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

6 months to
25 Apr 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 63 51 51
Rank change year-on-year -12 0 +3
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,382 2,669 4,312
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.17% 4.45% 4.87%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 18.93% 24.59% 24.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 944 2,014 3,269
10th Percentile £334 £375 £356
25th Percentile £400 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -2.38% +2.44% +13.89%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £634
90th Percentile £725 £750 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -2.06% +7.78% +9.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 25 24 44
10th Percentile £20.77 £26.32 £20.75
25th Percentile £37.63 £35.00 £22.06
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 £67.42
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 7,301 10,856 17,913
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.73% 18.08% 20.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,192 7,727 12,773
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £540
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% +0.93% +8.00%
75th Percentile £650 £661 £650
90th Percentile £763 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £485
% change year-on-year -4.00% +3.09% +10.58%
Number of hourly rates quoted 146 184 189
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% +57.64%
75th Percentile £57.61 £71.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £79.19 £69.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £58.05 £35.00
% change year-on-year -31.09% +65.84% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 £520 -2.80% 1,011
London +4 827 £539 -6.30% 362
Work from Home -10 569 £500 -4.76% 746
UK excluding London -44 434 £475 -2.06% 707
South East -54 103 £463 -7.50% 159
North of England -21 102 £475 -5.00% 183
Midlands -17 69 £482 +13.41% 156
South West -25 69 £550 +10.00% 82
North West -29 61 £475 -5.00% 100
Scotland -13 55 £525 +10.53% 48
West Midlands -2 43 £463 -9.76% 96
Yorkshire +1 31 £450 -8.86% 62
East of England -33 27 £475 +5.56% 66
East Midlands -9 23 £490 +22.38% 60
Wales 0 11 £500 -4.76% 14
North East +21 10 £475 -5.00% 22
Northern Ireland -4 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 72 (5.21%) SharePoint
2 41 (2.97%) IIS
3 30 (2.17%) Microsoft Exchange
4 26 (1.88%) Confluence
5 23 (1.66%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 19 (1.37%) 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 77 (5.57%) 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%) Endur
1 19 (1.37%) Teamcenter
2 18 (1.30%) Dynamics CRM
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%) Oracle EBS
10 1 (0.072%) Oracle ERP
Cloud Services
1 626 (45.30%) Azure
2 261 (18.89%) Azure DevOps
3 200 (14.47%) Power Platform
4 167 (12.08%) AWS
5 89 (6.44%) Microsoft 365
6 82 (5.93%) Entra ID
7 79 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
8 77 (5.57%) GitHub
9 74 (5.35%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 69 (4.99%) Azure Service Bus
11 60 (4.34%) Serverless
12 51 (3.69%) PowerApps
13 50 (3.62%) Azure Functions
14 49 (3.55%) 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 55 (3.98%) Firewall
2 51 (3.69%) DNS
3 34 (2.46%) 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
9 14 (1.01%) NAS
10 11 (0.80%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (0.72%) VPN
12 9 (0.65%) Wireless
13 8 (0.58%) MPLS
14 7 (0.51%) TCP/IP
15 6 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
15 6 (0.43%) SSL
16 5 (0.36%) HTTP
16 5 (0.36%) Network Security
17 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
18 3 (0.22%) VSAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 172 (12.45%) Power BI
2 163 (11.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 138 (9.99%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (9.41%) Relational Database
5 118 (8.54%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (8.39%) MySQL
7 113 (8.18%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 66 (4.78%) Oracle Database
9 61 (4.41%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 59 (4.27%) Azure SQL Database
11 55 (3.98%) NoSQL
12 47 (3.40%) Data Lake
13 42 (3.04%) Oracle Reports
14 40 (2.89%) MongoDB
15 39 (2.82%) RDBMS
16 36 (2.60%) Metadata
16 36 (2.60%) 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 98 (7.09%) JIRA
3 57 (4.12%) Visual Studio
4 49 (3.55%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 44 (3.18%) Jenkins
6 38 (2.75%) Selenium
6 38 (2.75%) SpecFlow
7 36 (2.60%) TeamCity
8 30 (2.17%) GitLab
9 21 (1.52%) Postman
10 20 (1.45%) Team Foundation Server
11 18 (1.30%) WebDriver
12 17 (1.23%) Bitbucket
12 17 (1.23%) Octopus Deploy
13 15 (1.09%) Maven
14 14 (1.01%) SoapUI
15 13 (0.94%) JMeter
16 11 (0.80%) ERwin
16 11 (0.80%) NUnit
16 11 (0.80%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 292 (21.13%) Finance
2 287 (20.77%) Social Skills
3 150 (10.85%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (10.49%) Public Sector
5 126 (9.12%) Banking
6 46 (3.33%) Back Office
7 34 (2.46%) Manufacturing
8 30 (2.17%) Financial Institution
8 30 (2.17%) Front Office
