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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,244 1,837 2,302
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.43% 14.87% 13.17%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.63% 38.05% 35.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,492 1,321 1,786
10th Percentile £363 £363 £385
25th Percentile £415 £425 £474
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £538 £575
Median % change year-on-year -3.26% -6.52% -
75th Percentile £625 £688 £688
90th Percentile £738 £800 £788
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 18 19 18
10th Percentile £31.58 £29.07 £25.99
25th Percentile £35.50 £35.50 £40.88
Median hourly rate £45.25 £46.50 £46.25
Median % change year-on-year -2.69% +0.54% -28.85%
75th Percentile £54.94 £61.88 £51.75
90th Percentile £61.30 £72.75 £57.25
England median hourly rate £47.50 £45.50 £43.50
% change year-on-year +4.40% +4.60% -12.62%

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 5,663 4,828 6,433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.37% 39.08% 36.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,803 3,403 4,915
10th Percentile £366 £380 £377
25th Percentile £435 £440 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £650 £713 £700
90th Percentile £763 £825 £838
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 60 31 51
10th Percentile £33.48 £29.07 £23.80
25th Percentile £41.25 £33.25 £40.79
Median hourly rate £58.94 £40.50 £50.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.52% -19.80% -14.04%
75th Percentile £73.00 £56.25 £63.52
90th Percentile £88.75 £67.50 £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -

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 May 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 May 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 May 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 -7 267 £540 -1.82% 153
West London +4 60 £601 +20.25% 32
South London +1 42 £496 -26.52% 15
East London +4 22 £450 +1.11% 32
North London - 2 £336 - 7
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 (7.26%) Apache Spark
2 112 (4.99%) Apache Airflow
3 88 (3.92%) Apache
4 62 (2.76%) Confluence
5 36 (1.60%) SharePoint
6 22 (0.98%) IIS
7 18 (0.80%) SAS
8 13 (0.58%) HCL Notes
9 12 (0.53%) Mendix
9 12 (0.53%) Palantir Foundry
10 11 (0.49%) Appian
10 11 (0.49%) Microsoft Exchange
11 10 (0.45%) Jupyter
11 10 (0.45%) Tomcat
12 8 (0.36%) nginx
13 7 (0.31%) Camunda
13 7 (0.31%) CMS
14 6 (0.27%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 5 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
16 4 (0.18%) WebLogic
Applications
1 148 (6.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 36 (1.60%) MS Visio
3 27 (1.20%) Microsoft Office
3 27 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (0.71%) Spreadsheet
5 7 (0.31%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.27%) Chatbot
7 5 (0.22%) Notion
8 3 (0.13%) Trello
9 1 (0.045%) Mingle
9 1 (0.045%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 28 (1.25%) Aladdin
2 19 (0.85%) Oracle EBS
3 12 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 12 (0.53%) Oracle General Ledger
4 10 (0.45%) NetSuite
4 10 (0.45%) Oracle Payables
4 10 (0.45%) SAP S/4HANA
5 9 (0.40%) Endur
5 9 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
6 8 (0.36%) Findur
6 8 (0.36%) Oracle Receivables
7 7 (0.31%) Fidessa
7 7 (0.31%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
8 6 (0.27%) BASE24
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Assets
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
8 6 (0.27%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
8 6 (0.27%) Payment Gateway
8 6 (0.27%) SimCorp Dimension
8 6 (0.27%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 828 (36.90%) Azure
2 565 (25.18%) AWS
3 434 (19.34%) Power Platform
4 269 (11.99%) Azure DevOps
5 212 (9.45%) GitHub
6 203 (9.05%) Azure Data Factory
7 202 (9.00%) GCP
8 166 (7.40%) Snowflake
9 161 (7.17%) Serverless
10 160 (7.13%) Amazon S3
11 149 (6.64%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 129 (5.75%) dbt
13 108 (4.81%) AWS Lambda
