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 9 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 119 92 90
Rank change year-on-year -27 -2 -24
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 36 33 50
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 0.97% 1.67% 1.96%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 9.86% 14.47% 14.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 23 38
10th Percentile £404 £363 £350
25th Percentile £513 £375 £402
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £715 £475 £506
Median % change year-on-year +50.53% -6.17% -5.81%
75th Percentile £750 £556 £588
90th Percentile £765 £575 £725
England median daily rate £500 £496 £500
% change year-on-year +0.91% -0.90% -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £19.25 £72.50 -
Median hourly rate £19.50 £75.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -74.00% - -
75th Percentile £19.75 £77.50 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £36.02 £21.27 £56.25
% change year-on-year +69.35% -62.19% +7.14%

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 365 228 334
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.86% 11.52% 13.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 210 157 223
10th Percentile £361 £311 £353
25th Percentile £425 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.44% +2.50% -11.11%
75th Percentile £675 £588 £621
90th Percentile £750 £668 £701
England median daily rate £510 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -0.49% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 63 12 16
10th Percentile £17.17 £22.73 -
25th Percentile £35.21 £55.13 £17.50
Median hourly rate £41.71 £65.00 £28.56
Median % change year-on-year -35.83% +127.57% -60.87%
75th Percentile £55.31 - £71.50
90th Percentile £74.68 £76.25 £85.00
England median hourly rate £41.71 £42.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -0.68% +19.99% -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 9 October 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 9 October 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
Bristol -13 9 £513 +28.13% 11
Somerset -27 8 £760 +20.63% 10
Devon -7 7 £750 +44.23% 6
Wiltshire -22 6 £572 +6.47% 7
Gloucestershire +1 3 £433 -8.95% 3
Dorset -14 1 £300 -20.00% 2
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 4 (11.11%) Apache
2 3 (8.33%) Apache Airflow
2 3 (8.33%) Microsoft Exchange
3 2 (5.56%) Confluence
3 2 (5.56%) IIS
3 2 (5.56%) Jupyter
4 1 (2.78%) Traefik
Applications
1 1 (2.78%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (2.78%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 1 (2.78%) SAP Hybris
Cloud Services
1 21 (58.33%) Azure
2 16 (44.44%) AWS
3 5 (13.89%) Power Platform
4 4 (11.11%) Amazon S3
5 3 (8.33%) Azure DevOps
6 2 (5.56%) Azure API Management
6 2 (5.56%) Entra ID
6 2 (5.56%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (2.78%) Amazon EC2
7 1 (2.78%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (2.78%) Amazon EKS
7 1 (2.78%) Amazon SQS
7 1 (2.78%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 1 (2.78%) Azure Key Vault
7 1 (2.78%) Azure Logic Apps
7 1 (2.78%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (2.78%) Datadog
7 1 (2.78%) SaaS
7 1 (2.78%) SAP Commerce Cloud
7 1 (2.78%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 3 (8.33%) DHCP
1 3 (8.33%) DNS
1 3 (8.33%) SAN
1 3 (8.33%) VoIP
2 2 (5.56%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (38.89%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (22.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 6 (16.67%) Oracle Database
4 5 (13.89%) Power BI
5 2 (5.56%) Amazon RDS
5 2 (5.56%) Data Warehouse
5 2 (5.56%) EDRMS
5 2 (5.56%) MySQL
5 2 (5.56%) Oracle BI EE
5 2 (5.56%) Tableau
6 1 (2.78%) Flink
6 1 (2.78%) MongoDB
6 1 (2.78%) NoSQL
6 1 (2.78%) RDBMS
