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

6 months to
28 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,395 1,969 2,321
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.02% 14.51% 14.06%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.65% 37.44% 35.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,623 1,397 1,808
10th Percentile £367 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £415 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £564
Median % change year-on-year - -6.87% -1.96%
75th Percentile £638 £688 £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 24 14
10th Percentile £29.41 £25.92 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.25 £29.07 £40.75
Median hourly rate £47.50 £41.66 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.03% -7.43% -23.40%
75th Percentile £54.75 £55.00 £51.75
90th Percentile £60.04 £63.75 £53.15
England median hourly rate £45.90 £39.00 £42.00
% change year-on-year +17.69% -7.14% -8.46%

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 6,197 5,259 6,526
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.10% 38.77% 39.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,138 3,697 4,923
10th Percentile £383 £368 £375
25th Percentile £450 £430 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £700 £713
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £521 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.07% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 49 45
10th Percentile £34.35 £26.31 £23.80
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £33.07
Median hourly rate £54.50 £43.50 £49.50
Median % change year-on-year +25.29% -12.12% -17.50%
75th Percentile £73.00 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.25 £74.00
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 28 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 28 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 28 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 -9 293 £550 - 142
West London +11 66 £520 +4.00% 51
South London -2 40 £513 -22.64% 12
East London 0 13 £450 -7.69% 20
North London - 6 £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
1 138 (5.76%) Apache Airflow
2 129 (5.39%) Apache Spark
3 99 (4.13%) Apache
4 81 (3.38%) Confluence
5 37 (1.54%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.09%) IIS
7 23 (0.96%) SAS
8 18 (0.75%) Palantir Foundry
9 15 (0.63%) nginx
9 15 (0.63%) Oracle Workflow
10 14 (0.58%) CMS
11 12 (0.50%) Jupyter
12 11 (0.46%) Microsoft Exchange
13 10 (0.42%) Camunda
13 10 (0.42%) Tomcat
14 8 (0.33%) Appian
15 7 (0.29%) WebLogic
16 6 (0.25%) CICS
17 3 (0.13%) ArcGIS
17 3 (0.13%) HCL Notes
Applications
1 147 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.21%) Microsoft Office
2 29 (1.21%) MS Visio
3 25 (1.04%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 20 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.29%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.17%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.17%) Notion
6 4 (0.17%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.13%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Project
8 1 (0.042%) Mingle
8 1 (0.042%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 29 (1.21%) Aladdin
2 24 (1.00%) Oracle EBS
3 15 (0.63%) 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 (0.42%) Fidessa
6 10 (0.42%) Finacle
7 7 (0.29%) Oracle FAH
7 7 (0.29%) Oracle Financials
7 7 (0.29%) Unit4 Business World
8 6 (0.25%) OpenText MBPM
8 6 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.25%) Oracle BPM
8 6 (0.25%) Remedy ITSM
8 6 (0.25%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 819 (34.20%) Azure
2 587 (24.51%) AWS
3 453 (18.91%) Power Platform
4 262 (10.94%) Azure DevOps
5 257 (10.73%) GCP
6 215 (8.98%) GitHub
7 212 (8.85%) Snowflake
8 184 (7.68%) dbt
9 175 (7.31%) Azure Data Factory
10 158 (6.60%) Serverless
11 157 (6.56%) Amazon S3
12 126 (5.26%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 116 (4.84%) AWS Lambda
14 109 (4.55%) GitHub Actions
15 52 (2.17%) Entra ID
16 51 (2.13%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 47 (1.96%) SaaS
