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

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 9 7
Rank change year-on-year 0 -2 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,103 1,925 2,428
As % of all contract jobs in London 14.36% 14.04% 13.11%
As % of the Programming Languages category 38.94% 36.42% 37.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,418 1,327 1,800
10th Percentile £359 £363 £389
25th Percentile £413 £441 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year -6.82% -4.35% -3.36%
75th Percentile £638 £656 £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% -20.35%
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 5,401 5,285 6,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 36.87% 38.54% 34.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,619 3,486 4,900
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 £690 £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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -2 276 £531 -7.61% 193
South London +17 46 £492 -0.35% 39
West London -1 38 £575 +15.00% 43
East London +1 23 £469 +17.19% 27
North London +6 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
1 132 (6.28%) Apache Spark
2 94 (4.47%) Apache Airflow
3 70 (3.33%) Confluence
4 56 (2.66%) Apache
5 42 (2.00%) SharePoint
6 18 (0.86%) IIS
7 14 (0.67%) nginx
8 13 (0.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 12 (0.57%) Jupyter
9 12 (0.57%) SAS
10 11 (0.52%) HCL Notes
11 10 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
12 9 (0.43%) Mendix
12 9 (0.43%) Microsoft Exchange
13 7 (0.33%) Appian
13 7 (0.33%) MQSeries
13 7 (0.33%) Skype for Business
14 6 (0.29%) Mattermost
14 6 (0.29%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.19%) Anypoint
Applications
1 146 (6.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 37 (1.76%) Microsoft Office
3 31 (1.47%) MS Visio
4 26 (1.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 11 (0.52%) Microsoft Project
6 8 (0.38%) Mozilla Thunderbird
7 5 (0.24%) Trello
8 4 (0.19%) Chatbot
8 4 (0.19%) Spreadsheet
9 3 (0.14%) Notion
10 1 (0.048%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 22 (1.05%) Aladdin
2 21 (1.00%) Oracle General Ledger
3 20 (0.95%) Oracle Payables
4 17 (0.81%) Oracle EBS
5 15 (0.71%) Oracle Assets
6 14 (0.67%) Endur
7 13 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
7 13 (0.62%) NetSuite
7 13 (0.62%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.57%) Oracle Financials
9 11 (0.52%) SAP S/4HANA
10 10 (0.48%) Oracle EBS R12
11 9 (0.43%) Oracle ERP
11 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.29%) Markit EDM
14 6 (0.29%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
Cloud Services
1 688 (32.72%) Azure
2 513 (24.39%) AWS
3 392 (18.64%) Power Platform
4 195 (9.27%) Azure DevOps
5 185 (8.80%) GitHub
6 175 (8.32%) Snowflake
7 166 (7.89%) Azure Data Factory
8 156 (7.42%) GCP
9 151 (7.18%) Serverless
10 135 (6.42%) Amazon S3
11 113 (5.37%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 94 (4.47%) GitHub Actions
13 86 (4.09%) dbt
14 81 (3.85%) AWS Lambda
15 61 (2.90%) SaaS
16 56 (2.66%) Azure Functions
17 43 (2.04%) AWS CloudFormation
18 42 (2.00%) Power Automate
19 40 (1.90%) Azure Logic Apps
19 40 (1.90%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 26 (1.24%) Firewall
2 19 (0.90%) HTTP
3 18 (0.86%) DNS
4 12 (0.57%) Internet
4 12 (0.57%) Network Security
4 12 (0.57%) SSH
5 10 (0.48%) 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 (0.29%) Unified Communications
9 5 (0.24%) LAN
9 5 (0.24%) WAN
10 4 (0.19%) 2G
10 4 (0.19%) 4G
