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

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,287 1,849 2,391
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.96% 14.36% 13.12%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.28% 36.77% 37.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,523 1,299 1,812
10th Percentile £363 £363 £400
25th Percentile £415 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £628 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £799 £788
England median daily rate £500 £518 £550
% change year-on-year -3.38% -5.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 22 20
10th Percentile £18.25 £29.66 £35.23
25th Percentile £28.69 £38.31 £41.25
Median hourly rate £41.62 £44.75 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year -7.01% -4.28% -28.08%
75th Percentile £49.69 £58.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £60.20 £65.00 £62.03
England median hourly rate £45.00 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -3.23% +9.41% -16.26%

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 5,678 5,028 6,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 34.65% 39.05% 34.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,839 3,455 4,822
10th Percentile £363 £375 £388
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £700
90th Percentile £775 £825 £813
England median daily rate £505 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.33% -6.52%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 35 61
10th Percentile £18.91 £30.74 £25.79
25th Percentile £39.51 £38.18 £39.85
Median hourly rate £54.75 £45.00 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +21.67% -10.89% -12.17%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.38 £60.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £93.75 £70.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -6.80%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 +1 298 £550 - 262
West London +11 54 £603 +20.50% 34
South London +4 37 £500 +1.01% 11
East London 0 22 £463 +5.71% 25
North London - 1 £495 - 2
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
1 153 (6.69%) Apache Spark
2 114 (4.98%) Apache Airflow
3 77 (3.37%) Apache
4 69 (3.02%) Confluence
5 40 (1.75%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.87%) IIS
7 16 (0.70%) Palantir Foundry
8 14 (0.61%) Jupyter
8 14 (0.61%) SAS
9 13 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
10 12 (0.52%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.44%) Mendix
12 9 (0.39%) Appian
12 9 (0.39%) nginx
13 7 (0.31%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.26%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.22%) Camunda
16 4 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 4 (0.17%) Anypoint
16 4 (0.17%) WebLogic
Applications
1 161 (7.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (1.66%) MS Visio
3 36 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
4 35 (1.53%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.48%) Microsoft Project
5 11 (0.48%) Spreadsheet
6 5 (0.22%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.13%) Notion
7 3 (0.13%) Trello
8 1 (0.044%) Mingle
8 1 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 28 (1.22%) Aladdin
2 14 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
2 14 (0.61%) Oracle Payables
3 13 (0.57%) NetSuite
4 12 (0.52%) Oracle Receivables
5 11 (0.48%) Dynamics CRM
5 11 (0.48%) Oracle EBS
6 10 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
7 9 (0.39%) Endur
8 8 (0.35%) Oracle Assets
8 8 (0.35%) SAP HR
9 7 (0.31%) Fidessa
9 7 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
9 7 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 6 (0.26%) BASE24
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle EBS R12
10 6 (0.26%) Oracle Financials
11 5 (0.22%) Actimize
11 5 (0.22%) Findur
11 5 (0.22%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 843 (36.86%) Azure
2 579 (25.32%) AWS
3 453 (19.81%) Power Platform
4 252 (11.02%) Azure DevOps
5 224 (9.79%) GitHub
6 209 (9.14%) Azure Data Factory
7 194 (8.48%) Snowflake
8 183 (8.00%) Serverless
9 182 (7.96%) GCP
10 146 (6.38%) Amazon S3
10 146 (6.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 109 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
12 105 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
