SQL Server Contract Job Trends in the South West

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
England > South West

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the South West requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 June 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 103 86 85
Rank change year-on-year -17 -1 -18
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 43 28 70
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.27% 1.63% 2.16%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 13.31% 13.33% 21.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 32 22 49
10th Percentile £400 £363 £360
25th Percentile £413 £377 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £444 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year -11.25% -6.98% +4.88%
75th Percentile £616 £616 £650
90th Percentile £750 £739 £705
England median daily rate £491 £521 £513
% change year-on-year -5.80% +1.71% -2.38%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 8
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 £25.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.00% -37.50% +42.11%
75th Percentile £19.75 - -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £27.88 £26.32 £40.00
% change year-on-year +5.93% -34.20% -2.44%

All Database & BI Skills
South 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 South West.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 323 210 322
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.53% 12.22% 9.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 224 150 231
10th Percentile £328 £325 £350
25th Percentile £409 £406 £422
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £602 £625 £600
90th Percentile £721 £676 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 32 12 19
10th Percentile £14.09 £25.08 -
25th Percentile £19.25 £56.13 £17.50
Median hourly rate £39.75 £70.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -43.21% +75.00% -39.39%
75th Percentile £51.00 - £55.75
90th Percentile £74.68 £77.83 £85.00
England median hourly rate £41.71 £32.05 £40.00
% change year-on-year +30.14% -19.88% -31.73%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL Server relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West.

SQL Server job vacancy trend in the South West

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing SQL Server.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the South West

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in the South West over the 6 months to 4 June 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the South West

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in the South West

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing SQL Server.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the South West citing SQL Server

