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

6 months to
20 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,075 1,952 2,403
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.39% 14.15% 13.17%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.73% 36.66% 37.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,403 1,356 1,778
10th Percentile £363 £363 £390
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 £667 £688
90th Percentile £738 £775 £779
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% -20.35%
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% -12.56%

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 5,357 5,324 6,422
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 37.14% 38.59% 35.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,606 3,536 4,856
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £458 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £536 £564 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.05% -1.91% -4.17%
75th Percentile £652 £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 35 65
10th Percentile £25.28 £35.00 £26.50
25th Percentile £35.50 £39.54 £36.84
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 £63.75
90th Percentile £78.75 £97.50 £72.30
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £61.60
% change year-on-year +4.00% +1.46% -5.23%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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% 183
South London +17 47 £492 -0.35% 30
West London -5 35 £575 +15.00% 41
East London -2 19 £450 +12.50% 22
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
1 125 (6.02%) Apache Spark
2 90 (4.34%) Apache Airflow
3 73 (3.52%) Confluence
4 50 (2.41%) Apache
5 42 (2.02%) SharePoint
6 16 (0.77%) IIS
7 15 (0.72%) nginx
8 13 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.58%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.58%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 11 (0.53%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.53%) Oracle Workflow
11 9 (0.43%) Mendix
11 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.34%) MQSeries
12 7 (0.34%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
14 5 (0.24%) Appian
14 5 (0.24%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.19%) WebSphere
Applications
1 145 (6.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.49%) MS Visio
4 25 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.53%) 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 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 22 (1.06%) Oracle General Ledger
2 22 (1.06%) Oracle Payables
3 19 (0.92%) Oracle EBS
4 16 (0.77%) Oracle Assets
5 15 (0.72%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.67%) Endur
6 14 (0.67%) Oracle Financials
7 13 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.63%) NetSuite
8 11 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
9 9 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
9 9 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 9 (0.43%) SAP S/4HANA
10 8 (0.39%) Oracle E-Business Tax
10 8 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
10 8 (0.39%) SAP HR
11 7 (0.34%) Oracle Cash Management
11 7 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 6 (0.29%) Markit EDM
Cloud Services
1 672 (32.39%) Azure
2 495 (23.86%) AWS
3 393 (18.94%) Power Platform
4 187 (9.01%) Azure DevOps
5 177 (8.53%) GitHub
6 169 (8.14%) Snowflake
7 163 (7.86%) Azure Data Factory
8 150 (7.23%) GCP
9 147 (7.08%) Serverless
10 131 (6.31%) Amazon S3
11 112 (5.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 86 (4.14%) GitHub Actions
13 84 (4.05%) dbt
14 78 (3.76%) AWS Lambda
15 60 (2.89%) SaaS
16 57 (2.75%) Azure Functions
17 44 (2.12%) Power Automate
18 43 (2.07%) Azure Logic Apps
19 41 (1.98%) Microsoft 365
20 40 (1.93%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.35%) Firewall
2 21 (1.01%) 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 (0.43%) FTP
7 9 (0.43%) IMAP
7 9 (0.43%) 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
1 362 (17.45%) Power BI
2 251 (12.10%) Data Warehouse
3 242 (11.66%) SQL Server
4 152 (7.33%) NoSQL
5 150 (7.23%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (7.23%) Relational Database
6 147 (7.08%) Tableau
7 139 (6.70%) Data Lake
8 101 (4.87%) Metadata
9 98 (4.72%) Azure SQL Database
10 96 (4.63%) Oracle Database
11 78 (3.76%) Big Data
12 77 (3.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 65 (3.13%) BigQuery
14 58 (2.80%) Amazon Redshift
15 49 (2.36%) MongoDB
16 48 (2.31%) Delta Lake
17 46 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (2.07%) Amazon RDS
19 42 (2.02%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 214 (10.31%) Git
2 163 (7.86%) JIRA
3 83 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.33%) GitLab
5 36 (1.73%) JUnit
6 25 (1.20%) Selenium
7 21 (1.01%) SpecFlow
8 20 (0.96%) ERwin
9 19 (0.92%) Cypress.io
10 18 (0.87%) MLflow
11 17 (0.82%) Bitbucket
11 17 (0.82%) Cucumber
11 17 (0.82%) Postman
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
1 697 (33.59%) Finance
2 617 (29.73%) Social Skills
3 373 (17.98%) Analytical Skills
4 289 (13.93%) Banking
5 123 (5.93%) Public Sector
6 114 (5.49%) Investment Banking
7 94 (4.53%) Front Office
8 59 (2.84%) Marketing
9 50 (2.41%) Documentation Skills
10 42 (2.02%) Financial Institution
10 42 (2.02%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 38 (1.83%) Retail
12 23 (1.11%) Back Office
