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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 82 41
Rank change year-on-year -22 -41 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 474 417 827
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.66% 3.32% 4.67%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.50% 14.85% 21.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 300 574
10th Percentile £363 £385 £363
25th Percentile £413 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £575 £538
Median % change year-on-year -13.04% +6.98% -6.52%
75th Percentile £630 £688 £650
90th Percentile £738 £763 £750
England median daily rate £475 £525 £505
% change year-on-year -9.52% +3.96% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile £23.93 - -
25th Percentile £30.94 - -
Median hourly rate £43.75 £26.32 -
Median % change year-on-year +66.22% - -
75th Percentile £57.44 - -
90th Percentile £64.98 - -
England median hourly rate £47.54 £63.75 £40.25
% change year-on-year -25.42% +58.37% -7.47%

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 3,269 2,808 3,830
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.36% 22.34% 21.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,229 1,988 2,831
10th Percentile £363 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £557 £560
Median % change year-on-year -5.82% -0.46% -2.61%
75th Percentile £631 £713 £700
90th Percentile £750 £838 £825
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 31 36
10th Percentile £19.23 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £29.14 £27.46 £25.59
Median hourly rate £50.00 £38.11 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +31.20% -23.78% -9.09%
75th Percentile £62.63 £56.25 £55.00
90th Percentile £81.00 £77.50 £64.78
England median hourly rate £47.54 £32.05 £40.13
% change year-on-year +48.33% -20.12% -30.22%

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 6 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL Server in London over the 6 months to 6 May 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 6 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 -44 56 £560 -4.27% 52
South London -10 7 £530 -26.90% 1
East London -7 3 £630 +57.50% 2
West London -26 3 £463 -29.06% 6
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 (7.17%) SharePoint
2 23 (4.85%) IIS
3 13 (2.74%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.11%) Apache
5 9 (1.90%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.90%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.90%) Appian
5 9 (1.90%) Confluence
5 9 (1.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 8 (1.69%) WebSphere
7 6 (1.27%) Camunda
8 4 (0.84%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.21%) CMS
9 1 (0.21%) ColdFusion
9 1 (0.21%) JBoss
9 1 (0.21%) Mule
9 1 (0.21%) OpenEdge
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.21%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.21%) Tomcat
Applications
1 27 (5.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.53%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.27%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.42%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.27%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.05%) Dynamics AX
3 4 (0.84%) BusinessWorks
3 4 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
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
1 230 (48.52%) Azure
2 98 (20.68%) AWS
3 86 (18.14%) Power Platform
4 79 (16.67%) Azure DevOps
5 65 (13.71%) Azure Data Factory
6 48 (10.13%) GitHub
7 43 (9.07%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 26 (5.49%) GCP
8 26 (5.49%) Microsoft 365
9 25 (5.27%) Power Automate
10 23 (4.85%) Amazon S3
11 21 (4.43%) GitHub Actions
12 20 (4.22%) Serverless
13 18 (3.80%) Amazon EC2
13 18 (3.80%) SaaS
14 16 (3.38%) IaaS
15 14 (2.95%) AWS CloudFormation
