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 17 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 133 89 64
Rank change year-on-year -44 -25 -16
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 766 710 1,188
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.08% 2.89% 3.13%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 12.94% 15.13% 19.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 522 526 837
10th Percentile £356 £350 £325
25th Percentile £406 £407 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £486 £511 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.89% -2.62% -4.55%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £675 £719 £725
UK median daily rate £485 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -3.00% -4.76% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 19 6 29
10th Percentile £12.95 £25.66 £20.71
25th Percentile £20.75 £34.80 £40.00
Median hourly rate £27.00 £62.12 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year -56.54% +54.34% -3.59%
75th Percentile £58.50 £65.46 £59.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.62 £64.40
UK median hourly rate £39.10 £27.35 £40.25
% change year-on-year +42.96% -32.05% -7.75%

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 5,920 4,693 6,179
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 16.07% 19.10% 16.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,100 3,288 4,433
10th Percentile £346 £356 £350
25th Percentile £413 £425 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £530 £525
Median % change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £600 £663 £662
90th Percentile £700 £775 £763
UK median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 120 87 155
10th Percentile £18.23 £20.21 £14.14
25th Percentile £26.50 £24.25 £20.77
Median hourly rate £49.36 £33.11 £40.25
Median % change year-on-year +49.08% -17.74% -32.92%
75th Percentile £75.00 £64.86 £55.19
90th Percentile £85.33 £71.50 £75.92
UK median hourly rate £50.00 £30.00 £40.25
% change year-on-year +66.67% -25.47% -32.92%

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 17 March 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 17 March 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 17 March 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 -25 457 £500 -9.09% 131
South East -32 103 £482 -3.60% 134
North of England -30 102 £450 +5.88% 111
North West -20 62 £466 +6.57% 60
Yorkshire -30 38 £400 -0.06% 45
South West -32 33 £444 -19.32% 48
Midlands -68 32 £450 -10.00% 60
West Midlands -72 23 £450 -21.74% 24
East of England -15 21 £600 +14.83% 38
East Midlands -38 7 £425 +11.70% 36
North East -10 3 £475 +14.11% 9
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 33 (4.31%) SharePoint
2 32 (4.18%) IIS
3 23 (3.00%) Microsoft Exchange
4 18 (2.35%) Confluence
5 14 (1.83%) Oracle SOA Suite
6 13 (1.70%) Apache Spark
7 11 (1.44%) Apache
7 11 (1.44%) WebSphere
8 10 (1.31%) Appian
9 9 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
9 9 (1.17%) CMS
10 7 (0.91%) WebLogic
11 6 (0.78%) Sitecore CMS
12 3 (0.39%) Camunda
12 3 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
13 2 (0.26%) NetWeaver
13 2 (0.26%) SharePoint Server
14 1 (0.13%) BizTalk Server
14 1 (0.13%) Oracle Application Server
14 1 (0.13%) Umbraco
Applications
1 43 (5.61%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.83%) MS Visio
3 13 (1.70%) Microsoft Office
4 6 (0.78%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.13%) InDesign
6 1 (0.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 8 (1.04%) Advent Geneva
1 8 (1.04%) Dynamics CRM
2 7 (0.91%) BusinessWorks
2 7 (0.91%) SAP S/4HANA
3 6 (0.78%) Salesforce CRM
4 5 (0.65%) Remedy ITSM
5 4 (0.52%) Dynamics AX
5 4 (0.52%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.39%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 3 (0.39%) SystmOne
7 2 (0.26%) Dynamics NAV
7 2 (0.26%) Loan IQ
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle General Ledger
7 2 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.26%) Veritas eDiscovery
8 1 (0.13%) Elite 3E
8 1 (0.13%) Orchestrade
8 1 (0.13%) RMDS
8 1 (0.13%) SAP R/3
Cloud Services
1 331 (43.21%) Azure
2 165 (21.54%) AWS
3 128 (16.71%) Power Platform
4 98 (12.79%) Azure DevOps
5 73 (9.53%) Azure Data Factory
