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

6 months to
11 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,533 1,944 2,315
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.46% 14.40% 14.23%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.53% 37.28% 35.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,763 1,366 1,741
10th Percentile £365 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile £625 £675 £694
90th Percentile £725 £788 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £539
% change year-on-year - -7.28% -0.14%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 30 17
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.20 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.52 £31.56 £40.58
Median hourly rate £37.50 £41.65 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -9.97% -12.31% +29.99%
75th Percentile £52.49 £56.56 £53.75
90th Percentile £53.75 £65.03 £64.25
England median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -18.00% +20.48% +3.33%

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 6,407 5,214 6,508
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.50% 38.61% 40.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,293 3,587 4,719
10th Percentile £381 £368 £370
25th Percentile £450 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £660 £688 £704
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 57 65 40
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.71 £25.11
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £32.62
Median hourly rate £52.50 £44.90 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.94% -5.48% -20.83%
75th Percentile £73.00 £63.75 £63.26
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.00 £78.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 11 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 11 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 11 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 -6 306 £550 -4.35% 208
West London +7 71 £520 +27.14% 82
South London -7 44 £535 +12.63% 20
East London +4 16 £450 -10.00% 20
North London +3 6 £550 - 6
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
1 173 (6.83%) Apache Airflow
2 136 (5.37%) Apache Spark
3 108 (4.26%) Apache
4 86 (3.40%) Confluence
5 61 (2.41%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.03%) IIS
7 24 (0.95%) SAS
8 15 (0.59%) CMS
8 15 (0.59%) nginx
9 14 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.51%) Camunda
10 13 (0.51%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.51%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 8 (0.32%) Tomcat
12 8 (0.32%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.24%) Appian
13 6 (0.24%) MTS
14 4 (0.16%) CICS
Applications
1 156 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.14%) Microsoft Office
3 21 (0.83%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (0.71%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Project
7 4 (0.16%) Notion
7 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
9 2 (0.079%) Mingle
10 1 (0.039%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.039%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (0.83%) Aladdin
3 20 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
4 18 (0.71%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.67%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
6 16 (0.63%) Oracle Receivables
7 10 (0.39%) Finacle
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
7 10 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
7 10 (0.39%) SAP S/4HANA
7 10 (0.39%) Summit
8 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
9 8 (0.32%) Findur
9 8 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.28%) Front Arena
10 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 836 (33.00%) Azure
2 610 (24.08%) AWS
3 479 (18.91%) Power Platform
4 281 (11.09%) GCP
5 268 (10.58%) Azure DevOps
6 259 (10.23%) Snowflake
7 234 (9.24%) GitHub
8 222 (8.76%) dbt
9 175 (6.91%) Azure Data Factory
10 165 (6.51%) Serverless
11 148 (5.84%) Amazon S3
12 127 (5.01%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 121 (4.78%) GitHub Actions
14 113 (4.46%) AWS Lambda
15 58 (2.29%) Azure Databricks
16 57 (2.25%) SaaS
17 53 (2.09%) PowerApps
