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 8 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 78 77
Rank change year-on-year -33 -1 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 28 45 75
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.05% 2.39% 2.37%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 11.20% 17.44% 20.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 16 36 47
10th Percentile £375 £412 £323
25th Percentile £441 £494 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £600
Median % change year-on-year - -8.33% +20.00%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £678
90th Percentile £663 £831 £720
England median daily rate £480 £506 £540
% change year-on-year -5.11% -6.32% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 11
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate - £25.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - -37.50% +18.52%
75th Percentile - - £48.13
90th Percentile - - £62.50
England median hourly rate £25.25 £63.75 £40.25
% change year-on-year -60.39% +58.37% -3.59%

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 250 258 365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.34% 13.72% 11.55%
Number of daily rates quoted 178 175 250
10th Percentile £364 £385 £363
25th Percentile £413 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £565 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.65% +2.73% -
75th Percentile £647 £676 £650
90th Percentile £700 £788 £729
England median daily rate £500 £538 £538
% change year-on-year -6.98% - -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 15 9 22
10th Percentile £46.10 £23.97 £14.48
25th Percentile £63.25 £25.26 £26.23
Median hourly rate £65.00 £27.13 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +139.63% -32.19% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.68 £64.50 £68.13
90th Percentile - £69.00 £78.00
England median hourly rate £51.36 £41.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +23.76% -2.35% -25.26%

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 8 February 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 8 February 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 +1 9 £450 -16.28% 16
Wiltshire -30 8 £550 -4.35% 4
Somerset -1 7 £575 +15.00% 4
Dorset -7 2 - - 3
Gloucestershire -11 1 - - 4
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 (28.57%) SharePoint
2 7 (25.00%) Microsoft Exchange
3 4 (14.29%) SharePoint Server
4 1 (3.57%) Apache
4 1 (3.57%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (3.57%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Windchill
2 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Excel
Business Applications
1 2 (7.14%) Teamcenter
2 1 (3.57%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 11 (39.29%) Azure
2 6 (21.43%) AWS
3 3 (10.71%) Azure Monitor
3 3 (10.71%) Azure Sentinel
3 3 (10.71%) GCP
3 3 (10.71%) IaaS
3 3 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
3 3 (10.71%) PaaS
3 3 (10.71%) Power Platform
4 2 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
4 2 (7.14%) Dynamics 365
4 2 (7.14%) PowerApps
5 1 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 1 (3.57%) Amazon EC2
5 1 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
5 1 (3.57%) AWS Fargate
5 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Purview
5 1 (3.57%) Power Automate
5 1 (3.57%) SaaS
5 1 (3.57%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 11 (39.29%) DNS
2 5 (17.86%) Skype
3 4 (14.29%) DHCP
3 4 (14.29%) VPN
4 3 (10.71%) Firewall
5 2 (7.14%) LAN
5 2 (7.14%) SMTP
5 2 (7.14%) WAN
6 1 (3.57%) Fibre Channel
6 1 (3.57%) HTTP
6 1 (3.57%) iSCSI
6 1 (3.57%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (17.86%) PostgreSQL
2 4 (14.29%) MongoDB
3 3 (10.71%) MySQL
3 3 (10.71%) Power BI
3 3 (10.71%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 2 (7.14%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (7.14%) DynamoDB
4 2 (7.14%) NoSQL
4 2 (7.14%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 2 (7.14%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (3.57%) Amazon Aurora
5 1 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
5 1 (3.57%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 4 (14.29%) Git
