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 27 April 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
27 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 62 52 51
Rank change year-on-year -10 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,382 2,621 4,302
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.19% 4.38% 4.84%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 19.08% 24.31% 24.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 942 1,981 3,256
10th Percentile £331 £375 £351
25th Percentile £400 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +2.34% +14.00%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £632
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -1.03% +7.78% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 24 43
10th Percentile £20.77 £26.32 £20.75
25th Percentile £37.63 £35.00 £21.63
Median hourly rate £40.00 £44.32 £46.67
Median % change year-on-year -9.74% -5.05% +66.68%
75th Percentile £51.91 £75.63 £60.00
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £67.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £35.00 £46.67
% change year-on-year +14.29% -25.01% +79.50%

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 7,245 10,781 17,916
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 18.03% 20.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,147 7,685 12,759
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -0.92% +9.00%
75th Percentile £650 £658 £650
90th Percentile £763 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £500 £488
% change year-on-year -3.40% +2.56% +9.86%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 185 187
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.98 £35.00 £22.40
Median hourly rate £40.00 £60.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +41.18% +57.52%
75th Percentile £58.55 £71.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £79.19 £69.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £57.50 £35.00
% change year-on-year -30.43% +64.29% +45.83%

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 27 April 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 27 April 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Top 17 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 27 April 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 -10 1,227 £525 -0.94% 1,030
London +5 830 £540 -6.09% 353
Work from Home -9 568 £500 -4.76% 762
UK excluding London -38 431 £480 -1.03% 737
North of England -20 104 £475 -5.00% 191
South East -52 100 £463 -7.50% 159
South West -24 70 £550 +8.64% 89
Midlands -20 69 £482 +13.41% 163
North West -25 63 £475 -5.00% 103
Scotland -7 55 £525 +10.53% 50
West Midlands +1 43 £463 -9.76% 98
Yorkshire -7 31 £450 -10.00% 63
East of England -37 25 £475 +5.56% 78
East Midlands -10 23 £490 +22.38% 65
Wales 0 11 £500 -4.76% 14
North East +22 10 £475 -5.00% 26
Northern Ireland -2 1 - - 13

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 73 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 41 (2.97%) IIS
3 31 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (1.95%) Confluence
5 23 (1.66%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 18 (1.30%) Apache Spark
8 13 (0.94%) Tomcat
9 12 (0.87%) nginx
10 10 (0.72%) JBoss
10 10 (0.72%) SAS
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
12 6 (0.43%) Tornado
13 4 (0.29%) Appian
13 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
13 4 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
14 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
14 3 (0.22%) WordPress
Applications
1 75 (5.43%) Microsoft Excel
2 33 (2.39%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.59%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 4 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.072%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 19 (1.37%) Teamcenter
2 18 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 18 (1.30%) Endur
3 10 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 9 (0.65%) Temenos T24
5 8 (0.58%) DELMIA
6 5 (0.36%) OPENHousing
7 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
8 3 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
8 3 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.22%) Sage X3
8 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.14%) BusinessWorks
9 2 (0.14%) Dynamics NAV
9 2 (0.14%) Oracle Receivables
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
9 2 (0.14%) Visualfiles
10 1 (0.072%) Sage 200
10 1 (0.072%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 626 (45.30%) Azure
2 264 (19.10%) Azure DevOps
3 203 (14.69%) Power Platform
