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 27 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 81 46
Rank change year-on-year -22 -35 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 460 420 794
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.75% 3.32% 4.39%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.49% 14.95% 21.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 321 304 563
10th Percentile £363 £375 £364
25th Percentile £413 £435 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £601 £675 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
England median daily rate £490 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -4.44% -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 £28.68 £62.12 £40.25
% change year-on-year -53.83% +54.34% +5.92%

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 3,174 2,809 3,700
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.98% 22.23% 20.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,164 2,007 2,740
10th Percentile £363 £375 £380
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £555 £550
Median % change year-on-year -5.41% +0.91% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £750 £834 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 31 37
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £29.88 £28.60 £25.79
Median hourly rate £44.50 £42.50 £46.06
Median % change year-on-year +4.71% -7.72% +5.56%
75th Percentile £63.75 £59.75 £54.13
90th Percentile £89.00 £77.50 £65.52
England median hourly rate £49.36 £33.81 £40.00
% change year-on-year +46.01% -15.49% -29.08%

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 27 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 27 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 51 £560 -4.27% 41
South London -10 7 £530 -26.90% 1
West London -14 3 £463 -7.50% 6
East London -11 1 £630 +57.50% 3
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 23 (5.00%) SharePoint
2 19 (4.13%) IIS
3 13 (2.83%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 11 (2.39%) WebSphere
5 9 (1.96%) Confluence
6 8 (1.74%) Appian
7 7 (1.52%) Apache
7 7 (1.52%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.30%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (1.30%) Apache Spark
9 4 (0.87%) Camunda
10 2 (0.43%) 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 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.61%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.30%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.43%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.52%) BusinessWorks
1 7 (1.52%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.30%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.65%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (0.65%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.65%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.43%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.43%) Endur
4 2 (0.43%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.43%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.43%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.43%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 1 (0.22%) Findur
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.22%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
5 1 (0.22%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 224 (48.70%) Azure
2 95 (20.65%) AWS
3 85 (18.48%) Power Platform
4 78 (16.96%) Azure DevOps
5 59 (12.83%) Azure Data Factory
6 45 (9.78%) GitHub
7 36 (7.83%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 28 (6.09%) GCP
9 23 (5.00%) Microsoft 365
10 22 (4.78%) SaaS
11 19 (4.13%) Amazon S3
11 19 (4.13%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (3.70%) Amazon EC2
13 16 (3.48%) IaaS
13 16 (3.48%) Power Automate
14 14 (3.04%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (3.04%) Dynamics 365
14 14 (3.04%) Serverless
14 14 (3.04%) Snowflake
15 13 (2.83%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.83%) DNS
2 12 (2.61%) Firewall
3 11 (2.39%) Internet
4 8 (1.74%) DHCP
4 8 (1.74%) VPN
5 7 (1.52%) SAN
6 6 (1.30%) NetScaler
6 6 (1.30%) VLAN
