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

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 122 93 63
Rank change year-on-year -29 -30 -15
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 827 676 1,221
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.11% 2.78% 3.26%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 13.24% 14.58% 19.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 576 504 858
10th Percentile £353 £340 £330
25th Percentile £404 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -8.65% -0.95% -2.78%
75th Percentile £588 £638 £650
90th Percentile £675 £738 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -6.86% -2.86% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 28 6 26
10th Percentile £17.36 £25.66 £21.79
25th Percentile £24.98 £34.80 £38.22
Median hourly rate £50.61 £62.12 £40.13
Median % change year-on-year -18.53% +54.82% +11.46%
75th Percentile £69.58 £65.62 £56.84
90th Percentile £74.75 £77.18 £62.98
UK median hourly rate £53.00 £62.12 £40.00
% change year-on-year -14.68% +55.31% -8.05%

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 6,246 4,637 6,151
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.92% 19.04% 16.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,355 3,266 4,415
10th Percentile £350 £357 £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 146 95 138
10th Percentile £18.13 £20.99 £14.00
25th Percentile £29.84 £24.25 £20.78
Median hourly rate £50.50 £33.11 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +52.52% -17.23% -28.19%
75th Percentile £74.68 £65.62 £51.75
90th Percentile £83.50 £73.75 £67.50
UK median hourly rate £51.00 £33.11 £40.00
% change year-on-year +54.03% -17.23% -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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -24 458 £500 -9.09% 115
North of England -30 126 £450 +5.88% 114
South East -24 110 £482 -3.60% 129
North West -20 67 £463 +5.71% 64
Yorkshire -10 57 £428 +6.88% 44
Midlands -51 52 £450 -21.74% 64
South West -31 35 £438 -20.45% 39
East of England -14 28 £544 +4.07% 45
West Midlands -67 26 £449 -25.13% 36
East Midlands -17 24 £463 +27.41% 28
North East -20 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 37 (4.47%) IIS
1 37 (4.47%) SharePoint
2 21 (2.54%) Microsoft Exchange
3 17 (2.06%) Confluence
4 13 (1.57%) Apache
4 13 (1.57%) Apache Spark
4 13 (1.57%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 11 (1.33%) Apache Airflow
5 11 (1.33%) Appian
5 11 (1.33%) WebSphere
6 8 (0.97%) CMS
6 8 (0.97%) WebLogic
7 6 (0.73%) Camunda
7 6 (0.73%) Sitecore CMS
8 4 (0.48%) Oracle Workflow
9 3 (0.36%) Apache Superset
9 3 (0.36%) OpenEdge
10 2 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.12%) ColdFusion
11 1 (0.12%) Oracle Application Server
Applications
1 44 (5.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 14 (1.69%) MS Visio
3 13 (1.57%) Microsoft Office
4 7 (0.85%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.12%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 12 (1.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 9 (1.09%) Remedy ITSM
3 8 (0.97%) Advent Geneva
4 7 (0.85%) BusinessWorks
4 7 (0.85%) SAP S/4HANA
5 6 (0.73%) Salesforce CRM
6 4 (0.48%) Oracle Payables
7 3 (0.36%) Dynamics AX
7 3 (0.36%) Oracle General Ledger
7 3 (0.36%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
7 3 (0.36%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
7 3 (0.36%) SystmOne
8 2 (0.24%) Endur
8 2 (0.24%) Loan IQ
8 2 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
8 2 (0.24%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 1 (0.12%) Findur
9 1 (0.12%) SAP R/3
9 1 (0.12%) Teamcenter
9 1 (0.12%) TIBCO BusinessEvents
Cloud Services
1 353 (42.68%) Azure
2 166 (20.07%) AWS
3 138 (16.69%) Power Platform
4 108 (13.06%) Azure DevOps
5 80 (9.67%) Azure Data Factory
6 63 (7.62%) GitHub
7 45 (5.44%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 39 (4.72%) GCP
9 35 (4.23%) Microsoft 365
10 30 (3.63%) SaaS
11 27 (3.26%) Amazon S3
11 27 (3.26%) GitHub Actions
11 27 (3.26%) Power Automate
12 24 (2.90%) Dynamics 365
12 24 (2.90%) Snowflake
13 22 (2.66%) IaaS
13 22 (2.66%) Serverless