14 104 (4.63%) GitHub Actions
15 48 (2.14%) Collibra
16 47 (2.09%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 44 (1.96%) Entra ID
17 44 (1.96%) Power Automate
18 43 (1.92%) AWS CloudFormation
19 41 (1.83%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 15 (0.67%) Firewall
2 13 (0.58%) DNS
2 13 (0.58%) Internet
2 13 (0.58%) Network Security
3 12 (0.53%) HTTP
4 6 (0.27%) WAN
5 4 (0.18%) FIX Connectivity
5 4 (0.18%) NetScaler
5 4 (0.18%) SMS
5 4 (0.18%) VPN
6 3 (0.13%) FTP
6 3 (0.13%) LAN
6 3 (0.13%) Multicast
6 3 (0.13%) NAS
6 3 (0.13%) SAN
6 3 (0.13%) TCP/IP
6 3 (0.13%) Wi-Fi
7 2 (0.089%) NaaS
7 2 (0.089%) SD-WAN
7 2 (0.089%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 391 (17.42%) Power BI
2 304 (13.55%) Data Warehouse
2 304 (13.55%) SQL Server
3 193 (8.60%) Data Lake
4 171 (7.62%) Tableau
5 154 (6.86%) Relational Database
6 151 (6.73%) PostgreSQL
7 144 (6.42%) Metadata
8 134 (5.97%) NoSQL
9 117 (5.21%) Azure SQL Database
10 101 (4.50%) BigQuery
11 90 (4.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 86 (3.83%) Oracle Database
13 84 (3.74%) Delta Lake
14 75 (3.34%) Amazon Redshift
15 66 (2.94%) Big Data
16 59 (2.63%) Snowflake Schema
17 55 (2.45%) Amazon Athena
18 47 (2.09%) Looker
19 46 (2.05%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 228 (10.16%) Git
2 150 (6.68%) JIRA
3 97 (4.32%) Jenkins
4 69 (3.07%) GitLab
5 34 (1.52%) JUnit
6 30 (1.34%) MLflow
7 27 (1.20%) Mockito
8 26 (1.16%) Selenium
9 20 (0.89%) ERwin
9 20 (0.89%) Gradle
10 19 (0.85%) Cucumber
10 19 (0.85%) Maven
11 18 (0.80%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.76%) SpecFlow
13 16 (0.71%) Team Foundation Server
14 14 (0.62%) TeamCity
15 12 (0.53%) Postman
15 12 (0.53%) REST Assured
16 11 (0.49%) ER Studio
16 11 (0.49%) Liquibase
General
1 791 (35.25%) Finance
2 590 (26.29%) Social Skills
3 439 (19.56%) Analytical Skills
4 308 (13.73%) Banking
5 135 (6.02%) Public Sector
6 104 (4.63%) Front Office
7 93 (4.14%) Investment Banking
8 69 (3.07%) Marketing
9 50 (2.23%) Documentation Skills
10 46 (2.05%) Financial Institution
11 43 (1.92%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 32 (1.43%) Retail
13 28 (1.25%) Publishing
14 27 (1.20%) Legal
14 27 (1.20%) Telecoms
15 21 (0.94%) Organisational Skills
16 20 (0.89%) Back Office
17 19 (0.85%) Presentation Skills
18 16 (0.71%) General Ledger
19 14 (0.62%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 475 (21.17%) Developer
2 471 (20.99%) Data Engineer
3 340 (15.15%) Analyst
4 317 (14.13%) Senior
5 163 (7.26%) Lead
6 147 (6.55%) Data Analyst
7 140 (6.24%) Business Analyst
8 131 (5.84%) Architect
9 91 (4.06%) Senior Data Engineer
10 85 (3.79%) C# Developer
11 81 (3.61%) Software Engineer
12 76 (3.39%) Senior Developer
13 75 (3.34%) Consultant
14 74 (3.30%) Azure Engineer
15 69 (3.07%) Python Developer
16 64 (2.85%) Java Developer
17 62 (2.76%) Data Scientist
18 55 (2.45%) Data Architect
19 54 (2.41%) Python Engineer
20 51 (2.27%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 227 (10.12%) .NET
2 189 (8.42%) Kafka
3 169 (7.53%) PySpark
4 162 (7.22%) REST
5 128 (5.70%) React
6 99 (4.41%) RESTful
7 98 (4.37%) HTML
8 95 (4.23%) Pandas
9 91 (4.06%) Spring
10 79 (3.52%) AngularJS
10 79 (3.52%) CSS
11 78 (3.48%) Spring Boot
12 75 (3.34%) JSON
13 56 (2.50%) Middleware
14 55 (2.45%) .NET Framework
15 54 (2.41%) NumPy
16 52 (2.32%) FastAPI
17 47 (2.09%) OAuth
17 47 (2.09%) SOAP
17 47 (2.09%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 165 (7.35%) Cloud Native
2 83 (3.70%) Data Structures
3 77 (3.43%) Derivative
4 75 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
5 71 (3.16%) Distributed Systems
6 66 (2.94%) Product Ownership
7 52 (2.32%) Equities
8 51 (2.27%) Fixed Income
9 48 (2.14%) Onboarding
10 44 (1.96%) Management Information System
11 42 (1.87%) Data Protection Act
12 40 (1.78%) Algorithms
13 37 (1.65%) Analytical Mindset
14 35 (1.56%) Self-Motivation
15 33 (1.47%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 32 (1.43%) Greenfield Project
17 30 (1.34%) Low-Code
17 30 (1.34%) Market Risk
18 28 (1.25%) Credit Risk
19 26 (1.16%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 140 (6.24%) Linux