18 51 (2.01%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 49 (1.93%) Power Automate
20 48 (1.89%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 17 (0.67%) HTTP
2 16 (0.63%) DNS
2 16 (0.63%) Internet
3 15 (0.59%) Firewall
3 15 (0.59%) VPN
4 12 (0.47%) Broadband
5 10 (0.39%) Network Security
6 8 (0.32%) Multicast
6 8 (0.32%) TCP/IP
7 7 (0.28%) SSH
7 7 (0.28%) SSL
8 6 (0.24%) DHCP
8 6 (0.24%) SAN
9 5 (0.20%) HTTPS
10 4 (0.16%) IPv4
10 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
10 4 (0.16%) SMS
11 3 (0.12%) FTP
11 3 (0.12%) Intranet
11 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 429 (16.94%) Power BI
2 380 (15.00%) Data Warehouse
3 304 (12.00%) SQL Server
4 176 (6.95%) Relational Database
5 166 (6.55%) Tableau
6 164 (6.47%) Data Lake
7 157 (6.20%) Metadata
8 145 (5.72%) PostgreSQL
9 130 (5.13%) BigQuery
10 123 (4.86%) NoSQL
11 112 (4.42%) Oracle Database
12 100 (3.95%) Delta Lake
13 95 (3.75%) Azure SQL Database
14 88 (3.47%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (2.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 63 (2.49%) Star Schema
17 62 (2.45%) Power Query
18 59 (2.33%) Snowflake Schema
19 57 (2.25%) Big Data
20 56 (2.21%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 300 (11.84%) Git
2 188 (7.42%) JIRA
3 129 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 87 (3.43%) GitLab
5 46 (1.82%) Selenium
6 45 (1.78%) Gradle
7 38 (1.50%) JUnit
8 29 (1.14%) SonarQube
9 28 (1.11%) Maven
10 26 (1.03%) Mockito
11 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.83%) Visual Studio
13 20 (0.79%) MLflow
14 19 (0.75%) ERwin
15 18 (0.71%) Liquibase
15 18 (0.71%) Postman
16 17 (0.67%) Cypress.io
16 17 (0.67%) Oracle Forms
17 15 (0.59%) ER Studio
17 15 (0.59%) JMeter
General
1 933 (36.83%) Finance
2 731 (28.86%) Social Skills
3 564 (22.27%) Analytical Skills
4 423 (16.70%) Banking
5 161 (6.36%) Public Sector
6 129 (5.09%) Front Office
7 115 (4.54%) Marketing
8 110 (4.34%) Investment Banking
9 76 (3.00%) Retail
10 66 (2.61%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (2.01%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.58%) Documentation Skills
13 35 (1.38%) Back Office
14 26 (1.03%) Publishing
15 25 (0.99%) Legal
16 24 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
16 24 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
16 24 (0.95%) Telecoms
17 23 (0.91%) General Ledger
17 23 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 541 (21.36%) Developer
2 486 (19.19%) Data Engineer
3 436 (17.21%) Analyst
4 398 (15.71%) Senior
5 188 (7.42%) Lead
6 173 (6.83%) Data Analyst
7 153 (6.04%) Business Analyst
8 136 (5.37%) Architect
9 123 (4.86%) Senior Data Engineer
10 104 (4.11%) Consultant
11 94 (3.71%) Senior Developer
12 86 (3.40%) Java Developer
13 79 (3.12%) Python Engineer
14 76 (3.00%) Software Engineer
15 71 (2.80%) Python Developer
16 69 (2.72%) Azure Engineer
17 65 (2.57%) Data Architect
17 65 (2.57%) Full-Stack Developer
18 62 (2.45%) C# Developer
19 59 (2.33%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (10.82%) .NET
2 249 (9.83%) Terraform
3 240 (9.47%) REST
4 211 (8.33%) PySpark
5 199 (7.86%) Kafka
6 145 (5.72%) React
7 127 (5.01%) Spring
8 112 (4.42%) Spring Boot
9 108 (4.26%) HTML
9 108 (4.26%) JSON
10 103 (4.07%) RESTful
11 98 (3.87%) CSS
12 87 (3.43%) XML
13 84 (3.32%) Pandas
14 78 (3.08%) AngularJS
15 65 (2.57%) Middleware
16 64 (2.53%) SOAP
17 62 (2.45%) Web Services
18 59 (2.33%) .NET Framework
19 57 (2.25%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 193 (7.62%) Cloud Native
2 134 (5.29%) Product Ownership
3 122 (4.82%) Data Structures
4 85 (3.36%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (3.12%) Onboarding
6 78 (3.08%) Distributed Systems
7 72 (2.84%) Derivative
8 63 (2.49%) Enterprise Software
9 59 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 55 (2.17%) Management Information System
11 49 (1.93%) AI Agents
12 48 (1.89%) Fixed Income
13 44 (1.74%) Analytical Mindset
14 40 (1.58%) Reference Data
15 38 (1.50%) Algorithms
15 38 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 37 (1.46%) Equities
17 34 (1.34%) Replication
18 33 (1.30%) Greenfield Project
19 30 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 168 (6.63%) Linux
