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

6 months to
14 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 7 6
Rank change year-on-year -1 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,065 1,970 2,397
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.42% 14.11% 13.35%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.61% 36.91% 37.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,397 1,371 1,772
10th Percentile £361 £363 £390
25th Percentile £413 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -7.27% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £688
90th Percentile £738 £770 £775
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 21 25
10th Percentile £18.25 £35.75 £29.75
25th Percentile £26.50 £40.58 £36.25
Median hourly rate £40.49 £52.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.88% +16.67% -26.53%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.75 £54.13
90th Percentile £64.35 £80.00 £64.52
England median hourly rate £49.36 £52.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -5.98% +16.67% -9.55%

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 5,349 5,337 6,350
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 37.35% 38.24% 35.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,600 3,551 4,792
10th Percentile £363 £375 £400
25th Percentile £425 £459 £467
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.44% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £669 £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 60 34 64
10th Percentile £26.14 £35.00 £26.44
25th Percentile £36.00 £39.02 £36.70
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +3.96% -12.17%
75th Percentile £66.50 £69.50 £63.94
90th Percentile £79.63 £97.50 £72.35
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 £538 -6.52% 183
South London +21 49 £475 -5.00% 27
West London -4 32 £525 +2.44% 39
East London -1 19 £450 +12.50% 25
North London +6 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
1 117 (5.67%) Apache Spark
2 88 (4.26%) Apache Airflow
3 74 (3.58%) Confluence
4 44 (2.13%) Apache
5 42 (2.03%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.87%) IIS
7 15 (0.73%) nginx
8 13 (0.63%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 13 (0.63%) SAS
9 12 (0.58%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.58%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
10 9 (0.44%) Mendix
11 8 (0.39%) MQSeries
12 7 (0.34%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.34%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.29%) Tomcat
14 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
14 4 (0.19%) Appian
Applications
1 149 (7.22%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (1.69%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 25 (1.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.53%) Microsoft Project
6 9 (0.44%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
7 5 (0.24%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
9 3 (0.15%) Notion
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 24 (1.16%) Aladdin
2 23 (1.11%) Oracle General Ledger
2 23 (1.11%) Oracle Payables
3 20 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
4 17 (0.82%) Oracle Assets
5 15 (0.73%) Endur
5 15 (0.73%) Oracle Receivables
6 14 (0.68%) Oracle Financials
7 13 (0.63%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.63%) NetSuite
8 12 (0.58%) Oracle EBS R12
9 9 (0.44%) Oracle E-Business Tax
9 9 (0.44%) Oracle ERP
9 9 (0.44%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 9 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
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
1 657 (31.82%) Azure
2 493 (23.87%) AWS
3 386 (18.69%) Power Platform
4 175 (8.47%) GitHub
5 174 (8.43%) Azure DevOps
6 170 (8.23%) Snowflake
7 156 (7.55%) Azure Data Factory
8 149 (7.22%) GCP
9 147 (7.12%) Serverless
10 135 (6.54%) Amazon S3
11 109 (5.28%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 86 (4.16%) GitHub Actions
13 80 (3.87%) AWS Lambda
13 80 (3.87%) dbt
14 56 (2.71%) Azure Functions
14 56 (2.71%) SaaS
15 43 (2.08%) Azure Logic Apps
15 43 (2.08%) Power Automate
