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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 16 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 86 69 63
Rank change year-on-year -17 -6 +8
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 28 71 110
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the South West 1.43% 2.69% 3.38%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 13.15% 20.94% 27.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 19 59 72
10th Percentile £360 £383 £400
25th Percentile £366 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £550 £538
Median % change year-on-year -13.64% +2.33% +13.16%
75th Percentile £538 £650 £626
90th Percentile £580 £705 £688
England median daily rate £500 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -2.44% -2.38% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 4
10th Percentile - - £36.48
25th Percentile £72.50 - £42.60
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £46.09
75th Percentile £77.50 - £50.74
90th Percentile - - £58.93
England median hourly rate £21.27 £43.00 £52.50
% change year-on-year -50.53% -18.10% -4.55%

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 213 339 401
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.86% 12.83% 12.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 146 242 280
10th Percentile £310 £364 £400
25th Percentile £377 £425 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £523 £550
Median % change year-on-year -9.09% -5.00% +4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £675
90th Percentile £650 £683 £729
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 14 26
10th Percentile £44.70 - £23.63
25th Percentile - £17.50 £47.45
Median hourly rate £65.00 £30.00 £74.00
Median % change year-on-year +116.67% -59.46% +30.14%
75th Percentile £70.00 £71.50 £78.00
90th Percentile £75.25 £85.00 £83.57
England median hourly rate £42.00 £36.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +15.85% -34.09% +22.66%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the South West

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

Job vacancy trend for SQL Server 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 16 September 2025.

