SQL DBA Contracts

SQL Database Administrator
UK

The median SQL Database Administrator daily rate in the UK is £450, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 6 May 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 May 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 467 500 577
Rank change year-on-year +33 +77 +75
Contract jobs requiring a SQL DBA 57 100 139
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 0.19% 0.23% 0.24%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.21% 0.25% 0.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 34 65 108
10th Percentile £304 £344 £381
25th Percentile £358 £400 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £508 £585 £581
90th Percentile £538 £600 £666
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 0 1
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile - - £32.40
Median hourly rate £22.48 - £34.80
75th Percentile - - £37.19
90th Percentile - - -
UK excluding London median hourly rate £22.48 - £34.80

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
UK

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in the UK with a recognized job title 27,127 40,034 55,895
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.50% 92.76% 94.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 17,721 26,064 39,048
10th Percentile £300 £280 £313
25th Percentile £406 £409 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £525 £540
Median % change year-on-year -2.10% -2.78% +2.86%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £650
90th Percentile £738 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £490 £500
% change year-on-year -3.06% -2.00% +5.26%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1,053 2,665 1,566
10th Percentile £14.14 £12.86 £14.25
25th Percentile £18.50 £16.30 £19.11
Median hourly rate £29.00 £36.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.55% -18.89% +90.68%
75th Percentile £62.50 £61.30 £65.75
90th Percentile £75.00 £72.50 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £28.00 £40.00 £42.00
% change year-on-year -30.00% -4.76% +115.16%

SQL DBA
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings that featured SQL DBA in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SQL DBA in the UK

SQL DBA
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

3-month moving average daily rate quoted in jobs citing SQL DBA.

Daily rate trend for SQL DBA in the UK

SQL DBA
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL DBA over the 6 months to 6 May 2025.

Daily rate histogram for SQL DBA in the UK

SQL DBA
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

3-month moving average hourly rates quoted in jobs citing SQL DBA.

Hourly rate trend for SQL DBA in the UK

SQL DBA
Top 14 Contract Locations

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL DBA within the UK over the 6 months to 6 May 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
England +39 41 £450 +5.88% 7
Work from Home +19 28 £450 -5.26% 6
London +27 23 £450 -10.00% 2
UK excluding London +18 18 £450 -5.26% 5
South East +38 9 £475 -13.64% 4
North of England +10 3 £298 -37.37%
North West +8 2 £298 -30.00%
Scotland -11 2 £463 -17.78%
Yorkshire +19 1 - -
Wales +9 1 £275 -52.17%
West Midlands +9 1 - - 1
Midlands +9 1 - - 1
East of England - 1 £321 - 1
Northern Ireland - 1 - -

SQL DBA Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities

For the 6 months to 6 May 2025, SQL DBA contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads featuring SQL DBA in the job title.

1 53 (92.98%) SQL
2 41 (71.93%) SQL Server
3 25 (43.86%) Performance Tuning
4 21 (36.84%) Database Security
4 21 (36.84%) High Availability
4 21 (36.84%) Azure
5 20 (35.09%) Disaster Recovery
5 20 (35.09%) Migration
6 14 (24.56%) Microsoft
6 14 (24.56%) Problem-Solving
6 14 (24.56%) Social Skills
7 11 (19.30%) ITIL
8 10 (17.54%) Replication
9 9 (15.79%) Clustering
9 9 (15.79%) AWS
9 9 (15.79%) PowerShell
10 8 (14.04%) Database Tuning
10 8 (14.04%) Oracle
10 8 (14.04%) SQL Optimisation
11 7 (12.28%) Database Migration
11 7 (12.28%) Finance
11 7 (12.28%) Security Cleared
11 7 (12.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
11 7 (12.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 6 (10.53%) Agile
12 6 (10.53%) SC Cleared
12 6 (10.53%) Azure SQL Database
12 6 (10.53%) PostgreSQL
12 6 (10.53%) T-SQL
12 6 (10.53%) Windows

