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 13 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 120 113 56
Rank change year-on-year -7 -57 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,007 674 1,212
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.21% 2.44% 3.63%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.45% 13.52% 19.85%
Number of daily rates quoted 711 497 857
10th Percentile £358 £313 £331
25th Percentile £413 £400 £410
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.50% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £600 £650 £625
90th Percentile £712 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £481 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -3.80% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 43 6 9
10th Percentile £13.51 £20.89 £29.48
25th Percentile £19.25 £21.02 £36.75
Median hourly rate £47.54 £23.80 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year +99.79% -51.00% +6.73%
75th Percentile £68.88 £64.71 £62.96
90th Percentile £76.40 £83.13 £84.00
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £70.00 £48.03
% change year-on-year -32.09% +45.74% +6.73%

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 6,971 4,987 6,107
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.30% 18.04% 18.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,674 3,453 4,347
10th Percentile £358 £343 £350
25th Percentile £420 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £515 £543
Median % change year-on-year -2.91% -5.07% -1.36%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £675
90th Percentile £701 £763 £825
UK median daily rate £500 £510 £525
% change year-on-year -1.96% -2.86% -3.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 224 79 93
10th Percentile £15.17 £20.35 £14.40
25th Percentile £23.62 £24.00 £20.00
Median hourly rate £38.25 £34.50 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +10.87% -8.00% -31.82%
75th Percentile £67.48 £60.50 £59.95
90th Percentile £76.00 £77.74 £71.50
UK median hourly rate £38.38 £34.99 £34.47
% change year-on-year +9.67% +1.52% -34.35%

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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 -26 484 £525 -6.58% 249
North of England +12 203 £475 +5.56% 78
South East -9 120 £450 +28.57% 115
North West 0 112 £479 +8.86% 46
Midlands -1 102 £473 +11.29% 69
Yorkshire +15 91 £450 -6.25% 22
West Midlands -13 59 £450 -14.29% 40
South West -11 49 £513 +20.59% 35
East Midlands +7 41 £525 +60.80% 29
East of England -20 25 £450 -10.00% 19
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 69 (6.85%) SharePoint
2 48 (4.77%) IIS
3 41 (4.07%) Confluence
4 23 (2.28%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.89%) Apache
5 19 (1.89%) Apache Spark
6 17 (1.69%) Apache Airflow
7 13 (1.29%) Camunda
8 11 (1.09%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.60%) Appian
9 6 (0.60%) CMS
9 6 (0.60%) NetWeaver
10 5 (0.50%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.50%) Tuxedo
11 4 (0.40%) OpenEdge
11 4 (0.40%) Tomcat
11 4 (0.40%) Umbraco
12 3 (0.30%) Apache Superset
12 3 (0.30%) nginx
13 2 (0.20%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 50 (4.97%) Microsoft Excel
2 23 (2.28%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (0.99%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
5 1 (0.099%) Adobe XD
5 1 (0.099%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.099%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 26 (2.58%) Remedy ITSM
2 20 (1.99%) Dynamics CRM
3 16 (1.59%) SAP S/4HANA
4 7 (0.70%) OpenText MBPM
4 7 (0.70%) Oracle BPM
5 6 (0.60%) Dynamics AX
5 6 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
6 4 (0.40%) Aladdin
6 4 (0.40%) Elite 3E
7 2 (0.20%) Dynamics NAV
7 2 (0.20%) Endur
7 2 (0.20%) Infor LN
7 2 (0.20%) Siebel CRM
7 2 (0.20%) Teamcenter
8 1 (0.099%) Findur
8 1 (0.099%) Loan IQ
8 1 (0.099%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.099%) SAP Business One
8 1 (0.099%) SAP CRM
8 1 (0.099%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 417 (41.41%) Azure
2 217 (21.55%) AWS
3 153 (15.19%) Power Platform
4 107 (10.63%) Azure DevOps
5 89 (8.84%) GitHub
6 62 (6.16%) Azure Data Factory
7 47 (4.67%) Entra ID
8 41 (4.07%) Azure Monitor
8 41 (4.07%) Serverless
9 39 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
9 39 (3.87%) Microsoft 365
9 39 (3.87%) Snowflake
10 38 (3.77%) Power Automate