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 16 September 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
Wiltshire +6 9 £525 -4.55% 11
Somerset +7 6 £630 +48.24% 5
Dorset - 5 £375 - 3
Devon - 3 £520 - 6
Gloucestershire +9 2 £475 +66.67% 9
Bristol -14 2 £375 -41.18% 13
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the South 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 3 (10.71%) Microsoft Exchange
1 3 (10.71%) SharePoint
2 2 (7.14%) SharePoint Server
3 1 (3.57%) Skype for Business
3 1 (3.57%) Umbraco
Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (7.14%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 12 (42.86%) Azure
2 5 (17.86%) AWS
2 5 (17.86%) Power Platform
3 4 (14.29%) Azure Cosmos DB
3 4 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
3 4 (14.29%) Azure Logic Apps
4 2 (7.14%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 2 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
4 2 (7.14%) Azure Functions
4 2 (7.14%) Azure Monitor
4 2 (7.14%) Azure Service Bus
4 2 (7.14%) GCP
4 2 (7.14%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 6 (21.43%) DNS
2 3 (10.71%) Skype
3 2 (7.14%) SMTP
4 1 (3.57%) DHCP
4 1 (3.57%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (17.86%) Power BI
2 4 (14.29%) MySQL
3 3 (10.71%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (10.71%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (10.71%) Relational Database
3 3 (10.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 2 (7.14%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (7.14%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (7.14%) Data Lake
4 2 (7.14%) DynamoDB
4 2 (7.14%) NoSQL
4 2 (7.14%) Oracle Database
4 2 (7.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 1 (3.57%) RDBMS
5 1 (3.57%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 1 (3.57%) Artifactory
1 1 (3.57%) Bitbucket
1 1 (3.57%) Git
1 1 (3.57%) Jenkins
General
1 8 (28.57%) Social Skills
2 7 (25.00%) Public Sector
3 3 (10.71%) Finance
4 2 (7.14%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (7.14%) Local Government
5 1 (3.57%) Electronics
5 1 (3.57%) Manufacturing
5 1 (3.57%) Marketing
5 1 (3.57%) Military
5 1 (3.57%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 11 (39.29%) Developer
2 6 (21.43%) Data Engineer
3 4 (14.29%) DBA
4 3 (10.71%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 3 (10.71%) Power BI Developer
4 3 (10.71%) Senior
5 2 (7.14%) .NET Developer
5 2 (7.14%) Administrator
5 2 (7.14%) Analyst
5 2 (7.14%) Applications Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Architect
5 2 (7.14%) Azure Data Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Azure Engineer
5 2 (7.14%) Database Analyst
5 2 (7.14%) Digital Developer
5 2 (7.14%) Infrastructure Architect
5 2 (7.14%) Integration Developer
5 2 (7.14%) Lead
5 2 (7.14%) Oracle DBA
5 2 (7.14%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (21.43%) .NET
2 3 (10.71%) ASP.NET
3 2 (7.14%) .NET Core
3 2 (7.14%) .NET Framework
3 2 (7.14%) ARM Templates
3 2 (7.14%) ASP.NET Web API
3 2 (7.14%) Entity Framework
3 2 (7.14%) JDBC
3 2 (7.14%) JSON
3 2 (7.14%) React
3 2 (7.14%) XML
4 1 (3.57%) AngularJS
4 1 (3.57%) ASP.NET Core
4 1 (3.57%) ASP.NET MVC
4 1 (3.57%) Bootstrap
4 1 (3.57%) Express.js
4 1 (3.57%) jQuery
4 1 (3.57%) Middleware
4 1 (3.57%) WCF
4 1 (3.57%) WPF
Miscellaneous
1 3 (10.71%) PKI
2 2 (7.14%) Data Fabric
2 2 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (7.14%) Replication
3 1 (3.57%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (3.57%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 10 (35.71%) Windows
2 6 (21.43%) Windows Server
3 5 (17.86%) Linux
4 3 (10.71%) Windows 10
5 2 (7.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (7.14%) Windows Server 2016
6 1 (3.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 8 (28.57%) Business Intelligence
2 7 (25.00%) ETL
2 7 (25.00%) Migration
3 6 (21.43%) Agile
3 6 (21.43%) Problem-Solving
4 5 (17.86%) DevOps
4 5 (17.86%) High Availability
5 4 (14.29%) Analytics
5 4 (14.29%) CI/CD
5 4 (14.29%) Data Protection
5 4 (14.29%) Runbook
6 3 (10.71%) Database Security
6 3 (10.71%) Knowledge Transfer
6 3 (10.71%) MVC
6 3 (10.71%) Performance Tuning
6 3 (10.71%) Scrum
7 2 (7.14%) Data Management
7 2 (7.14%) Incident Management
7 2 (7.14%) PLM
7 2 (7.14%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 10 (35.71%) SQL
2 6 (21.43%) C#
3 4 (14.29%) T-SQL
4 2 (7.14%) Java
4 2 (7.14%) JavaScript
4 2 (7.14%) PowerShell
4 2 (7.14%) Python
5 1 (3.57%) C++
5 1 (3.57%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 10 (35.71%) Security Cleared
2 7 (25.00%) SC Cleared
3 4 (14.29%) Azure Certification
3 4 (14.29%) Degree
4 3 (10.71%) DV Cleared
5 2 (7.14%) MCSE
5 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.71%) Data Quality
2 2 (7.14%) GDPR
System Software
1 8 (28.57%) Active Directory
2 3 (10.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 3 (10.71%) VMware NSX
3 2 (7.14%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (3.57%) Docker
4 1 (3.57%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 3 (10.71%) Active Directory Federation Services
1 3 (10.71%) vCenter Server
2 2 (7.14%) Data Guard
2 2 (7.14%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
2 2 (7.14%) Oracle RMAN
2 2 (7.14%) Single Sign-On
3 1 (3.57%) WSUS
Vendors
1 14 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 5 (17.86%) Oracle
3 4 (14.29%) VMware
4 3 (10.71%) Cisco
4 3 (10.71%) SolarWinds
4 3 (10.71%) Veeam
5 2 (7.14%) CyberArk
5 2 (7.14%) Databricks
5 2 (7.14%) Google
5 2 (7.14%) PTC
5 2 (7.14%) Talend
6 1 (3.57%) Atlassian
6 1 (3.57%) SAP