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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 8 7
Rank change year-on-year -7 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,532 1,944 2,353
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.53% 14.51% 14.59%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.58% 37.45% 36.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,778 1,332 1,721
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £423 £415 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -4.55% -4.35%
75th Percentile £638 £663 £675
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 29 21
10th Percentile £26.51 £22.41 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £35.75
Median hourly rate £37.50 £37.50 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year - -9.64% +0.61%
75th Percentile £53.75 £53.75 £51.75
90th Percentile £68.75 £63.95 £53.75
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -12.82%

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 6,397 5,191 6,430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.65% 38.75% 39.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,352 3,510 4,508
10th Percentile £375 £375 £370
25th Percentile £447 £432 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £668 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £800 £850
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 49 67 47
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.05 £25.99
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £37.63
Median hourly rate £52.50 £44.90 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.94% -5.48% -18.10%
75th Percentile £73.00 £63.50 £71.44
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.50 £97.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% -

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 8 October 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 8 October 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 8 October 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 -5 315 £550 -3.30% 369
West London +11 68 £500 +22.92% 60
South London -8 41 £535 +17.91% 20
East London +2 15 £470 -7.84% 17
North London +5 6 £550 - 9
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
1 183 (7.23%) Apache Airflow
2 138 (5.45%) Apache Spark
3 100 (3.95%) Apache
4 99 (3.91%) Confluence
5 58 (2.29%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.99%) IIS
7 19 (0.75%) SAS
8 15 (0.59%) CMS
8 15 (0.59%) Jupyter
8 15 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
9 14 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.51%) Camunda
10 13 (0.51%) nginx
10 13 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 7 (0.28%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.24%) MTS
14 5 (0.20%) Appian
14 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.16%) WebSphere
Applications
1 144 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.18%) Microsoft Office
3 16 (0.63%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 16 (0.63%) MS Visio
4 12 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
5 8 (0.32%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.16%) Notion
6 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.16%) Windchill
7 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
7 3 (0.12%) Mingle
8 1 (0.039%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 26 (1.03%) Aladdin
2 20 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
4 18 (0.71%) Oracle ERP
4 18 (0.71%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.59%) Oracle General Ledger
6 14 (0.55%) Oracle Receivables
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle FAH
7 10 (0.39%) Oracle Financials
7 10 (0.39%) Remedy ITSM
8 9 (0.36%) Finacle
9 8 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
9 8 (0.32%) Summit
10 7 (0.28%) Actimize
10 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
10 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
11 6 (0.24%) Fidessa
11 6 (0.24%) Front Arena
Cloud Services
1 818 (32.31%) Azure
2 624 (24.64%) AWS
3 468 (18.48%) Power Platform
4 290 (11.45%) GCP
5 270 (10.66%) Snowflake
6 242 (9.56%) Azure DevOps
7 221 (8.73%) dbt
8 217 (8.57%) GitHub
9 160 (6.32%) Azure Data Factory
10 158 (6.24%) Serverless
11 153 (6.04%) Amazon S3
12 116 (4.58%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 109 (4.30%) GitHub Actions
14 103 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
