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 13 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 135 123 68
Rank change year-on-year -12 -55 -11
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 956 673 1,047
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.05% 2.41% 3.27%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.07% 13.29% 18.11%
Number of daily rates quoted 669 494 740
10th Percentile £357 £313 £325
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £503
Median % change year-on-year - -0.50% -6.51%
75th Percentile £600 £626 £625
90th Percentile £713 £731 £725
UK median daily rate £491 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 31 4 6
10th Percentile £13.51 £20.83 £26.83
25th Percentile £17.97 £20.95 £35.00
Median hourly rate £24.50 £21.27 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +15.19% -62.19% +7.14%
75th Percentile £57.50 £35.52 £65.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £60.71 £82.50
UK median hourly rate £24.00 £21.27 £47.50
% change year-on-year +12.83% -55.22% -9.52%

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 6,797 5,064 5,782
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 14.60% 18.14% 18.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,515 3,474 3,922
10th Percentile £353 £338 £350
25th Percentile £419 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £510 £550
Median % change year-on-year - -7.27% -
75th Percentile £625 £633 £663
90th Percentile £713 £750 £813
UK median daily rate £501 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +0.24% -4.76% -2.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 266 72 83
10th Percentile £16.70 £20.67 £17.50
25th Percentile £21.25 £29.00 £22.20
Median hourly rate £41.36 £42.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% +19.99% -33.33%
75th Percentile £61.31 £65.00 £61.60
90th Percentile £74.68 £80.00 £71.15
UK median hourly rate £40.18 £39.48 £33.93
% change year-on-year +1.77% +16.36% -35.37%

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 13 October 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 13 October 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 13 October 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 -20 495 £500 -9.09% 467
North of England +8 183 £475 +9.20% 158
North West +1 106 £493 +11.93% 83
Midlands +12 102 £463 +23.33% 94
South East -53 84 £525 +50.00% 129
West Midlands -1 74 £460 -1.60% 60
Yorkshire -2 70 £450 +5.88% 59
South West -29 36 £715 +50.53% 39
East Midlands +2 28 £525 +54.41% 34
East of England -37 19 £425 -15.00% 45
North East - 7 £425 - 18
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 68 (7.11%) SharePoint
2 47 (4.92%) Confluence
3 37 (3.87%) IIS
4 23 (2.41%) Apache Airflow
5 22 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
6 19 (1.99%) Apache
7 18 (1.88%) Camunda
8 17 (1.78%) Apache Spark
9 9 (0.94%) Oracle Workflow
10 7 (0.73%) CMS
11 5 (0.52%) Apache Solr
11 5 (0.52%) Appian
11 5 (0.52%) NetWeaver
11 5 (0.52%) Tomcat
11 5 (0.52%) Tuxedo
12 4 (0.42%) Traefik
12 4 (0.42%) Umbraco
13 3 (0.31%) nginx
14 2 (0.21%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 2 (0.21%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 47 (4.92%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (3.14%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.05%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.31%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 3 (0.31%) Windchill
5 1 (0.10%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 34 (3.56%) Dynamics CRM
2 19 (1.99%) Remedy ITSM
3 15 (1.57%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.73%) Aladdin
4 7 (0.73%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.73%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.63%) Oracle Payables
6 5 (0.52%) Dynamics AX
7 4 (0.42%) Elite 3E
8 3 (0.31%) Dynamics NAV
8 3 (0.31%) Siebel CRM
9 2 (0.21%) Infor LN
9 2 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 1 (0.10%) Endur
10 1 (0.10%) FIS Private Capital Suite
10 1 (0.10%) NetSuite
10 1 (0.10%) SAP CRM
10 1 (0.10%) SAP MDG
10 1 (0.10%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 1 (0.10%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 415 (43.41%) Azure
2 201 (21.03%) AWS
3 159 (16.63%) Power Platform
4 118 (12.34%) Azure DevOps
5 94 (9.83%) GitHub
6 59 (6.17%) Entra ID
7 53 (5.54%) Serverless
8 49 (5.13%) Azure Data Factory
9 44 (4.60%) Dynamics 365
