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

6 months to
30 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 77 41
Rank change year-on-year -25 -36 +4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 479 411 837
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.71% 3.27% 4.69%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.60% 14.68% 21.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 344 295 574
10th Percentile £363 £385 £363
25th Percentile £413 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £543
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +5.99% -5.65%
75th Percentile £630 £688 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
England median daily rate £475 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -9.52% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 2 0
10th Percentile £23.93 £29.71 -
25th Percentile £30.94 £34.80 -
Median hourly rate £43.75 £43.41 -
Median % change year-on-year +0.78% - -
75th Percentile £57.44 £52.14 -
90th Percentile £64.98 £57.31 -
England median hourly rate £48.72 £62.12 £40.13
% change year-on-year -21.57% +54.82% -7.76%

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 3,280 2,799 3,831
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.54% 22.30% 21.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,248 1,978 2,822
10th Percentile £361 £375 £377
25th Percentile £425 £450 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £563
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -2.22% -2.17%
75th Percentile £630 £713 £700
90th Percentile £749 £838 £825
England median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 33 36
10th Percentile £19.23 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £29.14 £28.60 £25.59
Median hourly rate £50.00 £40.50 £49.25
Median % change year-on-year +23.46% -17.77% -6.19%
75th Percentile £62.63 £58.75 £54.34
90th Percentile £81.00 £75.50 £64.14
England median hourly rate £48.13 £32.43 £40.00
% change year-on-year +48.41% -18.93% -31.09%

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 30 April 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL Server in London over the 6 months to 30 April 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in London

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 30 April 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 -36 56 £543 -7.26% 34
South London -10 7 £530 -26.90% 1
West London -26 3 £463 -29.06% 9
East London -8 2 £630 +57.50% 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 34 (7.10%) SharePoint
2 24 (5.01%) IIS
3 13 (2.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 12 (2.51%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 11 (2.30%) WebSphere
6 9 (1.88%) Apache
6 9 (1.88%) Appian
6 9 (1.88%) Confluence
7 8 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
7 8 (1.67%) Apache Spark
8 7 (1.46%) WebLogic
9 6 (1.25%) Camunda
10 1 (0.21%) Anypoint
10 1 (0.21%) CMS
10 1 (0.21%) ColdFusion
10 1 (0.21%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.21%) JBoss
10 1 (0.21%) OpenEdge
10 1 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.21%) Tomcat
Applications
1 28 (5.85%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.51%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.25%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.46%) BusinessWorks
2 6 (1.25%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.25%) SAP S/4HANA
3 5 (1.04%) Dynamics AX
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%) Loan IQ
5 2 (0.42%) Oracle Payables
5 2 (0.42%) Oracle Receivables
5 2 (0.42%) Veritas eDiscovery
6 1 (0.21%) Endur
6 1 (0.21%) Findur
6 1 (0.21%) Oracle FAH
6 1 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
6 1 (0.21%) SAP R/3
6 1 (0.21%) SDL Web 8
6 1 (0.21%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 231 (48.23%) Azure
2 94 (19.62%) AWS
3 91 (19.00%) Power Platform
4 82 (17.12%) Azure DevOps
5 65 (13.57%) Azure Data Factory
6 47 (9.81%) GitHub
7 43 (8.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 26 (5.43%) GCP
8 26 (5.43%) Microsoft 365
9 25 (5.22%) Power Automate
10 23 (4.80%) Amazon S3
11 21 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
