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

6 months to
23 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,258 1,805 2,307
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.39% 14.88% 13.25%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.41% 37.96% 35.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,504 1,298 1,796
10th Percentile £363 £363 £385
25th Percentile £415 £425 £468
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £536 £575
Median % change year-on-year -2.99% -6.78% -1.37%
75th Percentile £625 £688 £688
90th Percentile £738 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £503 £550
% change year-on-year -0.50% -8.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 19 18
10th Percentile £31.58 £29.07 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.50 £33.13 £40.88
Median hourly rate £45.25 £44.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.69% -6.32% -26.92%
75th Percentile £54.94 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £61.30 £72.75 £57.25
England median hourly rate £47.50 £43.66 £43.75
% change year-on-year +8.80% -0.21% -12.50%

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 5,730 4,755 6,450
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.45% 39.21% 37.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,837 3,350 4,937
10th Percentile £363 £375 £375
25th Percentile £435 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £700
90th Percentile £763 £825 £838
England median daily rate £511 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.67% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 33 50
10th Percentile £33.75 £29.07 £23.80
25th Percentile £41.25 £33.25 £40.77
Median hourly rate £58.94 £38.11 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.64% -24.53% -15.83%
75th Percentile £73.00 £53.75 £64.02
90th Percentile £88.75 £66.65 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £61.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +5.69% -1.60% -

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 -9 269 £539 -2.05% 216
West London +4 61 £601 +20.25% 26
South London 0 42 £496 -23.69% 7
East London +4 22 £450 +1.11% 31
North London - 2 £336 - 7
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
1 162 (7.17%) Apache Spark
2 116 (5.14%) Apache Airflow
3 90 (3.99%) Apache
4 63 (2.79%) Confluence
5 35 (1.55%) SharePoint
6 23 (1.02%) IIS
7 18 (0.80%) SAS
8 13 (0.58%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.53%) Appian
9 12 (0.53%) Mendix
10 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
10 11 (0.49%) Palantir Foundry
11 10 (0.44%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.44%) Tomcat
12 8 (0.35%) Camunda
12 8 (0.35%) nginx
13 7 (0.31%) CMS
14 6 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
15 5 (0.22%) ArcGIS
Applications
1 147 (6.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.59%) MS Visio
3 26 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (1.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.22%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Trello
9 1 (0.044%) Mingle
9 1 (0.044%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 28 (1.24%) Aladdin
2 19 (0.84%) Oracle EBS
3 12 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
4 10 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 10 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
4 10 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.40%) Endur
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
6 8 (0.35%) Findur
6 8 (0.35%) Oracle Receivables
7 7 (0.31%) Fidessa
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 6 (0.27%) BASE24
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
8 6 (0.27%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 833 (36.89%) Azure
2 571 (25.29%) AWS
3 439 (19.44%) Power Platform
4 275 (12.18%) Azure DevOps
5 214 (9.48%) GitHub
6 203 (8.99%) Azure Data Factory
6 203 (8.99%) GCP
7 170 (7.53%) Snowflake
8 161 (7.13%) Amazon S3
8 161 (7.13%) Serverless
9 149 (6.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 131 (5.80%) dbt
11 109 (4.83%) AWS Lambda
12 106 (4.69%) GitHub Actions
