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 11 December 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 107 70 66
Rank change year-on-year -37 -4 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 26 53 93
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.13% 2.39% 3.02%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.97% 17.21% 22.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 14 44 57
10th Percentile £371 £400 £390
25th Percentile £394 £423 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £535 £513 £575
Median % change year-on-year +4.39% -10.87% +15.00%
75th Percentile £575 £594 £675
90th Percentile £593 £701 £713
England median daily rate £480 £503 £540
% change year-on-year -4.48% -6.94% -1.82%
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 £58.36 £62.75 £53.75
% change year-on-year -7.00% +16.74% +28.74%

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 237 308 409
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 10.34% 13.91% 13.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 208 284
10th Percentile £317 £371 £375
25th Percentile £413 £425 £455
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £531 £575
Median % change year-on-year -1.18% -7.61% +4.55%
75th Percentile £619 £671 £675
90th Percentile £700 £750 £729
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 8 20
10th Percentile £34.47 £23.63 £14.36
25th Percentile £62.38 £25.26 £20.13
Median hourly rate £65.00 £28.56 £49.34
Median % change year-on-year +127.57% -42.11% -13.23%
75th Percentile - £30.00 £78.00
90th Percentile £66.25 £40.35 £82.71
England median hourly rate £45.00 £38.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +18.42% -17.71% -7.73%

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 11 December 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 11 December 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
Somerset +2 8 £575 +35.29% 4
Wiltshire -29 8 £550 - 4
Bristol -4 5 £400 -11.11% 15
Dorset +3 3 £400 -20.00% 1
Gloucestershire -12 1 - - 6
Devon - 1 £520 - 3
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 (30.77%) SharePoint
2 7 (26.92%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (15.38%) SharePoint Server
4 1 (3.85%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (7.69%) Microsoft Office
1 2 (7.69%) Windchill
2 1 (3.85%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (7.69%) Teamcenter
2 1 (3.85%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 12 (46.15%) Azure
2 7 (26.92%) AWS
3 5 (19.23%) Power Platform
4 4 (15.38%) GCP
5 3 (11.54%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (7.69%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (7.69%) Azure Monitor
6 2 (7.69%) Dynamics 365
6 2 (7.69%) PowerApps
7 1 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 1 (3.85%) AWS CloudFormation
7 1 (3.85%) Azure Cosmos DB
7 1 (3.85%) Azure Data Factory
7 1 (3.85%) Azure DevOps
7 1 (3.85%) Azure Sentinel
7 1 (3.85%) IaaS
7 1 (3.85%) Microsoft Purview
7 1 (3.85%) PaaS
7 1 (3.85%) Power Automate
7 1 (3.85%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (34.62%) DNS
2 5 (19.23%) Skype
3 2 (7.69%) DHCP
3 2 (7.69%) SMTP
4 1 (3.85%) Firewall
4 1 (3.85%) TCP/IP
4 1 (3.85%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (19.23%) PostgreSQL
1 5 (19.23%) Power BI
2 3 (11.54%) MongoDB
2 3 (11.54%) MySQL
2 3 (11.54%) NoSQL
2 3 (11.54%) Oracle Database
3 2 (7.69%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (7.69%) DynamoDB
3 2 (7.69%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 2 (7.69%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 1 (3.85%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (3.85%) Azure SQL Database
4 1 (3.85%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (3.85%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 4 (15.38%) Git
2 2 (7.69%) Artifactory
2 2 (7.69%) Jenkins
3 1 (3.85%) Bitbucket
3 1 (3.85%) GitLab
3 1 (3.85%) Maven
3 1 (3.85%) SonarQube
General
1 11 (42.31%) Social Skills
