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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,517 1,933 2,311
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.38% 14.33% 14.19%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.39% 37.17% 35.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,754 1,360 1,739
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £459
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -8.70% -
75th Percentile £625 £675 £693
90th Percentile £725 £788 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -0.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 30 17
10th Percentile £26.51 £26.20 £25.99
25th Percentile £26.51 £31.56 £40.58
Median hourly rate £40.00 £41.65 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -3.97% -12.31% +28.31%
75th Percentile £52.81 £56.56 £53.75
90th Percentile £53.75 £65.03 £64.25
England median hourly rate £41.00 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -18.00% +20.48% +2.91%

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 6,390 5,201 6,527
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.44% 38.55% 40.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,286 3,583 4,722
10th Percentile £381 £369 £368
25th Percentile £450 £425 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £575
Median % change year-on-year - -4.35% -4.17%
75th Percentile £659 £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 56 65 40
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.71 £25.11
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £32.62
Median hourly rate £52.50 £44.90 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +16.94% -5.48% -20.83%
75th Percentile £73.50 £63.75 £63.26
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.00 £78.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 -6 305 £550 -4.35% 271
West London +8 70 £520 +27.14% 81
South London -9 41 £535 +12.63% 21
East London +4 16 £450 -10.00% 22
North London +3 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
1 175 (6.95%) Apache Airflow
2 133 (5.28%) Apache Spark
3 106 (4.21%) Apache
4 84 (3.34%) Confluence
5 61 (2.42%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.03%) IIS
7 23 (0.91%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) nginx
9 14 (0.56%) CMS
9 14 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.52%) Camunda
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
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
1 153 (6.08%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.15%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (0.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 17 (0.68%) MS Visio
5 16 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
6 9 (0.36%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.16%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.16%) Notion
7 4 (0.16%) Photoshop
8 3 (0.12%) CPLEX
8 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
9 2 (0.079%) Mingle
10 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (0.95%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (0.83%) Aladdin
3 20 (0.79%) Dynamics CRM
4 18 (0.72%) Oracle Payables
5 17 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
6 16 (0.64%) Oracle General Ledger
7 15 (0.60%) Oracle Receivables
8 11 (0.44%) Summit
9 10 (0.40%) Finacle
9 10 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
9 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
9 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.40%) SAP S/4HANA
10 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
11 8 (0.32%) Findur
11 8 (0.32%) Front Arena
11 8 (0.32%) Oracle Assets
12 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
12 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
12 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 830 (32.98%) Azure
2 608 (24.16%) AWS
3 473 (18.79%) Power Platform
4 279 (11.08%) GCP
5 264 (10.49%) Azure DevOps
6 260 (10.33%) Snowflake
7 233 (9.26%) GitHub
8 223 (8.86%) dbt
9 171 (6.79%) Azure Data Factory
10 166 (6.60%) Serverless
11 148 (5.88%) Amazon S3