6 6 (1.30%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.87%) FTP
7 4 (0.87%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.43%) HTTP
8 2 (0.43%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.43%) VSAN
9 1 (0.22%) DMZ
9 1 (0.22%) Ethernet VPN
9 1 (0.22%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.22%) Multicast
9 1 (0.22%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.22%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (15.43%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 65 (14.13%) Power BI
3 61 (13.26%) PostgreSQL
4 56 (12.17%) Data Warehouse
5 52 (11.30%) Relational Database
6 40 (8.70%) Oracle Database
7 37 (8.04%) Data Lake
8 35 (7.61%) Azure SQL Database
9 26 (5.65%) MongoDB
9 26 (5.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 24 (5.22%) NoSQL
11 20 (4.35%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 16 (3.48%) Delta Lake
13 15 (3.26%) Metadata
14 14 (3.04%) Redis
15 12 (2.61%) BigQuery
15 12 (2.61%) MySQL
16 11 (2.39%) Amazon RDS
17 10 (2.17%) Big Data
17 10 (2.17%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 40 (8.70%) Git
2 29 (6.30%) JIRA
3 20 (4.35%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.91%) Visual Studio
5 13 (2.83%) TeamCity
6 9 (1.96%) ERwin
6 9 (1.96%) Octopus Deploy
7 8 (1.74%) MLflow
8 7 (1.52%) Chocolatey
8 7 (1.52%) GitLab
8 7 (1.52%) JUnit
8 7 (1.52%) Maven
8 7 (1.52%) SpecFlow
8 7 (1.52%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.30%) Mockito
10 5 (1.09%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.09%) MSTest
11 4 (0.87%) Sonatype Nexus
11 4 (0.87%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
12 3 (0.65%) tSQLt
General
1 162 (35.22%) Finance
2 127 (27.61%) Social Skills
3 93 (20.22%) Banking
4 64 (13.91%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.65%) Public Sector
6 22 (4.78%) Investment Banking
7 21 (4.57%) Front Office
8 15 (3.26%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (3.04%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 13 (2.83%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.96%) Retail
12 6 (1.30%) Local Government
12 6 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.87%) General Ledger
13 4 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.65%) Legal
15 2 (0.43%) Back Office
15 2 (0.43%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.43%) Law
15 2 (0.43%) Military
Job Titles
1 169 (36.74%) Developer
2 78 (16.96%) Senior
3 73 (15.87%) Data Engineer
4 71 (15.43%) C# Developer
5 42 (9.13%) .NET Developer
6 34 (7.39%) Architect
7 31 (6.74%) DBA
8 26 (5.65%) Senior Developer
9 25 (5.43%) Senior Data Engineer
9 25 (5.43%) SQL DBA
10 21 (4.57%) Azure Engineer
11 20 (4.35%) Lead
12 19 (4.13%) C# .NET Developer
13 18 (3.91%) Analyst
14 16 (3.48%) Full-Stack Developer
15 15 (3.26%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (3.04%) Java Developer
16 14 (3.04%) Software Engineer
17 13 (2.83%) SQL Developer
18 11 (2.39%) Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 135 (29.35%) .NET
2 66 (14.35%) .NET Framework
3 50 (10.87%) REST
4 38 (8.26%) React
5 37 (8.04%) AngularJS
5 37 (8.04%) RESTful
6 34 (7.39%) HTML
7 29 (6.30%) .NET Core
8 28 (6.09%) XML
9 26 (5.65%) CSS
10 25 (5.43%) Kafka
11 24 (5.22%) Web Services
12 21 (4.57%) ASP.NET
13 19 (4.13%) OAuth
13 19 (4.13%) WPF
14 18 (3.91%) WinForms
15 16 (3.48%) Spring
16 15 (3.26%) Spring Boot
17 14 (3.04%) SOAP
18 12 (2.61%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.26%) Legacy Systems
2 26 (5.65%) Cloud Native
3 17 (3.70%) Replication
4 15 (3.26%) Data Structures
4 15 (3.26%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (2.83%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.61%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (2.17%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.96%) Credit Risk
8 9 (1.96%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.96%) Derivative
8 9 (1.96%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.96%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 9 (1.96%) Reinsurance
9 8 (1.74%) Low-Code
9 8 (1.74%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.52%) Cyber Threat
10 7 (1.52%) Market Risk
11 6 (1.30%) Clustering