13 48 (2.13%) Collibra
14 47 (2.08%) Amazon CloudWatch
15 44 (1.95%) Entra ID
15 44 (1.95%) Power Automate
16 43 (1.90%) AWS CloudFormation
17 41 (1.82%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 14 (0.62%) Firewall
2 13 (0.58%) DNS
2 13 (0.58%) Internet
3 12 (0.53%) HTTP
3 12 (0.53%) Network Security
4 6 (0.27%) WAN
5 4 (0.18%) FIX Connectivity
5 4 (0.18%) NetScaler
5 4 (0.18%) SMS
5 4 (0.18%) VPN
6 3 (0.13%) FTP
6 3 (0.13%) LAN
6 3 (0.13%) Multicast
6 3 (0.13%) NAS
6 3 (0.13%) SAN
6 3 (0.13%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.089%) NaaS
7 2 (0.089%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.089%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 396 (17.54%) Power BI
2 306 (13.55%) Data Warehouse
2 306 (13.55%) SQL Server
3 197 (8.72%) Data Lake
4 173 (7.66%) Tableau
5 153 (6.78%) PostgreSQL
5 153 (6.78%) Relational Database
6 144 (6.38%) Metadata
7 129 (5.71%) NoSQL
8 115 (5.09%) Azure SQL Database
9 102 (4.52%) BigQuery
10 90 (3.99%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 86 (3.81%) Oracle Database
12 85 (3.76%) Delta Lake
13 76 (3.37%) Amazon Redshift
14 67 (2.97%) Big Data
15 61 (2.70%) Snowflake Schema
16 56 (2.48%) Amazon Athena
17 47 (2.08%) Looker
18 46 (2.04%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 227 (10.05%) Git
2 153 (6.78%) JIRA
3 97 (4.30%) Jenkins
4 70 (3.10%) GitLab
5 34 (1.51%) JUnit
6 30 (1.33%) MLflow
7 27 (1.20%) Mockito
8 26 (1.15%) Selenium
9 21 (0.93%) Gradle
10 20 (0.89%) ERwin
11 19 (0.84%) Cucumber
11 19 (0.84%) Maven
12 18 (0.80%) SonarQube
13 17 (0.75%) SpecFlow
14 16 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
15 14 (0.62%) TeamCity
16 12 (0.53%) Liquibase
16 12 (0.53%) Postman
16 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
17 11 (0.49%) ER Studio
General
1 800 (35.43%) Finance
2 596 (26.40%) Social Skills
3 444 (19.66%) Analytical Skills
4 314 (13.91%) Banking
5 135 (5.98%) Public Sector
6 104 (4.61%) Front Office
7 94 (4.16%) Investment Banking
8 70 (3.10%) Marketing
9 51 (2.26%) Documentation Skills
10 46 (2.04%) Financial Institution
11 45 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 32 (1.42%) Retail
13 29 (1.28%) Publishing
14 28 (1.24%) Legal
15 27 (1.20%) Telecoms
16 22 (0.97%) Back Office
17 21 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
18 19 (0.84%) Presentation Skills
19 16 (0.71%) General Ledger
20 14 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 476 (21.08%) Data Engineer
2 475 (21.04%) Developer
3 347 (15.37%) Analyst
4 318 (14.08%) Senior
5 164 (7.26%) Lead
6 152 (6.73%) Data Analyst
7 142 (6.29%) Business Analyst
8 131 (5.80%) Architect
9 90 (3.99%) Senior Data Engineer
10 85 (3.76%) C# Developer
11 81 (3.59%) Software Engineer
12 77 (3.41%) Senior Developer
13 76 (3.37%) Consultant
14 72 (3.19%) Azure Engineer
15 69 (3.06%) Python Developer
16 65 (2.88%) Java Developer
17 62 (2.75%) Data Scientist
18 55 (2.44%) Data Architect
19 54 (2.39%) Python Engineer
20 52 (2.30%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (10.14%) .NET
2 190 (8.41%) Kafka
3 169 (7.48%) PySpark
4 164 (7.26%) REST
5 126 (5.58%) React
6 100 (4.43%) RESTful
7 98 (4.34%) HTML
8 96 (4.25%) Pandas
9 92 (4.07%) Spring
10 79 (3.50%) CSS
11 78 (3.45%) Spring Boot
12 77 (3.41%) AngularJS
13 75 (3.32%) JSON
14 56 (2.48%) .NET Framework
14 56 (2.48%) Middleware
15 54 (2.39%) NumPy
16 52 (2.30%) FastAPI
17 47 (2.08%) OAuth
17 47 (2.08%) SOAP
17 47 (2.08%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 168 (7.44%) Cloud Native
2 83 (3.68%) Data Structures
3 77 (3.41%) Derivative
4 76 (3.37%) Legacy Systems
5 73 (3.23%) Distributed Systems
6 66 (2.92%) Product Ownership
7 52 (2.30%) Equities
8 51 (2.26%) Fixed Income
9 48 (2.13%) Onboarding
10 44 (1.95%) Management Information System
11 41 (1.82%) Data Protection Act
12 40 (1.77%) Algorithms
13 38 (1.68%) Analytical Mindset
14 37 (1.64%) Self-Motivation
15 33 (1.46%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 33 (1.46%) Greenfield Project
16 30 (1.33%) Low-Code
16 30 (1.33%) Market Risk
17 28 (1.24%) Credit Risk
