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 24 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 69 49
Rank change year-on-year -31 -20 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 434 459 743
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.77% 3.46% 4.06%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.25% 15.83% 20.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 300 325 544
10th Percentile £368 £363 £375
25th Percentile £407 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -4.35% -2.54%
75th Percentile £605 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £733 £750
England median daily rate £480 £515 £538
% change year-on-year -6.80% -4.19% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £66.00 £60.25 -
Median hourly rate £68.00 £60.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +12.40% - -
75th Percentile £70.00 £60.75 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £26.72 £63.75 £43.22
% change year-on-year -58.08% +47.51% +3.51%

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 3,045 2,899 3,591
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.43% 21.85% 19.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,091 2,012 2,661
10th Percentile £361 £363 £385
25th Percentile £420 £454 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £551 £560
Median % change year-on-year -4.72% -1.61% -4.68%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £738 £825 £788
England median daily rate £500 £538 £534
% change year-on-year -6.98% +0.66% -2.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 29 31 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £29.25 £28.84 £25.90
Median hourly rate £54.00 £41.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +30.12% -5.14% +0.28%
75th Percentile £75.00 £59.75 £54.03
90th Percentile £91.00 £78.75 £65.27
England median hourly rate £54.50 £41.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +32.93% -3.53% -22.73%

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 24 February 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 24 February 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 44 £525 -8.70% 30
South London -10 7 £530 -26.90% 3
West London -19 3 £463 - 8
East London -2 2 £585 +46.25% 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 18 (4.15%) IIS
2 17 (3.92%) SharePoint
3 15 (3.46%) Confluence
4 14 (3.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 11 (2.53%) WebSphere
6 8 (1.84%) Appian
6 8 (1.84%) Microsoft Exchange
7 7 (1.61%) Apache
7 7 (1.61%) Apache Spark
7 7 (1.61%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.46%) CMS
10 1 (0.23%) GeoServer
10 1 (0.23%) JBoss
10 1 (0.23%) Mule
10 1 (0.23%) OpenEdge
10 1 (0.23%) Oracle Application Server
10 1 (0.23%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.23%) SAS
10 1 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 29 (6.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.76%) MS Visio
3 7 (1.61%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) Trello
Business Applications
1 7 (1.61%) BusinessWorks
1 7 (1.61%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.69%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 3 (0.69%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 3 (0.69%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.46%) Loan IQ
3 2 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.46%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.46%) Veritas eDiscovery
4 1 (0.23%) Endur
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle FAH
4 1 (0.23%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.23%) RMDS
4 1 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.23%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.23%) SAP R/3
4 1 (0.23%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 205 (47.24%) Azure
2 97 (22.35%) AWS
3 87 (20.05%) Power Platform
4 75 (17.28%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (11.29%) Azure Data Factory
6 48 (11.06%) GitHub
7 34 (7.83%) GCP
8 29 (6.68%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 21 (4.84%) SaaS
10 18 (4.15%) Amazon S3
10 18 (4.15%) GitHub Actions