6 59 (7.70%) GitHub
7 46 (6.01%) GCP
8 41 (5.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 34 (4.44%) Microsoft 365
10 32 (4.18%) SaaS
11 30 (3.92%) Snowflake
12 28 (3.66%) Amazon S3
13 24 (3.13%) GitHub Actions
14 22 (2.87%) Power Automate
14 22 (2.87%) Serverless
15 21 (2.74%) Amazon EC2
15 21 (2.74%) Dynamics 365
15 21 (2.74%) IaaS
16 18 (2.35%) AWS CloudFormation
17 16 (2.09%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 21 (2.74%) DNS
2 20 (2.61%) Firewall
3 14 (1.83%) DHCP
4 12 (1.57%) Internet
4 12 (1.57%) TCP/IP
5 11 (1.44%) VPN
6 8 (1.04%) HTTP
6 8 (1.04%) SAN
7 7 (0.91%) LAN
8 6 (0.78%) NetScaler
8 6 (0.78%) VLAN
8 6 (0.78%) Wi-Fi
9 4 (0.52%) FTP
9 4 (0.52%) RS-232
9 4 (0.52%) X.400
10 3 (0.39%) SSH
10 3 (0.39%) VoIP
10 3 (0.39%) WAN
11 2 (0.26%) Remote Desktop
11 2 (0.26%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 111 (14.49%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 108 (14.10%) Power BI
3 104 (13.58%) PostgreSQL
4 97 (12.66%) Data Warehouse
5 88 (11.49%) Relational Database
6 65 (8.49%) Oracle Database
6 65 (8.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 56 (7.31%) Azure SQL Database
8 55 (7.18%) MySQL
9 51 (6.66%) Data Lake
10 39 (5.09%) NoSQL
11 37 (4.83%) MongoDB
12 31 (4.05%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 26 (3.39%) RDBMS
14 25 (3.26%) DB2
15 23 (3.00%) Amazon RDS
15 23 (3.00%) Big Data
16 21 (2.74%) Metadata
17 19 (2.48%) Delta Lake
18 16 (2.09%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 66 (8.62%) Git
2 48 (6.27%) JIRA
3 32 (4.18%) Jenkins
4 27 (3.52%) Visual Studio
5 22 (2.87%) GitLab
6 12 (1.57%) TeamCity
7 11 (1.44%) Cucumber
7 11 (1.44%) Postman
7 11 (1.44%) Team Foundation Server
8 10 (1.31%) Octopus Deploy
9 9 (1.17%) ERwin
10 8 (1.04%) JUnit
10 8 (1.04%) MLflow
10 8 (1.04%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
11 7 (0.91%) Mockito
11 7 (0.91%) Selenium
11 7 (0.91%) SpecFlow
12 6 (0.78%) Chocolatey
12 6 (0.78%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.78%) TestRail
General
1 228 (29.77%) Social Skills
2 186 (24.28%) Finance
3 124 (16.19%) Analytical Skills
4 91 (11.88%) Banking
5 61 (7.96%) Public Sector
6 36 (4.70%) Documentation Skills
7 22 (2.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 20 (2.61%) Investment Banking
9 17 (2.22%) Legal
10 16 (2.09%) Front Office
11 13 (1.70%) Financial Institution
11 13 (1.70%) Retail
12 10 (1.31%) Organisational Skills
13 9 (1.17%) Advertising
14 7 (0.91%) Local Government
15 6 (0.78%) Law
15 6 (0.78%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.65%) Presentation Skills
17 4 (0.52%) Influencing Skills
17 4 (0.52%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 236 (30.81%) Developer
2 110 (14.36%) Senior
3 102 (13.32%) Data Engineer
4 76 (9.92%) DBA
5 73 (9.53%) C# Developer
6 69 (9.01%) Architect
7 51 (6.66%) .NET Developer
8 44 (5.74%) SQL DBA
9 39 (5.09%) Lead
10 37 (4.83%) Analyst
11 33 (4.31%) Senior Developer
12 31 (4.05%) Senior Data Engineer
13 30 (3.92%) Full-Stack Developer
14 28 (3.66%) Azure Engineer
15 27 (3.52%) Software Engineer
16 24 (3.13%) Administrator
16 24 (3.13%) SQL Developer
17 22 (2.87%) Consultant
17 22 (2.87%) Data Architect
18 20 (2.61%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 211 (27.55%) .NET
2 94 (12.27%) .NET Framework
3 85 (11.10%) REST
4 61 (7.96%) React
5 56 (7.31%) AngularJS
6 47 (6.14%) HTML
7 46 (6.01%) RESTful
8 44 (5.74%) CSS
9 40 (5.22%) XML
10 39 (5.09%) .NET Core
11 36 (4.70%) Kafka
12 34 (4.44%) ASP.NET
13 28 (3.66%) Web Services
14 26 (3.39%) Entity Framework
15 22 (2.87%) OAuth
15 22 (2.87%) WPF
16 20 (2.61%) Node.js
16 20 (2.61%) Spring
16 20 (2.61%) YAML
17 19 (2.48%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 53 (6.92%) Legacy Systems
2 33 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 29 (3.79%) Replication
4 25 (3.26%) Data Structures
5 24 (3.13%) Enterprise Software
6 21 (2.74%) Onboarding
7 20 (2.61%) Management Information System
8 18 (2.35%) Clustering
9 11 (1.44%) Data Protection Act
9 11 (1.44%) NHS
9 11 (1.44%) Product Ownership
9 11 (1.44%) Reinsurance
9 11 (1.44%) Self-Motivation
10 10 (1.31%) Credit Risk
10 10 (1.31%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
10 10 (1.31%) Greenfield Project
10 10 (1.31%) Low-Code
11 9 (1.17%) Derivative
