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

6 months to
23 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 8 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -1 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,102 1,971 2,397
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.37% 14.12% 13.13%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.78% 36.59% 37.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,421 1,371 1,778
10th Percentile £360 £363 £388
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 £663 £688
90th Percentile £738 £775 £788
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 23 26
10th Percentile £18.25 £36.25 £30.40
25th Percentile £26.50 £40.91 £36.26
Median hourly rate £40.49 £52.50 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year -22.88% +12.30% -17.26%
75th Percentile £47.50 £62.88 £54.03
90th Percentile £64.35 £91.00 £64.52
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +20.69% -9.38%

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 5,421 5,386 6,410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 37.07% 38.60% 35.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,651 3,580 4,858
10th Percentile £363 £375 £391
25th Percentile £425 £460 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £533 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -5.33% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £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 63 36 67
10th Percentile £25.39 £35.00 £26.62
25th Percentile £35.75 £40.06 £36.96
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +3.96% -12.17%
75th Percentile £67.10 £73.25 £62.13
90th Percentile £85.75 £97.50 £72.20
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -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 23 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 23 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 23 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% 182
South London +20 47 £492 -0.35% 44
West London -3 36 £575 +15.00% 37
East London +1 22 £463 +15.63% 22
North London +7 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
1 129 (6.14%) Apache Spark
2 91 (4.33%) Apache Airflow
3 73 (3.47%) Confluence
4 54 (2.57%) Apache
5 42 (2.00%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.86%) IIS
7 15 (0.71%) nginx
8 13 (0.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 13 (0.62%) SAS
9 12 (0.57%) Jupyter
10 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
10 11 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 9 (0.43%) Mendix
11 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
12 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
12 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
13 6 (0.29%) Appian
13 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
13 6 (0.29%) Tomcat
14 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
Applications
1 146 (6.95%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.71%) Microsoft Office
3 32 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 26 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) 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 22 (1.05%) Aladdin
1 22 (1.05%) Oracle General Ledger
1 22 (1.05%) Oracle Payables
2 19 (0.90%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.76%) Oracle Assets
4 15 (0.71%) Oracle Receivables
5 14 (0.67%) Endur
5 14 (0.67%) Oracle Financials
6 13 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
6 13 (0.62%) NetSuite
7 11 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
8 10 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
9 9 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
9 9 (0.43%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 8 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
10 8 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
10 8 (0.38%) SAP HR
11 7 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
11 7 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
12 6 (0.29%) Markit EDM
Cloud Services
1 686 (32.64%) Azure
2 502 (23.88%) AWS
3 391 (18.60%) Power Platform
4 197 (9.37%) Azure DevOps
5 185 (8.80%) GitHub
6 173 (8.23%) Snowflake
7 165 (7.85%) Azure Data Factory
8 154 (7.33%) GCP
9 152 (7.23%) Serverless
