SQL Server Contracts

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
UK

The following table provides summary statistics for contract job vacancies with a requirement for SQL Server skills. Included is a benchmarking guide to the contractor rates offered in vacancies that have cited SQL Server over the 6 months to 4 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
4 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 62 52 51
Rank change year-on-year -10 -1 +3
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,390 2,578 4,273
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.22% 4.36% 4.82%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 19.08% 24.31% 23.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 961 1,950 3,234
10th Percentile £333 £375 £353
25th Percentile £400 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £515
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +1.94% +14.44%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £630
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -2.06% +7.78% +8.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 23 43
10th Percentile £26.95 £26.30 £20.75
25th Percentile £39.41 £35.00 £21.63
Median hourly rate £40.13 £45.00 £46.67
Median % change year-on-year -10.83% -3.58% +66.68%
75th Percentile £53.55 £78.75 £61.08
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £69.05
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.13 £35.50 £47.50
% change year-on-year +13.03% -25.26% +82.69%

All Database and Business Intelligence Skills
UK

SQL Server is in the Databases and Business Intelligence category. The following table is for comparison with the above and provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 7,284 10,606 17,885
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.88% 17.93% 20.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,196 7,543 12,708
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £550
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -1.82% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £771 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% +10.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 143 187 186
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.98 £33.70 £22.39
Median hourly rate £40.00 £58.59 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.73% +37.86% +57.64%
75th Percentile £58.88 £73.11 £62.05
90th Percentile £72.50 £81.00 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £55.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -27.27% +57.14% +44.33%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend

Job postings citing SQL Server as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised.

Job vacancy trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Contractor Daily Rate Trend

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

Daily rate trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server over the 6 months to 4 May 2024.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Contractor Hourly Rate Trend

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

Hourly rate trend for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Histogram

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL Server over the 6 months to 4 May 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Top 17 Contract Locations

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 UK over the 6 months to 4 May 2024. 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 -11 1,234 £505 -3.81% 1,065
London +4 827 £538 -6.52% 358
Work from Home -4 572 £500 -4.76% 777
UK excluding London -42 437 £475 -2.06% 758
North of England -12 107 £450 -10.00% 182
South East -50 101 £463 -7.50% 156
Midlands -4 77 £450 +5.88% 185
South West -20 71 £550 +10.00% 100
North West -19 68 £450 -10.00% 99
Scotland -6 52 £550 +15.79% 45
West Midlands -6 43 £450 -12.20% 111
East Midlands +3 31 £445 +11.25% 73
Yorkshire -6 29 £450 -10.00% 62
East of England -40 24 £475 +5.56% 67
Wales -3 11 £500 -4.76% 17
North East +21 10 £475 -5.00% 22
Northern Ireland -4 1 - - 14