2 6 (23.08%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (23.08%) Finance
3 4 (15.38%) Public Sector
4 2 (7.69%) Documentation Skills
4 2 (7.69%) Legal
4 2 (7.69%) Local Government
5 1 (3.85%) Banking
5 1 (3.85%) Electronics
5 1 (3.85%) Manufacturing
5 1 (3.85%) Marketing
5 1 (3.85%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 7 (26.92%) Developer
2 4 (15.38%) Senior
3 3 (11.54%) Consultant
3 3 (11.54%) DBA
3 3 (11.54%) Lead
3 3 (11.54%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) .NET Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Administrator
4 2 (7.69%) Applications Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Data Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Oracle DBA
4 2 (7.69%) Power BI Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Senior Data Engineer
4 2 (7.69%) Senior Developer
4 2 (7.69%) Software Engineer
5 1 (3.85%) C++ Developer
5 1 (3.85%) Data Warehouse Developer
5 1 (3.85%) Data Warehouse Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 5 (19.23%) .NET
2 3 (11.54%) React
3 2 (7.69%) .NET Framework
3 2 (7.69%) AngularJS
3 2 (7.69%) ASP.NET
3 2 (7.69%) ASP.NET Web API
3 2 (7.69%) Bootstrap
3 2 (7.69%) CSS
3 2 (7.69%) CSS3
3 2 (7.69%) Entity Framework
3 2 (7.69%) HTML
3 2 (7.69%) HTML5
3 2 (7.69%) JDBC
3 2 (7.69%) Node.js
3 2 (7.69%) WPF
4 1 (3.85%) Middleware
4 1 (3.85%) SOAP
4 1 (3.85%) Spring
4 1 (3.85%) WCF
4 1 (3.85%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 5 (19.23%) PKI
2 2 (7.69%) Cloud Native
2 2 (7.69%) Data Protection Act
2 2 (7.69%) Product Ownership
2 2 (7.69%) Replication
3 1 (3.85%) Clustering
3 1 (3.85%) Enterprise Software
3 1 (3.85%) Low-Code
3 1 (3.85%) Mobile App
Operating Systems
1 12 (46.15%) Windows
2 7 (26.92%) Linux
3 5 (19.23%) Windows 10
3 5 (19.23%) Windows Server
4 4 (15.38%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (7.69%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (3.85%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (38.46%) Problem-Solving
2 7 (26.92%) Agile
3 6 (23.08%) Business Intelligence
3 6 (23.08%) Performance Tuning
4 5 (19.23%) Knowledge Transfer
4 5 (19.23%) Migration
4 5 (19.23%) Runbook
4 5 (19.23%) Software Testing
5 4 (15.38%) Analytics
5 4 (15.38%) CI/CD
5 4 (15.38%) Full-Stack Development
5 4 (15.38%) High Availability
5 4 (15.38%) Root Cause Analysis
5 4 (15.38%) Service Management
5 4 (15.38%) Software Engineering
6 3 (11.54%) Capacity Planning
6 3 (11.54%) Database Security
6 3 (11.54%) DevOps
6 3 (11.54%) Platform Engineering
6 3 (11.54%) Server Management
Programming Languages
1 10 (38.46%) SQL
2 5 (19.23%) C#
2 5 (19.23%) JavaScript
3 4 (15.38%) PowerShell
3 4 (15.38%) TypeScript
4 3 (11.54%) T-SQL
5 2 (7.69%) Python
6 1 (3.85%) Bicep
6 1 (3.85%) C++
6 1 (3.85%) Java
Qualifications
1 12 (46.15%) Security Cleared
2 10 (38.46%) SC Cleared
3 3 (11.54%) DV Cleared
4 2 (7.69%) Azure Certification
4 2 (7.69%) Degree
4 2 (7.69%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (3.85%) AWS Certification
5 1 (3.85%) MCSE
5 1 (3.85%) Microsoft Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.85%) Accessibility
1 1 (3.85%) Data Quality
1 1 (3.85%) GDPR
1 1 (3.85%) WCAG
System Software
1 11 (42.31%) Active Directory
2 6 (23.08%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (19.23%) VMware NSX
4 4 (15.38%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (3.85%) Docker
5 1 (3.85%) Hyper-V
5 1 (3.85%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 5 (19.23%) Active Directory Federation Services
1 5 (19.23%) vCenter Server
2 3 (11.54%) WSUS
3 2 (7.69%) Data Guard
3 2 (7.69%) NetBackup
3 2 (7.69%) Oracle Enterprise Manager
3 2 (7.69%) Oracle RMAN
3 2 (7.69%) Single Sign-On
3 2 (7.69%) Terraform
4 1 (3.85%) Ansible
Vendors
1 18 (69.23%) Microsoft
2 7 (26.92%) VMware
3 5 (19.23%) Cisco
3 5 (19.23%) Oracle
3 5 (19.23%) SolarWinds
3 5 (19.23%) Veeam
4 2 (7.69%) Commvault
4 2 (7.69%) CyberArk
4 2 (7.69%) Google
4 2 (7.69%) PTC
4 2 (7.69%) Veritas
5 1 (3.85%) Atlassian
5 1 (3.85%) SAP