14 20 (2.42%) Amazon EC2
15 19 (2.30%) Azure Monitor
16 17 (2.06%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 26 (3.14%) DNS
2 20 (2.42%) DHCP
2 20 (2.42%) Firewall
3 12 (1.45%) Internet
3 12 (1.45%) TCP/IP
3 12 (1.45%) VPN
4 11 (1.33%) VLAN
5 10 (1.21%) SAN
6 7 (0.85%) LAN
6 7 (0.85%) Wi-Fi
7 6 (0.73%) HTTP
7 6 (0.73%) NetScaler
8 4 (0.48%) FTP
8 4 (0.48%) IPv4
8 4 (0.48%) IPv6
8 4 (0.48%) RS-232
8 4 (0.48%) SSH
8 4 (0.48%) X.400
9 3 (0.36%) Network Security
9 3 (0.36%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 116 (14.03%) PostgreSQL
2 114 (13.78%) Power BI
3 112 (13.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 95 (11.49%) Data Warehouse
5 87 (10.52%) Relational Database
6 66 (7.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 62 (7.50%) Oracle Database
8 59 (7.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 52 (6.29%) Data Lake
9 52 (6.29%) MySQL
10 35 (4.23%) NoSQL
11 34 (4.11%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 32 (3.87%) MongoDB
13 25 (3.02%) DB2
14 23 (2.78%) Metadata
15 20 (2.42%) Amazon RDS
16 18 (2.18%) Delta Lake
17 17 (2.06%) RDBMS
17 17 (2.06%) Tableau
18 13 (1.57%) Redis
Development Applications
1 70 (8.46%) Git
2 52 (6.29%) JIRA
3 37 (4.47%) Jenkins
4 25 (3.02%) Visual Studio
5 21 (2.54%) GitLab
6 15 (1.81%) TeamCity
7 11 (1.33%) Cucumber
7 11 (1.33%) Team Foundation Server
8 10 (1.21%) Maven
8 10 (1.21%) Postman
9 9 (1.09%) ERwin
9 9 (1.09%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 8 (0.97%) MLflow
10 8 (0.97%) Octopus Deploy
11 7 (0.85%) Chocolatey
11 7 (0.85%) JUnit
11 7 (0.85%) Selenium
12 6 (0.73%) Mockito
12 6 (0.73%) REST Assured
12 6 (0.73%) TestRail
General
1 232 (28.05%) Social Skills
2 189 (22.85%) Finance
3 136 (16.44%) Analytical Skills
4 96 (11.61%) Banking
5 71 (8.59%) Public Sector
6 35 (4.23%) Documentation Skills
7 25 (3.02%) Investment Banking
8 24 (2.90%) Front Office
9 22 (2.66%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 16 (1.93%) Legal
11 14 (1.69%) Organisational Skills
12 13 (1.57%) Retail
13 12 (1.45%) Financial Institution
14 9 (1.09%) Advertising
14 9 (1.09%) Local Government
15 6 (0.73%) Telecoms
16 5 (0.60%) Law
17 4 (0.48%) Back Office
17 4 (0.48%) General Ledger
17 4 (0.48%) Military
Job Titles
1 261 (31.56%) Developer
2 125 (15.11%) Senior
3 106 (12.82%) Data Engineer
4 89 (10.76%) DBA
5 76 (9.19%) C# Developer
6 71 (8.59%) Architect
7 62 (7.50%) .NET Developer
8 51 (6.17%) SQL DBA
9 41 (4.96%) Lead
10 37 (4.47%) Analyst
10 37 (4.47%) Senior Developer
11 33 (3.99%) Senior Data Engineer
12 30 (3.63%) Azure Engineer
13 29 (3.51%) Full-Stack Developer
13 29 (3.51%) Software Engineer
13 29 (3.51%) SQL Developer
14 27 (3.26%) Administrator
15 22 (2.66%) Oracle DBA
16 21 (2.54%) C# .NET Developer
17 20 (2.42%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 229 (27.69%) .NET
2 94 (11.37%) .NET Framework
3 93 (11.25%) REST
4 68 (8.22%) React
5 58 (7.01%) AngularJS
6 55 (6.65%) RESTful
7 50 (6.05%) HTML
8 47 (5.68%) CSS
9 39 (4.72%) .NET Core
9 39 (4.72%) ASP.NET
10 38 (4.59%) XML
11 36 (4.35%) Kafka
12 29 (3.51%) Web Services
13 24 (2.90%) Entity Framework
14 21 (2.54%) Spring
14 21 (2.54%) WPF
15 20 (2.42%) JSON
15 20 (2.42%) Node.js
15 20 (2.42%) SOAP
15 20 (2.42%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 57 (6.89%) Legacy Systems
2 36 (4.35%) Cloud Native
3 32 (3.87%) Data Structures
3 32 (3.87%) Onboarding
3 32 (3.87%) Replication
4 23 (2.78%) Enterprise Software
5 21 (2.54%) Management Information System
6 19 (2.30%) Clustering
7 17 (2.06%) NHS
8 16 (1.93%) Self-Motivation
9 13 (1.57%) Product Ownership
10 12 (1.45%) Legacy Code
11 11 (1.33%) Virtual Team
12 10 (1.21%) Low-Code
13 9 (1.09%) Credit Risk
13 9 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
13 9 (1.09%) Distributed Systems
13 9 (1.09%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
13 9 (1.09%) Greenfield Project
13 9 (1.09%) Reinsurance
Operating Systems
1 164 (19.83%) Windows
2 90 (10.88%) Windows Server
3 81 (9.79%) Linux
4 45 (5.44%) Unix
5 11 (1.33%) Windows 10
6 10 (1.21%) Windows Server 2016
7 8 (0.97%) AIX
8 7 (0.85%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.73%) Windows Server 2012
