Azure SQL Database Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft Azure SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring Azure SQL Database skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 31 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 459 372 323
Rank change year-on-year -87 -49 +16
Contract jobs citing Azure SQL Database 175 139 220
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.39% 0.51% 0.65%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 2.52% 2.78% 3.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 121 105 167
10th Percentile £400 £400 £314
25th Percentile £450 £425 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -5.75%
75th Percentile £613 £600 £650
90th Percentile £725 £675 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £485 £525
% change year-on-year +8.25% -7.62% -4.55%

All Database & BI Skills
England

Azure SQL Database 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 in England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 6,957 4,999 6,177
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.35% 18.16% 18.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,654 3,467 4,422
10th Percentile £356 £347 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £538
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -4.19% -2.27%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £675
90th Percentile £701 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £500 £507 £525
% change year-on-year -1.28% -3.52% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 223 78 92
10th Percentile £16.00 £18.67 £13.74
25th Percentile £25.25 £23.50 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.50 £34.82 £38.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.58% -8.38% -30.91%
75th Percentile £62.00 £64.69 £60.36
90th Percentile £76.90 £77.86 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £36.25 £37.50
% change year-on-year +8.97% -3.33% -31.82%

Azure SQL Database
Job Vacancy Trend in England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Azure SQL Database relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in England.

Azure SQL Database job vacancy trend in England

Azure SQL Database
Daily Rate Trend in England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure SQL Database.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure SQL Database in England over the 6 months to 31 July 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Azure SQL Database in England

Azure SQL Database
Hourly Rate Trend in England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure SQL Database.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing Azure SQL Database

Azure SQL Database
Contract Job Locations in England

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure SQL Database within the England region over the 6 months to 31 July 2026. 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
London -44 100 £550 - 62
Midlands -38 30 £523 +21.51% 18
West Midlands -54 18 £488 +21.88% 13
North of England -65 18 £419 -20.24% 43
South East -69 14 £500 +17.65% 46
East Midlands -5 11 £600 +39.53% 5
Yorkshire -45 10 £490 -6.67% 7
South West -36 8 £600 +15.38% 8
North West -57 5 £409 -16.15% 28
North East - 3 £400 - 8
East of England - 1 £505 - 21
Azure SQL Database
UK

