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 28 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
28 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,490 1,950 2,327
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.37% 14.59% 14.31%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.50% 37.75% 35.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,740 1,356 1,713
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £424 £413 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £634 £663 £680
90th Percentile £725 £775 £779
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 28 20
10th Percentile £26.51 £25.06 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £35.56
Median hourly rate £43.25 £39.00 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.91% -7.15% +13.45%
75th Percentile £53.75 £54.69 £52.25
90th Percentile £67.25 £64.05 £56.38
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -11.11%

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 6,303 5,165 6,493
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.31% 38.65% 39.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,270 3,534 4,587
10th Percentile £375 £375 £368
25th Percentile £448 £434 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £813 £850
England median daily rate £525 £515 £545
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 52 64 46
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.25 £25.99
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £37.58
Median hourly rate £55.00 £44.20 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -8.87% -15.65%
75th Percentile £73.50 £63.38 £71.66
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.13 £97.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +3.17%

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 28 September 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 28 September 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 28 September 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 -5 308 £550 -4.35% 345
West London +6 67 £520 +24.70% 87
South London -9 38 £535 +12.63% 18
East London 0 16 £450 -11.76% 10
North London +5 6 £550 - 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
1 174 (6.99%) Apache Airflow
2 130 (5.22%) Apache Spark
3 98 (3.94%) Apache
4 95 (3.82%) Confluence
5 59 (2.37%) SharePoint
6 25 (1.00%) IIS
7 20 (0.80%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) CMS
9 14 (0.56%) nginx
10 13 (0.52%) Camunda
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.28%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.24%) Appian
14 6 (0.24%) MTS
14 6 (0.24%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 143 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (0.68%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.64%) MS Visio
5 11 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Notion
7 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
7 4 (0.16%) Windchill
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.080%) Mingle
10 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 26 (1.04%) Aladdin
2 21 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 21 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle General Ledger
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
5 10 (0.40%) Finacle
5 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
5 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
6 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
6 9 (0.36%) Summit
7 8 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
8 7 (0.28%) Front Arena
8 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
8 7 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
8 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
8 7 (0.28%) Oracle EBS R12
8 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
9 6 (0.24%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 804 (32.29%) Azure
2 605 (24.30%) AWS
3 470 (18.88%) Power Platform
4 284 (11.41%) GCP
5 266 (10.68%) Snowflake
6 239 (9.60%) Azure DevOps
7 221 (8.88%) dbt
8 217 (8.71%) GitHub
9 161 (6.47%) Azure Data Factory
10 157 (6.31%) Serverless
11 153 (6.14%) Amazon S3
12 115 (4.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 111 (4.46%) GitHub Actions
14 107 (4.30%) AWS Lambda
15 57 (2.29%) Azure Databricks
16 56 (2.25%) SaaS
17 54 (2.17%) PowerApps
18 52 (2.09%) Power Automate
