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 7 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
7 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 59 50 51
Rank change year-on-year -9 +1 +4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,382 2,526 4,224
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.23% 4.35% 4.80%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 19.07% 24.20% 23.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 958 1,917 3,197
10th Percentile £330 £368 £356
25th Percentile £400 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £515
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +1.94% +13.19%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £631
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -2.06% +7.78% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 23 43
10th Percentile £25.55 £26.30 £20.75
25th Percentile £38.81 £35.00 £21.63
Median hourly rate £40.00 £45.00 £46.67
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -3.58% +66.68%
75th Percentile £49.04 £78.75 £61.08
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £69.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £35.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +12.68% -25.26% +82.69%

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 7,246 10,437 17,652
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.92% 17.97% 20.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,175 7,433 12,551
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 143 186 184
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £14.69
25th Percentile £20.98 £33.05 £21.69
Median hourly rate £40.00 £59.30 £42.92
Median % change year-on-year -32.54% +38.16% +59.07%
75th Percentile £60.13 £73.41 £62.24
90th Percentile £72.50 £81.25 £74.85
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £55.70 £35.00
% change year-on-year -28.19% +59.14% +42.86%

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 7 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 7 May 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 7 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 -12 1,226 £505 -3.81% 1,138
London +2 819 £535 -6.96% 394
Work from Home -6 567 £500 -4.76% 825
UK excluding London -39 433 £475 -2.06% 787
North of England -18 107 £463 -7.50% 197
South East -50 101 £469 -6.25% 166
Midlands -5 77 £456 +5.80% 192
South West -25 71 £550 +4.76% 98
North West -14 69 £463 -7.50% 110
Scotland -6 49 £563 +18.42% 44
West Midlands -7 43 £475 -8.65% 115
East Midlands +3 31 £445 +11.25% 77
Yorkshire 0 28 £450 -10.00% 67
East of England -43 23 £475 +5.56% 68
Wales 0 11 £500 -4.76% 17
North East +17 10 £475 -5.00% 21
Northern Ireland -3 1 - - 14

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 71 (5.14%) SharePoint
2 40 (2.89%) IIS
3 31 (2.24%) Microsoft Exchange
4 26 (1.88%) Confluence
5 22 (1.59%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 16 (1.16%) Apache Spark
8 12 (0.87%) nginx
9 11 (0.80%) Tomcat
10 10 (0.72%) JBoss
11 8 (0.58%) SAS
12 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
12 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
13 6 (0.43%) Tornado
14 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
15 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
15 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 3 (0.22%) WordPress
16 2 (0.14%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 70 (5.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.59%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.072%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.072%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 19 (1.37%) Teamcenter
2 17 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.23%) 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
7 4 (0.29%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 3 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
8 3 (0.22%) Sage X3
8 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.14%) BusinessWorks
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
9 2 (0.14%) Visualfiles
10 1 (0.072%) Epicor Tropos
10 1 (0.072%) Oracle Retail
10 1 (0.072%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 637 (46.09%) Azure
2 282 (20.41%) Azure DevOps
3 219 (15.85%) Power Platform
4 170 (12.30%) AWS
5 87 (6.30%) Entra ID
6 85 (6.15%) Microsoft 365
7 81 (5.86%) Azure Data Factory
