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

6 months to
25 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 82 45
Rank change year-on-year -25 -37 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 458 416 787
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.75% 3.28% 4.34%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.43% 14.81% 21.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 319 301 559
10th Percentile £363 £375 £369
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £600 £663 £662
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
England median daily rate £492 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -3.53% -2.86% -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 £60.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year -52.60% +50.31% +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 3,173 2,809 3,690
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.05% 22.18% 20.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,164 2,001 2,732
10th Percentile £363 £375 £377
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% - -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £749 £834 £800
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 30 39
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £28.56 £28.60 £26.02
Median hourly rate £46.50 £42.75 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +8.77% -5.00% +3.14%
75th Percentile £66.88 £60.25 £53.13
90th Percentile £89.50 £77.63 £65.03
England median hourly rate £50.00 £33.81 £40.25
% change year-on-year +47.91% -16.01% -28.63%

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 25 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 25 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 -39 50 £555 -5.13% 38
South London -9 7 £530 -26.90% 1
West London -17 3 £463 -7.50% 6
East London -12 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 (5.02%) SharePoint
2 19 (4.15%) IIS
3 13 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (2.84%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 11 (2.40%) WebSphere
5 9 (1.97%) Confluence
6 8 (1.75%) Appian
7 7 (1.53%) Apache
7 7 (1.53%) WebLogic
8 6 (1.31%) Apache Airflow
8 6 (1.31%) Apache Spark
9 4 (0.87%) 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 28 (6.11%) 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 6 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle General Ledger
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
3 3 (0.66%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
4 2 (0.44%) Dynamics AX
4 2 (0.44%) Loan IQ
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
4 2 (0.44%) Veritas eDiscovery
5 1 (0.22%) Endur
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.22%) Orchestrade
5 1 (0.22%) RMDS
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
5 1 (0.22%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 222 (48.47%) Azure
2 96 (20.96%) AWS
3 84 (18.34%) Power Platform
4 78 (17.03%) Azure DevOps
5 58 (12.66%) Azure Data Factory
6 45 (9.83%) GitHub
7 35 (7.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 28 (6.11%) GCP
9 23 (5.02%) Microsoft 365
10 22 (4.80%) SaaS
11 19 (4.15%) Amazon S3
11 19 (4.15%) GitHub Actions
12 17 (3.71%) Amazon EC2
13 16 (3.49%) IaaS
13 16 (3.49%) Power Automate
13 16 (3.49%) Snowflake
14 14 (3.06%) AWS CloudFormation
14 14 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
14 14 (3.06%) Serverless
15 13 (2.84%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 13 (2.84%) DNS
2 12 (2.62%) Firewall
3 11 (2.40%) Internet
4 9 (1.97%) VPN
5 8 (1.75%) DHCP
6 7 (1.53%) SAN
7 6 (1.31%) NetScaler
7 6 (1.31%) VLAN
7 6 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (1.09%) TCP/IP
9 4 (0.87%) FTP
