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 12 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
12 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,250 1,868 2,401
As % of all contract jobs in London 13.89% 14.47% 13.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.89% 37.09% 37.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,496 1,320 1,807
10th Percentile £363 £363 £400
25th Percentile £415 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -4.35% -
75th Percentile £630 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £799 £788
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 21 22
10th Percentile £18.25 £29.07 £35.70
25th Percentile £28.69 £38.25 £41.25
Median hourly rate £41.62 £45.00 £46.75
Median % change year-on-year -7.52% -3.74% -28.08%
75th Percentile £49.69 £58.75 £53.75
90th Percentile £60.20 £65.00 £64.25
England median hourly rate £45.00 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -14.29% +23.53% -19.05%

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 5,640 5,037 6,375
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 34.83% 39.02% 34.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,820 3,445 4,827
10th Percentile £363 £375 £388
25th Percentile £425 £450 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £552 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -4.00% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £700 £700
90th Percentile £775 £825 £804
England median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 47 35 64
10th Percentile £18.81 £30.74 £25.93
25th Percentile £39.42 £37.43 £39.15
Median hourly rate £55.00 £45.00 £51.13
Median % change year-on-year +22.22% -11.98% -11.09%
75th Percentile £66.50 £62.38 £61.94
90th Percentile £73.50 £93.75 £71.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -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 12 March 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 12 March 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 12 March 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 +1 300 £550 - 315
West London +8 49 £601 +20.25% 36
South London +7 37 £500 +1.01% 9
East London 0 22 £463 +5.71% 26
North London +1 1 £495 - 9
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
1 149 (6.62%) Apache Spark
2 104 (4.62%) Apache Airflow
3 70 (3.11%) Apache
4 68 (3.02%) Confluence
5 40 (1.78%) SharePoint
6 20 (0.89%) IIS
7 16 (0.71%) Palantir Foundry
8 14 (0.62%) Jupyter
8 14 (0.62%) SAS
9 13 (0.58%) Microsoft Exchange
10 12 (0.53%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.44%) Mendix
12 9 (0.40%) Appian
12 9 (0.40%) nginx
13 8 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.27%) Tomcat
15 5 (0.22%) Camunda
16 4 (0.18%) Anypoint
16 4 (0.18%) MQSeries
16 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 157 (6.98%) Microsoft Excel
2 39 (1.73%) MS Visio
3 34 (1.51%) Microsoft Office
4 33 (1.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Project
6 10 (0.44%) Spreadsheet
7 4 (0.18%) Chatbot
8 3 (0.13%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Trello
9 1 (0.044%) Mingle
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 29 (1.29%) Aladdin
2 13 (0.58%) NetSuite
2 13 (0.58%) Oracle General Ledger
2 13 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
3 11 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 11 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
3 11 (0.49%) Oracle Receivables
4 9 (0.40%) Endur
4 9 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
5 8 (0.36%) SAP HR
6 7 (0.31%) Fidessa
6 7 (0.31%) Oracle Assets
6 7 (0.31%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 6 (0.27%) BASE24
7 6 (0.27%) Oracle EBS R12
7 6 (0.27%) Oracle Financials
7 6 (0.27%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 5 (0.22%) Actimize
8 5 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
8 5 (0.22%) SAP BPC
Cloud Services
1 817 (36.31%) Azure
2 569 (25.29%) AWS
3 446 (19.82%) Power Platform
4 238 (10.58%) Azure DevOps
5 213 (9.47%) GitHub
6 202 (8.98%) Azure Data Factory
7 194 (8.62%) Snowflake
8 178 (7.91%) GCP
9 174 (7.73%) Serverless
10 143 (6.36%) Amazon S3
11 133 (5.91%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 103 (4.58%) GitHub Actions
13 102 (4.53%) AWS Lambda
13 102 (4.53%) dbt
14 56 (2.49%) SaaS
15 54 (2.40%) AWS CloudFormation
