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

6 months to
12 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 107 75 43
Rank change year-on-year -32 -32 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 457 417 830
As % of all contract jobs in London 2.57% 3.34% 4.70%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.07% 14.99% 21.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 327 297 575
10th Percentile £363 £384 £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 £513
% change year-on-year -9.52% +2.44% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 £26.32 -
Median % change year-on-year -25.91% - -
75th Percentile £19.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £47.54 £63.75 £40.13
% change year-on-year -25.42% +58.87% -7.76%

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 3,248 2,782 3,849
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 18.29% 22.29% 21.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,209 1,964 2,837
10th Percentile £363 £380 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £556 £563
Median % change year-on-year -5.58% -1.16% -2.17%
75th Percentile £638 £713 £700
90th Percentile £750 £838 £825
England median daily rate £500 £525 £529
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.76% -3.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 30 36
10th Percentile £18.44 £22.27 £20.98
25th Percentile £26.52 £26.89 £25.93
Median hourly rate £45.50 £36.56 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +24.47% -26.89% -9.09%
75th Percentile £60.56 £57.50 £55.94
90th Percentile £79.50 £79.13 £69.75
England median hourly rate £46.65 £32.05 £40.25
% change year-on-year +45.55% -20.37% -31.30%

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 12 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
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 12 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 -40 53 £560 -3.45% 43
South London -10 5 £530 -26.90%
East London -6 3 £630 +44.00% 1
West London -29 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 (7.44%) SharePoint
2 20 (4.38%) IIS
3 13 (2.84%) Microsoft Exchange
4 10 (2.19%) Apache
4 10 (2.19%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.97%) Apache Spark
5 9 (1.97%) Appian
5 9 (1.97%) Confluence
6 7 (1.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
7 6 (1.31%) Camunda
7 6 (1.31%) WebSphere
8 2 (0.44%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.22%) CMS
9 1 (0.22%) ColdFusion
9 1 (0.22%) JBoss
9 1 (0.22%) Mule
9 1 (0.22%) OpenEdge
9 1 (0.22%) Oracle Application Server
9 1 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
Applications
1 26 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 12 (2.63%) MS Visio
3 6 (1.31%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 6 (1.31%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (1.09%) Dynamics AX
3 3 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
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%) BusinessWorks
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%) Findur
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle FAH
5 1 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP R/3
5 1 (0.22%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 226 (49.45%) Azure
2 95 (20.79%) AWS
3 86 (18.82%) Power Platform
4 79 (17.29%) Azure DevOps
5 65 (14.22%) Azure Data Factory
6 49 (10.72%) GitHub
7 43 (9.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 25 (5.47%) GCP
8 25 (5.47%) Microsoft 365
8 25 (5.47%) Power Automate
9 22 (4.81%) GitHub Actions
10 21 (4.60%) Amazon S3
10 21 (4.60%) Serverless
11 17 (3.72%) SaaS
12 16 (3.50%) Amazon EC2
13 14 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
14 13 (2.84%) AWS Lambda
14 13 (2.84%) IaaS
14 13 (2.84%) PaaS
