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

6 months to
30 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,297 1,814 2,308
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.43% 14.91% 13.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.39% 37.74% 35.46%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,532 1,304 1,794
10th Percentile £363 £375 £380
25th Percentile £422 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £536 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.05% -6.78% -0.86%
75th Percentile £630 £688 £686
90th Percentile £738 £800 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £545
% change year-on-year - -8.26% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 19 17
10th Percentile £29.41 £25.75 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.25 £29.07 £40.75
Median hourly rate £45.00 £40.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +11.11% -14.74% -9.52%
75th Percentile £54.12 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £60.04 £60.50 £53.90
England median hourly rate £46.80 £36.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +30.00% -15.29% -15.00%

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 5,832 4,807 6,508
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.57% 39.51% 37.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,909 3,371 4,974
10th Percentile £375 £380 £375
25th Percentile £440 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.79% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £700
90th Percentile £763 £825 £838
England median daily rate £513 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.67% -3.48%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 36 51
10th Percentile £33.21 £28.20 £23.80
25th Percentile £40.25 £32.75 £36.91
Median hourly rate £58.94 £37.25 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.21% -26.24% -15.83%
75th Percentile £73.00 £53.75 £62.50
90th Percentile £89.00 £62.63 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.84% -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 30 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 30 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 30 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 -8 272 £534 -2.95% 107
West London +4 60 £601 +20.25% 24
South London -1 41 £492 -21.28% 6
East London +2 21 £450 +8.39% 20
North London - 3 £495 - 5
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
1 157 (6.84%) Apache Spark
2 122 (5.31%) Apache Airflow
3 93 (4.05%) Apache
4 62 (2.70%) Confluence
5 37 (1.61%) SharePoint
6 22 (0.96%) IIS
7 16 (0.70%) SAS
8 13 (0.57%) Appian
8 13 (0.57%) HCL Notes
8 13 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
8 13 (0.57%) Palantir Foundry
9 12 (0.52%) Mendix
10 11 (0.48%) nginx
11 10 (0.44%) Camunda
11 10 (0.44%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.44%) Tomcat
12 9 (0.39%) CMS
13 7 (0.30%) Oracle Workflow
14 6 (0.26%) CICS
15 5 (0.22%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 150 (6.53%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (1.44%) MS Visio
3 26 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.13%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.74%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.30%) Chatbot
6 6 (0.26%) Microsoft Project
7 5 (0.22%) Notion
8 2 (0.087%) Trello
9 1 (0.044%) Mingle
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 26 (1.13%) Aladdin
2 18 (0.78%) Oracle EBS
3 16 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
4 11 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
4 11 (0.48%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.39%) Endur
5 9 (0.39%) Findur
5 9 (0.39%) Oracle EBS R12
5 9 (0.39%) Oracle Payables
6 7 (0.30%) Fidessa
6 7 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 7 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 7 (0.30%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 7 (0.30%) Oracle Receivables
7 6 (0.26%) BASE24
7 6 (0.26%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 6 (0.26%) Payment Gateway
7 6 (0.26%) SimCorp Dimension
7 6 (0.26%) Summit
8 5 (0.22%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 839 (36.53%) Azure
2 586 (25.51%) AWS
3 456 (19.85%) Power Platform
4 278 (12.10%) Azure DevOps
5 216 (9.40%) GitHub
6 213 (9.27%) GCP
7 196 (8.53%) Azure Data Factory