10 2 (0.44%) HTTP
10 2 (0.44%) Software-Defined Networking
10 2 (0.44%) VSAN
11 1 (0.22%) Ethernet VPN
11 1 (0.22%) Kerberos
11 1 (0.22%) Multicast
11 1 (0.22%) Remote Desktop
11 1 (0.22%) SSL
11 1 (0.22%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (15.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 64 (13.97%) Power BI
3 61 (13.32%) PostgreSQL
4 57 (12.45%) Data Warehouse
5 54 (11.79%) Relational Database
6 39 (8.52%) Oracle Database
7 36 (7.86%) Data Lake
8 34 (7.42%) Azure SQL Database
9 26 (5.68%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 25 (5.46%) MongoDB
11 23 (5.02%) NoSQL
12 19 (4.15%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 16 (3.49%) Delta Lake
14 15 (3.28%) Metadata
15 12 (2.62%) Big Data
15 12 (2.62%) BigQuery
15 12 (2.62%) MySQL
15 12 (2.62%) Redis
16 11 (2.40%) Amazon RDS
16 11 (2.40%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 40 (8.73%) Git
2 29 (6.33%) JIRA
3 20 (4.37%) Jenkins
4 18 (3.93%) Visual Studio
5 12 (2.62%) TeamCity
6 9 (1.97%) ERwin
7 8 (1.75%) MLflow
7 8 (1.75%) Octopus Deploy
8 7 (1.53%) Chocolatey
8 7 (1.53%) GitLab
8 7 (1.53%) JUnit
8 7 (1.53%) Maven
8 7 (1.53%) SpecFlow
8 7 (1.53%) Team Foundation Server
9 6 (1.31%) 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 (0.66%) tSQLt
General
1 160 (34.93%) Finance
2 127 (27.73%) Social Skills
3 93 (20.31%) Banking
4 64 (13.97%) Analytical Skills
5 26 (5.68%) Public Sector
6 21 (4.59%) Investment Banking
7 20 (4.37%) Front Office
8 15 (3.28%) Documentation Skills
9 14 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 13 (2.84%) Financial Institution
11 9 (1.97%) Retail
12 6 (1.31%) Local Government
12 6 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 4 (0.87%) General Ledger
13 4 (0.87%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.66%) Legal
14 3 (0.66%) Presentation Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Back Office
15 2 (0.44%) Influencing Skills
15 2 (0.44%) Law
Job Titles
1 166 (36.24%) Developer
2 79 (17.25%) Senior
3 73 (15.94%) Data Engineer
4 69 (15.07%) C# Developer
5 40 (8.73%) .NET Developer
6 34 (7.42%) Architect
7 31 (6.77%) DBA
8 26 (5.68%) Senior Developer
9 25 (5.46%) Senior Data Engineer
9 25 (5.46%) SQL DBA
10 21 (4.59%) Azure Engineer
10 21 (4.59%) Lead
11 19 (4.15%) Analyst
12 18 (3.93%) C# .NET Developer
13 16 (3.49%) Full-Stack Developer
14 15 (3.28%) Solutions Architect
15 14 (3.06%) Java Developer
15 14 (3.06%) Software Engineer
16 13 (2.84%) SQL Developer
17 11 (2.40%) Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 132 (28.82%) .NET
2 65 (14.19%) .NET Framework
3 50 (10.92%) REST
4 37 (8.08%) React
4 37 (8.08%) RESTful
5 36 (7.86%) AngularJS
6 34 (7.42%) HTML
7 28 (6.11%) .NET Core
7 28 (6.11%) XML
8 26 (5.68%) CSS
9 25 (5.46%) Kafka
10 24 (5.24%) Web Services
11 21 (4.59%) ASP.NET
12 19 (4.15%) OAuth
12 19 (4.15%) WPF
13 18 (3.93%) WinForms
14 15 (3.28%) Spring
15 14 (3.06%) SOAP
15 14 (3.06%) Spring Boot
16 12 (2.62%) Pandas
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.30%) Legacy Systems
2 25 (5.46%) Cloud Native
3 17 (3.71%) Replication
4 15 (3.28%) Data Structures
4 15 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
5 13 (2.84%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.62%) Self-Motivation
7 10 (2.18%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 10 (2.18%) Greenfield Project
8 9 (1.97%) Credit Risk
8 9 (1.97%) Data Protection Act
8 9 (1.97%) Distributed Systems
8 9 (1.97%) Reinsurance
9 8 (1.75%) Derivative
9 8 (1.75%) Low-Code
9 8 (1.75%) Management Information System
10 7 (1.53%) Cyber Threat
10 7 (1.53%) Market Risk
11 6 (1.31%) Clustering
11 6 (1.31%) Fixed Income
Operating Systems
1 87 (19.00%) Windows
2 39 (8.52%) Linux