18 45 (1.88%) Amazon EC2
19 43 (1.80%) Collibra
20 40 (1.67%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 17 (0.71%) Firewall
1 17 (0.71%) Internet
2 13 (0.54%) HTTP
2 13 (0.54%) VPN
3 10 (0.42%) DNS
3 10 (0.42%) Network Security
4 7 (0.29%) Multicast
5 6 (0.25%) SAN
5 6 (0.25%) TCP/IP
6 5 (0.21%) SSL
7 3 (0.13%) Broadband
7 3 (0.13%) FTP
7 3 (0.13%) Intranet
7 3 (0.13%) IPv4
7 3 (0.13%) NAS
7 3 (0.13%) SMS
7 3 (0.13%) WAN
7 3 (0.13%) WinSCP
8 2 (0.084%) Kerberos
8 2 (0.084%) NaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 409 (17.08%) Power BI
2 349 (14.57%) Data Warehouse
3 289 (12.07%) SQL Server
4 176 (7.35%) Data Lake
5 175 (7.31%) Tableau
6 174 (7.27%) Relational Database
7 145 (6.05%) Metadata
8 133 (5.55%) PostgreSQL
9 125 (5.22%) NoSQL
10 122 (5.09%) BigQuery
11 98 (4.09%) Azure SQL Database
12 89 (3.72%) Oracle Database
13 84 (3.51%) Delta Lake
14 82 (3.42%) Amazon Redshift
15 69 (2.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 63 (2.63%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (2.30%) Big Data
18 54 (2.25%) Amazon Athena
19 51 (2.13%) Star Schema
20 50 (2.09%) Looker
Development Applications
1 245 (10.23%) Git
2 178 (7.43%) JIRA
3 113 (4.72%) Jenkins
4 72 (3.01%) GitLab
5 34 (1.42%) Gradle
6 33 (1.38%) JUnit
7 26 (1.09%) Mockito
8 24 (1.00%) Maven
9 22 (0.92%) ERwin
10 21 (0.88%) Selenium
11 19 (0.79%) SonarQube
12 18 (0.75%) MLflow
13 17 (0.71%) TeamCity
14 16 (0.67%) ER Studio
14 16 (0.67%) Liquibase
14 16 (0.67%) Oracle Forms
14 16 (0.67%) Visual Studio
15 15 (0.63%) Bitbucket
16 14 (0.58%) Cucumber
16 14 (0.58%) REST Assured
General
1 866 (36.16%) Finance
2 659 (27.52%) Social Skills
3 521 (21.75%) Analytical Skills
4 353 (14.74%) Banking
5 166 (6.93%) Public Sector
6 123 (5.14%) Front Office
7 99 (4.13%) Marketing
8 92 (3.84%) Investment Banking
9 57 (2.38%) Retail
10 51 (2.13%) Financial Institution
11 50 (2.09%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 45 (1.88%) Documentation Skills
13 36 (1.50%) Back Office
14 30 (1.25%) Publishing
15 29 (1.21%) Organisational Skills
16 28 (1.17%) Legal
17 26 (1.09%) Telecoms
18 22 (0.92%) Presentation Skills
19 21 (0.88%) Pharmaceutical
20 20 (0.84%) Law
Job Titles
1 522 (21.80%) Developer
2 462 (19.29%) Data Engineer
3 395 (16.49%) Analyst
4 348 (14.53%) Senior
5 175 (7.31%) Lead
6 173 (7.22%) Data Analyst
7 142 (5.93%) Business Analyst
8 130 (5.43%) Architect
9 98 (4.09%) Senior Data Engineer
10 96 (4.01%) Consultant
11 91 (3.80%) Senior Developer
12 85 (3.55%) C# Developer
12 85 (3.55%) Java Developer
13 81 (3.38%) Software Engineer
14 71 (2.96%) Data Scientist
15 67 (2.80%) Azure Engineer
15 67 (2.80%) Python Engineer
16 61 (2.55%) Python Developer
16 61 (2.55%) Snowflake Engineer
17 60 (2.51%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 239 (9.98%) .NET
2 199 (8.31%) REST
3 178 (7.43%) Kafka
4 168 (7.01%) PySpark
5 128 (5.34%) React
6 116 (4.84%) Spring
7 101 (4.22%) JSON
8 96 (4.01%) RESTful
9 95 (3.97%) Spring Boot
10 94 (3.92%) AngularJS
10 94 (3.92%) HTML
11 91 (3.80%) Pandas
12 80 (3.34%) CSS
13 70 (2.92%) XML
14 62 (2.59%) .NET Framework
15 61 (2.55%) SOAP
16 58 (2.42%) Web Services
17 55 (2.30%) Middleware
18 50 (2.09%) NumPy
19 48 (2.00%) FastAPI
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.97%) Cloud Native
2 115 (4.80%) Data Structures
3 95 (3.97%) Product Ownership
4 94 (3.92%) Legacy Systems
5 93 (3.88%) Distributed Systems
6 78 (3.26%) Derivative
7 57 (2.38%) Onboarding
8 53 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 52 (2.17%) Fixed Income
10 49 (2.05%) Equities
11 44 (1.84%) Analytical Mindset
12 42 (1.75%) Management Information System
13 41 (1.71%) Algorithms
14 38 (1.59%) Reference Data
15 37 (1.54%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 36 (1.50%) Enterprise Software
17 34 (1.42%) Greenfield Project
18 26 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
19 24 (1.00%) AI Agents
19 24 (1.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 138 (5.76%) Windows
2 132 (5.51%) Linux
3 84 (3.51%) Unix
4 34 (1.42%) Windows Server
5 12 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.33%) Windows Server 2008