2 140 (5.53%) Windows
3 105 (4.15%) Unix
4 35 (1.38%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.55%) 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%) Solaris
10 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.12%) Android
11 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.079%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.039%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 760 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 695 (27.44%) Analytics
3 681 (26.89%) Data Modelling
4 675 (26.65%) Agile
5 546 (21.56%) DevOps
6 526 (20.77%) Data Pipeline
7 521 (20.57%) AI
7 521 (20.57%) ETL
8 514 (20.29%) Business Intelligence
9 495 (19.54%) Data Engineering
10 485 (19.15%) Problem-Solving
11 410 (16.19%) Stakeholder Management
12 380 (15.00%) Validation
13 338 (13.34%) Data Governance
14 336 (13.26%) Migration
15 329 (12.99%) Data Analysis
16 287 (11.33%) Decision-Making
17 268 (10.58%) Continuous Improvement
18 251 (9.91%) Test Automation
19 247 (9.75%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,104 (43.58%) Python
2 336 (13.26%) Java
3 306 (12.08%) C#
4 228 (9.00%) JavaScript
5 185 (7.30%) PL/SQL
6 139 (5.49%) TypeScript
7 118 (4.66%) T-SQL
8 111 (4.38%) PowerShell
9 98 (3.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 84 (3.32%) Shell Script
11 57 (2.25%) R
12 52 (2.05%) Scala
13 43 (1.70%) Bash
14 36 (1.42%) C++
15 32 (1.26%) VBA
16 18 (0.71%) Go
17 16 (0.63%) VB.NET
18 14 (0.55%) Groovy
18 14 (0.55%) Korn
19 12 (0.47%) VB
Qualifications
1 379 (14.96%) Security Cleared
2 321 (12.67%) SC Cleared
3 200 (7.90%) Degree
4 70 (2.76%) Computer Science Degree
5 46 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.70%) Azure Certification
7 30 (1.18%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.71%) ISTQB
10 16 (0.63%) DV Cleared
11 12 (0.47%) FFIEC
12 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Certification
13 10 (0.39%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.39%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.39%) ISEB
14 8 (0.32%) ACCA
14 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 8 (0.32%) CIMA
15 7 (0.28%) CISM
15 7 (0.28%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 527 (20.81%) Data Quality
2 203 (8.01%) QA
3 83 (3.28%) GDPR
4 29 (1.14%) Accessibility
4 29 (1.14%) SLA
5 20 (0.79%) Actionable Recommendations
6 19 (0.75%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.67%) NIST
8 16 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.59%) IFRS
9 15 (0.59%) MiFID
10 11 (0.43%) COBIT
11 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
11 9 (0.36%) Solvency II
12 8 (0.32%) PMO
13 7 (0.28%) Basel III
13 7 (0.28%) EMIR
13 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 6 (0.24%) PSD2
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 241 (9.51%) Docker
2 36 (1.42%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.55%) 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 (0.079%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.079%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.079%) GridGain
8 2 (0.079%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.079%) Squid
9 1 (0.039%) RACF
9 1 (0.039%) Varnish
9 1 (0.039%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 213 (8.41%) Kubernetes
2 41 (1.62%) Grafana
3 33 (1.30%) Ansible
4 29 (1.14%) Control-M
5 21 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.43%) Kibana
6 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Clustering
6 11 (0.43%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
8 8 (0.32%) SCOM
8 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
11 4 (0.16%) Argo
11 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.16%) Istio
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.16%) Packer
11 4 (0.16%) systemd
Vendors
1 370 (14.61%) Microsoft
2 342 (13.50%) Oracle
3 341 (13.46%) Databricks
4 112 (4.42%) Google
5 65 (2.57%) Informatica
6 49 (1.93%) SAP
7 48 (1.89%) IBM
8 39 (1.54%) Bloomberg
8 39 (1.54%) Salesforce
9 33 (1.30%) Murex
10 32 (1.26%) ServiceNow
11 30 (1.18%) Citrix
12 25 (0.99%) VMware
13 23 (0.91%) Foundry
13 23 (0.91%) Splunk
13 23 (0.91%) Talend
14 22 (0.87%) Adobe
14 22 (0.87%) OpenAI
14 22 (0.87%) Sybase
15 21 (0.83%) Alteryx