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

6 months to
18 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,486 1,946 2,342
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.31% 14.45% 14.36%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.26% 37.39% 35.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,734 1,365 1,750
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £461
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £564
Median % change year-on-year - -6.87% -1.96%
75th Percentile £625 £673 £688
90th Percentile £725 £775 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 29 19
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.15 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.52 £31.25 £37.79
Median hourly rate £42.50 £40.49 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +4.96% -4.73% +14.80%
75th Percentile £53.75 £57.50 £52.75
90th Percentile £65.75 £65.30 £59.00
England median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.16
% change year-on-year -18.00% +21.49% -10.30%

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 6,332 5,204 6,568
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.35% 38.64% 40.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,260 3,576 4,703
10th Percentile £377 £375 £363
25th Percentile £450 £427 £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 £813 £850
England median daily rate £525 £513 £545
% change year-on-year +2.44% -5.96% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 65 43
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.71 £25.40
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £34.04
Median hourly rate £53.75 £45.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.44% -5.26% -20.83%
75th Percentile £73.50 £63.75 £59.47
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.00 £78.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.04% -13.08% -

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 -6 308 £550 -4.35% 365
West London +8 67 £520 +27.14% 79
South London -8 40 £535 +12.63% 26
East London -1 16 £450 -11.76% 27
North London +5 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
1 171 (6.88%) Apache Airflow
2 131 (5.27%) Apache Spark
3 100 (4.02%) Apache
4 88 (3.54%) Confluence
5 60 (2.41%) SharePoint
6 27 (1.09%) IIS
7 23 (0.93%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) nginx
9 14 (0.56%) CMS
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
11 12 (0.48%) Camunda
11 12 (0.48%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.32%) WebLogic
14 7 (0.28%) Tomcat
15 6 (0.24%) Appian
15 6 (0.24%) MTS
16 4 (0.16%) CICS
Applications
1 150 (6.03%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (1.13%) Microsoft Office
3 18 (0.72%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 18 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 15 (0.60%) 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 (0.080%) Mingle
8 2 (0.080%) Windchill
9 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 24 (0.97%) Aladdin
1 24 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 16 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
5 14 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
6 10 (0.40%) Finacle
6 10 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
6 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
6 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
7 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
7 9 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
7 9 (0.36%) Summit
8 8 (0.32%) Front Arena
9 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
9 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
9 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
10 6 (0.24%) Fidessa
Cloud Services
1 807 (32.46%) Azure
2 605 (24.34%) AWS
3 470 (18.91%) Power Platform
4 282 (11.34%) GCP
5 264 (10.62%) Snowflake
6 243 (9.77%) Azure DevOps
7 219 (8.81%) dbt
8 216 (8.69%) GitHub
9 165 (6.64%) Azure Data Factory
10 159 (6.40%) Serverless
11 152 (6.11%) Amazon S3
12 119 (4.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 111 (4.47%) GitHub Actions
14 110 (4.42%) AWS Lambda
15 56 (2.25%) Azure Databricks
16 54 (2.17%) SaaS
17 53 (2.13%) PowerApps
