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

6 months to
4 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 100 67 48
Rank change year-on-year -33 -19 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 458 456 754
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.85% 3.47% 4.15%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.73% 15.63% 21.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 316 324 545
10th Percentile £369 £363 £375
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £624 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
England median daily rate £486 £523 £527
% change year-on-year -6.94% -0.76% -4.27%
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 £40.25
% change year-on-year -58.08% +58.37% -7.61%

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 3,109 2,918 3,566
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.35% 22.18% 19.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,136 2,041 2,628
10th Percentile £361 £369 £385
25th Percentile £424 £455 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +2.73% -5.98%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £738 £825 £788
England median daily rate £500 £538 £525
% change year-on-year -6.98% +2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 30 40
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £28.25 £28.72 £26.13
Median hourly rate £50.00 £41.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +21.95% -8.89% +3.14%
75th Percentile £72.50 £58.00 £53.84
90th Percentile £88.50 £77.63 £64.78
England median hourly rate £50.00 £38.11 £42.50
% change year-on-year +31.20% -10.33% -24.95%

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 4 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 4 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 -37 46 £560 -4.27% 48
South London -10 7 £530 -26.90% 2
West London -20 3 £463 - 9
East London -6 2 £585 +46.25% 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 20 (4.37%) SharePoint
2 19 (4.15%) IIS
3 15 (3.28%) Confluence
4 14 (3.06%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 13 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
6 11 (2.40%) WebSphere
7 8 (1.75%) Appian
8 7 (1.53%) Apache
8 7 (1.53%) Apache Spark
8 7 (1.53%) WebLogic
9 6 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
10 2 (0.44%) 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 27 (5.90%) 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 3 (0.66%) Loan IQ
2 3 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 3 (0.66%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 3 (0.66%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.44%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.44%) Veritas eDiscovery
4 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.22%) Endur
4 1 (0.22%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
4 1 (0.22%) Orchestrade
4 1 (0.22%) RMDS
4 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
4 1 (0.22%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 216 (47.16%) Azure
2 103 (22.49%) AWS
3 86 (18.78%) Power Platform
4 76 (16.59%) Azure DevOps
5 52 (11.35%) Azure Data Factory
6 51 (11.14%) GitHub
7 35 (7.64%) GCP
8 30 (6.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 22 (4.80%) SaaS
10 21 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
11 20 (4.37%) Amazon S3
12 18 (3.93%) Amazon EC2
12 18 (3.93%) Microsoft 365
12 18 (3.93%) Snowflake
13 15 (3.28%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (3.28%) Power Automate
14 14 (3.06%) IaaS
15 13 (2.84%) Dynamics 365
16 11 (2.40%) PaaS
17 10 (2.18%) Amazon EKS
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
5 5 (1.09%) 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 75 (16.38%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 69 (15.07%) Power BI
3 68 (14.85%) PostgreSQL
4 55 (12.01%) Data Warehouse
5 54 (11.79%) Relational Database
6 40 (8.73%) Oracle Database
7 37 (8.08%) Data Lake
8 30 (6.55%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 29 (6.33%) MongoDB
10 28 (6.11%) Azure SQL Database
11 27 (5.90%) NoSQL
12 19 (4.15%) Delta Lake
13 17 (3.71%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 16 (3.49%) Big Data
15 13 (2.84%) Amazon RDS
15 13 (2.84%) Metadata
15 13 (2.84%) RDBMS
15 13 (2.84%) Redis
16 12 (2.62%) BigQuery
16 12 (2.62%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 40 (8.73%) Git
2 34 (7.42%) JIRA
3 23 (5.02%) Jenkins
4 17 (3.71%) Visual Studio
5 11 (2.40%) SpecFlow
6 10 (2.18%) GitLab
6 10 (2.18%) JUnit
7 9 (1.97%) ERwin
7 9 (1.97%) TeamCity
8 8 (1.75%) Maven
8 8 (1.75%) MLflow
8 8 (1.75%) Mockito
8 8 (1.75%) Octopus Deploy
9 7 (1.53%) Team Foundation Server
10 5 (1.09%) Chocolatey
10 5 (1.09%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 4 (0.87%) MSTest
12 3 (0.66%) Mocha
12 3 (0.66%) tSQLt
General
1 161 (35.15%) Finance
2 128 (27.95%) Social Skills
3 91 (19.87%) Banking
4 57 (12.45%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (5.46%) Public Sector
6 23 (5.02%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.71%) Documentation Skills
8 15 (3.28%) Front Office
9 13 (2.84%) Financial Institution
9 13 (2.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (1.97%) Retail
11 6 (1.31%) Local Government
12 4 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.87%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.66%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.66%) Law
14 2 (0.44%) Back Office
14 2 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.44%) Japanese Language
