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

 6 months to
28 Aug 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 110 57
Rank change year-on-year -14 -53 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 999 679 1,193
As % of all contract jobs in England 2.18% 2.46% 3.60%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 14.34% 13.74% 19.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 700 499 857
10th Percentile £363 £313 £337
25th Percentile £413 £400 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% - -6.54%
75th Percentile £600 £647 £625
90th Percentile £713 £750 £725
UK median daily rate £488 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -2.50% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 42 6 7
10th Percentile £13.51 £20.89 £27.71
25th Percentile £19.25 £21.02 £34.00
Median hourly rate £50.02 £23.80 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +110.21% -49.91% +3.26%
75th Percentile £63.31 £64.71 £57.43
90th Percentile £75.80 £83.13 £77.78
UK median hourly rate £47.54 £70.00 £43.00
% change year-on-year -32.09% +62.79% -4.44%

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 6,966 4,943 6,120
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in England 15.22% 17.94% 18.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 4,649 3,409 4,328
10th Percentile £359 £338 £350
25th Percentile £423 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £512 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.34% -6.06% -0.91%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £675
90th Percentile £707 £750 £825
UK median daily rate £500 £500 £525
% change year-on-year - -4.76% -3.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 229 78 91
10th Percentile £14.85 £21.02 £14.25
25th Percentile £23.75 £29.02 £19.92
Median hourly rate £38.25 £36.75 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year +4.08% +8.31% -38.31%
75th Percentile £62.00 £64.50 £55.00
90th Percentile £75.20 £78.72 £69.75
UK median hourly rate £38.25 £38.85 £32.50
% change year-on-year -1.53% +19.52% -40.91%

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 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 28 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 28 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 -31 484 £525 -4.55% 443
North of England 0 195 £475 +6.74% 121
South East -21 111 £475 +40.12% 127
Midlands +6 109 £475 +11.11% 94
North West +1 105 £478 +7.42% 75
Yorkshire +6 89 £450 +5.88% 34
West Midlands -19 65 £473 -12.00% 51
South West -5 48 £513 +13.89% 48
East Midlands +9 43 £525 +60.80% 42
East of England -20 26 £425 -15.00% 37
North East -42 1 - - 14
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 67 (6.71%) SharePoint
2 45 (4.50%) IIS
3 40 (4.00%) Confluence
4 23 (2.30%) Microsoft Exchange
5 19 (1.90%) Camunda
6 18 (1.80%) Apache
6 18 (1.80%) Apache Airflow
7 17 (1.70%) Apache Spark
8 10 (1.00%) Oracle Workflow
9 6 (0.60%) Appian
9 6 (0.60%) CMS
10 5 (0.50%) Apache Solr
10 5 (0.50%) NetWeaver
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 52 (5.21%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.80%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.10%) MS Visio
4 3 (0.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 2 (0.20%) Microsoft Project
5 2 (0.20%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.10%) Adobe XD
6 1 (0.10%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.10%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 23 (2.30%) Dynamics CRM
1 23 (2.30%) Remedy ITSM
2 16 (1.60%) SAP S/4HANA
3 7 (0.70%) OpenText MBPM
3 7 (0.70%) Oracle BPM
4 6 (0.60%) Oracle Payables
5 5 (0.50%) Dynamics AX
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 (0.10%) Findur
8 1 (0.10%) Payment Gateway
8 1 (0.10%) Salesforce CRM
8 1 (0.10%) SAP Business One
8 1 (0.10%) SAP CRM
8 1 (0.10%) SDL Web 8
Cloud Services
1 413 (41.34%) Azure
2 211 (21.12%) AWS
3 150 (15.02%) Power Platform
4 108 (10.81%) Azure DevOps
5 92 (9.21%) GitHub
6 60 (6.01%) Azure Data Factory
7 49 (4.90%) Entra ID
8 45 (4.50%) Serverless
9 40 (4.00%) Azure Monitor
9 40 (4.00%) GitHub Actions
9 40 (4.00%) Microsoft 365
10 39 (3.90%) Power Automate
11 35 (3.50%) Dynamics 365