19 47 (1.89%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 47 (1.89%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 19 (0.76%) HTTP
1 19 (0.76%) Internet
2 18 (0.72%) DNS
3 15 (0.60%) Broadband
3 15 (0.60%) VPN
4 13 (0.52%) Firewall
5 10 (0.40%) TCP/IP
6 9 (0.36%) Network Security
7 8 (0.32%) SSH
8 7 (0.28%) Multicast
8 7 (0.28%) SSL
9 6 (0.24%) DHCP
9 6 (0.24%) HTTPS
9 6 (0.24%) SAN
10 4 (0.16%) IPv4
10 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
10 4 (0.16%) SMS
11 3 (0.12%) 4G
11 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
11 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 422 (16.95%) Power BI
2 365 (14.66%) Data Warehouse
3 297 (11.93%) SQL Server
4 168 (6.75%) Relational Database
5 159 (6.39%) Tableau
6 151 (6.06%) Data Lake
7 149 (5.98%) PostgreSQL
8 137 (5.50%) Metadata
9 134 (5.38%) BigQuery
10 123 (4.94%) NoSQL
11 109 (4.38%) Oracle Database
12 96 (3.86%) Delta Lake
13 86 (3.45%) Amazon Redshift
14 80 (3.21%) Azure SQL Database
15 64 (2.57%) Amazon Athena
16 60 (2.41%) Power Query
16 60 (2.41%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 56 (2.25%) Big Data
18 53 (2.13%) Snowflake Schema
19 52 (2.09%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 317 (12.73%) Git
2 190 (7.63%) JIRA
3 129 (5.18%) Jenkins
4 89 (3.57%) GitLab
5 54 (2.17%) Selenium
6 45 (1.81%) Gradle
7 36 (1.45%) JUnit
8 28 (1.12%) Maven
9 26 (1.04%) SonarQube
10 23 (0.92%) Bitbucket
11 22 (0.88%) Mockito
12 21 (0.84%) Visual Studio
13 20 (0.80%) Postman
14 19 (0.76%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.68%) ERwin
16 16 (0.64%) MLflow
17 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
17 15 (0.60%) Liquibase
17 15 (0.60%) REST Assured
18 14 (0.56%) Oracle Forms
General
1 914 (36.71%) Finance
2 713 (28.63%) Social Skills
3 550 (22.09%) Analytical Skills
4 429 (17.23%) Banking
5 157 (6.31%) Public Sector
6 125 (5.02%) Front Office
7 110 (4.42%) Marketing
8 108 (4.34%) Investment Banking
9 81 (3.25%) Retail
10 62 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 46 (1.85%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.61%) Back Office
13 38 (1.53%) Documentation Skills
14 31 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
15 30 (1.20%) Legal
16 27 (1.08%) Local Government
17 22 (0.88%) Organisational Skills
18 21 (0.84%) General Ledger
18 21 (0.84%) Manufacturing
18 21 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 544 (21.85%) Developer
2 456 (18.31%) Data Engineer
3 431 (17.31%) Analyst
4 401 (16.10%) Senior
5 188 (7.55%) Lead
6 169 (6.79%) Data Analyst
7 152 (6.10%) Business Analyst
8 132 (5.30%) Architect
9 126 (5.06%) Senior Data Engineer
10 101 (4.06%) Consultant
11 90 (3.61%) Senior Developer
12 82 (3.29%) Java Developer
13 73 (2.93%) Python Engineer
14 71 (2.85%) Python Developer
15 67 (2.69%) Azure Engineer
15 67 (2.69%) Full-Stack Developer
16 66 (2.65%) Software Engineer
17 64 (2.57%) Data Architect
18 61 (2.45%) Applications Support
18 61 (2.45%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 271 (10.88%) .NET
2 248 (9.96%) Terraform
3 244 (9.80%) REST
4 199 (7.99%) PySpark
5 196 (7.87%) Kafka
6 140 (5.62%) React
7 130 (5.22%) Spring
8 113 (4.54%) Spring Boot
9 104 (4.18%) HTML
10 101 (4.06%) RESTful
11 98 (3.94%) JSON
12 94 (3.78%) CSS
13 86 (3.45%) XML
14 77 (3.09%) AngularJS
15 72 (2.89%) SOAP
16 70 (2.81%) Pandas
17 67 (2.69%) Middleware
18 66 (2.65%) Web Services
19 59 (2.37%) .NET Framework
20 54 (2.17%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.67%) Cloud Native
2 146 (5.86%) Product Ownership
3 120 (4.82%) Data Structures
4 83 (3.33%) Legacy Systems
5 82 (3.29%) Distributed Systems
6 78 (3.13%) Onboarding
7 73 (2.93%) Enterprise Software
8 70 (2.81%) Derivative
9 57 (2.29%) Self-Motivation
10 53 (2.13%) AI Agents
10 53 (2.13%) Management Information System
11 43 (1.73%) Fixed Income
12 42 (1.69%) Analytical Mindset
12 42 (1.69%) Reference Data
13 38 (1.53%) Algorithms
13 38 (1.53%) Equities
13 38 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 32 (1.29%) Data Centre
14 32 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
14 32 (1.29%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 173 (6.95%) Linux
2 139 (5.58%) Windows
3 109 (4.38%) Unix
4 37 (1.49%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.28%) VMS
6 7 (0.28%) Windows Server 2008
7 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
