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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 102 76 72
Rank change year-on-year -26 -4 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 29 54 93
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.30% 2.26% 3.00%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 12.50% 16.36% 22.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 43 60
10th Percentile £363 £353 £398
25th Percentile £375 £403 £492
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £500 £563
Median % change year-on-year -3.00% -11.11% +15.38%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £675
90th Percentile £583 £705 £713
England median daily rate £482 £500 £543
% change year-on-year -3.60% -7.83% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 6
10th Percentile - - £46.09
25th Percentile £72.50 - £46.82
Median hourly rate £75.00 - £57.28
75th Percentile £77.50 - £63.93
90th Percentile - - £67.20
England median hourly rate £21.27 £60.50 £52.50
% change year-on-year -64.84% +15.24% +25.75%

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 232 330 413
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.40% 13.80% 13.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 165 223 287
10th Percentile £310 £365 £395
25th Percentile £413 £425 £454
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £525 £560
Median % change year-on-year - -6.25% +1.82%
75th Percentile £619 £638 £660
90th Percentile £695 £750 £720
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 9 24
10th Percentile £21.25 £17.50 £14.36
25th Percentile £48.75 £19.83 £22.29
Median hourly rate £65.00 £27.13 £62.28
Median % change year-on-year +139.63% -56.44% +9.52%
75th Percentile - £30.00 £78.00
90th Percentile - - £84.00
England median hourly rate £44.25 £33.93 £47.90
% change year-on-year +30.42% -29.16% -0.10%

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 20 November 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 20 November 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 -14 9 £550 - 8
Somerset +2 6 £630 +48.24% 6
Dorset +4 5 £375 -25.00% 4
Bristol +1 5 £400 -11.11% 15
Devon - 3 £520 - 6
Gloucestershire -15 1 - - 6
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 8 (27.59%) SharePoint
2 7 (24.14%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (13.79%) SharePoint Server
4 1 (3.45%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (6.90%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (6.90%) Windchill
2 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (6.90%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 13 (44.83%) Azure
2 8 (27.59%) AWS
3 5 (17.24%) Power Platform
4 4 (13.79%) GCP
5 3 (10.34%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (6.90%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Cosmos DB
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Functions
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Logic Apps
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Monitor
6 2 (6.90%) Azure Service Bus
6 2 (6.90%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (6.90%) Serverless
7 1 (3.45%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (3.45%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (3.45%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (3.45%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (3.45%) Power Automate
7 1 (3.45%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 8 (27.59%) DNS
2 5 (17.24%) Skype
3 2 (6.90%) SMTP
4 1 (3.45%) DHCP
4 1 (3.45%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (20.69%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (17.24%) Power BI
3 4 (13.79%) NoSQL
4 3 (10.34%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (10.34%) DynamoDB
4 3 (10.34%) MongoDB
4 3 (10.34%) MySQL
4 3 (10.34%) Oracle Database
4 3 (10.34%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 3 (10.34%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 2 (6.90%) Azure SQL Database
5 2 (6.90%) Data Warehouse
6 1 (3.45%) Amazon Aurora
6 1 (3.45%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 4 (13.79%) Git
2 2 (6.90%) Artifactory
2 2 (6.90%) Jenkins
3 1 (3.45%) Bitbucket
