) Legal
14 4 (0.83%) Publishing
14 4 (0.83%) Telecoms
15 3 (0.63%) General Ledger
15 3 (0.63%) Local Government
16 2 (0.42%) Corporate Banking
Job Titles
1 165 (34.38%) Developer
2 89 (18.54%) Senior
3 88 (18.33%) Data Engineer
4 73 (15.21%) C# Developer
5 34 (7.08%) .NET Developer
5 34 (7.08%) Architect
6 32 (6.67%) DBA
6 32 (6.67%) Senior Data Engineer
7 29 (6.04%) Senior Developer
8 27 (5.63%) Lead
9 24 (5.00%) SQL DBA
10 20 (4.17%) Software Engineer
11 19 (3.96%) C# .NET Developer
12 18 (3.75%) Azure Engineer
13 17 (3.54%) Full-Stack Developer
13 17 (3.54%) Integration Engineer
14 16 (3.33%) Consultant
15 14 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
15 14 (2.92%) SQL Developer
16 13 (2.71%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 133 (27.71%) .NET
2 63 (13.13%) REST
3 60 (12.50%) .NET Framework
4 44 (9.17%) React
5 43 (8.96%) CSS
6 42 (8.75%) HTML
7 39 (8.13%) RESTful
8 34 (7.08%) AngularJS
9 31 (6.46%) Kafka
10 29 (6.04%) .NET Core
10 29 (6.04%) OAuth
11 23 (4.79%) ASP.NET
12 21 (4.38%) XML
13 18 (3.75%) Web Services
14 16 (3.33%) SOAP
15 14 (2.92%) JSON
15 14 (2.92%) Spring Boot
15 14 (2.92%) WPF
16 13 (2.71%) Middleware
16 13 (2.71%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.29%) Legacy Systems
2 31 (6.46%) Cloud Native
3 18 (3.75%) Replication
3 18 (3.75%) Self-Motivation
4 16 (3.33%) Data Structures
4 16 (3.33%) Low-Code
5 14 (2.92%) Derivative
6 12 (2.50%) Fixed Income
7 10 (2.08%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (2.08%) Greenfield Project
7 10 (2.08%) Reinsurance
8 8 (1.67%) Onboarding
9 7 (1.46%) Clustering
9 7 (1.46%) Cyber Threat
9 7 (1.46%) Enterprise Software
10 6 (1.25%) Algorithms
10 6 (1.25%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 6 (1.25%) Management Information System
10 6 (1.25%) NHS
11 5 (1.04%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 97 (20.21%) Windows
2 42 (8.75%) Windows Server
3 36 (7.50%) Linux
4 9 (1.88%) Unix
5 6 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
6 4 (0.83%) Windows 10
6 4 (0.83%) Windows Server 2019
7 3 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 2 (0.42%) VMS
8 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (29.17%) DevOps
2 134 (27.92%) CI/CD
3 107 (22.29%) ETL
4 102 (21.25%) Agile
5 96 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
6 95 (19.79%) Data Modelling
7 93 (19.38%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (15.63%) AI
9 72 (15.00%) Analytics
10 68 (14.17%) Migration
11 66 (13.75%) Disaster Recovery
12 64 (13.33%) Data Pipeline
13 61 (12.71%) Data Analysis
14 60 (12.50%) Data Engineering
15 57 (11.88%) Performance Tuning
15 57 (11.88%) Test Automation
16 49 (10.21%) Data Integration
17 44 (9.17%) Change Management
17 44 (9.17%) Microservices
18 41 (8.54%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 309 (64.38%) SQL
2 153 (31.88%) C#
3 138 (28.75%) Python
4 94 (19.58%) T-SQL
5 60 (12.50%) PL/SQL
6 59 (12.29%) JavaScript
7 50 (10.42%) Java
8 42 (8.75%) PowerShell
9 30 (6.25%) TypeScript
10 13 (2.71%) VB
11 12 (2.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 11 (2.29%) VBA
13 9 (1.88%) Bicep
14 8 (1.67%) Bash
15 6 (1.25%) Scala
15 6 (1.25%) Shell Script
16 4 (0.83%) XPath
17 3 (0.63%) R
18 2 (0.42%) C
18 2 (0.42%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 64 (13.33%) Security Cleared
2 52 (10.83%) Degree
3 46 (9.58%) SC Cleared
4 19 (3.96%) Computer Science Degree
5 18 (3.75%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.50%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (1.46%) DV Cleared
8 7 (1.46%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.83%) CCA
9 4 (0.83%) Citrix Certification
9 4 (0.83%) DBS Check
9 4 (0.83%) MCITP
9 4 (0.83%) MCTS
10 2 (0.42%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.42%) CISSP
10 2 (0.42%) PhD
10 2 (0.42%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.42%) PMP
10 2 (0.42%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (14.38%) Data Quality
2 63 (13.13%) QA
3 10 (2.08%) SLA
4 9 (1.88%) GDPR
5 7 (1.46%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.83%) Basel III
7 3 (0.63%) IFRS
7 3 (0.63%) IFRS 9
7 3 (0.63%) WCAG
8 2 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
8 2 (0.42%) EMIR
8 2 (0.42%) GAAP
8 2 (0.42%) Government Security Classifications
8 2 (0.42%) IFRS 17
8 2 (0.42%) MiFID
8 2 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 2 (0.42%) SOC 2
System Software
1 55 (11.46%) Docker
2 29 (6.04%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 6 (1.25%) Virtual Machines
4 6 (1.25%) VMware Infrastructure
5 4 (0.83%) Hyper-V
5 4 (0.83%) XenApp
5 4 (0.83%) XenDesktop
6 3 (0.63%) GridGain
6 3 (0.63%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.21%) NFS
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.21%) RACF
Systems Management
1 69 (14.38%) Kubernetes
2 39 (8.13%) Terraform
3 11 (2.29%) SCCM
4 7 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
5 6 (1.25%) Ansible
6 4 (0.83%) SCVMM
7 3 (0.63%) Control-M
7 3 (0.63%) Grafana
7 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Clustering
7 3 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
8 2 (0.42%) ITRS Geneos
8 2 (0.42%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.42%) Prometheus
8 2 (0.42%) TIBCO Hawk
9 1 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
9 1 (0.21%) Packer
9 1 (0.21%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 154 (32.08%) Oracle
2 116 (24.17%) Microsoft
3 53 (11.04%) Databricks
4 42 (8.75%) Citrix
5 29 (6.04%) Informatica
6 18 (3.75%) VMware
7 16 (3.33%) SAP
8 11 (2.29%) Dynatrace
8 11 (2.29%) Sybase
9 10 (2.08%) IBM
9 10 (2.08%) OpenAI
9 10 (2.08%) ServiceNow
9 10 (2.08%) UiPath
10 8 (1.67%) Automation Anywhere
10 8 (1.67%) OutSystems
11 7 (1.46%) AppDynamics
11 7 (1.46%) Tenable
12 6 (1.25%) Alteryx
12 6 (1.25%) Google
13 4 (0.83%) Pega