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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,506 1,957 2,307
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.31% 14.52% 14.26%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.23% 37.58% 35.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,745 1,369 1,713
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £560
Median % change year-on-year - -6.25% -2.61%
75th Percentile £631 £671 £688
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £539
% change year-on-year - -7.28% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 29 19
10th Percentile £26.51 £25.29 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £37.79
Median hourly rate £43.25 £37.50 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +15.33% -11.76% +16.31%
75th Percentile £53.75 £53.75 £52.75
90th Percentile £67.25 £63.95 £59.00
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.58
% change year-on-year -10.00% +23.22% -11.56%

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 6,388 5,208 6,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.37% 38.64% 40.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,308 3,569 4,615
10th Percentile £375 £375 £364
25th Percentile £450 £431 £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 £550
% change year-on-year +2.04% -6.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 65 45
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.25 £25.54
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £35.00
Median hourly rate £53.75 £43.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +23.56% -8.42% -20.83%
75th Percentile £73.50 £63.25 £68.75
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.00 £90.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% -

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 24 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 24 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 24 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 -6 313 £550 -3.30% 418
West London +6 67 £520 +27.14% 108
South London -10 39 £535 +12.63% 20
East London -1 15 £450 -11.76% 17
North London +5 6 £550 - 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
1 177 (7.06%) Apache Airflow
2 133 (5.31%) Apache Spark
3 101 (4.03%) Apache
4 94 (3.75%) Confluence
5 60 (2.39%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.04%) IIS
7 22 (0.88%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) nginx
9 14 (0.56%) CMS
9 14 (0.56%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Camunda
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 8 (0.32%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.28%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.24%) Appian
15 6 (0.24%) MTS
16 4 (0.16%) CICS
Applications
1 151 (6.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.12%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 14 (0.56%) 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 25 (1.00%) 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%) Oracle EBS R12
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%) Unit4 Business World
9 6 (0.24%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 821 (32.76%) Azure
2 615 (24.54%) AWS
3 479 (19.11%) Power Platform
4 287 (11.45%) GCP
5 272 (10.85%) Snowflake
6 245 (9.78%) Azure DevOps
7 224 (8.94%) dbt
8 215 (8.58%) GitHub
9 165 (6.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 160 (6.38%) Serverless
11 155 (6.19%) Amazon S3
12 118 (4.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 110 (4.39%) GitHub Actions
14 109 (4.35%) AWS Lambda
15 55 (2.19%) Azure Databricks
15 55 (2.19%) SaaS
16 54 (2.15%) PowerApps
17 52 (2.08%) Power Automate
18 48 (1.92%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 47 (1.88%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 20 (0.80%) Internet
2 19 (0.76%) HTTP
3 17 (0.68%) DNS
4 15 (0.60%) Broadband
4 15 (0.60%) VPN
5 13 (0.52%) Firewall
6 9 (0.36%) Network Security
6 9 (0.36%) TCP/IP
7 8 (0.32%) SSH
8 7 (0.28%) Multicast
8 7 (0.28%) SSL
9 6 (0.24%) DHCP
9 6 (0.24%) SAN
10 5 (0.20%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.16%) IPv4
