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 28 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
28 May 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 94 57
Rank change year-on-year -25 -37 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 890 659 1,241
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.13% 2.77% 3.39%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.00% 14.55% 19.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 620 478 873
10th Percentile £356 £339 £333
25th Percentile £404 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £525 £510
Median % change year-on-year -7.14% +2.94% -2.86%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £638
90th Percentile £700 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £475 £513 £505
% change year-on-year -7.32% +1.49% -3.81%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 6 21
10th Percentile £13.51 £23.01 £36.75
25th Percentile £19.63 £25.33 -
Median hourly rate £38.51 £45.03 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -14.48% +12.58% -11.11%
75th Percentile £60.38 £65.62 £46.18
90th Percentile £74.00 £77.18 £62.96
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £63.75 £40.00
% change year-on-year -25.42% +59.36% -18.37%

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 6,359 4,530 6,240
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.23% 19.01% 17.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,347 3,149 4,518
10th Percentile £350 £363 £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 £650 £675
90th Percentile £700 £775 £788
UK median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 200 86 137
10th Percentile £14.00 £19.00 £14.00
25th Percentile £23.00 £22.99 £20.77
Median hourly rate £41.36 £31.85 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +29.86% -20.39% -31.09%
75th Percentile £73.19 £63.88 £55.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.13 £73.50
UK median hourly rate £43.00 £32.96 £40.00
% change year-on-year +30.46% -17.60% -31.73%

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 28 May 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 28 May 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 28 May 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 -32 477 £500 -13.42% 110
North of England -28 136 £475 +11.76% 63
South East -10 119 £471 +0.43% 97
Midlands -31 68 £478 -4.40% 57
Yorkshire -12 67 £450 +12.50% 21
North West -30 67 £500 +11.11% 38
South West -12 40 £438 -14.63% 25
East Midlands +1 38 £525 +54.41% 23
East of England -8 33 £488 -2.50% 18
West Midlands -57 28 £460 -20.00% 34
North East -31 3 £475 +5.56% 5
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 47 (5.28%) SharePoint
2 45 (5.06%) IIS
3 24 (2.70%) Microsoft Exchange
4 22 (2.47%) Apache
5 20 (2.25%) Apache Spark
5 20 (2.25%) Confluence
6 19 (2.13%) Apache Airflow
7 14 (1.57%) Appian
8 12 (1.35%) CMS
9 11 (1.24%) Camunda
10 9 (1.01%) Oracle Workflow
11 8 (0.90%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 6 (0.67%) Sitecore CMS
13 5 (0.56%) OpenEdge
13 5 (0.56%) Tomcat
13 5 (0.56%) Umbraco
13 5 (0.56%) WebSphere
14 4 (0.45%) NetWeaver
15 3 (0.34%) Apache Superset
15 3 (0.34%) nginx
Applications
1 32 (3.60%) Microsoft Excel
