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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 66 48
Rank change year-on-year -36 -18 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 445 464 753
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.80% 3.46% 4.10%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.47% 15.71% 20.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 308 327 548
10th Percentile £363 £363 £375
25th Percentile £409 £433 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -4.35% -2.54%
75th Percentile £616 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £738 £750
England median daily rate £480 £524 £535
% change year-on-year -8.40% -2.06% -2.73%
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% -7.47%

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 3,075 2,954 3,603
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 19.35% 22.02% 19.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,110 2,047 2,659
10th Percentile £361 £367 £385
25th Percentile £420 £455 £462
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £565 £558
Median % change year-on-year -7.08% +1.35% -5.11%
75th Percentile £638 £700 £688
90th Percentile £738 £834 £788
England median daily rate £500 £538 £533
% change year-on-year -6.98% +0.84% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 31 38
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £28.75 £28.84 £25.90
Median hourly rate £52.00 £41.50 £43.75
Median % change year-on-year +25.30% -5.14% +4.01%
75th Percentile £75.94 £59.75 £54.03
90th Percentile £91.50 £78.75 £65.27
England median hourly rate £53.25 £38.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +38.31% -9.41% -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 28 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 28 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 -32 47 £538 -8.12% 33
South London -13 7 £530 -26.90% 1
West London -18 3 £463 - 10
East London -5 2 £585 +46.25% 4
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 19 (4.27%) IIS
1 19 (4.27%) SharePoint
2 15 (3.37%) Confluence
3 14 (3.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 11 (2.47%) Microsoft Exchange
4 11 (2.47%) WebSphere
5 8 (1.80%) Apache
5 8 (1.80%) Apache Spark
5 8 (1.80%) Appian
6 7 (1.57%) Apache Airflow
6 7 (1.57%) WebLogic
7 2 (0.45%) Camunda
7 2 (0.45%) CMS
8 1 (0.22%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.22%) ArcGIS
8 1 (0.22%) ColdFusion
8 1 (0.22%) GeoServer
8 1 (0.22%) JBoss
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
8 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
Applications
1 28 (6.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.70%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.35%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 7 (1.57%) BusinessWorks
1 7 (1.57%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.67%) Loan IQ
2 3 (0.67%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
2 3 (0.67%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
2 3 (0.67%) SAP S/4HANA
3 2 (0.45%) Oracle General Ledger
3 2 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
3 2 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
3 2 (0.45%) 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 ERP
4 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
4 1 (0.22%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 210 (47.19%) Azure
2 100 (22.47%) AWS
3 85 (19.10%) Power Platform
4 76 (17.08%) Azure DevOps
5 49 (11.01%) Azure Data Factory
6 47 (10.56%) GitHub
7 34 (7.64%) GCP
8 29 (6.52%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 22 (4.94%) SaaS
10 19 (4.27%) Amazon S3
11 18 (4.04%) GitHub Actions
11 18 (4.04%) Snowflake
12 17 (3.82%) Amazon EC2
12 17 (3.82%) Microsoft 365
13 15 (3.37%) AWS CloudFormation
13 15 (3.37%) Power Automate
14 14 (3.15%) IaaS