Azure SQL Database
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in England by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 13 (7.43%) SharePoint
2 7 (4.00%) Confluence
3 3 (1.71%) Apache
3 3 (1.71%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.14%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.57%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.57%) IIS
5 1 (0.57%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.57%) Tomcat
Applications
1 5 (2.86%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.57%) InDesign
2 1 (0.57%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.57%) MS Visio
2 1 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.57%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.57%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 175 (100.00%) Azure
2 71 (40.57%) Azure DevOps
3 62 (35.43%) Azure Data Factory
4 59 (33.71%) Power Platform
5 55 (31.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 37 (21.14%) GitHub
7 33 (18.86%) Azure Monitor
8 30 (17.14%) Azure Key Vault
8 30 (17.14%) Entra ID
8 30 (17.14%) Serverless
9 24 (13.71%) Azure Functions
10 20 (11.43%) PaaS
11 19 (10.86%) Azure Cosmos DB
12 17 (9.71%) Azure AKS
12 17 (9.71%) Azure Storage
13 14 (8.00%) Azure App Service
13 14 (8.00%) IaaS
14 12 (6.86%) AWS
14 12 (6.86%) PowerApps
15 11 (6.29%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 10 (5.71%) DNS
1 10 (5.71%) Firewall
2 6 (3.43%) Network Security
3 4 (2.29%) WAN
4 3 (1.71%) VPN
5 1 (0.57%) HTTP
5 1 (0.57%) Internet
5 1 (0.57%) Reverse Proxy
5 1 (0.57%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 56 (32.00%) SQL Server
2 50 (28.57%) Data Lake
3 48 (27.43%) Power BI
4 34 (19.43%) Data Warehouse
5 18 (10.29%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (9.14%) NoSQL
7 15 (8.57%) Delta Lake
8 14 (8.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 14 (8.00%) Star Schema
9 11 (6.29%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 9 (5.14%) Relational Database
11 8 (4.57%) Power Query
11 8 (4.57%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 6 (3.43%) MySQL
12 6 (3.43%) Parquet
13 5 (2.86%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
13 5 (2.86%) Metadata
13 5 (2.86%) Oracle Database
14 4 (2.29%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (2.29%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 32 (18.29%) Git
2 6 (3.43%) Visual Studio
3 4 (2.29%) JetBrains Rider
4 2 (1.14%) Jasmine
4 2 (1.14%) JIRA
4 2 (1.14%) JUnit
4 2 (1.14%) Karma Test Runner
4 2 (1.14%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (0.57%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.57%) ERwin
5 1 (0.57%) git-flow
5 1 (0.57%) GitLab
5 1 (0.57%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.57%) MSI
5 1 (0.57%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.57%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (0.57%) webpack
General
1 44 (25.14%) Finance
2 41 (23.43%) Social Skills
3 20 (11.43%) Analytical Skills
4 15 (8.57%) Public Sector
5 11 (6.29%) Banking
6 7 (4.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (3.43%) Documentation Skills
7 6 (3.43%) Investment Banking
8 4 (2.29%) Retail
9 3 (1.71%) Local Government
10 2 (1.14%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.57%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.57%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.57%) Games
11 1 (0.57%) Marketing
11 1 (0.57%) Military
11 1 (0.57%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.57%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 51 (29.14%) Data Engineer
2 46 (26.29%) Developer
3 34 (19.43%) Architect
4 29 (16.57%) Senior
5 21 (12.00%) Azure Engineer
6 17 (9.71%) Full-Stack Developer
7 16 (9.14%) Data Architect
8 13 (7.43%) Senior Data Engineer
9 11 (6.29%) Azure Developer
9 11 (6.29%) DBA
9 11 (6.29%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (5.71%) .NET Developer
10 10 (5.71%) Azure Architect
10 10 (5.71%) Azure Data Engineer
10 10 (5.71%) Business Intelligence Developer
10 10 (5.71%) Senior Developer
11 9 (5.14%) Informatica Engineer
11 9 (5.14%) SQL DBA
12 8 (4.57%) Platform Engineer
12 8 (4.57%) Power BI Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (17.14%) .NET
2 28 (16.00%) REST
3 15 (8.57%) .NET Core
4 14 (8.00%) OAuth
5 13 (7.43%) .NET Framework
6 12 (6.86%) Entity Framework
6 12 (6.86%) JSON
6 12 (6.86%) PySpark
7 11 (6.29%) React
7 11 (6.29%) RESTful
8 9 (5.14%) ARM Templates
8 9 (5.14%) CSS
8 9 (5.14%) HTML
9 8 (4.57%) AngularJS
9 8 (4.57%) OpenID
9 8 (4.57%) SAML
10 6 (3.43%) OAuth2
10 6 (3.43%) XML
11 5 (2.86%) Web Services
12 4 (2.29%) Kafka
Miscellaneous
1 26 (14.86%) Cloud Native
2 11 (6.29%) Replication
3 7 (4.00%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.43%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.43%) Hybrid Cloud
5 5 (2.86%) Clustering
5 5 (2.86%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (2.29%) IoT
6 4 (2.29%) SCADA
7 3 (1.71%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.71%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.71%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.71%) Wiki
8 2 (1.14%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.14%) Data Fabric
8 2 (1.14%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.14%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (1.14%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.14%) Reinsurance
8 2 (1.14%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.00%) Linux
2 5 (2.86%) Windows
3 4 (2.29%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.71%) VMS
5 2 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.57%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 90 (51.43%) DevOps
2 75 (42.86%) CI/CD
3 63 (36.00%) Analytics
3 63 (36.00%) Data Modelling
4 60 (34.29%) ETL
5 46 (26.29%) Business Intelligence
6 45 (25.71%) Data Pipeline
7 40 (22.86%) Data Engineering
8 35 (20.00%) Infrastructure as Code
9 33 (18.86%) Migration
10 32 (18.29%) Agile
11 31 (17.71%) AI
11 31 (17.71%) Performance Tuning
12 30 (17.14%) Data Governance
13 29 (16.57%) RBAC
14 25 (14.29%) High Availability
15 22 (12.57%) Disaster Recovery
15 22 (12.57%) Log Analytics
16 21 (12.00%) Problem-Solving
16 21 (12.00%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 175 (100.00%) SQL
2 48 (27.43%) Python
3 29 (16.57%) C#
4 27 (15.43%) PowerShell
5 20 (11.43%) Bicep
6 19 (10.86%) T-SQL
7 15 (8.57%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 15 (8.57%) TypeScript
8 7 (4.00%) Scala
9 5 (2.86%) Bash
9 5 (2.86%) JavaScript
10 4 (2.29%) Java
11 2 (1.14%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.57%) C
12 1 (0.57%) C++
12 1 (0.57%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.57%) X++
Qualifications
1 36 (20.57%) Security Cleared
2 27 (15.43%) SC Cleared
3 15 (8.57%) Azure Certification
4 6 (3.43%) Degree
5 5 (2.86%) Computer Science Degree
6 3 (1.71%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.57%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.57%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.57%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.57%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 26 (14.86%) Data Quality
2 17 (9.71%) QA
3 12 (6.86%) GDPR
4 9 (5.14%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (2.29%) NCSC
6 3 (1.71%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (1.71%) NIST
7 1 (0.57%) IFRS
7 1 (0.57%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.57%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.57%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.57%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (9.71%) Active Directory
2 11 (6.29%) Docker
3 10 (5.71%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (2.29%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 40 (22.86%) Terraform
2 10 (5.71%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.71%) Failover Clustering
4 2 (1.14%) Ansible
5 1 (0.57%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 107 (61.14%) Microsoft
2 38 (21.71%) Databricks
3 15 (8.57%) Informatica
4 14 (8.00%) Oracle
5 4 (2.29%) SAP
5 4 (2.29%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.71%) Google
7 1 (0.57%) Adobe
7 1 (0.57%) Foundry
7 1 (0.57%) IBM
7 1 (0.57%) NetApp
7 1 (0.57%) OpenAI
7 1 (0.57%) Salesforce
7 1 (0.57%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud