SQL Server Contracts

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SQL Server skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited SQL Server over the 6 months to 28 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
28 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 61 51 53
Rank change year-on-year -10 +2 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,376 2,379 4,162
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.21% 4.23% 4.72%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 18.82% 23.86% 23.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 963 1,824 3,167
10th Percentile £325 £375 £356
25th Percentile £400 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +2.44% +10.81%
75th Percentile £638 £661 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £493 £455
% change year-on-year -3.72% +8.43% +10.30%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 12 40
10th Percentile £36.75 £27.07 -
25th Percentile - £35.10 £20.75
Median hourly rate £40.00 £48.75 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.95% +0.52% +93.46%
75th Percentile £46.18 £75.63 £63.60
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £75.08
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £37.90 £51.03
% change year-on-year +5.55% -25.73% +103.54%

All Database and Business Intelligence Skills
UK

SQL Server is in the Databases and Business Intelligence category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 7,310 9,969 17,441
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.07% 17.72% 19.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,256 7,083 12,443
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £550
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.91% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £755 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 151 175 183
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.25
25th Percentile £20.77 £32.30 £22.45
Median hourly rate £40.00 £58.59 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.73% +30.20% +69.81%
75th Percentile £61.55 £73.75 £64.18
90th Percentile £72.50 £82.80 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £57.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -39.13% +64.29% +43.44%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SQL Server as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SQL Server.

Daily rate trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SQL Server.

Hourly rate trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL Server over the 6 months to 28 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Top 16 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL Server within the UK over the 6 months to 28 May 2024. 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
England -9 1,244 £505 -3.81% 1,104
London +2 822 £530 -7.83% 380
Work from Home -6 541 £500 -4.76% 841
UK excluding London -42 435 £475 -3.72% 757
North of England -14 108 £475 -2.56% 222
South East -52 103 £475 -6.40% 136
Midlands +1 90 £450 +2.86% 186
North West -12 73 £463 -1.33% 119
South West -22 73 £538 +7.50% 94
West Midlands -18 46 £518 +0.24% 113
East Midlands +7 41 £445 +14.84% 73
Scotland -20 35 £475 - 36
Yorkshire -15 25 £450 -10.00% 67
East of England -30 23 £475 +5.56% 68
North East +16 10 £475 -13.64% 38
Wales -1 10 £563 +7.14% 15