2 119 (5.30%) Windows
3 85 (3.79%) Unix
4 36 (1.60%) Windows Server
5 10 (0.45%) Windows Server 2019
6 7 (0.31%) Solaris
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
6 7 (0.31%) Windows Server 2016
6 7 (0.31%) zOS
7 6 (0.27%) Android
7 6 (0.27%) Apple iOS
7 6 (0.27%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 4 (0.18%) Windows 10
9 2 (0.089%) AIX
10 1 (0.045%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 641 (28.57%) CI/CD
2 613 (27.32%) Analytics
3 603 (26.87%) Data Modelling
4 559 (24.91%) Agile
5 536 (23.89%) ETL
6 514 (22.91%) DevOps
7 500 (22.28%) Business Intelligence
8 442 (19.70%) Data Pipeline
9 439 (19.56%) Problem-Solving
10 431 (19.21%) Data Engineering
11 384 (17.11%) AI
12 322 (14.35%) Data Governance
13 297 (13.24%) Validation
14 263 (11.72%) Migration
15 251 (11.19%) Data Analysis
16 236 (10.52%) Decision-Making
17 220 (9.80%) Machine Learning
18 217 (9.67%) Data Science
19 210 (9.36%) Test Automation
20 206 (9.18%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 1,007 (44.88%) Python
2 308 (13.73%) C#
3 284 (12.66%) Java
4 177 (7.89%) JavaScript
5 150 (6.68%) PL/SQL
6 108 (4.81%) T-SQL
7 92 (4.10%) TypeScript
8 81 (3.61%) PowerShell
9 76 (3.39%) Scala
10 74 (3.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 73 (3.25%) R
12 59 (2.63%) Shell Script
13 47 (2.09%) C++
14 29 (1.29%) VBA
15 27 (1.20%) Bash
16 24 (1.07%) Bicep
17 18 (0.80%) C
18 16 (0.71%) VB
19 10 (0.45%) LotusScript
19 10 (0.45%) Perl
Qualifications
1 354 (15.78%) Security Cleared
2 294 (13.10%) SC Cleared
3 176 (7.84%) Degree
4 59 (2.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 53 (2.36%) Azure Certification
6 46 (2.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 28 (1.25%) Master's Degree
8 19 (0.85%) Microsoft Certification
9 17 (0.76%) AWS Certification
10 14 (0.62%) ISTQB
11 13 (0.58%) CBAP
12 12 (0.53%) PhD
13 10 (0.45%) PMI Certification
14 9 (0.40%) PMP
15 8 (0.36%) CISM
15 8 (0.36%) CISSP
15 8 (0.36%) DBS Check
16 6 (0.27%) DV Cleared
16 6 (0.27%) Oracle Certification
16 6 (0.27%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 445 (19.83%) Data Quality
2 181 (8.07%) QA
3 113 (5.04%) GDPR
4 24 (1.07%) Accessibility
4 24 (1.07%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 19 (0.85%) SLA
6 16 (0.71%) MiFID
6 16 (0.71%) PMO
7 13 (0.58%) IFRS
7 13 (0.58%) NIST
8 12 (0.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 12 (0.53%) PCI DSS
9 9 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
10 8 (0.36%) ISO 8583
10 8 (0.36%) Solvency II
11 7 (0.31%) Basel III
11 7 (0.31%) EMIR
11 7 (0.31%) HIPAA
11 7 (0.31%) ISO 20022
11 7 (0.31%) NCSC
System Software
1 252 (11.23%) Docker
2 42 (1.87%) Active Directory
3 17 (0.76%) Virtual Machines
4 7 (0.31%) Oracle RAC
5 5 (0.22%) Hyper-V
5 5 (0.22%) VMware Infrastructure
6 4 (0.18%) VMware ESXi
6 4 (0.18%) XenApp
6 4 (0.18%) XenDesktop
7 3 (0.13%) HDFS
7 3 (0.13%) Postfix
7 3 (0.13%) Virtual Desktop
8 2 (0.089%) GridGain
9 1 (0.045%) Apache ZooKeeper
9 1 (0.045%) RACF
9 1 (0.045%) Varnish
9 1 (0.045%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 217 (9.67%) Terraform
2 201 (8.96%) Kubernetes
3 42 (1.87%) Grafana
4 22 (0.98%) Ansible
5 19 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 13 (0.58%) Kibana
7 11 (0.49%) Control-M
8 10 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
9 9 (0.40%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.31%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.27%) Data Guard
11 6 (0.27%) ITRS Geneos
12 5 (0.22%) Packer
12 5 (0.22%) SCCM
13 4 (0.18%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.18%) SCVMM
14 3 (0.13%) Microsoft Clustering
15 2 (0.089%) Amdocs OSS
15 2 (0.089%) Argo
15 2 (0.089%) Knative
Vendors
1 335 (14.93%) Microsoft
2 308 (13.73%) Databricks
3 307 (13.68%) Oracle
4 83 (3.70%) Google
5 60 (2.67%) Informatica
6 57 (2.54%) SAP
7 56 (2.50%) ServiceNow
8 41 (1.83%) Citrix
9 35 (1.56%) Salesforce
10 32 (1.43%) IBM
11 29 (1.29%) Bloomberg
12 27 (1.20%) Murex
13 26 (1.16%) OpenAI
14 20 (0.89%) Workday
15 19 (0.85%) Splunk
16 18 (0.80%) MuleSoft
17 16 (0.71%) Adobe
18 15 (0.67%) VMware
19 14 (0.62%) Alteryx
19 14 (0.62%) Sybase