12 23 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
13 22 (1.06%) General Ledger
13 22 (1.06%) Legal
14 16 (0.77%) Publishing
15 15 (0.72%) Law
16 14 (0.67%) Pharmaceutical
17 13 (0.63%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 510 (24.58%) Developer
2 364 (17.54%) Analyst
3 344 (16.58%) Data Engineer
4 282 (13.59%) Senior
5 154 (7.42%) Business Analyst
6 141 (6.80%) Data Analyst
7 139 (6.70%) Lead
8 98 (4.72%) Architect
9 81 (3.90%) Consultant
10 71 (3.42%) Azure Engineer
11 69 (3.33%) Senior Developer
12 68 (3.28%) Java Developer
13 62 (2.99%) C# Developer
13 62 (2.99%) Software Engineer
14 59 (2.84%) Python Developer
15 57 (2.75%) Senior Data Engineer
16 52 (2.51%) Azure Data Engineer
17 50 (2.41%) Senior Analyst
18 48 (2.31%) Data Architect
19 44 (2.12%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 193 (9.30%) .NET
2 170 (8.19%) Kafka
3 145 (6.99%) PySpark
4 141 (6.80%) REST
5 93 (4.48%) RESTful
6 89 (4.29%) React
7 78 (3.76%) HTML
8 71 (3.42%) XML
9 68 (3.28%) CSS
9 68 (3.28%) Spring
10 67 (3.23%) Node.js
11 59 (2.84%) Pandas
12 54 (2.60%) JSON
13 53 (2.55%) AngularJS
14 51 (2.46%) Spring Boot
15 49 (2.36%) .NET Framework
16 48 (2.31%) Middleware
17 45 (2.17%) NumPy
18 39 (1.88%) YAML
19 38 (1.83%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 120 (5.78%) Cloud Native
2 70 (3.37%) Data Structures
3 60 (2.89%) Derivative
4 59 (2.84%) Data Protection Act
5 54 (2.60%) Legacy Systems
5 54 (2.60%) Product Ownership
6 53 (2.55%) Equities
7 52 (2.51%) Analytical Mindset
8 49 (2.36%) Fixed Income
8 49 (2.36%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 48 (2.31%) Management Information System
10 40 (1.93%) Market Risk
11 39 (1.88%) Algorithms
12 38 (1.83%) Onboarding
13 36 (1.73%) Distributed Systems
14 26 (1.25%) Hedge funds
15 25 (1.20%) Self-Motivation
16 24 (1.16%) Replication
17 23 (1.11%) Credit Risk
18 22 (1.06%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 192 (9.25%) Linux
2 122 (5.88%) Windows
3 120 (5.78%) Unix
4 27 (1.30%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.67%) VMS
6 11 (0.53%) Android
6 11 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 2 (0.096%) zOS
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 564 (27.18%) Agile
2 516 (24.87%) Analytics
3 475 (22.89%) Data Modelling
4 464 (22.36%) Business Intelligence
5 462 (22.27%) Problem-Solving
6 453 (21.83%) CI/CD
7 423 (20.39%) ETL
8 408 (19.66%) DevOps
9 326 (15.71%) Data Pipeline
10 300 (14.46%) Data Engineering
11 258 (12.43%) Data Governance
12 247 (11.90%) Migration
13 237 (11.42%) AI
14 221 (10.65%) Data Analysis
15 211 (10.17%) Validation
16 201 (9.69%) Visualisation
17 198 (9.54%) Data Science
18 188 (9.06%) Decision-Making
19 180 (8.67%) Stakeholder Management
20 170 (8.19%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 862 (41.54%) Python
2 281 (13.54%) Java
3 263 (12.67%) C#
4 165 (7.95%) JavaScript
5 132 (6.36%) PL/SQL
6 96 (4.63%) PowerShell
7 90 (4.34%) TypeScript
8 72 (3.47%) C++
9 64 (3.08%) T-SQL
10 62 (2.99%) Scala
11 59 (2.84%) R
12 50 (2.41%) Shell Script
13 48 (2.31%) VBA
14 47 (2.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 42 (2.02%) VB
16 34 (1.64%) Bash
17 29 (1.40%) Bicep
18 22 (1.06%) Perl
19 19 (0.92%) Groovy
19 19 (0.92%) Korn
Qualifications
1 273 (13.16%) Security Cleared
2 216 (10.41%) SC Cleared
3 185 (8.92%) Degree
4 66 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.46%) Azure Certification
6 34 (1.64%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.45%) Master's Degree
8 25 (1.20%) ISTQB
9 24 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
10 19 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.87%) CBAP
12 16 (0.77%) DV Cleared
13 12 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.58%) PMI Certification
14 11 (0.53%) CFA
15 9 (0.43%) 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
1 340 (16.39%) Data Quality
2 155 (7.47%) QA
3 88 (4.24%) GDPR
4 32 (1.54%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.92%) MiFID
5 19 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (0.63%) IFRS
7 12 (0.58%) 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 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.39%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.39%) ISO 8583
11 7 (0.34%) Basel III
11 7 (0.34%) GAAP
11 7 (0.34%) IFRS 9
12 5 (0.24%) PMO
12 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 217 (10.46%) Docker
2 50 (2.41%) 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 (0.39%) HDFS
6 7 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.34%) 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 (0.096%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 178 (8.58%) Kubernetes
2 166 (8.00%) Terraform
3 27 (1.30%) Grafana
4 24 (1.16%) Ansible
5 19 (0.92%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.67%) SCOM
7 12 (0.58%) SCCM
8 11 (0.53%) 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 (0.39%) 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
1 309 (14.89%) Oracle
2 296 (14.27%) Microsoft
3 268 (12.92%) Databricks
4 65 (3.13%) Google
5 55 (2.65%) SAP
6 50 (2.41%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.83%) ServiceNow
8 35 (1.69%) Citrix
8 35 (1.69%) IBM
9 34 (1.64%) Splunk
10 33 (1.59%) Informatica
11 31 (1.49%) OpenAI
12 28 (1.35%) Bloomberg
13 23 (1.11%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.82%) Murex
14 17 (0.82%) Palantir
14 17 (0.82%) Sybase
15 15 (0.72%) Adobe
15 15 (0.72%) Foundry
16 14 (0.67%) UiPath