12 18 (3.76%) SaaS
12 18 (3.76%) Serverless
13 16 (3.34%) Amazon EC2
13 16 (3.34%) Dynamics 365
13 16 (3.34%) IaaS
14 14 (2.92%) AWS CloudFormation
15 13 (2.71%) PaaS
15 13 (2.71%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.71%) Internet
2 12 (2.51%) DNS
3 11 (2.30%) Firewall
4 8 (1.67%) VPN
5 7 (1.46%) DHCP
5 7 (1.46%) SAN
6 6 (1.25%) NetScaler
6 6 (1.25%) VLAN
6 6 (1.25%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.84%) FTP
8 3 (0.63%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.21%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.21%) MQTT
9 1 (0.21%) Multicast
9 1 (0.21%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
9 1 (0.21%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (14.41%) Power BI
2 65 (13.57%) PostgreSQL
2 65 (13.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 61 (12.73%) Data Warehouse
4 53 (11.06%) Relational Database
5 44 (9.19%) Oracle Database
6 42 (8.77%) Data Lake
7 35 (7.31%) Azure SQL Database
8 29 (6.05%) MongoDB
9 24 (5.01%) NoSQL
10 23 (4.80%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 19 (3.97%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 17 (3.55%) Delta Lake
13 15 (3.13%) Metadata
14 14 (2.92%) Redis
15 13 (2.71%) BigQuery
16 11 (2.30%) DB2
17 10 (2.09%) Amazon RDS
17 10 (2.09%) MySQL
18 9 (1.88%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 43 (8.98%) Git
2 31 (6.47%) JIRA
3 17 (3.55%) TeamCity
3 17 (3.55%) Visual Studio
4 16 (3.34%) Jenkins
5 9 (1.88%) Octopus Deploy
6 8 (1.67%) ERwin
6 8 (1.67%) GitLab
6 8 (1.67%) MLflow
7 7 (1.46%) Chocolatey
7 7 (1.46%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (1.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 5 (1.04%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.04%) JUnit
9 5 (1.04%) Mockito
9 5 (1.04%) MSTest
10 4 (0.84%) NUnit
10 4 (0.84%) SpecFlow
11 3 (0.63%) Bitbucket
11 3 (0.63%) tSQLt
General
1 167 (34.86%) Finance
2 135 (28.18%) Social Skills
3 89 (18.58%) Banking
4 69 (14.41%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (5.22%) Front Office
5 25 (5.22%) Public Sector
6 23 (4.80%) Investment Banking
7 14 (2.92%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (2.71%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 12 (2.51%) Financial Institution
10 8 (1.67%) Retail
11 7 (1.46%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.84%) Local Government
12 4 (0.84%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.63%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.63%) Legal
14 2 (0.42%) Back Office
14 2 (0.42%) Law
14 2 (0.42%) Military
14 2 (0.42%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 169 (35.28%) Developer
2 86 (17.95%) Senior
3 84 (17.54%) Data Engineer
4 74 (15.45%) C# Developer
5 41 (8.56%) .NET Developer
6 36 (7.52%) Architect
7 31 (6.47%) DBA
8 30 (6.26%) Senior Data Engineer
9 25 (5.22%) Senior Developer
10 24 (5.01%) SQL DBA
11 21 (4.38%) Azure Engineer
12 20 (4.18%) C# .NET Developer
12 20 (4.18%) Lead
13 17 (3.55%) Analyst
14 16 (3.34%) Full-Stack Developer
14 16 (3.34%) Software Engineer
15 15 (3.13%) Solutions Architect
16 14 (2.92%) Consultant
16 14 (2.92%) Integration Engineer
16 14 (2.92%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (29.23%) .NET
2 68 (14.20%) .NET Framework
3 53 (11.06%) REST
4 43 (8.98%) React
5 38 (7.93%) HTML
6 37 (7.72%) RESTful
7 35 (7.31%) AngularJS
7 35 (7.31%) CSS
8 29 (6.05%) .NET Core
8 29 (6.05%) Kafka
9 27 (5.64%) XML
10 24 (5.01%) Web Services
11 23 (4.80%) OAuth
12 22 (4.59%) ASP.NET
13 20 (4.18%) WinForms
13 20 (4.18%) WPF
14 18 (3.76%) SOAP
15 13 (2.71%) Spring
15 13 (2.71%) Spring Boot
16 12 (2.51%) ASP.NET Web API
Miscellaneous
1 39 (8.14%) Legacy Systems
2 30 (6.26%) Cloud Native
3 16 (3.34%) Data Structures
3 16 (3.34%) Replication
3 16 (3.34%) Self-Motivation
4 12 (2.51%) Enterprise Software
4 12 (2.51%) Low-Code
5 11 (2.30%) Onboarding
6 10 (2.09%) Derivative
7 9 (1.88%) Distributed Systems
7 9 (1.88%) Greenfield Project
7 9 (1.88%) Reinsurance
8 7 (1.46%) Clustering
8 7 (1.46%) Credit Risk
8 7 (1.46%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.46%) Fixed Income
