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 3 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 129 90 63
Rank change year-on-year -39 -27 -13
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 801 672 1,219
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.09% 2.77% 3.24%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 13.03% 14.59% 19.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 558 500 857
10th Percentile £358 £337 £325
25th Percentile £407 £411 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £518 £525
Median % change year-on-year -6.76% -1.43% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £675 £726 £725
UK median daily rate £481 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -5.69% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 6 27
10th Percentile £14.21 £25.66 £21.98
25th Percentile £21.75 £34.80 £38.81
Median hourly rate £29.48 £62.12 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year -52.55% +54.34% +11.81%
75th Percentile £69.72 £65.62 £58.74
90th Percentile £76.00 £77.18 £65.80
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £60.50 £40.25
% change year-on-year -12.40% +50.31% -7.47%

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 6,149 4,607 6,147
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.03% 19.00% 16.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,290 3,241 4,404
10th Percentile £350 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £663 £670
90th Percentile £700 £775 £775
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 133 88 140
10th Percentile £18.05 £20.37 £14.00
25th Percentile £28.72 £24.25 £20.81
Median hourly rate £50.00 £32.96 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +51.70% -17.60% -30.43%
75th Percentile £75.00 £65.00 £51.79
90th Percentile £83.95 £71.88 £68.88
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £32.23 £40.00
% change year-on-year +58.26% -19.44% -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 3 April 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 3 April 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 3 April 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 -33 458 £500 -9.09% 115
North of England -22 120 £450 +8.70% 114
South East -35 100 £494 -1.25% 129
North West -32 66 £456 +7.35% 64
Yorkshire -22 52 £439 +9.69% 44
Midlands -59 45 £450 -14.29% 64
South West -31 34 £438 -20.45% 39
East of England -16 27 £588 +12.44% 45
West Midlands -72 23 £449 -24.53% 36
East Midlands -20 19 £463 +25.00% 28
North East -16 3 £475 +5.56% 13
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 36 (4.49%) SharePoint
2 35 (4.37%) IIS
3 23 (2.87%) Microsoft Exchange
4 17 (2.12%) Confluence
5 13 (1.62%) Apache
5 13 (1.62%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 12 (1.50%) Apache Spark
7 11 (1.37%) Appian
7 11 (1.37%) WebSphere
8 10 (1.25%) Apache Airflow
9 8 (1.00%) CMS
9 8 (1.00%) WebLogic
10 6 (0.75%) Camunda
10 6 (0.75%) Sitecore CMS
11 3 (0.37%) Apache Superset
11 3 (0.37%) Oracle Workflow
12 2 (0.25%) NetWeaver
12 2 (0.25%) OpenEdge
12 2 (0.25%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.12%) JBoss
Applications
1 43 (5.37%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.75%) MS Visio
3 13 (1.62%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.87%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 12 (1.50%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.12%) Remedy ITSM
3 8 (1.00%) Advent Geneva
3 8 (1.00%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.87%) BusinessWorks
5 6 (0.75%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.50%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.37%) Dynamics AX
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.37%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.37%) SystmOne
8 2 (0.25%) Endur
8 2 (0.25%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.25%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.25%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 1 (0.12%) Elite 3E
9 1 (0.12%) Findur
9 1 (0.12%) Oracle FAH
9 1 (0.12%) Orchestrade
Cloud Services
1 348 (43.45%) Azure
2 167 (20.85%) AWS
3 135 (16.85%) Power Platform
4 104 (12.98%) Azure DevOps
5 79 (9.86%) Azure Data Factory
6 63 (7.87%) GitHub
7 42 (5.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 42 (5.24%) GCP
8 36 (4.49%) Microsoft 365
9 29 (3.62%) SaaS