12 127 (5.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 120 (4.77%) GitHub Actions
14 113 (4.49%) AWS Lambda
15 56 (2.22%) Azure Databricks
15 56 (2.22%) SaaS
16 54 (2.15%) PowerApps
17 50 (1.99%) Amazon CloudWatch
17 50 (1.99%) Power Automate
18 48 (1.91%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.72%) Internet
2 17 (0.68%) HTTP
3 16 (0.64%) DNS
4 15 (0.60%) VPN
5 14 (0.56%) Firewall
6 12 (0.48%) Broadband
7 9 (0.36%) Network Security
8 8 (0.32%) Multicast
8 8 (0.32%) TCP/IP
9 7 (0.28%) SSH
9 7 (0.28%) SSL
10 6 (0.24%) DHCP
10 6 (0.24%) SAN
11 5 (0.20%) HTTPS
12 4 (0.16%) IPv4
12 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
12 4 (0.16%) SMS
13 3 (0.12%) FTP
13 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
13 3 (0.12%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 423 (16.81%) Power BI
2 375 (14.90%) Data Warehouse
3 306 (12.16%) SQL Server
4 179 (7.11%) Relational Database
5 164 (6.52%) Data Lake
6 160 (6.36%) Tableau
7 153 (6.08%) Metadata
8 148 (5.88%) PostgreSQL
9 130 (5.16%) BigQuery
10 123 (4.89%) NoSQL
11 111 (4.41%) Oracle Database
12 102 (4.05%) Delta Lake
13 95 (3.77%) Azure SQL Database
14 87 (3.46%) Amazon Redshift
15 64 (2.54%) Star Schema
16 63 (2.50%) Power Query
16 63 (2.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 59 (2.34%) Snowflake Schema
18 57 (2.26%) Big Data
19 56 (2.22%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 306 (12.16%) Git
2 187 (7.43%) JIRA
3 129 (5.13%) Jenkins
4 87 (3.46%) GitLab
5 48 (1.91%) Gradle
6 46 (1.83%) Selenium
7 39 (1.55%) JUnit
8 31 (1.23%) Maven
9 29 (1.15%) SonarQube
10 26 (1.03%) Mockito
11 22 (0.87%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.83%) Visual Studio
13 20 (0.79%) MLflow
14 18 (0.72%) ERwin
14 18 (0.72%) Liquibase
14 18 (0.72%) Postman
15 17 (0.68%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
16 15 (0.60%) REST Assured
General
1 931 (36.99%) Finance
2 722 (28.68%) Social Skills
3 555 (22.05%) Analytical Skills
4 426 (16.92%) Banking
5 157 (6.24%) Public Sector
6 128 (5.09%) Front Office
7 115 (4.57%) Marketing
8 110 (4.37%) Investment Banking
9 76 (3.02%) Retail
10 66 (2.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (2.03%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.55%) Documentation Skills
13 35 (1.39%) Back Office
14 24 (0.95%) General Ledger
14 24 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
14 24 (0.95%) Legal
14 24 (0.95%) Presentation Skills
15 23 (0.91%) Local Government
15 23 (0.91%) Organisational Skills
15 23 (0.91%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 540 (21.45%) Developer
2 477 (18.95%) Data Engineer
3 433 (17.20%) Analyst
4 397 (15.77%) Senior
5 188 (7.47%) Lead
6 170 (6.75%) Data Analyst
7 154 (6.12%) Business Analyst
8 136 (5.40%) Architect
9 122 (4.85%) Senior Data Engineer
10 103 (4.09%) Consultant
11 94 (3.73%) Senior Developer
12 85 (3.38%) Java Developer
13 78 (3.10%) Software Engineer
14 77 (3.06%) Python Engineer
15 70 (2.78%) Python Developer
16 68 (2.70%) Azure Engineer
17 67 (2.66%) Full-Stack Developer
18 65 (2.58%) Data Architect
19 62 (2.46%) C# Developer
20 59 (2.34%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 275 (10.93%) .NET
2 251 (9.97%) Terraform
3 242 (9.61%) REST
4 211 (8.38%) PySpark
5 198 (7.87%) Kafka
6 146 (5.80%) React
7 130 (5.16%) Spring
8 115 (4.57%) Spring Boot
9 109 (4.33%) HTML
10 106 (4.21%) JSON
11 104 (4.13%) RESTful
12 99 (3.93%) CSS
13 87 (3.46%) XML
14 80 (3.18%) Pandas
15 78 (3.10%) AngularJS
16 63 (2.50%) Middleware
16 63 (2.50%) SOAP
17 61 (2.42%) Web Services
18 59 (2.34%) .NET Framework
19 57 (2.26%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 191 (7.59%) Cloud Native
2 137 (5.44%) Product Ownership
3 120 (4.77%) Data Structures
4 83 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
5 80 (3.18%) Distributed Systems
5 80 (3.18%) Onboarding
6 72 (2.86%) Derivative
7 64 (2.54%) Enterprise Software
8 58 (2.30%) Self-Motivation
9 55 (2.19%) Management Information System
10 50 (1.99%) AI Agents
11 47 (1.87%) Fixed Income
