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

6 months to
16 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,478 1,927 2,304
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.28% 14.35% 14.27%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.15% 37.30% 35.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,722 1,358 1,725
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £565
Median % change year-on-year - -7.08% -1.74%
75th Percentile £625 £674 £688
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £542
% change year-on-year - -7.79% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 29 17
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.15 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.25 £40.58
Median hourly rate £40.00 £40.49 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -1.21% -14.76% +28.31%
75th Percentile £52.81 £57.50 £53.75
90th Percentile £53.75 £65.30 £64.25
England median hourly rate £43.75 £50.00 £41.33
% change year-on-year -12.50% +20.98% -8.16%

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 6,330 5,166 6,491
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.36% 38.46% 40.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,251 3,551 4,661
10th Percentile £380 £369 £365
25th Percentile £450 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £663 £688 £700
90th Percentile £775 £825 £850
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 55 64 41
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.60 £25.25
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £33.07
Median hourly rate £52.50 £44.95 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.80% -5.37% -20.83%
75th Percentile £74.00 £63.75 £61.43
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.13 £78.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +0.78%

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 16 September 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 16 September 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 16 September 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 -7 302 £550 -4.35% 397
West London +9 67 £520 +27.84% 82
South London -8 41 £535 +12.63% 27
East London +4 16 £450 -10.00% 29
North London +5 6 £550 - 6
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
1 167 (6.74%) Apache Airflow
2 128 (5.17%) Apache Spark
3 99 (4.00%) Apache
4 86 (3.47%) Confluence
5 61 (2.46%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.05%) IIS
7 23 (0.93%) SAS
8 15 (0.61%) nginx
9 14 (0.56%) CMS
10 13 (0.52%) Camunda
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.52%) Palantir Foundry
11 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 8 (0.32%) Tomcat
12 8 (0.32%) WebLogic
13 6 (0.24%) Appian
13 6 (0.24%) MTS
14 4 (0.16%) CICS
Applications
1 148 (5.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 27 (1.09%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (0.73%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 18 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 15 (0.61%) Spreadsheet
5 8 (0.32%) Chatbot
6 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
6 4 (0.16%) Notion
6 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
7 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
7 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.081%) Mingle
9 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
9 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (0.85%) Aladdin
2 21 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.69%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.69%) Oracle Payables
4 15 (0.61%) Oracle General Ledger
5 14 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.44%) Summit
7 10 (0.40%) Finacle
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
7 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
8 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
9 8 (0.32%) Front Arena
10 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
11 6 (0.24%) Actimize
Cloud Services
1 799 (32.24%) Azure
2 600 (24.21%) AWS
3 470 (18.97%) Power Platform
4 279 (11.26%) GCP
5 260 (10.49%) Snowflake
6 247 (9.97%) Azure DevOps
7 220 (8.88%) dbt
8 218 (8.80%) GitHub
9 163 (6.58%) Azure Data Factory
10 158 (6.38%) Serverless
11 151 (6.09%) Amazon S3
12 115 (4.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 111 (4.48%) AWS Lambda
14 110 (4.44%) GitHub Actions
15 54 (2.18%) Azure Databricks