8 78 (5.64%) Azure Cosmos DB
8 78 (5.64%) Azure Service Bus
9 69 (4.99%) GitHub
10 59 (4.27%) Serverless
11 58 (4.20%) PowerApps
12 53 (3.84%) Power Automate
13 51 (3.69%) Azure Functions
14 49 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
15 40 (2.89%) PaaS
16 34 (2.46%) Azure Logic Apps
17 29 (2.10%) Snowflake
18 27 (1.95%) Dynamics 365
19 26 (1.88%) Collibra
Communications & Networking
1 55 (3.98%) Firewall
2 44 (3.18%) DNS
3 33 (2.39%) SAN
4 23 (1.66%) WAN
5 22 (1.59%) DHCP
6 21 (1.52%) 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%) SSL
14 5 (0.36%) Network Security
15 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
15 4 (0.29%) HTTP
16 3 (0.22%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 191 (13.82%) Power BI
2 150 (10.85%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 141 (10.20%) Data Warehouse
3 141 (10.20%) Relational Database
4 117 (8.47%) MySQL
5 102 (7.38%) PostgreSQL
6 99 (7.16%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 61 (4.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 59 (4.27%) Azure SQL Database
9 58 (4.20%) NoSQL
10 57 (4.12%) Oracle Database
11 45 (3.26%) RDBMS
12 44 (3.18%) Metadata
13 43 (3.11%) Data Lake
14 39 (2.82%) MongoDB
15 36 (2.60%) Oracle Reports
16 30 (2.17%) Microsoft Analysis Services
17 29 (2.10%) Tableau
18 24 (1.74%) Big Data
19 18 (1.30%) Redis
Development Applications
1 145 (10.49%) Git
2 85 (6.15%) JIRA
3 57 (4.12%) Visual Studio
4 49 (3.55%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.97%) SpecFlow
6 37 (2.68%) Selenium
7 32 (2.32%) Jenkins
8 31 (2.24%) TeamCity
9 29 (2.10%) GitLab
10 20 (1.45%) Team Foundation Server
11 19 (1.37%) WebDriver
12 17 (1.23%) Bitbucket
13 14 (1.01%) JMeter
14 13 (0.94%) Octopus Deploy
15 12 (0.87%) Postman
16 10 (0.72%) Cucumber
16 10 (0.72%) ERwin
16 10 (0.72%) NUnit
16 10 (0.72%) SonarQube
17 9 (0.65%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 302 (21.85%) Social Skills
2 294 (21.27%) Finance
3 156 (11.29%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (10.49%) Public Sector
5 128 (9.26%) Banking
6 49 (3.55%) Back Office
7 32 (2.32%) Front Office
7 32 (2.32%) Manufacturing
8 31 (2.24%) Investment Banking
9 28 (2.03%) Financial Institution
10 26 (1.88%) Marketing
10 26 (1.88%) Presentation Skills
10 26 (1.88%) Telecoms
11 19 (1.37%) Local Government
12 18 (1.30%) Retail
13 17 (1.23%) Electronics
14 16 (1.16%) Publishing
15 14 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
16 13 (0.94%) Legal
17 11 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 545 (39.44%) Developer
2 233 (16.86%) Senior
3 146 (10.56%) Senior Developer
4 135 (9.77%) .NET Developer
5 126 (9.12%) C# Developer
6 98 (7.09%) Architect
7 95 (6.87%) DBA
8 92 (6.66%) Analyst
9 89 (6.44%) Data Engineer
10 75 (5.43%) SQL DBA
11 68 (4.92%) Software Developer
12 66 (4.78%) Lead
13 60 (4.34%) SQL Developer
14 59 (4.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 57 (4.12%) Azure Developer
16 50 (3.62%) Senior Software Developer
17 47 (3.40%) Administrator
17 47 (3.40%) Consultant
18 46 (3.33%) C# .NET Developer
18 46 (3.33%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 433 (31.33%) .NET
2 166 (12.01%) XML
3 148 (10.71%) .NET Core
4 142 (10.27%) .NET Framework
5 139 (10.06%) HTML
6 111 (8.03%) AngularJS
7 109 (7.89%) ASP.NET
8 100 (7.24%) CSS
9 98 (7.09%) React
10 66 (4.78%) Web Services
11 60 (4.34%) REST
12 48 (3.47%) Entity Framework
13 47 (3.40%) JSON
13 47 (3.40%) SOAP
14 44 (3.18%) Kafka
15 42 (3.04%) RESTful
16 37 (2.68%) WCF
17 35 (2.53%) jQuery
18 34 (2.46%) ASP.NET MVC
19 33 (2.39%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 73 (5.28%) Product Ownership
2 63 (4.56%) Onboarding
3 57 (4.12%) Replication
4 45 (3.26%) Clustering
5 31 (2.24%) Public Cloud
6 25 (1.81%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.74%) Cloud Native
8 22 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
9 21 (1.52%) Client/Server
9 21 (1.52%) Hedge funds
9 21 (1.52%) Management Information System
10 19 (1.37%) Derivative
11 18 (1.30%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
13 16 (1.16%) PKI
14 14 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
15 13 (0.94%) Blog
15 13 (0.94%) Data Structures
15 13 (0.94%) NHS
15 13 (0.94%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 268 (19.39%) Windows
2 134 (9.70%) Windows Server
3 129 (9.33%) Linux
4 60 (4.34%) Unix