10 42 (4.39%) Power Automate
11 41 (4.29%) GCP
11 41 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
12 38 (3.97%) Azure Monitor
13 37 (3.87%) Snowflake
14 33 (3.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
15 32 (3.35%) GitHub Actions
16 25 (2.62%) Azure Functions
17 24 (2.51%) GitHub Copilot
17 24 (2.51%) PaaS
18 23 (2.41%) Amazon S3
Communications & Networking
1 45 (4.71%) DNS
2 36 (3.77%) DHCP
3 33 (3.45%) Firewall
4 16 (1.67%) SAN
4 16 (1.67%) SSL
5 15 (1.57%) VLAN
6 14 (1.46%) TCP/IP
6 14 (1.46%) VPN
7 12 (1.26%) Internet
8 11 (1.15%) Network Security
9 9 (0.94%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.84%) SSH
11 6 (0.63%) HTTPS
11 6 (0.63%) LAN
12 5 (0.52%) Kerberos
12 5 (0.52%) VoIP
12 5 (0.52%) WAN
13 3 (0.31%) Reverse Proxy
13 3 (0.31%) Wireless
14 2 (0.21%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 160 (16.74%) PostgreSQL
2 132 (13.81%) Power BI
3 100 (10.46%) Relational Database
4 98 (10.25%) MySQL
5 93 (9.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 87 (9.10%) Data Warehouse
7 64 (6.69%) Oracle Database
8 57 (5.96%) Azure SQL Database
8 57 (5.96%) MongoDB
9 54 (5.65%) SQL Server Reporting Services
10 33 (3.45%) Data Lake
11 29 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
12 25 (2.62%) NoSQL
13 23 (2.41%) Metadata
13 23 (2.41%) Redis
14 20 (2.09%) RDBMS
14 20 (2.09%) Tableau
15 19 (1.99%) SQL Server Analysis Services
16 15 (1.57%) Amazon Aurora
17 13 (1.36%) Star Schema
Development Applications
1 115 (12.03%) Git
2 76 (7.95%) JIRA
3 55 (5.75%) Jenkins
4 32 (3.35%) GitLab
5 25 (2.62%) Visual Studio
6 21 (2.20%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
7 19 (1.99%) Maven
8 18 (1.88%) REST Assured
8 18 (1.88%) Selenium
8 18 (1.88%) Sonatype Nexus
8 18 (1.88%) Team Foundation Server
9 15 (1.57%) Gradle
10 14 (1.46%) Claude Code
10 14 (1.46%) JUnit
10 14 (1.46%) Mockito
10 14 (1.46%) Postman
11 13 (1.36%) Cypress.io
11 13 (1.36%) SonarQube
12 12 (1.26%) Cucumber
13 11 (1.15%) WebDriver
General
1 309 (32.32%) Social Skills
2 263 (27.51%) Finance
3 174 (18.20%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (13.49%) Banking
5 65 (6.80%) Public Sector
6 39 (4.08%) Front Office
7 36 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
8 34 (3.56%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 23 (2.41%) Retail
10 22 (2.30%) Investment Banking
11 13 (1.36%) Legal
12 12 (1.26%) Back Office
12 12 (1.26%) Financial Institution
13 9 (0.94%) Manufacturing
14 7 (0.73%) Billing
14 7 (0.73%) Law
14 7 (0.73%) Presentation Skills
15 6 (0.63%) Local Government
15 6 (0.63%) Organisational Skills
15 6 (0.63%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 307 (32.11%) Developer
2 158 (16.53%) Senior
3 131 (13.70%) DBA
4 76 (7.95%) SQL DBA
5 72 (7.53%) Administrator
6 67 (7.01%) .NET Developer
6 67 (7.01%) C# Developer
7 64 (6.69%) Data Engineer
8 63 (6.59%) Lead
9 55 (5.75%) Full-Stack Developer
9 55 (5.75%) Senior Developer
10 53 (5.54%) Analyst
11 47 (4.92%) Architect
11 47 (4.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
12 41 (4.29%) SQL Developer
13 34 (3.56%) Software Engineer
14 28 (2.93%) Applications Support
14 28 (2.93%) Cloud Engineer
15 27 (2.82%) Azure Engineer
15 27 (2.82%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 282 (29.50%) .NET
2 141 (14.75%) REST
3 85 (8.89%) .NET Framework
4 83 (8.68%) React
5 80 (8.37%) Terraform
6 66 (6.90%) CSS
7 61 (6.38%) ASP.NET
8 60 (6.28%) .NET Core
8 60 (6.28%) HTML
9 58 (6.07%) AngularJS
10 56 (5.86%) Kafka
11 51 (5.33%) JSON
11 51 (5.33%) RESTful
12 45 (4.71%) Web Services
13 43 (4.50%) XML
14 40 (4.18%) SOAP
15 39 (4.08%) Spring Boot
16 33 (3.45%) OAuth
16 33 (3.45%) Spring
17 24 (2.51%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 61 (6.38%) Cloud Native
1 61 (6.38%) Enterprise Software
2 51 (5.33%) Onboarding
3 50 (5.23%) Data Structures
4 46 (4.81%) Replication
5 45 (4.71%) Product Ownership
6 43 (4.50%) Clustering
7 42 (4.39%) Self-Motivation
8 39 (4.08%) Data Centre
9 37 (3.87%) Management Information System
10 31 (3.24%) Legacy Systems
11 20 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
12 19 (1.99%) PKI
13 14 (1.46%) Derivative
13 14 (1.46%) Low-Code
14 13 (1.36%) Legacy Applications
14 13 (1.36%) Virtual Team
15 12 (1.26%) Algorithms
16 11 (1.15%) Taxonomies
17 10 (1.05%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 244 (25.52%) Windows
2 146 (15.27%) Windows Server
3 89 (9.31%) Linux
