SQL Contract Job Trends in London

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > London

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in London requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,064 1,976 2,415
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.39% 14.11% 13.27%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.61% 36.66% 37.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,393 1,368 1,788
10th Percentile £363 £363 £387
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £688
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 22 25
10th Percentile £18.25 £36.00 £29.75
25th Percentile £26.50 £40.75 £36.25
Median hourly rate £40.49 £50.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.02% +11.11% -18.18%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.25 £54.13
90th Percentile £64.35 £78.50 £64.52
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +20.69% -4.40%

All Programming Languages
London

SQL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in London.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 5,346 5,390 6,425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 37.27% 38.48% 35.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,597 3,577 4,851
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £699 £700
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 35 64
10th Percentile £25.17 £35.00 £26.44
25th Percentile £35.25 £39.54 £36.70
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +3.96% -12.17%
75th Percentile £66.50 £68.00 £63.94
90th Percentile £78.75 £97.50 £72.35
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.18
% change year-on-year +4.00% +0.52% -4.34%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in London

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in London.

SQL job vacancy trend in London

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in London

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in London

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in London over the 6 months to 18 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in London

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in London

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in London citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in London

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in London over the 6 months to 18 January 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in London

SQL
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 within the London region over the 6 months to 18 January 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 -3 274 £525 -8.70% 192
South London +19 47 £492 -0.35% 35
West London -6 33 £525 +5.00% 36
East London -2 19 £450 +12.50% 26
North London +5 1 - - 3
SQL
England