18 52 (2.09%) Power Automate
19 49 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 49 (1.97%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 19 (0.76%) HTTP
1 19 (0.76%) Internet
2 17 (0.68%) DNS
3 15 (0.60%) Broadband
3 15 (0.60%) VPN
4 13 (0.52%) Firewall
5 9 (0.36%) Network Security
5 9 (0.36%) TCP/IP
6 8 (0.32%) SSH
7 7 (0.28%) Multicast
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 (16.98%) Power BI
2 368 (14.80%) Data Warehouse
3 300 (12.07%) SQL Server
4 172 (6.92%) Relational Database
5 158 (6.36%) Tableau
6 154 (6.19%) Data Lake
7 150 (6.03%) PostgreSQL
8 143 (5.75%) Metadata
9 130 (5.23%) BigQuery
10 123 (4.95%) NoSQL
11 111 (4.47%) Oracle Database
12 100 (4.02%) Delta Lake
13 86 (3.46%) Azure SQL Database
14 85 (3.42%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (2.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 62 (2.49%) Amazon Athena
16 62 (2.49%) Power Query
17 59 (2.37%) Star Schema
18 56 (2.25%) Big Data
18 56 (2.25%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 307 (12.35%) Git
2 188 (7.56%) JIRA
3 129 (5.19%) Jenkins
4 89 (3.58%) GitLab
5 51 (2.05%) Selenium
6 47 (1.89%) Gradle
7 36 (1.45%) JUnit
8 29 (1.17%) Maven
8 29 (1.17%) SonarQube
9 24 (0.97%) Bitbucket
10 23 (0.93%) Mockito
11 21 (0.84%) Visual Studio
12 19 (0.76%) Cypress.io
12 19 (0.76%) Postman
13 17 (0.68%) ERwin
13 17 (0.68%) MLflow
13 17 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
14 16 (0.64%) Liquibase
15 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
16 14 (0.56%) REST Assured
General
1 922 (37.09%) Finance
2 718 (28.88%) Social Skills
3 553 (22.24%) Analytical Skills
4 432 (17.38%) Banking
5 151 (6.07%) Public Sector
6 126 (5.07%) Front Office
7 113 (4.55%) Investment Banking
7 113 (4.55%) Marketing
8 76 (3.06%) Retail
9 66 (2.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 47 (1.89%) Financial Institution
11 39 (1.57%) Back Office
11 39 (1.57%) Documentation Skills
12 29 (1.17%) Influencing Skills
13 28 (1.13%) Legal
14 24 (0.97%) General Ledger
14 24 (0.97%) Local Government
14 24 (0.97%) Organisational Skills
15 22 (0.88%) Presentation Skills
15 22 (0.88%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 535 (21.52%) Developer
2 463 (18.62%) Data Engineer
3 431 (17.34%) Analyst
4 395 (15.89%) Senior
5 187 (7.52%) Lead
6 168 (6.76%) Data Analyst
7 153 (6.15%) Business Analyst
8 132 (5.31%) Architect
9 123 (4.95%) Senior Data Engineer
10 103 (4.14%) Consultant
11 88 (3.54%) Senior Developer
12 81 (3.26%) Java Developer
13 74 (2.98%) Python Engineer
14 72 (2.90%) Software Engineer
15 70 (2.82%) Python Developer
16 68 (2.74%) Azure Engineer
17 67 (2.70%) Full-Stack Developer
18 63 (2.53%) Data Architect
19 61 (2.45%) C# Developer
19 61 (2.45%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 269 (10.82%) .NET
2 249 (10.02%) Terraform
3 240 (9.65%) REST
4 201 (8.09%) PySpark
5 190 (7.64%) Kafka
6 142 (5.71%) React
7 128 (5.15%) Spring
8 112 (4.51%) Spring Boot
9 107 (4.30%) HTML
10 100 (4.02%) RESTful
11 99 (3.98%) JSON
12 97 (3.90%) CSS
13 81 (3.26%) XML
14 74 (2.98%) AngularJS
14 74 (2.98%) Pandas
15 68 (2.74%) SOAP
16 65 (2.61%) Middleware
16 65 (2.61%) Web Services
17 59 (2.37%) .NET Framework
18 56 (2.25%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 186 (7.48%) Cloud Native
2 143 (5.75%) Product Ownership
3 123 (4.95%) Data Structures
4 82 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
5 81 (3.26%) Distributed Systems
5 81 (3.26%) Onboarding
6 72 (2.90%) Derivative
7 69 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
8 55 (2.21%) Self-Motivation
9 53 (2.13%) Management Information System
10 51 (2.05%) AI Agents
11 44 (1.77%) Analytical Mindset
12 42 (1.69%) Fixed Income
12 42 (1.69%) Reference Data
13 39 (1.57%) Algorithms
14 37 (1.49%) Equities
14 37 (1.49%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 34 (1.37%) Replication
16 31 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
17 28 (1.13%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 163 (6.56%) Linux
2 139 (5.59%) Windows
3 102 (4.10%) 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%) Android
10 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
10 4 (0.16%) Solaris
