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

6 months to
30 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,130 1,946 2,412
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.38% 14.01% 13.08%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.16% 36.31% 37.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,438 1,335 1,792
10th Percentile £358 £363 £390
25th Percentile £413 £446 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £512 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.95% -4.35% -3.36%
75th Percentile £638 £658 £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 27
10th Percentile £18.25 £36.00 £31.32
25th Percentile £26.50 £39.58 £36.27
Median hourly rate £40.49 £47.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -13.85% +4.44% -30.23%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.25 £53.94
90th Percentile £64.35 £78.50 £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 5,439 5,360 6,420
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 36.73% 38.59% 34.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,651 3,533 4,873
10th Percentile £363 £375 £388
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £690 £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 60 37 71
10th Percentile £24.57 £35.00 £26.88
25th Percentile £36.00 £38.50 £38.46
Median hourly rate £55.00 £47.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -5.94% -12.17%
75th Percentile £67.70 £65.00 £62.50
90th Percentile £87.50 £97.50 £72.50
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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -2 272 £525 -8.70% 204
South London +16 48 £492 -0.35% 34
West London +1 42 £575 +15.00% 37
East London +1 23 £469 +17.19% 29
North London +4 1 - - 5
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 71 (3.33%) Confluence
4 55 (2.58%) Apache
5 43 (2.02%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.85%) IIS
7 14 (0.66%) nginx
8 13 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 12 (0.56%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.56%) Palantir Foundry
9 12 (0.56%) SAS
10 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
12 9 (0.42%) Mendix
12 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
13 7 (0.33%) Appian
13 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
13 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
15 5 (0.23%) Tomcat
Applications
1 148 (6.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.83%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (1.50%) MS Visio
4 27 (1.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.38%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.23%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.23%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 24 (1.13%) Aladdin
2 21 (0.99%) Oracle General Ledger
3 20 (0.94%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.70%) Oracle Assets
6 14 (0.66%) Endur
7 13 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.61%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.56%) Oracle Financials
9 11 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
10 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
11 9 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.42%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 8 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
12 8 (0.38%) SAP HR
13 7 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
14 6 (0.28%) BASE24
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 699 (32.82%) Azure
2 525 (24.65%) AWS
3 398 (18.69%) Power Platform
4 199 (9.34%) Azure DevOps
5 188 (8.83%) GitHub
6 180 (8.45%) Snowflake
7 168 (7.89%) Azure Data Factory
8 158 (7.42%) GCP
9 152 (7.14%) Serverless
10 136 (6.38%) Amazon S3
11 113 (5.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 94 (4.41%) GitHub Actions
13 87 (4.08%) dbt
14 82 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
15 63 (2.96%) SaaS
16 56 (2.63%) Azure Functions
17 43 (2.02%) AWS CloudFormation
17 43 (2.02%) Power Automate
18 40 (1.88%) Azure Logic Apps
18 40 (1.88%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.22%) Firewall
2 19 (0.89%) HTTP
3 17 (0.80%) DNS
4 12 (0.56%) Internet
4 12 (0.56%) Network Security
4 12 (0.56%) SSH
5 10 (0.47%) SMTP
6 8 (0.38%) FTP
6 8 (0.38%) IMAP
6 8 (0.38%) OpenLDAP
6 8 (0.38%) SMS
7 7 (0.33%) Multicast
7 7 (0.33%) Skype
7 7 (0.33%) VPN
8 6 (0.28%) Unified Communications
9 5 (0.23%) LAN
9 5 (0.23%) WAN
10 4 (0.19%) 4G
10 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
10 4 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 367 (17.23%) Power BI
2 258 (12.11%) SQL Server
3 253 (11.88%) Data Warehouse
4 156 (7.32%) PostgreSQL
4 156 (7.32%) Tableau
5 150 (7.04%) NoSQL
6 146 (6.85%) Relational Database
7 141 (6.62%) Data Lake
8 107 (5.02%) Metadata
9 100 (4.69%) Azure SQL Database
10 96 (4.51%) Oracle Database
11 81 (3.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (3.62%) Big Data
13 71 (3.33%) BigQuery
14 57 (2.68%) Amazon Redshift
15 52 (2.44%) Delta Lake
16 49 (2.30%) Amazon Athena
17 47 (2.21%) MongoDB
18 43 (2.02%) Amazon RDS
19 42 (1.97%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 225 (10.56%) Git
2 161 (7.56%) JIRA
3 87 (4.08%) Jenkins
4 66 (3.10%) 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 (0.85%) Cucumber
9 18 (0.85%) 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
1 721 (33.85%) Finance
2 629 (29.53%) Social Skills
3 389 (18.26%) Analytical Skills
4 299 (14.04%) Banking
5 125 (5.87%) Public Sector
6 117 (5.49%) Investment Banking
7 97 (4.55%) Front Office
8 59 (2.77%) Marketing
9 52 (2.44%) Documentation Skills
