SQL Server Contract Job Trends in England

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
UK > England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in England requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 30 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
30 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 91 59
Rank change year-on-year -28 -32 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 899 667 1,245
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.14% 2.78% 3.39%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.09% 14.57% 19.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 625 489 879
10th Percentile £352 £327 £331
25th Percentile £404 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £523 £513
Median % change year-on-year -6.70% +1.95% -2.38%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £510 £505
% change year-on-year -6.86% +0.99% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 7 21
10th Percentile £13.51 £21.02 £36.75
25th Percentile £19.63 £23.01 -
Median hourly rate £38.51 £26.32 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +46.31% -34.20% -2.44%
75th Percentile £60.38 £65.62 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.00 £74.87 £62.96
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £63.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -25.42% +59.36% -17.95%

All Database & BI Skills
England

SQL Server 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 6,382 4,578 6,255
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.19% 19.05% 17.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,351 3,179 4,523
10th Percentile £350 £363 £350
25th Percentile £413 £424 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £518 £525
% change year-on-year -3.38% -1.43% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 204 91 136
10th Percentile £14.00 £19.25 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £22.94 £20.70
Median hourly rate £40.50 £31.64 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +28.00% -20.90% -33.33%
75th Percentile £73.19 £60.38 £55.63
90th Percentile £82.25 £70.00 £73.75
UK median hourly rate £42.11 £32.81 £40.00
% change year-on-year +28.33% -17.98% -33.33%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in England

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

SQL Server job vacancy trend in England

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in England over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in England

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in England

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

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in England citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Histogram in England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL Server in England over the 6 months to 30 May 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in England

SQL Server
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 SQL Server within the England region over the 6 months to 30 May 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 -28 480 £500 -13.04% 110
North of England -24 142 £475 +11.76% 62
South East -21 116 £461 -1.60% 90
Yorkshire -13 70 £450 +12.50% 22
North West -35 70 £500 +11.11% 34
Midlands -30 69 £481 -2.83% 52
South West -22 40 £438 -12.50% 26
East Midlands +2 38 £525 +67.73% 21
East of England -8 35 £475 -5.00% 16
West Midlands -64 29 £465 -19.13% 31
North East -27 3 £475 +5.56% 7
SQL Server
UK