12 33 (3.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 33 (3.30%) Snowflake
13 29 (2.90%) GCP
14 25 (2.50%) SaaS
15 23 (2.30%) dbt
16 22 (2.20%) PowerApps
17 19 (1.90%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 47 (4.70%) DNS
2 40 (4.00%) DHCP
3 31 (3.10%) Firewall
4 18 (1.80%) SAN
4 18 (1.80%) VLAN
5 14 (1.40%) VPN
6 13 (1.30%) Internet
6 13 (1.30%) Network Security
7 12 (1.20%) TCP/IP
8 10 (1.00%) SSL
8 10 (1.00%) Wi-Fi
9 9 (0.90%) SSH
10 6 (0.60%) HTTPS
10 6 (0.60%) IPv4
10 6 (0.60%) IPv6
10 6 (0.60%) LAN
11 5 (0.50%) Kerberos
11 5 (0.50%) VoIP
11 5 (0.50%) WAN
12 3 (0.30%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 145 (14.51%) PostgreSQL
2 126 (12.61%) Power BI
3 105 (10.51%) Relational Database
4 94 (9.41%) Data Warehouse
5 90 (9.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 69 (6.91%) MySQL
7 60 (6.01%) Oracle Database
8 57 (5.71%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 55 (5.51%) Azure SQL Database
10 51 (5.11%) MongoDB
11 34 (3.40%) Data Lake
12 27 (2.70%) NoSQL
13 26 (2.60%) Redis
14 25 (2.50%) SQL Server Analysis Services
15 22 (2.20%) Amazon RDS
16 21 (2.10%) RDBMS
17 20 (2.00%) Tableau
18 16 (1.60%) Star Schema
19 15 (1.50%) Metadata
20 11 (1.10%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 97 (9.71%) Git
2 63 (6.31%) Jenkins
3 55 (5.51%) JIRA
4 34 (3.40%) GitLab
5 27 (2.70%) Visual Studio
6 21 (2.10%) Maven
7 19 (1.90%) Sonatype Nexus
7 19 (1.90%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
8 16 (1.60%) TeamCity
9 15 (1.50%) Team Foundation Server
10 14 (1.40%) REST Assured
10 14 (1.40%) Selenium
11 13 (1.30%) JUnit
11 13 (1.30%) Octopus Deploy
12 12 (1.20%) Mockito
12 12 (1.20%) Postman
13 11 (1.10%) Artifactory
13 11 (1.10%) Gradle
14 10 (1.00%) Cucumber
14 10 (1.00%) SonarQube
General
1 309 (30.93%) Social Skills
2 259 (25.93%) Finance
3 186 (18.62%) Analytical Skills
4 127 (12.71%) Banking
5 74 (7.41%) Public Sector
6 45 (4.50%) Front Office
7 39 (3.90%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (2.70%) Investment Banking
9 21 (2.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 18 (1.80%) Legal
11 17 (1.70%) Retail
12 15 (1.50%) Organisational Skills
13 14 (1.40%) Financial Institution
14 8 (0.80%) Back Office
14 8 (0.80%) Manufacturing
15 6 (0.60%) Advertising
15 6 (0.60%) Billing
16 5 (0.50%) Law
16 5 (0.50%) Local Government
16 5 (0.50%) Military
Job Titles
1 310 (31.03%) Developer
2 156 (15.62%) Senior
3 139 (13.91%) DBA
4 84 (8.41%) SQL DBA
5 81 (8.11%) .NET Developer
6 79 (7.91%) C# Developer
7 77 (7.71%) Data Engineer
8 68 (6.81%) Lead
9 66 (6.61%) Administrator
10 51 (5.11%) Architect
11 50 (5.01%) Full-Stack Developer
11 50 (5.01%) Senior Developer
12 49 (4.90%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 47 (4.70%) Analyst
14 46 (4.60%) SQL Developer
15 39 (3.90%) Software Engineer
16 33 (3.30%) Oracle DBA
17 32 (3.20%) Azure Engineer
17 32 (3.20%) Consultant
18 31 (3.10%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 278 (27.83%) .NET
2 124 (12.41%) REST
3 100 (10.01%) .NET Framework
4 82 (8.21%) React
5 76 (7.61%) Terraform
6 62 (6.21%) CSS
7 60 (6.01%) ASP.NET
8 58 (5.81%) AngularJS
9 57 (5.71%) Kafka
10 54 (5.41%) RESTful
11 53 (5.31%) .NET Core
12 51 (5.11%) HTML
13 38 (3.80%) JSON
13 38 (3.80%) Web Services
14 35 (3.50%) Spring Boot
15 34 (3.40%) XML
16 30 (3.00%) Spring
17 29 (2.90%) SOAP
18 26 (2.60%) OAuth
19 25 (2.50%) Entity Framework
Miscellaneous
1 61 (6.11%) Onboarding
2 57 (5.71%) Cloud Native
3 52 (5.21%) Data Structures
4 43 (4.30%) Enterprise Software
5 42 (4.20%) Clustering
5 42 (4.20%) Self-Motivation
6 39 (3.90%) Replication
7 37 (3.70%) Legacy Systems
8 30 (3.00%) Product Ownership
9 26 (2.60%) Management Information System
10 24 (2.40%) Data Centre
11 20 (2.00%) PKI
12 17 (1.70%) Derivative
13 16 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
14 14 (1.40%) Low-Code
15 13 (1.30%) NHS
16 11 (1.10%) Algorithms
16 11 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
16 11 (1.10%) Fixed Income
16 11 (1.10%) Legacy Code
Operating Systems
1 255 (25.53%) Windows
2 146 (14.61%) Windows Server
3 89 (8.91%) Linux
4 40 (4.00%) Unix
5 13 (1.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 11 (1.10%) Ubuntu
7 8 (0.80%) VMS
8 7 (0.70%) Solaris
8 7 (0.70%) Windows 10