4 166 (12.01%) AWS
5 90 (6.51%) Microsoft 365
6 83 (6.01%) Entra ID
7 78 (5.64%) Azure Data Factory
8 77 (5.57%) GitHub
9 73 (5.28%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 70 (5.07%) Azure Service Bus
11 62 (4.49%) Serverless
12 53 (3.84%) PowerApps
13 52 (3.76%) Azure Functions
14 50 (3.62%) Power Automate
15 47 (3.40%) Azure Monitor
16 39 (2.82%) PaaS
17 33 (2.39%) Azure Logic Apps
17 33 (2.39%) GCP
18 31 (2.24%) Snowflake
19 27 (1.95%) Dynamics 365
Communications & Networking
1 56 (4.05%) Firewall
2 51 (3.69%) DNS
3 35 (2.53%) SAN
4 25 (1.81%) DHCP
5 24 (1.74%) WAN
6 22 (1.59%) LAN
7 17 (1.23%) Internet
8 15 (1.09%) FTP
8 15 (1.09%) NAS
9 11 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.72%) VPN
11 9 (0.65%) Wireless
12 8 (0.58%) MPLS
12 8 (0.58%) TCP/IP
13 6 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
13 6 (0.43%) HTTP
13 6 (0.43%) SSL
14 5 (0.36%) Network Security
15 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
16 3 (0.22%) iSCSI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 175 (12.66%) Power BI
2 163 (11.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 136 (9.84%) Data Warehouse
4 131 (9.48%) Relational Database
5 119 (8.61%) MySQL
6 118 (8.54%) PostgreSQL
7 113 (8.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 64 (4.63%) Oracle Database
9 61 (4.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 58 (4.20%) Azure SQL Database
11 56 (4.05%) NoSQL
12 45 (3.26%) Data Lake
13 42 (3.04%) Oracle Reports
14 40 (2.89%) MongoDB
14 40 (2.89%) RDBMS
15 37 (2.68%) Metadata
16 35 (2.53%) Tableau
17 30 (2.17%) Microsoft Analysis Services
18 23 (1.66%) Big Data
19 16 (1.16%) Qlik Sense
Development Applications
1 152 (11.00%) Git
2 97 (7.02%) JIRA
3 57 (4.12%) Visual Studio
4 48 (3.47%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 43 (3.11%) Jenkins
6 39 (2.82%) SpecFlow
7 37 (2.68%) Selenium
8 36 (2.60%) TeamCity
9 30 (2.17%) GitLab
10 21 (1.52%) Postman
11 20 (1.45%) Team Foundation Server
12 18 (1.30%) WebDriver
13 17 (1.23%) Bitbucket
13 17 (1.23%) Octopus Deploy
14 15 (1.09%) Maven
15 14 (1.01%) SoapUI
16 13 (0.94%) JMeter
17 11 (0.80%) ERwin
17 11 (0.80%) NUnit
17 11 (0.80%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 293 (21.20%) Finance
2 286 (20.69%) Social Skills
3 151 (10.93%) Analytical Skills
4 146 (10.56%) Public Sector
5 126 (9.12%) Banking
6 47 (3.40%) Back Office
7 35 (2.53%) Manufacturing
8 31 (2.24%) Front Office
9 30 (2.17%) Financial Institution
9 30 (2.17%) Investment Banking
10 29 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
11 26 (1.88%) Marketing
11 26 (1.88%) Telecoms
12 19 (1.37%) Retail
13 18 (1.30%) Electronics
14 17 (1.23%) Local Government
15 16 (1.16%) Publishing
16 13 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
17 9 (0.65%) Legal
17 9 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 553 (40.01%) Developer
2 226 (16.35%) Senior
3 137 (9.91%) .NET Developer
3 137 (9.91%) Senior Developer
4 129 (9.33%) C# Developer
5 97 (7.02%) Architect
6 95 (6.87%) Analyst
6 95 (6.87%) DBA
7 85 (6.15%) Data Engineer
8 73 (5.28%) SQL DBA
9 66 (4.78%) SQL Developer
10 65 (4.70%) Software Developer
11 62 (4.49%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 61 (4.41%) Lead
13 54 (3.91%) C# .NET Developer
14 53 (3.84%) Azure Developer
15 47 (3.40%) Administrator
15 47 (3.40%) Senior Software Developer
16 44 (3.18%) Full Stack Developer
17 43 (3.11%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 417 (30.17%) .NET
2 161 (11.65%) XML
3 143 (10.35%) .NET Framework
4 140 (10.13%) .NET Core
5 130 (9.41%) HTML
6 112 (8.10%) AngularJS
7 97 (7.02%) ASP.NET
8 91 (6.58%) CSS
9 78 (5.64%) React
10 65 (4.70%) Web Services
11 64 (4.63%) REST
12 54 (3.91%) SOAP
13 51 (3.69%) JSON
14 48 (3.47%) Entity Framework
15 45 (3.26%) Kafka
16 39 (2.82%) RESTful
17 37 (2.68%) SailPoint
17 37 (2.68%) WCF
18 36 (2.60%) jQuery
18 36 (2.60%) LDAP
Miscellaneous
1 66 (4.78%) Product Ownership
2 60 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 58 (4.20%) Replication
4 44 (3.18%) Clustering
5 28 (2.03%) Data Centre
6 25 (1.81%) Public Cloud
7 24 (1.74%) Cloud Native
8 23 (1.66%) Client/Server
8 23 (1.66%) Distributed Systems
9 22 (1.59%) Derivative
9 22 (1.59%) Hedge funds
9 22 (1.59%) Management Information System
10 18 (1.30%) PKI
11 17 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
12 16 (1.16%) Data Protection Act
13 15 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.01%) NHS
15 13 (0.94%) Blog
15 13 (0.94%) Equity Derivative
16 12 (0.87%) Data Structures
Operating Systems
1 257 (18.60%) Windows
2 133 (9.62%) Windows Server
3 123 (8.90%) Linux
4 54 (3.91%) Unix