15 54 (2.40%) Azure Functions
16 48 (2.13%) Power Automate
17 46 (2.04%) Entra ID
18 45 (2.00%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 23 (1.02%) Firewall
2 17 (0.76%) DNS
2 17 (0.76%) Network Security
3 12 (0.53%) Internet
4 11 (0.49%) HTTP
5 9 (0.40%) VPN
6 8 (0.36%) SMS
7 6 (0.27%) Multicast
7 6 (0.27%) WAN
8 5 (0.22%) 4G
8 5 (0.22%) 5G
8 5 (0.22%) LAN
8 5 (0.22%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.18%) 2G
9 4 (0.18%) FIX Connectivity
9 4 (0.18%) Radio Access Network
9 4 (0.18%) SAN
9 4 (0.18%) TCP/IP
10 3 (0.13%) DHCP
10 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
Database & Business Intelligence
1 408 (18.13%) Power BI
2 293 (13.02%) Data Warehouse
3 287 (12.76%) SQL Server
4 166 (7.38%) Tableau
5 165 (7.33%) Data Lake
6 157 (6.98%) NoSQL
7 152 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
8 150 (6.67%) Relational Database
9 128 (5.69%) Metadata
10 119 (5.29%) Azure SQL Database
11 91 (4.04%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (3.87%) Oracle Database
13 81 (3.60%) BigQuery
14 74 (3.29%) Amazon Redshift
15 73 (3.24%) Big Data
16 67 (2.98%) Delta Lake
17 59 (2.62%) Amazon Athena
18 50 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
19 44 (1.96%) MongoDB
20 43 (1.91%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 238 (10.58%) Git
2 155 (6.89%) JIRA
3 92 (4.09%) Jenkins
4 78 (3.47%) GitLab
5 39 (1.73%) JUnit
6 28 (1.24%) MLflow
6 28 (1.24%) Selenium
7 22 (0.98%) SpecFlow
8 20 (0.89%) Cucumber
9 19 (0.84%) ERwin
10 18 (0.80%) Cypress.io
11 17 (0.76%) Mockito
12 15 (0.67%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.67%) Postman
13 14 (0.62%) Maven
13 14 (0.62%) Team Foundation Server
13 14 (0.62%) Visual Studio
14 13 (0.58%) TeamCity
15 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
15 12 (0.53%) SonarQube
General
1 752 (33.42%) Finance
2 641 (28.49%) Social Skills
3 419 (18.62%) Analytical Skills
4 305 (13.56%) Banking
5 144 (6.40%) Public Sector
6 103 (4.58%) Investment Banking
7 102 (4.53%) Front Office
8 59 (2.62%) Documentation Skills
9 58 (2.58%) Marketing
10 43 (1.91%) Financial Institution
11 42 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 40 (1.78%) Retail
13 29 (1.29%) Legal
14 28 (1.24%) Publishing
15 20 (0.89%) Organisational Skills
15 20 (0.89%) Telecoms
16 18 (0.80%) Back Office
17 17 (0.76%) Presentation Skills
18 16 (0.71%) Law
19 15 (0.67%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 529 (23.51%) Developer
2 416 (18.49%) Data Engineer
3 364 (16.18%) Analyst
4 302 (13.42%) Senior
5 168 (7.47%) Business Analyst
6 164 (7.29%) Lead
7 144 (6.40%) Data Analyst
8 130 (5.78%) Architect
9 83 (3.69%) C# Developer
10 79 (3.51%) Consultant
11 78 (3.47%) Senior Developer
12 75 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
13 73 (3.24%) Java Developer
14 68 (3.02%) Senior Data Engineer
15 66 (2.93%) Python Developer
16 56 (2.49%) Data Architect
17 55 (2.44%) Software Engineer
18 54 (2.40%) Data Scientist
19 51 (2.27%) Senior Analyst
20 49 (2.18%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 217 (9.64%) .NET
2 190 (8.44%) Kafka
3 167 (7.42%) PySpark
4 151 (6.71%) REST
5 109 (4.84%) React
6 103 (4.58%) RESTful
7 86 (3.82%) Pandas
8 79 (3.51%) HTML
9 74 (3.29%) AngularJS
10 69 (3.07%) Spring
11 60 (2.67%) CSS
11 60 (2.67%) XML
12 59 (2.62%) NumPy
13 53 (2.36%) JSON
13 53 (2.36%) Spring Boot
14 52 (2.31%) .NET Framework
14 52 (2.31%) Middleware
14 52 (2.31%) Node.js
15 49 (2.18%) scikit-learn
16 47 (2.09%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 164 (7.29%) Cloud Native
2 82 (3.64%) Data Structures
3 76 (3.38%) Legacy Systems
4 71 (3.16%) Derivative
5 63 (2.80%) Equities
6 57 (2.53%) Fixed Income
6 57 (2.53%) Product Ownership
7 51 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
8 46 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
8 46 (2.04%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
9 45 (2.00%) Analytical Mindset
10 44 (1.96%) Algorithms
11 41 (1.82%) Management Information System
12 37 (1.64%) Market Risk
13 34 (1.51%) Onboarding
14 30 (1.33%) Self-Motivation
15 26 (1.16%) Hedge funds
16 24 (1.07%) Credit Risk
17 22 (0.98%) AI Agents
17 22 (0.98%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 167 (7.42%) Linux
2 127 (5.64%) Windows
3 102 (4.53%) Unix
