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 24 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 446 365 326
Rank change year-on-year -81 -39 +38
Contract jobs citing Azure SQL Database 173 143 221
As % of all contract jobs in England 0.38% 0.52% 0.63%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 2.51% 2.86% 3.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 118 110 169
10th Percentile £404 £405 £325
25th Percentile £458 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £538 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year +3.37% -0.95% -6.25%
75th Percentile £614 £622 £650
90th Percentile £729 £725 £700
UK median daily rate £525 £500 £522
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.21% -5.09%

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 6,899 5,007 6,317
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.35% 18.30% 18.07%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,616 3,470 4,547
10th Percentile £355 £350 £350
25th Percentile £415 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £518 £531
Median % change year-on-year -3.38% -2.54% -3.45%
75th Percentile £606 £638 £675
90th Percentile £700 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £500 £508 £525
% change year-on-year -1.48% -3.33% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 221 80 99
10th Percentile £16.70 £18.72 £13.94
25th Percentile £25.25 £23.50 £20.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £34.82 £38.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.46% -9.57% -30.00%
75th Percentile £70.00 £64.06 £56.25
90th Percentile £77.50 £77.62 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £41.71 £36.25 £37.50
% change year-on-year +15.06% -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 24 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 24 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 -62 97 £575 +4.55% 33
Midlands -38 31 £540 +20.00% 5
West Midlands -54 18 £500 +25.00% 4
North of England -57 18 £409 -22.14% 15
South East -71 14 £500 +17.65% 17
East Midlands -4 12 £570 +26.67% 1
Yorkshire -38 10 £490 -6.67% 5
South West -37 8 £600 +17.65% 7
North West -46 5 £409 -18.25% 6
North East - 3 £400 - 4
East of England -19 1 £505 -32.76% 5
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 9 (5.20%) SharePoint
2 7 (4.05%) Confluence
3 3 (1.73%) Apache
3 3 (1.73%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (1.16%) Apache Airflow
5 1 (0.58%) Apache Spark
5 1 (0.58%) IIS
5 1 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
5 1 (0.58%) Tomcat
Applications
1 3 (1.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.58%) InDesign
2 1 (0.58%) Microsoft PowerPoint
2 1 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 2 (1.16%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (0.58%) Aladdin
2 1 (0.58%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 173 (100.00%) Azure
2 69 (39.88%) Azure DevOps
3 61 (35.26%) Azure Data Factory
4 56 (32.37%) Power Platform
5 54 (31.21%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 38 (21.97%) GitHub
7 34 (19.65%) Azure Monitor
8 28 (16.18%) Azure Key Vault
8 28 (16.18%) Entra ID
8 28 (16.18%) Serverless
9 22 (12.72%) Azure Functions
10 20 (11.56%) Azure Cosmos DB
11 19 (10.98%) Azure Storage
12 18 (10.40%) Azure AKS
12 18 (10.40%) PaaS
13 13 (7.51%) AWS
13 13 (7.51%) Azure App Service
13 13 (7.51%) IaaS
14 11 (6.36%) Azure ExpressRoute
15 10 (5.78%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 10 (5.78%) DNS
2 9 (5.20%) Firewall
3 6 (3.47%) Network Security
4 4 (2.31%) WAN
5 3 (1.73%) VPN
6 1 (0.58%) HTTP
6 1 (0.58%) Internet
6 1 (0.58%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.58%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 55 (31.79%) Data Lake
2 52 (30.06%) SQL Server
3 45 (26.01%) Power BI
4 31 (17.92%) Data Warehouse
5 17 (9.83%) Delta Lake
5 17 (9.83%) PostgreSQL
6 16 (9.25%) NoSQL
7 13 (7.51%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 10 (5.78%) Relational Database
8 10 (5.78%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 10 (5.78%) Star Schema
9 8 (4.62%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 6 (3.47%) Metadata
10 6 (3.47%) MySQL
10 6 (3.47%) Parquet
11 5 (2.89%) Oracle Database
12 4 (2.31%) Amazon RDS
12 4 (2.31%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
12 4 (2.31%) Enterprise Data Warehouse
12 4 (2.31%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 34 (19.65%) Git
2 6 (3.47%) Visual Studio
3 4 (2.31%) JetBrains Rider
4 2 (1.16%) Jasmine
4 2 (1.16%) JIRA
4 2 (1.16%) JUnit
4 2 (1.16%) Karma Test Runner
4 2 (1.16%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 1 (0.58%) Bitbucket
5 1 (0.58%) git-flow
5 1 (0.58%) GitLab
5 1 (0.58%) Jenkins
5 1 (0.58%) MSI
5 1 (0.58%) Team Foundation Server
5 1 (0.58%) webpack
General
1 43 (24.86%) Finance
