SQL Server Contracts

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
UK

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies requiring SQL Server skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SQL Server over the 6 months leading up to 31 October 2024, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Oct 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 68 58 50
Rank change year-on-year -10 -8 +4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,108 1,679 4,034
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.03% 3.56% 4.96%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 17.18% 21.24% 25.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 792 1,217 2,999
10th Percentile £310 £359 £363
25th Percentile £400 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - +7.58%
75th Percentile £623 £650 £650
90th Percentile £713 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £500 £475
% change year-on-year -10.00% +5.26% +11.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 22 30
10th Percentile £20.76 £19.52 £16.63
25th Percentile £29.04 £29.75 £23.41
Median hourly rate £54.00 £52.50 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +2.86% +5.00% +20.55%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £74.88
90th Percentile £75.50 £69.44 £76.97
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £49.34 £35.00
% change year-on-year -18.93% +40.97% -21.35%

All Database and Business Intelligence Skills
UK

SQL Server falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 6,448 7,904 16,106
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.63% 16.76% 19.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,310 5,520 11,295
10th Percentile £340 £355 £388
25th Percentile £425 £438 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £527 £535 £550
Median % change year-on-year -1.45% -2.73% +4.76%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £663
90th Percentile £775 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - +8.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 88 159 159
10th Percentile £17.85 £16.93 £15.79
25th Percentile £21.81 £24.00 £21.79
Median hourly rate £31.55 £47.90 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year -34.14% -4.21% +42.86%
75th Percentile £54.69 £70.00 £66.75
90th Percentile £67.13 £78.75 £75.34
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £46.84 £42.50
% change year-on-year -35.95% +10.21% +41.67%

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 31 October 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 31 October 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 31 October 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 -10 971 £513 -4.65% 741
London -9 601 £550 -3.72% 226
Work from Home -8 410 £488 -7.14% 464
UK excluding London -21 381 £450 -10.00% 553
South East -5 118 £500 -4.76% 137
Midlands +7 98 £411 -13.47% 108
North of England -32 60 £481 +6.94% 162
South West -10 53 £469 -14.77% 56
East Midlands +25 50 £383 -19.37% 40
West Midlands -14 47 £567 +21.94% 68
North West -19 40 £444 -4.00% 85
East of England -12 25 £375 -25.00% 74
Scotland -9 22 £433 -17.52% 18
Yorkshire -8 19 £562 +49.73% 56
Wales -6 12 £388 -8.82% 19
Northern Ireland -4 4 - - 5
North East -12 1 - - 22

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 69 (6.23%) SharePoint
2 40 (3.61%) Confluence
3 38 (3.43%) IIS
4 35 (3.16%) Microsoft Exchange
5 29 (2.62%) Apache Spark
6 17 (1.53%) Apache