3 1 (3.45%) GitLab
3 1 (3.45%) Maven
3 1 (3.45%) SonarQube
General
1 14 (48.28%) Social Skills
2 5 (17.24%) Finance
2 5 (17.24%) Public Sector
3 4 (13.79%) Analytical Skills
4 2 (6.90%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (6.90%) Legal
4 2 (6.90%) Local Government
5 1 (3.45%) Electronics
5 1 (3.45%) Manufacturing
5 1 (3.45%) Marketing
5 1 (3.45%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 10 (34.48%) Developer
2 4 (13.79%) DBA
2 4 (13.79%) Senior
3 3 (10.34%) Consultant
3 3 (10.34%) Lead
3 3 (10.34%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) .NET Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Administrator
4 2 (6.90%) Analyst
4 2 (6.90%) Applications Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Data Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) Database Analyst
4 2 (6.90%) Digital Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Integration Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Oracle DBA
4 2 (6.90%) Power BI Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Senior Data Engineer
4 2 (6.90%) Senior Developer
4 2 (6.90%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (24.14%) .NET
2 3 (10.34%) React
3 2 (6.90%) .NET Framework
3 2 (6.90%) AngularJS
3 2 (6.90%) ARM Templates
3 2 (6.90%) ASP.NET
3 2 (6.90%) ASP.NET Web API
3 2 (6.90%) Bootstrap
3 2 (6.90%) CSS
3 2 (6.90%) CSS3
3 2 (6.90%) Entity Framework
3 2 (6.90%) HTML
3 2 (6.90%) HTML5
3 2 (6.90%) JDBC
3 2 (6.90%) JSON
3 2 (6.90%) Node.js
3 2 (6.90%) WPF
3 2 (6.90%) XML
4 1 (3.45%) Spring
4 1 (3.45%) WCF
Miscellaneous
1 5 (17.24%) PKI
2 3 (10.34%) Replication
3 2 (6.90%) Data Protection Act
4 1 (3.45%) Cloud Native
4 1 (3.45%) Clustering
4 1 (3.45%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (3.45%) Mobile App
4 1 (3.45%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 12 (41.38%) Windows
2 7 (24.14%) Linux
3 5 (17.24%) Windows 10
3 5 (17.24%) Windows Server
4 4 (13.79%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (6.90%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (3.45%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 11 (37.93%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (24.14%) Agile
2 7 (24.14%) Migration
3 6 (20.69%) Business Intelligence
3 6 (20.69%) DevOps
3 6 (20.69%) Performance Tuning
4 5 (17.24%) Analytics
4 5 (17.24%) CI/CD
4 5 (17.24%) High Availability
4 5 (17.24%) Knowledge Transfer
4 5 (17.24%) Software Testing
5 4 (13.79%) Data Protection
5 4 (13.79%) Database Security
5 4 (13.79%) ETL
5 4 (13.79%) Full-Stack Development
5 4 (13.79%) Root Cause Analysis
5 4 (13.79%) Runbook
5 4 (13.79%) Service Management
5 4 (13.79%) Software Engineering
6 3 (10.34%) Proactive Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 11 (37.93%) SQL
2 7 (24.14%) C#
3 4 (13.79%) JavaScript
3 4 (13.79%) PowerShell
3 4 (13.79%) T-SQL
4 3 (10.34%) TypeScript
5 2 (6.90%) Python
6 1 (3.45%) C++
6 1 (3.45%) Java
Qualifications
1 13 (44.83%) Security Cleared
2 11 (37.93%) SC Cleared
3 3 (10.34%) DV Cleared
4 2 (6.90%) Azure Certification
4 2 (6.90%) Degree
4 2 (6.90%) ITIL Certification
4 2 (6.90%) MCSE
4 2 (6.90%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (3.45%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 2 (6.90%) GDPR
2 1 (3.45%) Accessibility
2 1 (3.45%) Data Quality
2 1 (3.45%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (37.93%) Active Directory
2 5 (17.24%) VMware Infrastructure
2 5 (17.24%) VMware NSX
3 4 (13.79%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (3.45%) Docker
4 1 (3.45%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 5 (17.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
1 5 (17.24%) vCenter Server
2 3 (10.34%) WSUS
3 2 (6.90%) Data Guard
3 2 (6.90%) NetBackup
3 2 (6.90%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
3 2 (6.90%) Oracle RMAN
3 2 (6.90%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (3.45%) Ansible
4 1 (3.45%) Terraform
Vendors
1 18 (62.07%) Microsoft
2 6 (20.69%) VMware
3 5 (17.24%) Cisco
3 5 (17.24%) Oracle
3 5 (17.24%) SolarWinds
3 5 (17.24%) Veeam
4 2 (6.90%) Commvault
4 2 (6.90%) CyberArk
4 2 (6.90%) Google
4 2 (6.90%) PTC
4 2 (6.90%) Veritas
5 1 (3.45%) Atlassian
5 1 (3.45%) SAP