10 4 (0.19%) NetScaler
Database & Business Intelligence
1 361 (17.17%) Power BI
2 251 (11.94%) Data Warehouse
3 250 (11.89%) SQL Server
4 154 (7.32%) PostgreSQL
5 151 (7.18%) Tableau
6 149 (7.09%) NoSQL
6 149 (7.09%) Relational Database
7 140 (6.66%) Data Lake
8 104 (4.95%) Metadata
9 100 (4.76%) Azure SQL Database
10 94 (4.47%) Oracle Database
11 79 (3.76%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 77 (3.66%) Big Data
13 70 (3.33%) BigQuery
14 57 (2.71%) Amazon Redshift
15 50 (2.38%) Delta Lake
16 48 (2.28%) Amazon Athena
17 47 (2.23%) MongoDB
18 42 (2.00%) Amazon RDS
18 42 (2.00%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 221 (10.51%) Git
2 158 (7.51%) JIRA
3 83 (3.95%) Jenkins
4 67 (3.19%) GitLab
5 37 (1.76%) JUnit
6 25 (1.19%) Selenium
7 21 (1.00%) ERwin
7 21 (1.00%) MLflow
7 21 (1.00%) SpecFlow
8 18 (0.86%) Cypress.io
9 17 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 17 (0.81%) Postman
10 16 (0.76%) Bitbucket
11 14 (0.67%) Maven
11 14 (0.67%) Visual Studio
12 13 (0.62%) Mockito
13 11 (0.52%) ER Studio
13 11 (0.52%) SonarQube
13 11 (0.52%) TeamCity
14 10 (0.48%) Gradle
General
1 708 (33.67%) Finance
2 626 (29.77%) Social Skills
3 380 (18.07%) Analytical Skills
4 299 (14.22%) Banking
5 124 (5.90%) Public Sector
6 117 (5.56%) Investment Banking
7 96 (4.56%) Front Office
8 56 (2.66%) Marketing
9 51 (2.43%) Documentation Skills
10 45 (2.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 40 (1.90%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.85%) Retail
13 22 (1.05%) Presentation Skills
14 21 (1.00%) Back Office
14 21 (1.00%) General Ledger
14 21 (1.00%) Legal
15 17 (0.81%) Publishing
16 16 (0.76%) Telecoms
17 15 (0.71%) Law
18 12 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 523 (24.87%) Developer
2 366 (17.40%) Analyst
3 353 (16.79%) Data Engineer
4 286 (13.60%) Senior
5 160 (7.61%) Business Analyst
6 148 (7.04%) Lead
7 139 (6.61%) Data Analyst
8 104 (4.95%) Architect
9 80 (3.80%) Consultant
10 72 (3.42%) Senior Developer
11 70 (3.33%) Azure Engineer
12 69 (3.28%) Java Developer
13 68 (3.23%) C# Developer
14 60 (2.85%) Python Developer
15 58 (2.76%) Senior Data Engineer
15 58 (2.76%) Software Engineer
16 51 (2.43%) Senior Analyst
17 50 (2.38%) Azure Data Engineer
18 49 (2.33%) SQL Developer
19 48 (2.28%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 204 (9.70%) .NET
2 175 (8.32%) Kafka
3 146 (6.94%) REST
4 145 (6.89%) PySpark
5 94 (4.47%) RESTful
6 92 (4.37%) React
7 75 (3.57%) HTML
8 71 (3.38%) XML
9 66 (3.14%) CSS
9 66 (3.14%) Spring
10 64 (3.04%) Pandas
11 63 (3.00%) Node.js
12 55 (2.62%) AngularJS
13 52 (2.47%) JSON
14 51 (2.43%) .NET Framework
14 51 (2.43%) Spring Boot
15 50 (2.38%) NumPy
16 49 (2.33%) Middleware
17 40 (1.90%) PyTorch
18 39 (1.85%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 128 (6.09%) Cloud Native
2 71 (3.38%) Data Structures
3 62 (2.95%) Derivative
4 57 (2.71%) Data Protection Act
5 56 (2.66%) Legacy Systems
5 56 (2.66%) Product Ownership
6 54 (2.57%) Equities
7 50 (2.38%) Management Information System
8 49 (2.33%) Analytical Mindset
9 48 (2.28%) Fixed Income
10 47 (2.23%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
11 42 (2.00%) Market Risk
12 41 (1.95%) Algorithms
13 37 (1.76%) Distributed Systems
14 36 (1.71%) Onboarding
15 26 (1.24%) Credit Risk
15 26 (1.24%) Hedge funds
16 25 (1.19%) Self-Motivation
17 24 (1.14%) Replication
18 23 (1.09%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 196 (9.32%) Linux
2 123 (5.85%) Unix
3 117 (5.56%) Windows
4 28 (1.33%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.62%) VMS
6 10 (0.48%) Ubuntu
