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

6 months to
6 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 104 74 49
Rank change year-on-year -30 -25 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 419 456 734
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.81% 3.32% 3.97%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.12% 15.38% 20.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 292 322 542
10th Percentile £363 £363 £376
25th Percentile £407 £441 £440
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £650 £675
90th Percentile £722 £725 £750
England median daily rate £480 £508 £539
% change year-on-year -5.58% -5.64% -2.05%
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 £23.50 £63.75 £40.25
% change year-on-year -63.13% +58.37% -3.59%

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 2,967 2,965 3,565
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.88% 21.61% 19.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,043 2,019 2,642
10th Percentile £353 £363 £385
25th Percentile £415 £455 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +2.73% -8.33%
75th Percentile £638 £699 £676
90th Percentile £749 £825 £775
England median daily rate £500 £545 £538
% change year-on-year -8.21% +1.35% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 31 42
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £29.72 £28.60 £25.90
Median hourly rate £45.00 £41.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +8.43% -5.14% -2.78%
75th Percentile £75.94 £58.25 £54.03
90th Percentile £89.75 £78.75 £64.43
England median hourly rate £47.61 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +17.56% -4.71% -25.26%

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 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 6 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 -40 40 £513 -11.64% 36
South London -4 7 £530 -26.90% 6
East London -3 2 £585 +46.25% 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 18 (4.30%) IIS
2 14 (3.34%) Confluence
2 14 (3.34%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 13 (3.10%) SharePoint
4 11 (2.63%) WebSphere
5 8 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
6 7 (1.67%) Apache
6 7 (1.67%) Apache Spark
6 7 (1.67%) Appian
6 7 (1.67%) WebLogic
7 6 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.48%) CMS
9 1 (0.24%) ArcGIS
9 1 (0.24%) ColdFusion
9 1 (0.24%) JBoss
9 1 (0.24%) Mule
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.24%) SAS
9 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
Applications
1 34 (8.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (3.10%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.43%) Microsoft Office
4 4 (0.95%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.48%) Trello
6 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 7 (1.67%) BusinessWorks
1 7 (1.67%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.72%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 3 (0.72%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 3 (0.72%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.48%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.48%) Veritas eDiscovery
4 1 (0.24%) Endur
4 1 (0.24%) Fidessa
4 1 (0.24%) Loan IQ
4 1 (0.24%) Oracle BPM
4 1 (0.24%) Oracle FAH
4 1 (0.24%) RMDS
4 1 (0.24%) Salesforce CRM
4 1 (0.24%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.24%) SAP R/3
4 1 (0.24%) thinkFolio
4 1 (0.24%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 189 (45.11%) Azure
2 91 (21.72%) AWS
3 81 (19.33%) Power Platform
4 67 (15.99%) Azure DevOps
5 46 (10.98%) GitHub
6 43 (10.26%) Azure Data Factory
7 30 (7.16%) GCP
8 25 (5.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 21 (5.01%) SaaS
10 17 (4.06%) GitHub Actions
11 16 (3.82%) Amazon S3
12 14 (3.34%) Microsoft 365
13 13 (3.10%) Snowflake
14 12 (2.86%) Power Automate
15 11 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
15 11 (2.63%) IaaS
16 9 (2.15%) Amazon EC2
16 9 (2.15%) Azure Key Vault
