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 25 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 384 344 391
Rank change year-on-year -40 +47 -24
Contract jobs citing Azure SQL Database 184 146 167
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.52% 0.57% 0.45%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.22% 3.05% 2.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 140 102 122
10th Percentile £409 £401 £425
25th Percentile £450 £486 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £603 £650 £663
90th Percentile £689 £749 £734
UK median daily rate £525 £545 £525
% change year-on-year -3.67% +3.81% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 0
Median hourly rate - £60.50 -
UK median hourly rate - £60.50 -

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 5,719 4,788 6,032
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.22% 18.72% 16.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,985 3,256 4,336
10th Percentile £340 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £538 £534
Median % change year-on-year -6.98% +0.75% -3.00%
75th Percentile £600 £670 £662
90th Percentile £700 £780 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 110 84 153
10th Percentile £18.25 £22.27 £15.65
25th Percentile £26.69 £25.26 £21.64
Median hourly rate £54.25 £41.00 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +32.32% -3.53% -22.73%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £61.75
90th Percentile £86.00 £72.63 £77.31
UK median hourly rate £54.25 £38.31 £42.50
% change year-on-year +41.63% -9.87% -22.73%

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 25 February 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 25 February 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 -30 110 £550 -8.33% 50
South East -27 28 £447 -17.22% 44
North of England -60 11 £488 +5.41% 40
Midlands -56 10 £519 +25.76% 22
East Midlands -26 6 £515 -10.43% 8
South West -27 5 £550 +10.00% 11
Yorkshire -57 5 £500 +8.11% 12
North West -40 4 £500 +8.11% 21
West Midlands -54 4 £548 +34.83% 14
North East - 2 £425 - 8
East of England -24 1 £505 -12.25% 15
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 32 (17.39%) Apache Spark
2 7 (3.80%) SharePoint
3 4 (2.17%) ArcGIS
4 3 (1.63%) CMS
5 2 (1.09%) Confluence
5 2 (1.09%) Microsoft Exchange
6 1 (0.54%) Apache
6 1 (0.54%) Umbraco
Applications
1 6 (3.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.17%) Microsoft Office
Business Applications
1 3 (1.63%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (1.09%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 184 (100.00%) Azure
2 99 (53.80%) Azure Data Factory
3 62 (33.70%) Azure DevOps
4 56 (30.43%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 54 (29.35%) Power Platform
6 37 (20.11%) GitHub
7 31 (16.85%) Serverless
8 27 (14.67%) Azure Functions
9 23 (12.50%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 22 (11.96%) Azure Key Vault
11 21 (11.41%) Azure AKS
12 20 (10.87%) Azure Service Bus
13 17 (9.24%) Azure Monitor
13 17 (9.24%) Azure Storage
13 17 (9.24%) GitHub Actions
14 15 (8.15%) PaaS
15 14 (7.61%) Entra ID
16 11 (5.98%) AWS
16 11 (5.98%) Azure Logic Apps
17 9 (4.89%) IaaS
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.17%) HTTP
2 3 (1.63%) DNS
2 3 (1.63%) Network Security
3 2 (1.09%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (33.70%) Data Warehouse
2 52 (28.26%) Power BI
3 50 (27.17%) SQL Server
4 45 (24.46%) Data Lake
5 31 (16.85%) NoSQL
6 17 (9.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 15 (8.15%) Delta Lake
8 13 (7.07%) Metadata
9 9 (4.89%) Power Query
10 8 (4.35%) Relational Database
10 8 (4.35%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 7 (3.80%) PostgreSQL
11 7 (3.80%) Tableau
12 6 (3.26%) MySQL
12 6 (3.26%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 5 (2.72%) Big Data
13 5 (2.72%) Parquet
13 5 (2.72%) Spark SQL
14 4 (2.17%) Amazon RDS
14 4 (2.17%) Metadata Repository
Development Applications
1 52 (28.26%) Git
2 8 (4.35%) Jenkins
3 2 (1.09%) JMeter
3 2 (1.09%) Postman
4 1 (0.54%) Bitbucket
4 1 (0.54%) Cypress.io
4 1 (0.54%) git-flow
4 1 (0.54%) GitLab
4 1 (0.54%) JIRA
4 1 (0.54%) REST Assured
4 1 (0.54%) Selenium
4 1 (0.54%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
4 1 (0.54%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 51 (27.72%) Social Skills
2 31 (16.85%) Finance
3 25 (13.59%) Public Sector
4 14 (7.61%) Analytical Skills
5 11 (5.98%) Banking