6 1 (2.78%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 6 (16.67%) JIRA
2 3 (8.33%) Git
2 3 (8.33%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
3 2 (5.56%) RStudio
4 1 (2.78%) Jenkins
4 1 (2.78%) Maven
4 1 (2.78%) SonarQube
4 1 (2.78%) Visual Studio
General
1 7 (19.44%) Social Skills
2 4 (11.11%) Analytical Skills
2 4 (11.11%) Documentation Skills
3 2 (5.56%) Banking
3 2 (5.56%) Finance
4 1 (2.78%) Aerospace
4 1 (2.78%) Military
Job Titles
1 12 (33.33%) DBA
1 12 (33.33%) Lead
2 8 (22.22%) SQL DBA
3 7 (19.44%) DV Cleared DBA
4 6 (16.67%) Developer
4 6 (16.67%) Oracle DBA
5 5 (13.89%) Senior
6 4 (11.11%) Administrator
7 3 (8.33%) Data Engineer
7 3 (8.33%) Infrastructure Engineer
7 3 (8.33%) Software Developer
8 2 (5.56%) .NET Developer
8 2 (5.56%) 1st Line Support
8 2 (5.56%) Architect
8 2 (5.56%) Senior Infrastructure Engineer
8 2 (5.56%) Solutions Architect
9 1 (2.78%) Consultant
9 1 (2.78%) Senior Manager
9 1 (2.78%) Software Engineer
9 1 (2.78%) SQL Server DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (19.44%) .NET
2 4 (11.11%) ASP.NET
2 4 (11.11%) React
3 3 (8.33%) ASP.NET Core
3 3 (8.33%) Blazor
3 3 (8.33%) jQuery
3 3 (8.33%) JSON
3 3 (8.33%) RESTful
3 3 (8.33%) SOAP
4 2 (5.56%) REST
4 2 (5.56%) Spring
4 2 (5.56%) Spring Boot
5 1 (2.78%) .NET Core
5 1 (2.78%) AngularJS
5 1 (2.78%) CSS3
5 1 (2.78%) Hibernate
5 1 (2.78%) HTML5
5 1 (2.78%) OpenID
5 1 (2.78%) RabbitMQ
5 1 (2.78%) Terraform
Miscellaneous
1 9 (25.00%) Enterprise Software
2 3 (8.33%) Clustering
2 3 (8.33%) Fat Client
2 3 (8.33%) PKI
2 3 (8.33%) Smartcard
2 3 (8.33%) Thin Client
3 2 (5.56%) Cloud Native
3 2 (5.56%) Hybrid Cloud
3 2 (5.56%) Replication
4 1 (2.78%) Enterprise Cloud
4 1 (2.78%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (2.78%) Low-Code
4 1 (2.78%) Product Ownership
4 1 (2.78%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 14 (38.89%) Windows
2 13 (36.11%) Windows Server
3 3 (8.33%) Linux
3 3 (8.33%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (27.78%) DevOps
1 10 (27.78%) Technical Leadership
2 8 (22.22%) Agile
2 8 (22.22%) Problem-Solving
3 7 (19.44%) CI/CD
3 7 (19.44%) ETL
4 6 (16.67%) Business Intelligence
4 6 (16.67%) Database Security
5 5 (13.89%) Data Governance
5 5 (13.89%) Design Patterns
5 5 (13.89%) High Availability
5 5 (13.89%) Performance Tuning
5 5 (13.89%) Workflow
6 4 (11.11%) Migration
6 4 (11.11%) Stakeholder Management
7 3 (8.33%) AI
7 3 (8.33%) Change Management
7 3 (8.33%) Root Cause Analysis
7 3 (8.33%) Software Architecture
7 3 (8.33%) Software Testing
Programming Languages
1 25 (69.44%) SQL
2 7 (19.44%) C#
3 5 (13.89%) JavaScript
3 5 (13.89%) PowerShell
3 5 (13.89%) T-SQL
4 3 (8.33%) PL/SQL
5 2 (5.56%) Java
6 1 (2.78%) Python
6 1 (2.78%) R
6 1 (2.78%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 18 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 12 (33.33%) DV Cleared
3 6 (16.67%) Degree
3 6 (16.67%) SC Cleared
4 2 (5.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (2.78%) AWS Certification
5 1 (2.78%) CISSP
5 1 (2.78%) CompTIA Security+
5 1 (2.78%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (13.89%) ISO 9000
2 4 (11.11%) QA
3 1 (2.78%) Data Quality
System Software
1 5 (13.89%) Active Directory
2 3 (8.33%) Docker
2 3 (8.33%) Hyper-V
3 2 (5.56%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 7 (19.44%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
2 3 (8.33%) Failover Clustering
2 3 (8.33%) Kubernetes
2 3 (8.33%) WSUS
3 2 (5.56%) Data Guard
3 2 (5.56%) Oracle RMAN
4 1 (2.78%) Ansible
4 1 (2.78%) Enterprise Manager Cloud Control
4 1 (2.78%) Grafana
4 1 (2.78%) Istio
4 1 (2.78%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 19 (52.78%) Microsoft
2 17 (47.22%) Oracle
3 3 (8.33%) Cisco
3 3 (8.33%) McAfee
3 3 (8.33%) MuleSoft
3 3 (8.33%) Red Hat
4 2 (5.56%) Databricks
4 2 (5.56%) VMware
4 2 (5.56%) webMethods
5 1 (2.78%) Alteryx
5 1 (2.78%) PTC
5 1 (2.78%) SAP