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 18 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 372 326 342
Rank change year-on-year -46 +16 +52
Contract jobs citing Azure SQL Database 168 164 218
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.53% 0.61% 0.59%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.18% 3.33% 3.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 128 105 146
10th Percentile £400 £385 £413
25th Percentile £425 £465 £463
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £575 £550
Median % change year-on-year -12.61% +4.55% -
75th Percentile £588 £675 £650
90th Percentile £640 £732 £706
UK median daily rate £500 £550 £525
% change year-on-year -9.09% +4.76% -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 5,285 4,928 6,009
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.62% 18.34% 16.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,691 3,268 4,302
10th Percentile £329 £354 £355
25th Percentile £413 £425 £431
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% - -
75th Percentile £613 £663 £650
90th Percentile £710 £780 £750
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £530
% change year-on-year -4.76% -0.94% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 72 145
10th Percentile £18.25 £21.25 £15.71
25th Percentile £29.00 £24.25 £22.61
Median hourly rate £43.50 £39.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.54% -13.33% -18.18%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.73 £63.75
90th Percentile £84.00 £72.98 £77.80
UK median hourly rate £43.50 £35.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year +24.29% -22.22% -18.18%

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 18 January 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 18 January 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 -19 100 £525 -12.50% 55
South East -14 23 £425 -19.05% 75
North of England -48 14 £463 +1.37% 66
North West -25 9 £475 +4.11% 35
Midlands -52 7 £544 -1.14% 41
South West -3 5 £550 +2.33% 29
East Midlands -21 4 £505 +12.22% 26
West Midlands -44 3 £575 +2.22% 14
Yorkshire -50 3 £475 +6.74% 21
North East - 2 £425 - 10
East of England -12 1 £505 - 35
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 (19.05%) Apache Spark
2 6 (3.57%) SharePoint
3 4 (2.38%) ArcGIS
4 2 (1.19%) Apache Airflow
4 2 (1.19%) Confluence
4 2 (1.19%) Microsoft Exchange
5 1 (0.60%) CMS
Applications
1 6 (3.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (2.38%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (1.19%) Trello
4 1 (0.60%) Microsoft Project
Business Applications
1 3 (1.79%) Payment Gateway
2 2 (1.19%) Aladdin
Cloud Services
1 168 (100.00%) Azure
2 90 (53.57%) Azure Data Factory
3 55 (32.74%) Azure DevOps
3 55 (32.74%) Power Platform
4 49 (29.17%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 34 (20.24%) Serverless
6 33 (19.64%) GitHub
7 29 (17.26%) Azure Functions
8 21 (12.50%) Azure Service Bus
9 20 (11.90%) Azure Key Vault
10 19 (11.31%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 18 (10.71%) Azure AKS
11 18 (10.71%) GitHub Actions
12 16 (9.52%) PaaS
13 15 (8.93%) Azure Logic Apps
14 13 (7.74%) Azure Storage
15 12 (7.14%) Entra ID
16 11 (6.55%) Azure Monitor
17 8 (4.76%) Azure API Management
17 8 (4.76%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.38%) HTTP
2 3 (1.79%) Network Security
3 2 (1.19%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 59 (35.12%) Data Warehouse
2 54 (32.14%) Power BI
3 47 (27.98%) SQL Server
4 37 (22.02%) Data Lake
5 30 (17.86%) NoSQL
6 13 (7.74%) Metadata
6 13 (7.74%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 11 (6.55%) Power Query
8 10 (5.95%) Tableau
9 9 (5.36%) Relational Database
10 7 (4.17%) Big Data
10 7 (4.17%) Delta Lake
11 6 (3.57%) PostgreSQL
12 5 (2.98%) MySQL
12 5 (2.98%) Spark SQL
13 4 (2.38%) Amazon RDS
13 4 (2.38%) Metadata Repository
13 4 (2.38%) MongoDB
13 4 (2.38%) Snowflake Schema
13 4 (2.38%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 44 (26.19%) Git
2 7 (4.17%) Jenkins
3 3 (1.79%) JIRA
4 2 (1.19%) SonarQube
5 1 (0.60%) JMeter
5 1 (0.60%) Poetry
5 1 (0.60%) Postman
5 1 (0.60%) Pylint
5 1 (0.60%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (0.60%) Visual Studio
5 1 (0.60%) Visual Studio Code
General
1 51 (30.36%) Social Skills
2 25 (14.88%) Finance
3 23 (13.69%) Public Sector
4 10 (5.95%) Analytical Skills
4 10 (5.95%) Banking
5 6 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 3 (1.79%) Aviation