10 5 (0.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 3 (0.36%) Android
11 3 (0.36%) Windows Server 2003
12 2 (0.24%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.24%) VMS
12 2 (0.24%) Windows 7
13 1 (0.12%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.12%) Ubuntu
13 1 (0.12%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 198 (23.94%) DevOps
2 197 (23.82%) CI/CD
3 176 (21.28%) ETL
4 175 (21.16%) Problem-Solving
5 171 (20.68%) Agile
6 153 (18.50%) Business Intelligence
7 141 (17.05%) Data Modelling
8 123 (14.87%) Migration
9 102 (12.33%) Analytics
10 91 (11.00%) Disaster Recovery
11 85 (10.28%) Performance Tuning
12 82 (9.92%) Data Pipeline
13 79 (9.55%) Data Engineering
14 74 (8.95%) AI
14 74 (8.95%) Test Automation
15 72 (8.71%) Data Analysis
16 68 (8.22%) Data Integration
16 68 (8.22%) Microservices
17 63 (7.62%) High Availability
18 60 (7.26%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 484 (58.52%) SQL
2 208 (25.15%) C#
3 193 (23.34%) Python
4 123 (14.87%) T-SQL
5 104 (12.58%) PowerShell
6 73 (8.83%) JavaScript
7 71 (8.59%) Java
8 62 (7.50%) PL/SQL
9 50 (6.05%) TypeScript
10 32 (3.87%) Bash
11 24 (2.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 22 (2.66%) Shell Script
13 18 (2.18%) VB
14 16 (1.93%) Korn
15 15 (1.81%) Bicep
16 14 (1.69%) VBA
17 12 (1.45%) Scala
18 11 (1.33%) PHP
19 7 (0.85%) XPath
20 5 (0.60%) Rust
Qualifications
1 176 (21.28%) Security Cleared
2 133 (16.08%) SC Cleared
3 87 (10.52%) Degree
4 30 (3.63%) Microsoft Certification
5 28 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 23 (2.78%) DV Cleared
7 19 (2.30%) Azure Certification
8 17 (2.06%) BPSS Clearance
9 8 (0.97%) Master's Degree
10 5 (0.60%) CCA
10 5 (0.60%) Citrix Certification
10 5 (0.60%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.60%) OCP
10 5 (0.60%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.48%) CISSP
11 4 (0.48%) ITIL Certification
11 4 (0.48%) MCITP
11 4 (0.48%) MCTS
11 4 (0.48%) Microsoft Certified Professional
12 3 (0.36%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 92 (11.12%) Data Quality
2 87 (10.52%) QA
3 21 (2.54%) GDPR
4 15 (1.81%) NIST
4 15 (1.81%) SLA
5 14 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 6 (0.73%) Accessibility
6 6 (0.73%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 4 (0.48%) IFRS
7 4 (0.48%) WCAG
8 3 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
8 3 (0.36%) IFRS 17
8 3 (0.36%) IFRS 9
9 2 (0.24%) Basel III
9 2 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 2 (0.24%) EMIR
9 2 (0.24%) GAAP
9 2 (0.24%) GRC
9 2 (0.24%) HIPAA
9 2 (0.24%) MiFID
System Software
1 85 (10.28%) Docker
2 61 (7.38%) Active Directory
3 18 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 16 (1.93%) Hyper-V
4 16 (1.93%) Oracle RAC
5 11 (1.33%) Virtual Desktop
6 10 (1.21%) Virtual Machines
7 6 (0.73%) KVM
8 5 (0.60%) XenApp
8 5 (0.60%) XenDesktop
9 3 (0.36%) GridGain
10 2 (0.24%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.12%) Citrix Hypervisor
11 1 (0.12%) NFS
11 1 (0.12%) RACF
11 1 (0.12%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 86 (10.40%) Kubernetes
2 57 (6.89%) Terraform
3 17 (2.06%) Ansible
4 16 (1.93%) Oracle RMAN
5 14 (1.69%) Grafana
5 14 (1.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 14 (1.69%) SCCM
6 10 (1.21%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.97%) Puppet
7 8 (0.97%) vCenter Server
8 7 (0.85%) TIBCO Hawk
9 6 (0.73%) IBM BigFix
9 6 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
10 5 (0.60%) HAProxy
10 5 (0.60%) SCVMM
10 5 (0.60%) WSUS
11 3 (0.36%) Control-M
11 3 (0.36%) Foglight
11 3 (0.36%) Microsoft Clustering
11 3 (0.36%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 257 (31.08%) Microsoft
2 234 (28.30%) Oracle
3 70 (8.46%) Databricks
4 53 (6.41%) Citrix
5 39 (4.72%) ServiceNow
6 31 (3.75%) VMware
7 29 (3.51%) Informatica
8 21 (2.54%) SAP
9 20 (2.42%) CyberArk
9 20 (2.42%) Google
9 20 (2.42%) IBM
10 14 (1.69%) Sybase
11 13 (1.57%) BeyondTrust
12 12 (1.45%) UiPath
13 11 (1.33%) Dynatrace
14 10 (1.21%) OpenAI
15 9 (1.09%) Remedy
15 9 (1.09%) Tenable
16 8 (0.97%) Advent
16 8 (0.97%) Sitecore