SQL Server
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 72 (5.18%) SharePoint
2 41 (2.95%) IIS
3 31 (2.23%) Microsoft Exchange
4 27 (1.94%) Confluence
5 22 (1.58%) Apache
6 20 (1.44%) CMS
7 16 (1.15%) Apache Spark
8 12 (0.86%) nginx
9 11 (0.79%) Tomcat
10 10 (0.72%) JBoss
11 8 (0.58%) SAS
12 7 (0.50%) SharePoint 2010
12 7 (0.50%) SharePoint Server
13 6 (0.43%) Tornado
14 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
14 4 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
15 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.22%) WordPress
16 2 (0.14%) ThingWorx
Applications
1 73 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (2.09%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.58%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 2 (0.14%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.072%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 19 (1.37%) Teamcenter
2 17 (1.22%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.22%) Endur
3 10 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 9 (0.65%) Temenos T24
5 8 (0.58%) DELMIA
6 5 (0.36%) OPENHousing
7 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
8 3 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
8 3 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
8 3 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.22%) Sage X3
8 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.14%) BusinessWorks
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
9 2 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
9 2 (0.14%) Visualfiles
10 1 (0.072%) Epicor Tropos
10 1 (0.072%) Sage 200
10 1 (0.072%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 638 (45.90%) Azure
2 278 (20.00%) Azure DevOps
3 217 (15.61%) Power Platform
4 168 (12.09%) AWS
5 87 (6.26%) Microsoft 365
6 86 (6.19%) Entra ID
7 81 (5.83%) Azure Data Factory
8 78 (5.61%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 76 (5.47%) Azure Service Bus
10 69 (4.96%) GitHub
11 59 (4.24%) Serverless
12 57 (4.10%) PowerApps
13 52 (3.74%) Power Automate
14 51 (3.67%) Azure Functions
15 48 (3.45%) Azure Monitor
16 40 (2.88%) PaaS
17 34 (2.45%) Azure Logic Apps
18 32 (2.30%) Snowflake
19 27 (1.94%) Dynamics 365
20 26 (1.87%) Azure Key Vault
Communications & Networking
1 55 (3.96%) Firewall
2 45 (3.24%) DNS
3 33 (2.37%) SAN
4 23 (1.65%) DHCP
4 23 (1.65%) WAN
5 21 (1.51%) LAN
6 17 (1.22%) Internet
7 15 (1.08%) FTP
7 15 (1.08%) NAS
8 11 (0.79%) Wi-Fi
9 10 (0.72%) VPN
10 9 (0.65%) Wireless
11 8 (0.58%) MPLS
11 8 (0.58%) TCP/IP
12 6 (0.43%) Cisco IOS
12 6 (0.43%) SSL
13 5 (0.36%) Network Security
14 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
14 4 (0.29%) HTTP
15 3 (0.22%) BGP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 189 (13.60%) Power BI
2 156 (11.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 142 (10.22%) Data Warehouse
4 137 (9.86%) Relational Database
5 116 (8.35%) MySQL
6 107 (7.70%) PostgreSQL
7 103 (7.41%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 62 (4.46%) SQL Server Analysis Services
9 61 (4.39%) Oracle Database
10 60 (4.32%) Azure SQL Database
11 58 (4.17%) NoSQL
12 42 (3.02%) Data Lake
12 42 (3.02%) Metadata
12 42 (3.02%) RDBMS
13 39 (2.81%) MongoDB
14 36 (2.59%) Oracle Reports
15 32 (2.30%) Tableau
16 30 (2.16%) Microsoft Analysis Services
17 22 (1.58%) Big Data
18 18 (1.29%) Redis
Development Applications
1 145 (10.43%) Git
2 88 (6.33%) JIRA
3 57 (4.10%) Visual Studio
4 49 (3.53%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 40 (2.88%) SpecFlow
6 36 (2.59%) Selenium
7 35 (2.52%) Jenkins
8 32 (2.30%) TeamCity
9 30 (2.16%) GitLab
