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

 6 months to
25 Jun 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 116 97 59
Rank change year-on-year -19 -38 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 948 673 1,309
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.18% 2.68% 3.50%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.31% 14.35% 20.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 667 504 926
10th Percentile £356 £325 £350
25th Percentile £410 £400 £419
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £511 £511
Median % change year-on-year -2.20% - -2.62%
75th Percentile £619 £650 £638
90th Percentile £713 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £492 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -1.60% -0.99% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 48 6 23
10th Percentile £13.51 £21.02 £25.55
25th Percentile £19.25 £22.02 £38.81
Median hourly rate £28.68 £25.66 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +11.77% -35.85% -6.98%
75th Percentile £62.44 £64.71 £47.47
90th Percentile £74.60 £83.13 £62.96
UK median hourly rate £37.50 £70.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -46.43% +75.00% -11.11%

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 6,625 4,690 6,499
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.26% 18.68% 17.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,490 3,258 4,685
10th Percentile £350 £358 £350
25th Percentile £413 £418 £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 £800
UK median daily rate £500 £514 £525
% change year-on-year -2.72% -2.10% -2.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 214 84 142
10th Percentile £14.00 £18.89 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.05 £24.63 £20.77
Median hourly rate £38.25 £33.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.20% -16.26% -30.43%
75th Percentile £71.13 £62.44 £51.87
90th Percentile £77.50 £75.25 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £39.50 £34.99 £40.00
% change year-on-year +12.89% -12.53% -30.43%

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 25 June 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 25 June 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 25 June 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 -29 489 £538 -6.52% 86
North of England -21 152 £475 +11.76% 91
South East -16 117 £450 - 96
North West -23 85 £478 +7.42% 50
Midlands -22 84 £481 +11.21% 51
Yorkshire -8 66 £473 +18.13% 31
South West -24 50 £481 -1.28% 21
East Midlands +6 41 £525 +60.80% 20
West Midlands -42 41 £474 -13.82% 31
East of England -3 37 £475 -5.00% 13
North East -38 2 £475 +4.11% 14
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 55 (5.80%) SharePoint
2 43 (4.54%) IIS
3 24 (2.53%) Confluence
3 24 (2.53%) Microsoft Exchange
4 22 (2.32%) Apache Spark
5 21 (2.22%) Apache
6 19 (2.00%) Apache Airflow
7 15 (1.58%) Appian
8 13 (1.37%) Camunda
9 12 (1.27%) CMS
9 12 (1.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 6 (0.63%) NetWeaver
10 6 (0.63%) Sitecore CMS
11 5 (0.53%) OpenEdge
11 5 (0.53%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 5 (0.53%) Tuxedo
11 5 (0.53%) Umbraco
12 4 (0.42%) Tomcat
13 3 (0.32%) Apache Superset
13 3 (0.32%) nginx
Applications
1 38 (4.01%) Microsoft Excel
2 19 (2.00%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.16%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.21%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.21%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.11%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.11%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.11%) InDesign
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 18 (1.90%) SAP S/4HANA
2 14 (1.48%) Remedy ITSM
3 13 (1.37%) Dynamics CRM
4 7 (0.74%) Oracle Payables
5 6 (0.63%) Dynamics AX
6 5 (0.53%) Elite 3E
6 5 (0.53%) OpenText MBPM
6 5 (0.53%) Oracle BPM
7 3 (0.32%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.32%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.32%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.32%) SystmOne
8 2 (0.21%) Aladdin
8 2 (0.21%) Dynamics NAV
8 2 (0.21%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.21%) Siebel CRM
8 2 (0.21%) Teamcenter
8 2 (0.21%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 392 (41.35%) Azure
2 213 (22.47%) AWS
3 141 (14.87%) Power Platform
4 95 (10.02%) Azure DevOps
5 80 (8.44%) GitHub