15 54 (2.18%) SaaS
16 53 (2.14%) PowerApps
17 52 (2.10%) Power Automate
18 49 (1.98%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 48 (1.94%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.73%) HTTP
1 18 (0.73%) Internet
2 17 (0.69%) DNS
3 15 (0.61%) Broadband
3 15 (0.61%) VPN
4 13 (0.52%) Firewall
5 9 (0.36%) Network Security
5 9 (0.36%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.32%) Multicast
6 8 (0.32%) SSH
7 7 (0.28%) SSL
8 6 (0.24%) DHCP
8 6 (0.24%) SAN
9 5 (0.20%) HTTPS
10 4 (0.16%) IPv4
10 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
10 4 (0.16%) SMS
11 3 (0.12%) 4G
11 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
11 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 422 (17.03%) Power BI
2 367 (14.81%) Data Warehouse
3 302 (12.19%) SQL Server
4 175 (7.06%) Relational Database
5 158 (6.38%) Tableau
6 154 (6.21%) Data Lake
7 148 (5.97%) Metadata
7 148 (5.97%) PostgreSQL
8 129 (5.21%) BigQuery
9 123 (4.96%) NoSQL
10 109 (4.40%) Oracle Database
11 98 (3.95%) Delta Lake
12 85 (3.43%) Amazon Redshift
12 85 (3.43%) Azure SQL Database
13 63 (2.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 62 (2.50%) Power Query
15 61 (2.46%) Amazon Athena
16 58 (2.34%) Star Schema
17 55 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
18 54 (2.18%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 305 (12.31%) Git
2 188 (7.59%) JIRA
3 127 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 88 (3.55%) GitLab
5 48 (1.94%) Selenium
6 47 (1.90%) Gradle
7 37 (1.49%) JUnit
8 32 (1.29%) Maven
9 29 (1.17%) SonarQube
10 24 (0.97%) Mockito
11 23 (0.93%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.85%) Visual Studio
13 19 (0.77%) Postman
14 17 (0.69%) Cypress.io
14 17 (0.69%) ERwin
14 17 (0.69%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.65%) Liquibase
15 16 (0.65%) MLflow
16 15 (0.61%) ER Studio
17 14 (0.56%) REST Assured
General
1 922 (37.21%) Finance
2 719 (29.02%) Social Skills
3 552 (22.28%) Analytical Skills
4 428 (17.27%) Banking
5 154 (6.21%) Public Sector
6 129 (5.21%) Front Office
7 115 (4.64%) Marketing
8 109 (4.40%) Investment Banking
9 76 (3.07%) Retail
10 66 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (2.06%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
13 36 (1.45%) Back Office
14 29 (1.17%) Legal
15 28 (1.13%) Influencing Skills
16 24 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
17 23 (0.93%) Local Government
17 23 (0.93%) Presentation Skills
18 22 (0.89%) General Ledger
18 22 (0.89%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 537 (21.67%) Developer
2 463 (18.68%) Data Engineer
3 432 (17.43%) Analyst
4 388 (15.66%) Senior
5 186 (7.51%) Lead
6 170 (6.86%) Data Analyst
7 152 (6.13%) Business Analyst
8 133 (5.37%) Architect
9 121 (4.88%) Senior Data Engineer
10 102 (4.12%) Consultant
11 91 (3.67%) Senior Developer
12 84 (3.39%) Java Developer
13 76 (3.07%) Python Engineer
14 73 (2.95%) Software Engineer
15 71 (2.87%) Python Developer
16 67 (2.70%) Azure Engineer
17 66 (2.66%) Full-Stack Developer
18 63 (2.54%) Data Architect
19 61 (2.46%) C# Developer
20 59 (2.38%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 270 (10.90%) .NET
2 248 (10.01%) Terraform
3 240 (9.69%) REST
4 205 (8.27%) PySpark
5 192 (7.75%) Kafka
6 141 (5.69%) React
7 129 (5.21%) Spring
8 113 (4.56%) Spring Boot
9 108 (4.36%) HTML
10 102 (4.12%) RESTful
11 101 (4.08%) JSON
12 99 (4.00%) CSS
13 84 (3.39%) XML
14 76 (3.07%) Pandas
15 75 (3.03%) AngularJS
16 66 (2.66%) SOAP
17 64 (2.58%) Middleware
17 64 (2.58%) Web Services
18 58 (2.34%) .NET Framework
19 57 (2.30%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 183 (7.38%) Cloud Native
2 139 (5.61%) Product Ownership
3 122 (4.92%) Data Structures
4 81 (3.27%) Distributed Systems
5 80 (3.23%) Onboarding
6 79 (3.19%) Legacy Systems
7 75 (3.03%) Derivative
8 65 (2.62%) Enterprise Software
9 55 (2.22%) Self-Motivation
10 54 (2.18%) Management Information System
11 50 (2.02%) AI Agents
12 46 (1.86%) Fixed Income
13 44 (1.78%) Analytical Mindset
14 40 (1.61%) Reference Data
15 38 (1.53%) Algorithms
16 37 (1.49%) Equities
16 37 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 33 (1.33%) Replication
18 30 (1.21%) Data Protection Act
18 30 (1.21%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 166 (6.70%) Linux
2 138 (5.57%) Windows
3 105 (4.24%) Unix
4 34 (1.37%) Windows Server
5 14 (0.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) Windows Server 2008