11 9 (1.17%) Legacy Code
11 9 (1.17%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 146 (19.06%) Windows
2 80 (10.44%) Windows Server
3 70 (9.14%) Linux
4 31 (4.05%) Unix
5 11 (1.44%) Windows Server 2016
6 9 (1.17%) Windows 10
7 8 (1.04%) AIX
7 8 (1.04%) Windows Server 2019
8 5 (0.65%) Windows Server 2012
9 4 (0.52%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 3 (0.39%) Android
10 3 (0.39%) Windows Server 2003
11 2 (0.26%) OpenVMS
11 2 (0.26%) VMS
11 2 (0.26%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (23.37%) CI/CD
2 175 (22.85%) DevOps
3 170 (22.19%) ETL
4 164 (21.41%) Agile
5 163 (21.28%) Problem-Solving
6 147 (19.19%) Business Intelligence
7 135 (17.62%) Data Modelling
8 127 (16.58%) Migration
9 92 (12.01%) Analytics
10 84 (10.97%) Performance Tuning
11 80 (10.44%) Disaster Recovery
12 77 (10.05%) Data Engineering
13 76 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
14 68 (8.88%) Data Analysis
15 66 (8.62%) Test Automation
16 65 (8.49%) Data Governance
16 65 (8.49%) Microservices
17 63 (8.22%) Data Integration
18 61 (7.96%) AI
19 58 (7.57%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 451 (58.88%) SQL
2 189 (24.67%) C#
3 176 (22.98%) Python
4 108 (14.10%) T-SQL
5 87 (11.36%) PowerShell
6 67 (8.75%) JavaScript
7 60 (7.83%) Java
8 59 (7.70%) PL/SQL
9 47 (6.14%) TypeScript
10 36 (4.70%) Bash
11 25 (3.26%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 16 (2.09%) Shell Script
12 16 (2.09%) VB
13 15 (1.96%) Bicep
13 15 (1.96%) Korn
14 12 (1.57%) VBA
15 11 (1.44%) PHP
16 8 (1.04%) Scala
17 7 (0.91%) XPath
18 4 (0.52%) Delphi
Qualifications
1 148 (19.32%) Security Cleared
2 110 (14.36%) SC Cleared
3 77 (10.05%) Degree
4 32 (4.18%) Microsoft Certification
5 27 (3.52%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (2.87%) Azure Certification
7 18 (2.35%) DV Cleared
8 15 (1.96%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (1.04%) Master's Degree
10 7 (0.91%) OCP
10 7 (0.91%) Oracle Certification
11 5 (0.65%) AWS Certification
11 5 (0.65%) CCA
11 5 (0.65%) Citrix Certification
11 5 (0.65%) DBS Check
11 5 (0.65%) ITIL Certification
12 4 (0.52%) Cisco Certification
12 4 (0.52%) CISSP
12 4 (0.52%) MCITP
12 4 (0.52%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 85 (11.10%) Data Quality
2 84 (10.97%) QA
3 20 (2.61%) GDPR
4 14 (1.83%) SLA
5 8 (1.04%) NIST
6 7 (0.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 6 (0.78%) Accessibility
8 4 (0.52%) IFRS
8 4 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 4 (0.52%) WCAG
9 3 (0.39%) Actionable Recommendations
9 3 (0.39%) IFRS 17
9 3 (0.39%) IFRS 9
10 2 (0.26%) Basel III
10 2 (0.26%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 2 (0.26%) EMIR
10 2 (0.26%) GAAP
10 2 (0.26%) HIPAA
10 2 (0.26%) MiFID
10 2 (0.26%) NIST 800
System Software
1 78 (10.18%) Docker
2 57 (7.44%) Active Directory
3 16 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (1.96%) Hyper-V
5 14 (1.83%) Oracle RAC
6 11 (1.44%) Virtual Machines
7 10 (1.31%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.78%) KVM
9 5 (0.65%) XenApp
9 5 (0.65%) XenDesktop
10 4 (0.52%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.26%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.26%) zsh
12 1 (0.13%) Citrix Hypervisor
Systems Management
1 77 (10.05%) Kubernetes
2 51 (6.66%) Terraform
3 17 (2.22%) Ansible
4 16 (2.09%) Grafana
5 15 (1.96%) Oracle RMAN
6 13 (1.70%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 13 (1.70%) SCCM
7 10 (1.31%) Puppet
7 10 (1.31%) vCenter Server
8 9 (1.17%) Microsoft Intune
9 7 (0.91%) TIBCO Hawk
10 6 (0.78%) IBM BigFix
10 6 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
11 5 (0.65%) SCVMM
12 4 (0.52%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 4 (0.52%) Progress Chef
13 3 (0.39%) Control-M
13 3 (0.39%) Foglight
13 3 (0.39%) Microsoft Clustering
13 3 (0.39%) WSUS
Vendors
1 229 (29.90%) Microsoft
2 226 (29.50%) Oracle
3 63 (8.22%) Databricks
4 49 (6.40%) Citrix
5 33 (4.31%) ServiceNow
6 31 (4.05%) Informatica
7 30 (3.92%) VMware
8 20 (2.61%) IBM
9 19 (2.48%) Google
9 19 (2.48%) SAP
10 12 (1.57%) UiPath
11 11 (1.44%) CyberArk
12 10 (1.31%) OpenAI
13 9 (1.17%) Dynatrace
13 9 (1.17%) Sybase
14 8 (1.04%) Advent
14 8 (1.04%) PagerDuty
14 8 (1.04%) Sitecore
14 8 (1.04%) SolarWinds
14 8 (1.04%) Tenable