14 13 (2.84%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 14 (3.06%) DNS
2 11 (2.41%) Firewall
2 11 (2.41%) Internet
3 9 (1.97%) DHCP
4 8 (1.75%) VPN
5 7 (1.53%) SAN
6 6 (1.31%) NetScaler
6 6 (1.31%) VLAN
6 6 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
7 4 (0.88%) FTP
8 3 (0.66%) TCP/IP
9 1 (0.22%) Kerberos
9 1 (0.22%) MQTT
9 1 (0.22%) Multicast
9 1 (0.22%) Remote Desktop
9 1 (0.22%) Software-Defined Networking
9 1 (0.22%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (14.44%) Power BI
2 65 (14.22%) PostgreSQL
3 63 (13.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 62 (13.57%) Data Warehouse
5 49 (10.72%) Relational Database
6 43 (9.41%) Data Lake
6 43 (9.41%) Oracle Database
7 33 (7.22%) Azure SQL Database
8 30 (6.56%) MongoDB
9 24 (5.25%) NoSQL
10 20 (4.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 19 (4.16%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 17 (3.72%) Delta Lake
13 15 (3.28%) Metadata
14 13 (2.84%) BigQuery
15 12 (2.63%) Redis
16 10 (2.19%) DataStage
16 10 (2.19%) MySQL
17 9 (1.97%) Star Schema
17 9 (1.97%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 38 (8.32%) Git
2 31 (6.78%) JIRA
3 17 (3.72%) TeamCity
4 16 (3.50%) Jenkins
4 16 (3.50%) Visual Studio
5 9 (1.97%) GitLab
6 8 (1.75%) ERwin
6 8 (1.75%) MLflow
6 8 (1.75%) Octopus Deploy
7 7 (1.53%) Chocolatey
7 7 (1.53%) Cucumber
7 7 (1.53%) MSTest
7 7 (1.53%) Team Foundation Server
8 6 (1.31%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 5 (1.09%) JUnit
9 5 (1.09%) Mocha
9 5 (1.09%) Mockito
9 5 (1.09%) tSQLt
10 4 (0.88%) NUnit
10 4 (0.88%) SpecFlow
General
1 159 (34.79%) Finance
2 123 (26.91%) Social Skills
3 86 (18.82%) Banking
4 72 (15.75%) Analytical Skills
5 24 (5.25%) Front Office
6 23 (5.03%) Public Sector
7 20 (4.38%) Investment Banking
8 13 (2.84%) Documentation Skills
9 12 (2.63%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 9 (1.97%) Financial Institution
11 8 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
12 5 (1.09%) Retail
13 4 (0.88%) Legal
13 4 (0.88%) Telecoms
14 3 (0.66%) General Ledger
14 3 (0.66%) Local Government
15 2 (0.44%) Back Office
15 2 (0.44%) Corporate Banking
15 2 (0.44%) Japanese Language
15 2 (0.44%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 154 (33.70%) Developer
2 87 (19.04%) Senior
3 84 (18.38%) Data Engineer
4 68 (14.88%) C# Developer
5 37 (8.10%) .NET Developer
6 32 (7.00%) Architect
7 31 (6.78%) DBA
7 31 (6.78%) Senior Data Engineer
8 25 (5.47%) Senior Developer
9 24 (5.25%) SQL DBA
10 23 (5.03%) Lead
11 20 (4.38%) C# .NET Developer
12 19 (4.16%) Azure Engineer
13 18 (3.94%) Software Engineer
14 17 (3.72%) Full-Stack Developer
15 16 (3.50%) Integration Engineer
16 14 (3.06%) Consultant
17 13 (2.84%) Analyst
17 13 (2.84%) SQL Developer
18 11 (2.41%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 129 (28.23%) .NET
2 60 (13.13%) .NET Framework
3 53 (11.60%) REST
4 45 (9.85%) React
5 40 (8.75%) HTML
6 38 (8.32%) AngularJS
6 38 (8.32%) CSS
7 37 (8.10%) RESTful
8 31 (6.78%) Kafka
9 27 (5.91%) .NET Core
10 25 (5.47%) OAuth
11 22 (4.81%) ASP.NET
12 19 (4.16%) XML
13 18 (3.94%) Web Services
14 14 (3.06%) Spring Boot
14 14 (3.06%) WinForms
14 14 (3.06%) WPF
15 13 (2.84%) ASP.NET Web API
15 13 (2.84%) SOAP
15 13 (2.84%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 35 (7.66%) Legacy Systems
2 28 (6.13%) Cloud Native
3 16 (3.50%) Data Structures
3 16 (3.50%) Replication
4 14 (3.06%) Self-Motivation
5 13 (2.84%) Low-Code
6 10 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (2.19%) Enterprise Software
6 10 (2.19%) Greenfield Project
7 9 (1.97%) Derivative
7 9 (1.97%) Fixed Income
7 9 (1.97%) Onboarding
7 9 (1.97%) Reinsurance
8 7 (1.53%) Clustering
8 7 (1.53%) Cyber Threat
8 7 (1.53%) Management Information System
9 6 (1.31%) Algorithms
10 5 (1.09%) Data Fabric
