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

6 months to
21 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 7
Rank change year-on-year -1 0 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,096 1,968 2,398
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.38% 14.18% 13.18%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.74% 36.72% 37.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,421 1,368 1,777
10th Percentile £363 £363 £388
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 £780
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 23 25
10th Percentile £18.25 £36.25 £29.47
25th Percentile £26.50 £40.91 £36.25
Median hourly rate £40.49 £52.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.88% +16.67% -20.35%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.88 £54.13
90th Percentile £64.35 £91.00 £64.52
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +20.69% -12.12%

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 5,410 5,360 6,405
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 37.11% 38.61% 35.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,648 3,562 4,849
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £459 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £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 62 36 67
10th Percentile £25.28 £35.00 £26.62
25th Percentile £35.50 £40.06 £36.96
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +3.96% -12.17%
75th Percentile £66.50 £73.25 £63.13
90th Percentile £78.75 £97.50 £72.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% +3.31% -6.92%

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 21 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 21 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 21 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 -3 277 £525 -8.70% 178
South London +16 47 £492 -0.35% 30
West London -5 35 £575 +15.00% 36
East London -2 19 £450 +12.50% 21
North London +5 1 - - 4
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
1 129 (6.15%) Apache Spark
2 90 (4.29%) Apache Airflow
3 74 (3.53%) Confluence
4 53 (2.53%) Apache
5 42 (2.00%) SharePoint
6 17 (0.81%) IIS
7 15 (0.72%) nginx
8 13 (0.62%) SAS
9 12 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 9 (0.43%) Mendix
11 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
12 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
14 5 (0.24%) Appian
14 5 (0.24%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.19%) Mule
Applications
1 147 (7.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.67%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (1.53%) MS Visio
4 25 (1.19%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.43%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.24%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 23 (1.10%) Aladdin
2 22 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
2 22 (1.05%) Oracle Payables
3 19 (0.91%) Oracle EBS
4 16 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
5 15 (0.72%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.67%) Endur
6 14 (0.67%) Oracle Financials
7 13 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.62%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
9 10 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
10 9 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
10 9 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
11 8 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
11 8 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
11 8 (0.38%) SAP HR
12 7 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
12 7 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
13 6 (0.29%) Markit EDM
Cloud Services
1 679 (32.40%) Azure
2 501 (23.90%) AWS
3 394 (18.80%) Power Platform
4 192 (9.16%) Azure DevOps
5 180 (8.59%) GitHub
6 169 (8.06%) Snowflake
7 163 (7.78%) Azure Data Factory
8 151 (7.20%) GCP
9 148 (7.06%) Serverless
10 132 (6.30%) Amazon S3
11 112 (5.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 89 (4.25%) GitHub Actions
13 84 (4.01%) dbt
14 79 (3.77%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.91%) SaaS
16 57 (2.72%) Azure Functions
17 44 (2.10%) Power Automate
18 43 (2.05%) Azure Logic Apps
19 41 (1.96%) Microsoft 365