7 15 (1.35%) Umbraco
8 11 (0.99%) CMS
9 9 (0.81%) Exchange Server 2013
10 8 (0.72%) Apache Airflow
10 8 (0.72%) Tomcat
11 6 (0.54%) Skype for Business
12 5 (0.45%) JBoss
13 4 (0.36%) Drupal
13 4 (0.36%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 4 (0.36%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 4 (0.36%) WordPress
14 3 (0.27%) SAS
14 3 (0.27%) SharePoint Server
14 3 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 40 (3.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 13 (1.17%) Microsoft Office
3 3 (0.27%) Adobe Captivate
3 3 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
4 1 (0.090%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.090%) InfoPath
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.090%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.090%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.090%) PTC Creo
4 1 (0.090%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 37 (3.34%) Dynamics CRM
2 13 (1.17%) NEC Housing
3 8 (0.72%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.63%) Endur
5 3 (0.27%) MIS ActiveH
5 3 (0.27%) OPENHousing
5 3 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
6 2 (0.18%) Academy Housing
6 2 (0.18%) Dynamics NAV
6 2 (0.18%) Oracle BPM
6 2 (0.18%) Orchard Housing
6 2 (0.18%) Relativity
6 2 (0.18%) Remedy ITSM
6 2 (0.18%) SAP ERP
6 2 (0.18%) SystmOne
6 2 (0.18%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 1 (0.090%) Adobe Campaign
7 1 (0.090%) Maximo
7 1 (0.090%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.090%) SimCorp Dimension
Cloud Services
1 522 (47.11%) Azure
2 173 (15.61%) Power Platform
3 128 (11.55%) AWS
4 127 (11.46%) Azure DevOps
5 76 (6.86%) Microsoft 365
6 65 (5.87%) PowerApps
7 63 (5.69%) Serverless
8 53 (4.78%) Azure Functions
8 53 (4.78%) Azure Service Bus
9 49 (4.42%) Azure Data Factory
10 46 (4.15%) Dynamics 365
10 46 (4.15%) Entra ID
11 44 (3.97%) GitHub
12 42 (3.79%) Power Automate
13 40 (3.61%) GCP
14 39 (3.52%) Azure Logic Apps
15 35 (3.16%) SaaS
16 34 (3.07%) PaaS
17 33 (2.98%) Azure Synapse Analytics
18 32 (2.89%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 32 (2.89%) Internet
2 30 (2.71%) Firewall
3 27 (2.44%) DNS
4 22 (1.99%) DHCP
5 18 (1.62%) LAN
5 18 (1.62%) WAN
6 15 (1.35%) SAN
7 11 (0.99%) TCP/IP
8 10 (0.90%) SSL
9 9 (0.81%) HTTP
9 9 (0.81%) VPN
10 8 (0.72%) FTP
10 8 (0.72%) VLAN
11 7 (0.63%) NAS
11 7 (0.63%) Network Security
12 6 (0.54%) Skype
13 5 (0.45%) SSH
14 4 (0.36%) MPLS
14 4 (0.36%) Wi-Fi
14 4 (0.36%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 155 (13.99%) Power BI
2 118 (10.65%) Relational Database
3 113 (10.20%) Data Warehouse
4 110 (9.93%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 100 (9.03%) Azure SQL Database
6 96 (8.66%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 83 (7.49%) PostgreSQL
8 80 (7.22%) MySQL
9 66 (5.96%) NoSQL
10 63 (5.69%) Oracle Database
11 55 (4.96%) Data Lake
12 53 (4.78%) RDBMS
13 47 (4.24%) MongoDB
14 33 (2.98%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 29 (2.62%) Redis
16 26 (2.35%) Big Data
17 24 (2.17%) DB2
18 21 (1.90%) Star Schema
19 18 (1.62%) Power Query
19 18 (1.62%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 108 (9.75%) Git
2 59 (5.32%) JIRA
3 51 (4.60%) Visual Studio
4 38 (3.43%) Jenkins
5 35 (3.16%) GitLab
6 27 (2.44%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 22 (1.99%) Team Foundation Server
8 20 (1.81%) TeamCity
9 18 (1.62%) Bitbucket
10 14 (1.26%) Maven