SQL Server
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 48 (5.34%) SharePoint
2 44 (4.89%) IIS
3 24 (2.67%) Microsoft Exchange
4 22 (2.45%) Apache
5 20 (2.22%) Apache Airflow
5 20 (2.22%) Apache Spark
5 20 (2.22%) Confluence
6 14 (1.56%) Appian
7 12 (1.33%) CMS
8 11 (1.22%) Camunda
9 9 (1.00%) Oracle Workflow
10 8 (0.89%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 6 (0.67%) Sitecore CMS
12 5 (0.56%) NetWeaver
12 5 (0.56%) OpenEdge
12 5 (0.56%) Tomcat
12 5 (0.56%) Umbraco
12 5 (0.56%) WebSphere
13 3 (0.33%) nginx
13 3 (0.33%) WebLogic
Applications
1 32 (3.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.33%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.11%) InDesign
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 14 (1.56%) Remedy ITSM
1 14 (1.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
3 6 (0.67%) Dynamics AX
4 5 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
5 3 (0.33%) OpenText MBPM
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle BPM
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle General Ledger
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 3 (0.33%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
5 3 (0.33%) SystmOne
6 2 (0.22%) BusinessWorks
6 2 (0.22%) Elite 3E
6 2 (0.22%) Loan IQ
6 2 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
6 2 (0.22%) Teamcenter
6 2 (0.22%) Veritas eDiscovery
7 1 (0.11%) Oracle FAH
7 1 (0.11%) Payment Gateway
7 1 (0.11%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 387 (43.05%) Azure
2 195 (21.69%) AWS
3 153 (17.02%) Power Platform
4 109 (12.12%) Azure DevOps
5 88 (9.79%) Azure Data Factory
6 82 (9.12%) GitHub
7 49 (5.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 42 (4.67%) GCP
9 36 (4.00%) Microsoft 365
10 35 (3.89%) GitHub Actions
10 35 (3.89%) Power Automate
11 34 (3.78%) Serverless
12 32 (3.56%) Snowflake
13 28 (3.11%) SaaS
14 26 (2.89%) Amazon S3
15 25 (2.78%) Dynamics 365
16 23 (2.56%) Azure Monitor
17 21 (2.34%) PowerApps
18 20 (2.22%) dbt
19 19 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 37 (4.12%) DNS
2 29 (3.23%) DHCP
3 22 (2.45%) Firewall
4 14 (1.56%) SAN
5 12 (1.33%) Internet
5 12 (1.33%) VLAN
5 12 (1.33%) VPN
6 9 (1.00%) TCP/IP
7 6 (0.67%) IPv4
7 6 (0.67%) IPv6
7 6 (0.67%) LAN
7 6 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
8 5 (0.56%) Network Security
9 4 (0.44%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.44%) SSH
9 4 (0.44%) WAN
10 3 (0.33%) FTP
10 3 (0.33%) NAS
10 3 (0.33%) RS-232
10 3 (0.33%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 126 (14.02%) PostgreSQL
1 126 (14.02%) Power BI
2 116 (12.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 109 (12.12%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (10.12%) Relational Database
5 70 (7.79%) Oracle Database
6 61 (6.79%) Data Lake
7 57 (6.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 55 (6.12%) MySQL
9 54 (6.01%) Azure SQL Database
10 41 (4.56%) NoSQL
11 39 (4.34%) MongoDB
12 35 (3.89%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 24 (2.67%) Tableau
14 22 (2.45%) Metadata
15 20 (2.22%) Delta Lake
15 20 (2.22%) RDBMS
16 17 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
17 16 (1.78%) Big Data
17 16 (1.78%) Redis
Development Applications
1 71 (7.90%) Git
2 57 (6.34%) JIRA
3 41 (4.56%) Jenkins
4 24 (2.67%) GitLab
5 23 (2.56%) Visual Studio
6 19 (2.11%) TeamCity
7 14 (1.56%) Team Foundation Server
8 13 (1.45%) Cucumber
9 12 (1.33%) Octopus Deploy
10 11 (1.22%) Maven
10 11 (1.22%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 10 (1.11%) Postman
12 9 (1.00%) Gatling
13 8 (0.89%) ERwin
13 8 (0.89%) MLflow
13 8 (0.89%) REST Assured
13 8 (0.89%) Selenium
14 7 (0.78%) Chocolatey
14 7 (0.78%) MSTest
15 6 (0.67%) TestRail
General
1 255 (28.36%) Social Skills
2 216 (24.03%) Finance
3 143 (15.91%) Analytical Skills
4 109 (12.12%) Banking
5 64 (7.12%) Public Sector
6 32 (3.56%) Front Office
7 31 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 22 (2.45%) Investment Banking
9 21 (2.34%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 19 (2.11%) Legal
11 15 (1.67%) Organisational Skills
11 15 (1.67%) Retail
12 9 (1.00%) Advertising
12 9 (1.00%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.00%) Local Government
13 8 (0.89%) Law
14 7 (0.78%) Back Office
15 6 (0.67%) Publishing
15 6 (0.67%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.56%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 262 (29.14%) Developer
2 139 (15.46%) Senior
3 120 (13.35%) Data Engineer
4 98 (10.90%) DBA
5 81 (9.01%) C# Developer
6 64 (7.12%) Architect
7 61 (6.79%) .NET Developer
8 60 (6.67%) SQL DBA
9 56 (6.23%) Lead
10 40 (4.45%) Senior Data Engineer
10 40 (4.45%) Senior Developer
11 34 (3.78%) Analyst
11 34 (3.78%) Full-Stack Developer
12 33 (3.67%) Software Engineer
13 31 (3.45%) SQL Developer
14 29 (3.23%) Azure Engineer
15 28 (3.11%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 27 (3.00%) Support Engineer
17 26 (2.89%) Administrator
17 26 (2.89%) Oracle DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (24.69%) .NET
2 114 (12.68%) REST
3 94 (10.46%) .NET Framework
4 77 (8.57%) React
5 63 (7.01%) CSS
6 61 (6.79%) RESTful
7 58 (6.45%) HTML
8 56 (6.23%) AngularJS
9 44 (4.89%) ASP.NET
10 43 (4.78%) Kafka
11 42 (4.67%) .NET Core
12 32 (3.56%) XML
13 31 (3.45%) OAuth
14 26 (2.89%) Web Services
15 25 (2.78%) Entity Framework
16 23 (2.56%) JSON
16 23 (2.56%) PySpark
16 23 (2.56%) SOAP
17 21 (2.34%) YAML
18 20 (2.22%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 56 (6.23%) Legacy Systems