12 105 (4.59%) dbt
13 58 (2.54%) Azure Functions
13 58 (2.54%) SaaS
14 56 (2.45%) AWS CloudFormation
15 48 (2.10%) Power Automate
16 45 (1.97%) Azure Monitor
16 45 (1.97%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.01%) Firewall
2 17 (0.74%) DNS
2 17 (0.74%) Network Security
3 12 (0.52%) Internet
4 11 (0.48%) HTTP
5 9 (0.39%) VPN
6 8 (0.35%) SMS
7 7 (0.31%) WAN
8 6 (0.26%) Multicast
9 5 (0.22%) 4G
9 5 (0.22%) 5G
9 5 (0.22%) LAN
9 5 (0.22%) NetScaler
10 4 (0.17%) 2G
10 4 (0.17%) FIX Connectivity
10 4 (0.17%) Radio Access Network
10 4 (0.17%) SAN
10 4 (0.17%) TCP/IP
11 3 (0.13%) DHCP
11 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 413 (18.06%) Power BI
2 304 (13.29%) Data Warehouse
3 292 (12.77%) SQL Server
4 176 (7.70%) Data Lake
5 171 (7.48%) Tableau
6 160 (7.00%) NoSQL
7 155 (6.78%) PostgreSQL
8 154 (6.73%) Relational Database
9 132 (5.77%) Metadata
10 129 (5.64%) Azure SQL Database
11 90 (3.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 89 (3.89%) Oracle Database
13 84 (3.67%) BigQuery
14 76 (3.32%) Amazon Redshift
15 74 (3.24%) Big Data
16 72 (3.15%) Delta Lake
17 59 (2.58%) Amazon Athena
18 52 (2.27%) Snowflake Schema
19 44 (1.92%) MongoDB
20 43 (1.88%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 245 (10.71%) Git
2 158 (6.91%) JIRA
3 95 (4.15%) Jenkins
4 79 (3.45%) GitLab
5 40 (1.75%) JUnit
6 32 (1.40%) MLflow
7 28 (1.22%) Selenium
8 22 (0.96%) SpecFlow
9 20 (0.87%) Cucumber
10 19 (0.83%) ERwin
10 19 (0.83%) Mockito
11 18 (0.79%) Cypress.io
12 15 (0.66%) Postman
13 14 (0.61%) Bitbucket
13 14 (0.61%) Maven
13 14 (0.61%) Team Foundation Server
13 14 (0.61%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.57%) REST Assured
14 13 (0.57%) TeamCity
15 12 (0.52%) Gradle
General
1 762 (33.32%) Finance
2 641 (28.03%) Social Skills
3 433 (18.93%) Analytical Skills
4 303 (13.25%) Banking
5 146 (6.38%) Public Sector
6 104 (4.55%) Front Office
7 101 (4.42%) Investment Banking
8 61 (2.67%) Marketing
9 59 (2.58%) Documentation Skills
10 42 (1.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 41 (1.79%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.75%) Retail
13 29 (1.27%) Legal
13 29 (1.27%) Publishing
14 21 (0.92%) Telecoms
15 20 (0.87%) Organisational Skills
16 18 (0.79%) Back Office
16 18 (0.79%) Presentation Skills
17 17 (0.74%) General Ledger
17 17 (0.74%) Law
Job Titles
1 523 (22.87%) Developer
2 433 (18.93%) Data Engineer
3 363 (15.87%) Analyst
4 308 (13.47%) Senior
5 172 (7.52%) Lead
6 168 (7.35%) Business Analyst
7 144 (6.30%) Data Analyst
8 132 (5.77%) Architect
9 83 (3.63%) C# Developer
10 80 (3.50%) Consultant
11 79 (3.45%) Senior Developer
12 75 (3.28%) Azure Engineer
13 71 (3.10%) Java Developer
14 70 (3.06%) Senior Data Engineer
15 67 (2.93%) Python Developer
16 60 (2.62%) Software Engineer
17 59 (2.58%) Data Architect
17 59 (2.58%) Data Scientist
18 51 (2.23%) Senior Analyst
19 50 (2.19%) Azure Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (9.49%) .NET
2 196 (8.57%) Kafka
3 173 (7.56%) PySpark
4 155 (6.78%) REST
5 114 (4.98%) React
6 105 (4.59%) RESTful
7 92 (4.02%) Pandas
8 79 (3.45%) HTML
9 75 (3.28%) AngularJS
10 71 (3.10%) Spring
11 62 (2.71%) NumPy
11 62 (2.71%) XML
12 61 (2.67%) CSS
13 59 (2.58%) JSON
14 56 (2.45%) Spring Boot
15 54 (2.36%) scikit-learn
16 52 (2.27%) .NET Framework
17 50 (2.19%) Middleware
17 50 (2.19%) Node.js
18 47 (2.06%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 172 (7.52%) Cloud Native
2 82 (3.59%) Legacy Systems
3 81 (3.54%) Data Structures
4 70 (3.06%) Derivative
5 63 (2.75%) Equities
6 60 (2.62%) Product Ownership
7 59 (2.58%) Fixed Income
8 52 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
9 48 (2.10%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 46 (2.01%) Algorithms
11 45 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
12 44 (1.92%) Data Protection Act
13 41 (1.79%) Management Information System
14 35 (1.53%) Market Risk
15 34 (1.49%) Onboarding
15 34 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
16 27 (1.18%) Hedge funds
17 24 (1.05%) Credit Risk
18 22 (0.96%) AI Agents
19 21 (0.92%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 169 (7.39%) Linux
2 127 (5.55%) Windows
3 105 (4.59%) Unix
4 38 (1.66%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.52%) Windows Server 2016
6 9 (0.39%) Windows Server 2019
