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

6 months to
15 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 9 7
Rank change year-on-year -6 -2 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 2,497 1,901 2,287
As % of all contract jobs in London 12.33% 14.36% 14.22%
As % of the Programming Languages category 39.31% 37.31% 35.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,739 1,337 1,715
10th Percentile £363 £363 £363
25th Percentile £425 £413 £460
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £565
Median % change year-on-year - -7.08% -1.74%
75th Percentile £625 £675 £688
90th Percentile £725 £780 £775
England median daily rate £500 £500 £543
% change year-on-year - -7.83% -1.36%
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% +7.95%
75th Percentile £52.81 £56.56 £53.75
90th Percentile £53.75 £65.03 £64.25
England median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -15.00% +20.48% -2.72%

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 6,352 5,095 6,456
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in London 31.36% 38.48% 40.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,265 3,502 4,650
10th Percentile £379 £368 £363
25th Percentile £450 £425 £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 £825 £850
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 56 65 41
10th Percentile £26.52 £26.71 £25.25
25th Percentile £36.25 £33.25 £33.07
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 £61.43
90th Percentile £88.75 £87.00 £78.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +1.56%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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% 367
West London +10 70 £520 +27.84% 84
South London -9 41 £535 +12.63% 27
East London +4 16 £450 -10.00% 29
North London +5 6 £550 - 5
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
1 170 (6.81%) Apache Airflow
2 129 (5.17%) Apache Spark
3 102 (4.08%) Apache
4 84 (3.36%) Confluence
5 61 (2.44%) SharePoint
6 26 (1.04%) IIS
7 23 (0.92%) SAS
8 15 (0.60%) nginx
9 14 (0.56%) CMS
10 13 (0.52%) Camunda
10 13 (0.52%) Jupyter
10 13 (0.52%) Microsoft Exchange
10 13 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
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
1 152 (6.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (1.16%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (0.80%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 18 (0.72%) MS Visio
5 15 (0.60%) 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 (0.080%) Mingle
10 1 (0.040%) Mozilla Thunderbird
10 1 (0.040%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 24 (0.96%) Oracle EBS
2 21 (0.84%) Aladdin
2 21 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle ERP
3 17 (0.68%) Oracle Payables
4 15 (0.60%) Oracle General Ledger
5 14 (0.56%) Oracle Receivables
6 11 (0.44%) Summit
7 10 (0.40%) Finacle
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle EBS R12
7 10 (0.40%) Oracle FAH
7 10 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
8 9 (0.36%) Oracle Financials
8 9 (0.36%) SAP S/4HANA
9 8 (0.32%) Front Arena
10 7 (0.28%) Findur
10 7 (0.28%) OpenText MBPM
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle Assets
10 7 (0.28%) Oracle BPM
10 7 (0.28%) Unit4 Business World
Cloud Services
1 816 (32.68%) Azure
2 605 (24.23%) AWS
3 472 (18.90%) Power Platform
4 280 (11.21%) GCP
5 260 (10.41%) Snowflake
6 257 (10.29%) Azure DevOps
7 225 (9.01%) GitHub
8 221 (8.85%) dbt
9 166 (6.65%) Azure Data Factory
10 160 (6.41%) Serverless
11 151 (6.05%) Amazon S3
12 124 (4.97%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 113 (4.53%) GitHub Actions