11 17 (3.92%) Microsoft 365
12 16 (3.69%) Snowflake
13 14 (3.23%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (3.23%) AWS CloudFormation
13 14 (3.23%) Power Automate
14 13 (3.00%) IaaS
15 11 (2.53%) Dynamics 365
16 10 (2.30%) Azure Key Vault
16 10 (2.30%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.53%) Internet
2 10 (2.30%) DNS
3 9 (2.07%) Firewall
4 6 (1.38%) DHCP
4 6 (1.38%) NetScaler
5 5 (1.15%) VPN
6 4 (0.92%) FTP
6 4 (0.92%) SAN
6 4 (0.92%) VLAN
6 4 (0.92%) Wi-Fi
7 3 (0.69%) HTTP
7 3 (0.69%) TCP/IP
8 2 (0.46%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.46%) VSAN
9 1 (0.23%) BGP
9 1 (0.23%) DMZ
9 1 (0.23%) Ethernet VPN
9 1 (0.23%) Network Security
9 1 (0.23%) VXLAN
9 1 (0.23%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (17.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 70 (16.13%) Power BI
3 65 (14.98%) PostgreSQL
4 53 (12.21%) Data Warehouse
5 51 (11.75%) Relational Database
6 36 (8.29%) Data Lake
6 36 (8.29%) Oracle Database
7 31 (7.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 26 (5.99%) Azure SQL Database
8 26 (5.99%) MongoDB
9 24 (5.53%) NoSQL
10 20 (4.61%) Delta Lake
11 18 (4.15%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 16 (3.69%) Big Data
13 13 (3.00%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (3.00%) RDBMS
14 12 (2.76%) BigQuery
14 12 (2.76%) Redis
15 11 (2.53%) Metadata
15 11 (2.53%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 38 (8.76%) Git
2 36 (8.29%) JIRA
3 21 (4.84%) Jenkins
4 18 (4.15%) Visual Studio
5 10 (2.30%) SpecFlow
6 9 (2.07%) GitLab
7 8 (1.84%) ERwin
7 8 (1.84%) JUnit
7 8 (1.84%) Maven
7 8 (1.84%) MLflow
8 7 (1.61%) Octopus Deploy
8 7 (1.61%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.38%) Mockito
9 6 (1.38%) TeamCity
10 5 (1.15%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 4 (0.92%) Chocolatey
11 4 (0.92%) Cucumber
12 3 (0.69%) Gradle
12 3 (0.69%) Sonatype Nexus
13 2 (0.46%) Bitbucket
General
1 150 (34.56%) Finance
2 122 (28.11%) Social Skills
3 82 (18.89%) Banking
4 53 (12.21%) Analytical Skills
5 22 (5.07%) Public Sector
6 21 (4.84%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.92%) Documentation Skills
8 12 (2.76%) Financial Institution
8 12 (2.76%) Front Office
8 12 (2.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 9 (2.07%) Retail
10 6 (1.38%) Local Government
11 4 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.92%) Telecoms
12 3 (0.69%) General Ledger
12 3 (0.69%) Influencing Skills
12 3 (0.69%) Law
12 3 (0.69%) Legal
12 3 (0.69%) Organisational Skills
13 2 (0.46%) Military
Job Titles
1 171 (39.40%) Developer
2 82 (18.89%) Data Engineer
3 78 (17.97%) Senior
4 65 (14.98%) C# Developer
5 40 (9.22%) .NET Developer
6 29 (6.68%) Architect
6 29 (6.68%) Senior Developer
7 27 (6.22%) Senior Data Engineer
8 22 (5.07%) Lead
9 21 (4.84%) Analyst
10 20 (4.61%) C# .NET Developer
11 17 (3.92%) Azure Engineer
11 17 (3.92%) DBA
11 17 (3.92%) Full-Stack Developer
12 16 (3.69%) SQL DBA
13 15 (3.46%) SQL Developer
14 14 (3.23%) Angular Developer
15 13 (3.00%) Java Developer
15 13 (3.00%) Solutions Architect
16 11 (2.53%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (29.49%) .NET
2 67 (15.44%) .NET Framework
3 44 (10.14%) REST
4 33 (7.60%) RESTful
5 32 (7.37%) AngularJS
6 31 (7.14%) HTML
6 31 (7.14%) React
7 29 (6.68%) .NET Core
7 29 (6.68%) Kafka
7 29 (6.68%) XML
8 25 (5.76%) Web Services
9 20 (4.61%) CSS
9 20 (4.61%) WPF
10 18 (4.15%) OAuth
10 18 (4.15%) WinForms
11 17 (3.92%) Spring
12 16 (3.69%) ASP.NET
12 16 (3.69%) Entity Framework
12 16 (3.69%) SOAP
13 15 (3.46%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.76%) Legacy Systems
2 23 (5.30%) Cloud Native
3 16 (3.69%) Enterprise Software
4 13 (3.00%) Replication
5 12 (2.76%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 12 (2.76%) Onboarding
5 12 (2.76%) Reinsurance
6 11 (2.53%) Credit Risk
6 11 (2.53%) Data Structures
6 11 (2.53%) Derivative
6 11 (2.53%) Management Information System
7 10 (2.30%) Distributed Systems
7 10 (2.30%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (2.07%) Low-Code
9 7 (1.61%) Data Protection Act
10 6 (1.38%) Fixed Income
10 6 (1.38%) Market Risk