11 33 (3.28%) Dynamics 365
12 32 (3.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
13 30 (2.98%) GCP
14 26 (2.58%) dbt
15 25 (2.48%) SaaS
16 21 (2.09%) Amazon S3
16 21 (2.09%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 49 (4.87%) DNS
2 39 (3.87%) DHCP
3 30 (2.98%) Firewall
4 19 (1.89%) SAN
5 18 (1.79%) VLAN
6 15 (1.49%) VPN
7 14 (1.39%) Internet
8 13 (1.29%) Network Security
9 12 (1.19%) TCP/IP
10 11 (1.09%) Wi-Fi
11 10 (0.99%) SSL
12 9 (0.89%) SSH
13 7 (0.70%) LAN
14 6 (0.60%) HTTPS
14 6 (0.60%) IPv4
14 6 (0.60%) IPv6
15 5 (0.50%) Kerberos
15 5 (0.50%) VoIP
15 5 (0.50%) WAN
16 3 (0.30%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 148 (14.70%) PostgreSQL
2 131 (13.01%) Power BI
3 103 (10.23%) Relational Database
4 99 (9.83%) Data Warehouse
5 93 (9.24%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 73 (7.25%) MySQL
7 70 (6.95%) Oracle Database
8 58 (5.76%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 54 (5.36%) Azure SQL Database
10 48 (4.77%) MongoDB
11 38 (3.77%) Data Lake
12 29 (2.88%) SQL Server Analysis Services
13 28 (2.78%) NoSQL
14 22 (2.18%) RDBMS
15 21 (2.09%) Redis
16 20 (1.99%) Tableau
17 19 (1.89%) Amazon RDS
18 16 (1.59%) Star Schema
19 15 (1.49%) Metadata
20 12 (1.19%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 93 (9.24%) Git
2 55 (5.46%) Jenkins
3 52 (5.16%) JIRA
4 30 (2.98%) GitLab
5 27 (2.68%) Visual Studio
6 18 (1.79%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
6 18 (1.79%) TeamCity
7 16 (1.59%) Maven
7 16 (1.59%) Team Foundation Server
8 14 (1.39%) Sonatype Nexus
9 13 (1.29%) Octopus Deploy
10 12 (1.19%) Cucumber
10 12 (1.19%) Postman
10 12 (1.19%) Selenium
11 10 (0.99%) Artifactory
11 10 (0.99%) Cypress.io
12 9 (0.89%) Gatling
12 9 (0.89%) REST Assured
12 9 (0.89%) WebDriver
13 8 (0.79%) Chocolatey
General
1 302 (29.99%) Social Skills
2 253 (25.12%) Finance
3 181 (17.97%) Analytical Skills
4 129 (12.81%) Banking
5 81 (8.04%) Public Sector
6 41 (4.07%) Front Office
7 39 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (2.68%) Investment Banking
9 20 (1.99%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 16 (1.59%) Legal
10 16 (1.59%) Organisational Skills
11 14 (1.39%) Financial Institution
11 14 (1.39%) Retail
12 9 (0.89%) Advertising
12 9 (0.89%) Manufacturing
13 7 (0.70%) Back Office
14 5 (0.50%) Law
14 5 (0.50%) Local Government
14 5 (0.50%) Military
14 5 (0.50%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 298 (29.59%) Developer
2 160 (15.89%) Senior
3 149 (14.80%) DBA
4 90 (8.94%) SQL DBA
5 84 (8.34%) C# Developer
6 83 (8.24%) Data Engineer
7 79 (7.85%) .NET Developer
8 71 (7.05%) Lead
9 65 (6.45%) Administrator
10 51 (5.06%) Architect
11 49 (4.87%) Senior Developer
11 49 (4.87%) SQL Developer
12 45 (4.47%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 44 (4.37%) Analyst
14 41 (4.07%) Oracle DBA
15 40 (3.97%) Full-Stack Developer
16 39 (3.87%) Software Engineer
17 35 (3.48%) Azure Engineer
18 33 (3.28%) Consultant
19 32 (3.18%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 262 (26.02%) .NET
2 121 (12.02%) REST
3 101 (10.03%) .NET Framework
4 75 (7.45%) React
5 59 (5.86%) ASP.NET
6 55 (5.46%) AngularJS
7 54 (5.36%) RESTful
8 52 (5.16%) Kafka
9 50 (4.97%) CSS
10 46 (4.57%) .NET Core
11 41 (4.07%) HTML
12 35 (3.48%) Web Services
13 34 (3.38%) JSON
14 33 (3.28%) XML
15 28 (2.78%) Entity Framework
16 27 (2.68%) SOAP
17 23 (2.28%) Spring Boot
17 23 (2.28%) WinForms
18 21 (2.09%) Spring
18 21 (2.09%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 59 (5.86%) Onboarding
2 51 (5.06%) Cloud Native
3 47 (4.67%) Data Structures
4 45 (4.47%) Clustering
5 44 (4.37%) Replication
6 43 (4.27%) Legacy Systems
7 42 (4.17%) Self-Motivation
8 39 (3.87%) Enterprise Software
9 23 (2.28%) Data Centre
9 23 (2.28%) Management Information System
9 23 (2.28%) Product Ownership
10 21 (2.09%) PKI
11 17 (1.69%) Derivative
12 14 (1.39%) Distributed Systems
12 14 (1.39%) Low-Code
13 13 (1.29%) NHS
14 11 (1.09%) Algorithms
14 11 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
14 11 (1.09%) Fixed Income
14 11 (1.09%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 264 (26.22%) Windows
2 148 (14.70%) Windows Server
3 96 (9.53%) Linux
4 48 (4.77%) Unix
5 13 (1.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 8 (0.79%) Ubuntu
6 8 (0.79%) VMS
7 7 (0.70%) Solaris
7 7 (0.70%) Windows 10
8 6 (0.60%) AIX
8 6 (0.60%) Android
