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

6 months to
10 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 8 7
Rank change year-on-year -7 -1 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,529 1,941 2,348
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.50% 14.49% 14.54%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.44% 37.46% 36.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,781 1,333 1,711
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 10 30 22
10th Percentile £26.51 £18.25 £26.44
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.03 £36.44
Median hourly rate £43.25 £37.25 £42.00
Median % change year-on-year +16.11% -11.31% +1.82%
75th Percentile £53.75 £53.75 £53.25
90th Percentile £69.18 £63.85 £58.25
England median hourly rate £46.80 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -6.40% +25.00% -11.11%

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 6,413 5,182 6,419
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.69% 38.67% 39.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,362 3,505 4,484
10th Percentile £375 £375 £371
25th Percentile £447 £431 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £565
Median % change year-on-year - -2.65% -5.83%
75th Percentile £668 £685 £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 68 48
10th Percentile £26.51 £25.58 £25.99
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.06 £38.06
Median hourly rate £55.00 £44.20 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year +24.44% -8.87% -16.02%
75th Percentile £73.00 £63.38 £71.22
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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -6 315 £550 -4.35% 372
West London +11 67 £510 +26.07% 61
South London -10 39 £535 +17.91% 23
East London +2 15 £470 -6.00% 19
North London +3 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
1 180 (7.12%) Apache Airflow
2 140 (5.54%) Apache Spark
3 102 (4.03%) Apache
4 97 (3.84%) Confluence
5 60 (2.37%) SharePoint
6 25 (0.99%) IIS
7 19 (0.75%) SAS
8 16 (0.63%) Microsoft Exchange
9 15 (0.59%) CMS
10 14 (0.55%) Jupyter
10 14 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
11 13 (0.51%) Camunda
11 13 (0.51%) nginx
11 13 (0.51%) Palantir Foundry
12 9 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.28%) WebLogic
14 6 (0.24%) MTS
15 5 (0.20%) Appian
15 5 (0.20%) Tomcat
16 4 (0.16%) Exchange Server 2013
Applications
1 146 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (1.19%) Microsoft Office
3 17 (0.67%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 15 (0.59%) MS Visio
5 12 (0.47%) Spreadsheet
6 8 (0.32%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Notion
7 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
7 4 (0.16%) Windchill
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
8 3 (0.12%) Mingle
9 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
Business Applications
1 26 (1.03%) Aladdin
2 20 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
3 19 (0.75%) Oracle EBS
3 19 (0.75%) Oracle ERP
3 19 (0.75%) Oracle Payables
4 16 (0.63%) Oracle General Ledger
5 14 (0.55%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.43%) Oracle Financials
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
7 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
8 9 (0.36%) Finacle
8 9 (0.36%) 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 (32.34%) Azure
2 617 (24.40%) AWS
3 467 (18.47%) Power Platform
4 289 (11.43%) GCP
5 268 (10.60%) Snowflake
6 235 (9.29%) Azure DevOps
7 214 (8.46%) dbt
7 214 (8.46%) GitHub
8 161 (6.37%) Azure Data Factory
9 159 (6.29%) Serverless
10 150 (5.93%) Amazon S3
11 114 (4.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 109 (4.31%) GitHub Actions
13 103 (4.07%) AWS Lambda
14 65 (2.57%) Azure Databricks
15 59 (2.33%) SaaS
16 57 (2.25%) Entra ID