10 5 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 5 (1.09%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 88 (19.26%) Windows
2 36 (7.88%) Windows Server
3 34 (7.44%) Linux
4 9 (1.97%) 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%) Windows Server 2012
8 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 1 (0.22%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 130 (28.45%) DevOps
2 128 (28.01%) CI/CD
3 104 (22.76%) ETL
4 98 (21.44%) Agile
5 96 (21.01%) Business Intelligence
6 93 (20.35%) Data Modelling
7 92 (20.13%) Problem-Solving
8 73 (15.97%) Analytics
9 64 (14.00%) AI
10 63 (13.79%) Migration
11 61 (13.35%) Data Pipeline
11 61 (13.35%) Disaster Recovery
12 60 (13.13%) Data Engineering
13 59 (12.91%) Performance Tuning
14 58 (12.69%) Test Automation
15 55 (12.04%) Data Analysis
16 45 (9.85%) Data Integration
17 42 (9.19%) Change Management
18 41 (8.97%) Microservices
19 39 (8.53%) Continuous Improvement
Programming Languages
1 300 (65.65%) SQL
2 148 (32.39%) C#
3 126 (27.57%) Python
4 92 (20.13%) T-SQL
5 59 (12.91%) PL/SQL
6 53 (11.60%) JavaScript
7 45 (9.85%) Java
8 37 (8.10%) PowerShell
9 31 (6.78%) TypeScript
10 13 (2.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 13 (2.84%) VB
11 11 (2.41%) VBA
12 9 (1.97%) Bicep
13 7 (1.53%) Bash
14 6 (1.31%) Scala
15 5 (1.09%) Shell Script
16 4 (0.88%) R
17 3 (0.66%) XPath
18 2 (0.44%) C
19 1 (0.22%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 64 (14.00%) Security Cleared
2 49 (10.72%) SC Cleared
3 44 (9.63%) Degree
4 18 (3.94%) Computer Science Degree
5 17 (3.72%) Microsoft Certification
6 12 (2.63%) Azure Certification
7 8 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 6 (1.31%) DV Cleared
9 5 (1.09%) CCA
9 5 (1.09%) Citrix Certification
9 5 (1.09%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.88%) MCITP
10 4 (0.88%) MCTS
11 2 (0.44%) Cisco Certification
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%) Postgraduate
11 2 (0.44%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (14.88%) Data Quality
2 63 (13.79%) QA
3 10 (2.19%) SLA
4 9 (1.97%) GDPR
5 5 (1.09%) Accessibility
6 3 (0.66%) IFRS
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%) IFRS 17
7 2 (0.44%) MiFID
7 2 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 2 (0.44%) WCAG
8 1 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 57 (12.47%) Docker
2 23 (5.03%) Active Directory
3 7 (1.53%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (1.09%) Hyper-V
4 5 (1.09%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (1.09%) XenApp
4 5 (1.09%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.66%) GridGain
7 2 (0.44%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.22%) NFS
8 1 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
8 1 (0.22%) RACF
8 1 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.22%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 68 (14.88%) Kubernetes
2 40 (8.75%) Terraform
3 12 (2.63%) SCCM
4 9 (1.97%) Ansible
5 7 (1.53%) Microsoft Intune
6 5 (1.09%) SCVMM
7 4 (0.88%) Grafana
8 3 (0.66%) Control-M
8 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Clustering
8 3 (0.66%) Progress Chef
8 3 (0.66%) Puppet
9 2 (0.44%) TIBCO Hawk
10 1 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
10 1 (0.22%) Packer
10 1 (0.22%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 151 (33.04%) Oracle
2 117 (25.60%) Microsoft
3 55 (12.04%) Databricks
4 42 (9.19%) Citrix
5 24 (5.25%) Informatica
6 17 (3.72%) VMware
7 15 (3.28%) SAP
8 11 (2.41%) Dynatrace
8 11 (2.41%) UiPath
9 10 (2.19%) OpenAI
9 10 (2.19%) ServiceNow
9 10 (2.19%) Sybase
10 9 (1.97%) IBM
11 8 (1.75%) Automation Anywhere
12 7 (1.53%) AppDynamics
12 7 (1.53%) Google
12 7 (1.53%) Tenable
13 5 (1.09%) Alteryx
13 5 (1.09%) OutSystems
14 4 (0.88%) Workday