6 73 (7.70%) Azure Data Factory
7 39 (4.11%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 39 (4.11%) GCP
8 37 (3.90%) GitHub Actions
8 37 (3.90%) Power Automate
8 37 (3.90%) Serverless
9 31 (3.27%) Microsoft 365
9 31 (3.27%) Snowflake
10 29 (3.06%) Dynamics 365
11 27 (2.85%) Azure Monitor
11 27 (2.85%) SaaS
12 23 (2.43%) Amazon S3
12 23 (2.43%) Entra ID
13 22 (2.32%) dbt
14 20 (2.11%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 37 (3.90%) DNS
2 29 (3.06%) DHCP
3 18 (1.90%) SAN
4 17 (1.79%) Firewall
5 12 (1.27%) Internet
5 12 (1.27%) VLAN
6 10 (1.05%) SSH
7 9 (0.95%) TCP/IP
7 9 (0.95%) VPN
8 6 (0.63%) HTTPS
8 6 (0.63%) IPv4
8 6 (0.63%) IPv6
8 6 (0.63%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.53%) Network Security
10 4 (0.42%) LAN
11 3 (0.32%) NAS
11 3 (0.32%) NetScaler
11 3 (0.32%) RS-232
11 3 (0.32%) VoIP
11 3 (0.32%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (15.61%) PostgreSQL
2 115 (12.13%) Power BI
3 107 (11.29%) Relational Database
4 106 (11.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 103 (10.86%) Data Warehouse
6 74 (7.81%) Oracle Database
7 57 (6.01%) MySQL
8 54 (5.70%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 49 (5.17%) Data Lake
10 48 (5.06%) Azure SQL Database
11 45 (4.75%) MongoDB
12 38 (4.01%) NoSQL
13 31 (3.27%) SQL Server Analysis Services
14 28 (2.95%) RDBMS
15 20 (2.11%) Tableau
16 19 (2.00%) Metadata
17 18 (1.90%) Delta Lake
18 17 (1.79%) Big Data
18 17 (1.79%) Redis
19 15 (1.58%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 78 (8.23%) Git
2 50 (5.27%) JIRA
3 40 (4.22%) Jenkins
4 26 (2.74%) Visual Studio
5 24 (2.53%) GitLab
6 17 (1.79%) TeamCity
7 16 (1.69%) Team Foundation Server
8 15 (1.58%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
9 13 (1.37%) Maven
10 12 (1.27%) Octopus Deploy
11 11 (1.16%) Cucumber
12 9 (0.95%) Gatling
12 9 (0.95%) Postman
13 8 (0.84%) MSTest
13 8 (0.84%) Oracle Forms
14 7 (0.74%) Artifactory
14 7 (0.74%) Chocolatey
14 7 (0.74%) ERwin
14 7 (0.74%) MLflow
15 6 (0.63%) tSQLt
General
1 270 (28.48%) Social Skills
2 237 (25.00%) Finance
3 152 (16.03%) Analytical Skills
4 117 (12.34%) Banking
5 74 (7.81%) Public Sector
6 39 (4.11%) Documentation Skills
7 33 (3.48%) Front Office
8 25 (2.64%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 22 (2.32%) Investment Banking
10 19 (2.00%) Legal
11 15 (1.58%) Retail
12 14 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (0.95%) Advertising
13 9 (0.95%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.84%) Local Government
15 6 (0.63%) Back Office
15 6 (0.63%) Law
15 6 (0.63%) Manufacturing
16 5 (0.53%) Publishing
17 4 (0.42%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 282 (29.75%) Developer
2 142 (14.98%) Senior
3 113 (11.92%) DBA
4 105 (11.08%) Data Engineer
5 86 (9.07%) C# Developer
6 69 (7.28%) Lead
7 66 (6.96%) .NET Developer
7 66 (6.96%) SQL DBA
8 60 (6.33%) Architect
9 45 (4.75%) SQL Developer
10 42 (4.43%) Analyst
10 42 (4.43%) Senior Developer
11 36 (3.80%) Administrator
12 34 (3.59%) Software Engineer
13 32 (3.38%) Full-Stack Developer
13 32 (3.38%) Senior Data Engineer
14 31 (3.27%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 30 (3.16%) Azure Engineer
15 30 (3.16%) Oracle DBA
16 28 (2.95%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 233 (24.58%) .NET
2 118 (12.45%) REST
3 100 (10.55%) .NET Framework
4 80 (8.44%) React
5 64 (6.75%) CSS
6 63 (6.65%) RESTful
7 57 (6.01%) AngularJS
8 54 (5.70%) HTML
9 50 (5.27%) Kafka
10 47 (4.96%) ASP.NET
11 42 (4.43%) .NET Core
12 37 (3.90%) XML
13 31 (3.27%) Web Services
14 30 (3.16%) JSON
14 30 (3.16%) OAuth
15 27 (2.85%) SOAP
16 26 (2.74%) Entity Framework
17 24 (2.53%) Spring Boot
18 23 (2.43%) Spring
19 20 (2.11%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 54 (5.70%) Legacy Systems
2 50 (5.27%) Cloud Native
3 47 (4.96%) Onboarding
4 37 (3.90%) Data Structures
5 36 (3.80%) Replication
6 33 (3.48%) Self-Motivation
7 32 (3.38%) Clustering
8 24 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
8 24 (2.53%) Management Information System
9 22 (2.32%) Low-Code
10 20 (2.11%) Product Ownership
11 18 (1.90%) Derivative
12 17 (1.79%) PKI
13 16 (1.69%) NHS
14 14 (1.48%) Fixed Income
15 12 (1.27%) Algorithms
15 12 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
15 12 (1.27%) Greenfield Project
15 12 (1.27%) Linux Command Line
15 12 (1.27%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 223 (23.52%) Windows
2 125 (13.19%) Windows Server
3 90 (9.49%) Linux