SQL DBA Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (3.51%) BizTalk Server
1 2 (3.51%) Confluence
1 2 (3.51%) SharePoint
2 1 (1.75%) Apache
2 1 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
Cloud Services
1 21 (36.84%) Azure
2 9 (15.79%) AWS
3 4 (7.02%) GCP
4 3 (5.26%) Power Platform
5 2 (3.51%) Azure Data Factory
5 2 (3.51%) GitHub
5 2 (3.51%) Miro
5 2 (3.51%) PaaS
5 2 (3.51%) SAP Commerce Cloud
6 1 (1.75%) Azure DevOps
6 1 (1.75%) dbt
6 1 (1.75%) Snowflake
6 1 (1.75%) Vertex AI
Database & Business Intelligence
1 41 (71.93%) SQL Server
2 7 (12.28%) SQL Server Integration Services
2 7 (12.28%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 6 (10.53%) Azure SQL Database
3 6 (10.53%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (7.02%) Data Warehouse
4 4 (7.02%) Oracle Database
4 4 (7.02%) Relational Database
5 3 (5.26%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (5.26%) MySQL
5 3 (5.26%) Power BI
5 3 (5.26%) RDBMS
6 2 (3.51%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (3.51%) DTS
6 2 (3.51%) GIS
6 2 (3.51%) MongoDB
6 2 (3.51%) MSDE
6 2 (3.51%) SQL Server Analysis Services
7 1 (1.75%) DB2
7 1 (1.75%) Sybase ASE
Development Applications
1 2 (3.51%) DBeaver
1 2 (3.51%) GitLab
1 2 (3.51%) JIRA
2 1 (1.75%) SonarQube
2 1 (1.75%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
2 1 (1.75%) tSQLt
General
1 14 (24.56%) Social Skills
2 7 (12.28%) Finance
3 4 (7.02%) Legal
4 3 (5.26%) Analytical Skills
4 3 (5.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 2 (3.51%) Banking
6 1 (1.75%) Back Office
6 1 (1.75%) Digital Healthcare
6 1 (1.75%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.75%) Financial Institution
6 1 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.75%) Public Sector
6 1 (1.75%) Telecoms
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (5.26%) .NET
2 2 (3.51%) ASP.NET
3 1 (1.75%) AngularJS
3 1 (1.75%) FHIR
3 1 (1.75%) Kafka
3 1 (1.75%) NumPy
3 1 (1.75%) Pandas
3 1 (1.75%) PySpark
3 1 (1.75%) React
3 1 (1.75%) REST
3 1 (1.75%) Web Services
3 1 (1.75%) WS-I
Miscellaneous
1 10 (17.54%) Replication
2 9 (15.79%) Clustering
3 2 (3.51%) Greenfield Project
4 1 (1.75%) Cloud Native
4 1 (1.75%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.75%) IBM Mainframe
4 1 (1.75%) Mainframe
4 1 (1.75%) Management Information System
4 1 (1.75%) NHS
4 1 (1.75%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 6 (10.53%) Windows
2 3 (5.26%) Linux
2 3 (5.26%) Windows Server
3 2 (3.51%) Unix
4 1 (1.75%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.75%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 25 (43.86%) Performance Tuning
2 21 (36.84%) Database Security
2 21 (36.84%) High Availability
3 20 (35.09%) Disaster Recovery
3 20 (35.09%) Migration
4 14 (24.56%) Problem-Solving
5 11 (19.30%) ITIL
6 8 (14.04%) Database Tuning
6 8 (14.04%) SQL Optimisation
7 7 (12.28%) Database Migration
8 6 (10.53%) Agile
9 5 (8.77%) Data Migration
9 5 (8.77%) ETL
10 3 (5.26%) Analytics
10 3 (5.26%) Business Continuity
10 3 (5.26%) Business Intelligence
10 3 (5.26%) Capacity Planning
10 3 (5.26%) Data Integration
10 3 (5.26%) Data Modelling
11 2 (3.51%) Change Control
Programming Languages
1 53 (92.98%) SQL
2 9 (15.79%) PowerShell
3 6 (10.53%) T-SQL
4 3 (5.26%) Java
4 3 (5.26%) PL/SQL
4 3 (5.26%) Python
5 1 (1.75%) Bash
5 1 (1.75%) Bicep
5 1 (1.75%) C#
5 1 (1.75%) Korn
5 1 (1.75%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 7 (12.28%) Security Cleared
2 6 (10.53%) SC Cleared
3 4 (7.02%) Degree
4 3 (5.26%) Microsoft Certification
5 1 (1.75%) AWS Certification
5 1 (1.75%) Azure Certification
5 1 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 1 (1.75%) Computer Science Degree
5 1 (1.75%) DV Cleared
5 1 (1.75%) MCDBA
5 1 (1.75%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (7.02%) QA
2 3 (5.26%) GDPR
3 2 (3.51%) HIPAA
4 1 (1.75%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.75%) HL7
4 1 (1.75%) SLA
System Software
1 1 (1.75%) Active Directory
1 1 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
1 1 (1.75%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 2 (3.51%) Terraform
2 1 (1.75%) Perfmon
2 1 (1.75%) SCOM
2 1 (1.75%) VxRail
Vendors
1 14 (24.56%) Microsoft
2 8 (14.04%) Oracle
3 3 (5.26%) Google
3 3 (5.26%) RedGate
4 2 (3.51%) SAP
4 2 (3.51%) SolarWinds
4 2 (3.51%) VMware
5 1 (1.75%) Checkmarx
5 1 (1.75%) Cisco
5 1 (1.75%) Dynatrace
5 1 (1.75%) IBM
5 1 (1.75%) IDERA
5 1 (1.75%) Red Hat
5 1 (1.75%) Salesforce
5 1 (1.75%) Sybase