15 63 (2.49%) Azure Databricks
16 59 (2.33%) SaaS
17 55 (2.17%) Entra ID
18 53 (2.09%) PowerApps
19 49 (1.94%) Power Automate
20 45 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 22 (0.87%) DNS
2 18 (0.71%) HTTP
2 18 (0.71%) Internet
3 17 (0.67%) VPN
4 16 (0.63%) Firewall
5 15 (0.59%) Broadband
5 15 (0.59%) Network Security
6 11 (0.43%) TCP/IP
7 10 (0.39%) SSL
8 8 (0.32%) Multicast
8 8 (0.32%) SSH
9 6 (0.24%) DHCP
9 6 (0.24%) HTTPS
9 6 (0.24%) SAN
10 4 (0.16%) IPv4
10 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
10 4 (0.16%) Reverse Proxy
11 3 (0.12%) 4G
11 3 (0.12%) 5G
11 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 422 (16.67%) Power BI
2 367 (14.49%) Data Warehouse
3 309 (12.20%) SQL Server
4 176 (6.95%) Relational Database
5 155 (6.12%) Tableau
6 151 (5.96%) Data Lake
6 151 (5.96%) PostgreSQL
7 144 (5.69%) Metadata
8 133 (5.25%) BigQuery
9 129 (5.09%) NoSQL
10 112 (4.42%) Oracle Database
11 102 (4.03%) Delta Lake
12 87 (3.44%) Amazon Redshift
12 87 (3.44%) Azure SQL Database
13 64 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
14 62 (2.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 61 (2.41%) Big Data
16 60 (2.37%) Power Query
17 53 (2.09%) Amazon RDS
18 52 (2.05%) Looker
Development Applications
1 333 (13.15%) Git
2 199 (7.86%) JIRA
3 129 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 94 (3.71%) GitLab
5 54 (2.13%) Selenium
6 47 (1.86%) Gradle
7 36 (1.42%) JUnit
8 31 (1.22%) Maven
9 25 (0.99%) SonarQube
10 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.87%) Visual Studio
11 21 (0.83%) Postman
12 20 (0.79%) Mockito
13 18 (0.71%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.67%) REST Assured
15 16 (0.63%) ERwin
16 15 (0.59%) ER Studio
16 15 (0.59%) MLflow
17 14 (0.55%) Cucumber
17 14 (0.55%) Liquibase
General
1 935 (36.93%) Finance
2 736 (29.07%) Social Skills
3 572 (22.59%) Analytical Skills
4 453 (17.89%) Banking
5 168 (6.64%) Public Sector
6 125 (4.94%) Front Office
7 119 (4.70%) Investment Banking
8 108 (4.27%) Marketing
9 84 (3.32%) Retail
10 63 (2.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (2.13%) Financial Institution
12 41 (1.62%) Back Office
13 39 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
14 32 (1.26%) Influencing Skills
15 31 (1.22%) Legal
16 27 (1.07%) Local Government
17 22 (0.87%) General Ledger
18 21 (0.83%) Manufacturing
18 21 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
18 21 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 554 (21.88%) Developer
2 462 (18.25%) Data Engineer
3 445 (17.58%) Analyst
4 416 (16.43%) Senior
5 186 (7.35%) Lead
6 176 (6.95%) Data Analyst
7 158 (6.24%) Business Analyst
8 132 (5.21%) Architect
9 127 (5.02%) Senior Data Engineer
10 100 (3.95%) Consultant
11 92 (3.63%) Senior Developer
12 83 (3.28%) Java Developer
13 76 (3.00%) Python Engineer
14 75 (2.96%) Python Developer
15 70 (2.76%) Azure Engineer
16 68 (2.69%) Full-Stack Developer
17 65 (2.57%) Software Engineer
18 64 (2.53%) Data Architect
19 62 (2.45%) Applications Support
20 60 (2.37%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (10.74%) .NET
2 268 (10.58%) Terraform
3 262 (10.35%) REST
4 210 (8.29%) Kafka
5 209 (8.25%) PySpark
6 140 (5.53%) React
6 140 (5.53%) Spring
7 124 (4.90%) Spring Boot
8 104 (4.11%) JSON
9 103 (4.07%) HTML
9 103 (4.07%) RESTful
10 90 (3.55%) CSS
11 86 (3.40%) XML
12 80 (3.16%) AngularJS
13 71 (2.80%) SOAP
14 68 (2.69%) Pandas
15 66 (2.61%) Middleware
15 66 (2.61%) Web Services
16 62 (2.45%) OAuth
17 57 (2.25%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.54%) Cloud Native
2 150 (5.92%) Product Ownership
3 130 (5.13%) Data Structures
4 90 (3.55%) Legacy Systems
5 85 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
6 83 (3.28%) Enterprise Software
7 81 (3.20%) Onboarding
8 72 (2.84%) Derivative
9 59 (2.33%) Management Information System
9 59 (2.33%) Self-Motivation
10 57 (2.25%) AI Agents
11 47 (1.86%) Reference Data
12 45 (1.78%) Algorithms
13 44 (1.74%) Fixed Income
14 43 (1.70%) Analytical Mindset
15 38 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 37 (1.46%) Equities
17 36 (1.42%) Data Centre
17 36 (1.42%) Replication
18 32 (1.26%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 178 (7.03%) Linux
2 139 (5.49%) Windows
3 110 (4.34%) Unix
4 41 (1.62%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 7 (0.28%) VMS
7 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