2 18 (2.02%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.35%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.22%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.11%) InDesign
5 1 (0.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 14 (1.57%) Remedy ITSM
2 13 (1.46%) SAP S/4HANA
3 11 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 6 (0.67%) Dynamics AX
5 5 (0.56%) Oracle Payables
6 3 (0.34%) OpenText MBPM
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle BPM
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle General Ledger
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 3 (0.34%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 3 (0.34%) SystmOne
7 2 (0.22%) BusinessWorks
7 2 (0.22%) Elite 3E
7 2 (0.22%) Loan IQ
7 2 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
7 2 (0.22%) Teamcenter
7 2 (0.22%) Veritas eDiscovery
8 1 (0.11%) Aladdin
8 1 (0.11%) Siebel CRM
8 1 (0.11%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 387 (43.48%) Azure
2 190 (21.35%) AWS
3 151 (16.97%) Power Platform
4 111 (12.47%) Azure DevOps
5 89 (10.00%) Azure Data Factory
6 78 (8.76%) GitHub
7 50 (5.62%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 42 (4.72%) GCP
9 36 (4.04%) Microsoft 365
10 35 (3.93%) Power Automate
11 34 (3.82%) GitHub Actions
12 32 (3.60%) Serverless
13 31 (3.48%) Snowflake
14 28 (3.15%) SaaS
15 25 (2.81%) Amazon S3
16 24 (2.70%) Dynamics 365
17 23 (2.58%) Azure Monitor
18 21 (2.36%) PowerApps
19 20 (2.25%) dbt
20 19 (2.13%) Entra ID
Communications & Networking
1 35 (3.93%) DNS
2 27 (3.03%) DHCP
3 22 (2.47%) Firewall
4 14 (1.57%) SAN
5 13 (1.46%) Internet
6 12 (1.35%) VLAN
6 12 (1.35%) VPN
7 8 (0.90%) TCP/IP
8 6 (0.67%) IPv4
8 6 (0.67%) IPv6
8 6 (0.67%) LAN
8 6 (0.67%) Wi-Fi
9 5 (0.56%) Network Security
10 4 (0.45%) NetScaler
10 4 (0.45%) SSH
10 4 (0.45%) WAN
11 3 (0.34%) FTP
11 3 (0.34%) NAS
11 3 (0.34%) RS-232
11 3 (0.34%) X.400
Database & Business Intelligence
1 125 (14.04%) PostgreSQL
1 125 (14.04%) Power BI
2 114 (12.81%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 107 (12.02%) Data Warehouse
4 91 (10.22%) Relational Database
5 69 (7.75%) Oracle Database
6 61 (6.85%) Data Lake
7 57 (6.40%) Azure SQL Database
8 54 (6.07%) MySQL
8 54 (6.07%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 40 (4.49%) NoSQL
10 39 (4.38%) MongoDB
11 34 (3.82%) SQL Server Analysis Services
12 24 (2.70%) Tableau
13 23 (2.58%) Metadata
14 20 (2.25%) Delta Lake
14 20 (2.25%) RDBMS
15 16 (1.80%) Amazon RDS
15 16 (1.80%) Big Data
16 15 (1.69%) Redis
Development Applications
1 69 (7.75%) Git
2 57 (6.40%) JIRA
3 40 (4.49%) Jenkins
4 24 (2.70%) GitLab
5 23 (2.58%) Visual Studio
6 18 (2.02%) TeamCity
7 14 (1.57%) Team Foundation Server
8 13 (1.46%) Cucumber
9 11 (1.24%) Maven
9 11 (1.24%) Octopus Deploy
9 11 (1.24%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
10 10 (1.12%) Postman
11 9 (1.01%) Gatling
12 8 (0.90%) ERwin
12 8 (0.90%) MLflow
12 8 (0.90%) REST Assured
12 8 (0.90%) Selenium
13 7 (0.79%) Chocolatey
13 7 (0.79%) MSTest
14 6 (0.67%) TestRail
General
1 249 (27.98%) Social Skills
2 211 (23.71%) Finance
3 143 (16.07%) Analytical Skills
4 106 (11.91%) Banking
5 66 (7.42%) Public Sector
6 31 (3.48%) Documentation Skills
6 31 (3.48%) Front Office
7 22 (2.47%) Investment Banking
