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

6 months to
31 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 106 74 92
Rank change year-on-year -32 +18 -26
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 32 38 67
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.06% 2.24% 2.08%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.96% 16.10% 20.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 19 33 39
10th Percentile £400 £400 £385
25th Percentile £413 £450 £513
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £550 £625
Median % change year-on-year -20.45% -12.00% +25.00%
75th Percentile £575 £638 £682
90th Percentile £615 £820 £720
England median daily rate £488 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -5.02% -2.24% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 11
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 - -
Median hourly rate £19.50 £25.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.00% -37.50% +28.42%
75th Percentile £19.75 - £48.13
90th Percentile - - £62.50
England median hourly rate £29.48 £62.12 £40.25
% change year-on-year -52.55% +54.34% +5.92%

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 292 236 324
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.64% 13.92% 10.04%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 178 216
10th Percentile £365 £361 £356
25th Percentile £409 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.55% +4.76% -
75th Percentile £613 £674 £650
90th Percentile £714 £750 £723
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 9 17
10th Percentile £32.50 £25.21 £14.36
25th Percentile £47.25 £25.75 £15.89
Median hourly rate £56.75 £67.50 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year -15.93% +68.75% -38.46%
75th Percentile £74.68 £70.00 -
90th Percentile - £71.74 £58.75
England median hourly rate £51.00 £32.96 £40.00
% change year-on-year +54.73% -17.60% -33.33%