11 6 (1.30%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 86 (18.70%) Windows
2 38 (8.26%) Linux
3 34 (7.39%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.74%) Unix
5 7 (1.52%) Windows Server 2016
6 5 (1.09%) Windows 10
6 5 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.43%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.43%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (28.26%) DevOps
2 127 (27.61%) CI/CD
3 107 (23.26%) ETL
4 98 (21.30%) Agile
5 94 (20.43%) Business Intelligence
6 93 (20.22%) Problem-Solving
7 90 (19.57%) Data Modelling
8 74 (16.09%) Migration
9 68 (14.78%) Analytics
10 62 (13.48%) Data Engineering
11 59 (12.83%) Data Analysis
12 56 (12.17%) Data Pipeline
13 55 (11.96%) Disaster Recovery
14 54 (11.74%) AI
14 54 (11.74%) Performance Tuning
15 47 (10.22%) Test Automation
16 40 (8.70%) Microservices
17 39 (8.48%) Change Management
17 39 (8.48%) Containerisation
18 38 (8.26%) Data Integration
Programming Languages
1 295 (64.13%) SQL
2 143 (31.09%) C#
3 116 (25.22%) Python
4 79 (17.17%) T-SQL
5 53 (11.52%) PL/SQL
6 45 (9.78%) Java
7 40 (8.70%) JavaScript
8 30 (6.52%) PowerShell
9 28 (6.09%) TypeScript
10 15 (3.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 13 (2.83%) VB
12 12 (2.61%) VBA
13 9 (1.96%) Bash
13 9 (1.96%) Bicep
14 7 (1.52%) XPath
15 5 (1.09%) Scala
15 5 (1.09%) Shell Script
16 4 (0.87%) R
17 2 (0.43%) C
18 1 (0.22%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 63 (13.70%) Security Cleared
2 47 (10.22%) Degree
2 47 (10.22%) SC Cleared
3 21 (4.57%) Computer Science Degree
4 16 (3.48%) Microsoft Certification
5 12 (2.61%) Azure Certification
6 8 (1.74%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.74%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.09%) CCA
7 5 (1.09%) Citrix Certification
7 5 (1.09%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.87%) MCITP
8 4 (0.87%) MCTS
9 3 (0.65%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.43%) CCNP
10 2 (0.43%) CISSP
10 2 (0.43%) ISTQB
10 2 (0.43%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.43%) PMP
10 2 (0.43%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (14.13%) Data Quality
2 60 (13.04%) QA
3 10 (2.17%) SLA
4 9 (1.96%) GDPR
5 4 (0.87%) IFRS
6 3 (0.65%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.65%) IFRS 17
6 3 (0.65%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.43%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.43%) Basel III
7 2 (0.43%) EMIR
7 2 (0.43%) GAAP
7 2 (0.43%) MiFID
7 2 (0.43%) 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 60 (13.04%) Docker
2 24 (5.22%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.52%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.09%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.09%) XenApp
4 5 (1.09%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.87%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.65%) GridGain
7 2 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.43%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.43%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.22%) NFS
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 63 (13.70%) Kubernetes
2 37 (8.04%) Terraform
3 12 (2.61%) Ansible
3 12 (2.61%) SCCM
4 9 (1.96%) Grafana
5 7 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (1.52%) TIBCO Hawk
6 6 (1.30%) Puppet
7 5 (1.09%) SCVMM
8 3 (0.65%) Control-M
8 3 (0.65%) Microsoft Clustering
8 3 (0.65%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.43%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 1 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.22%) FortiGate
10 1 (0.22%) Packer
10 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
10 1 (0.22%) VxRail
Vendors
1 156 (33.91%) Oracle
2 123 (26.74%) Microsoft
3 47 (10.22%) Databricks
4 41 (8.91%) Citrix
5 28 (6.09%) Informatica
6 17 (3.70%) VMware
7 14 (3.04%) IBM
8 13 (2.83%) SAP
9 12 (2.61%) UiPath
10 10 (2.17%) Sybase
11 9 (1.96%) Dynatrace
11 9 (1.96%) OpenAI
11 9 (1.96%) ServiceNow
12 8 (1.74%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (1.74%) Google
12 8 (1.74%) TIBCO
13 7 (1.52%) AppDynamics
13 7 (1.52%) BEA
13 7 (1.52%) Tenable
14 6 (1.30%) PagerDuty