8 20 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 19 (2.13%) Legal
10 16 (1.80%) Organisational Skills
11 15 (1.69%) Retail
12 9 (1.01%) Advertising
12 9 (1.01%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.01%) Local Government
13 7 (0.79%) Law
14 6 (0.67%) Back Office
14 6 (0.67%) Publishing
14 6 (0.67%) Telecoms
15 5 (0.56%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 258 (28.99%) Developer
2 142 (15.96%) Senior
3 120 (13.48%) Data Engineer
4 96 (10.79%) DBA
5 79 (8.88%) C# Developer
6 67 (7.53%) Architect
7 60 (6.74%) .NET Developer
8 58 (6.52%) SQL DBA
9 56 (6.29%) Lead
10 40 (4.49%) Senior Data Engineer
10 40 (4.49%) Senior Developer
11 34 (3.82%) Full-Stack Developer
12 33 (3.71%) Analyst
13 32 (3.60%) Software Engineer
14 31 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
14 31 (3.48%) SQL Developer
15 27 (3.03%) Infrastructure Engineer
16 26 (2.92%) Administrator
16 26 (2.92%) Oracle DBA
17 25 (2.81%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 223 (25.06%) .NET
2 110 (12.36%) REST
3 92 (10.34%) .NET Framework
4 77 (8.65%) React
5 63 (7.08%) CSS
6 61 (6.85%) RESTful
7 58 (6.52%) HTML
8 56 (6.29%) AngularJS
9 43 (4.83%) Kafka
10 42 (4.72%) .NET Core
10 42 (4.72%) ASP.NET
11 32 (3.60%) XML
12 31 (3.48%) OAuth
13 25 (2.81%) Entity Framework
14 24 (2.70%) Web Services
15 23 (2.58%) JSON
15 23 (2.58%) PySpark
15 23 (2.58%) SOAP
16 21 (2.36%) YAML
17 20 (2.25%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 55 (6.18%) Legacy Systems
2 42 (4.72%) Cloud Native
3 36 (4.04%) Replication
4 33 (3.71%) Onboarding
5 30 (3.37%) Data Structures
6 27 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
7 26 (2.92%) Clustering
8 20 (2.25%) Management Information System
9 19 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
9 19 (2.13%) Low-Code
10 17 (1.91%) NHS
11 16 (1.80%) Product Ownership
12 13 (1.46%) Derivative
12 13 (1.46%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (1.35%) Fixed Income
13 12 (1.35%) PKI
14 11 (1.24%) Greenfield Project
14 11 (1.24%) Legacy Code
14 11 (1.24%) Reinsurance
15 8 (0.90%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 197 (22.13%) Windows
2 115 (12.92%) Windows Server
3 85 (9.55%) Linux
4 51 (5.73%) Unix
5 12 (1.35%) Windows 10
6 11 (1.24%) Windows Server 2019
7 10 (1.12%) AIX
7 10 (1.12%) Windows Server 2016
8 8 (0.90%) Windows Server 2012
9 7 (0.79%) Android
9 7 (0.79%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.45%) Ubuntu
10 4 (0.45%) VMS
11 3 (0.34%) CentOS
12 2 (0.22%) OpenVMS
12 2 (0.22%) Windows 7
12 2 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
13 1 (0.11%) Data ONTAP
13 1 (0.11%) Solaris
13 1 (0.11%) Windows Server 2008
Processes & Methodologies
1 225 (25.28%) DevOps
2 219 (24.61%) CI/CD
3 194 (21.80%) Agile
4 185 (20.79%) ETL
5 178 (20.00%) Problem-Solving
6 153 (17.19%) Business Intelligence
6 153 (17.19%) Data Modelling
7 135 (15.17%) Migration
8 109 (12.25%) Analytics
9 103 (11.57%) Disaster Recovery
10 101 (11.35%) Performance Tuning
11 99 (11.12%) AI
12 92 (10.34%) Data Pipeline
13 86 (9.66%) Data Engineering
14 80 (8.99%) Test Automation
15 76 (8.54%) Data Integration
16 75 (8.43%) Data Analysis
16 75 (8.43%) Microservices
17 72 (8.09%) High Availability
18 70 (7.87%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 515 (57.87%) SQL