4 58 (6.12%) Unix
5 11 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 11 (1.16%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.05%) AIX
7 9 (0.95%) Android
7 9 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
8 8 (0.84%) Windows Server 2012
8 8 (0.84%) Windows Server 2016
9 5 (0.53%) Solaris
9 5 (0.53%) Ubuntu
9 5 (0.53%) VMS
10 3 (0.32%) CentOS
11 2 (0.21%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.21%) Windows 7
11 2 (0.21%) Windows Server 2003
12 1 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 230 (24.26%) DevOps
2 222 (23.42%) Agile
2 222 (23.42%) CI/CD
3 190 (20.04%) Problem-Solving
4 170 (17.93%) ETL
5 152 (16.03%) Migration
6 142 (14.98%) Business Intelligence
7 141 (14.87%) Data Modelling
8 114 (12.03%) Performance Tuning
9 110 (11.60%) AI
10 106 (11.18%) Disaster Recovery
11 105 (11.08%) Analytics
12 89 (9.39%) Data Pipeline
13 84 (8.86%) Microservices
14 82 (8.65%) High Availability
15 81 (8.54%) Validation
16 80 (8.44%) Data Analysis
16 80 (8.44%) Data Engineering
17 79 (8.33%) Data Integration
18 71 (7.49%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 536 (56.54%) SQL
2 249 (26.27%) C#
3 227 (23.95%) Python
4 157 (16.56%) PowerShell
5 155 (16.35%) T-SQL
6 94 (9.92%) JavaScript
7 78 (8.23%) Java
8 66 (6.96%) PL/SQL
9 56 (5.91%) TypeScript
10 31 (3.27%) Bash
11 25 (2.64%) Shell Script
12 23 (2.43%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 19 (2.00%) Scala
13 19 (2.00%) VB
14 16 (1.69%) Korn
15 13 (1.37%) VBA
16 10 (1.05%) Bicep
17 7 (0.74%) VB.NET
17 7 (0.74%) VB6
18 5 (0.53%) XPath
Qualifications
1 214 (22.57%) Security Cleared
2 161 (16.98%) SC Cleared
3 99 (10.44%) Degree
4 39 (4.11%) DV Cleared
5 32 (3.38%) Microsoft Certification
6 26 (2.74%) Computer Science Degree
7 17 (1.79%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.48%) Azure Certification
9 11 (1.16%) Master's Degree
10 9 (0.95%) DBS Check
11 6 (0.63%) ISTQB
11 6 (0.63%) Oracle Certification
12 5 (0.53%) CISSP
12 5 (0.53%) OCP
13 4 (0.42%) AWS Certification
13 4 (0.42%) MCITP
13 4 (0.42%) MCTS
13 4 (0.42%) PhD
14 3 (0.32%) CCA
14 3 (0.32%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 99 (10.44%) Data Quality
2 96 (10.13%) QA
3 27 (2.85%) GDPR
4 25 (2.64%) NIST
5 23 (2.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 16 (1.69%) SLA
7 15 (1.58%) Accessibility
8 11 (1.16%) WCAG
9 8 (0.84%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.42%) Basel III
10 4 (0.42%) ISO 9000
11 3 (0.32%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.32%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.32%) IFRS
11 3 (0.32%) IFRS 9
12 2 (0.21%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.21%) COREP
12 2 (0.21%) Government Security Classifications
12 2 (0.21%) GRC
12 2 (0.21%) SOC 2
System Software
1 90 (9.49%) Active Directory
2 80 (8.44%) Docker
3 25 (2.64%) Virtual Machines
4 22 (2.32%) VMware Infrastructure
5 19 (2.00%) Oracle RAC
6 13 (1.37%) Hyper-V
7 6 (0.63%) KVM
7 6 (0.63%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.32%) Dovecot
8 3 (0.32%) GridGain
8 3 (0.32%) Postfix
8 3 (0.32%) Virtual Servers
8 3 (0.32%) XenApp
8 3 (0.32%) XenDesktop
9 2 (0.21%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.21%) vSphere
10 1 (0.11%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.11%) RACF
10 1 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 104 (10.97%) Kubernetes
2 68 (7.17%) Terraform
3 24 (2.53%) Ansible
4 20 (2.11%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 19 (2.00%) Oracle RMAN
6 15 (1.58%) SCCM
7 13 (1.37%) HAProxy
8 10 (1.05%) WSUS
9 8 (0.84%) Microsoft Intune
10 7 (0.74%) Grafana
10 7 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
10 7 (0.74%) vCenter Server
11 6 (0.63%) Failover Clustering
11 6 (0.63%) IBM BigFix
12 4 (0.42%) Data Guard
13 3 (0.32%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 3 (0.32%) Control-M
13 3 (0.32%) Foglight
13 3 (0.32%) Prometheus
13 3 (0.32%) SCVMM
Vendors
1 269 (28.38%) Microsoft
2 264 (27.85%) Oracle
3 73 (7.70%) Databricks
4 52 (5.49%) Citrix
5 41 (4.32%) ServiceNow
6 35 (3.69%) SAP
6 35 (3.69%) VMware
7 33 (3.48%) Informatica
8 32 (3.38%) CyberArk
9 23 (2.43%) Google
9 23 (2.43%) Sybase
10 22 (2.32%) BeyondTrust
11 19 (2.00%) IBM
12 16 (1.69%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.48%) Remedy
14 13 (1.37%) BMC
14 13 (1.37%) Cisco
15 12 (1.27%) Red Hat
16 11 (1.16%) Alteryx
16 11 (1.16%) OpenAI
318 SQL Server jobs in England