SQL
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
1 122 (5.91%) Apache Spark
2 90 (4.36%) Apache Airflow
3 74 (3.59%) Confluence
4 47 (2.28%) Apache
5 43 (2.08%) SharePoint
6 16 (0.78%) IIS
7 15 (0.73%) nginx
8 13 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.58%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.58%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.58%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 11 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 10 (0.48%) Mendix
12 9 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
13 7 (0.34%) MQSeries
13 7 (0.34%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
15 5 (0.24%) Tomcat
16 4 (0.19%) Mule
16 4 (0.19%) WebSphere
Applications
1 146 (7.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.50%) MS Visio
4 25 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.44%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.24%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.15%) Notion
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 23 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 22 (1.07%) Oracle General Ledger
2 22 (1.07%) Oracle Payables
3 19 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
4 16 (0.78%) Oracle Assets
5 15 (0.73%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.68%) Oracle Financials
7 13 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.63%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.58%) Endur
9 11 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
10 9 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.44%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 9 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
11 8 (0.39%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 8 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
11 8 (0.39%) SAP HR
12 7 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
12 7 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 6 (0.29%) Markit EDM
Cloud Services
1 668 (32.36%) Azure
2 493 (23.89%) AWS
3 390 (18.90%) Power Platform
4 185 (8.96%) Azure DevOps
5 176 (8.53%) GitHub
6 169 (8.19%) Snowflake
7 162 (7.85%) Azure Data Factory
8 149 (7.22%) GCP
9 146 (7.07%) Serverless
10 130 (6.30%) Amazon S3
11 111 (5.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 86 (4.17%) GitHub Actions
13 84 (4.07%) dbt
14 78 (3.78%) AWS Lambda
15 59 (2.86%) SaaS
16 57 (2.76%) Azure Functions
17 44 (2.13%) Azure Logic Apps
17 44 (2.13%) Power Automate
18 41 (1.99%) Microsoft 365
19 39 (1.89%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.36%) Firewall
2 21 (1.02%) HTTP
3 19 (0.92%) DNS
4 13 (0.63%) SSH
5 11 (0.53%) Internet
5 11 (0.53%) Network Security
6 10 (0.48%) SMTP
7 9 (0.44%) FTP
7 9 (0.44%) IMAP
7 9 (0.44%) OpenLDAP
8 8 (0.39%) SMS
8 8 (0.39%) VPN
9 7 (0.34%) Multicast
9 7 (0.34%) Skype
10 6 (0.29%) Unified Communications
11 5 (0.24%) LAN
11 5 (0.24%) WAN
12 4 (0.19%) 2G
12 4 (0.19%) 4G
12 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 359 (17.39%) Power BI
2 251 (12.16%) Data Warehouse
3 240 (11.63%) SQL Server
4 152 (7.36%) NoSQL
4 152 (7.36%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (7.27%) Relational Database
6 145 (7.03%) Tableau
7 136 (6.59%) Data Lake
8 99 (4.80%) Azure SQL Database
8 99 (4.80%) Metadata
9 97 (4.70%) Oracle Database
10 78 (3.78%) Big Data
11 76 (3.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 64 (3.10%) BigQuery
13 58 (2.81%) Amazon Redshift
14 49 (2.37%) MongoDB
15 48 (2.33%) Delta Lake
16 44 (2.13%) Amazon Athena
17 43 (2.08%) Amazon RDS
18 41 (1.99%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 212 (10.27%) Git
2 164 (7.95%) JIRA
3 83 (4.02%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.34%) GitLab
5 37 (1.79%) JUnit
6 25 (1.21%) Selenium
7 21 (1.02%) SpecFlow
8 20 (0.97%) ERwin
9 19 (0.92%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.82%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.82%) MLflow
10 17 (0.82%) Postman
11 16 (0.78%) Cucumber
12 13 (0.63%) Maven
12 13 (0.63%) TeamCity
12 13 (0.63%) Visual Studio
13 12 (0.58%) Mockito
13 12 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
14 11 (0.53%) ER Studio
14 11 (0.53%) SonarQube
General
1 699 (33.87%) Finance
2 619 (29.99%) Social Skills
3 371 (17.97%) Analytical Skills
4 287 (13.91%) Banking
5 123 (5.96%) Public Sector
6 113 (5.47%) Investment Banking
7 94 (4.55%) Front Office
8 59 (2.86%) Marketing
9 50 (2.42%) Documentation Skills
10 43 (2.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 42 (2.03%) Financial Institution
12 38 (1.84%) Retail
13 23 (1.11%) Back Office
13 23 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.07%) Legal
15 21 (1.02%) General Ledger
16 16 (0.78%) Publishing
17 15 (0.73%) Law
17 15 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
18 13 (0.63%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 513 (24.85%) Developer
2 360 (17.44%) Analyst
3 341 (16.52%) Data Engineer
4 285 (13.81%) Senior
5 150 (7.27%) Business Analyst
6 140 (6.78%) Data Analyst
7 136 (6.59%) Lead
8 97 (4.70%) Architect
9 81 (3.92%) Consultant
10 72 (3.49%) Senior Developer
11 71 (3.44%) Java Developer
12 69 (3.34%) Azure Engineer
13 63 (3.05%) C# Developer
14 62 (3.00%) Software Engineer
15 58 (2.81%) Python Developer
16 57 (2.76%) Senior Data Engineer
17 52 (2.52%) Azure Data Engineer
18 49 (2.37%) Senior Analyst
19 48 (2.33%) Data Architect
20 44 (2.13%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (9.35%) .NET
