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

6 months to
31 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,131 1,942 2,431
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.39% 14.03% 13.08%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.24% 36.28% 37.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,433 1,330 1,809
10th Percentile £358 £363 £399
25th Percentile £413 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.95% -4.35% -2.95%
75th Percentile £638 £659 £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 21 27
10th Percentile £18.25 £35.75 £31.32
25th Percentile £26.50 £39.25 £36.27
Median hourly rate £40.49 £47.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.76% +5.56% -30.23%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.75 £53.94
90th Percentile £64.35 £80.00 £64.51
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -15.00%

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 5,430 5,353 6,479
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 36.66% 38.68% 34.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,636 3,519 4,922
10th Percentile £363 £375 £388
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £560 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.36% -2.61% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £814 £800
England median daily rate £513 £536 £550
% change year-on-year -4.38% -2.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 36 72
10th Percentile £23.97 £35.00 £27.16
25th Percentile £35.75 £38.44 £39.15
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.00 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -2.20% -11.09%
75th Percentile £67.10 £66.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.50 £97.50 £72.45
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -7.69%

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 31 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 31 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 31 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 -1 276 £531 -7.61% 192
South London +15 48 £492 -0.35% 29
West London +2 42 £575 +15.00% 34
East London 0 23 £469 +17.19% 29
North London +5 2 £495 - 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
1 134 (6.29%) Apache Spark
2 94 (4.41%) Apache Airflow
3 70 (3.28%) Confluence
4 55 (2.58%) Apache
5 43 (2.02%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.84%) IIS
7 13 (0.61%) nginx
7 13 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 12 (0.56%) Jupyter
8 12 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
8 12 (0.56%) SAS
9 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
10 9 (0.42%) Mendix
10 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
11 8 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
12 7 (0.33%) Appian
12 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
12 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
14 5 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 149 (6.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (1.50%) MS Visio
4 29 (1.36%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 7 (0.33%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.23%) Trello
8 3 (0.14%) Notion
9 1 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 25 (1.17%) Aladdin
2 18 (0.84%) Oracle General Ledger
3 16 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.66%) Endur
5 13 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
5 13 (0.61%) NetSuite
5 13 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
5 13 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.52%) Oracle Assets
6 11 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
7 9 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
7 9 (0.42%) Oracle Financials
7 9 (0.42%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 8 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
8 8 (0.38%) SAP HR
9 7 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
10 6 (0.28%) BASE24
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle E-Business Tax
10 6 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 702 (32.94%) Azure
2 524 (24.59%) AWS
3 396 (18.58%) Power Platform
4 200 (9.39%) Azure DevOps
5 188 (8.82%) GitHub
6 180 (8.45%) Snowflake
7 171 (8.02%) Azure Data Factory
8 160 (7.51%) GCP
9 153 (7.18%) Serverless
10 136 (6.38%) Amazon S3
