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 18 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,454 1,944 2,283
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.21% 14.44% 14.12%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.97% 37.60% 35.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,699 1,372 1,767
10th Percentile £364 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £415 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -7.83% -
75th Percentile £638 £675 £691
90th Percentile £738 £788 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 26 16
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.04 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.52 £29.54 £40.71
Median hourly rate £37.50 £39.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -3.83% -13.34% -28.57%
75th Percentile £52.49 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £57.60 £63.75 £53.75
England median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £41.50
% change year-on-year +5.10% +3.17% -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 6,297 5,170 6,439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.34% 38.40% 39.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,224 3,612 4,806
10th Percentile £383 £370 £375
25th Percentile £450 £428 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £713
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 56 42
10th Percentile £31.03 £26.86 £23.80
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £31.71
Median hourly rate £52.50 £44.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.32% -7.37% -24.60%
75th Percentile £73.00 £62.69 £57.50
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.25 £74.69
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £65.00
% change year-on-year +14.54% -12.69% +8.14%

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 18 August 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 18 August 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 18 August 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 -6 306 £550 -4.35% 194
West London +11 72 £520 +4.79% 39
South London 0 40 £535 -16.08% 9
East London -1 13 £450 -1.66% 21
North London +2 5 £500 - 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
1 160 (6.52%) Apache Airflow
2 133 (5.42%) Apache Spark
3 107 (4.36%) Apache
4 80 (3.26%) Confluence
5 51 (2.08%) SharePoint
6 25 (1.02%) IIS
7 23 (0.94%) SAS
8 15 (0.61%) Oracle Workflow
8 15 (0.61%) Palantir Foundry
9 14 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
9 14 (0.57%) nginx
10 13 (0.53%) CMS
10 13 (0.53%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.41%) Camunda
12 9 (0.37%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.29%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.24%) Appian
14 6 (0.24%) CICS
15 4 (0.16%) MTS
Applications
1 150 (6.11%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 23 (0.94%) MS Visio
4 22 (0.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 15 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Notion
7 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.041%) Mingle
Business Applications
1 25 (1.02%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.98%) Oracle EBS
3 17 (0.69%) Dynamics CRM
4 16 (0.65%) Oracle ERP
5 14 (0.57%) Oracle Payables
6 12 (0.49%) Oracle General Ledger
7 11 (0.45%) Oracle EBS R12
7 11 (0.45%) Oracle Receivables
7 11 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
8 10 (0.41%) Finacle
8 10 (0.41%) Findur
8 10 (0.41%) Remedy ITSM
9 8 (0.33%) Unit4 Business World
10 7 (0.29%) OpenText MBPM
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle FAH
10 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
10 7 (0.29%) Summit
11 6 (0.24%) Actimize
11 6 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 829 (33.78%) Azure
2 596 (24.29%) AWS
3 457 (18.62%) Power Platform
4 275 (11.21%) Azure DevOps
5 259 (10.55%) GCP
6 225 (9.17%) GitHub
6 225 (9.17%) Snowflake
7 199 (8.11%) dbt
8 173 (7.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 156 (6.36%) Serverless
10 144 (5.87%) Amazon S3
11 130 (5.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 116 (4.73%) GitHub Actions
13 113 (4.60%) AWS Lambda
14 54 (2.20%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 52 (2.12%) SaaS