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 31 March 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 31 March 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 +1 17 £438 -12.50% 8
Bristol -11 8 £525 +5.00% 14
Wiltshire -28 4 £550 - 7
Dorset -11 1 - - 2
Gloucestershire -11 1 - - 1
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 9 (28.13%) IIS
2 4 (12.50%) SharePoint
3 3 (9.38%) Microsoft Exchange
4 1 (3.13%) Apache
4 1 (3.13%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (3.13%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (3.13%) SharePoint Server
Applications
1 2 (6.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (3.13%) InDesign
2 1 (3.13%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 1 (3.13%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 17 (53.13%) Azure
2 11 (34.38%) Azure Monitor
3 10 (31.25%) AWS
4 3 (9.38%) Azure DevOps
4 3 (9.38%) Azure Sentinel
4 3 (9.38%) IaaS
4 3 (9.38%) Microsoft 365
4 3 (9.38%) PaaS
4 3 (9.38%) Power Platform
5 2 (6.25%) Dynamics 365
5 2 (6.25%) Entra ID
5 2 (6.25%) PowerApps
6 1 (3.13%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (3.13%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (3.13%) Azure Key Vault
6 1 (3.13%) Figma
6 1 (3.13%) GCP
6 1 (3.13%) Microsoft Purview
6 1 (3.13%) Power Automate
6 1 (3.13%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 5 (15.63%) DNS
2 4 (12.50%) VPN
3 3 (9.38%) DHCP
3 3 (9.38%) Firewall
4 2 (6.25%) HTTP
4 2 (6.25%) LAN
4 2 (6.25%) WAN
5 1 (3.13%) Fibre Channel
5 1 (3.13%) iSCSI
5 1 (3.13%) Skype
5 1 (3.13%) SMTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (9.38%) Power BI
2 2 (6.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 2 (6.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 1 (3.13%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (3.13%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (3.13%) DynamoDB
3 1 (3.13%) GIS
3 1 (3.13%) MongoDB
3 1 (3.13%) Oracle BI EE
3 1 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (3.13%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 2 (6.25%) Git
2 1 (3.13%) Artifactory
2 1 (3.13%) eggPlant
2 1 (3.13%) GitLab
2 1 (3.13%) Jenkins
2 1 (3.13%) JIRA
2 1 (3.13%) Maven
2 1 (3.13%) MSI
2 1 (3.13%) SonarQube
2 1 (3.13%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
2 1 (3.13%) webpack
General
1 8 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (18.75%) Analytical Skills
3 5 (15.63%) Finance
4 2 (6.25%) Banking
4 2 (6.25%) Legal
5 1 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
5 1 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (3.13%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 7 (21.88%) Site Engineer
1 7 (21.88%) Site Reliability Engineer
2 6 (18.75%) Azure Engineer
3 4 (12.50%) Developer
3 4 (12.50%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 4 (12.50%) Senior
4 3 (9.38%) Architect
4 3 (9.38%) Database Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Migration Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) PowerShell Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Senior Database Engineer
4 3 (9.38%) Windows Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Consultant
5 2 (6.25%) DevOps Engineer
5 2 (6.25%) Technical Architect
6 1 (3.13%) Administrator
6 1 (3.13%) Business Intelligence Specialist
6 1 (3.13%) DBA
6 1 (3.13%) Senior Developer
6 1 (3.13%) Wintel Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 13 (40.63%) .NET
2 11 (34.38%) .NET Framework
3 3 (9.38%) REST
4 2 (6.25%) ASP.NET
4 2 (6.25%) ASP.NET MVC
4 2 (6.25%) Blazor
4 2 (6.25%) CSS
4 2 (6.25%) CSS3
4 2 (6.25%) Entity Framework
4 2 (6.25%) HTML
4 2 (6.25%) HTML5
5 1 (3.13%) ATL
5 1 (3.13%) COM
5 1 (3.13%) JAX-RS
5 1 (3.13%) MFC
5 1 (3.13%) Node.js
5 1 (3.13%) Razor View Engine
5 1 (3.13%) Spring
5 1 (3.13%) WPF
5 1 (3.13%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 8 (25.00%) Legacy Systems
2 6 (18.75%) Legacy Code
3 3 (9.38%) Data Structures
4 2 (6.25%) Enterprise Software
4 2 (6.25%) Legacy Applications
4 2 (6.25%) Product Ownership
5 1 (3.13%) Cloud Native
5 1 (3.13%) Cyber Threat
5 1 (3.13%) Data Centre
5 1 (3.13%) Low-Code
5 1 (3.13%) Mobile App
5 1 (3.13%) PKI
5 1 (3.13%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 17 (53.13%) Windows
2 14 (43.75%) Windows Server
3 2 (6.25%) Linux
4 1 (3.13%) Windows 10
4 1 (3.13%) Windows Server 2016
4 1 (3.13%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (31.25%) Runbook
2 9 (28.13%) DevOps
2 9 (28.13%) Disaster Recovery
2 9 (28.13%) Root Cause Analysis
3 8 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
4 7 (21.88%) High Availability
4 7 (21.88%) Incident Management
4 7 (21.88%) Migration
4 7 (21.88%) Site Reliability Engineering
5 6 (18.75%) Graceful Degradation
5 6 (18.75%) Incident Response
5 6 (18.75%) ITIL
5 6 (18.75%) Service-Level Objective
6 5 (15.63%) Capacity Planning
6 5 (15.63%) Change Management
7 4 (12.50%) Agile
7 4 (12.50%) Analytics
7 4 (12.50%) Business Continuity
7 4 (12.50%) Business Intelligence
7 4 (12.50%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 15 (46.88%) PowerShell
2 8 (25.00%) SQL
3 4 (12.50%) Bicep
3 4 (12.50%) JavaScript
3 4 (12.50%) T-SQL
4 3 (9.38%) C#
4 3 (9.38%) TypeScript
5 2 (6.25%) Java
5 2 (6.25%) Python
6 1 (3.13%) Bash
6 1 (3.13%) C++
6 1 (3.13%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 12 (37.50%) Security Cleared
2 11 (34.38%) SC Cleared
3 3 (9.38%) Azure Certification
4 2 (6.25%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (3.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (3.13%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (18.75%) QA
2 1 (3.13%) Accessibility
2 1 (3.13%) Cyber Essentials
2 1 (3.13%) Data Quality
2 1 (3.13%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (3.13%) WCAG
System Software
1 7 (21.88%) Active Directory
2 6 (18.75%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (9.38%) Hyper-V
4 1 (3.13%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (3.13%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 5 (15.63%) Terraform
2 2 (6.25%) NetBackup
3 1 (3.13%) Active Directory Federation Services
3 1 (3.13%) Ansible
3 1 (3.13%) EMC VPLEX
3 1 (3.13%) Grafana
3 1 (3.13%) vCenter Server
3 1 (3.13%) WSUS
Vendors
1 14 (43.75%) Microsoft
2 6 (18.75%) VMware
3 3 (9.38%) Oracle
4 2 (6.25%) Commvault
4 2 (6.25%) Veritas
5 1 (3.13%) Adobe
5 1 (3.13%) Alteryx
5 1 (3.13%) Cisco
5 1 (3.13%) Citrix
5 1 (3.13%) Dell
5 1 (3.13%) Google
5 1 (3.13%) Qualys
5 1 (3.13%) SolarWinds
5 1 (3.13%) Tenable
5 1 (3.13%) Veeam