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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
30 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,414 1,965 2,309
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.06% 14.45% 14.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.72% 37.41% 35.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,642 1,398 1,796
10th Percentile £367 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £415 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £568
Median % change year-on-year - -7.49% -1.30%
75th Percentile £638 £679 £688
90th Percentile £738 £788 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 23 14
10th Percentile £29.41 £25.86 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.25 £29.07 £40.75
Median hourly rate £47.50 £42.82 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.94% -4.86% -23.40%
75th Percentile £54.75 £56.25 £51.75
90th Percentile £60.04 £63.75 £53.15
England median hourly rate £45.90 £37.50 £42.00
% change year-on-year +22.40% -10.71% -8.58%

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 6,235 5,253 6,490
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.15% 38.63% 39.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,168 3,696 4,894
10th Percentile £385 £368 £375
25th Percentile £450 £427 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £549 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.18% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £713
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £523 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.55% -6.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 49 42
10th Percentile £34.50 £26.31 £23.80
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £31.71
Median hourly rate £53.50 £44.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.22% -6.32% -20.83%
75th Percentile £73.00 £62.50 £60.45
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.25 £74.69
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

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 30 July 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 30 July 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 30 July 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 -5 298 £550 - 150
West London +11 66 £520 +4.00% 41
South London -1 39 £513 -22.64% 10
East London 0 13 £450 -7.69% 16
North London - 6 £495 - 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
1 143 (5.92%) Apache Airflow
2 129 (5.34%) Apache Spark
3 102 (4.23%) Apache
4 82 (3.40%) Confluence
5 40 (1.66%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.08%) IIS
7 23 (0.95%) SAS
8 18 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
9 15 (0.62%) nginx
9 15 (0.62%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.58%) CMS
11 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Exchange
12 12 (0.50%) Jupyter
13 10 (0.41%) Camunda
13 10 (0.41%) Tomcat
14 8 (0.33%) Appian
15 7 (0.29%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.25%) CICS
17 3 (0.12%) ArcGIS
17 3 (0.12%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 152 (6.30%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (1.16%) MS Visio
4 24 (0.99%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 20 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.17%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.17%) Notion
7 4 (0.17%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 1 (0.041%) Mingle
9 1 (0.041%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 28 (1.16%) Aladdin
2 24 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.62%) Oracle ERP
4 14 (0.58%) Dynamics CRM
4 14 (0.58%) Oracle Payables
5 11 (0.46%) Findur
5 11 (0.46%) Oracle EBS R12
5 11 (0.46%) Oracle General Ledger
5 11 (0.46%) Oracle Receivables
5 11 (0.46%) SAP S/4HANA
6 10 (0.41%) Finacle
7 9 (0.37%) Fidessa
8 7 (0.29%) OpenText MBPM
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle BPM
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle FAH
8 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
8 7 (0.29%) Remedy ITSM
8 7 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
9 6 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
9 6 (0.25%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 824 (34.13%) Azure
2 588 (24.36%) AWS
3 457 (18.93%) Power Platform
4 264 (10.94%) Azure DevOps
5 260 (10.77%) GCP
6 216 (8.95%) GitHub
7 214 (8.86%) Snowflake
8 191 (7.91%) dbt