2 232 (26.07%) Python
3 223 (25.06%) C#
4 141 (15.84%) T-SQL
5 137 (15.39%) PowerShell
6 97 (10.90%) JavaScript
7 86 (9.66%) Java
8 67 (7.53%) PL/SQL
9 51 (5.73%) TypeScript
10 34 (3.82%) Bash
11 25 (2.81%) Shell Script
12 23 (2.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 18 (2.02%) Scala
14 17 (1.91%) VB
15 16 (1.80%) Bicep
15 16 (1.80%) Korn
16 13 (1.46%) VBA
17 8 (0.90%) PHP
18 5 (0.56%) Rust
19 4 (0.45%) XPath
Qualifications
1 194 (21.80%) Security Cleared
2 148 (16.63%) SC Cleared
3 96 (10.79%) Degree
4 30 (3.37%) DV Cleared
4 30 (3.37%) Microsoft Certification
5 27 (3.03%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.36%) BPSS Clearance
7 19 (2.13%) Azure Certification
8 10 (1.12%) Master's Degree
9 9 (1.01%) DBS Check
10 5 (0.56%) CISSP
10 5 (0.56%) OCP
10 5 (0.56%) Oracle Certification
11 4 (0.45%) CCA
11 4 (0.45%) Citrix Certification
11 4 (0.45%) MCITP
11 4 (0.45%) MCTS
12 3 (0.34%) ITIL Certification
12 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
13 2 (0.22%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 103 (11.57%) Data Quality
2 90 (10.11%) QA
3 23 (2.58%) GDPR
4 20 (2.25%) NIST
5 18 (2.02%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 15 (1.69%) SLA
7 10 (1.12%) Accessibility
8 8 (0.90%) Sarbanes-Oxley
9 7 (0.79%) WCAG
10 4 (0.45%) Basel III
11 3 (0.34%) California Consumer Privacy Act
11 3 (0.34%) HIPAA
11 3 (0.34%) IFRS
11 3 (0.34%) IFRS 9
12 2 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.22%) EMIR
12 2 (0.22%) GRC
12 2 (0.22%) IFRS 17
12 2 (0.22%) MiFID
12 2 (0.22%) SOC 2
System Software
1 87 (9.78%) Docker
2 85 (9.55%) Active Directory
3 26 (2.92%) VMware Infrastructure
4 19 (2.13%) Virtual Machines
5 18 (2.02%) Oracle RAC
6 14 (1.57%) Hyper-V
7 11 (1.24%) Virtual Desktop
8 6 (0.67%) KVM
9 4 (0.45%) XenApp
9 4 (0.45%) XenDesktop
10 3 (0.34%) Dovecot
10 3 (0.34%) GridGain
10 3 (0.34%) Postfix
10 3 (0.34%) Virtual Servers
11 2 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 2 (0.22%) vSphere
12 1 (0.11%) BitLocker
12 1 (0.11%) Citrix Hypervisor
12 1 (0.11%) RACF
12 1 (0.11%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 106 (11.91%) Kubernetes
2 67 (7.53%) Terraform
3 18 (2.02%) Oracle RMAN
4 17 (1.91%) Ansible
4 17 (1.91%) SCCM
5 15 (1.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
6 13 (1.46%) HAProxy
7 8 (0.90%) Grafana
7 8 (0.90%) Microsoft Intune
7 8 (0.90%) WSUS
8 7 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
8 7 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 6 (0.67%) IBM BigFix
10 4 (0.45%) SCVMM
11 3 (0.34%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 3 (0.34%) Control-M
11 3 (0.34%) Data Guard
11 3 (0.34%) Foglight
11 3 (0.34%) Microsoft Clustering
12 2 (0.22%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 245 (27.53%) Microsoft
2 240 (26.97%) Oracle
3 81 (9.10%) Databricks
4 53 (5.96%) Citrix
5 40 (4.49%) ServiceNow
6 39 (4.38%) VMware
7 33 (3.71%) Informatica
8 29 (3.26%) SAP
9 22 (2.47%) CyberArk
9 22 (2.47%) Google
10 19 (2.13%) IBM
11 18 (2.02%) Sybase
12 17 (1.91%) BeyondTrust
13 14 (1.57%) Dynatrace
13 14 (1.57%) Remedy
14 13 (1.46%) BMC
15 11 (1.24%) Alteryx
15 11 (1.24%) Cisco
15 11 (1.24%) OpenAI
16 10 (1.12%) UiPath
344 SQL Server jobs in England