15 12 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
16 11 (2.47%) PaaS
17 10 (2.25%) Amazon EKS
Communications & Networking
1 11 (2.47%) DNS
1 11 (2.47%) Internet
2 10 (2.25%) Firewall
3 7 (1.57%) DHCP
3 7 (1.57%) VPN
4 6 (1.35%) NetScaler
5 5 (1.12%) SAN
5 5 (1.12%) VLAN
5 5 (1.12%) Wi-Fi
6 4 (0.90%) FTP
6 4 (0.90%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.67%) HTTP
8 2 (0.45%) Software-Defined Networking
8 2 (0.45%) 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 77 (17.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 68 (15.28%) Power BI
3 67 (15.06%) PostgreSQL
4 55 (12.36%) Data Warehouse
5 53 (11.91%) Relational Database
6 38 (8.54%) Data Lake
7 37 (8.31%) Oracle Database
8 31 (6.97%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 28 (6.29%) MongoDB
10 27 (6.07%) Azure SQL Database
11 26 (5.84%) NoSQL
12 20 (4.49%) Delta Lake
13 18 (4.04%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 16 (3.60%) Big Data
15 14 (3.15%) RDBMS
16 13 (2.92%) Amazon RDS
16 13 (2.92%) Metadata
17 12 (2.70%) BigQuery
17 12 (2.70%) MySQL
17 12 (2.70%) Redis
Development Applications
1 40 (8.99%) Git
2 34 (7.64%) JIRA
3 21 (4.72%) Jenkins
4 18 (4.04%) Visual Studio
5 11 (2.47%) SpecFlow
6 9 (2.02%) ERwin
7 8 (1.80%) GitLab
7 8 (1.80%) JUnit
7 8 (1.80%) Maven
7 8 (1.80%) MLflow
8 7 (1.57%) Octopus Deploy
8 7 (1.57%) Team Foundation Server
8 7 (1.57%) TeamCity
9 6 (1.35%) Mockito
10 5 (1.12%) Chocolatey
10 5 (1.12%) Cucumber
10 5 (1.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 4 (0.90%) MSTest
12 3 (0.67%) Mocha
12 3 (0.67%) tSQLt
General
1 156 (35.06%) Finance
2 124 (27.87%) Social Skills
3 86 (19.33%) Banking
4 56 (12.58%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (5.39%) Public Sector
6 21 (4.72%) Investment Banking
7 17 (3.82%) Documentation Skills
8 13 (2.92%) Financial Institution
8 13 (2.92%) Front Office
9 12 (2.70%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (2.02%) Retail
11 6 (1.35%) Local Government
12 4 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
12 4 (0.90%) Telecoms
13 3 (0.67%) General Ledger
13 3 (0.67%) Law
13 3 (0.67%) Legal
14 2 (0.45%) Back Office
14 2 (0.45%) Corporate Banking
14 2 (0.45%) Japanese Language
Job Titles
1 173 (38.88%) Developer
2 82 (18.43%) Data Engineer
3 78 (17.53%) Senior
4 69 (15.51%) C# Developer
5 44 (9.89%) .NET Developer
6 31 (6.97%) Architect
7 28 (6.29%) Senior Data Engineer
7 28 (6.29%) Senior Developer
8 22 (4.94%) C# .NET Developer
8 22 (4.94%) Lead
9 21 (4.72%) Analyst
10 18 (4.04%) Azure Engineer
11 17 (3.82%) DBA
12 16 (3.60%) Full-Stack Developer
12 16 (3.60%) SQL DBA
12 16 (3.60%) SQL Developer
13 13 (2.92%) Angular Developer
13 13 (2.92%) Java Developer
13 13 (2.92%) Solutions Architect
14 11 (2.47%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 130 (29.21%) .NET
2 68 (15.28%) .NET Framework
3 47 (10.56%) REST
4 34 (7.64%) RESTful
5 33 (7.42%) AngularJS
5 33 (7.42%) HTML
6 31 (6.97%) Kafka
7 29 (6.52%) .NET Core
7 29 (6.52%) React
7 29 (6.52%) XML
8 24 (5.39%) Web Services
9 22 (4.94%) CSS
10 20 (4.49%) WPF
11 18 (4.04%) OAuth
11 18 (4.04%) WinForms
12 17 (3.82%) ASP.NET
12 17 (3.82%) Spring
13 16 (3.60%) SOAP
14 15 (3.37%) Entity Framework
14 15 (3.37%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 38 (8.54%) Legacy Systems
2 23 (5.17%) Cloud Native
3 17 (3.82%) Enterprise Software
4 14 (3.15%) Replication
5 13 (2.92%) Onboarding
6 12 (2.70%) Credit Risk
6 12 (2.70%) Data Structures
6 12 (2.70%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
7 11 (2.47%) Derivative
7 11 (2.47%) Management Information System
7 11 (2.47%) Reinsurance
8 10 (2.25%) Distributed Systems
8 10 (2.25%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (2.02%) Low-Code
10 8 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
11 7 (1.57%) Data Protection Act
12 6 (1.35%) Fixed Income
