SQL Server Contracts in the North West

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
England > North West

The table below provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies advertised in the North West requiring SQL Server skills. It includes a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that cited SQL Server over the 6 months leading up to 1 May 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 63 71 50
Rank change year-on-year +8 -21 -18
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 58 67 130
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the North West 2.95% 2.43% 4.07%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 17.16% 16.03% 25.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 52 100
10th Percentile £241 £285 £374
25th Percentile £362 £363 £418
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.70% -7.50% +9.89%
75th Percentile £522 £539 £591
90th Percentile £569 £610 £675
England median daily rate £525 £518 £525
% change year-on-year +1.45% -1.43% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 5 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £76.25 £37.63 -
Median hourly rate £82.50 £46.18 -
Median % change year-on-year +78.65% - -
75th Percentile £88.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £63.75 £40.25 £43.50
% change year-on-year +58.37% -7.47% -10.31%

All Database and Business Intelligence Skills
North West

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 the North West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 338 418 511
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North West 17.17% 15.17% 16.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 258 318 374
10th Percentile £354 £346 £338
25th Percentile £402 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £490
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% -0.20% -2.00%
75th Percentile £573 £575 £588
90th Percentile £638 £635 £675
England median daily rate £525 £530 £550
% change year-on-year -0.94% -3.64% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 19 18
10th Percentile £22.72 £26.85 £35.00
25th Percentile £22.92 £39.44 £39.70
Median hourly rate £25.43 £42.50 £47.29
Median % change year-on-year -40.16% -10.12% +60.29%
75th Percentile £29.85 £46.18 £65.00
90th Percentile £66.00 £69.50 £65.30
England median hourly rate £32.05 £40.13 £58.05
% change year-on-year -20.12% -30.87% +35.25%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

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

Job vacancy trend for SQL Server in the North West

SQL Server
Contractor Daily Rate Trend in the North West

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

Daily rate trend for SQL Server in the North West

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the North West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in the North West over the 6 months to 1 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the North West

SQL Server
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend in the North West

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SQL Server in the North West.