2 36 (20.81%) Social Skills
3 19 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (9.83%) Public Sector
5 10 (5.78%) Banking
6 8 (4.62%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 6 (3.47%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (2.89%) Investment Banking
9 3 (1.73%) Local Government
10 2 (1.16%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (1.16%) Manufacturing
11 1 (0.58%) Aerospace
11 1 (0.58%) Agriculture
11 1 (0.58%) Games
11 1 (0.58%) Marketing
11 1 (0.58%) Military
11 1 (0.58%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.58%) Presentation Skills
11 1 (0.58%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 52 (30.06%) Data Engineer
2 43 (24.86%) Developer
3 35 (20.23%) Architect
4 30 (17.34%) Senior
5 20 (11.56%) Azure Engineer
6 17 (9.83%) Data Architect
6 17 (9.83%) Full-Stack Developer
7 14 (8.09%) Senior Data Engineer
8 12 (6.94%) Azure Architect
8 12 (6.94%) Azure Developer
9 11 (6.36%) .NET Developer
9 11 (6.36%) DBA
9 11 (6.36%) Solutions Architect
10 10 (5.78%) Azure Data Engineer
11 9 (5.20%) Informatica Engineer
11 9 (5.20%) Senior Developer
11 9 (5.20%) SQL DBA
12 8 (4.62%) Azure Data Architect
12 8 (4.62%) SQL Developer
13 7 (4.05%) Angular Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (17.92%) .NET
2 27 (15.61%) REST
3 14 (8.09%) .NET Core
3 14 (8.09%) .NET Framework
3 14 (8.09%) OAuth
3 14 (8.09%) PySpark
4 13 (7.51%) Entity Framework
5 11 (6.36%) JSON
5 11 (6.36%) React
5 11 (6.36%) RESTful
6 9 (5.20%) ARM Templates
6 9 (5.20%) CSS
6 9 (5.20%) HTML
7 8 (4.62%) AngularJS
7 8 (4.62%) OpenID
7 8 (4.62%) SAML
8 6 (3.47%) OAuth2
9 5 (2.89%) Web Services
9 5 (2.89%) XML
10 4 (2.31%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 25 (14.45%) Cloud Native
2 11 (6.36%) Replication
3 7 (4.05%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.47%) Data Structures
4 6 (3.47%) Hybrid Cloud
4 6 (3.47%) IoT
5 5 (2.89%) Clustering
5 5 (2.89%) Legacy Systems
6 4 (2.31%) SCADA
7 3 (1.73%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.73%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (1.73%) Onboarding
7 3 (1.73%) Wiki
8 2 (1.16%) Data Centre
8 2 (1.16%) Data Fabric
8 2 (1.16%) Distributed Computing
8 2 (1.16%) Distributed Systems
8 2 (1.16%) Enterprise Cloud
8 2 (1.16%) Low-Code
8 2 (1.16%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 7 (4.05%) Linux
2 5 (2.89%) Windows
3 4 (2.31%) Ubuntu
4 3 (1.73%) VMS
5 2 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.58%) Data ONTAP
Processes & Methodologies
1 86 (49.71%) DevOps
2 70 (40.46%) CI/CD
3 62 (35.84%) Analytics
3 62 (35.84%) Data Modelling
4 60 (34.68%) ETL
5 46 (26.59%) Data Pipeline
6 43 (24.86%) Business Intelligence
7 41 (23.70%) Data Engineering
8 34 (19.65%) Infrastructure as Code
9 32 (18.50%) Agile
10 31 (17.92%) Migration
11 30 (17.34%) Performance Tuning
12 29 (16.76%) AI
13 28 (16.18%) Data Governance
14 27 (15.61%) RBAC
15 26 (15.03%) High Availability
16 24 (13.87%) Disaster Recovery
17 23 (13.29%) Log Analytics
18 20 (11.56%) Data Science
18 20 (11.56%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 173 (100.00%) SQL
2 50 (28.90%) Python
3 28 (16.18%) C#
4 27 (15.61%) PowerShell
5 19 (10.98%) Bicep
6 16 (9.25%) T-SQL
7 15 (8.67%) TypeScript
8 12 (6.94%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (5.20%) Scala
10 5 (2.89%) Bash
10 5 (2.89%) Java
10 5 (2.89%) JavaScript
11 2 (1.16%) Kusto Query Language
12 1 (0.58%) C
12 1 (0.58%) C++
12 1 (0.58%) PL/SQL
12 1 (0.58%) X++
Qualifications
1 33 (19.08%) Security Cleared
2 25 (14.45%) SC Cleared
3 17 (9.83%) Azure Certification
4 6 (3.47%) Degree
5 5 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 4 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (0.58%) DBS Check
7 1 (0.58%) DV Cleared
7 1 (0.58%) Master's Degree
7 1 (0.58%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.58%) SnowPro
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 28 (16.18%) Data Quality
2 17 (9.83%) QA
3 15 (8.67%) GDPR
4 9 (5.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (2.31%) NCSC
6 3 (1.73%) Cyber Essentials
6 3 (1.73%) NIST
7 1 (0.58%) IFRS
7 1 (0.58%) IFRS 17
7 1 (0.58%) IFRS 9
7 1 (0.58%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.58%) SOC 2
System Software
1 17 (9.83%) Active Directory
2 11 (6.36%) Docker
3 10 (5.78%) Virtual Machines
4 4 (2.31%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 40 (23.12%) Terraform
2 11 (6.36%) Kubernetes
3 3 (1.73%) Failover Clustering
4 2 (1.16%) Ansible
5 1 (0.58%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 103 (59.54%) Microsoft
2 35 (20.23%) Databricks
3 15 (8.67%) Informatica
3 15 (8.67%) Oracle
4 4 (2.31%) SAP
4 4 (2.31%) ServiceNow
5 3 (1.73%) Google
6 1 (0.58%) Adobe
6 1 (0.58%) IBM
6 1 (0.58%) NetApp
6 1 (0.58%) OpenAI
6 1 (0.58%) Salesforce
6 1 (0.58%) Salesforce Marketing Cloud