6 10 (0.48%) 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 (0.095%) zOS
12 1 (0.048%) Alpine Linux
12 1 (0.048%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 576 (27.39%) Agile
2 522 (24.82%) Analytics
3 484 (23.01%) Data Modelling
4 471 (22.40%) Problem-Solving
5 465 (22.11%) CI/CD
6 463 (22.02%) Business Intelligence
7 438 (20.83%) ETL
8 418 (19.88%) DevOps
9 334 (15.88%) Data Pipeline
10 304 (14.46%) Data Engineering
11 265 (12.60%) Data Governance
12 254 (12.08%) AI
13 251 (11.94%) Migration
14 224 (10.65%) Data Analysis
15 214 (10.18%) Validation
16 204 (9.70%) Visualisation
17 202 (9.61%) Data Science
18 191 (9.08%) Decision-Making
19 183 (8.70%) Machine Learning
19 183 (8.70%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 870 (41.37%) Python
2 285 (13.55%) Java
3 266 (12.65%) C#
4 163 (7.75%) JavaScript
5 130 (6.18%) PL/SQL
6 94 (4.47%) PowerShell
6 94 (4.47%) TypeScript
7 68 (3.23%) Scala
8 66 (3.14%) C++
8 66 (3.14%) T-SQL
9 58 (2.76%) R
10 53 (2.52%) Shell Script
11 47 (2.23%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 46 (2.19%) VBA
13 41 (1.95%) VB
14 33 (1.57%) Bash
15 28 (1.33%) Bicep
16 22 (1.05%) Perl
17 20 (0.95%) Go
18 19 (0.90%) Korn
Qualifications
1 277 (13.17%) Security Cleared
2 221 (10.51%) SC Cleared
3 188 (8.94%) Degree
4 66 (3.14%) Computer Science Degree
5 50 (2.38%) Azure Certification
6 34 (1.62%) AWS Certification
7 30 (1.43%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.28%) BPSS Clearance
9 26 (1.24%) ISTQB
10 20 (0.95%) Microsoft Certification
11 18 (0.86%) CBAP
12 16 (0.76%) DV Cleared
13 12 (0.57%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 12 (0.57%) PMI Certification
14 10 (0.48%) CFA
15 9 (0.43%) PMP
16 8 (0.38%) ITIL Certification
17 6 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
17 6 (0.29%) ISEB
17 6 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 343 (16.31%) Data Quality
2 164 (7.80%) QA
3 87 (4.14%) GDPR
4 32 (1.52%) Accessibility
5 19 (0.90%) MiFID
5 19 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (0.62%) IFRS
7 12 (0.57%) EMIR
8 10 (0.48%) SLA
9 9 (0.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 9 (0.43%) NIST
9 9 (0.43%) 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 (0.29%) IFRS 9
13 5 (0.24%) PMO
13 5 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 222 (10.56%) Docker
2 51 (2.43%) 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 (0.29%) 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 (0.095%) Virtual Desktop
10 1 (0.048%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 1 (0.048%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 182 (8.65%) Kubernetes
2 173 (8.23%) Terraform
3 26 (1.24%) Grafana
4 22 (1.05%) Ansible
5 19 (0.90%) Prometheus
6 14 (0.67%) HP SiteScope
6 14 (0.67%) SCOM
7 12 (0.57%) SCCM
8 11 (0.52%) Control-M
9 9 (0.43%) ITRS Geneos
9 9 (0.43%) Kibana
10 8 (0.38%) Nessus
10 8 (0.38%) Proxmox
10 8 (0.38%) Single Sign-On
11 6 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 6 (0.29%) logstash
12 5 (0.24%) Progress Chef
13 4 (0.19%) Data Guard
13 4 (0.19%) Oracle RMAN
13 4 (0.19%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 315 (14.98%) Oracle
2 302 (14.36%) Microsoft
3 270 (12.84%) Databricks
4 67 (3.19%) Google
5 58 (2.76%) SAP
6 47 (2.23%) Salesforce
7 37 (1.76%) Citrix
7 37 (1.76%) ServiceNow
8 35 (1.66%) IBM
8 35 (1.66%) Informatica
9 33 (1.57%) OpenAI
9 33 (1.57%) Splunk
10 27 (1.28%) Bloomberg
11 22 (1.05%) MuleSoft
12 17 (0.81%) Palantir
12 17 (0.81%) Sybase
13 16 (0.76%) Murex
14 15 (0.71%) Foundry
14 15 (0.71%) UiPath
15 14 (0.67%) Adobe