17 54 (2.14%) PowerApps
18 51 (2.02%) Power Automate
19 42 (1.66%) Amazon CloudWatch
Communications & Networking
1 24 (0.95%) 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 (0.40%) SSL
8 9 (0.36%) Multicast
9 8 (0.32%) SSH
10 6 (0.24%) DHCP
10 6 (0.24%) HTTPS
10 6 (0.24%) SAN
11 4 (0.16%) IPv4
11 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 4 (0.16%) Reverse Proxy
12 3 (0.12%) 4G
12 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
12 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 420 (16.61%) Power BI
2 365 (14.43%) Data Warehouse
3 312 (12.34%) SQL Server
4 176 (6.96%) Relational Database
5 155 (6.13%) Tableau
6 154 (6.09%) PostgreSQL
7 151 (5.97%) Data Lake
8 143 (5.65%) Metadata
9 130 (5.14%) NoSQL
10 128 (5.06%) BigQuery
11 115 (4.55%) Oracle Database
12 102 (4.03%) Delta Lake
13 86 (3.40%) Azure SQL Database
14 83 (3.28%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (2.53%) Amazon Athena
16 62 (2.45%) Big Data
16 62 (2.45%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 61 (2.41%) Power Query
18 54 (2.14%) Amazon RDS
19 53 (2.10%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 332 (13.13%) Git
2 198 (7.83%) JIRA
3 130 (5.14%) Jenkins
4 94 (3.72%) GitLab
5 54 (2.14%) Selenium
6 48 (1.90%) Gradle
7 37 (1.46%) JUnit
8 32 (1.27%) Maven
9 25 (0.99%) SonarQube
10 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.87%) Visual Studio
11 21 (0.83%) Mockito
11 21 (0.83%) Postman
12 18 (0.71%) Cypress.io
13 17 (0.67%) REST Assured
14 15 (0.59%) Cucumber
14 15 (0.59%) MLflow
15 14 (0.55%) ERwin
15 14 (0.55%) Liquibase
16 13 (0.51%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 930 (36.77%) Finance
2 739 (29.22%) Social Skills
3 571 (22.58%) Analytical Skills
4 463 (18.31%) Banking
5 167 (6.60%) Public Sector
6 128 (5.06%) Front Office
7 122 (4.82%) Investment Banking
8 108 (4.27%) Marketing
9 84 (3.32%) Retail
10 60 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 54 (2.14%) Financial Institution
12 41 (1.62%) Back Office
13 39 (1.54%) Documentation Skills
14 32 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
15 30 (1.19%) Legal
16 27 (1.07%) Local Government
17 23 (0.91%) General Ledger
18 22 (0.87%) Pharmaceutical
19 21 (0.83%) Organisational Skills
20 19 (0.75%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 559 (22.10%) Developer
2 459 (18.15%) Data Engineer
3 444 (17.56%) Analyst
4 420 (16.61%) Senior
5 187 (7.39%) Lead
6 177 (7.00%) Data Analyst
7 158 (6.25%) Business Analyst
8 133 (5.26%) Architect
9 128 (5.06%) Senior Data Engineer
10 100 (3.95%) Consultant
11 93 (3.68%) Senior Developer
12 83 (3.28%) Java Developer
13 75 (2.97%) Python Engineer
14 74 (2.93%) Python Developer
15 67 (2.65%) Full-Stack Developer
16 66 (2.61%) Azure Engineer
17 64 (2.53%) Software Engineer
18 63 (2.49%) Data Architect
19 61 (2.41%) Applications Support
19 61 (2.41%) C# Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 274 (10.83%) .NET
2 270 (10.68%) Terraform
3 261 (10.32%) REST
4 214 (8.46%) PySpark
5 209 (8.26%) Kafka
6 139 (5.50%) React
6 139 (5.50%) Spring
7 123 (4.86%) Spring Boot
8 104 (4.11%) RESTful
9 103 (4.07%) HTML
10 101 (3.99%) JSON
11 90 (3.56%) CSS
12 86 (3.40%) XML
13 80 (3.16%) AngularJS
14 72 (2.85%) SOAP
15 69 (2.73%) Web Services
16 66 (2.61%) Middleware
16 66 (2.61%) Pandas
17 61 (2.41%) OAuth
18 57 (2.25%) .NET Framework
Miscellaneous
1 192 (7.59%) Cloud Native
2 151 (5.97%) Product Ownership
3 131 (5.18%) Data Structures
4 93 (3.68%) Legacy Systems
5 86 (3.40%) Enterprise Software
6 85 (3.36%) Distributed Systems
7 80 (3.16%) Onboarding
8 70 (2.77%) Derivative
9 60 (2.37%) Management Information System
9 60 (2.37%) Self-Motivation
10 59 (2.33%) AI Agents
11 49 (1.94%) Reference Data
12 45 (1.78%) Algorithms
13 44 (1.74%) Fixed Income
14 42 (1.66%) Analytical Mindset