8 189 (8.23%) Snowflake
9 159 (6.92%) Amazon S3
10 158 (6.88%) Serverless
11 142 (6.18%) dbt
12 140 (6.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 110 (4.79%) GitHub Actions
14 108 (4.70%) AWS Lambda
15 47 (2.05%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 46 (2.00%) Collibra
16 46 (2.00%) Entra ID
17 44 (1.92%) Power Automate
17 44 (1.92%) SaaS
18 43 (1.87%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 15 (0.65%) Firewall
2 14 (0.61%) DNS
3 12 (0.52%) Internet
3 12 (0.52%) Network Security
4 10 (0.44%) HTTP
5 6 (0.26%) VPN
5 6 (0.26%) WAN
6 4 (0.17%) FIX Connectivity
6 4 (0.17%) NetScaler
6 4 (0.17%) SMS
7 3 (0.13%) FTP
7 3 (0.13%) LAN
7 3 (0.13%) Multicast
7 3 (0.13%) NAS
7 3 (0.13%) SAN
7 3 (0.13%) TCP/IP
7 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
8 2 (0.087%) NaaS
8 2 (0.087%) SD-WAN
8 2 (0.087%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 411 (17.89%) Power BI
2 314 (13.67%) Data Warehouse
3 309 (13.45%) SQL Server
4 194 (8.45%) Data Lake
5 179 (7.79%) Tableau
6 158 (6.88%) PostgreSQL
6 158 (6.88%) Relational Database
7 141 (6.14%) Metadata
8 128 (5.57%) NoSQL
9 112 (4.88%) Azure SQL Database
10 105 (4.57%) BigQuery
11 91 (3.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 87 (3.79%) Oracle Database
13 86 (3.74%) Delta Lake
14 75 (3.27%) Amazon Redshift
15 63 (2.74%) Big Data
15 63 (2.74%) Snowflake Schema
16 53 (2.31%) Amazon Athena
17 48 (2.09%) Looker
18 45 (1.96%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 228 (9.93%) Git
2 155 (6.75%) JIRA
3 99 (4.31%) Jenkins
4 76 (3.31%) GitLab
5 36 (1.57%) JUnit
6 31 (1.35%) Mockito
7 28 (1.22%) MLflow
8 24 (1.04%) Gradle
8 24 (1.04%) Selenium
9 21 (0.91%) Maven
10 20 (0.87%) ERwin
11 19 (0.83%) SonarQube
12 18 (0.78%) Cucumber
13 15 (0.65%) Team Foundation Server
14 14 (0.61%) Liquibase
14 14 (0.61%) SpecFlow
14 14 (0.61%) TeamCity
15 13 (0.57%) REST Assured
16 12 (0.52%) Postman
17 11 (0.48%) ER Studio
General
1 823 (35.83%) Finance
2 605 (26.34%) Social Skills
3 456 (19.85%) Analytical Skills
4 324 (14.11%) Banking
5 138 (6.01%) Public Sector
6 109 (4.75%) Front Office
7 95 (4.14%) Investment Banking
8 78 (3.40%) Marketing
9 52 (2.26%) Financial Institution
10 49 (2.13%) Documentation Skills
11 45 (1.96%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 33 (1.44%) Retail
13 30 (1.31%) Publishing
14 27 (1.18%) Legal
15 26 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 25 (1.09%) Back Office
17 22 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
18 19 (0.83%) Presentation Skills
19 16 (0.70%) General Ledger
19 16 (0.70%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 486 (21.16%) Data Engineer
2 485 (21.11%) Developer
3 352 (15.32%) Analyst
4 321 (13.97%) Senior
5 163 (7.10%) Lead
6 160 (6.97%) Data Analyst
7 138 (6.01%) Business Analyst
8 132 (5.75%) Architect
9 93 (4.05%) Senior Data Engineer
10 86 (3.74%) C# Developer
11 84 (3.66%) Consultant
12 81 (3.53%) Software Engineer
13 80 (3.48%) Senior Developer
14 70 (3.05%) Java Developer
15 67 (2.92%) Python Developer
16 65 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
16 65 (2.83%) Data Scientist
17 57 (2.48%) Python Engineer
18 56 (2.44%) Snowflake Engineer
19 55 (2.39%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 236 (10.27%) .NET
2 188 (8.18%) Kafka
3 174 (7.58%) REST
4 163 (7.10%) PySpark
5 133 (5.79%) React
6 102 (4.44%) RESTful
7 100 (4.35%) HTML
7 100 (4.35%) Spring
8 98 (4.27%) Pandas
9 83 (3.61%) Spring Boot
10 82 (3.57%) CSS
11 80 (3.48%) JSON
12 79 (3.44%) AngularJS
13 57 (2.48%) .NET Framework
14 55 (2.39%) NumPy
15 52 (2.26%) Middleware
16 50 (2.18%) FastAPI
16 50 (2.18%) OAuth
16 50 (2.18%) XML
17 49 (2.13%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 177 (7.71%) Cloud Native
2 82 (3.57%) Data Structures
3 79 (3.44%) Derivative
3 79 (3.44%) Legacy Systems
4 74 (3.22%) Distributed Systems
5 67 (2.92%) Product Ownership
6 53 (2.31%) Equities
7 50 (2.18%) Onboarding
8 49 (2.13%) Fixed Income
9 43 (1.87%) Management Information System
10 39 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
10 39 (1.70%) Data Protection Act
10 39 (1.70%) Self-Motivation
11 37 (1.61%) Algorithms
12 34 (1.48%) Greenfield Project
13 33 (1.44%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 31 (1.35%) Low-Code
15 29 (1.26%) Credit Risk
15 29 (1.26%) Market Risk