12 6 (1.35%) Market Risk
13 5 (1.12%) Client/Server
13 5 (1.12%) Cyber Threat
Operating Systems
1 76 (17.08%) Windows
2 39 (8.76%) Linux
3 25 (5.62%) Windows Server
4 7 (1.57%) Unix
4 7 (1.57%) Windows Server 2016
5 5 (1.12%) Windows 10
5 5 (1.12%) Windows Server 2019
6 2 (0.45%) Windows Server 2012
7 1 (0.22%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 124 (27.87%) CI/CD
2 114 (25.62%) DevOps
3 104 (23.37%) Agile
4 103 (23.15%) ETL
5 94 (21.12%) Business Intelligence
6 88 (19.78%) Data Modelling
7 87 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
8 76 (17.08%) Migration
9 62 (13.93%) Analytics
10 60 (13.48%) Data Engineering
11 53 (11.91%) Data Pipeline
12 51 (11.46%) Data Analysis
13 48 (10.79%) Microservices
14 44 (9.89%) Containerisation
14 44 (9.89%) Test Automation
15 41 (9.21%) AI
15 41 (9.21%) Performance Tuning
16 40 (8.99%) Data Migration
16 40 (8.99%) Disaster Recovery
17 36 (8.09%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 273 (61.35%) SQL
2 136 (30.56%) C#
3 119 (26.74%) Python
4 72 (16.18%) T-SQL
5 52 (11.69%) PL/SQL
6 45 (10.11%) Java
7 39 (8.76%) JavaScript
8 30 (6.74%) PowerShell
9 24 (5.39%) TypeScript
10 14 (3.15%) Bash
10 14 (3.15%) VB
10 14 (3.15%) VBA
11 13 (2.92%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 9 (2.02%) Bicep
13 7 (1.57%) XPath
14 5 (1.12%) Scala
15 3 (0.67%) R
15 3 (0.67%) Shell Script
16 2 (0.45%) C
16 2 (0.45%) C++
Qualifications
1 51 (11.46%) Security Cleared
2 44 (9.89%) Degree
3 37 (8.31%) SC Cleared
4 17 (3.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 10 (2.25%) Azure Certification
5 10 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
6 8 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.80%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.35%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.12%) CCA
8 5 (1.12%) Citrix Certification
9 3 (0.67%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.67%) Cisco Certification
10 2 (0.45%) CCNP
10 2 (0.45%) CISSP
10 2 (0.45%) PMI Certification
10 2 (0.45%) PMP
11 1 (0.22%) CCIE
11 1 (0.22%) CCNA
11 1 (0.22%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (15.51%) Data Quality
2 61 (13.71%) QA
3 8 (1.80%) GDPR
3 8 (1.80%) SLA
4 4 (0.90%) IFRS
5 3 (0.67%) Accessibility
5 3 (0.67%) IFRS 17
5 3 (0.67%) IFRS 9
6 2 (0.45%) Basel III
6 2 (0.45%) EMIR
6 2 (0.45%) GAAP
6 2 (0.45%) MiFID
6 2 (0.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 2 (0.45%) 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 62 (13.93%) Docker
2 17 (3.82%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.35%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.12%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.12%) XenApp
4 5 (1.12%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.90%) zsh
6 3 (0.67%) VMware Infrastructure
7 2 (0.45%) GridGain
7 2 (0.45%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.45%) VMware NSX
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.22%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 61 (13.71%) Kubernetes
2 33 (7.42%) Terraform
3 12 (2.70%) Ansible
4 11 (2.47%) Grafana
5 10 (2.25%) SCCM
6 8 (1.80%) Puppet
7 7 (1.57%) TIBCO Hawk
8 5 (1.12%) Microsoft Intune
8 5 (1.12%) SCVMM
9 4 (0.90%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.67%) Control-M
10 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (0.67%) 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
1 156 (35.06%) Oracle
2 114 (25.62%) Microsoft
3 50 (11.24%) Databricks
4 38 (8.54%) Citrix
5 23 (5.17%) Informatica
6 15 (3.37%) VMware
7 14 (3.15%) IBM
7 14 (3.15%) SAP
8 13 (2.92%) UiPath
9 10 (2.25%) Google
10 9 (2.02%) ServiceNow
11 8 (1.80%) Automation Anywhere
11 8 (1.80%) Dynatrace
11 8 (1.80%) OpenAI
11 8 (1.80%) Sybase
12 7 (1.57%) BEA
12 7 (1.57%) TIBCO
13 6 (1.35%) AppDynamics
13 6 (1.35%) PagerDuty
14 5 (1.12%) Splunk