10 20 (1.44%) Team Foundation Server
11 19 (1.37%) WebDriver
12 17 (1.22%) Bitbucket
13 14 (1.01%) JMeter
13 14 (1.01%) Octopus Deploy
14 13 (0.94%) Postman
15 10 (0.72%) Cucumber
15 10 (0.72%) ERwin
15 10 (0.72%) NUnit
15 10 (0.72%) SonarQube
16 9 (0.65%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 297 (21.37%) Finance
2 295 (21.22%) Social Skills
3 153 (11.01%) Analytical Skills
4 145 (10.43%) Public Sector
5 132 (9.50%) Banking
6 49 (3.53%) Back Office
7 34 (2.45%) Manufacturing
8 33 (2.37%) Front Office
9 32 (2.30%) Investment Banking
10 28 (2.01%) Financial Institution
11 26 (1.87%) Marketing
11 26 (1.87%) Presentation Skills
11 26 (1.87%) Telecoms
12 18 (1.29%) Local Government
12 18 (1.29%) Retail
13 17 (1.22%) Electronics
14 16 (1.15%) Publishing
15 14 (1.01%) Documentation Skills
16 10 (0.72%) Legal
17 9 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
Job Titles
1 551 (39.64%) Developer
2 236 (16.98%) Senior
3 146 (10.50%) Senior Developer
4 139 (10.00%) .NET Developer
5 132 (9.50%) C# Developer
6 100 (7.19%) Architect
7 96 (6.91%) DBA
8 94 (6.76%) Analyst
9 90 (6.47%) Data Engineer
10 76 (5.47%) SQL DBA
11 68 (4.89%) Software Developer
12 63 (4.53%) Lead
12 63 (4.53%) SQL Developer
13 59 (4.24%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 58 (4.17%) Azure Developer
15 51 (3.67%) C# .NET Developer
16 50 (3.60%) Senior Software Developer
17 46 (3.31%) Administrator
17 46 (3.31%) Full Stack Developer
18 43 (3.09%) Consultant
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 435 (31.29%) .NET
2 164 (11.80%) XML
3 148 (10.65%) .NET Core
4 144 (10.36%) .NET Framework
5 135 (9.71%) HTML
6 111 (7.99%) AngularJS
7 107 (7.70%) ASP.NET
8 99 (7.12%) CSS
9 97 (6.98%) React
10 64 (4.60%) Web Services
11 61 (4.39%) REST
12 47 (3.38%) Entity Framework
12 47 (3.38%) JSON
13 46 (3.31%) SOAP
14 44 (3.17%) Kafka
15 41 (2.95%) RESTful
16 36 (2.59%) WCF
17 35 (2.52%) jQuery
18 33 (2.37%) ASP.NET MVC
18 33 (2.37%) SailPoint
Miscellaneous
1 75 (5.40%) Product Ownership
2 59 (4.24%) Onboarding
2 59 (4.24%) Replication
3 45 (3.24%) Clustering
4 30 (2.16%) Public Cloud
5 26 (1.87%) Data Centre
6 24 (1.73%) Cloud Native
7 23 (1.65%) Distributed Systems
7 23 (1.65%) Hedge funds
8 22 (1.58%) Client/Server
9 21 (1.51%) Derivative
9 21 (1.51%) Management Information System
10 17 (1.22%) Linux Command Line
10 17 (1.22%) PKI
11 15 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
12 14 (1.01%) Self-Motivation
13 13 (0.94%) Blog
13 13 (0.94%) Data Protection Act
13 13 (0.94%) Equity Derivative
13 13 (0.94%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 264 (18.99%) Windows
2 134 (9.64%) Windows Server
3 124 (8.92%) Linux
4 56 (4.03%) Unix
5 48 (3.45%) Windows Server 2019
6 44 (3.17%) Windows Server 2016
7 33 (2.37%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 25 (1.80%) Windows 10
9 21 (1.51%) Windows Server 2012
10 12 (0.86%) Android
11 11 (0.79%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.79%) Windows Server 2008
12 9 (0.65%) Apple iOS
12 9 (0.65%) VMS
12 9 (0.65%) Windows 7
13 7 (0.50%) zOS
14 5 (0.36%) CentOS
14 5 (0.36%) Mac OS
15 2 (0.14%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 454 (32.66%) Agile
2 407 (29.28%) DevOps
3 232 (16.69%) Business Intelligence
4 201 (14.46%) CI/CD
5 199 (14.32%) Migration
6 197 (14.17%) Scrum
7 193 (13.88%) Problem-Solving
8 172 (12.37%) ETL
9 141 (10.14%) Data Modelling
10 121 (8.71%) TDD
11 101 (7.27%) OO
12 95 (6.83%) Disaster Recovery
13 88 (6.33%) SDLC
14 83 (5.97%) MVC
14 83 (5.97%) Software Engineering
15 81 (5.83%) Test Automation
16 80 (5.76%) Data Analysis