4 27 (2.82%) Unix
5 17 (1.78%) Solaris
6 14 (1.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (1.15%) Ubuntu
8 8 (0.84%) VMS
9 7 (0.73%) CentOS
9 7 (0.73%) Windows Server 2019
10 6 (0.63%) Android
10 6 (0.63%) Windows Server 2012
11 3 (0.31%) Windows 10
11 3 (0.31%) Windows Server 2008
12 2 (0.21%) AIX
12 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2016
13 1 (0.10%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.10%) SUSE
13 1 (0.10%) Windows XP
Processes & Methodologies
1 259 (27.09%) DevOps
2 252 (26.36%) Agile
3 247 (25.84%) CI/CD
4 189 (19.77%) Problem-Solving
5 181 (18.93%) Migration
6 144 (15.06%) Business Intelligence
7 136 (14.23%) Performance Tuning
8 131 (13.70%) Data Modelling
9 130 (13.60%) ETL
10 127 (13.28%) AI
11 123 (12.87%) Stakeholder Management
12 118 (12.34%) Continuous Improvement
13 109 (11.40%) Disaster Recovery
14 95 (9.94%) Test Automation
15 92 (9.62%) Microservices
16 88 (9.21%) Analytics
17 87 (9.10%) Software Engineering
18 84 (8.79%) Validation
19 75 (7.85%) Mentoring
20 74 (7.74%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 581 (60.77%) SQL
2 280 (29.29%) C#
3 166 (17.36%) PowerShell
4 162 (16.95%) Python
5 157 (16.42%) T-SQL
6 147 (15.38%) JavaScript
7 84 (8.79%) Java
8 64 (6.69%) TypeScript
9 55 (5.75%) PL/SQL
10 35 (3.66%) Bash
11 16 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 15 (1.57%) VB
13 13 (1.36%) VBA
14 12 (1.26%) Shell Script
15 10 (1.05%) Bicep
16 8 (0.84%) PHP
16 8 (0.84%) Scala
17 7 (0.73%) Go
17 7 (0.73%) VB.NET
18 6 (0.63%) XPath
Qualifications
1 233 (24.37%) Security Cleared
2 170 (17.78%) SC Cleared
3 101 (10.56%) Degree
4 58 (6.07%) Microsoft Certification
5 52 (5.44%) DV Cleared
6 33 (3.45%) Computer Science Degree
7 31 (3.24%) Azure Certification
8 23 (2.41%) BPSS Clearance
9 15 (1.57%) AWS Certification
10 13 (1.36%) ISTQB
11 12 (1.26%) Oracle Certification
12 11 (1.15%) OCP
13 9 (0.94%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 9 (0.94%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
13 9 (0.94%) Master's Degree
14 5 (0.52%) DBS Check
14 5 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
15 4 (0.42%) CISSP
15 4 (0.42%) PhD
16 3 (0.31%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 96 (10.04%) QA
2 88 (9.21%) Data Quality
3 35 (3.66%) Accessibility
3 35 (3.66%) GDPR
4 25 (2.62%) WCAG
5 16 (1.67%) SLA
6 12 (1.26%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 11 (1.15%) NIST
8 5 (0.52%) ISO 9000
9 3 (0.31%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.31%) Basel III
9 3 (0.31%) Software Quality Assurance
10 2 (0.21%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.21%) COREP
10 2 (0.21%) FINREP
10 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
10 2 (0.21%) ITGC
10 2 (0.21%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
11 1 (0.10%) GMP
System Software
1 118 (12.34%) Active Directory
2 69 (7.22%) Docker
3 37 (3.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 34 (3.56%) Virtual Machines
5 16 (1.67%) Oracle RAC
6 9 (0.94%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.73%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.63%) vSphere
9 5 (0.52%) VMware ESXi
10 4 (0.42%) Virtual Servers
11 3 (0.31%) Dovecot
11 3 (0.31%) Postfix
12 1 (0.10%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.10%) HDFS
12 1 (0.10%) SRDF
12 1 (0.10%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 82 (8.58%) Kubernetes
2 45 (4.71%) Ansible
3 20 (2.09%) SCOM
4 15 (1.57%) Data Guard
5 14 (1.46%) Microsoft Intune
6 11 (1.15%) Microsoft Clustering
6 11 (1.15%) SCCM
7 10 (1.05%) Grafana
8 9 (0.94%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
9 8 (0.84%) HAProxy
9 8 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.73%) Istio
11 6 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (0.63%) ITRS Geneos
11 6 (0.63%) Prometheus
11 6 (0.63%) WSUS
12 5 (0.52%) Oracle RMAN
13 3 (0.31%) EMC NetWorker
13 3 (0.31%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
13 3 (0.31%) Puppet
Vendors
1 354 (37.03%) Microsoft
2 263 (27.51%) Oracle
3 73 (7.64%) Databricks
4 65 (6.80%) VMware
5 46 (4.81%) ServiceNow
6 36 (3.77%) CyberArk
7 35 (3.66%) SAP
8 33 (3.45%) Citrix
9 27 (2.82%) IBM
10 21 (2.20%) Cisco
11 20 (2.09%) BeyondTrust
11 20 (2.09%) Informatica
12 19 (1.99%) BMC
12 19 (1.99%) Remedy
13 18 (1.88%) Dynatrace
14 17 (1.78%) Google
15 16 (1.67%) Red Hat
16 15 (1.57%) Splunk
17 12 (1.26%) Commvault
18 11 (1.15%) SolarWinds