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

6 months to
28 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 6
Rank change year-on-year 0 -3 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,118 1,933 2,409
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.34% 13.99% 13.10%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.01% 36.36% 37.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,432 1,331 1,787
10th Percentile £358 £363 £388
25th Percentile £413 £441 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -4.35% -3.77%
75th Percentile £638 £658 £688
90th Percentile £738 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 21 27
10th Percentile £18.25 £35.75 £31.32
25th Percentile £26.50 £40.58 £36.27
Median hourly rate £40.49 £47.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.76% +5.56% -22.41%
75th Percentile £47.50 £60.75 £53.94
90th Percentile £64.35 £80.00 £64.51
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -4.76% +23.53% -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 5,429 5,316 6,406
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 36.77% 38.48% 34.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,643 3,512 4,862
10th Percentile £363 £375 £388
25th Percentile £425 £456 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £563 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -2.17% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £695 £700
90th Percentile £775 £825 £800
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 62 35 68
10th Percentile £25.28 £35.00 £26.68
25th Percentile £36.63 £38.38 £37.02
Median hourly rate £55.00 £52.50 £50.25
Median % change year-on-year +4.76% +4.48% -12.61%
75th Percentile £67.40 £68.00 £61.94
90th Percentile £86.63 £97.50 £72.15
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.69%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 -1 277 £538 -6.52% 192
South London +18 47 £492 -0.35% 37
West London -1 39 £550 +10.00% 38
East London +1 23 £469 +17.19% 28
North London +4 1 - - 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
1 133 (6.28%) Apache Spark
2 94 (4.44%) Apache Airflow
3 71 (3.35%) Confluence
4 56 (2.64%) Apache
5 42 (1.98%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.85%) IIS
7 14 (0.66%) nginx
8 13 (0.61%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 12 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.57%) SAS
10 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.47%) Oracle Workflow
12 9 (0.42%) Mendix
12 9 (0.42%) Microsoft Exchange
13 7 (0.33%) Appian
13 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
13 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.28%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.28%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
Applications
1 147 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (1.75%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.46%) MS Visio
4 26 (1.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.38%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.24%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.24%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 1 (0.047%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 23 (1.09%) Aladdin
2 21 (0.99%) Oracle General Ledger
3 20 (0.94%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.80%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.71%) Oracle Assets
6 14 (0.66%) Endur
7 13 (0.61%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.61%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.61%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
9 11 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
10 10 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
11 9 (0.42%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.42%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 8 (0.38%) Oracle E-Business Tax
12 8 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
12 8 (0.38%) SAP HR
13 7 (0.33%) Oracle Cash Management
14 6 (0.28%) Markit EDM
14 6 (0.28%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 694 (32.77%) Azure
2 518 (24.46%) AWS
3 394 (18.60%) Power Platform
4 196 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
5 186 (8.78%) GitHub
6 177 (8.36%) Snowflake
7 168 (7.93%) Azure Data Factory
8 157 (7.41%) GCP
9 151 (7.13%) Serverless
10 135 (6.37%) Amazon S3
11 113 (5.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 95 (4.49%) GitHub Actions
