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 25 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
25 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 111 78 81
Rank change year-on-year -33 +3 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 28 46 76
As % of all contract jobs in the South West 1.09% 2.42% 2.47%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 11.72% 18.18% 20.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 15 36 48
10th Percentile £375 £400 £323
25th Percentile £475 £459 £506
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £605
Median % change year-on-year - -9.09% +21.00%
75th Percentile £575 £675 £683
90th Percentile £675 £788 £720
England median daily rate £475 £510 £550
% change year-on-year -6.86% -7.27% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 10
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - -
Median hourly rate - £25.00 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year - -37.50% -
75th Percentile - - £60.94
90th Percentile - - £64.96
England median hourly rate £20.75 £63.75 £46.18
% change year-on-year -67.45% +38.04% +10.61%

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 239 253 362
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the South West 9.27% 13.29% 11.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 166 171 247
10th Percentile £375 £375 £366
25th Percentile £463 £450 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
75th Percentile £642 £676 £655
90th Percentile £700 £769 £730
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 7 21
10th Percentile £43.58 £22.93 £14.36
25th Percentile £62.38 £25.13 £21.64
Median hourly rate £65.00 £27.13 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +139.63% -32.19% -33.33%
75th Percentile £74.68 £28.99 £70.00
90th Percentile - £43.20 £78.00
England median hourly rate £44.25 £36.56 £42.50
% change year-on-year +21.05% -13.99% -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 25 January 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 25 January 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
Somerset +3 9 £575 +24.32% 11
Bristol -13 8 £488 -9.30% 22
Wiltshire -31 8 £550 -4.35% 12
Dorset -5 1 - - 11
Gloucestershire -15 1 - - 11
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 5 (17.86%) GCP
4 3 (10.71%) Azure Monitor
4 3 (10.71%) Azure Sentinel
4 3 (10.71%) IaaS
4 3 (10.71%) Microsoft 365
4 3 (10.71%) PaaS
4 3 (10.71%) Power Platform
5 2 (7.14%) Azure DevOps
5 2 (7.14%) Dynamics 365
5 2 (7.14%) PowerApps
6 1 (3.57%) Amazon CloudWatch
6 1 (3.57%) AWS CloudFormation
6 1 (3.57%) AWS CloudTrail
6 1 (3.57%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (3.57%) AWS Lambda
6 1 (3.57%) Entra ID
6 1 (3.57%) Power Automate
6 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%) SMTP
6 1 (3.57%) HTTP
6 1 (3.57%) LAN
6 1 (3.57%) TCP/IP
6 1 (3.57%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (14.29%) MongoDB
1 4 (14.29%) PostgreSQL
2 3 (10.71%) MySQL
2 3 (10.71%) Power BI
3 2 (7.14%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (7.14%) DynamoDB
3 2 (7.14%) NoSQL
3 2 (7.14%) SQL Server Reporting Services
4 1 (3.57%) Amazon Aurora
4 1 (3.57%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (3.57%) Oracle Database
4 1 (3.57%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 1 (3.57%) SQL Server Integration Services
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
Job Titles
1 5 (17.86%) Developer
2 4 (14.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) Senior
3 3 (10.71%) Consultant
3 3 (10.71%) Data Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) Platform Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) .NET Developer
4 2 (7.14%) Applications Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Architect
4 2 (7.14%) Senior Data Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Senior Developer
4 2 (7.14%) Software Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Technical Architect
5 1 (3.57%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Application Security Analyst
5 1 (3.57%) AWS DevOps
5 1 (3.57%) Junior Data Engineer
5 1 (3.57%) Lead
5 1 (3.57%) Lead Consultant
5 1 (3.57%) Operations Engineer
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%) JDBC
4 2 (7.14%) REST
4 2 (7.14%) WPF
5 1 (3.57%) .NET Core
5 1 (3.57%) Express.js
5 1 (3.57%) HTML5 Canvas
5 1 (3.57%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 5 (17.86%) PKI
2 2 (7.14%) Cloud Native
2 2 (7.14%) Data Protection Act
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%) Low-Code
3 1 (3.57%) Mobile App
3 1 (3.57%) Replication
3 1 (3.57%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 12 (42.86%) Windows
2 7 (25.00%) Linux
3 6 (21.43%) Windows Server
4 5 (17.86%) Windows 10
5 4 (14.29%) Windows Server 2016
6 2 (7.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 1 (3.57%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 12 (42.86%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (28.57%) Agile
3 7 (25.00%) 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%) Migration
4 5 (17.86%) Performance Tuning
4 5 (17.86%) Software Testing
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%) Software Engineering
5 4 (14.29%) Zero Trust
6 3 (10.71%) Infrastructure as Code
6 3 (10.71%) Server Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (42.86%) SQL
2 6 (21.43%) C#
3 5 (17.86%) JavaScript
3 5 (17.86%) PowerShell
4 4 (14.29%) TypeScript
5 3 (10.71%) Bicep
5 3 (10.71%) T-SQL
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 8 (28.57%) 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%) Grafana
Vendors
1 18 (64.29%) Microsoft
2 9 (32.14%) 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%) Google
5 2 (7.14%) PTC
5 2 (7.14%) Veritas
6 1 (3.57%) Alteryx
6 1 (3.57%) Atlassian