8 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
8 5 (0.20%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.16%) Android
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.16%) zOS
10 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
10 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
11 2 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
11 2 (0.079%) Solaris
11 2 (0.079%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.039%) Oracle Linux
12 1 (0.039%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 762 (30.09%) CI/CD
2 706 (27.88%) Agile
3 686 (27.09%) Analytics
4 671 (26.50%) Data Modelling
5 550 (21.72%) AI
6 510 (20.14%) Business Intelligence
7 506 (19.98%) ETL
8 502 (19.83%) Data Pipeline
9 500 (19.75%) DevOps
10 492 (19.43%) Data Engineering
11 488 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
12 461 (18.21%) Stakeholder Management
13 408 (16.11%) Validation
14 353 (13.94%) Migration
15 352 (13.90%) Data Analysis
16 328 (12.95%) Data Governance
17 299 (11.81%) Decision-Making
18 296 (11.69%) Continuous Improvement
19 282 (11.14%) Test Automation
20 257 (10.15%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,068 (42.18%) Python
2 341 (13.47%) Java
3 301 (11.89%) C#
4 239 (9.44%) JavaScript
5 168 (6.64%) PL/SQL
6 137 (5.41%) TypeScript
7 120 (4.74%) T-SQL
8 110 (4.34%) PowerShell
9 91 (3.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 81 (3.20%) Shell Script
11 57 (2.25%) Scala
12 56 (2.21%) Bash
13 44 (1.74%) R
14 31 (1.22%) C++
15 28 (1.11%) VBA
16 20 (0.79%) Go
17 19 (0.75%) Korn
18 16 (0.63%) Bicep
18 16 (0.63%) VB.NET
19 14 (0.55%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 380 (15.01%) Security Cleared
2 317 (12.52%) SC Cleared
3 209 (8.25%) Degree
4 69 (2.73%) Computer Science Degree
5 53 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (1.66%) Azure Certification
7 30 (1.18%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 21 (0.83%) DV Cleared
10 17 (0.67%) ISTQB
11 13 (0.51%) FFIEC
11 13 (0.51%) PMI Certification
12 12 (0.47%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 12 (0.47%) Microsoft Certification
13 11 (0.43%) DBS Check
14 10 (0.39%) ACCA
14 10 (0.39%) CIMA
14 10 (0.39%) ISEB
15 9 (0.36%) CBAP
16 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 558 (22.04%) Data Quality
2 192 (7.58%) QA
3 70 (2.76%) GDPR
4 28 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 26 (1.03%) SLA
6 21 (0.83%) Actionable Recommendations
7 19 (0.75%) ISO 20022
7 19 (0.75%) NIST
8 18 (0.71%) IFRS
9 15 (0.59%) MiFID
10 14 (0.55%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 12 (0.47%) Basel III
11 12 (0.47%) COBIT
12 7 (0.28%) EMIR
12 7 (0.28%) HIPAA
12 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
13 6 (0.24%) PSD2
13 6 (0.24%) SEPA
13 6 (0.24%) SOC 2
13 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 240 (9.48%) Docker
2 37 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 21 (0.83%) VMware Infrastructure
4 11 (0.43%) Virtual Machines
5 4 (0.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
5 4 (0.16%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.16%) Postfix
5 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
6 2 (0.079%) DFS Replication
6 2 (0.079%) Dovecot
6 2 (0.079%) Hyper-V
6 2 (0.079%) Squid
7 1 (0.039%) KVM
7 1 (0.039%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.039%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 224 (8.85%) Kubernetes
2 47 (1.86%) Grafana
3 35 (1.38%) Ansible
4 30 (1.18%) Control-M
5 25 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.75%) Kibana
7 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Clustering
8 10 (0.39%) Single Sign-On
9 8 (0.32%) SCOM
10 7 (0.28%) Istio
10 7 (0.28%) ITRS Geneos
11 6 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 6 (0.24%) Oracle RMAN
11 6 (0.24%) systemd
12 5 (0.20%) Argo
12 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
13 4 (0.16%) Data Guard
13 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 382 (15.09%) Microsoft
2 371 (14.65%) Databricks
3 333 (13.15%) Oracle
4 114 (4.50%) Google
5 55 (2.17%) Informatica
6 54 (2.13%) IBM
7 40 (1.58%) SAP
8 38 (1.50%) Bloomberg
9 37 (1.46%) Salesforce
10 34 (1.34%) Murex
11 31 (1.22%) ServiceNow
12 29 (1.15%) Splunk
13 28 (1.11%) Citrix
14 27 (1.07%) Foundry
14 27 (1.07%) UiPath
15 26 (1.03%) OpenAI
16 24 (0.95%) Talend
17 23 (0.91%) VMware
18 20 (0.79%) Alteryx
18 20 (0.79%) Sybase