16 80 (5.76%) High Availability
17 75 (5.40%) Analytics
18 73 (5.25%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 735 (52.88%) SQL
2 516 (37.12%) C#
3 281 (20.22%) PowerShell
4 176 (12.66%) JavaScript
5 152 (10.94%) Python
6 151 (10.86%) T-SQL
7 131 (9.42%) Java
8 100 (7.19%) Bicep
9 86 (6.19%) PL/SQL
10 62 (4.46%) TypeScript
11 31 (2.23%) VBA
12 30 (2.16%) Bash
13 25 (1.80%) VB.NET
14 23 (1.65%) VB
15 22 (1.58%) Shell Script
16 21 (1.51%) C
16 21 (1.51%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 15 (1.08%) PHP
18 14 (1.01%) C++
19 10 (0.72%) XPath
Qualifications
1 195 (14.03%) Security Cleared
2 138 (9.93%) Degree
3 115 (8.27%) SC Cleared
4 63 (4.53%) DV Cleared
5 45 (3.24%) Computer Science Degree
6 32 (2.30%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.15%) BPSS Clearance
8 14 (1.01%) Master's Degree
8 14 (1.01%) MCSE
9 12 (0.86%) Azure Certification
9 12 (0.86%) ISTQB
10 8 (0.58%) MCITP
10 8 (0.58%) MCTS
11 6 (0.43%) CCNP
11 6 (0.43%) Cisco Certification
11 6 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 5 (0.36%) CCNA
12 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
13 4 (0.29%) CISSP
13 4 (0.29%) ISEB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 117 (8.42%) QA
2 58 (4.17%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.73%) Accessibility
4 25 (1.80%) WCAG
5 14 (1.01%) GDPR
6 13 (0.94%) SLA
7 11 (0.79%) MiFID
8 5 (0.36%) EMIR
9 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
9 4 (0.29%) Dodd-Frank
9 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27001
10 3 (0.22%) IFRS
10 3 (0.22%) IFRS 17
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
10 3 (0.22%) NIST
10 3 (0.22%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.14%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.14%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.14%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 262 (18.85%) Active Directory
2 47 (3.38%) Docker
3 46 (3.31%) VMware Infrastructure
4 28 (2.01%) IAG
5 25 (1.80%) ACF2
5 25 (1.80%) RACF
6 21 (1.51%) Virtual Machines
7 14 (1.01%) vSphere
8 12 (0.86%) VMware ESXi
9 9 (0.65%) Hyper-V
9 9 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
10 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
11 4 (0.29%) VMware NSX
12 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
13 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
14 1 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
14 1 (0.072%) HDFS
14 1 (0.072%) KVM
14 1 (0.072%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 62 (4.46%) Terraform
2 57 (4.10%) Kubernetes
3 49 (3.53%) Ansible
4 42 (3.02%) SCCM
5 28 (2.01%) Single Sign-On
6 26 (1.87%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 21 (1.51%) Microsoft Clustering
8 19 (1.37%) Puppet
9 18 (1.29%) Grafana
10 16 (1.15%) Nagios
11 15 (1.08%) Progress Chef
11 15 (1.08%) Prometheus
12 11 (0.79%) Graylog
12 11 (0.79%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.79%) Nessus
13 8 (0.58%) Data Guard
13 8 (0.58%) Jamf Pro
13 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
14 7 (0.50%) vCenter Server
15 6 (0.43%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 521 (37.48%) Microsoft
2 298 (21.44%) Oracle
3 75 (5.40%) VMware
4 58 (4.17%) SAP
5 53 (3.81%) Databricks
6 51 (3.67%) ServiceNow
7 39 (2.81%) Sybase
8 37 (2.66%) Red Hat
9 31 (2.23%) Veeam
10 30 (2.16%) Citrix
11 29 (2.09%) Informatica
12 22 (1.58%) Splunk
13 20 (1.44%) Sparx
14 18 (1.29%) IBM
15 17 (1.22%) Cisco
15 17 (1.22%) Salesforce
16 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
17 12 (0.86%) CA
17 12 (0.86%) HP
17 12 (0.86%) Qualys