10 6 (1.38%) Self-Motivation
11 5 (1.15%) Client/Server
12 4 (0.92%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 73 (16.82%) Windows
2 39 (8.99%) Linux
3 25 (5.76%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.84%) Unix
5 7 (1.61%) Windows Server 2016
6 6 (1.38%) Windows 10
7 5 (1.15%) Windows Server 2019
8 2 (0.46%) Windows Server 2012
9 1 (0.23%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 119 (27.42%) CI/CD
2 109 (25.12%) DevOps
3 102 (23.50%) Agile
4 96 (22.12%) ETL
5 94 (21.66%) Business Intelligence
6 86 (19.82%) Data Modelling
7 85 (19.59%) Problem-Solving
8 75 (17.28%) Migration
9 61 (14.06%) Analytics
10 58 (13.36%) Data Engineering
11 51 (11.75%) Data Pipeline
12 49 (11.29%) Data Analysis
12 49 (11.29%) Microservices
13 44 (10.14%) Test Automation
14 42 (9.68%) Containerisation
15 40 (9.22%) Data Migration
16 39 (8.99%) AI
17 36 (8.29%) Change Management
18 35 (8.06%) Disaster Recovery
18 35 (8.06%) Full-Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 264 (60.83%) SQL
2 133 (30.65%) C#
3 118 (27.19%) Python
4 69 (15.90%) T-SQL
5 48 (11.06%) PL/SQL
6 45 (10.37%) Java
7 40 (9.22%) JavaScript
8 28 (6.45%) PowerShell
9 24 (5.53%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.23%) Bash
10 14 (3.23%) VB
10 14 (3.23%) VBA
11 13 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 9 (2.07%) Bicep
13 7 (1.61%) XPath
14 4 (0.92%) Scala
15 3 (0.69%) R
15 3 (0.69%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.46%) C++
17 1 (0.23%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 49 (11.29%) Security Cleared
2 46 (10.60%) Degree
3 35 (8.06%) SC Cleared
4 17 (3.92%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.30%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.84%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.15%) CCA
8 5 (1.15%) Citrix Certification
9 3 (0.69%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.69%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.46%) CCNP
10 2 (0.46%) CISSP
10 2 (0.46%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.46%) PMP
11 1 (0.23%) CCNA
11 1 (0.23%) ISEB
11 1 (0.23%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (15.21%) Data Quality
2 58 (13.36%) QA
3 8 (1.84%) GDPR
4 7 (1.61%) SLA
5 3 (0.69%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.69%) IFRS
5 3 (0.69%) IFRS 17
5 3 (0.69%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.46%) Basel III
6 2 (0.46%) EMIR
6 2 (0.46%) GAAP
6 2 (0.46%) IFRS 9
6 2 (0.46%) MiFID
6 2 (0.46%) Solvency II
7 1 (0.23%) NCSC
7 1 (0.23%) NIST
7 1 (0.23%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 61 (14.06%) Docker
2 15 (3.46%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.15%) Hyper-V
3 5 (1.15%) Virtual Desktop
3 5 (1.15%) XenApp
3 5 (1.15%) XenDesktop
4 4 (0.92%) zsh
5 2 (0.46%) GridGain
5 2 (0.46%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.46%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.46%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.23%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.23%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 59 (13.59%) Kubernetes
2 32 (7.37%) Terraform
3 12 (2.76%) Ansible
4 11 (2.53%) Grafana
5 10 (2.30%) SCCM
6 8 (1.84%) Puppet
7 7 (1.61%) TIBCO Hawk
8 5 (1.15%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.15%) SCVMM
9 4 (0.92%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.69%) Control-M
10 3 (0.69%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (0.69%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.23%) Ambari
11 1 (0.23%) BladeLogic
11 1 (0.23%) FortiGate
11 1 (0.23%) Oracle Identity Management
11 1 (0.23%) VxRail
11 1 (0.23%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 148 (34.10%) Oracle
2 113 (26.04%) Microsoft
3 50 (11.52%) Databricks
4 37 (8.53%) Citrix
5 22 (5.07%) Informatica
6 15 (3.46%) SAP
6 15 (3.46%) VMware
7 13 (3.00%) IBM
7 13 (3.00%) UiPath
8 10 (2.30%) Google
9 9 (2.07%) ServiceNow
10 8 (1.84%) Automation Anywhere
10 8 (1.84%) OpenAI
11 7 (1.61%) BEA
11 7 (1.61%) Dynatrace
11 7 (1.61%) Sybase
11 7 (1.61%) TIBCO
12 6 (1.38%) PagerDuty
13 5 (1.15%) AppDynamics
13 5 (1.15%) Tenable