10 133 (6.33%) Amazon S3
11 112 (5.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 92 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
13 85 (4.04%) dbt
14 80 (3.81%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.90%) SaaS
16 57 (2.71%) Azure Functions
17 43 (2.05%) Azure Logic Apps
17 43 (2.05%) Power Automate
18 41 (1.95%) AWS CloudFormation
18 41 (1.95%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 28 (1.33%) Firewall
2 21 (1.00%) HTTP
3 19 (0.90%) DNS
4 13 (0.62%) SSH
5 12 (0.57%) Internet
5 12 (0.57%) Network Security
6 11 (0.52%) SMTP
7 9 (0.43%) FTP
7 9 (0.43%) IMAP
7 9 (0.43%) OpenLDAP
8 8 (0.38%) SMS
8 8 (0.38%) VPN
9 7 (0.33%) Multicast
9 7 (0.33%) 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
1 360 (17.13%) Power BI
2 251 (11.94%) Data Warehouse
3 249 (11.85%) SQL Server
4 156 (7.42%) PostgreSQL
5 150 (7.14%) NoSQL
6 149 (7.09%) Relational Database
7 146 (6.95%) Tableau
8 138 (6.57%) Data Lake
9 103 (4.90%) Metadata
10 100 (4.76%) Azure SQL Database
11 98 (4.66%) Oracle Database
12 79 (3.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (3.66%) Big Data
14 68 (3.24%) BigQuery
15 58 (2.76%) Amazon Redshift
16 49 (2.33%) Delta Lake
16 49 (2.33%) MongoDB
17 47 (2.24%) Amazon Athena
18 43 (2.05%) Amazon RDS
19 42 (2.00%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 221 (10.51%) Git
2 161 (7.66%) JIRA
3 85 (4.04%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.28%) GitLab
5 38 (1.81%) JUnit
6 26 (1.24%) Selenium
7 21 (1.00%) ERwin
7 21 (1.00%) SpecFlow
8 20 (0.95%) Cypress.io
9 19 (0.90%) MLflow
10 17 (0.81%) Bitbucket
10 17 (0.81%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.81%) Postman
11 14 (0.67%) Maven
11 14 (0.67%) Mockito
11 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
12 12 (0.57%) TeamCity
13 11 (0.52%) ER Studio
13 11 (0.52%) Oracle Forms
13 11 (0.52%) SonarQube
General
1 710 (33.78%) Finance
2 626 (29.78%) Social Skills
3 382 (18.17%) Analytical Skills
4 298 (14.18%) Banking
5 124 (5.90%) Public Sector
6 116 (5.52%) Investment Banking
7 95 (4.52%) Front Office
8 56 (2.66%) Marketing
9 52 (2.47%) Documentation Skills
10 45 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 41 (1.95%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.90%) Retail
13 23 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.05%) Back Office
14 22 (1.05%) General Ledger
14 22 (1.05%) Legal
15 17 (0.81%) Publishing
16 15 (0.71%) Law
16 15 (0.71%) Telecoms
17 12 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 526 (25.02%) Developer
2 366 (17.41%) Analyst
3 348 (16.56%) Data Engineer
4 282 (13.42%) Senior
5 158 (7.52%) Business Analyst
6 141 (6.71%) Lead
7 138 (6.57%) Data Analyst
8 103 (4.90%) Architect
9 81 (3.85%) Consultant
10 72 (3.43%) Azure Engineer
11 69 (3.28%) Java Developer
11 69 (3.28%) Senior Developer
12 68 (3.24%) C# Developer
13 62 (2.95%) Software Engineer
14 61 (2.90%) Python Developer
15 57 (2.71%) Senior Data Engineer
16 51 (2.43%) Azure Data Engineer
16 51 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
17 48 (2.28%) Data Architect
18 47 (2.24%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 200 (9.51%) .NET
2 169 (8.04%) Kafka
3 146 (6.95%) PySpark
4 144 (6.85%) REST
5 97 (4.61%) RESTful
6 93 (4.42%) React
7 77 (3.66%) HTML
8 70 (3.33%) XML
9 68 (3.24%) Spring
10 67 (3.19%) CSS
10 67 (3.19%) Node.js
11 60 (2.85%) Pandas
12 54 (2.57%) AngularJS
13 53 (2.52%) Spring Boot
14 52 (2.47%) .NET Framework
14 52 (2.47%) JSON
15 49 (2.33%) Middleware
16 46 (2.19%) NumPy
17 40 (1.90%) YAML
18 39 (1.86%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 124 (5.90%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.38%) Data Structures
3 61 (2.90%) Derivative
4 57 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
5 55 (2.62%) Product Ownership
6 54 (2.57%) Equities
6 54 (2.57%) Legacy Systems
7 52 (2.47%) Analytical Mindset
8 49 (2.33%) Management Information System
9 48 (2.28%) Fixed Income
10 47 (2.24%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 41 (1.95%) Market Risk
12 40 (1.90%) Algorithms
13 38 (1.81%) Onboarding
14 36 (1.71%) Distributed Systems
15 26 (1.24%) Hedge funds
16 25 (1.19%) Credit Risk
16 25 (1.19%) Replication