3 34 (7.42%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.75%) Unix
5 7 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
6 5 (1.09%) Windows 10
6 5 (1.09%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.44%) Ubuntu
7 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 129 (28.17%) DevOps
2 126 (27.51%) CI/CD
3 108 (23.58%) ETL
4 98 (21.40%) Agile
5 93 (20.31%) Business Intelligence
6 92 (20.09%) Problem-Solving
7 91 (19.87%) Data Modelling
8 76 (16.59%) Migration
9 67 (14.63%) Analytics
10 63 (13.76%) Data Engineering
11 58 (12.66%) Data Analysis
12 55 (12.01%) Data Pipeline
12 55 (12.01%) Disaster Recovery
13 53 (11.57%) AI
14 52 (11.35%) Performance Tuning
15 46 (10.04%) Test Automation
16 41 (8.95%) Containerisation
17 39 (8.52%) Change Management
18 38 (8.30%) Data Migration
18 38 (8.30%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 296 (64.63%) SQL
2 141 (30.79%) C#
3 119 (25.98%) Python
4 77 (16.81%) T-SQL
5 53 (11.57%) PL/SQL
6 45 (9.83%) Java
7 39 (8.52%) JavaScript
8 30 (6.55%) PowerShell
9 27 (5.90%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.06%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 13 (2.84%) VB
12 12 (2.62%) VBA
13 9 (1.97%) Bash
13 9 (1.97%) Bicep
14 7 (1.53%) XPath
15 5 (1.09%) Scala
15 5 (1.09%) Shell Script
16 4 (0.87%) R
17 2 (0.44%) C
18 1 (0.22%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 62 (13.54%) Security Cleared
2 47 (10.26%) Degree
3 46 (10.04%) SC Cleared
4 21 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 16 (3.49%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.62%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.75%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.09%) CCA
8 5 (1.09%) Citrix Certification
8 5 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 4 (0.87%) MCITP
9 4 (0.87%) MCTS
10 3 (0.66%) Cisco Certification
11 2 (0.44%) CCNP
11 2 (0.44%) CISSP
11 2 (0.44%) ISTQB
11 2 (0.44%) PMI Certification
11 2 (0.44%) PMP
11 2 (0.44%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (14.41%) Data Quality
2 60 (13.10%) QA
3 10 (2.18%) SLA
4 9 (1.97%) GDPR
5 4 (0.87%) IFRS
6 3 (0.66%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.66%) IFRS 17
6 3 (0.66%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.44%) Actionable Recommendations
7 2 (0.44%) Basel III
7 2 (0.44%) EMIR
7 2 (0.44%) GAAP
7 2 (0.44%) MiFID
7 2 (0.44%) 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 62 (13.54%) Docker
2 24 (5.24%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.53%) 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 (0.66%) GridGain
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.44%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.44%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.22%) NFS
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 64 (13.97%) Kubernetes
2 37 (8.08%) Terraform
3 12 (2.62%) Ansible
3 12 (2.62%) SCCM
4 9 (1.97%) Grafana
5 7 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 7 (1.53%) TIBCO Hawk
6 6 (1.31%) Puppet
7 5 (1.09%) SCVMM
8 3 (0.66%) Control-M
8 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
8 3 (0.66%) Progress Chef
9 2 (0.44%) Prometheus
10 1 (0.22%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 1 (0.22%) BladeLogic
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 (34.06%) Oracle
2 122 (26.64%) Microsoft
3 47 (10.26%) Databricks
4 41 (8.95%) Citrix
5 28 (6.11%) Informatica
6 17 (3.71%) VMware
7 14 (3.06%) IBM
8 13 (2.84%) SAP
9 12 (2.62%) UiPath
10 10 (2.18%) Sybase
11 9 (1.97%) OpenAI
11 9 (1.97%) ServiceNow
12 8 (1.75%) Automation Anywhere
12 8 (1.75%) Dynatrace
12 8 (1.75%) Google
12 8 (1.75%) TIBCO
13 7 (1.53%) AppDynamics
13 7 (1.53%) BEA
13 7 (1.53%) Tenable
14 6 (1.31%) PagerDuty