5 51 (3.69%) Windows Server 2019
6 46 (3.33%) Windows Server 2016
7 32 (2.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 27 (1.95%) Windows 10
9 22 (1.59%) Windows Server 2012
10 11 (0.80%) Ubuntu
10 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2008
11 9 (0.65%) VMS
11 9 (0.65%) Windows 7
12 8 (0.58%) Android
13 6 (0.43%) CentOS
14 5 (0.36%) Apple iOS
14 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
14 5 (0.36%) zOS
15 2 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 445 (32.20%) Agile
2 397 (28.73%) DevOps
3 220 (15.92%) Business Intelligence
4 203 (14.69%) Migration
5 191 (13.82%) Scrum
6 189 (13.68%) CI/CD
7 187 (13.53%) Problem-Solving
8 165 (11.94%) ETL
9 136 (9.84%) Data Modelling
10 122 (8.83%) TDD
11 100 (7.24%) OO
12 94 (6.80%) Disaster Recovery
13 87 (6.30%) MVC
14 85 (6.15%) SDLC
15 84 (6.08%) Data Analysis
16 82 (5.93%) Software Engineering
17 78 (5.64%) Test Automation
18 76 (5.50%) Analytics
19 72 (5.21%) Data Migration
19 72 (5.21%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 754 (54.56%) SQL
2 504 (36.47%) C#
3 273 (19.75%) PowerShell
4 176 (12.74%) JavaScript
5 158 (11.43%) T-SQL
6 150 (10.85%) Python
7 130 (9.41%) Java
8 89 (6.44%) PL/SQL
9 86 (6.22%) Bicep
10 53 (3.84%) TypeScript
11 33 (2.39%) VBA
12 29 (2.10%) Bash
13 28 (2.03%) VB.NET
14 25 (1.81%) VB
15 21 (1.52%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 21 (1.52%) Shell Script
16 16 (1.16%) C
17 14 (1.01%) PHP
18 13 (0.94%) C++
19 10 (0.72%) XPath
Qualifications
1 196 (14.18%) Security Cleared
2 136 (9.84%) Degree
3 114 (8.25%) SC Cleared
4 65 (4.70%) DV Cleared
5 44 (3.18%) Computer Science Degree
6 25 (1.81%) Microsoft Certification
7 14 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.01%) Master's Degree
7 14 (1.01%) MCSE
8 13 (0.94%) Azure Certification
9 12 (0.87%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.43%) CCNP
10 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
10 6 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (0.36%) CCNA
11 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
12 4 (0.29%) ISEB
13 3 (0.22%) CISSP
13 3 (0.22%) MCITP
13 3 (0.22%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 112 (8.10%) QA
2 58 (4.20%) Data Quality
3 39 (2.82%) Accessibility
4 26 (1.88%) WCAG
5 13 (0.94%) GDPR
5 13 (0.94%) SLA
6 11 (0.80%) MiFID
7 5 (0.36%) EMIR
8 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 3 (0.22%) Dodd-Frank
9 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 2 (0.14%) Cyber Essentials
10 2 (0.14%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.14%) IFRS
10 2 (0.14%) IFRS 17
10 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 2 (0.14%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 2 (0.14%) NIST
10 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.14%) Solvency II
System Software
1 255 (18.45%) Active Directory
2 48 (3.47%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (3.40%) Docker
4 33 (2.39%) IAG
5 28 (2.03%) ACF2
5 28 (2.03%) RACF
6 22 (1.59%) Virtual Machines
7 15 (1.09%) vSphere
8 13 (0.94%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (0.65%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
11 5 (0.36%) VMware NSX
12 4 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
13 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
14 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
15 1 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
15 1 (0.072%) HDFS
15 1 (0.072%) KVM
15 1 (0.072%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 58 (4.20%) Kubernetes
2 57 (4.12%) Terraform
3 48 (3.47%) Ansible
4 43 (3.11%) SCCM
5 28 (2.03%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 25 (1.81%) Single Sign-On
7 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Clustering
8 19 (1.37%) Puppet
9 18 (1.30%) Grafana
10 16 (1.16%) Nagios
11 15 (1.09%) Progress Chef
11 15 (1.09%) Prometheus
12 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
13 11 (0.80%) Graylog
13 11 (0.80%) Nessus
14 9 (0.65%) Data Guard
15 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
15 8 (0.58%) vCenter Server
16 6 (0.43%) HP Fortify
16 6 (0.43%) WebInspect
Vendors
1 513 (37.12%) Microsoft
2 308 (22.29%) Oracle
3 78 (5.64%) VMware
4 58 (4.20%) SAP
5 55 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.91%) Databricks
7 44 (3.18%) Sybase
8 39 (2.82%) Red Hat
9 33 (2.39%) Citrix
10 32 (2.32%) Veeam
11 29 (2.10%) Informatica
12 22 (1.59%) Sparx
13 21 (1.52%) IBM
13 21 (1.52%) Splunk
14 18 (1.30%) Cisco
15 17 (1.23%) Salesforce
16 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
16 13 (0.94%) CA
16 13 (0.94%) HP
17 12 (0.87%) OpenLink