11 13 (1.17%) Visual Studio Team System
12 11 (0.99%) SpecFlow
13 10 (0.90%) Octopus Deploy
14 9 (0.81%) Artifactory
14 9 (0.81%) SoapUI
15 8 (0.72%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 8 (0.72%) Cucumber
16 7 (0.63%) JMeter
16 7 (0.63%) SonarQube
16 7 (0.63%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 287 (25.90%) Social Skills
2 235 (21.21%) Finance
3 138 (12.45%) Banking
4 137 (12.36%) Analytical Skills
5 105 (9.48%) Public Sector
6 34 (3.07%) Marketing
7 28 (2.53%) Front Office
7 28 (2.53%) Investment Banking
8 26 (2.35%) Telecoms
9 23 (2.08%) Legal
10 19 (1.71%) Manufacturing
11 18 (1.62%) Back Office
12 14 (1.26%) Electronics
13 13 (1.17%) Local Government
14 10 (0.90%) Influencing Skills
14 10 (0.90%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (0.72%) Law
15 8 (0.72%) Retail
16 6 (0.54%) Financial Institution
16 6 (0.54%) Retail Banking
Job Titles
1 440 (39.71%) Developer
2 135 (12.18%) .NET Developer
3 110 (9.93%) Senior
4 100 (9.03%) DBA
5 83 (7.49%) SQL DBA
6 82 (7.40%) C# Developer
7 79 (7.13%) Data Engineer
8 78 (7.04%) Analyst
9 70 (6.32%) Architect
9 70 (6.32%) Senior Developer
10 61 (5.51%) Lead
11 57 (5.14%) Full-Stack Developer
12 56 (5.05%) Consultant
13 44 (3.97%) SQL Developer
14 43 (3.88%) Administrator
15 33 (2.98%) Azure Developer
16 31 (2.80%) C# .NET Developer
16 31 (2.80%) Software Engineer
16 31 (2.80%) SQL Server DBA
17 30 (2.71%) Azure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 365 (32.94%) .NET
2 159 (14.35%) .NET Framework
3 142 (12.82%) HTML
4 123 (11.10%) ASP.NET
5 121 (10.92%) CSS
6 109 (9.84%) React
7 82 (7.40%) .NET Core
8 74 (6.68%) AngularJS
9 70 (6.32%) RESTful
10 65 (5.87%) Entity Framework
11 57 (5.14%) Kafka
12 50 (4.51%) XML
13 48 (4.33%) WCF
14 45 (4.06%) Web Services
15 44 (3.97%) ASP.NET Web API
16 43 (3.88%) Middleware
17 41 (3.70%) REST
18 37 (3.34%) WinForms
19 35 (3.16%) JSON
20 33 (2.98%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 47 (4.24%) Onboarding
2 39 (3.52%) Clustering
3 35 (3.16%) Product Ownership
4 33 (2.98%) Management Information System
5 31 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
6 29 (2.62%) Data Centre
7 28 (2.53%) Legacy Systems
8 22 (1.99%) Enterprise Software
9 21 (1.90%) Replication
10 18 (1.62%) Analytical Mindset
10 18 (1.62%) Data Structures
11 16 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
11 16 (1.44%) Greenfield Project
11 16 (1.44%) Hedge funds
12 14 (1.26%) Public Cloud
13 13 (1.17%) Cloud Native
14 12 (1.08%) Freedom of Information
14 12 (1.08%) Freedom of Information Act
15 11 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
16 10 (0.90%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 267 (24.10%) Windows
2 151 (13.63%) Linux
3 101 (9.12%) Windows Server
4 94 (8.48%) Unix
5 40 (3.61%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 28 (2.53%) Windows Server 2012
7 21 (1.90%) Windows Server 2019
8 19 (1.71%) Windows 10
9 17 (1.53%) Windows Server 2016
10 12 (1.08%) Android
11 10 (0.90%) Solaris
12 6 (0.54%) VMS
12 6 (0.54%) zOS
13 4 (0.36%) AIX
13 4 (0.36%) Oracle Linux
13 4 (0.36%) Windows 7
14 3 (0.27%) Apple iOS
14 3 (0.27%) CentOS
15 2 (0.18%) Ubuntu
16 1 (0.090%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 329 (29.69%) Agile
2 242 (21.84%) DevOps
3 206 (18.59%) Problem-Solving
4 194 (17.51%) Business Intelligence
5 162 (14.62%) CI/CD
6 156 (14.08%) ETL
7 153 (13.81%) Migration
8 127 (11.46%) Scrum
9 123 (11.10%) Data Modelling
10 97 (8.75%) Test Automation