16 40 (1.94%) Microsoft 365
17 38 (1.84%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 30 (1.45%) Firewall
2 22 (1.07%) HTTP
3 20 (0.97%) DNS
4 13 (0.63%) SSH
5 12 (0.58%) Internet
6 11 (0.53%) Network Security
7 10 (0.48%) SMTP
8 9 (0.44%) FTP
8 9 (0.44%) IMAP
8 9 (0.44%) OpenLDAP
9 8 (0.39%) Multicast
9 8 (0.39%) SMS
9 8 (0.39%) VPN
10 7 (0.34%) Skype
11 6 (0.29%) Unified Communications
12 5 (0.24%) LAN
12 5 (0.24%) WAN
13 4 (0.19%) 2G
13 4 (0.19%) 4G
13 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 353 (17.09%) Power BI
2 251 (12.15%) Data Warehouse
3 239 (11.57%) SQL Server
4 152 (7.36%) PostgreSQL
4 152 (7.36%) Relational Database
5 151 (7.31%) NoSQL
6 145 (7.02%) Tableau
7 133 (6.44%) Data Lake
8 102 (4.94%) Oracle Database
9 98 (4.75%) Azure SQL Database
10 94 (4.55%) Metadata
11 78 (3.78%) Big Data
12 77 (3.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 65 (3.15%) BigQuery
14 59 (2.86%) Amazon Redshift
15 48 (2.32%) MongoDB
16 44 (2.13%) Amazon RDS
17 43 (2.08%) Amazon Athena
17 43 (2.08%) Delta Lake
18 40 (1.94%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 212 (10.27%) Git
2 160 (7.75%) JIRA
3 85 (4.12%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.24%) GitLab
5 39 (1.89%) JUnit
6 26 (1.26%) Selenium
7 21 (1.02%) SpecFlow
8 19 (0.92%) Cypress.io
8 19 (0.92%) ERwin
9 18 (0.87%) Bitbucket
9 18 (0.87%) Postman
10 17 (0.82%) MLflow
11 16 (0.77%) Cucumber
12 15 (0.73%) Maven
13 14 (0.68%) Mockito
13 14 (0.68%) TeamCity
13 14 (0.68%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.63%) Oracle Forms
15 12 (0.58%) SonarQube
16 11 (0.53%) ER Studio
General
1 695 (33.66%) Finance
2 620 (30.02%) Social Skills
3 365 (17.68%) Analytical Skills
4 290 (14.04%) Banking
5 130 (6.30%) Public Sector
6 115 (5.57%) Investment Banking
7 92 (4.46%) Front Office
8 56 (2.71%) Marketing
9 49 (2.37%) Documentation Skills
10 41 (1.99%) Financial Institution
11 39 (1.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 34 (1.65%) Retail
13 25 (1.21%) Back Office
14 23 (1.11%) Legal
14 23 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (1.07%) General Ledger
16 16 (0.77%) Publishing
17 15 (0.73%) Law
17 15 (0.73%) Pharmaceutical
17 15 (0.73%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 524 (25.38%) Developer
2 369 (17.87%) Analyst
3 319 (15.45%) Data Engineer
4 278 (13.46%) Senior
5 154 (7.46%) Business Analyst
6 143 (6.92%) Data Analyst
7 138 (6.68%) Lead
8 99 (4.79%) Architect
9 82 (3.97%) Consultant
10 75 (3.63%) Java Developer
11 73 (3.54%) Senior Developer
12 68 (3.29%) Azure Engineer
13 66 (3.20%) C# Developer
14 62 (3.00%) Software Engineer
15 55 (2.66%) Python Developer
16 51 (2.47%) Azure Data Engineer
17 49 (2.37%) .NET Developer
17 49 (2.37%) Data Architect
17 49 (2.37%) Senior Data Engineer
18 48 (2.32%) Senior Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 202 (9.78%) .NET
2 172 (8.33%) Kafka
3 142 (6.88%) REST
4 139 (6.73%) PySpark
5 89 (4.31%) RESTful
6 83 (4.02%) React
7 78 (3.78%) HTML
8 77 (3.73%) XML
9 72 (3.49%) CSS
10 71 (3.44%) Spring
11 68 (3.29%) Node.js
12 57 (2.76%) JSON
13 54 (2.62%) AngularJS
14 53 (2.57%) Pandas
15 52 (2.52%) .NET Framework
15 52 (2.52%) Spring Boot
16 47 (2.28%) Middleware
17 41 (1.99%) NumPy
18 40 (1.94%) SOAP
19 38 (1.84%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 115 (5.57%) Cloud Native
2 68 (3.29%) Data Structures
3 58 (2.81%) Derivative
4 56 (2.71%) Legacy Systems
5 55 (2.66%) Data Protection Act
6 52 (2.52%) Analytical Mindset
6 52 (2.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
6 52 (2.52%) Product Ownership
7 51 (2.47%) Equities
8 48 (2.32%) Management Information System
9 47 (2.28%) Fixed Income
10 40 (1.94%) Onboarding
11 39 (1.89%) Market Risk
12 37 (1.79%) Algorithms
12 37 (1.79%) Distributed Systems
13 27 (1.31%) Self-Motivation
14 26 (1.26%) Hedge funds
14 26 (1.26%) Replication
15 23 (1.11%) SWIFT Messaging Network
16 22 (1.07%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 192 (9.30%) Linux
2 128 (6.20%) Windows
3 122 (5.91%) Unix
4 29 (1.40%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.68%) VMS
6 11 (0.53%) Android