9 178 (7.37%) Azure Data Factory
10 157 (6.50%) Serverless
11 156 (6.46%) Amazon S3
12 130 (5.39%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 115 (4.76%) AWS Lambda
14 112 (4.64%) GitHub Actions
15 53 (2.20%) Entra ID
16 51 (2.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 48 (1.99%) SaaS
18 45 (1.86%) Amazon EC2
19 43 (1.78%) PowerApps
20 42 (1.74%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 17 (0.70%) Firewall
1 17 (0.70%) Internet
2 14 (0.58%) VPN
3 13 (0.54%) DNS
3 13 (0.54%) HTTP
4 11 (0.46%) Network Security
5 7 (0.29%) Multicast
5 7 (0.29%) TCP/IP
6 6 (0.25%) SAN
7 5 (0.21%) SSL
8 4 (0.17%) Broadband
9 3 (0.12%) FTP
9 3 (0.12%) HTTPS
9 3 (0.12%) Intranet
9 3 (0.12%) IPv4
9 3 (0.12%) NAS
9 3 (0.12%) SMS
9 3 (0.12%) WAN
9 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
10 2 (0.083%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 413 (17.11%) Power BI
2 357 (14.79%) Data Warehouse
3 290 (12.01%) SQL Server
4 176 (7.29%) Relational Database
5 175 (7.25%) Data Lake
6 173 (7.17%) Tableau
7 143 (5.92%) Metadata
8 133 (5.51%) PostgreSQL
9 126 (5.22%) NoSQL
10 125 (5.18%) BigQuery
11 101 (4.18%) Azure SQL Database
12 90 (3.73%) Oracle Database
13 84 (3.48%) Amazon Redshift
14 83 (3.44%) Delta Lake
15 71 (2.94%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 62 (2.57%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (2.28%) Big Data
17 55 (2.28%) Star Schema
18 54 (2.24%) Power Query
19 53 (2.20%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 245 (10.15%) Git
2 177 (7.33%) JIRA
3 113 (4.68%) Jenkins
4 74 (3.07%) GitLab
5 34 (1.41%) Gradle
6 33 (1.37%) JUnit
7 26 (1.08%) Mockito
8 24 (0.99%) Maven
9 21 (0.87%) ERwin
10 19 (0.79%) Selenium
10 19 (0.79%) SonarQube
11 18 (0.75%) MLflow
11 18 (0.75%) TeamCity
12 16 (0.66%) Liquibase
12 16 (0.66%) Oracle Forms
12 16 (0.66%) Visual Studio
13 15 (0.62%) Bitbucket
13 15 (0.62%) ER Studio
14 13 (0.54%) Cucumber
15 12 (0.50%) Team Foundation Server
General
1 875 (36.25%) Finance
2 673 (27.88%) Social Skills
3 523 (21.67%) Analytical Skills
4 361 (14.95%) Banking
5 169 (7.00%) Public Sector
6 124 (5.14%) Front Office
7 99 (4.10%) Marketing
8 94 (3.89%) Investment Banking
9 63 (2.61%) Retail
10 52 (2.15%) Financial Institution
11 50 (2.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 46 (1.91%) Documentation Skills
13 34 (1.41%) Back Office
14 30 (1.24%) Publishing
15 29 (1.20%) Legal
15 29 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
16 26 (1.08%) Telecoms
17 22 (0.91%) Pharmaceutical
18 21 (0.87%) Presentation Skills
19 19 (0.79%) Law
Job Titles
1 519 (21.50%) Developer
2 464 (19.22%) Data Engineer
3 405 (16.78%) Analyst
4 354 (14.66%) Senior
5 182 (7.54%) Lead
6 169 (7.00%) Data Analyst
7 146 (6.05%) Business Analyst
8 133 (5.51%) Architect
9 98 (4.06%) Consultant
9 98 (4.06%) Senior Data Engineer
10 93 (3.85%) Senior Developer
11 85 (3.52%) Java Developer
12 84 (3.48%) C# Developer
13 82 (3.40%) Software Engineer
14 69 (2.86%) Python Engineer
15 68 (2.82%) Azure Engineer
15 68 (2.82%) Data Scientist
16 62 (2.57%) Python Developer
17 59 (2.44%) Snowflake Engineer
18 58 (2.40%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 241 (9.98%) .NET
2 201 (8.33%) REST
3 179 (7.42%) Kafka
4 171 (7.08%) PySpark
5 127 (5.26%) React
6 115 (4.76%) Spring
7 100 (4.14%) JSON
8 96 (3.98%) RESTful
9 94 (3.89%) HTML
9 94 (3.89%) Spring Boot
10 93 (3.85%) AngularJS
11 90 (3.73%) Pandas
12 80 (3.31%) CSS
13 67 (2.78%) XML
14 61 (2.53%) .NET Framework
15 58 (2.40%) SOAP
16 56 (2.32%) Middleware
16 56 (2.32%) Web Services
17 51 (2.11%) NumPy
18 49 (2.03%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 192 (7.95%) Cloud Native
2 113 (4.68%) Data Structures
3 97 (4.02%) Product Ownership
4 95 (3.94%) Legacy Systems
5 92 (3.81%) Distributed Systems
6 80 (3.31%) Derivative
7 58 (2.40%) Onboarding
8 55 (2.28%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.20%) Fixed Income
10 49 (2.03%) Equities
11 47 (1.95%) Management Information System
12 45 (1.86%) Analytical Mindset
13 40 (1.66%) Algorithms
14 38 (1.57%) Reference Data
15 37 (1.53%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 36 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
17 34 (1.41%) Greenfield Project
18 28 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
19 25 (1.04%) AI Agents
20 23 (0.95%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 142 (5.88%) Windows
2 133 (5.51%) Linux
3 85 (3.52%) Unix