11 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 4 (0.16%) SMS
12 3 (0.12%) 4G
12 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
12 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 430 (17.16%) Power BI
2 365 (14.57%) Data Warehouse
3 296 (11.81%) SQL Server
4 171 (6.82%) Relational Database
5 161 (6.42%) Tableau
6 152 (6.07%) Data Lake
7 150 (5.99%) PostgreSQL
8 140 (5.59%) Metadata
9 129 (5.15%) BigQuery
10 124 (4.95%) NoSQL
11 111 (4.43%) Oracle Database
12 99 (3.95%) Delta Lake
13 86 (3.43%) Amazon Redshift
14 81 (3.23%) Azure SQL Database
15 64 (2.55%) Amazon Athena
16 62 (2.47%) Power Query
17 60 (2.39%) SQL Server Integration Services
18 55 (2.19%) Big Data
18 55 (2.19%) Snowflake Schema
19 54 (2.15%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 312 (12.45%) Git
2 191 (7.62%) JIRA
3 130 (5.19%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.51%) GitLab
5 54 (2.15%) Selenium
6 46 (1.84%) Gradle
7 36 (1.44%) JUnit
8 29 (1.16%) Maven
8 29 (1.16%) SonarQube
9 23 (0.92%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.88%) Mockito
11 21 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 20 (0.80%) Postman
13 19 (0.76%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.68%) ERwin
14 17 (0.68%) MLflow
15 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
15 15 (0.60%) Liquibase
15 15 (0.60%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.60%) REST Assured
General
1 923 (36.83%) Finance
2 721 (28.77%) Social Skills
3 551 (21.99%) Analytical Skills
4 435 (17.36%) Banking
5 155 (6.19%) Public Sector
6 125 (4.99%) Front Office
7 111 (4.43%) Marketing
8 110 (4.39%) Investment Banking
9 79 (3.15%) Retail
10 65 (2.59%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 48 (1.92%) Financial Institution
12 38 (1.52%) Back Office
12 38 (1.52%) Documentation Skills
13 31 (1.24%) Influencing Skills
14 29 (1.16%) Legal
15 27 (1.08%) Local Government
16 23 (0.92%) Organisational Skills
17 22 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
18 21 (0.84%) General Ledger
19 20 (0.80%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 546 (21.79%) Developer
2 463 (18.48%) Data Engineer
3 430 (17.16%) Analyst
4 403 (16.08%) Senior
5 189 (7.54%) Lead
6 168 (6.70%) Data Analyst
7 152 (6.07%) Business Analyst
8 133 (5.31%) Architect
9 125 (4.99%) Senior Data Engineer
10 103 (4.11%) Consultant
11 91 (3.63%) Senior Developer
12 83 (3.31%) Java Developer
13 75 (2.99%) Python Engineer
14 71 (2.83%) Python Developer
15 68 (2.71%) Azure Engineer
15 68 (2.71%) Software Engineer
16 66 (2.63%) Full-Stack Developer
17 65 (2.59%) Data Architect
18 63 (2.51%) C# Developer
19 62 (2.47%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 273 (10.89%) .NET
2 250 (9.98%) Terraform
3 244 (9.74%) REST
4 201 (8.02%) PySpark
5 198 (7.90%) Kafka
6 138 (5.51%) React
7 129 (5.15%) Spring
8 112 (4.47%) Spring Boot
9 106 (4.23%) HTML
10 101 (4.03%) JSON
11 100 (3.99%) RESTful
12 96 (3.83%) CSS
13 84 (3.35%) XML
14 75 (2.99%) AngularJS
15 73 (2.91%) Pandas
16 70 (2.79%) SOAP
17 66 (2.63%) Middleware
18 65 (2.59%) Web Services
19 59 (2.35%) .NET Framework
20 56 (2.23%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.62%) Cloud Native
2 149 (5.95%) Product Ownership
3 122 (4.87%) Data Structures
4 83 (3.31%) Legacy Systems
5 82 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
6 78 (3.11%) Onboarding
7 72 (2.87%) Derivative
7 72 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
8 56 (2.23%) Self-Motivation
9 54 (2.15%) Management Information System
10 53 (2.11%) AI Agents
11 44 (1.76%) Fixed Income
12 43 (1.72%) Analytical Mindset
13 42 (1.68%) Reference Data
14 39 (1.56%) Algorithms
14 39 (1.56%) Equities
15 38 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 33 (1.32%) Greenfield Project
17 32 (1.28%) Replication
18 31 (1.24%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 169 (6.74%) Linux
2 140 (5.59%) Windows
3 107 (4.27%) Unix
4 37 (1.48%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
7 7 (0.28%) VMS
8 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.20%) zOS
10 4 (0.16%) Android
10 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.16%) Solaris