11 116 (5.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 94 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
13 88 (4.13%) dbt
14 83 (3.89%) AWS Lambda
15 63 (2.96%) SaaS
16 56 (2.63%) Azure Functions
17 43 (2.02%) Power Automate
18 42 (1.97%) AWS CloudFormation
19 40 (1.88%) Azure Logic Apps
20 39 (1.83%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 24 (1.13%) Firewall
2 18 (0.84%) HTTP
3 16 (0.75%) DNS
4 12 (0.56%) Internet
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
5 11 (0.52%) SSH
6 9 (0.42%) SMTP
7 8 (0.38%) SMS
8 7 (0.33%) FTP
8 7 (0.33%) IMAP
8 7 (0.33%) Multicast
8 7 (0.33%) OpenLDAP
8 7 (0.33%) Skype
8 7 (0.33%) VPN
9 6 (0.28%) Unified Communications
10 5 (0.23%) LAN
10 5 (0.23%) WAN
11 4 (0.19%) 2G
11 4 (0.19%) 4G
11 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 365 (17.13%) Power BI
2 256 (12.01%) Data Warehouse
2 256 (12.01%) SQL Server
3 157 (7.37%) Tableau
4 155 (7.27%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (7.04%) NoSQL
6 149 (6.99%) Relational Database
7 143 (6.71%) Data Lake
8 110 (5.16%) Metadata
9 102 (4.79%) Azure SQL Database
10 95 (4.46%) Oracle Database
11 80 (3.75%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (3.61%) Big Data
13 70 (3.28%) BigQuery
14 58 (2.72%) Amazon Redshift
15 53 (2.49%) Delta Lake
16 49 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
17 48 (2.25%) MongoDB
18 42 (1.97%) Amazon RDS
18 42 (1.97%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 223 (10.46%) Git
2 161 (7.56%) JIRA
3 86 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.14%) GitLab
5 38 (1.78%) JUnit
6 27 (1.27%) Selenium
7 22 (1.03%) SpecFlow
8 21 (0.99%) ERwin
8 21 (0.99%) MLflow
9 18 (0.84%) Cucumber
9 18 (0.84%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.80%) Postman
11 16 (0.75%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.70%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.66%) Maven
13 14 (0.66%) Mockito
14 12 (0.56%) ER Studio
14 12 (0.56%) Team Foundation Server
15 11 (0.52%) Gradle
15 11 (0.52%) SonarQube
General
1 722 (33.88%) Finance
2 626 (29.38%) Social Skills
3 389 (18.25%) Analytical Skills
4 301 (14.12%) Banking
5 124 (5.82%) Public Sector
6 116 (5.44%) Investment Banking
7 97 (4.55%) Front Office
8 60 (2.82%) Marketing
9 53 (2.49%) Documentation Skills
10 46 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 40 (1.88%) Retail
12 39 (1.83%) Financial Institution
13 24 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
14 23 (1.08%) Back Office
15 21 (0.99%) Legal
16 17 (0.80%) General Ledger
16 17 (0.80%) Law
16 17 (0.80%) Publishing
17 16 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 14 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 525 (24.64%) Developer
2 370 (17.36%) Analyst
3 357 (16.75%) Data Engineer
4 289 (13.56%) Senior
5 161 (7.56%) Business Analyst
6 153 (7.18%) Lead
7 143 (6.71%) Data Analyst
8 107 (5.02%) Architect
9 80 (3.75%) Consultant
10 73 (3.43%) Senior Developer
11 71 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
12 69 (3.24%) C# Developer
12 69 (3.24%) Java Developer
13 60 (2.82%) Python Developer
14 59 (2.77%) Senior Data Engineer
15 58 (2.72%) Software Engineer
16 51 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
16 51 (2.39%) SQL Developer
17 50 (2.35%) Azure Data Engineer
17 50 (2.35%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 205 (9.62%) .NET
2 175 (8.21%) Kafka
3 147 (6.90%) REST
4 146 (6.85%) PySpark
5 94 (4.41%) React
6 93 (4.36%) RESTful
7 73 (3.43%) HTML
7 73 (3.43%) XML
8 67 (3.14%) Spring
9 66 (3.10%) Pandas
10 64 (3.00%) CSS
11 62 (2.91%) Node.js
12 56 (2.63%) AngularJS
13 52 (2.44%) .NET Framework
13 52 (2.44%) JSON
13 52 (2.44%) Spring Boot
14 50 (2.35%) Middleware
14 50 (2.35%) NumPy
15 41 (1.92%) SOAP
16 40 (1.88%) PyTorch
Miscellaneous
1 134 (6.29%) Cloud Native
2 73 (3.43%) Data Structures
3 63 (2.96%) Derivative
4 59 (2.77%) Product Ownership
5 56 (2.63%) Data Protection Act
6 55 (2.58%) Equities
6 55 (2.58%) Legacy Systems
7 51 (2.39%) Analytical Mindset
8 50 (2.35%) Management Information System
9 49 (2.30%) Fixed Income
10 47 (2.21%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 42 (1.97%) Algorithms
12 39 (1.83%) Distributed Systems
12 39 (1.83%) Market Risk
13 35 (1.64%) Onboarding
14 26 (1.22%) Hedge funds
15 25 (1.17%) Replication
15 25 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
16 24 (1.13%) Credit Risk