6 8 (0.33%) zOS
7 7 (0.29%) Solaris
7 7 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
8 6 (0.25%) Android
8 6 (0.25%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.17%) Windows Server 2016
10 2 (0.084%) Ubuntu
10 2 (0.084%) VMS
10 2 (0.084%) Windows 10
11 1 (0.042%) AIX
11 1 (0.042%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 687 (28.68%) CI/CD
2 681 (28.43%) Analytics
3 643 (26.85%) Data Modelling
4 618 (25.80%) Agile
5 515 (21.50%) DevOps
6 508 (21.21%) ETL
7 502 (20.96%) Business Intelligence
8 496 (20.71%) Data Pipeline
9 472 (19.71%) Data Engineering
10 449 (18.75%) AI
11 439 (18.33%) Problem-Solving
12 323 (13.49%) Validation
13 320 (13.36%) Data Governance
14 310 (12.94%) Migration
15 288 (12.03%) Data Analysis
16 280 (11.69%) Stakeholder Management
17 263 (10.98%) Decision-Making
18 243 (10.15%) Machine Learning
19 230 (9.60%) Continuous Improvement
20 219 (9.14%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 1,035 (43.22%) Python
2 313 (13.07%) Java
3 311 (12.99%) C#
4 185 (7.72%) JavaScript
5 175 (7.31%) PL/SQL
6 120 (5.01%) T-SQL
7 114 (4.76%) TypeScript
8 105 (4.38%) PowerShell
9 83 (3.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 71 (2.96%) Shell Script
11 62 (2.59%) R
12 53 (2.21%) Scala
13 38 (1.59%) C++
14 32 (1.34%) VBA
15 30 (1.25%) Bash
16 17 (0.71%) Bicep
16 17 (0.71%) Groovy
17 14 (0.58%) Go
18 13 (0.54%) C
18 13 (0.54%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 364 (15.20%) Security Cleared
2 308 (12.86%) SC Cleared
3 188 (7.85%) Degree
4 61 (2.55%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (1.84%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.80%) Azure Certification
7 33 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 19 (0.79%) AWS Certification
9 13 (0.54%) PhD
10 11 (0.46%) Microsoft Certification
11 10 (0.42%) DV Cleared
12 9 (0.38%) DBS Check
13 8 (0.33%) CISM
13 8 (0.33%) CISSP
14 7 (0.29%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.29%) FFIEC
14 7 (0.29%) ISTQB
15 5 (0.21%) CBAP
15 5 (0.21%) PMI Certification
15 5 (0.21%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 459 (19.16%) Data Quality
2 173 (7.22%) QA
3 98 (4.09%) GDPR
4 34 (1.42%) Accessibility
5 22 (0.92%) SLA
6 14 (0.58%) MiFID
6 14 (0.58%) PMO
7 12 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
7 12 (0.50%) NIST
7 12 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 12 (0.50%) Solvency II
8 9 (0.38%) IFRS
8 9 (0.38%) ISO 20022
8 9 (0.38%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 6 (0.25%) COBIT
9 6 (0.25%) EMIR
9 6 (0.25%) HIPAA
10 5 (0.21%) COREP
10 5 (0.21%) DICOM
10 5 (0.21%) HL7
System Software
1 225 (9.39%) Docker
2 43 (1.80%) Active Directory
3 16 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
4 13 (0.54%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
7 3 (0.13%) Postfix
8 2 (0.084%) Apache ZooKeeper
8 2 (0.084%) GridGain
8 2 (0.084%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.084%) Virtual Desktop
9 1 (0.042%) HDFS
9 1 (0.042%) RACF
9 1 (0.042%) Varnish
9 1 (0.042%) VMware NSX
9 1 (0.042%) XenApp
9 1 (0.042%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 224 (9.35%) Terraform
2 206 (8.60%) Kubernetes
3 42 (1.75%) Grafana
4 25 (1.04%) Ansible
5 17 (0.71%) Control-M
6 16 (0.67%) Prometheus
7 14 (0.58%) Kibana
8 10 (0.42%) ITRS Geneos
8 10 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
9 7 (0.29%) Data Guard
10 6 (0.25%) Microsoft Clustering
10 6 (0.25%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.21%) Packer
12 4 (0.17%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.17%) SCOM
13 3 (0.13%) Argo
13 3 (0.13%) HP ALM
13 3 (0.13%) Podman
13 3 (0.13%) Thomson Reuters DACS
14 2 (0.084%) Istio
Vendors
1 324 (13.53%) Microsoft
2 309 (12.90%) Oracle
3 292 (12.19%) Databricks
4 103 (4.30%) Google
5 60 (2.51%) Informatica
6 46 (1.92%) SAP
7 45 (1.88%) ServiceNow
8 37 (1.54%) Bloomberg
8 37 (1.54%) Citrix
9 34 (1.42%) IBM
10 31 (1.29%) Salesforce
11 30 (1.25%) Murex
12 23 (0.96%) Foundry
13 22 (0.92%) Splunk
14 20 (0.84%) Adobe
14 20 (0.84%) VMware
15 19 (0.79%) Palantir
16 18 (0.75%) Alteryx
16 18 (0.75%) Dynatrace
16 18 (0.75%) OpenAI