6 3 (1.79%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.19%) Billing
7 2 (1.19%) Manufacturing
7 2 (1.19%) Military
7 2 (1.19%) Pharmaceutical
8 1 (0.60%) Agriculture
8 1 (0.60%) Investment Banking
8 1 (0.60%) Marketing
8 1 (0.60%) Retail
8 1 (0.60%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 61 (36.31%) Data Engineer
2 48 (28.57%) Azure Engineer
3 35 (20.83%) Developer
4 33 (19.64%) Azure Data Engineer
5 21 (12.50%) Architect
6 17 (10.12%) Senior
7 13 (7.74%) Azure Developer
8 12 (7.14%) Azure Architect
8 12 (7.14%) Technical Architect
9 10 (5.95%) Senior Data Engineer
10 9 (5.36%) .NET Developer
10 9 (5.36%) DBA
11 8 (4.76%) Lead
12 7 (4.17%) SQL DBA
13 6 (3.57%) Cloud Engineer
13 6 (3.57%) Full-Stack Developer
14 5 (2.98%) Azure DevOps Engineer
14 5 (2.98%) Azure Software Engineer
14 5 (2.98%) Microsoft Engineer
14 5 (2.98%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 45 (26.79%) PySpark
2 33 (19.64%) .NET
3 13 (7.74%) Kafka
4 12 (7.14%) ARM Templates
5 11 (6.55%) .NET Core
5 11 (6.55%) AngularJS
6 9 (5.36%) REST
7 8 (4.76%) JSON
7 8 (4.76%) Node.js
7 8 (4.76%) React
8 6 (3.57%) YAML
9 5 (2.98%) ADO
9 5 (2.98%) Express.js
9 5 (2.98%) Next.js
9 5 (2.98%) WebSockets
10 4 (2.38%) RESTful
10 4 (2.38%) SignalR
11 3 (1.79%) ASP.NET
11 3 (1.79%) Spring
11 3 (1.79%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 16 (9.52%) Cloud Native
2 4 (2.38%) AI Agents
2 4 (2.38%) Clustering
2 4 (2.38%) Data Structures
2 4 (2.38%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (2.38%) Legacy Systems
3 3 (1.79%) Distributed Computing
3 3 (1.79%) Onboarding
3 3 (1.79%) Replication
4 2 (1.19%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (1.19%) FMCG
4 2 (1.19%) Product Ownership
5 1 (0.60%) Data Fabric
5 1 (0.60%) Distributed Applications
5 1 (0.60%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
5 1 (0.60%) IoT
5 1 (0.60%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (0.60%) Life Science
5 1 (0.60%) Mobile App
5 1 (0.60%) Social Media
Operating Systems
1 2 (1.19%) VMS
2 1 (0.60%) Windows
2 1 (0.60%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 77 (45.83%) CI/CD
2 74 (44.05%) Data Modelling
3 70 (41.67%) DevOps
4 60 (35.71%) Data Pipeline
5 55 (32.74%) Business Intelligence
6 54 (32.14%) Analytics
7 51 (30.36%) ETL
8 49 (29.17%) Data Governance
9 47 (27.98%) Data Engineering
10 42 (25.00%) Data Integration
11 40 (23.81%) Agile
12 36 (21.43%) Data Architecture
13 30 (17.86%) Infrastructure as Code
14 27 (16.07%) Integration Patterns
15 24 (14.29%) RBAC
16 23 (13.69%) Problem-Solving
17 22 (13.10%) Migration
18 21 (12.50%) Microservices
19 19 (11.31%) Performance Tuning
20 18 (10.71%) Performance Optimisation
Programming Languages
1 167 (99.40%) SQL
2 71 (42.26%) Python
3 29 (17.26%) Scala
4 23 (13.69%) C#
5 16 (9.52%) Bicep
6 15 (8.93%) JavaScript
7 13 (7.74%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 12 (7.14%) T-SQL
9 9 (5.36%) PowerShell
9 9 (5.36%) TypeScript
10 5 (2.98%) Java
11 2 (1.19%) Bash
11 2 (1.19%) R
12 1 (0.60%) ANSI SQL
12 1 (0.60%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.60%) VBA
Qualifications
1 60 (35.71%) Security Cleared
2 48 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 18 (10.71%) Azure Certification
4 10 (5.95%) Microsoft Certification
5 6 (3.57%) Degree
6 4 (2.38%) CTC Cleared
7 3 (1.79%) Computer Science Degree
8 2 (1.19%) AWS Certification
8 2 (1.19%) OCP
8 2 (1.19%) Oracle Certification
9 1 (0.60%) BC Cleared
9 1 (0.60%) BPSS Clearance
9 1 (0.60%) DV Cleared
9 1 (0.60%) Master's Degree
9 1 (0.60%) PMI Certification
9 1 (0.60%) PMP
9 1 (0.60%) Tableau Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (29.17%) Data Quality
2 8 (4.76%) QA
3 7 (4.17%) GDPR
4 3 (1.79%) Accessibility
4 3 (1.79%) HIPAA
5 2 (1.19%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 1 (0.60%) PCI DSS
6 1 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.60%) SLA
System Software
1 16 (9.52%) Docker
2 12 (7.14%) Active Directory
3 6 (3.57%) Virtual Desktop
4 4 (2.38%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (17.26%) Terraform
2 18 (10.71%) Kubernetes
3 1 (0.60%) Grafana
3 1 (0.60%) Prometheus
3 1 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 70 (41.67%) Microsoft
2 67 (39.88%) Databricks
3 7 (4.17%) Oracle
3 7 (4.17%) ServiceNow
4 5 (2.98%) OpenAI
5 3 (1.79%) ForgeRock
6 2 (1.19%) Google
6 2 (1.19%) Palo Alto
6 2 (1.19%) SAP
6 2 (1.19%) Virgin Media
7 1 (0.60%) Atlassian