14 112 (4.49%) AWS Lambda
15 54 (2.16%) PowerApps
15 54 (2.16%) SaaS
16 53 (2.12%) Azure Databricks
17 50 (2.00%) Power Automate
18 49 (1.96%) Amazon CloudWatch
19 47 (1.88%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 18 (0.72%) Internet
2 17 (0.68%) HTTP
3 16 (0.64%) DNS
4 15 (0.60%) Broadband
4 15 (0.60%) VPN
5 13 (0.52%) Firewall
6 9 (0.36%) Network Security
7 8 (0.32%) Multicast
7 8 (0.32%) TCP/IP
8 7 (0.28%) SSH
8 7 (0.28%) SSL
9 6 (0.24%) DHCP
9 6 (0.24%) SAN
10 5 (0.20%) HTTPS
11 4 (0.16%) IPv4
11 4 (0.16%) Kerberos
11 4 (0.16%) SMS
12 3 (0.12%) WinSCP
12 3 (0.12%) Wireless
13 2 (0.080%) Skype
Database & Business Intelligence
1 423 (16.94%) Power BI
2 372 (14.90%) Data Warehouse
3 303 (12.13%) SQL Server
4 179 (7.17%) Relational Database
5 160 (6.41%) Data Lake
6 159 (6.37%) Tableau
7 148 (5.93%) Metadata
8 146 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
9 131 (5.25%) BigQuery
10 124 (4.97%) NoSQL
11 109 (4.37%) Oracle Database
12 98 (3.92%) Delta Lake
13 90 (3.60%) Azure SQL Database
14 85 (3.40%) Amazon Redshift
15 63 (2.52%) Power Query
15 63 (2.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 61 (2.44%) Star Schema
17 59 (2.36%) Amazon Athena
18 57 (2.28%) Snowflake Schema
19 55 (2.20%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 308 (12.33%) Git
2 187 (7.49%) JIRA
3 127 (5.09%) Jenkins
4 87 (3.48%) GitLab
5 48 (1.92%) Gradle
6 46 (1.84%) Selenium
7 38 (1.52%) JUnit
8 32 (1.28%) Maven
9 29 (1.16%) SonarQube
10 25 (1.00%) Mockito
11 23 (0.92%) Bitbucket
12 21 (0.84%) Visual Studio
13 19 (0.76%) Postman
14 18 (0.72%) MLflow
15 17 (0.68%) Cypress.io
15 17 (0.68%) ERwin
15 17 (0.68%) Liquibase
15 17 (0.68%) Oracle Forms
16 15 (0.60%) ER Studio
16 15 (0.60%) REST Assured
General
1 927 (37.12%) Finance
2 721 (28.87%) Social Skills
3 554 (22.19%) Analytical Skills
4 427 (17.10%) Banking
5 157 (6.29%) Public Sector
6 128 (5.13%) Front Office
7 116 (4.65%) Marketing
8 110 (4.41%) Investment Banking
9 76 (3.04%) Retail
10 66 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 51 (2.04%) Financial Institution
12 39 (1.56%) Documentation Skills
13 36 (1.44%) Back Office
14 26 (1.04%) Legal
15 25 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
16 24 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
16 24 (0.96%) Presentation Skills
17 23 (0.92%) Local Government
18 22 (0.88%) General Ledger
19 21 (0.84%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 537 (21.51%) Developer
2 470 (18.82%) Data Engineer
3 432 (17.30%) Analyst
4 395 (15.82%) Senior
5 186 (7.45%) Lead
6 170 (6.81%) Data Analyst
7 153 (6.13%) Business Analyst
8 135 (5.41%) Architect
9 122 (4.89%) Senior Data Engineer
10 102 (4.08%) Consultant
11 93 (3.72%) Senior Developer
12 84 (3.36%) Java Developer
13 75 (3.00%) Python Engineer
13 75 (3.00%) Software Engineer
14 70 (2.80%) Python Developer
15 67 (2.68%) Azure Engineer
16 66 (2.64%) Full-Stack Developer
17 65 (2.60%) Data Architect
18 62 (2.48%) C# Developer
19 60 (2.40%) Snowflake Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 272 (10.89%) .NET
2 248 (9.93%) Terraform
3 238 (9.53%) REST
4 204 (8.17%) PySpark
5 197 (7.89%) Kafka
6 143 (5.73%) React
7 130 (5.21%) Spring
8 115 (4.61%) Spring Boot
9 108 (4.33%) HTML
10 106 (4.25%) JSON
11 104 (4.16%) RESTful
12 98 (3.92%) CSS
13 85 (3.40%) XML
14 77 (3.08%) AngularJS
14 77 (3.08%) Pandas
15 64 (2.56%) SOAP
16 63 (2.52%) Middleware
17 61 (2.44%) Web Services
18 58 (2.32%) .NET Framework
19 57 (2.28%) OAuth
Miscellaneous
1 186 (7.45%) Cloud Native
2 138 (5.53%) Product Ownership
3 121 (4.85%) Data Structures
4 80 (3.20%) Distributed Systems
