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 15 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,243 1,848 2,285
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.55% 14.91% 13.05%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.78% 37.99% 35.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,496 1,325 1,776
10th Percentile £363 £363 £399
25th Percentile £415 £425 £475
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £540 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.70% -6.09% -0.86%
75th Percentile £630 £688 £688
90th Percentile £738 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 17 18
10th Percentile £31.58 £29.07 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.50 £39.25 £40.88
Median hourly rate £45.25 £52.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year -13.81% +13.51% -28.85%
75th Percentile £54.94 £65.00 £51.75
90th Percentile £61.30 £78.00 £57.25
England median hourly rate £48.72 £48.25 £44.25
% change year-on-year +0.97% +9.04% -10.73%

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 5,638 4,865 6,393
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.54% 39.25% 36.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,792 3,431 4,883
10th Percentile £363 £380 £381
25th Percentile £434 £445 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £700
90th Percentile £750 £825 £829
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.65%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 28 50
10th Percentile £32.39 £29.07 £23.80
25th Percentile £44.56 £33.25 £40.77
Median hourly rate £58.94 £43.66 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year +34.99% -14.61% -14.79%
75th Percentile £73.00 £59.88 £64.02
90th Percentile £88.75 £73.13 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -

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 15 May 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 15 May 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 15 May 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 -8 269 £550 - 241
West London +9 61 £600 +14.29% 29
South London +4 41 £500 -25.93% 6
East London +4 22 £450 +1.11% 26
North London - 2 £336 - 3
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
1 158 (7.04%) Apache Spark
2 110 (4.90%) Apache Airflow
3 85 (3.79%) Apache
4 64 (2.85%) Confluence
5 42 (1.87%) SharePoint
6 22 (0.98%) IIS
7 18 (0.80%) SAS
8 13 (0.58%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.58%) Palantir Foundry
9 12 (0.53%) Mendix
9 12 (0.53%) Microsoft Exchange
10 10 (0.45%) Appian
10 10 (0.45%) Jupyter
10 10 (0.45%) Tomcat
11 8 (0.36%) nginx
12 6 (0.27%) Camunda
12 6 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 5 (0.22%) CMS
14 4 (0.18%) Oracle Workflow
14 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 153 (6.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 38 (1.69%) MS Visio
3 31 (1.38%) Microsoft Office
4 30 (1.34%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 16 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
7 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 5 (0.22%) Notion
9 3 (0.13%) Trello
10 1 (0.045%) Mingle
10 1 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 25 (1.11%) Aladdin
2 19 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
3 13 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
4 11 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.49%) NetSuite
4 11 (0.49%) Oracle Payables
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle Receivables
5 9 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
6 8 (0.36%) Endur
6 8 (0.36%) Findur
7 7 (0.31%) Fidessa
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 6 (0.27%) Actimize
8 6 (0.27%) BASE24
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.27%) Summit
9 5 (0.22%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 825 (36.78%) Azure
2 556 (24.79%) AWS
3 436 (19.44%) Power Platform
4 270 (12.04%) Azure DevOps
5 210 (9.36%) GitHub
6 201 (8.96%) Azure Data Factory
7 200 (8.92%) GCP
8 168 (7.49%) Snowflake
9 157 (7.00%) Serverless
10 154 (6.87%) Amazon S3
11 150 (6.69%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 128 (5.71%) dbt