8 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
8 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2019
9 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
9 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
10 3 (0.30%) CentOS
11 2 (0.20%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.099%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.099%) Windows 7
12 1 (0.099%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 253 (25.12%) DevOps
2 229 (22.74%) CI/CD
3 224 (22.24%) Agile
4 193 (19.17%) Problem-Solving
5 190 (18.87%) Migration
6 155 (15.39%) ETL
7 148 (14.70%) Business Intelligence
8 137 (13.60%) Performance Tuning
9 135 (13.41%) Data Modelling
10 122 (12.12%) Disaster Recovery
11 111 (11.02%) AI
12 99 (9.83%) Analytics
13 96 (9.53%) High Availability
14 86 (8.54%) Data Pipeline
15 84 (8.34%) Stakeholder Management
16 82 (8.14%) Continuous Improvement
16 82 (8.14%) Microservices
17 78 (7.75%) Software Engineering
17 78 (7.75%) Test Automation
18 76 (7.55%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 567 (56.31%) SQL
2 265 (26.32%) C#
3 196 (19.46%) Python
4 182 (18.07%) PowerShell
5 160 (15.89%) T-SQL
6 112 (11.12%) JavaScript
7 74 (7.35%) Java
8 64 (6.36%) PL/SQL
9 48 (4.77%) TypeScript
10 38 (3.77%) Bash
11 24 (2.38%) Shell Script
12 21 (2.09%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 17 (1.69%) Scala
13 17 (1.69%) VB
14 16 (1.59%) Korn
15 15 (1.49%) VBA
16 8 (0.79%) VB.NET
17 7 (0.70%) Bicep
18 6 (0.60%) XPath
19 5 (0.50%) VB6
Qualifications
1 261 (25.92%) Security Cleared
2 199 (19.76%) SC Cleared
3 96 (9.53%) Degree
4 44 (4.37%) DV Cleared
4 44 (4.37%) Microsoft Certification
5 26 (2.58%) Computer Science Degree
6 21 (2.09%) BPSS Clearance
7 18 (1.79%) Azure Certification
8 13 (1.29%) ISTQB
9 12 (1.19%) Oracle Certification
10 11 (1.09%) AWS Certification
10 11 (1.09%) OCP
11 9 (0.89%) DBS Check
12 7 (0.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 6 (0.60%) CISSP
13 6 (0.60%) Master's Degree
14 5 (0.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 4 (0.40%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
15 4 (0.40%) MCTS
15 4 (0.40%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 95 (9.43%) QA
2 93 (9.24%) Data Quality
3 28 (2.78%) GDPR
4 24 (2.38%) Accessibility
5 23 (2.28%) NIST
6 21 (2.09%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 20 (1.99%) SLA
8 16 (1.59%) WCAG
9 6 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.50%) ISO 9000
11 4 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 3 (0.30%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.20%) Basel III
13 2 (0.20%) COREP
13 2 (0.20%) FINREP
13 2 (0.20%) Government Security Classifications
13 2 (0.20%) GRC
13 2 (0.20%) SOC 2
14 1 (0.099%) NIST 800
System Software
1 126 (12.51%) Active Directory
2 72 (7.15%) Docker
3 37 (3.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 33 (3.28%) Virtual Machines
5 28 (2.78%) Oracle RAC
6 9 (0.89%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.70%) Virtual Desktop
8 4 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
9 3 (0.30%) Dovecot
9 3 (0.30%) GridGain
9 3 (0.30%) KVM
9 3 (0.30%) Postfix
9 3 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.30%) vSphere
10 1 (0.099%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.099%) Citrix Hypervisor
10 1 (0.099%) NFS
10 1 (0.099%) RACF
10 1 (0.099%) SRDF
10 1 (0.099%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 99 (9.83%) Kubernetes
2 80 (7.94%) Terraform
3 41 (4.07%) Ansible
4 21 (2.09%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
5 19 (1.89%) Oracle RMAN
6 15 (1.49%) Data Guard
6 15 (1.49%) Microsoft Intune
7 13 (1.29%) HAProxy
7 13 (1.29%) SCCM
7 13 (1.29%) SCOM
8 11 (1.09%) Microsoft Clustering
9 10 (0.99%) WSUS
10 9 (0.89%) Grafana
11 7 (0.70%) Failover Clustering
11 7 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
12 4 (0.40%) ITRS Geneos
12 4 (0.40%) Prometheus
12 4 (0.40%) vCenter Server
13 3 (0.30%) Foglight
13 3 (0.30%) IBM BigFix
Vendors
1 328 (32.57%) Microsoft
2 271 (26.91%) Oracle
3 65 (6.45%) Databricks
4 62 (6.16%) VMware
5 51 (5.06%) ServiceNow
6 47 (4.67%) Citrix
6 47 (4.67%) CyberArk
7 36 (3.57%) SAP
8 29 (2.88%) BeyondTrust
9 26 (2.58%) Remedy
10 25 (2.48%) BMC
11 20 (1.99%) Cisco
11 20 (1.99%) Informatica
12 19 (1.89%) Sybase
13 18 (1.79%) Dynatrace
14 17 (1.69%) Red Hat
15 16 (1.59%) IBM
16 13 (1.29%) Alteryx
16 13 (1.29%) Google
17 10 (0.99%) AppDynamics