4 80 (3.20%) Legacy Systems
4 80 (3.20%) Onboarding
5 74 (2.96%) Derivative
6 64 (2.56%) Enterprise Software
7 55 (2.20%) Self-Motivation
8 54 (2.16%) Management Information System
9 50 (2.00%) AI Agents
10 46 (1.84%) Fixed Income
11 44 (1.76%) Analytical Mindset
12 40 (1.60%) Reference Data
13 39 (1.56%) Algorithms
14 38 (1.52%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
15 37 (1.48%) Equities
16 32 (1.28%) Replication
17 30 (1.20%) Data Protection Act
17 30 (1.20%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 167 (6.69%) Linux
2 138 (5.53%) Windows
3 106 (4.25%) Unix
4 34 (1.36%) 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 (0.080%) 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
1 749 (30.00%) CI/CD
2 680 (27.23%) Analytics
3 665 (26.63%) Agile
4 664 (26.59%) Data Modelling
5 526 (21.07%) DevOps
6 521 (20.87%) AI
7 516 (20.66%) Data Pipeline
8 515 (20.62%) ETL
9 504 (20.18%) Business Intelligence
10 482 (19.30%) Data Engineering
10 482 (19.30%) Problem-Solving
11 411 (16.46%) Stakeholder Management
12 382 (15.30%) Validation
13 336 (13.46%) Data Governance
14 326 (13.06%) Data Analysis
15 324 (12.98%) Migration
16 284 (11.37%) Decision-Making
17 266 (10.65%) Continuous Improvement
18 251 (10.05%) Test Automation
19 246 (9.85%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,085 (43.45%) Python
2 337 (13.50%) Java
3 305 (12.21%) C#
4 228 (9.13%) JavaScript
5 183 (7.33%) PL/SQL
6 137 (5.49%) TypeScript
7 118 (4.73%) T-SQL
8 112 (4.49%) PowerShell
9 97 (3.88%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 82 (3.28%) Shell Script
11 54 (2.16%) R
12 52 (2.08%) Scala
13 44 (1.76%) Bash
14 35 (1.40%) C++
15 32 (1.28%) VBA
16 19 (0.76%) Go
17 16 (0.64%) VB.NET
18 15 (0.60%) Korn
19 14 (0.56%) Groovy
20 12 (0.48%) VB
Qualifications
1 367 (14.70%) Security Cleared
2 309 (12.37%) SC Cleared
3 196 (7.85%) Degree
4 66 (2.64%) Computer Science Degree
5 45 (1.80%) BPSS Clearance
6 41 (1.64%) Azure Certification
7 29 (1.16%) Master's Degree
8 27 (1.08%) 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
1 517 (20.70%) Data Quality
2 202 (8.09%) QA
3 77 (3.08%) GDPR
4 30 (1.20%) Accessibility
5 29 (1.16%) SLA
6 20 (0.80%) Actionable Recommendations
7 19 (0.76%) ISO 20022
8 17 (0.68%) NIST
9 16 (0.64%) IFRS
9 16 (0.64%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 15 (0.60%) MiFID
11 11 (0.44%) COBIT
12 9 (0.36%) Basel III
12 9 (0.36%) HIPAA
13 7 (0.28%) EMIR
13 7 (0.28%) Solvency II
14 6 (0.24%) ISO/IEC 27001
14 6 (0.24%) PMO
14 6 (0.24%) PSD2
14 6 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 241 (9.65%) Docker
2 36 (1.44%) Active Directory
3 23 (0.92%) 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 (0.080%) DFS Replication
8 2 (0.080%) Dovecot
8 2 (0.080%) GridGain
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
1 213 (8.53%) Kubernetes
2 40 (1.60%) Grafana
3 34 (1.36%) Ansible
4 29 (1.16%) Control-M
5 20 (0.80%) 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
8 8 (0.32%) Single Sign-On
9 7 (0.28%) Data Guard
10 5 (0.20%) HP Fortify
10 5 (0.20%) Istio
10 5 (0.20%) systemd
11 4 (0.16%) Argo
11 4 (0.16%) HP ALM
11 4 (0.16%) Kubeflow
11 4 (0.16%) Microsoft Intune
11 4 (0.16%) Packer
Vendors
1 366 (14.66%) Microsoft
2 339 (13.58%) Databricks
3 337 (13.50%) Oracle
4 112 (4.49%) Google
5 62 (2.48%) Informatica
6 47 (1.88%) SAP
7 46 (1.84%) IBM
8 40 (1.60%) Salesforce
9 39 (1.56%) Bloomberg
10 34 (1.36%) Murex
11 30 (1.20%) Citrix
11 30 (1.20%) ServiceNow
12 25 (1.00%) VMware
13 23 (0.92%) Alteryx
13 23 (0.92%) Foundry
13 23 (0.92%) Splunk
14 22 (0.88%) Adobe
14 22 (0.88%) Sybase
14 22 (0.88%) Talend
15 21 (0.84%) OpenAI