13 104 (4.64%) AWS Lambda
14 102 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
15 49 (2.18%) Collibra
16 46 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 44 (1.96%) Entra ID
17 44 (1.96%) Power Automate
18 43 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
19 42 (1.87%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 16 (0.71%) Firewall
2 14 (0.62%) DNS
2 14 (0.62%) Network Security
3 13 (0.58%) Internet
4 11 (0.49%) HTTP
5 6 (0.27%) WAN
6 5 (0.22%) VPN
7 4 (0.18%) FIX Connectivity
7 4 (0.18%) LAN
7 4 (0.18%) NetScaler
7 4 (0.18%) SMS
8 3 (0.13%) FTP
8 3 (0.13%) Multicast
8 3 (0.13%) NAS
8 3 (0.13%) SAN
8 3 (0.13%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
9 2 (0.089%) NaaS
9 2 (0.089%) SD-WAN
9 2 (0.089%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 392 (17.48%) Power BI
2 304 (13.55%) Data Warehouse
3 303 (13.51%) SQL Server
4 190 (8.47%) Data Lake
5 170 (7.58%) Tableau
6 154 (6.87%) Relational Database
7 148 (6.60%) PostgreSQL
8 142 (6.33%) Metadata
9 130 (5.80%) NoSQL
10 116 (5.17%) Azure SQL Database
11 102 (4.55%) BigQuery
12 87 (3.88%) Oracle Database
13 86 (3.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 81 (3.61%) Delta Lake
15 77 (3.43%) Amazon Redshift
16 63 (2.81%) Big Data
17 60 (2.67%) Snowflake Schema
18 56 (2.50%) Amazon Athena
19 47 (2.10%) Looker
20 45 (2.01%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 219 (9.76%) Git
2 154 (6.87%) JIRA
3 94 (4.19%) Jenkins
4 67 (2.99%) GitLab
5 33 (1.47%) JUnit
6 30 (1.34%) MLflow
7 26 (1.16%) Mockito
8 25 (1.11%) Selenium
9 20 (0.89%) ERwin
10 19 (0.85%) Gradle
11 18 (0.80%) Cucumber
11 18 (0.80%) Maven
11 18 (0.80%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.80%) SpecFlow
12 14 (0.62%) TeamCity
13 12 (0.53%) PowerDesigner
13 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
14 11 (0.49%) ER Studio
14 11 (0.49%) Liquibase
14 11 (0.49%) Visual Studio
General
1 797 (35.53%) Finance
2 596 (26.57%) Social Skills
3 439 (19.57%) Analytical Skills
4 310 (13.82%) Banking
5 134 (5.97%) Public Sector
6 104 (4.64%) Front Office
7 93 (4.15%) Investment Banking
8 69 (3.08%) Marketing
9 51 (2.27%) Documentation Skills
10 50 (2.23%) Financial Institution
11 45 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 31 (1.38%) Retail
13 29 (1.29%) Publishing
14 28 (1.25%) Legal
15 27 (1.20%) Telecoms
16 22 (0.98%) Back Office
17 20 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
18 18 (0.80%) Presentation Skills
19 17 (0.76%) General Ledger
20 14 (0.62%) Law
Job Titles
1 473 (21.09%) Data Engineer
2 469 (20.91%) Developer
3 351 (15.65%) Analyst
4 311 (13.87%) Senior
5 159 (7.09%) Lead
6 148 (6.60%) Business Analyst
7 147 (6.55%) Data Analyst
8 131 (5.84%) Architect
9 89 (3.97%) Senior Data Engineer
10 84 (3.74%) C# Developer
11 78 (3.48%) Software Engineer
12 75 (3.34%) Consultant
13 74 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
14 73 (3.25%) Senior Developer
15 66 (2.94%) Python Developer
16 63 (2.81%) Java Developer
17 62 (2.76%) Data Scientist
18 55 (2.45%) Data Architect
19 54 (2.41%) Python Engineer
19 54 (2.41%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 225 (10.03%) .NET
2 183 (8.16%) Kafka
3 167 (7.45%) PySpark
4 155 (6.91%) REST
5 122 (5.44%) React
6 97 (4.32%) HTML
6 97 (4.32%) RESTful
7 95 (4.24%) Pandas
8 84 (3.74%) Spring
9 76 (3.39%) CSS
10 72 (3.21%) Spring Boot
11 71 (3.17%) AngularJS
12 69 (3.08%) JSON
13 58 (2.59%) Middleware
14 55 (2.45%) .NET Framework
14 55 (2.45%) NumPy
15 51 (2.27%) FastAPI
16 48 (2.14%) XML
17 47 (2.10%) scikit-learn
18 45 (2.01%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 165 (7.36%) Cloud Native
2 82 (3.66%) Data Structures
3 77 (3.43%) Derivative
4 73 (3.25%) Legacy Systems
5 66 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
6 62 (2.76%) Product Ownership
7 54 (2.41%) Equities
8 53 (2.36%) Fixed Income
9 47 (2.10%) Onboarding
10 43 (1.92%) Management Information System
11 41 (1.83%) Algorithms
12 40 (1.78%) Data Protection Act
13 39 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
14 37 (1.65%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 35 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