2 42 (4.67%) Cloud Native
3 36 (4.00%) Replication
4 33 (3.67%) Onboarding
5 30 (3.34%) Data Structures
6 28 (3.11%) Clustering
6 28 (3.11%) Self-Motivation
7 20 (2.22%) Management Information System
8 19 (2.11%) Enterprise Software
8 19 (2.11%) Low-Code
9 17 (1.89%) NHS
10 16 (1.78%) Product Ownership
11 14 (1.56%) Derivative
12 13 (1.45%) PKI
13 12 (1.33%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (1.33%) Fixed Income
14 11 (1.22%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (1.22%) Legacy Code
14 11 (1.22%) Reinsurance
15 8 (0.89%) Data Centre
Operating Systems
1 204 (22.69%) Windows
2 119 (13.24%) Windows Server
3 87 (9.68%) Linux
4 51 (5.67%) Unix
5 12 (1.33%) Windows 10
6 11 (1.22%) Windows Server 2019
7 10 (1.11%) AIX
7 10 (1.11%) Windows Server 2016
8 8 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 8 (0.89%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.78%) Android
10 4 (0.44%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.44%) VMS
11 3 (0.33%) CentOS
12 2 (0.22%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.22%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.11%) Solaris
13 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 228 (25.36%) DevOps
2 223 (24.81%) CI/CD
3 196 (21.80%) Agile
4 185 (20.58%) ETL
5 179 (19.91%) Problem-Solving
6 154 (17.13%) Business Intelligence
7 151 (16.80%) Data Modelling
8 139 (15.46%) Migration
9 108 (12.01%) Analytics
10 106 (11.79%) Disaster Recovery
11 104 (11.57%) Performance Tuning
12 100 (11.12%) AI
13 92 (10.23%) Data Pipeline
14 85 (9.45%) Data Engineering
15 80 (8.90%) Test Automation
16 77 (8.57%) High Availability
17 76 (8.45%) Data Integration
18 75 (8.34%) Microservices
19 74 (8.23%) Data Analysis
20 71 (7.90%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 515 (57.29%) SQL
2 235 (26.14%) Python
3 225 (25.03%) C#
4 143 (15.91%) T-SQL
5 142 (15.80%) PowerShell
6 97 (10.79%) JavaScript
7 87 (9.68%) Java
8 67 (7.45%) PL/SQL
9 51 (5.67%) TypeScript
10 35 (3.89%) Bash
11 25 (2.78%) Shell Script
12 23 (2.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 18 (2.00%) Scala
14 16 (1.78%) Korn
14 16 (1.78%) VB
15 15 (1.67%) Bicep
16 13 (1.45%) VBA
17 8 (0.89%) PHP
18 5 (0.56%) Rust
19 4 (0.44%) XPath
Qualifications
1 192 (21.36%) Security Cleared
2 147 (16.35%) SC Cleared
3 96 (10.68%) Degree
4 30 (3.34%) DV Cleared
4 30 (3.34%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.34%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (2.11%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.11%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.00%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.56%) CISSP
10 5 (0.56%) OCP
10 5 (0.56%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.44%) CCA
11 4 (0.44%) Citrix Certification
11 4 (0.44%) MCITP
11 4 (0.44%) MCTS
12 3 (0.33%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 2 (0.22%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (11.46%) Data Quality
2 91 (10.12%) QA
3 25 (2.78%) GDPR
4 20 (2.22%) NIST
5 18 (2.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (1.67%) SLA
7 10 (1.11%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.89%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.78%) WCAG
10 4 (0.44%) Basel III
11 3 (0.33%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.33%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.33%) IFRS
11 3 (0.33%) IFRS 9
12 2 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.22%) EMIR
12 2 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.22%) GRC
12 2 (0.22%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 88 (9.79%) Docker
2 83 (9.23%) Active Directory
3 27 (3.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (2.11%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
6 14 (1.56%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.78%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.67%) KVM
9 4 (0.44%) XenApp
9 4 (0.44%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.33%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.33%) GridGain
10 3 (0.33%) Postfix
10 3 (0.33%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.22%) vSphere
12 1 (0.11%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.11%) NFS
12 1 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 107 (11.90%) Kubernetes
2 67 (7.45%) Terraform
3 19 (2.11%) Ansible
4 18 (2.00%) Oracle RMAN
5 17 (1.89%) SCCM
6 15 (1.67%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
7 13 (1.45%) HAProxy
8 9 (1.00%) Grafana
9 8 (0.89%) Microsoft Intune
9 8 (0.89%) WSUS
10 7 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.78%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.67%) IBM BigFix
12 4 (0.44%) SCVMM
13 3 (0.33%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.33%) Control-M
13 3 (0.33%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.33%) Failover Clustering
13 3 (0.33%) Foglight
13 3 (0.33%) Microsoft Clustering
Vendors
1 248 (27.59%) Microsoft
2 241 (26.81%) Oracle
3 80 (8.90%) Databricks
4 53 (5.90%) Citrix
5 41 (4.56%) ServiceNow
6 40 (4.45%) VMware
7 33 (3.67%) Informatica
8 30 (3.34%) SAP
9 22 (2.45%) CyberArk
9 22 (2.45%) Google
10 20 (2.22%) Sybase
11 19 (2.11%) IBM
12 17 (1.89%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.56%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.56%) Remedy
14 13 (1.45%) BMC
15 12 (1.33%) Cisco
16 11 (1.22%) Alteryx
16 11 (1.22%) OpenAI
17 10 (1.11%) UiPath
330 SQL Server jobs in England