16 28 (1.22%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 137 (5.96%) Linux
2 120 (5.22%) Windows
3 82 (3.57%) Unix
4 35 (1.52%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
6 9 (0.39%) zOS
7 8 (0.35%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 7 (0.30%) Solaris
8 7 (0.30%) Windows Server 2008
8 7 (0.30%) Windows Server 2016
9 6 (0.26%) Android
9 6 (0.26%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.17%) Windows 10
11 2 (0.087%) VMS
12 1 (0.044%) AIX
12 1 (0.044%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 664 (28.91%) CI/CD
2 641 (27.91%) Analytics
3 611 (26.60%) Data Modelling
4 564 (24.55%) Agile
5 536 (23.33%) ETL
6 522 (22.73%) DevOps
7 512 (22.29%) Business Intelligence
8 457 (19.90%) Data Pipeline
9 449 (19.55%) Problem-Solving
10 441 (19.20%) Data Engineering
11 404 (17.59%) AI
12 313 (13.63%) Data Governance
13 293 (12.76%) Validation
14 270 (11.75%) Migration
15 268 (11.67%) Data Analysis
16 242 (10.54%) Decision-Making
17 230 (10.01%) Machine Learning
18 220 (9.58%) Data Science
18 220 (9.58%) Visualisation
19 215 (9.36%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,027 (44.71%) Python
2 312 (13.58%) C#
3 292 (12.71%) Java
4 177 (7.71%) JavaScript
5 152 (6.62%) PL/SQL
6 109 (4.75%) T-SQL
7 99 (4.31%) TypeScript
8 83 (3.61%) PowerShell
9 76 (3.31%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 71 (3.09%) R
11 69 (3.00%) Scala
12 59 (2.57%) Shell Script
13 49 (2.13%) C++
14 27 (1.18%) VBA
15 25 (1.09%) Bash
16 23 (1.00%) Bicep
17 19 (0.83%) C
18 15 (0.65%) VB
19 10 (0.44%) Formula Language
19 10 (0.44%) LotusScript
Qualifications
1 356 (15.50%) Security Cleared
2 297 (12.93%) SC Cleared
3 179 (7.79%) Degree
4 58 (2.53%) Computer Science Degree
5 52 (2.26%) Azure Certification
6 46 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
7 29 (1.26%) Master's Degree
8 20 (0.87%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (0.74%) AWS Certification
10 12 (0.52%) ISTQB
10 12 (0.52%) PhD
11 11 (0.48%) CBAP
11 11 (0.48%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.44%) PMI Certification
13 9 (0.39%) PMP
14 8 (0.35%) CISM
14 8 (0.35%) CISSP
15 6 (0.26%) DV Cleared
15 6 (0.26%) SnowPro
16 5 (0.22%) IIBA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 448 (19.50%) Data Quality
2 177 (7.71%) QA
3 116 (5.05%) GDPR
4 24 (1.04%) Accessibility
4 24 (1.04%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 20 (0.87%) SLA
6 16 (0.70%) MiFID
6 16 (0.70%) PMO
7 15 (0.65%) NIST
8 14 (0.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 13 (0.57%) IFRS
10 12 (0.52%) PCI DSS
11 9 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
11 9 (0.39%) Solvency II
12 8 (0.35%) Basel III
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 20022
12 8 (0.35%) ISO 8583
13 7 (0.30%) EMIR
13 7 (0.30%) GAAP
13 7 (0.30%) NCSC
System Software
1 257 (11.19%) Docker
2 43 (1.87%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.30%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.17%) XenApp
6 4 (0.17%) XenDesktop
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
7 3 (0.13%) Postfix
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.087%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.087%) GridGain
9 1 (0.044%) RACF
9 1 (0.044%) Varnish
9 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 220 (9.58%) Terraform
2 202 (8.79%) Kubernetes
3 42 (1.83%) Grafana
4 21 (0.91%) Ansible
5 19 (0.83%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.57%) Kibana
7 11 (0.48%) Control-M
7 11 (0.48%) Oracle RMAN
8 10 (0.44%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
9 7 (0.30%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.22%) ITRS Geneos
10 5 (0.22%) Packer
10 5 (0.22%) SCCM
11 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.17%) SCVMM
12 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
13 2 (0.087%) Amdocs OSS
13 2 (0.087%) Argo
13 2 (0.087%) Thomson Reuters DACS
Vendors
1 342 (14.89%) Microsoft
2 315 (13.71%) Oracle
3 308 (13.41%) Databricks
4 84 (3.66%) Google
5 61 (2.66%) Informatica
6 57 (2.48%) SAP
7 56 (2.44%) ServiceNow
8 42 (1.83%) Citrix
9 34 (1.48%) Salesforce
10 32 (1.39%) IBM
11 29 (1.26%) Bloomberg
12 26 (1.13%) Murex
13 23 (1.00%) OpenAI
14 20 (0.87%) Workday
15 18 (0.78%) Alteryx
15 18 (0.78%) Splunk
16 17 (0.74%) MuleSoft
16 17 (0.74%) Sybase
17 16 (0.70%) Adobe
18 15 (0.65%) VMware