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

6 months to
21 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,484 1,941 2,299
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.37% 14.48% 14.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.25% 37.61% 35.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,715 1,375 1,769
10th Percentile £365 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £530 £575
Median % change year-on-year -0.94% -7.83% -
75th Percentile £635 £675 £688
90th Percentile £738 £788 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% +0.47%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 27 16
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.09 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.52 £30.02 £40.71
Median hourly rate £37.50 £37.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year - -16.67% -28.57%
75th Percentile £52.49 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £57.60 £63.75 £53.75
England median hourly rate £42.50 £43.16 £41.50
% change year-on-year -1.52% +3.99% -8.67%

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 6,329 5,161 6,482
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.52% 38.50% 39.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,254 3,596 4,803
10th Percentile £383 £375 £375
25th Percentile £450 £428 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £660 £700 £712
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 60 42
10th Percentile £31.03 £26.31 £23.80
25th Percentile £36.25 £32.50 £31.71
Median hourly rate £52.50 £43.50 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +20.69% -8.42% -22.90%
75th Percentile £73.00 £62.31 £57.50
90th Percentile £88.75 £86.25 £74.69
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +4.55%

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 21 August 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 21 August 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 21 August 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 -5 310 £550 -4.35% 206
West London +10 73 £520 +4.00% 42
South London 0 39 £535 -14.40% 10
East London +1 13 £450 -1.66% 22
North London +2 6 £550 - 4
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
1 163 (6.56%) Apache Airflow
2 136 (5.48%) Apache Spark
3 104 (4.19%) Apache
4 82 (3.30%) Confluence
5 52 (2.09%) SharePoint
6 25 (1.01%) IIS
7 24 (0.97%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 15 (0.60%) Palantir Foundry
9 14 (0.56%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.52%) CMS
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
11 12 (0.48%) Camunda
11 12 (0.48%) nginx
12 7 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.28%) Tomcat
13 6 (0.24%) Appian
13 6 (0.24%) CICS
13 6 (0.24%) WebLogic
14 4 (0.16%) MTS
Applications
1 153 (6.16%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 25 (1.01%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 23 (0.93%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
6 7 (0.28%) 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 1 (0.040%) Mingle
9 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (0.97%) Aladdin
1 24 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
2 18 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 16 (0.64%) Oracle ERP
4 14 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 12 (0.48%) Oracle General Ledger
6 11 (0.44%) Oracle EBS R12
6 11 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
7 10 (0.40%) Finacle
7 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
8 8 (0.32%) Findur
9 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle FAH
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle Financials
9 7 (0.28%) Summit
9 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
10 6 (0.24%) Fidessa
10 6 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 838 (33.74%) Azure
2 608 (24.48%) AWS
3 453 (18.24%) Power Platform
4 279 (11.23%) Azure DevOps
5 264 (10.63%) GCP
6 232 (9.34%) Snowflake
7 223 (8.98%) GitHub
8 204 (8.21%) dbt
9 173 (6.96%) Azure Data Factory
10 162 (6.52%) Serverless
11 143 (5.76%) Amazon S3
12 129 (5.19%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 114 (4.59%) AWS Lambda
13 114 (4.59%) GitHub Actions
14 55 (2.21%) SaaS