Hourly rate trend for SQL Server in the North West

SQL Server
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 SQL Server within the North West region over the 6 months to 1 May 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 +30 38 £506 +6.47% 89
Cheshire -14 11 £400 -15.79% 29
Merseyside +1 6 £215 -25.86% 26
Lancashire 0 3 £425 - 45
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
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 16 (27.59%) Microsoft Exchange
2 4 (6.90%) SharePoint
3 3 (5.17%) Apache
3 3 (5.17%) nginx
3 3 (5.17%) Tomcat
4 2 (3.45%) BizTalk Server
5 1 (1.72%) CMS
5 1 (1.72%) Umbraco
Applications
1 5 (8.62%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 5 (8.62%) Kondor
Cloud Services
1 34 (58.62%) Azure
2 18 (31.03%) Microsoft 365
3 17 (29.31%) AWS
4 16 (27.59%) Entra ID
5 10 (17.24%) IaaS
6 6 (10.34%) Serverless
7 5 (8.62%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (8.62%) GCP
7 5 (8.62%) Power Platform
8 4 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
9 3 (5.17%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 3 (5.17%) Amazon ECS
9 3 (5.17%) Amazon S3
9 3 (5.17%) AWS CloudFormation
9 3 (5.17%) AWS KMS
9 3 (5.17%) Azure Functions
10 2 (3.45%) Azure AKS
10 2 (3.45%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 2 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
10 2 (3.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
Communications & Networking
1 16 (27.59%) Firewall
2 11 (18.97%) Intrusion Detection
2 11 (18.97%) Network Security
3 3 (5.17%) Internet
3 3 (5.17%) iSCSI
3 3 (5.17%) LAN
3 3 (5.17%) Remote Desktop
3 3 (5.17%) WAN
3 3 (5.17%) Wi-Fi
3 3 (5.17%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (15.52%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (13.79%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 6 (10.34%) MongoDB
4 5 (8.62%) Power BI
4 5 (8.62%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 4 (6.90%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (6.90%) MySQL
6 3 (5.17%) Amazon RDS
6 3 (5.17%) Relational Database
6 3 (5.17%) Tableau
7 2 (3.45%) Azure SQL Database
7 2 (3.45%) GIS
7 2 (3.45%) MSDE
8 1 (1.72%) Big Data
8 1 (1.72%) Data Lake
8 1 (1.72%) DB2
8 1 (1.72%) DTS
8 1 (1.72%) Hadoop
8 1 (1.72%) NoSQL
8 1 (1.72%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 8 (13.79%) Git
2 6 (10.34%) JIRA
3 3 (5.17%) Jenkins
3 3 (5.17%) Visual Studio
4 1 (1.72%) ERwin
4 1 (1.72%) Flyway
4 1 (1.72%) Liquibase
4 1 (1.72%) Postman
4 1 (1.72%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 15 (25.86%) Social Skills
2 11 (18.97%) Finance
2 11 (18.97%) Telecoms
3 7 (12.07%) Banking
4 4 (6.90%) Public Sector
5 1 (1.72%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 12 (20.69%) Developer
2 7 (12.07%) Analyst
3 6 (10.34%) Infrastructure Specialist
3 6 (10.34%) Senior
4 5 (8.62%) .NET Developer
4 5 (8.62%) Infrastructure Analyst
4 5 (8.62%) Python Engineer
4 5 (8.62%) Support Engineer
5 4 (6.90%) Data Engineer
5 4 (6.90%) Senior Software Engineer
5 4 (6.90%) Software Engineer
6 3 (5.17%) AWS DevOps
6 3 (5.17%) AWS DevOps Engineer
6 3 (5.17%) AWS Engineer
6 3 (5.17%) DevOps Engineer
6 3 (5.17%) Full-Stack Developer
6 3 (5.17%) Python Software Engineer
6 3 (5.17%) Technical Support
7 2 (3.45%) 2nd Line Support
7 2 (3.45%) DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (17.24%) .NET
2 7 (12.07%) REST
3 6 (10.34%) RESTful
4 5 (8.62%) SOAP
5 4 (6.90%) Spring
5 4 (6.90%) Spring Boot
6 3 (5.17%) AngularJS
6 3 (5.17%) ASP.NET
6 3 (5.17%) Kafka
6 3 (5.17%) OAuth
7 2 (3.45%) .NET Core
7 2 (3.45%) AWS CDK
7 2 (3.45%) FastAPI
7 2 (3.45%) Pandas
8 1 (1.72%) ASP.NET Core
8 1 (1.72%) ASP.NET Web API
8 1 (1.72%) Blazor
8 1 (1.72%) CSS
8 1 (1.72%) Node.js
8 1 (1.72%) Shiny
Miscellaneous
1 5 (8.62%) Derivative
1 5 (8.62%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
2 3 (5.17%) IVR
3 2 (3.45%) Cloud Native
3 2 (3.45%) Clustering
3 2 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
3 2 (3.45%) NHS
4 1 (1.72%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.72%) Data Structures
4 1 (1.72%) Hybrid Cloud
4 1 (1.72%) IoT
4 1 (1.72%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.72%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.72%) Replication
4 1 (1.72%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 22 (37.93%) Windows
2 18 (31.03%) Windows Server
3 13 (22.41%) Linux
4 5 (8.62%) Unix
5 3 (5.17%) Android
5 3 (5.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (5.17%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (3.45%) Windows 10
6 2 (3.45%) Windows 7
7 1 (1.72%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 21 (36.21%) Problem-Solving
2 16 (27.59%) CI/CD
3 13 (22.41%) DevOps
3 13 (22.41%) Disaster Recovery
4 12 (20.69%) BCP
5 11 (18.97%) Business Continuity
5 11 (18.97%) Information Security
5 11 (18.97%) Migration
5 11 (18.97%) Vulnerability Scanning
6 10 (17.24%) Change Management
6 10 (17.24%) Enterprise Architecture
7 9 (15.52%) Containerisation
7 9 (15.52%) Cybersecurity
7 9 (15.52%) Data Migration
7 9 (15.52%) High Availability
8 8 (13.79%) Agile
8 8 (13.79%) Business Continuity Planning
8 8 (13.79%) Risk Assessment
9 7 (12.07%) ETL
9 7 (12.07%) Risk Management
Programming Languages
1 31 (53.45%) SQL
2 18 (31.03%) Python
3 16 (27.59%) PowerShell
4 5 (8.62%) C#
4 5 (8.62%) TypeScript
5 4 (6.90%) Bash
5 4 (6.90%) Java
6 3 (5.17%) T-SQL
7 1 (1.72%) R
7 1 (1.72%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 12 (20.69%) Microsoft Certification
2 11 (18.97%) Azure Certification
3 1 (1.72%) Computer Science Degree
3 1 (1.72%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (8.62%) Basel III
1 5 (8.62%) MiFID
2 4 (6.90%) GDPR
3 3 (5.17%) SLA
4 2 (3.45%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (1.72%) Data Quality
System Software
1 19 (32.76%) Active Directory
2 12 (20.69%) vSphere
3 10 (17.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 9 (15.52%) Docker
5 3 (5.17%) Microsoft Virtual Server
5 3 (5.17%) Virtual Servers
Systems Management
1 11 (18.97%) Microsoft Intune
2 6 (10.34%) Kubernetes
3 5 (8.62%) Progress Chef
4 4 (6.90%) Ansible
5 3 (5.17%) Kibana
5 3 (5.17%) Terraform
6 2 (3.45%) SCCM
7 1 (1.72%) Perfmon
7 1 (1.72%) SCOM
7 1 (1.72%) VxRail
Vendors
1 24 (41.38%) Microsoft
2 17 (29.31%) Oracle
3 12 (20.69%) VMware
4 5 (8.62%) Sybase
5 3 (5.17%) AppDynamics
5 3 (5.17%) Apple
5 3 (5.17%) Databricks
6 2 (3.45%) Brio
7 1 (1.72%) Cloudera
7 1 (1.72%) CyberArk
7 1 (1.72%) IBM
7 1 (1.72%) Imperva
7 1 (1.72%) Informatica
7 1 (1.72%) Splunk
7 1 (1.72%) Talend