6 7 (3.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 5 (2.72%) Documentation Skills
8 3 (1.63%) Aviation
9 2 (1.09%) Billing
9 2 (1.09%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.09%) Military
10 1 (0.54%) Agriculture
10 1 (0.54%) Investment Banking
10 1 (0.54%) Legal
10 1 (0.54%) Presentation Skills
10 1 (0.54%) Retail
10 1 (0.54%) Retail Banking
10 1 (0.54%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 67 (36.41%) Data Engineer
2 43 (23.37%) Azure Engineer
3 33 (17.93%) Developer
4 30 (16.30%) Azure Data Engineer
5 28 (15.22%) Architect
6 22 (11.96%) Senior
7 16 (8.70%) Azure Developer
8 15 (8.15%) Azure Architect
9 14 (7.61%) Senior Data Engineer
10 12 (6.52%) Technical Architect
11 11 (5.98%) .NET Developer
12 9 (4.89%) Lead
13 8 (4.35%) DBA
13 8 (4.35%) SQL DBA
14 7 (3.80%) Full-Stack Developer
15 6 (3.26%) Data Architect
15 6 (3.26%) Platform Engineer
16 5 (2.72%) Azure Software Engineer
16 5 (2.72%) Cloud Engineer
16 5 (2.72%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (27.17%) PySpark
2 36 (19.57%) .NET
3 13 (7.07%) JSON
4 11 (5.98%) .NET Core
4 11 (5.98%) ARM Templates
4 11 (5.98%) Kafka
4 11 (5.98%) REST
5 10 (5.43%) AngularJS
5 10 (5.43%) React
6 9 (4.89%) YAML
7 8 (4.35%) Node.js
8 6 (3.26%) Next.js
9 5 (2.72%) .NET Framework
9 5 (2.72%) Express.js
10 4 (2.17%) ADO
10 4 (2.17%) PyTorch
10 4 (2.17%) SignalR
10 4 (2.17%) TensorFlow
10 4 (2.17%) WebSockets
10 4 (2.17%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (7.61%) Cloud Native
2 7 (3.80%) Replication
3 6 (3.26%) Clustering
4 5 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (2.17%) AI Agents
5 4 (2.17%) Data Structures
5 4 (2.17%) Distributed Computing
6 3 (1.63%) Enterprise Software
7 2 (1.09%) IoT
7 2 (1.09%) Onboarding
7 2 (1.09%) Wiki
8 1 (0.54%) Analytical Mindset
8 1 (0.54%) Data Centre
8 1 (0.54%) Distributed Applications
8 1 (0.54%) Hybrid Cloud
8 1 (0.54%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.54%) Mobile App
8 1 (0.54%) Product Ownership
8 1 (0.54%) Security Posture
8 1 (0.54%) Smart Meter
Operating Systems
1 3 (1.63%) Windows
2 1 (0.54%) VMS
2 1 (0.54%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 85 (46.20%) CI/CD
2 83 (45.11%) Data Modelling
3 76 (41.30%) DevOps
4 69 (37.50%) Data Pipeline
5 62 (33.70%) ETL
6 60 (32.61%) Analytics
7 55 (29.89%) Data Governance
8 54 (29.35%) Business Intelligence
9 52 (28.26%) Data Engineering
10 44 (23.91%) Agile
11 41 (22.28%) Data Integration
12 38 (20.65%) Data Architecture
13 34 (18.48%) Infrastructure as Code
14 30 (16.30%) Integration Patterns
15 29 (15.76%) Problem-Solving
16 27 (14.67%) Data Science
17 24 (13.04%) RBAC
18 22 (11.96%) Migration
19 19 (10.33%) Containerisation
19 19 (10.33%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 184 (100.00%) SQL
2 81 (44.02%) Python
3 35 (19.02%) Scala
4 27 (14.67%) C#
5 18 (9.78%) PowerShell
6 16 (8.70%) Bicep
7 15 (8.15%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 14 (7.61%) JavaScript
9 13 (7.07%) T-SQL
10 9 (4.89%) TypeScript
11 7 (3.80%) Java
12 3 (1.63%) Bash
13 2 (1.09%) R
14 1 (0.54%) ANSI SQL
14 1 (0.54%) Korn
14 1 (0.54%) PL/SQL
14 1 (0.54%) VBA
Qualifications
1 64 (34.78%) Security Cleared
2 51 (27.72%) SC Cleared
3 22 (11.96%) Azure Certification
4 11 (5.98%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.26%) Degree
6 4 (2.17%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.17%) CTC Cleared
7 2 (1.09%) AWS Certification
7 2 (1.09%) OCP
7 2 (1.09%) Oracle Certification
8 1 (0.54%) BC Cleared
8 1 (0.54%) BPSS Clearance
8 1 (0.54%) DV Cleared
8 1 (0.54%) ISTQB
8 1 (0.54%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 57 (30.98%) Data Quality
2 10 (5.43%) GDPR
2 10 (5.43%) QA
3 4 (2.17%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.63%) HIPAA
4 3 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 1 (0.54%) California Consumer Privacy Act
5 1 (0.54%) PCI DSS
5 1 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.54%) SLA
System Software
1 17 (9.24%) Docker
2 15 (8.15%) Active Directory
3 6 (3.26%) Virtual Desktop
4 5 (2.72%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 40 (21.74%) Terraform
2 17 (9.24%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.54%) Ansible
3 1 (0.54%) Failover Clustering
3 1 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 76 (41.30%) Microsoft
2 75 (40.76%) Databricks
3 9 (4.89%) ServiceNow
4 8 (4.35%) Oracle
5 5 (2.72%) OpenAI
6 3 (1.63%) ForgeRock
7 2 (1.09%) Palo Alto
7 2 (1.09%) SAP
8 1 (0.54%) Alteryx
8 1 (0.54%) Virgin Media