15 52 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 51 (2.05%) Entra ID
17 46 (1.85%) PowerApps
18 41 (1.65%) Power Automate
19 39 (1.57%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 16 (0.64%) DNS
1 16 (0.64%) Internet
2 15 (0.60%) Firewall
2 15 (0.60%) VPN
3 12 (0.48%) HTTP
3 12 (0.48%) Network Security
4 8 (0.32%) Multicast
4 8 (0.32%) TCP/IP
5 7 (0.28%) Broadband
5 7 (0.28%) SAN
5 7 (0.28%) SSL
6 5 (0.20%) DHCP
7 4 (0.16%) HTTPS
8 3 (0.12%) Intranet
8 3 (0.12%) IPv4
8 3 (0.12%) Kerberos
8 3 (0.12%) NAS
8 3 (0.12%) SMS
8 3 (0.12%) WAN
8 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 410 (16.51%) Power BI
2 371 (14.94%) Data Warehouse
3 304 (12.24%) SQL Server
4 179 (7.21%) Relational Database
5 166 (6.68%) Data Lake
6 165 (6.64%) Tableau
7 151 (6.08%) Metadata
8 138 (5.56%) PostgreSQL
9 129 (5.19%) NoSQL
10 128 (5.15%) BigQuery
11 101 (4.07%) Oracle Database
12 100 (4.03%) Azure SQL Database
13 91 (3.66%) Delta Lake
14 89 (3.58%) Amazon Redshift
15 68 (2.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 58 (2.33%) Amazon Athena
16 58 (2.33%) Snowflake Schema
16 58 (2.33%) Star Schema
17 57 (2.29%) Big Data
18 56 (2.25%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 274 (11.03%) Git
2 185 (7.45%) JIRA
3 124 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 79 (3.18%) GitLab
5 42 (1.69%) Selenium
6 39 (1.57%) Gradle
7 37 (1.49%) JUnit
8 26 (1.05%) Maven
8 26 (1.05%) Mockito
9 24 (0.97%) SonarQube
10 21 (0.85%) Visual Studio
11 20 (0.81%) Bitbucket
12 19 (0.76%) ERwin
13 18 (0.72%) Liquibase
13 18 (0.72%) TeamCity
14 17 (0.68%) MLflow
15 16 (0.64%) Cypress.io
15 16 (0.64%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
16 15 (0.60%) JMeter
General
1 893 (35.95%) Finance
2 707 (28.46%) Social Skills
3 533 (21.46%) Analytical Skills
4 400 (16.10%) Banking
5 164 (6.60%) Public Sector
6 130 (5.23%) Front Office
7 105 (4.23%) Marketing
8 103 (4.15%) Investment Banking
9 72 (2.90%) Retail
10 61 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 50 (2.01%) Financial Institution
12 40 (1.61%) Documentation Skills
13 33 (1.33%) Back Office
14 29 (1.17%) Legal
15 28 (1.13%) Telecoms
16 24 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
16 24 (0.97%) Publishing
17 21 (0.85%) Local Government
18 20 (0.81%) Presentation Skills
19 19 (0.76%) Law
Job Titles
1 545 (21.94%) Developer
2 462 (18.60%) Data Engineer
3 409 (16.47%) Analyst
4 373 (15.02%) Senior
5 187 (7.53%) Lead
6 164 (6.60%) Data Analyst
7 147 (5.92%) Business Analyst
8 146 (5.88%) Architect
9 105 (4.23%) Senior Data Engineer
10 101 (4.07%) Consultant
11 92 (3.70%) Senior Developer
12 86 (3.46%) Java Developer
13 83 (3.34%) C# Developer
14 82 (3.30%) Software Engineer
15 79 (3.18%) Python Engineer
16 68 (2.74%) Python Developer
17 65 (2.62%) Azure Engineer
18 61 (2.46%) Data Architect
19 58 (2.33%) Snowflake Engineer
20 56 (2.25%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 267 (10.75%) .NET
2 246 (9.90%) Terraform
3 227 (9.14%) REST
4 197 (7.93%) PySpark
5 192 (7.73%) Kafka
6 131 (5.27%) React
7 126 (5.07%) Spring
8 108 (4.35%) RESTful
9 107 (4.31%) JSON
10 106 (4.27%) Spring Boot
11 104 (4.19%) HTML
12 93 (3.74%) AngularJS
13 82 (3.30%) XML
14 80 (3.22%) CSS
14 80 (3.22%) Pandas
15 66 (2.66%) Web Services
16 64 (2.58%) Middleware
16 64 (2.58%) SOAP
17 62 (2.50%) .NET Framework
18 48 (1.93%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 194 (7.81%) Cloud Native
2 120 (4.83%) Product Ownership
3 110 (4.43%) Data Structures
4 87 (3.50%) Distributed Systems
4 87 (3.50%) Legacy Systems
5 79 (3.18%) Derivative
6 71 (2.86%) Onboarding
7 59 (2.38%) Self-Motivation
8 54 (2.17%) Management Information System
9 51 (2.05%) Fixed Income
10 49 (1.97%) Enterprise Software
11 43 (1.73%) Analytical Mindset
12 42 (1.69%) Equities
13 40 (1.61%) Reference Data
14 38 (1.53%) Algorithms
15 37 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 34 (1.37%) AI Agents
16 34 (1.37%) Greenfield Project
17 30 (1.21%) Replication
18 29 (1.17%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 161 (6.48%) Linux
2 146 (5.88%) Windows
3 105 (4.23%) Unix
4 36 (1.45%) Windows Server
5 11 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
7 7 (0.28%) zOS
8 6 (0.24%) VMS
8 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.16%) Solaris