2 172 (8.33%) Kafka
3 143 (6.93%) PySpark
4 139 (6.73%) REST
5 93 (4.51%) RESTful
6 89 (4.31%) React
7 78 (3.78%) HTML
8 71 (3.44%) XML
9 69 (3.34%) CSS
10 68 (3.29%) Spring
11 67 (3.25%) Node.js
12 57 (2.76%) Pandas
13 55 (2.66%) JSON
14 53 (2.57%) AngularJS
15 50 (2.42%) .NET Framework
15 50 (2.42%) Spring Boot
16 46 (2.23%) Middleware
17 43 (2.08%) NumPy
18 39 (1.89%) SOAP
18 39 (1.89%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 117 (5.67%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.44%) Data Structures
3 58 (2.81%) Data Protection Act
3 58 (2.81%) Derivative
4 54 (2.62%) Product Ownership
5 53 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
6 52 (2.52%) Analytical Mindset
6 52 (2.52%) Equities
7 50 (2.42%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 49 (2.37%) Management Information System
9 47 (2.28%) Fixed Income
10 40 (1.94%) Market Risk
11 38 (1.84%) Algorithms
11 38 (1.84%) Onboarding
12 35 (1.70%) Distributed Systems
13 26 (1.26%) Hedge funds
14 25 (1.21%) Replication
14 25 (1.21%) Self-Motivation
15 22 (1.07%) Credit Risk
15 22 (1.07%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 191 (9.25%) Linux
2 122 (5.91%) Windows
3 119 (5.77%) Unix
4 27 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.68%) VMS
6 11 (0.53%) Android
6 11 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.44%) Amazon Linux
9 7 (0.34%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) AIX
10 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 2 (0.097%) zOS
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 566 (27.42%) Agile
2 510 (24.71%) Analytics
3 474 (22.97%) Data Modelling
4 461 (22.34%) Business Intelligence
4 461 (22.34%) Problem-Solving
5 450 (21.80%) CI/CD
6 422 (20.45%) ETL
7 405 (19.62%) DevOps
8 325 (15.75%) Data Pipeline
9 299 (14.49%) Data Engineering
10 256 (12.40%) Data Governance
11 244 (11.82%) Migration
12 232 (11.24%) AI
13 217 (10.51%) Data Analysis
14 212 (10.27%) Validation
15 199 (9.64%) Visualisation
16 197 (9.54%) Data Science
17 187 (9.06%) Decision-Making
18 178 (8.62%) Stakeholder Management
19 165 (7.99%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 858 (41.57%) Python
2 282 (13.66%) Java
3 265 (12.84%) C#
4 167 (8.09%) JavaScript
5 132 (6.40%) PL/SQL
6 95 (4.60%) PowerShell
7 91 (4.41%) TypeScript
8 72 (3.49%) C++
9 63 (3.05%) T-SQL
10 60 (2.91%) Scala
11 59 (2.86%) R
12 50 (2.42%) Shell Script
13 49 (2.37%) VBA
14 46 (2.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 42 (2.03%) VB
16 34 (1.65%) Bash
17 29 (1.41%) Bicep
18 22 (1.07%) Perl
19 19 (0.92%) Groovy
19 19 (0.92%) Korn
Qualifications
1 272 (13.18%) Security Cleared
2 215 (10.42%) SC Cleared
3 185 (8.96%) Degree
4 65 (3.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 50 (2.42%) Azure Certification
6 34 (1.65%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.45%) Master's Degree
8 25 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 23 (1.11%) BPSS Clearance
10 19 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.87%) CBAP
12 16 (0.78%) DV Cleared
13 12 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.58%) PMI Certification
14 11 (0.53%) CFA
15 9 (0.44%) PMP
16 8 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
17 6 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.29%) ISEB
17 6 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 338 (16.38%) Data Quality
2 156 (7.56%) QA
3 87 (4.22%) GDPR
4 32 (1.55%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.92%) MiFID
5 19 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (0.58%) EMIR
6 12 (0.58%) IFRS
7 10 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
8 9 (0.44%) NIST
8 9 (0.44%) PCI DSS
9 8 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
9 8 (0.39%) ISO 8583
9 8 (0.39%) SLA
10 7 (0.34%) Basel III
10 7 (0.34%) GAAP
10 7 (0.34%) IFRS 9
11 5 (0.24%) PMO
11 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 216 (10.47%) Docker
2 50 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.44%) DFS Replication
3 9 (0.44%) Dovecot
3 9 (0.44%) Postfix
3 9 (0.44%) Squid
3 9 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.39%) HDFS
5 7 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.34%) zsh
6 5 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
7 4 (0.19%) XenApp
7 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.097%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 176 (8.53%) Kubernetes
2 162 (7.85%) Terraform
3 27 (1.31%) Grafana
4 24 (1.16%) Ansible
5 19 (0.92%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.68%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.68%) SCOM
7 12 (0.58%) Control-M
7 12 (0.58%) SCCM
8 10 (0.48%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.44%) Kibana
9 9 (0.44%) Nessus
9 9 (0.44%) Proxmox
10 8 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.29%) logstash
11 6 (0.29%) Puppet
12 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
13 4 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 306 (14.83%) Oracle
2 297 (14.39%) Microsoft
3 265 (12.84%) Databricks
4 64 (3.10%) Google
5 55 (2.66%) SAP
6 50 (2.42%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.84%) ServiceNow
8 35 (1.70%) Citrix
9 34 (1.65%) Splunk
10 33 (1.60%) Informatica
11 32 (1.55%) IBM
12 30 (1.45%) OpenAI
13 27 (1.31%) Bloomberg
14 23 (1.11%) MuleSoft
15 18 (0.87%) Murex
15 18 (0.87%) Sybase
16 16 (0.78%) Palantir
17 15 (0.73%) Adobe
18 14 (0.68%) Foundry
19 13 (0.63%) HP