12 44 (1.75%) Analytical Mindset
13 40 (1.59%) Reference Data
14 38 (1.51%) Algorithms
14 38 (1.51%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 36 (1.43%) Equities
16 34 (1.35%) Replication
17 31 (1.23%) Greenfield Project
18 30 (1.19%) Data Protection Act
Operating Systems
1 170 (6.75%) Linux
2 139 (5.52%) Windows
3 107 (4.25%) Unix
4 34 (1.35%) 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 (0.079%) Amazon Linux
12 2 (0.079%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.079%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.040%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 759 (30.15%) CI/CD
2 686 (27.25%) Analytics
3 673 (26.74%) Data Modelling
4 671 (26.66%) Agile
5 538 (21.37%) DevOps
6 520 (20.66%) AI
6 520 (20.66%) Data Pipeline
7 518 (20.58%) ETL
8 509 (20.22%) Business Intelligence
9 490 (19.47%) Data Engineering
10 482 (19.15%) Problem-Solving
11 411 (16.33%) Stakeholder Management
12 381 (15.14%) Validation
13 337 (13.39%) Data Governance
14 331 (13.15%) Migration
15 329 (13.07%) Data Analysis
16 285 (11.32%) Decision-Making
17 266 (10.57%) Continuous Improvement
18 251 (9.97%) Test Automation
19 248 (9.85%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,094 (43.46%) Python
2 340 (13.51%) Java
3 307 (12.20%) C#
4 229 (9.10%) JavaScript
5 184 (7.31%) PL/SQL
6 139 (5.52%) TypeScript
7 118 (4.69%) T-SQL
8 112 (4.45%) PowerShell
9 97 (3.85%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 83 (3.30%) Shell Script
11 55 (2.19%) R
12 52 (2.07%) Scala
13 44 (1.75%) Bash
14 36 (1.43%) C++
15 31 (1.23%) VBA
16 18 (0.72%) Go
17 16 (0.64%) VB.NET
18 15 (0.60%) Korn
19 14 (0.56%) Groovy
20 12 (0.48%) VB
Qualifications
1 371 (14.74%) Security Cleared
2 314 (12.48%) SC Cleared
3 200 (7.95%) Degree
4 70 (2.78%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
6 43 (1.71%) Azure Certification
7 30 (1.19%) Master's Degree
8 28 (1.11%) AWS Certification
9 18 (0.72%) DV Cleared
10 17 (0.68%) ISTQB
11 12 (0.48%) FFIEC
11 12 (0.48%) Microsoft Certification
12 10 (0.40%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
12 10 (0.40%) DBS Check
12 10 (0.40%) ISEB
13 9 (0.36%) ACCA
13 9 (0.36%) CIMA
14 8 (0.32%) AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner
15 7 (0.28%) CISM
15 7 (0.28%) CISSP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 518 (20.58%) Data Quality
2 202 (8.03%) QA
3 78 (3.10%) GDPR
4 30 (1.19%) Accessibility
5 29 (1.15%) SLA
6 19 (0.75%) Actionable Recommendations
6 19 (0.75%) ISO 20022
7 17 (0.68%) NIST
8 16 (0.64%) IFRS
8 16 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 15 (0.60%) MiFID
10 11 (0.44%) COBIT
11 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
12 8 (0.32%) Solvency II
13 7 (0.28%) Basel III
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
System Software
1 243 (9.65%) Docker
2 36 (1.43%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.91%) 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 (0.079%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.079%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.079%) GridGain
8 2 (0.079%) Hyper-V
8 2 (0.079%) Squid
9 1 (0.040%) RACF
9 1 (0.040%) Varnish
9 1 (0.040%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 213 (8.46%) Kubernetes
2 41 (1.63%) Grafana
3 34 (1.35%) Ansible
4 29 (1.15%) Control-M
5 21 (0.83%) 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
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
9 7 (0.28%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.20%) systemd
11 4 (0.16%) Argo
11 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.16%) Istio
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 368 (14.62%) Microsoft
2 343 (13.63%) Databricks
3 338 (13.43%) Oracle
4 111 (4.41%) Google
5 64 (2.54%) Informatica
6 49 (1.95%) SAP
7 47 (1.87%) IBM
8 40 (1.59%) Salesforce
9 38 (1.51%) Bloomberg
10 34 (1.35%) Murex
11 32 (1.27%) ServiceNow
12 30 (1.19%) Citrix
13 25 (0.99%) VMware
14 23 (0.91%) Foundry
14 23 (0.91%) Splunk
15 22 (0.87%) Adobe
15 22 (0.87%) Sybase
15 22 (0.87%) Talend
16 21 (0.83%) Alteryx
16 21 (0.83%) OpenAI