10 28 (3.50%) GitHub Actions
11 27 (3.37%) Amazon S3
12 25 (3.12%) Power Automate
13 23 (2.87%) Dynamics 365
14 22 (2.75%) IaaS
14 22 (2.75%) Serverless
14 22 (2.75%) Snowflake
15 19 (2.37%) Amazon EC2
16 18 (2.25%) Azure Monitor
17 17 (2.12%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 25 (3.12%) DNS
2 20 (2.50%) Firewall
3 18 (2.25%) DHCP
4 12 (1.50%) TCP/IP
4 12 (1.50%) VPN
5 11 (1.37%) Internet
6 10 (1.25%) SAN
6 10 (1.25%) VLAN
7 7 (0.87%) LAN
7 7 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
8 6 (0.75%) HTTP
8 6 (0.75%) NetScaler
9 4 (0.50%) FTP
9 4 (0.50%) RS-232
9 4 (0.50%) X.400
10 3 (0.37%) IPv4
10 3 (0.37%) IPv6
10 3 (0.37%) SSH
10 3 (0.37%) WAN
11 2 (0.25%) VoIP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 113 (14.11%) Power BI
2 110 (13.73%) PostgreSQL
2 110 (13.73%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 93 (11.61%) Data Warehouse
4 86 (10.74%) Relational Database
5 62 (7.74%) Oracle Database
5 62 (7.74%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 58 (7.24%) Azure SQL Database
7 52 (6.49%) MySQL
8 51 (6.37%) Data Lake
9 36 (4.49%) NoSQL
10 34 (4.24%) MongoDB
10 34 (4.24%) SQL Server Analysis Services
11 26 (3.25%) DB2
12 23 (2.87%) Metadata
13 20 (2.50%) Amazon RDS
14 17 (2.12%) Delta Lake
14 17 (2.12%) Tableau
15 16 (2.00%) RDBMS
16 14 (1.75%) Redis
Development Applications
1 69 (8.61%) Git
2 51 (6.37%) JIRA
3 38 (4.74%) Jenkins
4 25 (3.12%) Visual Studio
5 21 (2.62%) GitLab
6 15 (1.87%) TeamCity
7 11 (1.37%) Cucumber
7 11 (1.37%) Maven
7 11 (1.37%) Team Foundation Server
8 10 (1.25%) Postman
9 9 (1.12%) ERwin
9 9 (1.12%) Octopus Deploy
9 9 (1.12%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 8 (1.00%) JUnit
10 8 (1.00%) MLflow
11 7 (0.87%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.87%) Selenium
12 6 (0.75%) Mockito
12 6 (0.75%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.75%) TestRail
General
1 231 (28.84%) Social Skills
2 193 (24.09%) Finance
3 132 (16.48%) Analytical Skills
4 101 (12.61%) Banking
5 63 (7.87%) Public Sector
6 31 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
7 26 (3.25%) Investment Banking
8 24 (3.00%) Front Office
9 22 (2.75%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 17 (2.12%) Legal
11 13 (1.62%) Organisational Skills
11 13 (1.62%) Retail
12 12 (1.50%) Financial Institution
13 9 (1.12%) Advertising
14 8 (1.00%) Local Government
15 6 (0.75%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.62%) Law
17 4 (0.50%) Back Office
17 4 (0.50%) General Ledger
17 4 (0.50%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 254 (31.71%) Developer
2 118 (14.73%) Senior
3 103 (12.86%) Data Engineer
4 84 (10.49%) DBA
5 74 (9.24%) C# Developer
6 70 (8.74%) Architect
7 61 (7.62%) .NET Developer
8 47 (5.87%) SQL DBA
9 40 (4.99%) Lead
10 37 (4.62%) Senior Developer
11 36 (4.49%) Analyst
12 31 (3.87%) Senior Data Engineer
13 30 (3.75%) Full-Stack Developer
14 28 (3.50%) Azure Engineer
14 28 (3.50%) Software Engineer
15 27 (3.37%) SQL Developer
16 25 (3.12%) Administrator
17 22 (2.75%) Oracle DBA
18 21 (2.62%) Data Architect
19 20 (2.50%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 222 (27.72%) .NET
2 92 (11.49%) REST
3 90 (11.24%) .NET Framework
4 68 (8.49%) React
5 58 (7.24%) AngularJS
6 54 (6.74%) RESTful
7 49 (6.12%) HTML
8 45 (5.62%) CSS
9 39 (4.87%) .NET Core
9 39 (4.87%) ASP.NET
9 39 (4.87%) XML
10 36 (4.49%) Kafka
11 28 (3.50%) Web Services
12 23 (2.87%) Entity Framework
13 22 (2.75%) Spring
14 20 (2.50%) JSON
14 20 (2.50%) Node.js
14 20 (2.50%) SOAP
14 20 (2.50%) Spring Boot
14 20 (2.50%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.87%) Legacy Systems
2 37 (4.62%) Cloud Native
3 32 (4.00%) Replication
4 30 (3.75%) Data Structures
5 25 (3.12%) Onboarding
6 23 (2.87%) Enterprise Software
7 19 (2.37%) Clustering
8 18 (2.25%) Management Information System
9 15 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
10 14 (1.75%) NHS
11 13 (1.62%) Product Ownership
12 12 (1.50%) Legacy Code
13 10 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
13 10 (1.25%) Greenfield Project
13 10 (1.25%) Low-Code
13 10 (1.25%) Virtual Team
14 9 (1.12%) Credit Risk
14 9 (1.12%) Distributed Systems
14 9 (1.12%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
14 9 (1.12%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 155 (19.35%) Windows
2 85 (10.61%) Windows Server