4 38 (1.69%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.53%) Windows Server 2016
6 9 (0.40%) Windows Server 2019
7 7 (0.31%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.27%) Android
9 5 (0.22%) AIX
9 5 (0.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 5 (0.22%) zOS
10 4 (0.18%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.18%) Solaris
10 4 (0.18%) VMS
10 4 (0.18%) Windows Server 2008
11 2 (0.089%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.044%) Alpine Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 626 (27.82%) Analytics
2 599 (26.62%) Agile
3 575 (25.56%) CI/CD
4 565 (25.11%) Data Modelling
5 519 (23.07%) Business Intelligence
6 507 (22.53%) ETL
7 488 (21.69%) DevOps
8 473 (21.02%) Problem-Solving
9 390 (17.33%) Data Engineering
10 385 (17.11%) Data Pipeline
11 331 (14.71%) AI
12 307 (13.64%) Data Governance
13 283 (12.58%) Migration
14 242 (10.76%) Data Analysis
15 238 (10.58%) Validation
16 234 (10.40%) Data Science
17 230 (10.22%) Machine Learning
18 218 (9.69%) Decision-Making
19 215 (9.56%) Visualisation
20 202 (8.98%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 957 (42.53%) Python
2 297 (13.20%) C#
3 282 (12.53%) Java
4 164 (7.29%) JavaScript
5 122 (5.42%) PL/SQL
6 104 (4.62%) TypeScript
7 83 (3.69%) T-SQL
8 77 (3.42%) PowerShell
8 77 (3.42%) Scala
9 67 (2.98%) R
10 61 (2.71%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 59 (2.62%) C++
12 54 (2.40%) Shell Script
13 39 (1.73%) VBA
14 33 (1.47%) VB
15 32 (1.42%) Bicep
16 31 (1.38%) Bash
17 18 (0.80%) Perl
18 15 (0.67%) C
18 15 (0.67%) Korn
Qualifications
1 340 (15.11%) Security Cleared
2 275 (12.22%) SC Cleared
3 178 (7.91%) Degree
4 61 (2.71%) Computer Science Degree
5 48 (2.13%) Azure Certification
6 40 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
7 32 (1.42%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.20%) ISTQB
9 25 (1.11%) AWS Certification
10 23 (1.02%) Microsoft Certification
11 17 (0.76%) DV Cleared
12 15 (0.67%) CBAP
13 13 (0.58%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 10 (0.44%) PhD
15 9 (0.40%) PMI Certification
15 9 (0.40%) PMP
16 8 (0.36%) CFA
17 6 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.27%) ISEB
18 5 (0.22%) CCA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 417 (18.53%) Data Quality
2 181 (8.04%) QA
3 101 (4.49%) GDPR
4 37 (1.64%) Accessibility
5 20 (0.89%) MiFID
6 18 (0.80%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 16 (0.71%) PMO
8 13 (0.58%) PCI DSS
9 12 (0.53%) EMIR
9 12 (0.53%) IFRS
9 12 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 12 (0.53%) NIST
10 11 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
10 11 (0.49%) SLA
11 8 (0.36%) ISO 8583
12 7 (0.31%) Basel III
12 7 (0.31%) GAAP
12 7 (0.31%) NCSC
13 6 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.27%) Solvency II
System Software
1 236 (10.49%) Docker
2 54 (2.40%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
4 5 (0.22%) HDFS
4 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
4 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (0.22%) XenApp
4 5 (0.22%) XenDesktop
5 4 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
6 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
7 2 (0.089%) VMware ESXi
7 2 (0.089%) VMware NSX
7 2 (0.089%) zsh
8 1 (0.044%) Postfix
Systems Management
1 208 (9.24%) Kubernetes
1 208 (9.24%) Terraform
2 25 (1.11%) Grafana
3 21 (0.93%) Ansible
4 14 (0.62%) Prometheus
5 10 (0.44%) Control-M
5 10 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
6 9 (0.40%) SCCM
7 7 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 7 (0.31%) ITRS Geneos
7 7 (0.31%) Kibana
8 5 (0.22%) Kubeflow
8 5 (0.22%) SCVMM
8 5 (0.22%) Thomson Reuters DACS
9 4 (0.18%) Microsoft Intune
10 3 (0.13%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.13%) logstash
10 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
10 3 (0.13%) Progress Chef
10 3 (0.13%) Puppet
Vendors
1 336 (14.93%) Microsoft
2 318 (14.13%) Databricks
3 302 (13.42%) Oracle
4 81 (3.60%) Google
5 61 (2.71%) SAP
6 45 (2.00%) ServiceNow
7 44 (1.96%) Citrix
7 44 (1.96%) Informatica
8 43 (1.91%) Salesforce
9 38 (1.69%) IBM
10 37 (1.64%) OpenAI
11 35 (1.56%) Bloomberg
12 28 (1.24%) MuleSoft
13 24 (1.07%) Murex
14 20 (0.89%) Palantir
15 19 (0.84%) Charles River
15 19 (0.84%) Splunk
16 18 (0.80%) Sybase
17 16 (0.71%) Foundry
17 16 (0.71%) VMware