5 47 (3.40%) Windows Server 2019
6 43 (3.11%) Windows Server 2016
7 37 (2.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 24 (1.74%) Windows 10
9 21 (1.52%) Windows Server 2012
10 11 (0.80%) Android
10 11 (0.80%) Ubuntu
10 11 (0.80%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.58%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.58%) VMS
11 8 (0.58%) Windows 7
11 8 (0.58%) zOS
12 5 (0.36%) CentOS
12 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.14%) Mac OS X
13 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 450 (32.56%) Agile
2 408 (29.52%) DevOps
3 229 (16.57%) Business Intelligence
4 201 (14.54%) CI/CD
5 200 (14.47%) Problem-Solving
6 195 (14.11%) Migration
6 195 (14.11%) Scrum
7 173 (12.52%) ETL
8 142 (10.27%) Data Modelling
9 121 (8.76%) TDD
10 101 (7.31%) OO
11 93 (6.73%) Disaster Recovery
12 85 (6.15%) SDLC
13 84 (6.08%) MVC
14 83 (6.01%) Software Engineering
15 81 (5.86%) Analytics
15 81 (5.86%) Test Automation
16 79 (5.72%) High Availability
17 78 (5.64%) Data Analysis
18 72 (5.21%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 733 (53.04%) SQL
2 511 (36.98%) C#
3 280 (20.26%) PowerShell
4 175 (12.66%) JavaScript
5 149 (10.78%) Python
6 145 (10.49%) T-SQL
7 130 (9.41%) Java
8 102 (7.38%) Bicep
9 82 (5.93%) PL/SQL
10 63 (4.56%) TypeScript
11 30 (2.17%) Bash
11 30 (2.17%) VBA
12 23 (1.66%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 23 (1.66%) Shell Script
13 22 (1.59%) VB.NET
14 21 (1.52%) C
14 21 (1.52%) VB
15 15 (1.09%) PHP
16 14 (1.01%) C++
17 10 (0.72%) XPath
Qualifications
1 196 (14.18%) Security Cleared
2 138 (9.99%) Degree
3 117 (8.47%) SC Cleared
4 62 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 46 (3.33%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (2.32%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 14 (1.01%) MCSE
10 12 (0.87%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.87%) ISTQB
11 8 (0.58%) MCITP
11 8 (0.58%) MCTS
12 6 (0.43%) CCNP
12 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
12 6 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 5 (0.36%) CCNA
13 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
14 4 (0.29%) CISSP
14 4 (0.29%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (8.61%) QA
2 56 (4.05%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.75%) Accessibility
4 25 (1.81%) WCAG
5 14 (1.01%) GDPR
6 13 (0.94%) SLA
7 11 (0.80%) MiFID
8 5 (0.36%) EMIR
9 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.29%) Dodd-Frank
9 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.22%) IFRS
10 3 (0.22%) IFRS 17
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.22%) NIST
10 3 (0.22%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.14%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 268 (19.39%) Active Directory
2 46 (3.33%) VMware Infrastructure
3 45 (3.26%) Docker
4 28 (2.03%) IAG
5 25 (1.81%) ACF2
5 25 (1.81%) RACF
6 21 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (1.01%) vSphere
8 12 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 8 (0.58%) Hyper-V
10 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
11 4 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
14 1 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 1 (0.072%) HDFS
14 1 (0.072%) KVM
14 1 (0.072%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 62 (4.49%) Terraform
2 57 (4.12%) Kubernetes
3 49 (3.55%) Ansible
4 42 (3.04%) SCCM
5 28 (2.03%) Single Sign-On
6 25 (1.81%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Clustering
8 19 (1.37%) Puppet
9 17 (1.23%) Grafana
10 16 (1.16%) Nagios
10 16 (1.16%) Progress Chef
11 15 (1.09%) Prometheus
12 11 (0.80%) Graylog
12 11 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.80%) Nessus
13 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
14 8 (0.58%) Data Guard
14 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
15 7 (0.51%) vCenter Server
16 6 (0.43%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 529 (38.28%) Microsoft
2 301 (21.78%) Oracle
3 75 (5.43%) VMware
4 58 (4.20%) SAP
5 53 (3.84%) Databricks
6 51 (3.69%) ServiceNow
7 40 (2.89%) Sybase
8 37 (2.68%) Red Hat
9 30 (2.17%) Informatica
9 30 (2.17%) Veeam
10 27 (1.95%) Citrix
11 22 (1.59%) Splunk
12 19 (1.37%) Sparx
13 17 (1.23%) Cisco
13 17 (1.23%) IBM
14 15 (1.09%) CyberArk
14 15 (1.09%) Salesforce
15 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
16 12 (0.87%) CA
16 12 (0.87%) Qualys