18 26 (1.15%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 140 (6.20%) Linux
2 120 (5.31%) Windows
3 84 (3.72%) Unix
4 36 (1.59%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
6 7 (0.31%) Solaris
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
6 7 (0.31%) zOS
7 6 (0.27%) Android
7 6 (0.27%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.089%) AIX
10 1 (0.044%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 644 (28.52%) CI/CD
2 624 (27.64%) Analytics
3 607 (26.88%) Data Modelling
4 561 (24.84%) Agile
5 541 (23.96%) ETL
6 521 (23.07%) DevOps
7 506 (22.41%) Business Intelligence
8 446 (19.75%) Data Pipeline
9 443 (19.62%) Problem-Solving
10 434 (19.22%) Data Engineering
11 389 (17.23%) AI
12 322 (14.26%) Data Governance
13 301 (13.33%) Validation
14 264 (11.69%) Migration
15 257 (11.38%) Data Analysis
16 240 (10.63%) Decision-Making
17 222 (9.83%) Machine Learning
18 220 (9.74%) Data Science
19 213 (9.43%) Test Automation
20 204 (9.03%) Visualisation
Programming Languages
1 1,014 (44.91%) Python
2 310 (13.73%) C#
3 285 (12.62%) Java
4 176 (7.79%) JavaScript
5 150 (6.64%) PL/SQL
6 109 (4.83%) T-SQL
7 92 (4.07%) TypeScript
8 82 (3.63%) PowerShell
9 74 (3.28%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 73 (3.23%) Scala
11 72 (3.19%) R
12 58 (2.57%) Shell Script
13 47 (2.08%) C++
14 29 (1.28%) VBA
15 28 (1.24%) Bash
16 24 (1.06%) Bicep
17 18 (0.80%) C
18 16 (0.71%) VB
19 10 (0.44%) Formula Language
19 10 (0.44%) LotusScript
Qualifications
1 355 (15.72%) Security Cleared
2 293 (12.98%) SC Cleared
3 178 (7.88%) Degree
4 59 (2.61%) Computer Science Degree
5 51 (2.26%) Azure Certification
6 46 (2.04%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (1.24%) Master's Degree
8 19 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (0.75%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.62%) ISTQB
11 13 (0.58%) CBAP
12 12 (0.53%) PhD
13 10 (0.44%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.44%) PMI Certification
14 9 (0.40%) PMP
15 8 (0.35%) CISM
15 8 (0.35%) CISSP
16 6 (0.27%) DV Cleared
16 6 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
16 6 (0.27%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 449 (19.88%) Data Quality
2 182 (8.06%) QA
3 113 (5.00%) GDPR
4 24 (1.06%) Accessibility
4 24 (1.06%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 19 (0.84%) SLA
6 16 (0.71%) MiFID
6 16 (0.71%) PMO
7 13 (0.58%) IFRS
7 13 (0.58%) NIST
8 12 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.53%) PCI DSS
9 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.35%) ISO 8583
10 8 (0.35%) Solvency II
11 7 (0.31%) Basel III
11 7 (0.31%) EMIR
11 7 (0.31%) HIPAA
11 7 (0.31%) ISO 20022
11 7 (0.31%) NCSC
System Software
1 251 (11.12%) Docker
2 42 (1.86%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.18%) XenApp
6 4 (0.18%) XenDesktop
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
7 3 (0.13%) Postfix
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.089%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.089%) GridGain
9 1 (0.044%) RACF
9 1 (0.044%) Varnish
9 1 (0.044%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 218 (9.65%) Terraform
2 200 (8.86%) Kubernetes
3 42 (1.86%) Grafana
4 22 (0.97%) Ansible
5 19 (0.84%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.58%) Kibana
7 11 (0.49%) Control-M
8 10 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
9 9 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.27%) Data Guard
11 6 (0.27%) ITRS Geneos
12 5 (0.22%) Packer
12 5 (0.22%) SCCM
13 4 (0.18%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.18%) SCVMM
14 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
15 2 (0.089%) Amdocs OSS
15 2 (0.089%) Argo
15 2 (0.089%) Knative
Vendors
1 335 (14.84%) Microsoft
2 310 (13.73%) Databricks
3 307 (13.60%) Oracle
4 83 (3.68%) Google
5 60 (2.66%) Informatica
6 57 (2.52%) SAP
7 56 (2.48%) ServiceNow
8 42 (1.86%) Citrix
9 35 (1.55%) Salesforce
10 32 (1.42%) IBM
11 29 (1.28%) Bloomberg
12 27 (1.20%) Murex
13 26 (1.15%) OpenAI
14 20 (0.89%) Workday
15 19 (0.84%) Splunk
16 18 (0.80%) MuleSoft
17 16 (0.71%) Adobe
17 16 (0.71%) Alteryx
18 15 (0.66%) Sybase
18 15 (0.66%) VMware