8 7 (0.70%) Windows Server 2019
9 6 (0.60%) Android
9 6 (0.60%) CentOS
9 6 (0.60%) Windows Server 2012
10 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2008
10 4 (0.40%) Windows Server 2016
11 2 (0.20%) AIX
12 1 (0.10%) Data ONTAP
12 1 (0.10%) OpenVMS
12 1 (0.10%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 258 (25.83%) DevOps
2 245 (24.52%) CI/CD
3 233 (23.32%) Agile
4 198 (19.82%) Problem-Solving
5 184 (18.42%) Migration
6 149 (14.91%) ETL
7 140 (14.01%) Business Intelligence
8 134 (13.41%) Data Modelling
9 128 (12.81%) Performance Tuning
10 117 (11.71%) AI
11 115 (11.51%) Disaster Recovery
12 99 (9.91%) Stakeholder Management
13 92 (9.21%) Microservices
14 91 (9.11%) Analytics
15 88 (8.81%) Continuous Improvement
16 87 (8.71%) Test Automation
17 86 (8.61%) High Availability
17 86 (8.61%) Software Engineering
18 79 (7.91%) Validation
19 78 (7.81%) Data Pipeline
Programming Languages
1 572 (57.26%) SQL
2 272 (27.23%) C#
3 193 (19.32%) Python
4 175 (17.52%) PowerShell
5 152 (15.22%) T-SQL
6 125 (12.51%) JavaScript
7 90 (9.01%) Java
8 61 (6.11%) PL/SQL
9 54 (5.41%) TypeScript
10 32 (3.20%) Bash
11 18 (1.80%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 18 (1.80%) Shell Script
12 16 (1.60%) VB
13 14 (1.40%) Scala
13 14 (1.40%) VBA
14 10 (1.00%) Korn
15 8 (0.80%) VB.NET
16 6 (0.60%) Bicep
16 6 (0.60%) XPath
17 5 (0.50%) VB6
Qualifications
1 256 (25.63%) Security Cleared
2 194 (19.42%) SC Cleared
3 103 (10.31%) Degree
4 50 (5.01%) DV Cleared
5 43 (4.30%) Microsoft Certification
6 32 (3.20%) Computer Science Degree
7 23 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 20 (2.00%) Azure Certification
9 12 (1.20%) AWS Certification
9 12 (1.20%) ISTQB
10 10 (1.00%) Oracle Certification
11 9 (0.90%) DBS Check
11 9 (0.90%) OCP
12 8 (0.80%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
13 7 (0.70%) Master's Degree
14 5 (0.50%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
15 4 (0.40%) CISSP
15 4 (0.40%) MCITP
15 4 (0.40%) MCTS
15 4 (0.40%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 93 (9.31%) Data Quality
2 90 (9.01%) QA
3 28 (2.80%) GDPR
4 26 (2.60%) Accessibility
5 21 (2.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 20 (2.00%) NIST
7 18 (1.80%) WCAG
8 17 (1.70%) SLA
9 6 (0.60%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 5 (0.50%) ISO 9000
11 4 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
12 3 (0.30%) Basel III
13 2 (0.20%) California Consumer Privacy Act
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 (0.10%) ISO 20022
14 1 (0.10%) Software Quality Assurance
System Software
1 128 (12.81%) Active Directory
2 76 (7.61%) Docker
3 40 (4.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 30 (3.00%) Virtual Machines
5 23 (2.30%) Oracle RAC
6 8 (0.80%) Hyper-V
6 8 (0.80%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.60%) vSphere
8 4 (0.40%) Virtual Servers
8 4 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
9 3 (0.30%) Dovecot
9 3 (0.30%) GridGain
9 3 (0.30%) Postfix
10 1 (0.10%) BitLocker
10 1 (0.10%) NFS
10 1 (0.10%) RACF
10 1 (0.10%) SRDF
10 1 (0.10%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 99 (9.91%) Kubernetes
2 45 (4.50%) Ansible
3 16 (1.60%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
4 15 (1.50%) Microsoft Intune
4 15 (1.50%) SCOM
5 14 (1.40%) Data Guard
6 13 (1.30%) HAProxy
7 12 (1.20%) Oracle RMAN
7 12 (1.20%) SCCM
8 11 (1.10%) Microsoft Clustering
9 10 (1.00%) WSUS
10 8 (0.80%) Grafana
11 7 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
12 6 (0.60%) Failover Clustering
13 5 (0.50%) ITRS Geneos
13 5 (0.50%) Prometheus
14 3 (0.30%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 3 (0.30%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
14 3 (0.30%) Istio
14 3 (0.30%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 342 (34.23%) Microsoft
2 251 (25.13%) Oracle
3 68 (6.81%) Databricks
4 64 (6.41%) VMware
5 50 (5.01%) ServiceNow
6 44 (4.40%) CyberArk
7 41 (4.10%) Citrix
8 36 (3.60%) SAP
9 29 (2.90%) BeyondTrust
10 23 (2.30%) BMC
10 23 (2.30%) Remedy
11 21 (2.10%) Cisco
11 21 (2.10%) IBM
12 20 (2.00%) Informatica
13 17 (1.70%) Dynatrace
14 16 (1.60%) Sybase
15 15 (1.50%) Red Hat
16 14 (1.40%) Google
17 13 (1.30%) Alteryx
18 12 (1.20%) Splunk
823 SQL Server jobs in England