16 31 (1.38%) Greenfield Project
17 30 (1.34%) Market Risk
18 28 (1.25%) Credit Risk
18 28 (1.25%) Low-Code
19 26 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
Operating Systems
1 141 (6.29%) Linux
2 122 (5.44%) Windows
3 89 (3.97%) Unix
4 38 (1.69%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
6 7 (0.31%) Solaris
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
6 7 (0.31%) zOS
7 6 (0.27%) Android
7 6 (0.27%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.089%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 623 (27.78%) CI/CD
2 615 (27.42%) Analytics
3 607 (27.06%) Data Modelling
4 553 (24.65%) Agile
5 543 (24.21%) ETL
6 511 (22.78%) DevOps
7 501 (22.34%) Business Intelligence
8 444 (19.79%) Problem-Solving
9 437 (19.48%) Data Pipeline
10 430 (19.17%) Data Engineering
11 382 (17.03%) AI
12 316 (14.09%) Data Governance
13 295 (13.15%) Validation
14 263 (11.73%) Migration
15 247 (11.01%) Data Analysis
16 235 (10.48%) Decision-Making
17 221 (9.85%) Machine Learning
18 219 (9.76%) Data Science
19 209 (9.32%) Performance Tuning
19 209 (9.32%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,006 (44.85%) Python
2 309 (13.78%) C#
3 275 (12.26%) Java
4 167 (7.45%) JavaScript
5 151 (6.73%) PL/SQL
6 108 (4.81%) T-SQL
7 92 (4.10%) TypeScript
8 81 (3.61%) PowerShell
9 76 (3.39%) Scala
10 75 (3.34%) R
11 74 (3.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 61 (2.72%) Shell Script
13 50 (2.23%) C++
14 31 (1.38%) VBA
15 28 (1.25%) Bash
16 23 (1.03%) Bicep
17 17 (0.76%) C
18 16 (0.71%) VB
19 13 (0.58%) Perl
20 11 (0.49%) Go
Qualifications
1 354 (15.78%) Security Cleared
2 294 (13.11%) SC Cleared
3 174 (7.76%) Degree
4 60 (2.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.27%) Azure Certification
6 42 (1.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 29 (1.29%) Master's Degree
8 19 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 16 (0.71%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.62%) CBAP
10 14 (0.62%) ISTQB
11 11 (0.49%) PhD
11 11 (0.49%) PMI Certification
12 9 (0.40%) PMP
13 8 (0.36%) CISM
13 8 (0.36%) CISSP
14 7 (0.31%) DBS Check
14 7 (0.31%) DV Cleared
15 6 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
15 6 (0.27%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 444 (19.79%) Data Quality
2 186 (8.29%) QA
3 113 (5.04%) GDPR
4 24 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 21 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 18 (0.80%) MiFID
6 18 (0.80%) SLA
7 16 (0.71%) PMO
8 13 (0.58%) IFRS
8 13 (0.58%) NIST
8 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
9 11 (0.49%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 8 (0.36%) EMIR
11 8 (0.36%) ISO 8583
12 7 (0.31%) Basel III
12 7 (0.31%) HIPAA
12 7 (0.31%) NCSC
12 7 (0.31%) Solvency II
13 6 (0.27%) IFRS 9
System Software
1 241 (10.74%) Docker
2 43 (1.92%) Active Directory
3 18 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.18%) XenApp
6 4 (0.18%) XenDesktop
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.089%) GridGain
8 2 (0.089%) Postfix
9 1 (0.045%) RACF
9 1 (0.045%) Varnish
9 1 (0.045%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 218 (9.72%) Terraform
2 193 (8.60%) Kubernetes
3 41 (1.83%) Grafana
4 22 (0.98%) Ansible
5 18 (0.80%) Prometheus
6 12 (0.53%) Kibana
7 11 (0.49%) Control-M
8 10 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
9 8 (0.36%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 7 (0.31%) ITRS Geneos
11 6 (0.27%) Data Guard
11 6 (0.27%) SCCM
12 5 (0.22%) Kubeflow
12 5 (0.22%) Packer
13 4 (0.18%) SCVMM
14 3 (0.13%) HP ALM
14 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
15 2 (0.089%) Amdocs OSS
15 2 (0.089%) Knative
Vendors
1 339 (15.11%) Microsoft
2 309 (13.78%) Databricks
3 303 (13.51%) Oracle
4 83 (3.70%) Google
5 59 (2.63%) SAP
6 58 (2.59%) Informatica
7 56 (2.50%) ServiceNow
8 42 (1.87%) Citrix
9 38 (1.69%) Salesforce
10 34 (1.52%) Bloomberg
11 30 (1.34%) IBM
12 28 (1.25%) Murex
13 26 (1.16%) OpenAI
14 21 (0.94%) Splunk
15 20 (0.89%) Workday
16 19 (0.85%) MuleSoft
17 16 (0.71%) Adobe
18 15 (0.67%) Charles River
18 15 (0.67%) Palantir
18 15 (0.67%) VMware