15 14 (2.95%) Dynamics 365
16 13 (2.74%) PaaS
16 13 (2.74%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 12 (2.53%) DNS
1 12 (2.53%) Internet
2 11 (2.32%) Firewall
3 8 (1.69%) VPN
4 7 (1.48%) DHCP
4 7 (1.48%) SAN
5 6 (1.27%) NetScaler
5 6 (1.27%) VLAN
5 6 (1.27%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.84%) FTP
7 3 (0.63%) TCP/IP
8 1 (0.21%) Kerberos
8 1 (0.21%) MQTT
8 1 (0.21%) Multicast
8 1 (0.21%) Remote Desktop
8 1 (0.21%) Software-Defined Networking
8 1 (0.21%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (14.35%) PostgreSQL
2 65 (13.71%) Power BI
3 64 (13.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 62 (13.08%) Data Warehouse
5 50 (10.55%) Relational Database
6 45 (9.49%) Oracle Database
7 43 (9.07%) Data Lake
8 33 (6.96%) Azure SQL Database
9 31 (6.54%) MongoDB
10 25 (5.27%) NoSQL
11 21 (4.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
12 19 (4.01%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 17 (3.59%) Delta Lake
14 15 (3.16%) Metadata
15 13 (2.74%) BigQuery
15 13 (2.74%) Redis
16 10 (2.11%) Amazon RDS
16 10 (2.11%) DataStage
16 10 (2.11%) MySQL
17 9 (1.90%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 42 (8.86%) Git
2 31 (6.54%) JIRA
3 17 (3.59%) TeamCity
3 17 (3.59%) Visual Studio
4 16 (3.38%) Jenkins
5 8 (1.69%) ERwin
5 8 (1.69%) GitLab
5 8 (1.69%) MLflow
5 8 (1.69%) Octopus Deploy
6 7 (1.48%) Chocolatey
6 7 (1.48%) Cucumber
6 7 (1.48%) MSTest
6 7 (1.48%) Team Foundation Server
7 6 (1.27%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 5 (1.05%) JUnit
8 5 (1.05%) Mocha
8 5 (1.05%) Mockito
8 5 (1.05%) tSQLt
9 4 (0.84%) NUnit
9 4 (0.84%) SpecFlow
General
1 166 (35.02%) Finance
2 131 (27.64%) Social Skills
3 87 (18.35%) Banking
4 72 (15.19%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (5.06%) Front Office
6 23 (4.85%) Public Sector
7 21 (4.43%) Investment Banking
8 13 (2.74%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.53%) Financial Institution
9 12 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 8 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
11 6 (1.27%) Retail
12 4 (0.84%) Legal
12 4 (0.84%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.63%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.63%) Local Government
14 2 (0.42%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.42%) Influencing Skills
14 2 (0.42%) Japanese Language
14 2 (0.42%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 165 (34.81%) Developer
2 89 (18.78%) Senior
3 85 (17.93%) Data Engineer
4 72 (15.19%) C# Developer
5 41 (8.65%) .NET Developer
6 33 (6.96%) Architect
7 31 (6.54%) DBA
7 31 (6.54%) Senior Data Engineer
8 26 (5.49%) Senior Developer
9 24 (5.06%) SQL DBA
10 23 (4.85%) Lead
11 21 (4.43%) Azure Engineer
12 19 (4.01%) C# .NET Developer
13 18 (3.80%) Software Engineer
14 16 (3.38%) Full-Stack Developer
14 16 (3.38%) Integration Engineer
15 14 (2.95%) Analyst
15 14 (2.95%) Consultant
15 14 (2.95%) SQL Developer
16 12 (2.53%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 140 (29.54%) .NET
2 67 (14.14%) .NET Framework
3 53 (11.18%) REST
4 44 (9.28%) React
5 40 (8.44%) HTML
5 40 (8.44%) RESTful
6 38 (8.02%) AngularJS
6 38 (8.02%) CSS
7 32 (6.75%) Kafka
8 30 (6.33%) .NET Core
9 25 (5.27%) OAuth
10 22 (4.64%) ASP.NET
11 21 (4.43%) XML
12 20 (4.22%) Web Services
13 19 (4.01%) WinForms
13 19 (4.01%) WPF
14 15 (3.16%) SOAP
15 14 (2.95%) Spring Boot
16 13 (2.74%) ASP.NET Web API
16 13 (2.74%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.02%) Legacy Systems
2 30 (6.33%) Cloud Native
3 17 (3.59%) Self-Motivation
4 16 (3.38%) Data Structures
4 16 (3.38%) Replication
5 13 (2.74%) Low-Code
6 11 (2.32%) Enterprise Software
7 10 (2.11%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.90%) Derivative
8 9 (1.90%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.90%) Onboarding
8 9 (1.90%) Reinsurance
9 8 (1.69%) Fixed Income