13 86 (4.06%) dbt
14 81 (3.82%) AWS Lambda
15 62 (2.93%) SaaS
16 56 (2.64%) Azure Functions
17 43 (2.03%) AWS CloudFormation
18 42 (1.98%) Power Automate
19 40 (1.89%) Azure Logic Apps
19 40 (1.89%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.23%) Firewall
2 19 (0.90%) HTTP
3 18 (0.85%) DNS
4 12 (0.57%) Internet
4 12 (0.57%) Network Security
4 12 (0.57%) SSH
5 10 (0.47%) SMTP
6 8 (0.38%) FTP
6 8 (0.38%) IMAP
6 8 (0.38%) OpenLDAP
6 8 (0.38%) SMS
6 8 (0.38%) VPN
7 7 (0.33%) Multicast
7 7 (0.33%) Skype
8 6 (0.28%) Unified Communications
9 5 (0.24%) LAN
9 5 (0.24%) WAN
10 4 (0.19%) 4G
10 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
10 4 (0.19%) Radio Access Network
Database & Business Intelligence
1 363 (17.14%) Power BI
2 254 (11.99%) SQL Server
3 253 (11.95%) Data Warehouse
4 156 (7.37%) PostgreSQL
5 152 (7.18%) Tableau
6 150 (7.08%) NoSQL
7 149 (7.03%) Relational Database
8 140 (6.61%) Data Lake
9 105 (4.96%) Metadata
10 100 (4.72%) Azure SQL Database
11 96 (4.53%) Oracle Database
12 81 (3.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 77 (3.64%) Big Data
14 71 (3.35%) BigQuery
15 57 (2.69%) Amazon Redshift
16 50 (2.36%) Delta Lake
17 48 (2.27%) Amazon Athena
18 47 (2.22%) MongoDB
19 42 (1.98%) Amazon RDS
19 42 (1.98%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 224 (10.58%) Git
2 159 (7.51%) JIRA
3 84 (3.97%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.16%) GitLab
5 38 (1.79%) JUnit
6 25 (1.18%) Selenium
7 22 (1.04%) SpecFlow
8 21 (0.99%) ERwin
8 21 (0.99%) MLflow
9 18 (0.85%) Cypress.io
10 17 (0.80%) Cucumber
10 17 (0.80%) Postman
11 16 (0.76%) Bitbucket
12 15 (0.71%) Maven
12 15 (0.71%) Visual Studio
13 14 (0.66%) Mockito
14 11 (0.52%) ER Studio
14 11 (0.52%) Gradle
14 11 (0.52%) SonarQube
14 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
General
1 713 (33.66%) Finance
2 629 (29.70%) Social Skills
3 382 (18.04%) Analytical Skills
4 300 (14.16%) Banking
5 127 (6.00%) Public Sector
6 117 (5.52%) Investment Banking
7 96 (4.53%) Front Office
8 56 (2.64%) Marketing
9 52 (2.46%) Documentation Skills
10 45 (2.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 40 (1.89%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.84%) Retail
13 23 (1.09%) Presentation Skills
14 22 (1.04%) Legal
15 21 (0.99%) Back Office
15 21 (0.99%) General Ledger
16 17 (0.80%) Publishing
17 16 (0.76%) Law
17 16 (0.76%) Telecoms
18 12 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 526 (24.83%) Developer
2 368 (17.37%) Analyst
3 354 (16.71%) Data Engineer
4 286 (13.50%) Senior
5 162 (7.65%) Business Analyst
6 150 (7.08%) Lead
7 141 (6.66%) Data Analyst
8 105 (4.96%) Architect
9 80 (3.78%) Consultant
10 72 (3.40%) Senior Developer
11 71 (3.35%) Azure Engineer
12 70 (3.31%) Java Developer
13 69 (3.26%) C# Developer
14 61 (2.88%) Python Developer
15 59 (2.79%) Software Engineer
16 58 (2.74%) Senior Data Engineer
17 51 (2.41%) Senior Analyst
18 50 (2.36%) Azure Data Engineer
19 49 (2.31%) SQL Developer
20 48 (2.27%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 206 (9.73%) .NET
2 175 (8.26%) Kafka
3 146 (6.89%) REST
4 145 (6.85%) PySpark
5 97 (4.58%) RESTful
6 93 (4.39%) React
7 75 (3.54%) HTML
8 71 (3.35%) XML
9 67 (3.16%) Spring
10 66 (3.12%) CSS
11 64 (3.02%) Pandas
12 63 (2.97%) Node.js
13 55 (2.60%) AngularJS
14 52 (2.46%) .NET Framework
14 52 (2.46%) JSON
14 52 (2.46%) Spring Boot
15 50 (2.36%) NumPy
16 49 (2.31%) Middleware
17 40 (1.89%) PyTorch
18 39 (1.84%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 129 (6.09%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.35%) Data Structures
3 62 (2.93%) Derivative
4 58 (2.74%) Data Protection Act
4 58 (2.74%) Product Ownership
5 56 (2.64%) Legacy Systems
6 54 (2.55%) Equities
7 50 (2.36%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.31%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (2.27%) Fixed Income
10 47 (2.22%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 42 (1.98%) Market Risk
12 41 (1.94%) Algorithms
13 37 (1.75%) Distributed Systems
14 36 (1.70%) Onboarding
15 26 (1.23%) Credit Risk
15 26 (1.23%) Hedge funds
16 25 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
17 24 (1.13%) Replication
18 23 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 198 (9.35%) Linux
2 123 (5.81%) Unix
3 118 (5.57%) Windows
4 29 (1.37%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.61%) VMS
6 10 (0.47%) Ubuntu
6 10 (0.47%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (0.38%) Amazon Linux