SQL Server
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 70 (5.09%) SharePoint
2 39 (2.83%) IIS
3 26 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (1.82%) Confluence
5 24 (1.74%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 16 (1.16%) Apache Spark
8 12 (0.87%) Tomcat
9 11 (0.80%) JBoss
10 9 (0.65%) nginx
11 7 (0.51%) SAS
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
12 6 (0.44%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
13 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
14 2 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
14 2 (0.15%) Jadu
14 2 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
Applications
1 63 (4.58%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (1.89%) Microsoft Office
3 20 (1.45%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.073%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.073%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.073%) PTC Creo
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 19 (1.38%) Teamcenter
2 17 (1.24%) Endur
3 16 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 9 (0.65%) Temenos T24
6 8 (0.58%) DELMIA
7 6 (0.44%) OPENHousing
8 5 (0.36%) NEC Housing
9 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
9 4 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
10 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
11 2 (0.15%) BusinessWorks
11 2 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
11 2 (0.15%) Relativity
11 2 (0.15%) Remedy AR System
11 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
11 2 (0.15%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 2 (0.15%) Visualfiles
12 1 (0.073%) SAP ERP
12 1 (0.073%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 641 (46.58%) Azure
2 279 (20.28%) Azure DevOps
3 220 (15.99%) Power Platform
4 171 (12.43%) AWS
5 97 (7.05%) Entra ID
6 86 (6.25%) Azure Service Bus
6 86 (6.25%) Microsoft 365
7 78 (5.67%) Azure Data Factory
8 77 (5.60%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 72 (5.23%) GitHub
10 63 (4.58%) PowerApps
11 54 (3.92%) Power Automate
12 49 (3.56%) Azure Monitor
12 49 (3.56%) Serverless
13 41 (2.98%) Azure Functions
14 39 (2.83%) PaaS
15 33 (2.40%) Azure Logic Apps
16 29 (2.11%) SaaS
16 29 (2.11%) Snowflake
17 25 (1.82%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 49 (3.56%) Firewall
2 43 (3.13%) DNS
3 26 (1.89%) SAN
4 22 (1.60%) DHCP
4 22 (1.60%) Internet
5 17 (1.24%) LAN
5 17 (1.24%) WAN
6 15 (1.09%) FTP
7 14 (1.02%) NAS
8 12 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
9 8 (0.58%) MPLS
10 6 (0.44%) SSH
10 6 (0.44%) SSL
10 6 (0.44%) TCP/IP
10 6 (0.44%) VPN
11 5 (0.36%) Network Security
12 4 (0.29%) Cisco IOS
12 4 (0.29%) HTTP
12 4 (0.29%) VLAN
12 4 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (14.24%) Power BI
2 142 (10.32%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 139 (10.10%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (10.03%) Relational Database
5 115 (8.36%) MySQL
6 101 (7.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 90 (6.54%) PostgreSQL
8 62 (4.51%) NoSQL
9 60 (4.36%) Azure SQL Database
10 57 (4.14%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 55 (4.00%) Oracle Database
12 44 (3.20%) Metadata
13 41 (2.98%) RDBMS
14 40 (2.91%) Data Lake
15 39 (2.83%) MongoDB
16 36 (2.62%) Oracle Reports
17 32 (2.33%) Tableau
18 30 (2.18%) Microsoft Analysis Services
19 23 (1.67%) Redis
20 22 (1.60%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 136 (9.88%) Git
2 80 (5.81%) JIRA
3 55 (4.00%) Visual Studio
4 49 (3.56%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.98%) SpecFlow
6 37 (2.69%) Selenium
7 32 (2.33%) TeamCity
8 30 (2.18%) GitLab
8 30 (2.18%) Jenkins
9 23 (1.67%) Team Foundation Server
10 19 (1.38%) WebDriver
11 16 (1.16%) Bitbucket
12 15 (1.09%) JMeter
13 14 (1.02%) Octopus Deploy
14 10 (0.73%) ERwin
14 10 (0.73%) Postman
14 10 (0.73%) SonarQube
15 9 (0.65%) Cucumber
15 9 (0.65%) NUnit
16 8 (0.58%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 305 (22.17%) Social Skills
2 287 (20.86%) Finance
3 150 (10.90%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (10.17%) Public Sector
5 123 (8.94%) Banking
6 50 (3.63%) Back Office
7 36 (2.62%) Front Office
8 32 (2.33%) Investment Banking
9 29 (2.11%) Financial Institution
10 28 (2.03%) Manufacturing
11 23 (1.67%) Marketing
11 23 (1.67%) Telecoms
12 21 (1.53%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Local Government
14 17 (1.24%) Legal
15 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
15 16 (1.16%) Retail
16 15 (1.09%) Publishing
17 14 (1.02%) Electronics
18 13 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 551 (40.04%) Developer
2 222 (16.13%) Senior
3 145 (10.54%) Senior Developer
4 133 (9.67%) .NET Developer
5 123 (8.94%) C# Developer
6 96 (6.98%) Architect
7 93 (6.76%) Analyst
8 90 (6.54%) Data Engineer
9 86 (6.25%) DBA
10 71 (5.16%) Software Developer
11 70 (5.09%) SQL DBA
12 62 (4.51%) SQL Developer
13 60 (4.36%) Lead
14 56 (4.07%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 55 (4.00%) Azure Developer
16 53 (3.85%) Administrator
17 50 (3.63%) Consultant
17 50 (3.63%) Full Stack Developer
17 50 (3.63%) Senior Software Developer
18 43 (3.13%) Business Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 444 (32.27%) .NET
2 168 (12.21%) XML
3 149 (10.83%) HTML
4 146 (10.61%) .NET Core
5 140 (10.17%) .NET Framework
6 110 (7.99%) ASP.NET
7 107 (7.78%) AngularJS
8 106 (7.70%) CSS
9 99 (7.19%) React
10 67 (4.87%) Web Services
11 57 (4.14%) REST
12 52 (3.78%) Entity Framework
13 46 (3.34%) Kafka