7 7 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.26%) Android
9 5 (0.22%) AIX
9 5 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) zOS
10 4 (0.17%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.17%) Solaris
10 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.087%) Ubuntu
11 2 (0.087%) VMS
12 1 (0.044%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 640 (27.98%) Analytics
2 615 (26.89%) Agile
3 593 (25.93%) CI/CD
4 582 (25.45%) Data Modelling
5 528 (23.09%) Business Intelligence
6 525 (22.96%) ETL
7 503 (21.99%) DevOps
8 471 (20.59%) Problem-Solving
9 410 (17.93%) Data Engineering
10 402 (17.58%) Data Pipeline
11 343 (15.00%) AI
12 309 (13.51%) Data Governance
13 288 (12.59%) Migration
14 249 (10.89%) Validation
15 243 (10.63%) Data Analysis
16 242 (10.58%) Data Science
17 236 (10.32%) Machine Learning
18 228 (9.97%) Decision-Making
19 219 (9.58%) Visualisation
20 207 (9.05%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 974 (42.59%) Python
2 299 (13.07%) C#
3 282 (12.33%) Java
4 163 (7.13%) JavaScript
5 123 (5.38%) PL/SQL
6 105 (4.59%) TypeScript
7 86 (3.76%) T-SQL
8 78 (3.41%) Scala
9 75 (3.28%) PowerShell
10 69 (3.02%) R
11 63 (2.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 57 (2.49%) C++
12 57 (2.49%) Shell Script
13 38 (1.66%) VBA
14 32 (1.40%) VB
15 31 (1.36%) Bash
16 30 (1.31%) Bicep
17 19 (0.83%) Perl
18 15 (0.66%) C
18 15 (0.66%) Korn
Qualifications
1 356 (15.57%) Security Cleared
2 289 (12.64%) SC Cleared
3 183 (8.00%) Degree
4 66 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
5 48 (2.10%) Azure Certification
6 41 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
7 34 (1.49%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.18%) ISTQB
9 25 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 22 (0.96%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (0.74%) DV Cleared
12 15 (0.66%) CBAP
13 13 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 11 (0.48%) PhD
15 9 (0.39%) PMI Certification
15 9 (0.39%) PMP
16 8 (0.35%) CFA
17 6 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.26%) ISEB
18 5 (0.22%) CCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 433 (18.93%) Data Quality
2 185 (8.09%) QA
3 104 (4.55%) GDPR
4 37 (1.62%) Accessibility
5 20 (0.87%) MiFID
6 18 (0.79%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 16 (0.70%) PMO
8 13 (0.57%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.52%) IFRS
9 12 (0.52%) NIST
10 11 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
10 11 (0.48%) EMIR
10 11 (0.48%) SLA
11 10 (0.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 8583
12 8 (0.35%) Solvency II
13 7 (0.31%) GAAP
13 7 (0.31%) NCSC
14 6 (0.26%) Basel III
14 6 (0.26%) HIPAA
System Software
1 240 (10.49%) Docker
2 53 (2.32%) Active Directory
3 15 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.22%) HDFS
4 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
4 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.22%) XenApp
4 5 (0.22%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.17%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.087%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.087%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.087%) zsh
8 1 (0.044%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 210 (9.18%) Terraform
2 205 (8.96%) Kubernetes
3 26 (1.14%) Grafana
4 21 (0.92%) Ansible
5 15 (0.66%) Prometheus
6 10 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
7 9 (0.39%) Control-M
7 9 (0.39%) SCCM
8 7 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 6 (0.26%) ITRS Geneos
9 6 (0.26%) Kibana
10 5 (0.22%) Kubeflow
10 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
10 5 (0.22%) Thomson Reuters DACS
11 4 (0.17%) Microsoft Intune
12 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.13%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
12 3 (0.13%) Progress Chef
12 3 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 345 (15.09%) Microsoft
2 323 (14.12%) Databricks
3 304 (13.29%) Oracle
4 83 (3.63%) Google
5 61 (2.67%) SAP
6 51 (2.23%) Informatica
7 47 (2.06%) ServiceNow
8 44 (1.92%) Citrix
9 42 (1.84%) Salesforce
10 37 (1.62%) IBM
10 37 (1.62%) OpenAI
11 35 (1.53%) Bloomberg
12 28 (1.22%) MuleSoft
13 24 (1.05%) Murex
14 20 (0.87%) Palantir
15 19 (0.83%) Charles River
15 19 (0.83%) Splunk
16 17 (0.74%) Sybase
17 16 (0.70%) Foundry
17 16 (0.70%) VMware