8 7 (0.33%) Android
8 7 (0.33%) Windows 10
9 5 (0.24%) AIX
9 5 (0.24%) Apple iOS
9 5 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
10 3 (0.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.094%) zOS
12 1 (0.047%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.047%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 580 (27.38%) Agile
2 524 (24.74%) Analytics
3 485 (22.90%) Data Modelling
4 476 (22.47%) Problem-Solving
5 469 (22.14%) CI/CD
6 467 (22.05%) Business Intelligence
7 441 (20.82%) ETL
8 420 (19.83%) DevOps
9 334 (15.77%) Data Pipeline
10 304 (14.35%) Data Engineering
11 266 (12.56%) Data Governance
12 255 (12.04%) AI
13 251 (11.85%) Migration
14 227 (10.72%) Data Analysis
15 215 (10.15%) Validation
16 205 (9.68%) Visualisation
17 202 (9.54%) Data Science
18 192 (9.07%) Decision-Making
19 185 (8.73%) Stakeholder Management
20 183 (8.64%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 876 (41.36%) Python
2 287 (13.55%) Java
3 269 (12.70%) C#
4 165 (7.79%) JavaScript
5 131 (6.19%) PL/SQL
6 97 (4.58%) TypeScript
7 94 (4.44%) PowerShell
8 68 (3.21%) Scala
9 67 (3.16%) T-SQL
10 66 (3.12%) C++
11 58 (2.74%) R
12 53 (2.50%) Shell Script
13 47 (2.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 46 (2.17%) VBA
15 41 (1.94%) VB
16 33 (1.56%) Bash
17 28 (1.32%) Bicep
18 22 (1.04%) Perl
19 20 (0.94%) Go
20 19 (0.90%) Korn
Qualifications
1 283 (13.36%) Security Cleared
2 223 (10.53%) SC Cleared
3 190 (8.97%) Degree
4 66 (3.12%) Computer Science Degree
5 50 (2.36%) Azure Certification
6 34 (1.61%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.42%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.32%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.23%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.94%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.85%) CBAP
11 18 (0.85%) DV Cleared
12 12 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 12 (0.57%) PMI Certification
13 10 (0.47%) CFA
14 9 (0.42%) PMP
15 8 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
16 6 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
16 6 (0.28%) ISEB
16 6 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (16.24%) Data Quality
2 166 (7.84%) QA
3 87 (4.11%) GDPR
4 32 (1.51%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.90%) MiFID
5 19 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (0.61%) IFRS
7 12 (0.57%) EMIR
8 10 (0.47%) SLA
9 9 (0.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.42%) NIST
9 9 (0.42%) PCI DSS
10 8 (0.38%) HIPAA
10 8 (0.38%) ISO 8583
11 7 (0.33%) Actionable Recommendations
11 7 (0.33%) Basel III
11 7 (0.33%) GAAP
12 6 (0.28%) IFRS 9
12 6 (0.28%) PMO
13 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 224 (10.58%) Docker
2 52 (2.46%) Active Directory
3 11 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
4 8 (0.38%) DFS Replication
4 8 (0.38%) Dovecot
4 8 (0.38%) HDFS
4 8 (0.38%) Postfix
4 8 (0.38%) Squid
5 7 (0.33%) VMware Infrastructure
6 6 (0.28%) zsh
7 5 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
8 4 (0.19%) Hyper-V
8 4 (0.19%) VMware Workstation
8 4 (0.19%) XenApp
8 4 (0.19%) XenDesktop
9 2 (0.094%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.047%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.047%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 183 (8.64%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.17%) Terraform
3 26 (1.23%) Grafana
4 22 (1.04%) Ansible
5 19 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.66%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.66%) SCOM
7 12 (0.57%) SCCM
8 11 (0.52%) Control-M
9 9 (0.42%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.42%) Kibana
9 9 (0.42%) Single Sign-On
10 8 (0.38%) Nessus
10 8 (0.38%) Proxmox
11 7 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.28%) logstash
13 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
14 4 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
14 4 (0.19%) Puppet
14 4 (0.19%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 319 (15.06%) Oracle
2 306 (14.45%) Microsoft
3 275 (12.98%) Databricks
4 68 (3.21%) Google
5 58 (2.74%) SAP
6 47 (2.22%) Salesforce
7 38 (1.79%) Citrix
8 37 (1.75%) ServiceNow
9 35 (1.65%) IBM
9 35 (1.65%) Informatica
10 33 (1.56%) OpenAI
10 33 (1.56%) Splunk
11 27 (1.27%) Bloomberg
12 22 (1.04%) MuleSoft
13 17 (0.80%) Murex
13 17 (0.80%) Palantir
13 17 (0.80%) Sybase
14 15 (0.71%) Foundry
14 15 (0.71%) UiPath
15 14 (0.66%) Adobe