20 40 (1.91%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.34%) Firewall
2 21 (1.00%) HTTP
3 19 (0.91%) DNS
4 13 (0.62%) SSH
5 12 (0.57%) Internet
6 11 (0.52%) Network Security
7 10 (0.48%) SMTP
8 9 (0.43%) FTP
8 9 (0.43%) IMAP
8 9 (0.43%) OpenLDAP
9 8 (0.38%) SMS
9 8 (0.38%) VPN
10 7 (0.33%) Multicast
10 7 (0.33%) Skype
11 6 (0.29%) Unified Communications
12 5 (0.24%) LAN
12 5 (0.24%) WAN
13 4 (0.19%) 2G
13 4 (0.19%) 4G
13 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 363 (17.32%) Power BI
2 252 (12.02%) Data Warehouse
3 247 (11.78%) SQL Server
4 155 (7.40%) PostgreSQL
5 152 (7.25%) NoSQL
6 150 (7.16%) Relational Database
7 148 (7.06%) Tableau
8 139 (6.63%) Data Lake
9 103 (4.91%) Metadata
10 99 (4.72%) Azure SQL Database
11 98 (4.68%) Oracle Database
12 79 (3.77%) Big Data
13 77 (3.67%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 65 (3.10%) BigQuery
15 58 (2.77%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (2.39%) MongoDB
17 48 (2.29%) Delta Lake
18 47 (2.24%) Amazon Athena
19 43 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
20 42 (2.00%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 220 (10.50%) Git
2 164 (7.82%) JIRA
3 85 (4.06%) Jenkins
4 70 (3.34%) GitLab
5 38 (1.81%) JUnit
6 26 (1.24%) Selenium
7 21 (1.00%) ERwin
7 21 (1.00%) SpecFlow
8 20 (0.95%) Cypress.io
9 18 (0.86%) MLflow
9 18 (0.86%) Postman
10 17 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.81%) Cucumber
11 15 (0.72%) Maven
12 14 (0.67%) Mockito
12 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
13 13 (0.62%) TeamCity
14 12 (0.57%) Oracle Forms
15 11 (0.52%) Gradle
15 11 (0.52%) SonarQube
General
1 704 (33.59%) Finance
2 622 (29.68%) Social Skills
3 379 (18.08%) Analytical Skills
4 293 (13.98%) Banking
5 124 (5.92%) Public Sector
6 114 (5.44%) Investment Banking
7 95 (4.53%) Front Office
8 59 (2.81%) Marketing
9 51 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
10 43 (2.05%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 42 (2.00%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.86%) Retail
13 23 (1.10%) Back Office
13 23 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.05%) General Ledger
14 22 (1.05%) Legal
15 16 (0.76%) Publishing
16 15 (0.72%) Law
17 14 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
18 13 (0.62%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 516 (24.62%) Developer
2 367 (17.51%) Analyst
3 345 (16.46%) Data Engineer
4 283 (13.50%) Senior
5 155 (7.40%) Business Analyst
6 141 (6.73%) Data Analyst
6 141 (6.73%) Lead
7 98 (4.68%) Architect
8 81 (3.86%) Consultant
9 72 (3.44%) Azure Engineer
10 69 (3.29%) Java Developer
10 69 (3.29%) Senior Developer
11 66 (3.15%) C# Developer
12 63 (3.01%) Software Engineer
13 59 (2.81%) Python Developer
14 57 (2.72%) Senior Data Engineer
15 52 (2.48%) Azure Data Engineer
16 51 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
17 48 (2.29%) Data Architect
18 46 (2.19%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 198 (9.45%) .NET
2 170 (8.11%) Kafka
3 145 (6.92%) PySpark
4 143 (6.82%) REST
5 96 (4.58%) RESTful
6 92 (4.39%) React
7 78 (3.72%) HTML
8 71 (3.39%) XML
9 70 (3.34%) Spring
10 68 (3.24%) CSS
11 67 (3.20%) Node.js
12 59 (2.81%) Pandas
13 54 (2.58%) JSON
14 53 (2.53%) AngularJS
14 53 (2.53%) Spring Boot
15 52 (2.48%) .NET Framework
16 49 (2.34%) Middleware
17 45 (2.15%) NumPy
18 39 (1.86%) YAML
19 38 (1.81%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 122 (5.82%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.39%) Data Structures
3 61 (2.91%) Derivative
4 60 (2.86%) Data Protection Act
5 54 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
5 54 (2.58%) Product Ownership
6 53 (2.53%) Equities
7 52 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
8 49 (2.34%) Fixed Income
8 49 (2.34%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
8 49 (2.34%) Management Information System
9 40 (1.91%) Market Risk
10 39 (1.86%) Algorithms
11 38 (1.81%) Onboarding
12 36 (1.72%) Distributed Systems
13 26 (1.24%) Hedge funds
14 25 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
15 24 (1.15%) Credit Risk
15 24 (1.15%) Replication
16 22 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 193 (9.21%) Linux
2 125 (5.96%) Windows