17 22 (1.03%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 195 (9.15%) Linux
2 119 (5.58%) Unix
3 118 (5.54%) Windows
4 27 (1.27%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.56%) VMS
6 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
7 9 (0.42%) Ubuntu
8 7 (0.33%) Amazon Linux
8 7 (0.33%) Android
8 7 (0.33%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.23%) AIX
9 5 (0.23%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
10 2 (0.094%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.094%) zOS
11 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
11 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 582 (27.31%) Agile
2 535 (25.11%) Analytics
3 491 (23.04%) Data Modelling
4 477 (22.38%) Problem-Solving
5 473 (22.20%) CI/CD
6 468 (21.96%) Business Intelligence
7 453 (21.26%) ETL
8 421 (19.76%) DevOps
9 338 (15.86%) Data Pipeline
10 311 (14.59%) Data Engineering
11 268 (12.58%) Data Governance
12 261 (12.25%) AI
13 257 (12.06%) Migration
14 226 (10.61%) Data Analysis
15 218 (10.23%) Validation
16 207 (9.71%) Visualisation
17 206 (9.67%) Data Science
18 194 (9.10%) Decision-Making
19 189 (8.87%) Stakeholder Management
20 188 (8.82%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 874 (41.01%) Python
2 287 (13.47%) Java
3 269 (12.62%) C#
4 163 (7.65%) JavaScript
5 130 (6.10%) PL/SQL
6 97 (4.55%) TypeScript
7 96 (4.50%) PowerShell
8 69 (3.24%) T-SQL
9 68 (3.19%) Scala
10 66 (3.10%) C++
11 59 (2.77%) R
12 54 (2.53%) Shell Script
13 46 (2.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 45 (2.11%) VBA
15 40 (1.88%) VB
16 32 (1.50%) Bash
17 27 (1.27%) Bicep
18 22 (1.03%) Perl
19 20 (0.94%) Go
20 19 (0.89%) Korn
Qualifications
1 279 (13.09%) Security Cleared
2 221 (10.37%) SC Cleared
3 191 (8.96%) Degree
4 66 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.39%) Azure Certification
6 33 (1.55%) AWS Certification
7 32 (1.50%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.22%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.84%) CBAP
11 18 (0.84%) DV Cleared
12 12 (0.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 12 (0.56%) PMI Certification
13 10 (0.47%) CFA
14 9 (0.42%) PMP
15 8 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
16 6 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
16 6 (0.28%) ISEB
16 6 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 352 (16.52%) Data Quality
2 167 (7.84%) QA
3 89 (4.18%) GDPR
4 32 (1.50%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 18 (0.84%) MiFID
7 12 (0.56%) EMIR
7 12 (0.56%) IFRS
8 11 (0.52%) SLA
9 9 (0.42%) HIPAA
9 9 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.42%) NIST
9 9 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.38%) ISO 8583
11 7 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.33%) Basel III
11 7 (0.33%) GAAP
12 6 (0.28%) PMO
13 5 (0.23%) IFRS 9
13 5 (0.23%) SEPA
System Software
1 222 (10.42%) Docker
2 51 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.38%) HDFS
5 7 (0.33%) DFS Replication
5 7 (0.33%) Dovecot
5 7 (0.33%) Postfix
5 7 (0.33%) Squid
5 7 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.28%) zsh
7 5 (0.23%) 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 (0.094%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.047%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 181 (8.49%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.12%) Terraform
3 24 (1.13%) Grafana
4 22 (1.03%) Ansible
5 17 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.66%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.66%) SCOM
7 12 (0.56%) Control-M
7 12 (0.56%) SCCM
8 10 (0.47%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.38%) Kibana
11 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 7 (0.33%) Nessus
11 7 (0.33%) Proxmox
12 6 (0.28%) logstash
13 5 (0.23%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.19%) Microsoft Intune
14 4 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.19%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 314 (14.73%) Microsoft
1 314 (14.73%) Oracle
2 278 (13.05%) Databricks
3 69 (3.24%) Google
4 58 (2.72%) SAP
5 47 (2.21%) Salesforce
6 39 (1.83%) Citrix
7 37 (1.74%) Informatica
7 37 (1.74%) ServiceNow
8 34 (1.60%) IBM
8 34 (1.60%) Splunk
9 33 (1.55%) OpenAI
10 28 (1.31%) Bloomberg
11 23 (1.08%) MuleSoft
12 18 (0.84%) Sybase
13 17 (0.80%) Murex
14 16 (0.75%) Palantir
15 15 (0.70%) UiPath
15 15 (0.70%) VMware
16 14 (0.66%) Adobe