10 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.12%) OpenVMS
11 3 (0.12%) Windows Server 2012
12 2 (0.080%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.080%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.080%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.040%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 742 (29.85%) CI/CD
2 678 (27.27%) Analytics
3 663 (26.67%) Data Modelling
4 661 (26.59%) Agile
5 519 (20.88%) AI
6 511 (20.56%) DevOps
7 509 (20.47%) ETL
8 506 (20.35%) Data Pipeline
9 505 (20.31%) Business Intelligence
10 479 (19.27%) Problem-Solving
11 476 (19.15%) Data Engineering
12 424 (17.06%) Stakeholder Management
13 386 (15.53%) Validation
14 338 (13.60%) Data Governance
15 333 (13.40%) Data Analysis
16 329 (13.23%) Migration
17 283 (11.38%) Decision-Making
18 269 (10.82%) Continuous Improvement
19 253 (10.18%) Test Automation
20 242 (9.73%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,076 (43.28%) Python
2 330 (13.27%) Java
3 300 (12.07%) C#
4 226 (9.09%) JavaScript
5 182 (7.32%) PL/SQL
6 135 (5.43%) TypeScript
7 116 (4.67%) T-SQL
8 110 (4.42%) PowerShell
9 93 (3.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 81 (3.26%) Shell Script
11 58 (2.33%) Scala
12 52 (2.09%) R
13 45 (1.81%) Bash
14 34 (1.37%) C++
15 33 (1.33%) VBA
16 19 (0.76%) Go
17 16 (0.64%) VB.NET
18 15 (0.60%) Korn
19 14 (0.56%) Groovy
20 13 (0.52%) VB
Qualifications
1 356 (14.32%) Security Cleared
2 300 (12.07%) SC Cleared
3 198 (7.96%) Degree
4 64 (2.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (1.81%) BPSS Clearance
6 42 (1.69%) Azure Certification
7 29 (1.17%) AWS Certification
8 28 (1.13%) Master's Degree
9 18 (0.72%) ISTQB
10 17 (0.68%) DV Cleared
11 12 (0.48%) FFIEC
11 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 11 (0.44%) ACCA
12 11 (0.44%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 11 (0.44%) CIMA
12 11 (0.44%) PMI Certification
13 10 (0.40%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.40%) ISEB
14 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.28%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 525 (21.12%) Data Quality
2 198 (7.96%) QA
3 75 (3.02%) GDPR
4 29 (1.17%) Accessibility
4 29 (1.17%) SLA
5 20 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
6 19 (0.76%) ISO 20022
7 18 (0.72%) IFRS
8 17 (0.68%) NIST
9 16 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.60%) MiFID
11 11 (0.44%) COBIT
12 10 (0.40%) Basel III
13 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
14 7 (0.28%) EMIR
15 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
15 6 (0.24%) PSD2
15 6 (0.24%) SEPA
15 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
16 5 (0.20%) GAAP
System Software
1 235 (9.45%) Docker
2 36 (1.45%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.93%) VMware Infrastructure
4 13 (0.52%) 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 (0.080%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.080%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.080%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.080%) Squid
9 1 (0.040%) RACF
9 1 (0.040%) Varnish
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 207 (8.33%) Kubernetes
2 44 (1.77%) Grafana
3 34 (1.37%) Ansible
4 29 (1.17%) Control-M
5 22 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 15 (0.60%) Kibana
7 11 (0.44%) Microsoft Clustering
7 11 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 9 (0.36%) ITRS Geneos
9 8 (0.32%) SCOM
9 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
11 5 (0.20%) HP ALM
11 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
11 5 (0.20%) Istio
11 5 (0.20%) systemd
12 4 (0.16%) Argo
12 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
12 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
12 4 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 364 (14.64%) Microsoft
2 347 (13.96%) Databricks
3 332 (13.35%) Oracle
4 111 (4.47%) Google
5 59 (2.37%) Informatica
6 48 (1.93%) IBM
6 48 (1.93%) SAP
7 39 (1.57%) Salesforce
8 38 (1.53%) Bloomberg
9 33 (1.33%) Murex
10 31 (1.25%) Citrix
11 30 (1.21%) ServiceNow
12 24 (0.97%) Splunk
12 24 (0.97%) VMware
13 23 (0.93%) Adobe
13 23 (0.93%) Foundry
13 23 (0.93%) UiPath
14 22 (0.88%) Alteryx
14 22 (0.88%) OpenAI
14 22 (0.88%) Talend