16 51 (2.08%) Entra ID
17 44 (1.79%) PowerApps
18 40 (1.63%) Amazon EC2
18 40 (1.63%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 17 (0.69%) DNS
2 16 (0.65%) Firewall
2 16 (0.65%) Internet
2 16 (0.65%) VPN
3 13 (0.53%) HTTP
4 12 (0.49%) Network Security
5 7 (0.29%) Broadband
5 7 (0.29%) Multicast
5 7 (0.29%) SAN
5 7 (0.29%) SSL
5 7 (0.29%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.20%) DHCP
7 4 (0.16%) HTTPS
8 3 (0.12%) FTP
8 3 (0.12%) Intranet
8 3 (0.12%) IPv4
8 3 (0.12%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.12%) SMS
8 3 (0.12%) WAN
8 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 412 (16.79%) Power BI
2 359 (14.63%) Data Warehouse
3 299 (12.18%) SQL Server
4 176 (7.17%) Relational Database
5 165 (6.72%) Data Lake
6 163 (6.64%) Tableau
7 144 (5.87%) Metadata
8 135 (5.50%) PostgreSQL
9 127 (5.18%) NoSQL
10 125 (5.09%) BigQuery
11 101 (4.12%) Azure SQL Database
12 95 (3.87%) Oracle Database
13 85 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
14 84 (3.42%) Delta Lake
15 66 (2.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 60 (2.44%) Snowflake Schema
17 58 (2.36%) Amazon Athena
18 57 (2.32%) Star Schema
19 56 (2.28%) Power Query
20 53 (2.16%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 264 (10.76%) Git
2 180 (7.33%) JIRA
3 124 (5.05%) Jenkins
4 76 (3.10%) GitLab
5 38 (1.55%) Gradle
5 38 (1.55%) JUnit
6 36 (1.47%) Selenium
7 26 (1.06%) Maven
7 26 (1.06%) Mockito
7 26 (1.06%) SonarQube
8 20 (0.81%) Visual Studio
9 19 (0.77%) ERwin
10 18 (0.73%) Bitbucket
10 18 (0.73%) TeamCity
11 17 (0.69%) Liquibase
12 16 (0.65%) Oracle Forms
13 15 (0.61%) ER Studio
13 15 (0.61%) MLflow
14 14 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 14 (0.57%) JMeter
General
1 882 (35.94%) Finance
2 689 (28.08%) Social Skills
3 522 (21.27%) Analytical Skills
4 391 (15.93%) Banking
5 166 (6.76%) Public Sector
6 127 (5.18%) Front Office
7 102 (4.16%) Marketing
8 100 (4.07%) Investment Banking
9 68 (2.77%) Retail
10 61 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 50 (2.04%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.63%) Documentation Skills
13 32 (1.30%) Back Office
14 30 (1.22%) Legal
15 27 (1.10%) Telecoms
16 25 (1.02%) Organisational Skills
17 24 (0.98%) Publishing
18 20 (0.81%) Local Government
18 20 (0.81%) Pharmaceutical
18 20 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 539 (21.96%) Developer
2 456 (18.58%) Data Engineer
3 403 (16.42%) Analyst
4 368 (15.00%) Senior
5 186 (7.58%) Lead
6 162 (6.60%) Data Analyst
7 146 (5.95%) Business Analyst
8 136 (5.54%) Architect
9 99 (4.03%) Consultant
10 98 (3.99%) Senior Data Engineer
11 95 (3.87%) Senior Developer
12 87 (3.55%) Java Developer
13 83 (3.38%) C# Developer
13 83 (3.38%) Software Engineer
14 76 (3.10%) Python Engineer
15 67 (2.73%) Azure Engineer
15 67 (2.73%) Python Developer
16 58 (2.36%) DBA
16 58 (2.36%) Snowflake Engineer
17 56 (2.28%) Data Scientist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 263 (10.72%) .NET
2 219 (8.92%) REST
3 186 (7.58%) Kafka
4 184 (7.50%) PySpark
5 131 (5.34%) React
6 125 (5.09%) Spring
7 104 (4.24%) JSON
7 104 (4.24%) RESTful
7 104 (4.24%) Spring Boot
8 103 (4.20%) HTML
9 94 (3.83%) AngularJS
10 82 (3.34%) CSS
10 82 (3.34%) XML
11 78 (3.18%) Pandas
12 66 (2.69%) Web Services
13 64 (2.61%) SOAP
14 60 (2.44%) Middleware
15 59 (2.40%) .NET Framework
16 46 (1.87%) FastAPI
16 46 (1.87%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 195 (7.95%) Cloud Native
2 110 (4.48%) Product Ownership
3 109 (4.44%) Data Structures
4 90 (3.67%) Legacy Systems
5 86 (3.50%) Distributed Systems
6 76 (3.10%) Derivative
7 66 (2.69%) Onboarding
8 57 (2.32%) Self-Motivation
9 54 (2.20%) Management Information System
10 51 (2.08%) Fixed Income
11 45 (1.83%) Enterprise Software
12 44 (1.79%) Analytical Mindset
13 43 (1.75%) Equities
14 39 (1.59%) Reference Data
15 38 (1.55%) Algorithms
16 37 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 34 (1.39%) Greenfield Project
18 32 (1.30%) AI Agents
19 30 (1.22%) Replication
20 28 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 159 (6.48%) Linux
2 146 (5.95%) Windows
3 101 (4.12%) Unix
4 38 (1.55%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
7 8 (0.33%) Windows Server 2019