7 7 (0.28%) VMS
8 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
9 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.20%) zOS
10 4 (0.16%) Solaris
10 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.12%) Android
11 3 (0.12%) Apple iOS
11 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.081%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.081%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.081%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.040%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 741 (29.90%) CI/CD
2 676 (27.28%) Analytics
3 662 (26.72%) Data Modelling
4 658 (26.55%) Agile
5 515 (20.78%) AI
5 515 (20.78%) DevOps
6 507 (20.46%) Data Pipeline
7 504 (20.34%) Business Intelligence
8 503 (20.30%) ETL
9 482 (19.45%) Problem-Solving
10 472 (19.05%) Data Engineering
11 414 (16.71%) Stakeholder Management
12 383 (15.46%) Validation
13 337 (13.60%) Data Governance
14 326 (13.16%) Data Analysis
15 325 (13.12%) Migration
16 280 (11.30%) Decision-Making
17 269 (10.86%) Continuous Improvement
18 247 (9.97%) Test Automation
19 242 (9.77%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,078 (43.50%) Python
2 334 (13.48%) Java
3 300 (12.11%) C#
4 227 (9.16%) JavaScript
5 181 (7.30%) PL/SQL
6 133 (5.37%) TypeScript
7 115 (4.64%) T-SQL
8 110 (4.44%) PowerShell
9 95 (3.83%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 82 (3.31%) Shell Script
11 53 (2.14%) R
12 52 (2.10%) Scala
13 45 (1.82%) Bash
14 34 (1.37%) C++
15 32 (1.29%) VBA
16 19 (0.77%) Go
17 16 (0.65%) VB.NET
18 15 (0.61%) Korn
19 14 (0.56%) Groovy
20 12 (0.48%) VB
Qualifications
1 356 (14.37%) Security Cleared
2 300 (12.11%) SC Cleared
3 196 (7.91%) Degree
4 65 (2.62%) Computer Science Degree
5 44 (1.78%) BPSS Clearance
6 41 (1.65%) Azure Certification
7 27 (1.09%) AWS Certification
7 27 (1.09%) Master's Degree
8 18 (0.73%) DV Cleared
9 17 (0.69%) ISTQB
10 12 (0.48%) FFIEC
10 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
11 10 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
11 10 (0.40%) DBS Check
11 10 (0.40%) ISEB
11 10 (0.40%) PMI Certification
12 9 (0.36%) ACCA
12 9 (0.36%) CIMA
13 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
14 7 (0.28%) CISM
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 519 (20.94%) Data Quality
2 199 (8.03%) QA
3 76 (3.07%) GDPR
4 30 (1.21%) Accessibility
5 29 (1.17%) SLA
6 20 (0.81%) Actionable Recommendations
7 19 (0.77%) ISO 20022
8 17 (0.69%) NIST
9 16 (0.65%) IFRS
9 16 (0.65%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.61%) MiFID
11 11 (0.44%) COBIT
12 9 (0.36%) Basel III
12 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.28%) EMIR
14 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 6 (0.24%) PMO
14 6 (0.24%) PSD2
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
14 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 236 (9.52%) Docker
2 36 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 14 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
5 6 (0.24%) Oracle RAC
6 4 (0.16%) Apache ZooKeeper
6 4 (0.16%) Postfix
6 4 (0.16%) Virtual Desktop
7 3 (0.12%) VMware ESXi
8 2 (0.081%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.081%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.081%) GridGain
8 2 (0.081%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.081%) Squid
9 1 (0.040%) RACF
9 1 (0.040%) Varnish
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 210 (8.47%) Kubernetes
2 41 (1.65%) Grafana
3 34 (1.37%) Ansible
4 29 (1.17%) Control-M
5 21 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 11 (0.44%) Kibana
6 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Clustering
6 11 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
7 9 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
8 8 (0.32%) SCOM
8 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.20%) Istio
10 5 (0.20%) systemd
11 4 (0.16%) Argo
11 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 357 (14.41%) Microsoft
2 337 (13.60%) Databricks
3 335 (13.52%) Oracle
4 111 (4.48%) Google
5 57 (2.30%) Informatica
6 47 (1.90%) SAP
7 46 (1.86%) IBM
8 39 (1.57%) Salesforce
9 38 (1.53%) Bloomberg
10 34 (1.37%) Murex
11 30 (1.21%) Citrix
11 30 (1.21%) ServiceNow
12 25 (1.01%) VMware
13 23 (0.93%) Alteryx
13 23 (0.93%) Foundry
13 23 (0.93%) Splunk
14 22 (0.89%) Adobe
14 22 (0.89%) Sybase
14 22 (0.89%) Talend
14 22 (0.89%) UiPath