9 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
10 3 (0.12%) Android
10 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
10 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
10 3 (0.12%) Ubuntu
10 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.081%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.081%) Windows Server 2016
12 1 (0.040%) AIX
12 1 (0.040%) Oracle Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 758 (30.52%) CI/CD
2 670 (26.97%) Analytics
3 666 (26.81%) Agile
4 653 (26.29%) Data Modelling
5 553 (22.26%) DevOps
6 510 (20.53%) ETL
7 505 (20.33%) Data Pipeline
8 496 (19.97%) Business Intelligence
9 478 (19.24%) AI
10 475 (19.12%) Data Engineering
11 473 (19.04%) Problem-Solving
12 351 (14.13%) Stakeholder Management
13 348 (14.01%) Validation
14 331 (13.33%) Migration
15 323 (13.00%) Data Governance
16 306 (12.32%) Data Analysis
17 274 (11.03%) Decision-Making
18 257 (10.35%) Continuous Improvement
19 253 (10.19%) Test Automation
20 236 (9.50%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,061 (42.71%) Python
2 338 (13.61%) Java
3 324 (13.04%) C#
4 213 (8.57%) JavaScript
5 181 (7.29%) PL/SQL
6 124 (4.99%) TypeScript
7 117 (4.71%) PowerShell
8 114 (4.59%) T-SQL
9 90 (3.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 80 (3.22%) Shell Script
11 55 (2.21%) R
12 51 (2.05%) Scala
13 40 (1.61%) C++
14 34 (1.37%) VBA
15 32 (1.29%) Bash
16 18 (0.72%) VB.NET
17 16 (0.64%) Bicep
17 16 (0.64%) Go
18 13 (0.52%) Groovy
19 12 (0.48%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 410 (16.51%) Security Cleared
2 350 (14.09%) SC Cleared
3 194 (7.81%) Degree
4 70 (2.82%) Computer Science Degree
5 43 (1.73%) Azure Certification
6 39 (1.57%) BPSS Clearance
7 31 (1.25%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.09%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.72%) ISTQB
10 15 (0.60%) DV Cleared
10 15 (0.60%) Microsoft Certification
11 13 (0.52%) FFIEC
12 12 (0.48%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 10 (0.40%) ISEB
14 9 (0.36%) DBS Check
15 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 8 (0.32%) PhD
16 7 (0.28%) CISM
16 7 (0.28%) CISSP
17 6 (0.24%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 475 (19.12%) Data Quality
2 196 (7.89%) QA
3 88 (3.54%) GDPR
4 32 (1.29%) Accessibility
5 26 (1.05%) SLA
6 19 (0.76%) NIST
7 18 (0.72%) ISO 20022
8 15 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 14 (0.56%) MiFID
10 13 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
10 13 (0.52%) IFRS
11 12 (0.48%) COBIT
12 10 (0.40%) PMO
12 10 (0.40%) Solvency II
13 9 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 7 (0.28%) HIPAA
15 6 (0.24%) EMIR
16 5 (0.20%) NCSC
16 5 (0.20%) PSD2
16 5 (0.20%) SEPA
System Software
1 236 (9.50%) Docker
2 52 (2.09%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (0.60%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.12%) Apache ZooKeeper
7 3 (0.12%) Postfix
7 3 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.081%) GridGain
9 1 (0.040%) Hyper-V
9 1 (0.040%) RACF
9 1 (0.040%) Varnish
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
9 1 (0.040%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 217 (8.74%) Kubernetes
2 38 (1.53%) Grafana
3 32 (1.29%) Ansible
4 29 (1.17%) Control-M
5 18 (0.72%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Clustering
7 10 (0.40%) Kibana
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
8 9 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
10 6 (0.24%) Kubeflow
10 6 (0.24%) Packer
10 6 (0.24%) SCOM
11 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.20%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (0.16%) Istio
12 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.16%) SCCM
12 4 (0.16%) Thomson Reuters DACS
13 3 (0.12%) NetBackup
Vendors
1 351 (14.13%) Microsoft
2 328 (13.20%) Oracle
3 304 (12.24%) Databricks
4 106 (4.27%) Google
5 66 (2.66%) Informatica
6 47 (1.89%) SAP
7 42 (1.69%) IBM
8 38 (1.53%) Bloomberg
8 38 (1.53%) ServiceNow
9 37 (1.49%) Salesforce
10 33 (1.33%) Citrix
11 32 (1.29%) Murex
12 25 (1.01%) VMware
13 23 (0.93%) Adobe
14 21 (0.85%) Foundry
14 21 (0.85%) Splunk
15 19 (0.76%) Sybase
16 18 (0.72%) Alteryx
16 18 (0.72%) Dynatrace
16 18 (0.72%) UiPath