16 25 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
17 22 (1.05%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.32%) Linux
2 123 (5.85%) Windows
3 121 (5.76%) Unix
4 28 (1.33%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.67%) VMS
6 11 (0.52%) Android
6 11 (0.52%) Ubuntu
7 10 (0.48%) Windows Server 2016
8 9 (0.43%) Amazon Linux
9 7 (0.33%) 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 (0.095%) zOS
13 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
13 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (27.40%) Agile
2 514 (24.45%) Analytics
3 477 (22.69%) Data Modelling
4 472 (22.45%) Problem-Solving
5 469 (22.31%) CI/CD
6 465 (22.12%) Business Intelligence
7 430 (20.46%) ETL
8 420 (19.98%) DevOps
9 328 (15.60%) Data Pipeline
10 302 (14.37%) Data Engineering
11 261 (12.42%) Data Governance
12 252 (11.99%) Migration
13 243 (11.56%) AI
14 225 (10.70%) Data Analysis
15 212 (10.09%) Validation
16 200 (9.51%) Visualisation
17 199 (9.47%) Data Science
18 190 (9.04%) Decision-Making
19 181 (8.61%) Stakeholder Management
20 175 (8.33%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 871 (41.44%) Python
2 282 (13.42%) Java
3 270 (12.84%) C#
4 167 (7.94%) JavaScript
5 132 (6.28%) PL/SQL
6 97 (4.61%) PowerShell
7 92 (4.38%) TypeScript
8 72 (3.43%) C++
9 67 (3.19%) Scala
10 66 (3.14%) T-SQL
11 58 (2.76%) R
12 51 (2.43%) Shell Script
13 47 (2.24%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 47 (2.24%) VBA
14 42 (2.00%) VB
15 35 (1.67%) Bash
16 29 (1.38%) Bicep
17 22 (1.05%) Perl
18 20 (0.95%) Go
19 19 (0.90%) Korn
Qualifications
1 279 (13.27%) Security Cleared
2 222 (10.56%) SC Cleared
3 188 (8.94%) Degree
4 68 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.43%) Azure Certification
6 35 (1.67%) AWS Certification
7 29 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.33%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.24%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.86%) CBAP
12 16 (0.76%) DV Cleared
13 12 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.57%) PMI Certification
14 10 (0.48%) CFA
15 9 (0.43%) PMP
16 8 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
17 6 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.29%) ISEB
17 6 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 339 (16.13%) Data Quality
2 160 (7.61%) QA
3 84 (4.00%) GDPR
4 32 (1.52%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.90%) MiFID
5 19 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 12 (0.57%) EMIR
6 12 (0.57%) IFRS
7 10 (0.48%) SLA
8 9 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 9 (0.43%) NIST
8 9 (0.43%) PCI DSS
9 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
9 8 (0.38%) ISO 8583
10 7 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
10 7 (0.33%) Basel III
10 7 (0.33%) GAAP
11 6 (0.29%) IFRS 9
12 5 (0.24%) PMO
12 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 223 (10.61%) Docker
2 51 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.52%) 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 (0.38%) HDFS
6 7 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 7 (0.33%) 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 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 182 (8.66%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.23%) Terraform
3 28 (1.33%) Grafana
4 23 (1.09%) Ansible
5 20 (0.95%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.67%) SCOM
7 12 (0.57%) SCCM
8 11 (0.52%) Control-M
9 9 (0.43%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.43%) Kibana
9 9 (0.43%) Nessus
9 9 (0.43%) Proxmox
10 8 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.29%) logstash
11 6 (0.29%) Puppet
12 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
13 4 (0.19%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 317 (15.08%) Oracle
2 300 (14.27%) Microsoft
3 270 (12.84%) Databricks
4 68 (3.24%) Google
5 56 (2.66%) SAP
6 47 (2.24%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.81%) ServiceNow
8 37 (1.76%) Citrix
9 35 (1.67%) IBM
9 35 (1.67%) Splunk
10 33 (1.57%) Informatica
11 31 (1.47%) OpenAI
12 27 (1.28%) Bloomberg
13 23 (1.09%) MuleSoft
14 17 (0.81%) Palantir
14 17 (0.81%) Sybase
15 16 (0.76%) Murex
16 15 (0.71%) Foundry
17 14 (0.67%) Adobe
17 14 (0.67%) UiPath