10 7 (1.48%) Clustering
10 7 (1.48%) Credit Risk
10 7 (1.48%) Cyber Threat
10 7 (1.48%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.48%) Market Risk
11 6 (1.27%) Algorithms
12 5 (1.05%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 94 (19.83%) Windows
2 35 (7.38%) Linux
2 35 (7.38%) Windows Server
3 9 (1.90%) Unix
4 7 (1.48%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (1.05%) Windows 10
5 5 (1.05%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.42%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.21%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (0.21%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 136 (28.69%) CI/CD
1 136 (28.69%) DevOps
2 104 (21.94%) ETL
3 103 (21.73%) Agile
4 96 (20.25%) Business Intelligence
5 95 (20.04%) Problem-Solving
6 93 (19.62%) Data Modelling
7 74 (15.61%) Analytics
8 65 (13.71%) Migration
9 64 (13.50%) AI
9 64 (13.50%) Disaster Recovery
10 60 (12.66%) Data Engineering
11 59 (12.45%) Data Pipeline
11 59 (12.45%) Performance Tuning
12 58 (12.24%) Data Analysis
13 57 (12.03%) Test Automation
14 45 (9.49%) Change Management
14 45 (9.49%) Data Integration
15 41 (8.65%) Microservices
16 40 (8.44%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 312 (65.82%) SQL
2 159 (33.54%) C#
3 128 (27.00%) Python
4 96 (20.25%) T-SQL
5 64 (13.50%) PL/SQL
6 53 (11.18%) JavaScript
7 45 (9.49%) Java
8 35 (7.38%) PowerShell
9 30 (6.33%) TypeScript
10 14 (2.95%) VB
11 13 (2.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 12 (2.53%) VBA
13 9 (1.90%) Bash
13 9 (1.90%) Bicep
14 6 (1.27%) Scala
15 5 (1.05%) Shell Script
15 5 (1.05%) XPath
16 4 (0.84%) R
17 2 (0.42%) C
18 1 (0.21%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 64 (13.50%) Security Cleared
2 49 (10.34%) SC Cleared
3 47 (9.92%) Degree
4 21 (4.43%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.59%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.53%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.69%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (1.27%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.05%) CCA
9 5 (1.05%) Citrix Certification
9 5 (1.05%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.84%) MCITP
10 4 (0.84%) MCTS
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%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.42%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (14.35%) Data Quality
2 65 (13.71%) QA
3 10 (2.11%) SLA
4 9 (1.90%) GDPR
5 5 (1.05%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.63%) IFRS
6 3 (0.63%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.42%) Basel III
7 2 (0.42%) EMIR
7 2 (0.42%) GAAP
7 2 (0.42%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.42%) MiFID
7 2 (0.42%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.42%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (12.66%) Docker
2 21 (4.43%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.48%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.05%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.05%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.05%) XenApp
4 5 (1.05%) 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 68 (14.35%) Kubernetes
2 43 (9.07%) Terraform
3 12 (2.53%) Ansible
3 12 (2.53%) SCCM
4 8 (1.69%) Grafana
5 7 (1.48%) Microsoft Intune
6 6 (1.27%) Puppet
7 5 (1.05%) SCVMM
8 4 (0.84%) TIBCO Hawk
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
1 158 (33.33%) Oracle
2 123 (25.95%) Microsoft
3 55 (11.60%) Databricks
4 44 (9.28%) Citrix
5 24 (5.06%) Informatica
6 17 (3.59%) VMware
7 15 (3.16%) SAP
8 11 (2.32%) Dynatrace
8 11 (2.32%) IBM
8 11 (2.32%) UiPath
9 10 (2.11%) OpenAI
9 10 (2.11%) ServiceNow
9 10 (2.11%) Sybase
10 8 (1.69%) Automation Anywhere
11 7 (1.48%) AppDynamics
11 7 (1.48%) Google
11 7 (1.48%) Tenable
12 6 (1.27%) PagerDuty
13 5 (1.05%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.05%) OutSystems