10 46 (2.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 40 (1.88%) Financial Institution
11 40 (1.88%) Retail
12 24 (1.13%) Presentation Skills
13 23 (1.08%) Back Office
14 22 (1.03%) Legal
15 21 (0.99%) General Ledger
16 17 (0.80%) Law
16 17 (0.80%) Publishing
17 16 (0.75%) Telecoms
18 12 (0.56%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 530 (24.88%) Developer
2 369 (17.32%) Analyst
3 356 (16.71%) Data Engineer
4 288 (13.52%) Senior
5 163 (7.65%) Business Analyst
6 149 (7.00%) Lead
7 143 (6.71%) Data Analyst
8 105 (4.93%) Architect
9 80 (3.76%) Consultant
10 73 (3.43%) Senior Developer
11 71 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
12 70 (3.29%) C# Developer
13 69 (3.24%) Java Developer
14 60 (2.82%) Python Developer
15 59 (2.77%) Senior Data Engineer
16 58 (2.72%) Software Engineer
17 51 (2.39%) Senior Analyst
17 51 (2.39%) SQL Developer
18 50 (2.35%) Azure Data Engineer
19 48 (2.25%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 207 (9.72%) .NET
2 174 (8.17%) Kafka
3 147 (6.90%) REST
4 146 (6.85%) PySpark
5 95 (4.46%) RESTful
6 94 (4.41%) React
7 75 (3.52%) XML
8 73 (3.43%) HTML
9 67 (3.15%) Spring
10 66 (3.10%) Pandas
11 64 (3.00%) CSS
12 62 (2.91%) Node.js
13 56 (2.63%) AngularJS
14 53 (2.49%) .NET Framework
14 53 (2.49%) JSON
15 52 (2.44%) Spring Boot
16 50 (2.35%) Middleware
16 50 (2.35%) NumPy
17 42 (1.97%) SOAP
18 40 (1.88%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 132 (6.20%) Cloud Native
2 73 (3.43%) Data Structures
3 62 (2.91%) Derivative
4 59 (2.77%) Product Ownership
5 58 (2.72%) Data Protection Act
6 56 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
7 54 (2.54%) Equities
8 50 (2.35%) Analytical Mindset
8 50 (2.35%) Management Information System
9 48 (2.25%) Fixed Income
10 46 (2.16%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 42 (1.97%) Algorithms
12 40 (1.88%) Market Risk
13 38 (1.78%) Distributed Systems
14 36 (1.69%) Onboarding
15 26 (1.22%) Hedge funds
15 26 (1.22%) Replication
16 25 (1.17%) Credit Risk
16 25 (1.17%) Self-Motivation
17 22 (1.03%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.20%) Linux
2 121 (5.68%) Unix
3 119 (5.59%) Windows
4 28 (1.31%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.61%) VMS
6 10 (0.47%) Ubuntu
6 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
7 8 (0.38%) Android
8 7 (0.33%) Windows 10
9 6 (0.28%) Apple iOS
10 5 (0.23%) AIX
10 5 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
11 2 (0.094%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.094%) zOS
12 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 581 (27.28%) Agile
2 528 (24.79%) Analytics
3 486 (22.82%) Data Modelling
4 479 (22.49%) Problem-Solving
5 474 (22.25%) CI/CD
6 471 (22.11%) Business Intelligence
7 447 (20.99%) ETL
8 420 (19.72%) DevOps
9 337 (15.82%) Data Pipeline
10 307 (14.41%) Data Engineering
11 266 (12.49%) Data Governance
12 259 (12.16%) AI
13 256 (12.02%) Migration
14 227 (10.66%) Data Analysis
15 215 (10.09%) Validation
16 207 (9.72%) Visualisation
17 205 (9.62%) Data Science
18 195 (9.15%) Decision-Making
19 186 (8.73%) Machine Learning
20 185 (8.69%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 875 (41.08%) Python
2 289 (13.57%) Java
3 270 (12.68%) C#
4 163 (7.65%) JavaScript
5 132 (6.20%) PL/SQL
6 97 (4.55%) PowerShell
6 97 (4.55%) TypeScript
7 68 (3.19%) Scala
7 68 (3.19%) T-SQL
8 66 (3.10%) C++
9 59 (2.77%) R
10 55 (2.58%) Shell Script
11 46 (2.16%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 46 (2.16%) VBA
12 41 (1.92%) VB
13 32 (1.50%) Bash
14 27 (1.27%) Bicep
15 22 (1.03%) Perl
16 20 (0.94%) Go
17 19 (0.89%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 282 (13.24%) Security Cleared
2 223 (10.47%) SC Cleared
3 193 (9.06%) Degree
4 66 (3.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.39%) Azure Certification
6 35 (1.64%) AWS Certification
7 31 (1.46%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.22%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.85%) CBAP
11 18 (0.85%) 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
1 348 (16.34%) Data Quality
2 166 (7.79%) QA
3 85 (3.99%) GDPR
4 32 (1.50%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 18 (0.85%) MiFID
7 12 (0.56%) EMIR
7 12 (0.56%) IFRS
8 11 (0.52%) SLA
9 9 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.42%) NIST
9 9 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
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
1 223 (10.47%) Docker
2 51 (2.39%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.38%) DFS Replication
4 8 (0.38%) Dovecot
4 8 (0.38%) HDFS
4 8 (0.38%) Postfix
4 8 (0.38%) 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 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 174 (8.17%) Terraform
3 25 (1.17%) Grafana
4 23 (1.08%) Ansible
5 18 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.66%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.66%) SCOM
7 12 (0.56%) SCCM
8 11 (0.52%) Control-M
9 9 (0.42%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.38%) Kibana
10 8 (0.38%) Nessus
10 8 (0.38%) Proxmox
11 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
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%) Puppet
Vendors
1 319 (14.98%) Oracle
2 312 (14.65%) Microsoft
3 275 (12.91%) Databricks
4 68 (3.19%) Google
5 58 (2.72%) SAP
6 47 (2.21%) Salesforce
7 39 (1.83%) Citrix
8 36 (1.69%) ServiceNow
9 35 (1.64%) Informatica
10 34 (1.60%) IBM
11 33 (1.55%) OpenAI
11 33 (1.55%) Splunk
12 28 (1.31%) Bloomberg
13 24 (1.13%) MuleSoft
14 18 (0.85%) Sybase
15 17 (0.80%) Murex
16 16 (0.75%) Palantir
17 15 (0.70%) UiPath
17 15 (0.70%) VMware
18 14 (0.66%) Adobe