10 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.080%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.040%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 743 (29.65%) CI/CD
2 681 (27.17%) Analytics
3 674 (26.90%) Agile
4 666 (26.58%) Data Modelling
5 520 (20.75%) AI
6 512 (20.43%) Business Intelligence
7 510 (20.35%) Data Pipeline
7 510 (20.35%) ETL
8 507 (20.23%) DevOps
9 482 (19.23%) Data Engineering
10 476 (18.99%) Problem-Solving
11 437 (17.44%) Stakeholder Management
12 394 (15.72%) Validation
13 341 (13.61%) Data Analysis
14 338 (13.49%) Migration
15 336 (13.41%) Data Governance
16 294 (11.73%) Decision-Making
17 278 (11.09%) Continuous Improvement
18 263 (10.49%) Test Automation
19 244 (9.74%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,081 (43.14%) Python
2 334 (13.33%) Java
3 301 (12.01%) C#
4 234 (9.34%) JavaScript
5 178 (7.10%) PL/SQL
6 135 (5.39%) TypeScript
7 119 (4.75%) T-SQL
8 107 (4.27%) PowerShell
9 95 (3.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 81 (3.23%) Shell Script
11 59 (2.35%) Scala
12 52 (2.08%) R
13 48 (1.92%) Bash
14 33 (1.32%) VBA
15 32 (1.28%) C++
16 20 (0.80%) Go
17 16 (0.64%) Korn
17 16 (0.64%) VB.NET
18 14 (0.56%) Groovy
19 13 (0.52%) VB
Qualifications
1 360 (14.37%) Security Cleared
2 302 (12.05%) SC Cleared
3 201 (8.02%) Degree
4 63 (2.51%) Computer Science Degree
5 49 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (1.68%) Azure Certification
7 29 (1.16%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.12%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.72%) DV Cleared
10 17 (0.68%) ISTQB
11 12 (0.48%) FFIEC
11 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
11 12 (0.48%) PMI Certification
12 11 (0.44%) ACCA
12 11 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 11 (0.44%) CIMA
12 11 (0.44%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.40%) ISEB
14 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.28%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 532 (21.23%) Data Quality
2 198 (7.90%) QA
3 74 (2.95%) GDPR
4 30 (1.20%) SLA
5 29 (1.16%) Accessibility
6 20 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
7 19 (0.76%) ISO 20022
8 18 (0.72%) IFRS
9 17 (0.68%) NIST
10 15 (0.60%) MiFID
11 14 (0.56%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 11 (0.44%) Basel III
12 11 (0.44%) COBIT
13 7 (0.28%) EMIR
13 7 (0.28%) HIPAA
14 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 6 (0.24%) PSD2
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
14 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
15 5 (0.20%) ISO 15022
System Software
1 239 (9.54%) Docker
2 33 (1.32%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 4 (0.16%) Postfix
6 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.080%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.080%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.080%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) Squid
9 1 (0.040%) KVM
9 1 (0.040%) RACF
9 1 (0.040%) Varnish
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 213 (8.50%) Kubernetes
2 46 (1.84%) Grafana
3 34 (1.36%) Ansible
4 28 (1.12%) Control-M
5 22 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 17 (0.68%) Kibana
7 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Clustering
7 11 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 8 (0.32%) ITRS Geneos
8 8 (0.32%) SCOM
8 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
9 7 (0.28%) Istio
10 6 (0.24%) systemd
11 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.20%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.16%) Argo
12 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
12 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 365 (14.57%) Microsoft
2 354 (14.13%) Databricks
3 329 (13.13%) Oracle
4 110 (4.39%) Google
5 53 (2.11%) IBM
6 52 (2.08%) Informatica
7 45 (1.80%) SAP
8 40 (1.60%) Salesforce
9 38 (1.52%) Bloomberg
10 33 (1.32%) Murex
11 31 (1.24%) Citrix
12 28 (1.12%) ServiceNow
13 27 (1.08%) Splunk
14 26 (1.04%) UiPath
15 25 (1.00%) Foundry
15 25 (1.00%) VMware
16 24 (0.96%) Adobe
16 24 (0.96%) OpenAI
17 22 (0.88%) Alteryx
17 22 (0.88%) Talend