13 46 (3.34%) SOAP
14 43 (3.13%) RESTful
15 41 (2.98%) JSON
16 39 (2.83%) WCF
17 37 (2.69%) SailPoint
18 36 (2.62%) jQuery
19 33 (2.40%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 72 (5.23%) Onboarding
2 69 (5.01%) Product Ownership
3 55 (4.00%) Replication
4 48 (3.49%) Clustering
5 28 (2.03%) Public Cloud
6 27 (1.96%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.74%) Client/Server
7 24 (1.74%) Management Information System
8 23 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
9 20 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
9 20 (1.45%) Hedge funds
10 17 (1.24%) Cloud Native
10 17 (1.24%) Derivative
11 16 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
12 15 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
12 15 (1.09%) PKI
12 15 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.02%) Data Structures
14 13 (0.94%) Blog
14 13 (0.94%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 287 (20.86%) Windows
2 137 (9.96%) Windows Server
3 134 (9.74%) Linux
4 63 (4.58%) Unix
5 46 (3.34%) Windows Server 2016
6 45 (3.27%) Windows Server 2019
7 36 (2.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 25 (1.82%) Windows 10
9 19 (1.38%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (0.65%) Android
10 9 (0.65%) Windows 7
10 9 (0.65%) zOS
11 8 (0.58%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.58%) VMS
11 8 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
12 7 (0.51%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.44%) CentOS
14 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
14 2 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 2 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 430 (31.25%) Agile
2 397 (28.85%) DevOps
3 220 (15.99%) Business Intelligence
4 196 (14.24%) Problem-Solving
5 192 (13.95%) Scrum
6 189 (13.74%) CI/CD
7 180 (13.08%) Migration
8 161 (11.70%) ETL
9 143 (10.39%) Data Modelling
10 119 (8.65%) TDD
11 97 (7.05%) OO
12 92 (6.69%) Disaster Recovery
13 87 (6.32%) SDLC
14 86 (6.25%) Test Automation
15 83 (6.03%) MVC
16 81 (5.89%) Analytics
17 80 (5.81%) Computer Science
18 78 (5.67%) High Availability
19 77 (5.60%) Data Analysis
19 77 (5.60%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 726 (52.76%) SQL
2 515 (37.43%) C#
3 277 (20.13%) PowerShell
4 171 (12.43%) JavaScript
5 147 (10.68%) T-SQL
6 141 (10.25%) Python
7 129 (9.38%) Java
8 102 (7.41%) Bicep
9 83 (6.03%) PL/SQL
10 61 (4.43%) TypeScript
11 29 (2.11%) Bash
11 29 (2.11%) VBA
12 27 (1.96%) Shell Script
13 22 (1.60%) C
13 22 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 22 (1.60%) VB
14 18 (1.31%) VB.NET
15 17 (1.24%) PHP
16 14 (1.02%) C++
17 11 (0.80%) Perl
Qualifications
1 193 (14.03%) Security Cleared
2 155 (11.26%) Degree
3 113 (8.21%) SC Cleared
4 62 (4.51%) DV Cleared
5 49 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 18 (1.31%) Master's Degree
8 16 (1.16%) Azure Certification
8 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.02%) MCSE
10 11 (0.80%) ISTQB
11 8 (0.58%) MCITP
11 8 (0.58%) MCTS
12 6 (0.44%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 5 (0.36%) CISSP
13 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
14 4 (0.29%) ISEB
15 3 (0.22%) PRINCE2 Certification
15 3 (0.22%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (8.50%) QA
2 46 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 37 (2.69%) Accessibility
4 26 (1.89%) WCAG
5 14 (1.02%) SLA
6 13 (0.94%) GDPR
6 13 (0.94%) MiFID
7 7 (0.51%) EMIR
8 5 (0.36%) Dodd-Frank
8 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 4 (0.29%) NIST
10 3 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.15%) GxP
11 2 (0.15%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.15%) HL7
11 2 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 276 (20.06%) Active Directory
2 51 (3.71%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (3.42%) Docker
4 28 (2.03%) IAG
5 25 (1.82%) ACF2
5 25 (1.82%) RACF
6 24 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.87%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.80%) vSphere
9 10 (0.73%) Virtual Servers
9 10 (0.73%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
11 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
11 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
11 3 (0.22%) VMware NSX
12 2 (0.15%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.15%) VirtualBox
13 1 (0.073%) Citrix Presentation Server
13 1 (0.073%) KVM
13 1 (0.073%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 57 (4.14%) Kubernetes
2 55 (4.00%) Terraform
3 47 (3.42%) Ansible
4 40 (2.91%) SCCM
5 31 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (1.53%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 21 (1.53%) Microsoft Clustering
6 21 (1.53%) Puppet
7 18 (1.31%) Progress Chef
8 15 (1.09%) Grafana
9 14 (1.02%) Nagios
9 14 (1.02%) Prometheus
10 11 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
10 11 (0.80%) Nessus
11 10 (0.73%) Graylog
11 10 (0.73%) SCOM
12 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.51%) Red Hat Satellite
14 7 (0.51%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 541 (39.32%) Microsoft
2 303 (22.02%) Oracle
3 74 (5.38%) VMware
4 54 (3.92%) SAP
5 53 (3.85%) ServiceNow
6 42 (3.05%) Databricks
6 42 (3.05%) Sybase
7 36 (2.62%) Red Hat
8 33 (2.40%) Informatica
9 32 (2.33%) Citrix
10 25 (1.82%) Veeam
11 21 (1.53%) CyberArk
11 21 (1.53%) Splunk
12 19 (1.38%) Sparx
13 18 (1.31%) Salesforce
14 17 (1.24%) CA
14 17 (1.24%) IBM
15 14 (1.02%) Qualys
16 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
16 13 (0.94%) Cisco