Azure SQL Database Contracts in the North West

Microsoft Azure SQL Database (formerly SQL Azure)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring Azure SQL Database skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited Azure SQL Database over the 6 months leading up to 4 August 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Aug 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 111 109 98
Rank change year-on-year -2 -11 +57
Contract jobs citing Azure SQL Database 10 10 52
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 0.46% 0.42% 1.73%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.17% 3.02% 10.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 10 10 35
10th Percentile £420 £349 £463
25th Percentile £427 £367 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £438 £625
Median % change year-on-year +5.71% -30.00% +8.70%
75th Percentile £531 £456 £675
90th Percentile £546 £548 £686
England median daily rate £500 £525 £577
% change year-on-year -4.76% -9.05% +4.95%

All Database and Business Intelligence Skills
North West

Azure SQL Database 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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 315 331 503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 14.50% 13.80% 16.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 227 225 359
10th Percentile £313 £356 £337
25th Percentile £377 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £463 £490
Median % change year-on-year -3.35% -5.61% -3.92%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £597
90th Percentile £612 £610 £675
England median daily rate £515 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.19% -2.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 8 16
10th Percentile £21.02 £26.20 £28.55
25th Percentile £21.39 £33.25 £35.00
Median hourly rate £32.50 £46.12 £40.30
Median % change year-on-year -29.53% +14.46% +0.36%
75th Percentile £62.50 £69.00 £55.35
90th Percentile £79.38 £70.58 £64.50
England median hourly rate £34.65 £37.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -7.60% -31.82% +35.04%

Azure SQL Database
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Job postings citing Azure SQL Database as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Job vacancy trend for Azure SQL Database in the North West

Azure SQL Database
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing Azure SQL Database in the North West.

Daily rate trend for Azure SQL Database in the North West

Azure SQL Database
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Azure SQL Database in the North West over the 6 months to 4 August 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Azure SQL Database in the North West

Azure SQL Database
Contract Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing Azure SQL Database within the North West region over the 6 months to 4 August 2025. 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
Manchester +4 5 £500 +14.29% 33
Lancashire - 3 £450 - 31
Merseyside +2 2 £500 +12.36% 3
Azure SQL Database
England

Azure SQL Database
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the North West by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 1 (10.00%) Apache Spark
1 1 (10.00%) SharePoint
Applications
1 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Excel
Cloud Services
1 10 (100.00%) Azure
2 4 (40.00%) Azure Data Factory
3 3 (30.00%) Azure DevOps
3 3 (30.00%) Azure Monitor
3 3 (30.00%) Serverless
4 2 (20.00%) Azure Cosmos DB
4 2 (20.00%) Azure Event Grid
4 2 (20.00%) Azure Functions
4 2 (20.00%) Azure Logic Apps
4 2 (20.00%) Power Platform
5 1 (10.00%) Azure Key Vault
5 1 (10.00%) Azure Machine Learning
5 1 (10.00%) Cloud Computing
5 1 (10.00%) GitHub
5 1 (10.00%) GitHub Actions
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (60.00%) SQL Server
2 3 (30.00%) Delta Lake
3 2 (20.00%) Data Lake
3 2 (20.00%) Metadata
3 2 (20.00%) MongoDB
3 2 (20.00%) NoSQL
3 2 (20.00%) Power BI
4 1 (10.00%) Big Data
4 1 (10.00%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (10.00%) RDBMS
4 1 (10.00%) Relational Database
4 1 (10.00%) Snowflake Schema
4 1 (10.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 1 (10.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 2 (20.00%) ERwin
2 1 (10.00%) Git
General
1 3 (30.00%) Social Skills
2 1 (10.00%) Finance
2 1 (10.00%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 3 (30.00%) Architect
1 3 (30.00%) DBA
2 2 (20.00%) Azure Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Cloud Engineer
2 2 (20.00%) Data Architect
2 2 (20.00%) Data Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) Administrator
3 1 (10.00%) Azure Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Azure Data Architect
3 1 (10.00%) Data Modeller
3 1 (10.00%) Developer
3 1 (10.00%) Senior
3 1 (10.00%) Senior Data Engineer
3 1 (10.00%) SQL DBA
3 1 (10.00%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (20.00%) ARM Templates
2 1 (10.00%) .NET
2 1 (10.00%) .NET Framework
2 1 (10.00%) ADO
2 1 (10.00%) AngularJS
2 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET
2 1 (10.00%) ASP.NET Core
2 1 (10.00%) Blazor
2 1 (10.00%) Entity Framework
2 1 (10.00%) PySpark
2 1 (10.00%) React
Miscellaneous
1 2 (20.00%) Cloud Native
1 2 (20.00%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (10.00%) IoT
2 1 (10.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (10.00%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (60.00%) DevOps
2 4 (40.00%) CI/CD
2 4 (40.00%) Performance Tuning
3 3 (30.00%) Agile
3 3 (30.00%) Data Management
3 3 (30.00%) High Availability
3 3 (30.00%) Infrastructure as Code
3 3 (30.00%) Runbook
4 2 (20.00%) Analytics
4 2 (20.00%) Business Intelligence
4 2 (20.00%) Cloud Security
4 2 (20.00%) Data Architecture
4 2 (20.00%) Data Migration
4 2 (20.00%) Data Modelling
4 2 (20.00%) Disaster Recovery
4 2 (20.00%) ETL
4 2 (20.00%) Inmon Methodology
4 2 (20.00%) Migration
4 2 (20.00%) Roadmaps
5 1 (10.00%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 9 (90.00%) SQL
2 3 (30.00%) T-SQL
3 2 (20.00%) Bicep
3 2 (20.00%) Python
4 1 (10.00%) C#
4 1 (10.00%) Korn
4 1 (10.00%) PowerShell
4 1 (10.00%) VBA
Qualifications
1 3 (30.00%) Security Cleared
2 1 (10.00%) Degree
2 1 (10.00%) MCSA
2 1 (10.00%) MCSE
2 1 (10.00%) Microsoft Certification
2 1 (10.00%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (10.00%) Data Quality
System Software
1 1 (10.00%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 2 (20.00%) Terraform
Vendors
1 4 (40.00%) Databricks
2 3 (30.00%) Microsoft
3 1 (10.00%) Informatica
3 1 (10.00%) Talend