3 74 (9.24%) Linux
4 37 (4.62%) Unix
5 11 (1.37%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.25%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (1.00%) AIX
8 7 (0.87%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.75%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 3 (0.37%) Android
11 3 (0.37%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.25%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.25%) VMS
12 2 (0.25%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 195 (24.34%) CI/CD
2 194 (24.22%) DevOps
3 173 (21.60%) ETL
4 170 (21.22%) Problem-Solving
5 168 (20.97%) Agile
6 151 (18.85%) Business Intelligence
7 138 (17.23%) Data Modelling
8 121 (15.11%) Migration
9 99 (12.36%) Analytics
10 88 (10.99%) Performance Tuning
11 86 (10.74%) Disaster Recovery
12 80 (9.99%) Data Pipeline
13 77 (9.61%) Data Engineering
14 74 (9.24%) AI
15 73 (9.11%) Test Automation
16 71 (8.86%) Data Analysis
17 67 (8.36%) Data Integration
17 67 (8.36%) Microservices
18 59 (7.37%) High Availability
19 58 (7.24%) Data Governance
Programming Languages
1 470 (58.68%) SQL
2 203 (25.34%) C#
3 177 (22.10%) Python
4 117 (14.61%) T-SQL
5 96 (11.99%) PowerShell
6 72 (8.99%) Java
6 72 (8.99%) JavaScript
7 60 (7.49%) PL/SQL
8 50 (6.24%) TypeScript
9 31 (3.87%) Bash
10 24 (3.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 22 (2.75%) Shell Script
12 17 (2.12%) VB
13 16 (2.00%) Korn
14 15 (1.87%) Bicep
15 13 (1.62%) VBA
16 12 (1.50%) Scala
17 11 (1.37%) PHP
18 7 (0.87%) XPath
19 4 (0.50%) R
Qualifications
1 161 (20.10%) Security Cleared
2 123 (15.36%) SC Cleared
3 80 (9.99%) Degree
4 30 (3.75%) Microsoft Certification
5 28 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 20 (2.50%) DV Cleared
7 19 (2.37%) Azure Certification
8 16 (2.00%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.00%) Master's Degree
10 5 (0.62%) CCA
10 5 (0.62%) Citrix Certification
10 5 (0.62%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.62%) ITIL Certification
10 5 (0.62%) OCP
10 5 (0.62%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.50%) CISSP
11 4 (0.50%) MCITP
11 4 (0.50%) MCTS
11 4 (0.50%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.37%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 91 (11.36%) Data Quality
2 87 (10.86%) QA
3 20 (2.50%) GDPR
4 15 (1.87%) SLA
5 7 (0.87%) NIST
6 6 (0.75%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.75%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 5 (0.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 4 (0.50%) IFRS
8 4 (0.50%) WCAG
9 3 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.37%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.37%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.25%) Basel III
10 2 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.25%) EMIR
10 2 (0.25%) GAAP
10 2 (0.25%) GRC
10 2 (0.25%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.25%) MiFID
System Software
1 85 (10.61%) Docker
2 56 (6.99%) Active Directory
3 18 (2.25%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.87%) Hyper-V
4 15 (1.87%) Oracle RAC
5 11 (1.37%) Virtual Desktop
5 11 (1.37%) Virtual Machines
6 6 (0.75%) KVM
7 5 (0.62%) XenApp
7 5 (0.62%) XenDesktop
8 3 (0.37%) GridGain
9 2 (0.25%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.25%) VMware NSX
10 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.12%) NFS
10 1 (0.12%) RACF
Systems Management
1 85 (10.61%) Kubernetes
2 57 (7.12%) Terraform
3 17 (2.12%) Ansible
4 16 (2.00%) Oracle RMAN
5 14 (1.75%) Grafana
5 14 (1.75%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 14 (1.75%) SCCM
6 10 (1.25%) Microsoft Intune
7 9 (1.12%) vCenter Server
8 8 (1.00%) Puppet
9 7 (0.87%) TIBCO Hawk
10 6 (0.75%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.62%) HAProxy
11 5 (0.62%) SCVMM
11 5 (0.62%) WSUS
12 3 (0.37%) Control-M
12 3 (0.37%) Foglight
12 3 (0.37%) Microsoft Clustering
12 3 (0.37%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 252 (31.46%) Microsoft
2 230 (28.71%) Oracle
3 67 (8.36%) Databricks
4 52 (6.49%) Citrix
5 39 (4.87%) ServiceNow
6 32 (4.00%) Informatica
7 31 (3.87%) VMware
8 22 (2.75%) SAP
9 21 (2.62%) Google
10 20 (2.50%) IBM
11 14 (1.75%) Sybase
12 12 (1.50%) CyberArk
12 12 (1.50%) UiPath
13 11 (1.37%) Dynatrace
14 10 (1.25%) OpenAI
15 9 (1.12%) Remedy
15 9 (1.12%) Tenable
16 8 (1.00%) BMC
16 8 (1.00%) Sitecore
16 8 (1.00%) TIBCO