15 38 (1.50%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 38 (1.50%) Replication
16 36 (1.42%) Data Centre
16 36 (1.42%) Equities
17 32 (1.27%) Market Risk
Operating Systems
1 179 (7.08%) Linux
2 137 (5.42%) Windows
3 111 (4.39%) Unix
4 42 (1.66%) Windows Server
5 13 (0.51%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.32%) VMS
7 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2008
7 6 (0.24%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (0.20%) Ubuntu
9 4 (0.16%) Android
9 4 (0.16%) Apple iOS
9 4 (0.16%) OpenVMS
9 4 (0.16%) Windows 10
9 4 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.16%) zOS
10 2 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
10 2 (0.079%) Solaris
10 2 (0.079%) Windows 7
11 1 (0.040%) AIX
11 1 (0.040%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 761 (30.09%) CI/CD
2 704 (27.84%) Agile
3 683 (27.01%) Analytics
4 672 (26.57%) Data Modelling
5 555 (21.95%) AI
6 507 (20.05%) ETL
7 504 (19.93%) Business Intelligence
8 502 (19.85%) Data Pipeline
9 496 (19.61%) DevOps
10 491 (19.41%) Data Engineering
11 488 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
12 466 (18.43%) Stakeholder Management
13 407 (16.09%) Validation
14 356 (14.08%) Migration
15 351 (13.88%) Data Analysis
16 333 (13.17%) Data Governance
17 301 (11.90%) Continuous Improvement
18 297 (11.74%) Decision-Making
19 286 (11.31%) Test Automation
20 257 (10.16%) Machine Learning
Programming Languages
1 1,066 (42.15%) Python
2 337 (13.33%) Java
3 302 (11.94%) C#
4 240 (9.49%) JavaScript
5 166 (6.56%) PL/SQL
6 138 (5.46%) TypeScript
7 119 (4.71%) T-SQL
8 111 (4.39%) PowerShell
9 93 (3.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 81 (3.20%) Shell Script
11 56 (2.21%) Bash
11 56 (2.21%) Scala
12 43 (1.70%) R
13 32 (1.27%) C++
14 28 (1.11%) VBA
15 20 (0.79%) Go
16 19 (0.75%) Korn
17 18 (0.71%) Bicep
18 16 (0.63%) VB.NET
19 14 (0.55%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 378 (14.95%) Security Cleared
2 316 (12.50%) SC Cleared
3 211 (8.34%) Degree
4 70 (2.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 53 (2.10%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.70%) Azure Certification
7 31 (1.23%) Master's Degree
8 29 (1.15%) AWS Certification
9 27 (1.07%) 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 10 (0.40%) ACCA
13 10 (0.40%) CIMA
13 10 (0.40%) DBS Check
13 10 (0.40%) ISEB
14 9 (0.36%) CBAP
15 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 558 (22.06%) Data Quality
2 191 (7.55%) QA
3 68 (2.69%) GDPR
4 28 (1.11%) Accessibility
5 25 (0.99%) SLA
6 22 (0.87%) 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 8 (0.32%) SOC 2
13 7 (0.28%) EMIR
13 7 (0.28%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 6 (0.24%) PSD2
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
14 6 (0.24%) Solvency II
System Software
1 239 (9.45%) Docker
2 37 (1.46%) Active Directory
3 22 (0.87%) 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 (0.040%) KVM
7 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
7 1 (0.040%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 222 (8.78%) Kubernetes
2 48 (1.90%) Grafana
3 34 (1.34%) Ansible
4 30 (1.19%) Control-M
5 25 (0.99%) Prometheus
6 19 (0.75%) Kibana
7 11 (0.43%) Microsoft Clustering
8 10 (0.40%) 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%) HP ALM
13 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
13 4 (0.16%) NetBackup
13 4 (0.16%) Podman
Vendors
1 389 (15.38%) Microsoft
2 373 (14.75%) Databricks
3 341 (13.48%) Oracle
4 117 (4.63%) Google
5 55 (2.17%) Informatica
6 54 (2.14%) IBM
7 39 (1.54%) SAP
8 38 (1.50%) Bloomberg
9 37 (1.46%) Salesforce
10 34 (1.34%) Murex
11 30 (1.19%) ServiceNow
12 29 (1.15%) Foundry
12 29 (1.15%) Splunk
12 29 (1.15%) UiPath
13 28 (1.11%) Citrix
13 28 (1.11%) OpenAI
14 24 (0.95%) Talend
15 23 (0.91%) VMware
16 20 (0.79%) Alteryx
16 20 (0.79%) Sybase