8 30 (2.17%) Investment Banking
8 30 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
9 26 (1.88%) Marketing
9 26 (1.88%) Telecoms
10 20 (1.45%) Retail
11 18 (1.30%) Electronics
12 17 (1.23%) Local Government
13 16 (1.16%) Publishing
14 13 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
15 9 (0.65%) Legal
15 9 (0.65%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 547 (39.58%) Developer
2 221 (15.99%) Senior
3 134 (9.70%) .NET Developer
4 132 (9.55%) Senior Developer
5 131 (9.48%) C# Developer
6 98 (7.09%) Analyst
7 97 (7.02%) Architect
8 95 (6.87%) DBA
9 85 (6.15%) Data Engineer
10 73 (5.28%) SQL DBA
11 67 (4.85%) SQL Developer
12 64 (4.63%) Software Developer
13 62 (4.49%) Lead
14 61 (4.41%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 56 (4.05%) C# .NET Developer
16 51 (3.69%) Azure Developer
17 47 (3.40%) Administrator
18 46 (3.33%) Senior Software Developer
19 44 (3.18%) Consultant
19 44 (3.18%) Full Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (29.81%) .NET
2 158 (11.43%) XML
3 140 (10.13%) .NET Framework
4 139 (10.06%) .NET Core
5 128 (9.26%) HTML
6 112 (8.10%) AngularJS
7 93 (6.73%) ASP.NET
8 89 (6.44%) CSS
9 75 (5.43%) React
10 65 (4.70%) Web Services
11 63 (4.56%) REST
12 54 (3.91%) SOAP
13 49 (3.55%) JSON
14 46 (3.33%) Entity Framework
14 46 (3.33%) Kafka
15 38 (2.75%) RESTful
16 37 (2.68%) SailPoint
17 36 (2.60%) jQuery
17 36 (2.60%) LDAP
18 35 (2.53%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 65 (4.70%) Product Ownership
2 60 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 57 (4.12%) 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
10 21 (1.52%) Management Information System
11 17 (1.23%) Data Protection Act
11 17 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
11 17 (1.23%) PKI
12 15 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
13 14 (1.01%) NHS
14 13 (0.94%) Blog
14 13 (0.94%) Equity Derivative
15 11 (0.80%) Reference Data
Operating Systems
1 255 (18.45%) Windows
2 133 (9.62%) Windows Server
3 123 (8.90%) Linux
4 53 (3.84%) Unix
5 51 (3.69%) Windows Server 2019
6 46 (3.33%) Windows Server 2016
7 33 (2.39%) 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
1 442 (31.98%) Agile
2 393 (28.44%) DevOps
3 216 (15.63%) Business Intelligence
4 205 (14.83%) Migration
5 187 (13.53%) Scrum
6 186 (13.46%) CI/CD
6 186 (13.46%) Problem-Solving
7 168 (12.16%) ETL
8 137 (9.91%) Data Modelling
9 123 (8.90%) TDD
10 100 (7.24%) OO
11 96 (6.95%) Disaster Recovery
12 86 (6.22%) Data Analysis
12 86 (6.22%) MVC
12 86 (6.22%) SDLC
13 82 (5.93%) Software Engineering
14 79 (5.72%) Test Automation
15 77 (5.57%) Analytics
16 74 (5.35%) High Availability
17 73 (5.28%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 758 (54.85%) SQL
2 500 (36.18%) C#
3 266 (19.25%) PowerShell
4 174 (12.59%) JavaScript
5 158 (11.43%) T-SQL
6 150 (10.85%) Python
7 129 (9.33%) Java
8 91 (6.58%) PL/SQL
9 85 (6.15%) Bicep
10 51 (3.69%) TypeScript
11 34 (2.46%) VBA
12 29 (2.10%) Bash
12 29 (2.10%) VB.NET
13 26 (1.88%) VB
14 22 (1.59%) Shell Script
15 20 (1.45%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 16 (1.16%) C
17 14 (1.01%) PHP
18 13 (0.94%) C++
19 10 (0.72%) XPath
Qualifications
1 198 (14.33%) Security Cleared
2 135 (9.77%) Degree
3 115 (8.32%) SC Cleared
4 66 (4.78%) DV Cleared
5 42 (3.04%) Computer Science Degree
6 24 (1.74%) Microsoft Certification
7 14 (1.01%) BPSS Clearance
7 14 (1.01%) Master's Degree
8 13 (0.94%) Azure Certification
8 13 (0.94%) MCSE
9 12 (0.87%) ISTQB
10 6 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 5 (0.36%) CCNA
11 5 (0.36%) CCNP
11 5 (0.36%) Cisco Certification
11 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
12 4 (0.29%) ISEB
13 3 (0.22%) AWS Certification
13 3 (0.22%) MCITP
13 3 (0.22%) MCTS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 111 (8.03%) QA
2 58 (4.20%) Data Quality
3 40 (2.89%) 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%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
10 2 (0.14%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.14%) IFRS
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
1 254 (18.38%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 48 (3.47%) 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 10 (0.72%) Hyper-V
10 9 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
11 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
12 5 (0.36%) VMware NSX
13 4 (0.29%) Oracle RAC
14 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
15 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
16 1 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 1 (0.072%) KVM
16 1 (0.072%) vCloud
16 1 (0.072%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 60 (4.34%) Kubernetes
2 57 (4.12%) Terraform
3 48 (3.47%) Ansible
4 43 (3.11%) SCCM
5 29 (2.10%) Active Directory Federation Services
6 24 (1.74%) Single Sign-On
7 22 (1.59%) 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
1 511 (36.98%) Microsoft
2 315 (22.79%) Oracle
3 79 (5.72%) VMware
4 57 (4.12%) SAP
5 55 (3.98%) ServiceNow
6 54 (3.91%) Databricks
7 44 (3.18%) Sybase
8 40 (2.89%) Red Hat
9 34 (2.46%) Citrix
10 32 (2.32%) Veeam
11 31 (2.24%) 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%) HP
16 13 (0.94%) OpenLink
17 12 (0.87%) CA