16 9 (2.15%) Dynamics 365
17 8 (1.91%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.63%) Internet
2 7 (1.67%) Firewall
3 5 (1.19%) DNS
3 5 (1.19%) NetScaler
4 3 (0.72%) DHCP
4 3 (0.72%) HTTP
4 3 (0.72%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.48%) FTP
5 2 (0.48%) Software-Defined Networking
5 2 (0.48%) VPN
5 2 (0.48%) VSAN
6 1 (0.24%) BGP
6 1 (0.24%) DMZ
6 1 (0.24%) Ethernet VPN
6 1 (0.24%) SAN
6 1 (0.24%) SSL
6 1 (0.24%) VLAN
6 1 (0.24%) VXLAN
6 1 (0.24%) WebEx
6 1 (0.24%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 70 (16.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 68 (16.23%) Power BI
3 64 (15.27%) PostgreSQL
4 51 (12.17%) Relational Database
5 46 (10.98%) Data Warehouse
6 33 (7.88%) Data Lake
6 33 (7.88%) Oracle Database
7 29 (6.92%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 26 (6.21%) MongoDB
9 24 (5.73%) NoSQL
10 23 (5.49%) Azure SQL Database
11 20 (4.77%) Delta Lake
12 16 (3.82%) Big Data
13 13 (3.10%) Amazon RDS
13 13 (3.10%) DB2
13 13 (3.10%) RDBMS
13 13 (3.10%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 11 (2.63%) MySQL
14 11 (2.63%) Redis
14 11 (2.63%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 39 (9.31%) Git
2 34 (8.11%) JIRA
3 23 (5.49%) Jenkins
4 18 (4.30%) Visual Studio
5 12 (2.86%) SpecFlow
6 9 (2.15%) GitLab
7 8 (1.91%) ERwin
7 8 (1.91%) Maven
7 8 (1.91%) TeamCity
8 7 (1.67%) JUnit
8 7 (1.67%) MLflow
8 7 (1.67%) Octopus Deploy
9 5 (1.19%) Cucumber
9 5 (1.19%) Mockito
9 5 (1.19%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 5 (1.19%) Team Foundation Server
10 4 (0.95%) Bitbucket
10 4 (0.95%) Selenium
11 3 (0.72%) Gradle
11 3 (0.72%) Zephyr
General
1 151 (36.04%) Finance
2 124 (29.59%) Social Skills
3 84 (20.05%) Banking
4 48 (11.46%) Analytical Skills
5 25 (5.97%) Investment Banking
6 19 (4.53%) Public Sector
7 16 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (3.10%) Front Office
8 13 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 12 (2.86%) Financial Institution
10 9 (2.15%) Retail
11 5 (1.19%) Local Government
12 4 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
12 4 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
13 3 (0.72%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.72%) Influencing Skills
13 3 (0.72%) Law
13 3 (0.72%) Legal
13 3 (0.72%) Telecoms
14 2 (0.48%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 173 (41.29%) Developer
2 78 (18.62%) Data Engineer
3 77 (18.38%) Senior
4 65 (15.51%) C# Developer
5 41 (9.79%) .NET Developer
6 33 (7.88%) Senior Developer
7 28 (6.68%) Senior Data Engineer
8 26 (6.21%) Analyst
9 25 (5.97%) Architect
10 20 (4.77%) C# .NET Developer
11 18 (4.30%) Lead
12 16 (3.82%) Angular Developer
12 16 (3.82%) Full-Stack Developer
13 15 (3.58%) SQL Developer
14 14 (3.34%) Java Developer
15 13 (3.10%) Azure Engineer
15 13 (3.10%) DBA
16 12 (2.86%) SQL DBA
17 11 (2.63%) Business Analyst
17 11 (2.63%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 128 (30.55%) .NET
2 69 (16.47%) .NET Framework
3 44 (10.50%) REST
4 35 (8.35%) RESTful
5 33 (7.88%) AngularJS
6 30 (7.16%) HTML
6 30 (7.16%) Kafka
7 29 (6.92%) .NET Core
7 29 (6.92%) React
8 27 (6.44%) Web Services
8 27 (6.44%) XML
9 21 (5.01%) WPF
10 20 (4.77%) SOAP
11 19 (4.53%) CSS
11 19 (4.53%) Entity Framework
12 18 (4.30%) WinForms
13 17 (4.06%) ASP.NET
14 16 (3.82%) OAuth
14 16 (3.82%) Spring
15 15 (3.58%) NHibernate
Miscellaneous
1 32 (7.64%) Legacy Systems
2 24 (5.73%) Cloud Native
3 16 (3.82%) Enterprise Software
4 15 (3.58%) Derivative
4 15 (3.58%) Onboarding
5 13 (3.10%) Distributed Systems
5 13 (3.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 12 (2.86%) Credit Risk
7 11 (2.63%) Management Information System
8 10 (2.39%) Greenfield Project
8 10 (2.39%) Reinsurance
9 9 (2.15%) Data Structures
10 8 (1.91%) Low-Code
11 7 (1.67%) Data Protection Act
11 7 (1.67%) Fixed Income
12 6 (1.43%) Hedge funds
12 6 (1.43%) Linux Command Line
12 6 (1.43%) Market Risk
12 6 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