SQL Server
Contract Job Locations in the South 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 South West region over the 6 months to 4 June 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
Somerset +2 21 £438 -12.50% 9
Bristol -12 13 £425 +13.33% 8
Devon -17 4 £750 +63.04% 4
Gloucestershire -7 2 £475 - 4
Dorset -12 1 - - 1
Wiltshire -15 1 - - 5
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the South West 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 12 (27.91%) IIS
2 2 (4.65%) Apache
2 2 (4.65%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (2.33%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 2 (4.65%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (4.65%) Spreadsheet
2 1 (2.33%) InDesign
Business Applications
1 1 (2.33%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 23 (53.49%) Azure
2 14 (32.56%) AWS
3 11 (25.58%) Azure Monitor
4 3 (6.98%) Power Platform
5 2 (4.65%) Azure API Management
5 2 (4.65%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (4.65%) Azure Sentinel
5 2 (4.65%) Entra ID
5 2 (4.65%) IaaS
5 2 (4.65%) PaaS
6 1 (2.33%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (2.33%) AWS CloudTrail
6 1 (2.33%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (2.33%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Key Vault
6 1 (2.33%) Azure Logic Apps
6 1 (2.33%) Figma
6 1 (2.33%) GCP
6 1 (2.33%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 3 (6.98%) DNS
1 3 (6.98%) VPN
2 2 (4.65%) DHCP
2 2 (4.65%) Firewall
2 2 (4.65%) HTTP
2 2 (4.65%) LAN
2 2 (4.65%) WAN
3 1 (2.33%) Fibre Channel
3 1 (2.33%) iSCSI
3 1 (2.33%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (16.28%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (9.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 3 (6.98%) Oracle BI EE
3 3 (6.98%) Oracle Database
3 3 (6.98%) Power BI
4 1 (2.33%) Amazon RDS
4 1 (2.33%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (2.33%) DynamoDB
4 1 (2.33%) GIS
4 1 (2.33%) MongoDB
4 1 (2.33%) MS Access
4 1 (2.33%) NoSQL
4 1 (2.33%) RDBMS
4 1 (2.33%) Relational Database
4 1 (2.33%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 1 (2.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 3 (6.98%) JIRA
2 2 (4.65%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 1 (2.33%) eggPlant
3 1 (2.33%) Git
3 1 (2.33%) MSI
3 1 (2.33%) Visual Studio
3 1 (2.33%) webpack
General
1 6 (13.95%) Social Skills
2 3 (6.98%) Analytical Skills
3 2 (4.65%) Finance
4 1 (2.33%) Banking
4 1 (2.33%) Documentation Skills
4 1 (2.33%) Inclusion and Diversity
4 1 (2.33%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 9 (20.93%) Azure Engineer
2 8 (18.60%) Site Engineer
2 8 (18.60%) Site Reliability Engineer
3 7 (16.28%) DBA
4 6 (13.95%) Developer
4 6 (13.95%) Lead
5 5 (11.63%) Database Engineer
5 5 (11.63%) SQL DBA
6 4 (9.30%) DV Cleared DBA
6 4 (9.30%) PowerShell Engineer
6 4 (9.30%) Senior
6 4 (9.30%) Senior Database Engineer
6 4 (9.30%) Windows Engineer
7 3 (6.98%) Architect
7 3 (6.98%) DevOps Engineer
7 3 (6.98%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 3 (6.98%) Migration Engineer
8 2 (4.65%) 1st Line Support
8 2 (4.65%) Administrator
8 2 (4.65%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (39.53%) .NET
2 13 (30.23%) .NET Framework
3 3 (6.98%) REST
4 2 (4.65%) ASP.NET
4 2 (4.65%) RESTful
5 1 (2.33%) ASP.NET MVC
5 1 (2.33%) ATL
5 1 (2.33%) COM
5 1 (2.33%) Entity Framework
5 1 (2.33%) JSON
5 1 (2.33%) MFC
5 1 (2.33%) Node.js
5 1 (2.33%) OAuth
5 1 (2.33%) ODBC
5 1 (2.33%) OpenID
5 1 (2.33%) Razor View Engine
5 1 (2.33%) SignalR
5 1 (2.33%) SOAP
5 1 (2.33%) Web Services
5 1 (2.33%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 11 (25.58%) Legacy Systems
2 6 (13.95%) Legacy Code
3 4 (9.30%) Data Structures
3 4 (9.30%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (6.98%) Legacy Applications
5 2 (4.65%) Data Centre
6 1 (2.33%) Cyber Threat
6 1 (2.33%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (2.33%) Enterprise Cloud
6 1 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (2.33%) Low-Code
6 1 (2.33%) Replication
6 1 (2.33%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 22 (51.16%) Windows
2 21 (48.84%) Windows Server
3 1 (2.33%) Linux
3 1 (2.33%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (25.58%) High Availability
1 11 (25.58%) Root Cause Analysis
2 10 (23.26%) DevOps
2 10 (23.26%) Disaster Recovery
3 9 (20.93%) Incident Management
3 9 (20.93%) Runbook
4 8 (18.60%) Site Reliability Engineering
4 8 (18.60%) Technical Leadership
5 7 (16.28%) Database Security
5 7 (16.28%) Incident Response
5 7 (16.28%) Service-Level Objective
6 6 (13.95%) Analytics
6 6 (13.95%) Change Management
6 6 (13.95%) Graceful Degradation
7 5 (11.63%) AI
7 5 (11.63%) CI/CD
7 5 (11.63%) Generative AI
7 5 (11.63%) ITIL
7 5 (11.63%) Migration
7 5 (11.63%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 17 (39.53%) SQL
2 15 (34.88%) PowerShell
3 6 (13.95%) C#
4 5 (11.63%) T-SQL
5 3 (6.98%) Bicep
5 3 (6.98%) Python
6 2 (4.65%) JavaScript
7 1 (2.33%) Bash
7 1 (2.33%) C++
7 1 (2.33%) Java
7 1 (2.33%) PL/SQL
7 1 (2.33%) TypeScript
7 1 (2.33%) VB
7 1 (2.33%) VBA
Qualifications
1 16 (37.21%) Security Cleared
2 10 (23.26%) SC Cleared
3 5 (11.63%) DV Cleared
4 3 (6.98%) Degree
5 2 (4.65%) Azure Certification
5 2 (4.65%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (16.28%) QA
2 2 (4.65%) Data Quality
2 2 (4.65%) ISO 9000
3 1 (2.33%) Cyber Essentials
3 1 (2.33%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 6 (13.95%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (11.63%) Active Directory
3 2 (4.65%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 4 (9.30%) Terraform
2 3 (6.98%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
3 1 (2.33%) Ansible
3 1 (2.33%) Data Guard
3 1 (2.33%) EMC VPLEX
3 1 (2.33%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
3 1 (2.33%) Grafana
3 1 (2.33%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 19 (44.19%) Microsoft
2 12 (27.91%) Oracle
3 6 (13.95%) VMware
4 2 (4.65%) Alteryx
5 1 (2.33%) Adobe
5 1 (2.33%) Citrix
5 1 (2.33%) Dell
5 1 (2.33%) Google
5 1 (2.33%) MuleSoft
5 1 (2.33%) Qualys
5 1 (2.33%) SAP
5 1 (2.33%) Tenable