2 2 (7.14%) Artifactory
2 2 (7.14%) Jenkins
3 1 (3.57%) Bitbucket
3 1 (3.57%) GitLab
3 1 (3.57%) Maven
3 1 (3.57%) SonarQube
General
1 12 (42.86%) Social Skills
2 6 (21.43%) Analytical Skills
2 6 (21.43%) Finance
3 2 (7.14%) Documentation Skills
3 2 (7.14%) Legal
3 2 (7.14%) Public Sector
4 1 (3.57%) Banking
4 1 (3.57%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 5 (17.86%) Developer
2 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Consultant
3 3 (10.71%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) .NET Developer
4 2 (7.14%) Applications Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Senior
4 2 (7.14%) Senior Developer
4 2 (7.14%) Software Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Technical Architect
5 1 (3.57%) C++ Developer
5 1 (3.57%) Data Warehouse Developer
5 1 (3.57%) Data Warehouse Specialist
5 1 (3.57%) Enterprise Consultant
5 1 (3.57%) Infrastructure Architect
5 1 (3.57%) Lead
5 1 (3.57%) Lead Consultant
5 1 (3.57%) Senior .NET Developer
5 1 (3.57%) Senior C++ Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 6 (21.43%) .NET
2 4 (14.29%) React
3 3 (10.71%) Node.js
4 2 (7.14%) .NET Framework
4 2 (7.14%) AngularJS
4 2 (7.14%) ASP.NET
4 2 (7.14%) ASP.NET Web API
4 2 (7.14%) Bootstrap
4 2 (7.14%) CSS
4 2 (7.14%) CSS3
4 2 (7.14%) Entity Framework
4 2 (7.14%) HTML
4 2 (7.14%) HTML5
4 2 (7.14%) REST
4 2 (7.14%) WPF
5 1 (3.57%) ASP.NET MVC
5 1 (3.57%) SOAP
5 1 (3.57%) WCF
5 1 (3.57%) Web Services
5 1 (3.57%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 5 (17.86%) PKI
2 2 (7.14%) Cloud Native
2 2 (7.14%) Enterprise Software
2 2 (7.14%) Legacy Applications
2 2 (7.14%) Legacy Systems
2 2 (7.14%) Product Ownership
3 1 (3.57%) Clustering
3 1 (3.57%) Cyber Threat
3 1 (3.57%) Data Centre
3 1 (3.57%) Low-Code
3 1 (3.57%) Mobile App
3 1 (3.57%) Replication
3 1 (3.57%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 13 (46.43%) Windows
2 7 (25.00%) Linux
2 7 (25.00%) Windows Server
3 5 (17.86%) Windows 10
4 4 (14.29%) Windows Server 2016
5 2 (7.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (3.57%) Android
6 1 (3.57%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (35.71%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (28.57%) Agile
3 6 (21.43%) Migration
3 6 (21.43%) Runbook
4 5 (17.86%) Capacity Planning
4 5 (17.86%) Full-Stack Development
4 5 (17.86%) ITIL
4 5 (17.86%) Knowledge Transfer
4 5 (17.86%) Software Testing
5 4 (14.29%) Business Continuity
5 4 (14.29%) Business Intelligence
5 4 (14.29%) Change Management
5 4 (14.29%) CI/CD
5 4 (14.29%) Configuration Management
5 4 (14.29%) Disaster Recovery
5 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineering
5 4 (14.29%) Root Cause Analysis
5 4 (14.29%) Service Management
5 4 (14.29%) Zero Trust
6 3 (10.71%) Server Management
Programming Languages
1 11 (39.29%) SQL
2 6 (21.43%) C#
2 6 (21.43%) PowerShell
3 5 (17.86%) JavaScript
4 4 (14.29%) T-SQL
4 4 (14.29%) TypeScript
5 3 (10.71%) Bicep
6 2 (7.14%) Python
7 1 (3.57%) C++
7 1 (3.57%) Java
Qualifications
1 10 (35.71%) Security Cleared
2 8 (28.57%) SC Cleared
3 3 (10.71%) Azure Certification
3 3 (10.71%) Degree
3 3 (10.71%) DV Cleared
4 2 (7.14%) ITIL Certification
5 1 (3.57%) AWS Certification
5 1 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (3.57%) Accessibility
1 1 (3.57%) Cyber Essentials
1 1 (3.57%) Data Quality
1 1 (3.57%) ISO/IEC 27001
1 1 (3.57%) WCAG
System Software
1 13 (46.43%) Active Directory
2 9 (32.14%) VMware Infrastructure
3 5 (17.86%) VMware NSX
4 4 (14.29%) Virtual Machines
5 3 (10.71%) Hyper-V
6 1 (3.57%) Docker
6 1 (3.57%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 5 (17.86%) Active Directory Federation Services
1 5 (17.86%) Terraform
1 5 (17.86%) vCenter Server
2 3 (10.71%) WSUS
3 2 (7.14%) NetBackup
3 2 (7.14%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (3.57%) Ansible
4 1 (3.57%) EMC VPLEX
4 1 (3.57%) Grafana
Vendors
1 18 (64.29%) Microsoft
2 10 (35.71%) VMware
3 5 (17.86%) Cisco
3 5 (17.86%) SolarWinds
3 5 (17.86%) Veeam
4 3 (10.71%) Oracle
5 2 (7.14%) Commvault
5 2 (7.14%) CyberArk
5 2 (7.14%) PTC
5 2 (7.14%) Veritas
6 1 (3.57%) Alteryx
6 1 (3.57%) Atlassian
6 1 (3.57%) Citrix
6 1 (3.57%) Dell