3 122 (5.82%) Unix
4 28 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.67%) VMS
6 11 (0.52%) Android
6 11 (0.52%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
9 7 (0.33%) Windows 10
10 5 (0.24%) AIX
10 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 2 (0.095%) zOS
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 569 (27.15%) Agile
2 519 (24.76%) Analytics
3 477 (22.76%) Data Modelling
4 471 (22.47%) Problem-Solving
5 466 (22.23%) Business Intelligence
6 461 (21.99%) CI/CD
7 427 (20.37%) ETL
8 414 (19.75%) DevOps
9 328 (15.65%) Data Pipeline
10 301 (14.36%) Data Engineering
11 261 (12.45%) Data Governance
12 249 (11.88%) Migration
13 240 (11.45%) AI
14 226 (10.78%) Data Analysis
15 213 (10.16%) Validation
16 203 (9.69%) Visualisation
17 202 (9.64%) Data Science
18 192 (9.16%) Decision-Making
19 181 (8.64%) Stakeholder Management
20 175 (8.35%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 873 (41.65%) Python
2 285 (13.60%) Java
3 268 (12.79%) C#
4 167 (7.97%) JavaScript
5 135 (6.44%) PL/SQL
6 98 (4.68%) PowerShell
7 91 (4.34%) TypeScript
8 72 (3.44%) C++
9 66 (3.15%) T-SQL
10 65 (3.10%) Scala
11 60 (2.86%) R
12 51 (2.43%) Shell Script
13 49 (2.34%) VBA
14 47 (2.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 43 (2.05%) VB
16 35 (1.67%) Bash
17 29 (1.38%) Bicep
18 22 (1.05%) Perl
19 19 (0.91%) Groovy
19 19 (0.91%) Korn
Qualifications
1 277 (13.22%) Security Cleared
2 220 (10.50%) SC Cleared
3 187 (8.92%) Degree
4 67 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.43%) Azure Certification
6 34 (1.62%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.43%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.29%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.24%) ISTQB
10 19 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.86%) CBAP
12 16 (0.76%) DV Cleared
13 12 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.57%) PMI Certification
14 11 (0.52%) CFA
15 9 (0.43%) PMP
16 8 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
17 6 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.29%) ISEB
17 6 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (16.27%) Data Quality
2 159 (7.59%) QA
3 88 (4.20%) GDPR
4 33 (1.57%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.91%) MiFID
5 19 (0.91%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (0.62%) IFRS
7 12 (0.57%) EMIR
8 10 (0.48%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 10 (0.48%) SLA
9 9 (0.43%) NIST
9 9 (0.43%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.38%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.38%) ISO 8583
11 7 (0.33%) Basel III
11 7 (0.33%) GAAP
11 7 (0.33%) IFRS 9
12 5 (0.24%) PMO
12 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 219 (10.45%) Docker
2 50 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 10 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
4 9 (0.43%) DFS Replication
4 9 (0.43%) Dovecot
4 9 (0.43%) Postfix
4 9 (0.43%) Squid
5 8 (0.38%) HDFS
6 7 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.33%) zsh
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
8 4 (0.19%) XenApp
8 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
9 2 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 179 (8.54%) Kubernetes
2 167 (7.97%) Terraform
3 28 (1.34%) Grafana
4 24 (1.15%) Ansible
5 20 (0.95%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.67%) SCOM
7 12 (0.57%) SCCM
8 11 (0.52%) Control-M
9 10 (0.48%) ITRS Geneos
10 9 (0.43%) Kibana
10 9 (0.43%) Nessus
10 9 (0.43%) Proxmox
11 8 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.29%) logstash
12 6 (0.29%) Puppet
13 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
14 4 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 317 (15.12%) Oracle
2 297 (14.17%) Microsoft
3 268 (12.79%) Databricks
4 66 (3.15%) Google
5 56 (2.67%) SAP
6 50 (2.39%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.81%) ServiceNow
8 37 (1.77%) Citrix
9 35 (1.67%) IBM
9 35 (1.67%) Splunk
10 34 (1.62%) Informatica
11 31 (1.48%) OpenAI
12 28 (1.34%) Bloomberg
13 23 (1.10%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.81%) Murex
14 17 (0.81%) Palantir
14 17 (0.81%) Sybase
15 15 (0.72%) Adobe
15 15 (0.72%) Foundry
16 14 (0.67%) UiPath