6 11 (0.53%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.44%) 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 4 (0.19%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
12 2 (0.097%) zOS
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 567 (27.46%) Agile
2 500 (24.21%) Analytics
3 461 (22.32%) Data Modelling
4 459 (22.23%) Business Intelligence
5 446 (21.60%) Problem-Solving
6 442 (21.40%) CI/CD
7 417 (20.19%) ETL
8 398 (19.27%) DevOps
9 314 (15.21%) Data Pipeline
10 289 (14.00%) Data Engineering
11 251 (12.15%) Data Governance
12 244 (11.82%) Migration
13 228 (11.04%) AI
14 212 (10.27%) Data Analysis
15 205 (9.93%) Validation
16 192 (9.30%) Visualisation
17 188 (9.10%) Data Science
18 180 (8.72%) Decision-Making
19 175 (8.47%) Stakeholder Management
20 166 (8.04%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 834 (40.39%) Python
2 284 (13.75%) Java
3 271 (13.12%) C#
4 167 (8.09%) JavaScript
5 137 (6.63%) PL/SQL
6 96 (4.65%) PowerShell
7 92 (4.46%) TypeScript
8 73 (3.54%) C++
9 68 (3.29%) T-SQL
10 60 (2.91%) R
11 58 (2.81%) Scala
12 50 (2.42%) VBA
13 48 (2.32%) Shell Script
14 44 (2.13%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 44 (2.13%) VB
15 36 (1.74%) Bash
16 29 (1.40%) Bicep
17 22 (1.07%) Perl
18 20 (0.97%) Groovy
19 19 (0.92%) Korn
Qualifications
1 271 (13.12%) Security Cleared
2 212 (10.27%) SC Cleared
3 181 (8.77%) Degree
4 63 (3.05%) Computer Science Degree
5 47 (2.28%) Azure Certification
6 36 (1.74%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.45%) Master's Degree
8 25 (1.21%) ISTQB
9 19 (0.92%) Microsoft Certification
10 18 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
10 18 (0.87%) CBAP
11 17 (0.82%) DV Cleared
12 12 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 12 (0.58%) PMI Certification
13 11 (0.53%) CFA
14 9 (0.44%) PMP
15 8 (0.39%) ITIL Certification
16 6 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
16 6 (0.29%) ISEB
16 6 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 330 (15.98%) Data Quality
2 158 (7.65%) QA
3 84 (4.07%) GDPR
4 37 (1.79%) Accessibility
5 21 (1.02%) MiFID
6 19 (0.92%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 15 (0.73%) EMIR
8 11 (0.53%) IFRS
8 11 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (0.53%) SLA
9 9 (0.44%) HIPAA
9 9 (0.44%) NIST
10 8 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.34%) Basel III
11 7 (0.34%) GAAP
11 7 (0.34%) IFRS 9
11 7 (0.34%) PCI DSS
11 7 (0.34%) SEPA
12 6 (0.29%) ISO 8583
12 6 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 209 (10.12%) Docker
2 50 (2.42%) Active Directory
3 9 (0.44%) DFS Replication
3 9 (0.44%) Dovecot
3 9 (0.44%) Postfix
3 9 (0.44%) Squid
3 9 (0.44%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.39%) HDFS
4 8 (0.39%) zsh
5 7 (0.34%) VMware Infrastructure
6 5 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
7 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
7 4 (0.19%) XenApp
7 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
8 2 (0.097%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 173 (8.38%) Kubernetes
2 159 (7.70%) Terraform
3 29 (1.40%) Grafana
4 24 (1.16%) Ansible
5 20 (0.97%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.68%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.68%) SCOM
7 12 (0.58%) Control-M
7 12 (0.58%) SCCM
8 11 (0.53%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.44%) Kibana
9 9 (0.44%) Nessus
9 9 (0.44%) Proxmox
10 8 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
11 7 (0.34%) Puppet
12 6 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.29%) logstash
13 5 (0.24%) ZABBIX
14 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
14 4 (0.19%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 307 (14.87%) Oracle
2 296 (14.33%) Microsoft
3 255 (12.35%) Databricks
4 67 (3.24%) Google
5 56 (2.71%) SAP
6 50 (2.42%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.84%) ServiceNow
8 37 (1.79%) Citrix
9 35 (1.69%) Splunk
10 32 (1.55%) IBM
11 31 (1.50%) OpenAI
12 26 (1.26%) Informatica
13 25 (1.21%) Bloomberg
14 23 (1.11%) MuleSoft
15 18 (0.87%) Sybase
16 16 (0.77%) Adobe
16 16 (0.77%) Murex
17 15 (0.73%) Palantir
18 14 (0.68%) Alteryx
18 14 (0.68%) Dynatrace