7 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
8 4 (0.16%) Android
8 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
8 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
8 4 (0.16%) zOS
9 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
9 3 (0.12%) Solaris
9 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
10 2 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
10 2 (0.080%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.040%) Oracle Linux
11 1 (0.040%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 737 (29.60%) CI/CD
2 677 (27.19%) Analytics
3 673 (27.03%) Agile
4 654 (26.27%) Data Modelling
5 523 (21.00%) AI
6 508 (20.40%) Business Intelligence
7 497 (19.96%) ETL
8 496 (19.92%) DevOps
9 495 (19.88%) Data Pipeline
10 476 (19.12%) Problem-Solving
11 472 (18.96%) Data Engineering
12 444 (17.83%) Stakeholder Management
13 387 (15.54%) Validation
14 342 (13.73%) Migration
15 341 (13.69%) Data Analysis
16 329 (13.21%) Data Governance
17 295 (11.85%) Decision-Making
18 274 (11.00%) Continuous Improvement
19 262 (10.52%) Test Automation
20 242 (9.72%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,061 (42.61%) Python
2 331 (13.29%) Java
3 299 (12.01%) C#
4 234 (9.40%) JavaScript
5 172 (6.91%) PL/SQL
6 137 (5.50%) TypeScript
7 120 (4.82%) T-SQL
8 108 (4.34%) PowerShell
9 91 (3.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 81 (3.25%) Shell Script
11 58 (2.33%) Scala
12 52 (2.09%) Bash
13 48 (1.93%) R
14 32 (1.29%) C++
15 29 (1.16%) VBA
16 20 (0.80%) Go
17 17 (0.68%) Korn
18 16 (0.64%) VB.NET
19 14 (0.56%) Groovy
20 12 (0.48%) VB
Qualifications
1 360 (14.46%) Security Cleared
2 302 (12.13%) SC Cleared
3 200 (8.03%) Degree
4 63 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 52 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 40 (1.61%) Azure Certification
7 30 (1.20%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.08%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.72%) DV Cleared
10 17 (0.68%) ISTQB
11 12 (0.48%) FFIEC
11 12 (0.48%) PMI Certification
12 11 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 11 (0.44%) DBS Check
12 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.40%) ACCA
13 10 (0.40%) CIMA
13 10 (0.40%) ISEB
14 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (21.16%) Data Quality
2 195 (7.83%) QA
3 71 (2.85%) GDPR
4 30 (1.20%) SLA
5 27 (1.08%) Accessibility
6 21 (0.84%) Actionable Recommendations
7 19 (0.76%) ISO 20022
8 18 (0.72%) NIST
9 17 (0.68%) IFRS
10 15 (0.60%) MiFID
11 14 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 12 (0.48%) COBIT
13 11 (0.44%) Basel III
14 7 (0.28%) EMIR
14 7 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
15 6 (0.24%) PSD2
15 6 (0.24%) SEPA
15 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
16 5 (0.20%) GAAP
System Software
1 235 (9.44%) Docker
2 33 (1.33%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.88%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
5 5 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 4 (0.16%) Postfix
6 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.080%) DFS Replication
7 2 (0.080%) Dovecot
7 2 (0.080%) Hyper-V
7 2 (0.080%) Squid
7 2 (0.080%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.040%) KVM
8 1 (0.040%) RACF
8 1 (0.040%) Varnish
8 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 211 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 44 (1.77%) Grafana
3 33 (1.33%) Ansible
4 28 (1.12%) Control-M
5 22 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 17 (0.68%) Kibana
7 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Clustering
8 9 (0.36%) Oracle RMAN
9 8 (0.32%) ITRS Geneos
9 8 (0.32%) SCOM
9 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.28%) Istio
11 6 (0.24%) Data Guard
11 6 (0.24%) systemd
12 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (0.16%) Argo
13 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.16%) Packer
13 4 (0.16%) SCCM
Vendors
1 363 (14.58%) Microsoft
2 353 (14.18%) Databricks
3 328 (13.17%) Oracle
4 114 (4.58%) Google
5 54 (2.17%) IBM
6 53 (2.13%) Informatica
7 43 (1.73%) Salesforce
7 43 (1.73%) SAP
8 38 (1.53%) Bloomberg
9 33 (1.33%) Murex
10 30 (1.20%) Citrix
10 30 (1.20%) ServiceNow
11 27 (1.08%) Splunk
12 26 (1.04%) UiPath
13 25 (1.00%) Foundry
13 25 (1.00%) OpenAI
14 24 (0.96%) VMware
15 22 (0.88%) Adobe
15 22 (0.88%) Talend
16 20 (0.80%) Alteryx