13 5 (1.19%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 67 (15.99%) Windows
2 42 (10.02%) Linux
3 27 (6.44%) Windows Server
4 8 (1.91%) Unix
5 6 (1.43%) Windows 10
5 6 (1.43%) Windows Server 2016
6 4 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
7 2 (0.48%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.24%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 118 (28.16%) CI/CD
2 100 (23.87%) DevOps
3 98 (23.39%) Agile
4 92 (21.96%) ETL
5 86 (20.53%) Business Intelligence
6 80 (19.09%) Problem-Solving
7 79 (18.85%) Data Modelling
8 68 (16.23%) Migration
9 59 (14.08%) Analytics
10 53 (12.65%) Microservices
11 51 (12.17%) Data Engineering
12 49 (11.69%) Data Analysis
13 43 (10.26%) Data Pipeline
13 43 (10.26%) Test Automation
14 42 (10.02%) Data Migration
15 39 (9.31%) Containerisation
16 36 (8.59%) Scrum
17 35 (8.35%) Change Management
17 35 (8.35%) Full-Stack Development
18 34 (8.11%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 257 (61.34%) SQL
2 132 (31.50%) C#
3 112 (26.73%) Python
4 60 (14.32%) T-SQL
5 50 (11.93%) PL/SQL
6 49 (11.69%) Java
7 41 (9.79%) JavaScript
8 25 (5.97%) PowerShell
9 20 (4.77%) TypeScript
10 16 (3.82%) Bash
11 15 (3.58%) VB
12 14 (3.34%) VBA
13 11 (2.63%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 7 (1.67%) XPath
15 6 (1.43%) Bicep
16 3 (0.72%) COBOL
16 3 (0.72%) R
16 3 (0.72%) Scala
16 3 (0.72%) Shell Script
17 2 (0.48%) C++
Qualifications
1 51 (12.17%) Degree
2 44 (10.50%) Security Cleared
3 31 (7.40%) SC Cleared
4 21 (5.01%) Computer Science Degree
5 11 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (1.91%) Azure Certification
6 8 (1.91%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.91%) DV Cleared
7 7 (1.67%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.95%) CCA
8 4 (0.95%) Citrix Certification
9 3 (0.72%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.72%) Cisco Certification
9 3 (0.72%) PMI Certification
9 3 (0.72%) PMP
10 2 (0.48%) CCNP
10 2 (0.48%) CISSP
10 2 (0.48%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
11 1 (0.24%) CCIE
11 1 (0.24%) CCNA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (15.75%) Data Quality
2 49 (11.69%) QA
3 8 (1.91%) GDPR
4 6 (1.43%) SLA
5 4 (0.95%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 3 (0.72%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.72%) IFRS
6 3 (0.72%) IFRS 17
6 3 (0.72%) MiFID
7 2 (0.48%) Basel III
7 2 (0.48%) EMIR
7 2 (0.48%) GAAP
7 2 (0.48%) IFRS 9
7 2 (0.48%) Solvency II
8 1 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 1 (0.24%) NCSC
8 1 (0.24%) NIST
8 1 (0.24%) NIST 800
8 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (14.32%) Docker
2 14 (3.34%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.43%) zsh
4 4 (0.95%) Hyper-V
4 4 (0.95%) XenApp
4 4 (0.95%) XenDesktop
5 2 (0.48%) GridGain
5 2 (0.48%) Virtual Desktop
5 2 (0.48%) VMware ESXi
5 2 (0.48%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.48%) VMware NSX
6 1 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.24%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 53 (12.65%) Kubernetes
2 28 (6.68%) Terraform
3 12 (2.86%) Ansible
4 10 (2.39%) Grafana
5 8 (1.91%) Puppet
6 7 (1.67%) SCCM
6 7 (1.67%) TIBCO Hawk
7 4 (0.95%) Microsoft Intune
7 4 (0.95%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.95%) SCVMM
8 3 (0.72%) Control-M
8 3 (0.72%) Microsoft Clustering
8 3 (0.72%) Prometheus
9 1 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 1 (0.24%) Ambari
9 1 (0.24%) BladeLogic
9 1 (0.24%) Oracle Identity Management
9 1 (0.24%) SCOM
9 1 (0.24%) VxRail
9 1 (0.24%) ZABBIX
Vendors
1 145 (34.61%) Oracle
2 101 (24.11%) Microsoft
3 49 (11.69%) Databricks
4 34 (8.11%) Citrix
5 21 (5.01%) Informatica
6 16 (3.82%) SAP
7 13 (3.10%) IBM
8 12 (2.86%) UiPath
9 11 (2.63%) VMware
10 9 (2.15%) Google
10 9 (2.15%) ServiceNow
11 7 (1.67%) Automation Anywhere
11 7 (1.67%) BEA
11 7 (1.67%) OpenAI
11 7 (1.67%) Sybase
11 7 (1.67%) TIBCO
12 6 (1.43%) Atlassian
12 6 (1.43%) PagerDuty
13 5 (1.19%) Splunk
14 4 (0.95%) Salesforce