11 95 (8.57%) Performance Tuning
12 88 (7.94%) MVC
13 87 (7.85%) Analytics
14 83 (7.49%) Full-Stack Development
15 79 (7.13%) Disaster Recovery
16 77 (6.95%) Microservices
17 74 (6.68%) SDLC
18 69 (6.23%) Software Engineering
19 67 (6.05%) Computer Science
20 62 (5.60%) Unit Testing
Programming Languages
1 624 (56.32%) SQL
2 349 (31.50%) C#
3 170 (15.34%) JavaScript
4 137 (12.36%) T-SQL
5 136 (12.27%) Python
6 112 (10.11%) PowerShell
7 81 (7.31%) Java
8 55 (4.96%) PL/SQL
9 36 (3.25%) TypeScript
9 36 (3.25%) VBA
10 29 (2.62%) VB
11 23 (2.08%) Shell Script
11 23 (2.08%) VB.NET
12 22 (1.99%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 20 (1.81%) Bicep
14 15 (1.35%) Bash
15 10 (0.90%) C++
16 9 (0.81%) R
17 8 (0.72%) Perl
17 8 (0.72%) PHP
Qualifications
1 162 (14.62%) Security Cleared
2 151 (13.63%) Degree
3 123 (11.10%) SC Cleared
4 42 (3.79%) Computer Science Degree
5 35 (3.16%) Microsoft Certification
6 25 (2.26%) DV Cleared
7 22 (1.99%) Azure Certification
8 17 (1.53%) MCTS
9 16 (1.44%) MCITP
10 14 (1.26%) MCSE
11 13 (1.17%) Master's Degree
11 13 (1.17%) TOGAF Certification
12 8 (0.72%) BPSS Clearance
13 7 (0.63%) CCNA
13 7 (0.63%) Cisco Certification
14 5 (0.45%) AWS Certification
14 5 (0.45%) Microsoft Certified Master
15 4 (0.36%) CISSP
15 4 (0.36%) ITIL Certification
15 4 (0.36%) MCSA
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 80 (7.22%) QA
2 36 (3.25%) Data Quality
3 14 (1.26%) Accessibility
4 9 (0.81%) EMIR
4 9 (0.81%) HL7
4 9 (0.81%) MiFID
4 9 (0.81%) WCAG
5 7 (0.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 7 (0.63%) SLA
6 6 (0.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 5 (0.45%) GDPR
8 4 (0.36%) IFRS
9 3 (0.27%) Disclosure Scotland
9 3 (0.27%) Dodd-Frank
9 3 (0.27%) Government Security Classifications
9 3 (0.27%) HMG Security Policy Framework
9 3 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 3 (0.27%) NIST
9 3 (0.27%) PCI DSS
10 2 (0.18%) ISO 20022
System Software
1 155 (13.99%) Active Directory
2 65 (5.87%) Docker
3 50 (4.51%) VMware Infrastructure
4 24 (2.17%) VMware ESXi
5 16 (1.44%) Hyper-V
6 10 (0.90%) Virtual Desktop
7 9 (0.81%) Virtual Servers
8 7 (0.63%) Virtual Machines
9 6 (0.54%) Microsoft Virtual Server
10 3 (0.27%) Apache ZooKeeper
10 3 (0.27%) Ceph
10 3 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
10 3 (0.27%) XenApp
10 3 (0.27%) XenDesktop
11 2 (0.18%) Firmware
11 2 (0.18%) HDFS
12 1 (0.090%) Citrix Presentation Server
12 1 (0.090%) Oracle RAC
12 1 (0.090%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 83 (7.49%) Kubernetes
2 56 (5.05%) Terraform
3 38 (3.43%) Ansible
4 35 (3.16%) SCCM
5 17 (1.53%) Puppet
6 15 (1.35%) Progress Chef
7 13 (1.17%) Grafana
8 12 (1.08%) Microsoft Intune
9 10 (0.90%) Microsoft Clustering
10 9 (0.81%) SCOM
10 9 (0.81%) SCSM
11 7 (0.63%) Prometheus
11 7 (0.63%) Rancher
11 7 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.54%) Red Hat Satellite
13 4 (0.36%) FortiGate
13 4 (0.36%) Kibana
14 3 (0.27%) Failover Clustering
14 3 (0.27%) Oracle RMAN
14 3 (0.27%) VxRail
Vendors
1 477 (43.05%) Microsoft
2 278 (25.09%) Oracle
3 71 (6.41%) VMware
4 43 (3.88%) CyberArk
5 41 (3.70%) Citrix
6 40 (3.61%) SAP
7 33 (2.98%) Databricks
8 25 (2.26%) Red Hat
9 20 (1.81%) Sybase
10 16 (1.44%) ServiceNow
11 15 (1.35%) Cisco
11 15 (1.35%) Google
12 14 (1.26%) Atlassian
12 14 (1.26%) Salesforce
13 13 (1.17%) IBM
13 13 (1.17%) Informatica
13 13 (1.17%) NEC
14 12 (1.08%) Qualys
14 12 (1.08%) Splunk
15 10 (0.90%) OpenLink