8 7 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 7 (1.46%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.46%) Market Risk
9 6 (1.25%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 94 (19.62%) Windows
2 35 (7.31%) Windows Server
3 34 (7.10%) Linux
4 9 (1.88%) Unix
5 7 (1.46%) Windows Server 2016
6 5 (1.04%) Windows 10
6 5 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 137 (28.60%) DevOps
2 133 (27.77%) CI/CD
3 106 (22.13%) Agile
4 104 (21.71%) ETL
5 100 (20.88%) Business Intelligence
6 94 (19.62%) Data Modelling
7 92 (19.21%) Problem-Solving
8 74 (15.45%) Analytics
9 67 (13.99%) Migration
10 65 (13.57%) Disaster Recovery
11 62 (12.94%) AI
12 61 (12.73%) Data Analysis
12 61 (12.73%) Data Engineering
13 60 (12.53%) Data Pipeline
14 57 (11.90%) Performance Tuning
15 55 (11.48%) Test Automation
16 45 (9.39%) Change Management
17 44 (9.19%) Data Integration
18 39 (8.14%) Continuous Improvement
18 39 (8.14%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 312 (65.14%) SQL
2 157 (32.78%) C#
3 126 (26.30%) Python
4 91 (19.00%) T-SQL
5 63 (13.15%) PL/SQL
6 51 (10.65%) JavaScript
7 43 (8.98%) Java
8 35 (7.31%) PowerShell
9 29 (6.05%) TypeScript
10 15 (3.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 15 (3.13%) VB
11 14 (2.92%) VBA
12 9 (1.88%) Bash
12 9 (1.88%) Bicep
13 8 (1.67%) XPath
14 5 (1.04%) Scala
14 5 (1.04%) Shell Script
15 4 (0.84%) R
16 2 (0.42%) C
17 1 (0.21%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 63 (13.15%) Security Cleared
2 49 (10.23%) SC Cleared
3 47 (9.81%) Degree
4 21 (4.38%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.55%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.51%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.67%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (1.25%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.04%) CCA
9 5 (1.04%) Citrix Certification
9 5 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.84%) MCITP
10 4 (0.84%) MCTS
11 2 (0.42%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.42%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.42%) CISSP
11 2 (0.42%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.42%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.42%) PMP
11 2 (0.42%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (13.57%) Data Quality
1 65 (13.57%) QA
2 10 (2.09%) GDPR
2 10 (2.09%) SLA
3 4 (0.84%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.63%) IFRS
4 3 (0.63%) IFRS 9
5 2 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
5 2 (0.42%) Basel III
5 2 (0.42%) EMIR
5 2 (0.42%) GAAP
5 2 (0.42%) IFRS 17
5 2 (0.42%) MiFID
5 2 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 2 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 58 (12.11%) Docker
2 21 (4.38%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.46%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.04%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.04%) XenApp
4 5 (1.04%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.63%) GridGain
7 1 (0.21%) NFS
7 1 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
7 1 (0.21%) RACF
7 1 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
7 1 (0.21%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 66 (13.78%) Kubernetes
2 41 (8.56%) Terraform
3 12 (2.51%) SCCM
4 10 (2.09%) Ansible
5 8 (1.67%) Grafana
6 7 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
6 7 (1.46%) TIBCO Hawk
7 6 (1.25%) Puppet
8 5 (1.04%) SCVMM
9 3 (0.63%) Control-M
9 3 (0.63%) Microsoft Clustering
9 3 (0.63%) Progress Chef
10 1 (0.21%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.21%) Packer
10 1 (0.21%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.21%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 160 (33.40%) Oracle
2 125 (26.10%) Microsoft
3 53 (11.06%) Databricks
4 45 (9.39%) Citrix
5 24 (5.01%) Informatica
6 17 (3.55%) VMware
7 15 (3.13%) SAP
8 14 (2.92%) IBM
9 11 (2.30%) UiPath
10 10 (2.09%) Dynatrace
10 10 (2.09%) ServiceNow
11 9 (1.88%) OpenAI
11 9 (1.88%) Sybase
12 8 (1.67%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (1.67%) TIBCO
13 7 (1.46%) AppDynamics
13 7 (1.46%) BEA
13 7 (1.46%) Google
13 7 (1.46%) Tenable
14 6 (1.25%) PagerDuty