4 37 (1.53%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 10 (0.41%) Windows Server 2008
7 9 (0.37%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.33%) zOS
9 7 (0.29%) Solaris
10 5 (0.21%) Android
10 5 (0.21%) Apple iOS
11 4 (0.17%) VMS
11 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
12 3 (0.12%) Ubuntu
12 3 (0.12%) Windows 10
13 2 (0.083%) OpenVMS
13 2 (0.083%) Windows Server 2012
14 1 (0.041%) AIX
14 1 (0.041%) Oracle Linux
14 1 (0.041%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 695 (28.79%) CI/CD
2 688 (28.50%) Analytics
3 650 (26.93%) Data Modelling
4 617 (25.56%) Agile
5 522 (21.62%) DevOps
6 512 (21.21%) ETL
7 505 (20.92%) Business Intelligence
8 498 (20.63%) Data Pipeline
9 477 (19.76%) Data Engineering
10 452 (18.72%) AI
11 446 (18.48%) Problem-Solving
12 323 (13.38%) Validation
13 322 (13.34%) Data Governance
14 310 (12.84%) Migration
15 296 (12.26%) Stakeholder Management
16 292 (12.10%) Data Analysis
17 270 (11.18%) Decision-Making
18 241 (9.98%) Machine Learning
19 233 (9.65%) Continuous Improvement
20 218 (9.03%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,043 (43.21%) Python
2 315 (13.05%) Java
3 312 (12.92%) C#
4 186 (7.71%) JavaScript
5 175 (7.25%) PL/SQL
6 121 (5.01%) T-SQL
7 114 (4.72%) TypeScript
8 104 (4.31%) PowerShell
9 88 (3.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 71 (2.94%) Shell Script
11 62 (2.57%) R
12 53 (2.20%) Scala
13 39 (1.62%) C++
14 33 (1.37%) VBA
15 31 (1.28%) Bash
16 17 (0.70%) Bicep
17 16 (0.66%) Groovy
18 15 (0.62%) Go
19 13 (0.54%) C
19 13 (0.54%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 370 (15.33%) Security Cleared
2 313 (12.97%) SC Cleared
3 192 (7.95%) Degree
4 65 (2.69%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (1.82%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (1.74%) Azure Certification
7 33 (1.37%) Master's Degree
8 18 (0.75%) AWS Certification
9 12 (0.50%) DV Cleared
9 12 (0.50%) PhD
10 11 (0.46%) FFIEC
10 11 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
11 9 (0.37%) DBS Check
12 8 (0.33%) CISM
12 8 (0.33%) CISSP
13 7 (0.29%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
13 7 (0.29%) ISTQB
14 5 (0.21%) CBAP
14 5 (0.21%) ISEB
14 5 (0.21%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 464 (19.22%) Data Quality
2 176 (7.29%) QA
3 99 (4.10%) GDPR
4 34 (1.41%) Accessibility
5 22 (0.91%) SLA
6 16 (0.66%) NIST
7 15 (0.62%) Actionable Recommendations
7 15 (0.62%) PMO
8 14 (0.58%) MiFID
9 12 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 12 (0.50%) Solvency II
10 10 (0.41%) COBIT
11 9 (0.37%) IFRS
11 9 (0.37%) ISO 20022
11 9 (0.37%) ISO/IEC 27001
12 7 (0.29%) HIPAA
13 6 (0.25%) EMIR
14 5 (0.21%) COREP
14 5 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
14 5 (0.21%) NCSC
System Software
1 229 (9.49%) Docker
2 47 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 17 (0.70%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
5 7 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.12%) Postfix
7 3 (0.12%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.083%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.083%) GridGain
8 2 (0.083%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.041%) HDFS
9 1 (0.041%) RACF
9 1 (0.041%) Varnish
9 1 (0.041%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.041%) XenApp
9 1 (0.041%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 227 (9.40%) Terraform
2 213 (8.82%) Kubernetes
3 43 (1.78%) Grafana
4 26 (1.08%) Ansible
5 17 (0.70%) Control-M
5 17 (0.70%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.58%) Kibana
7 10 (0.41%) ITRS Geneos
7 10 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
8 7 (0.29%) Data Guard
8 7 (0.29%) Microsoft Clustering
9 6 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.21%) Packer
10 5 (0.21%) SCOM
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
12 3 (0.12%) Argo
12 3 (0.12%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.12%) Podman
12 3 (0.12%) SCCM
12 3 (0.12%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 329 (13.63%) Microsoft
2 312 (12.92%) Oracle
3 297 (12.30%) Databricks
4 105 (4.35%) Google
5 60 (2.49%) Informatica
6 47 (1.95%) SAP
7 45 (1.86%) ServiceNow
8 36 (1.49%) Bloomberg
8 36 (1.49%) Citrix
9 34 (1.41%) IBM
10 32 (1.33%) Salesforce
11 30 (1.24%) Murex
12 23 (0.95%) Foundry
12 23 (0.95%) Splunk
13 22 (0.91%) VMware
14 21 (0.87%) Adobe
15 19 (0.79%) Palantir
16 18 (0.75%) Alteryx
16 18 (0.75%) Dynatrace
16 18 (0.75%) OpenAI