8 7 (0.29%) zOS
9 6 (0.24%) Solaris
9 6 (0.24%) VMS
10 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
11 3 (0.12%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2016
12 2 (0.081%) Android
12 2 (0.081%) Apple iOS
12 2 (0.081%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.041%) AIX
13 1 (0.041%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 735 (29.95%) CI/CD
2 663 (27.02%) Analytics
3 652 (26.57%) Agile
4 648 (26.41%) Data Modelling
5 543 (22.13%) DevOps
6 502 (20.46%) ETL
7 496 (20.21%) Data Pipeline
8 494 (20.13%) Business Intelligence
9 466 (18.99%) Problem-Solving
10 465 (18.95%) Data Engineering
11 462 (18.83%) AI
12 341 (13.90%) Validation
13 336 (13.69%) Stakeholder Management
14 325 (13.24%) Migration
15 319 (13.00%) Data Governance
16 301 (12.27%) Data Analysis
17 269 (10.96%) Decision-Making
18 251 (10.23%) Continuous Improvement
19 244 (9.94%) Test Automation
20 228 (9.29%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,043 (42.50%) Python
2 337 (13.73%) Java
3 321 (13.08%) C#
4 210 (8.56%) JavaScript
5 182 (7.42%) PL/SQL
6 121 (4.93%) TypeScript
7 115 (4.69%) PowerShell
8 113 (4.60%) T-SQL
9 91 (3.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 76 (3.10%) Shell Script
11 50 (2.04%) Scala
12 49 (2.00%) R
13 38 (1.55%) C++
14 34 (1.39%) VBA
15 32 (1.30%) Bash
16 18 (0.73%) VB.NET
17 16 (0.65%) Bicep
17 16 (0.65%) Go
18 13 (0.53%) Groovy
19 12 (0.49%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 402 (16.38%) Security Cleared
2 347 (14.14%) SC Cleared
3 190 (7.74%) Degree
4 67 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 43 (1.75%) Azure Certification
6 38 (1.55%) BPSS Clearance
7 30 (1.22%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.10%) AWS Certification
9 19 (0.77%) ISTQB
10 14 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
11 13 (0.53%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 13 (0.53%) DV Cleared
11 13 (0.53%) FFIEC
12 11 (0.45%) ISEB
13 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
14 8 (0.33%) PhD
15 7 (0.29%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.29%) CISM
15 7 (0.29%) CISSP
15 7 (0.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (18.70%) Data Quality
2 191 (7.78%) QA
3 90 (3.67%) GDPR
4 32 (1.30%) Accessibility
5 23 (0.94%) SLA
6 19 (0.77%) NIST
7 16 (0.65%) ISO 20022
8 15 (0.61%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 13 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
9 13 (0.53%) IFRS
10 12 (0.49%) COBIT
10 12 (0.49%) MiFID
11 10 (0.41%) PMO
11 10 (0.41%) Solvency II
12 9 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 7 (0.29%) HIPAA
14 5 (0.20%) Basel III
14 5 (0.20%) DICOM
14 5 (0.20%) GAAP
14 5 (0.20%) HL7
System Software
1 232 (9.45%) Docker
2 52 (2.12%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.61%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
6 5 (0.20%) Virtual Desktop
7 4 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 3 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 3 (0.12%) Postfix
9 2 (0.081%) GridGain
10 1 (0.041%) Hyper-V
10 1 (0.041%) RACF
10 1 (0.041%) Varnish
10 1 (0.041%) Virtual Servers
10 1 (0.041%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 239 (9.74%) Terraform
2 216 (8.80%) Kubernetes
3 38 (1.55%) Grafana
4 30 (1.22%) Ansible
5 27 (1.10%) Control-M
6 17 (0.69%) Prometheus
7 11 (0.45%) Microsoft Clustering
7 11 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
8 10 (0.41%) Kibana
9 9 (0.37%) ITRS Geneos
10 7 (0.29%) Data Guard
11 6 (0.24%) Kubeflow
11 6 (0.24%) Packer
11 6 (0.24%) SCOM
12 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
12 5 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
13 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
13 4 (0.16%) SCCM
14 3 (0.12%) NetBackup
14 3 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 344 (14.02%) Microsoft
2 323 (13.16%) Oracle
3 293 (11.94%) Databricks
4 106 (4.32%) Google
5 64 (2.61%) Informatica
6 50 (2.04%) SAP
7 42 (1.71%) IBM
8 40 (1.63%) ServiceNow
9 36 (1.47%) Bloomberg
10 34 (1.39%) Citrix
10 34 (1.39%) Salesforce
11 32 (1.30%) Murex
12 27 (1.10%) VMware
13 23 (0.94%) Adobe
14 21 (0.86%) Foundry
14 21 (0.86%) Sybase
15 20 (0.81%) Splunk
16 18 (0.73%) Alteryx
17 17 (0.69%) Dynatrace
18 16 (0.65%) Talend