14 2 (0.44%) Legal
Job Titles
1 180 (39.30%) Developer
2 81 (17.69%) Data Engineer
3 80 (17.47%) Senior
4 75 (16.38%) C# Developer
5 46 (10.04%) .NET Developer
6 32 (6.99%) Architect
7 30 (6.55%) Senior Developer
8 27 (5.90%) Senior Data Engineer
9 24 (5.24%) C# .NET Developer
10 21 (4.59%) Azure Engineer
10 21 (4.59%) DBA
10 21 (4.59%) Lead
11 20 (4.37%) Analyst
12 19 (4.15%) SQL DBA
13 16 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
14 15 (3.28%) Java Developer
14 15 (3.28%) SQL Developer
15 13 (2.84%) Angular Developer
15 13 (2.84%) Solutions Architect
16 12 (2.62%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 136 (29.69%) .NET
2 71 (15.50%) .NET Framework
3 48 (10.48%) REST
4 36 (7.86%) RESTful
5 35 (7.64%) AngularJS
6 33 (7.21%) HTML
7 32 (6.99%) Kafka
8 31 (6.77%) React
9 29 (6.33%) .NET Core
9 29 (6.33%) XML
10 25 (5.46%) Web Services
11 22 (4.80%) CSS
12 20 (4.37%) WPF
13 19 (4.15%) Spring
14 18 (3.93%) ASP.NET
14 18 (3.93%) OAuth
14 18 (3.93%) WinForms
15 17 (3.71%) Spring Boot
16 16 (3.49%) Entity Framework
17 15 (3.28%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.30%) Legacy Systems
2 23 (5.02%) Cloud Native
3 18 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (3.06%) Onboarding
4 14 (3.06%) Replication
5 13 (2.84%) Data Structures
6 12 (2.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 11 (2.40%) Management Information System
7 11 (2.40%) Reinsurance
7 11 (2.40%) Self-Motivation
8 10 (2.18%) Credit Risk
8 10 (2.18%) Derivative
8 10 (2.18%) Distributed Systems
8 10 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (1.97%) Low-Code
10 7 (1.53%) Data Protection Act
11 6 (1.31%) Market Risk
12 5 (1.09%) Client/Server
12 5 (1.09%) Cyber Threat
13 4 (0.87%) Algorithms
Operating Systems
1 82 (17.90%) Windows
2 39 (8.52%) Linux
3 29 (6.33%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.53%) Unix
4 7 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
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
1 127 (27.73%) CI/CD
2 117 (25.55%) DevOps
3 108 (23.58%) Agile
4 105 (22.93%) ETL
5 97 (21.18%) Business Intelligence
6 90 (19.65%) Problem-Solving
7 89 (19.43%) Data Modelling
8 78 (17.03%) Migration
9 62 (13.54%) Analytics
10 59 (12.88%) Data Engineering
11 54 (11.79%) Data Analysis
12 53 (11.57%) Data Pipeline
13 51 (11.14%) Microservices
14 47 (10.26%) Disaster Recovery
15 46 (10.04%) Performance Tuning
15 46 (10.04%) Test Automation
16 45 (9.83%) Containerisation
17 43 (9.39%) AI
18 41 (8.95%) Data Migration
19 38 (8.30%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 286 (62.45%) SQL
2 142 (31.00%) C#
3 119 (25.98%) Python
4 76 (16.59%) T-SQL
5 54 (11.79%) PL/SQL
6 47 (10.26%) Java
7 39 (8.52%) JavaScript
8 32 (6.99%) PowerShell
9 26 (5.68%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 14 (3.06%) VB
11 13 (2.84%) Bash
11 13 (2.84%) VBA
12 9 (1.97%) Bicep
13 7 (1.53%) XPath
14 5 (1.09%) Scala
15 3 (0.66%) R
15 3 (0.66%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.44%) C
16 2 (0.44%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 57 (12.45%) Security Cleared
2 45 (9.83%) Degree
3 42 (9.17%) SC Cleared
4 18 (3.93%) Computer Science Degree
5 12 (2.62%) Microsoft Certification
6 11 (2.40%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.75%) DV Cleared
8 6 (1.31%) Master's Degree
9 5 (1.09%) CCA
9 5 (1.09%) Citrix Certification
10 3 (0.66%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.66%) Cisco 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%) CCIE
12 1 (0.22%) CCNA
12 1 (0.22%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 67 (14.63%) Data Quality
2 64 (13.97%) QA
3 8 (1.75%) GDPR
3 8 (1.75%) SLA
4 4 (0.87%) IFRS
5 3 (0.66%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.66%) IFRS 17
5 3 (0.66%) IFRS 9
6 2 (0.44%) Basel III
6 2 (0.44%) EMIR
6 2 (0.44%) GAAP
6 2 (0.44%) MiFID
6 2 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.44%) Solvency II
7 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.22%) NCSC
7 1 (0.22%) NIST
7 1 (0.22%) NIST 800
7 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 65 (14.19%) Docker
2 19 (4.15%) 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
5 3 (0.66%) zsh
6 2 (0.44%) GridGain
6 2 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
6 2 (0.44%) VMware NSX
7 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 66 (14.41%) Kubernetes
2 35 (7.64%) Terraform
3 12 (2.62%) Ansible
4 11 (2.40%) Grafana
5 10 (2.18%) SCCM
6 8 (1.75%) Puppet
7 7 (1.53%) TIBCO Hawk
8 5 (1.09%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.09%) SCVMM
9 4 (0.87%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.66%) Control-M
10 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (0.66%) Prometheus
11 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 1 (0.22%) BladeLogic
11 1 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
11 1 (0.22%) Oracle Identity Management
11 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
11 1 (0.22%) VxRail
11 1 (0.22%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 157 (34.28%) Oracle
2 113 (24.67%) Microsoft
3 49 (10.70%) Databricks
4 41 (8.95%) Citrix
5 23 (5.02%) Informatica
6 15 (3.28%) VMware
7 14 (3.06%) IBM
8 13 (2.84%) SAP
8 13 (2.84%) UiPath
9 10 (2.18%) Google
10 9 (1.97%) ServiceNow
11 8 (1.75%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (1.75%) Dynatrace
11 8 (1.75%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.75%) Sybase
12 7 (1.53%) BEA
12 7 (1.53%) TIBCO
13 6 (1.31%) AppDynamics
13 6 (1.31%) PagerDuty
14 5 (1.09%) Splunk