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 14 May 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
14 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 60 51 51
Rank change year-on-year -9 0 +4
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,381 2,499 4,227
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.24% 4.34% 4.80%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 19.02% 24.24% 23.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 959 1,900 3,205
10th Percentile £327 £363 £356
25th Percentile £406 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £515
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +1.94% +11.35%
75th Percentile £638 £666 £630
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £485 £450
% change year-on-year -2.04% +7.75% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 23 46
10th Percentile £25.55 £26.30 £20.75
25th Percentile £38.81 £35.00 £22.50
Median hourly rate £40.00 £45.00 £48.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.11% -7.22% +86.54%
75th Percentile £49.04 £78.75 £63.24
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £72.03
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £35.50 £51.03
% change year-on-year +12.68% -30.43% +96.26%

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 7,261 10,311 17,646
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.02% 17.89% 20.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,194 7,338 12,554
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £540 £545
Median % change year-on-year -2.78% -0.92% +9.00%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £750 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% +10.31%
Number of hourly rates quoted 144 184 194
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.37
25th Percentile £20.98 £32.37 £22.43
Median hourly rate £40.00 £59.30 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -32.54% +31.77% +69.81%
75th Percentile £61.53 £73.75 £64.94
90th Percentile £74.25 £81.75 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £55.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -27.27% +57.14% +43.44%

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 14 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 14 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 14 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 -9 1,235 £510 -2.86% 1,074
London +2 824 £535 -6.96% 358
Work from Home -6 554 £500 -4.76% 789
UK excluding London -42 430 £475 -2.04% 758
North of England -17 107 £475 -5.00% 210
South East -54 102 £469 -6.25% 154
Midlands -7 79 £463 +8.82% 173
South West -27 71 £550 +6.02% 97
North West -17 70 £475 -1.02% 117
West Midlands -5 45 £518 +0.24% 103
Scotland -14 42 £483 +2.71% 45
East Midlands 0 31 £445 +11.25% 70
Yorkshire -10 27 £450 -10.00% 67
East of England -30 24 £475 +11.76% 63
Wales +3 11 £500 -4.76% 16
North East +13 10 £475 -5.00% 27
Northern Ireland -3 1 - - 11

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 (5.21%) SharePoint
2 37 (2.68%) IIS
3 29 (2.10%) Confluence
4 25 (1.81%) Microsoft Exchange
5 23 (1.67%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 17 (1.23%) Apache Spark
8 11 (0.80%) Tomcat
9 10 (0.72%) JBoss
10 9 (0.65%) nginx
11 8 (0.58%) SAS
12 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
12 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
13 6 (0.43%) Tornado
14 5 (0.36%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
16 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
16 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
16 3 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 3 (0.22%) WordPress
Applications
1 69 (5.00%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.59%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.072%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.072%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 19 (1.38%) Teamcenter
2 17 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
3 16 (1.16%) Endur
4 10 (0.72%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 9 (0.65%) Temenos T24
6 8 (0.58%) DELMIA
7 5 (0.36%) OPENHousing
8 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
8 4 (0.29%) NEC Housing
9 3 (0.22%) Dynamics NAV
9 3 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
9 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
10 2 (0.14%) BusinessWorks
10 2 (0.14%) Remedy AR System
10 2 (0.14%) Remedy ITSM
10 2 (0.14%) Visualfiles
11 1 (0.072%) Epicor Tropos
11 1 (0.072%) Oracle EBS
11 1 (0.072%) Oracle Retail
11 1 (0.072%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 634 (45.91%) Azure
2 279 (20.20%) Azure DevOps
3 219 (15.86%) Power Platform
4 171 (12.38%) AWS
5 93 (6.73%) Entra ID
6 83 (6.01%) Microsoft 365
7 82 (5.94%) Azure Service Bus
8 79 (5.72%) Azure Data Factory
9 78 (5.65%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 72 (5.21%) GitHub
11 61 (4.42%) PowerApps
12 56 (4.06%) Power Automate
12 56 (4.06%) Serverless
13 49 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
14 48 (3.48%) Azure Functions
15 41 (2.97%) PaaS
16 34 (2.46%) Azure Logic Apps
17 28 (2.03%) Snowflake
18 27 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
18 27 (1.96%) SaaS
Communications & Networking
1 53 (3.84%) Firewall
2 45 (3.26%) DNS
3 27 (1.96%) SAN
4 23 (1.67%) DHCP
5 19 (1.38%) Internet
6 18 (1.30%) LAN
6 18 (1.30%) WAN
7 15 (1.09%) NAS
8 14 (1.01%) FTP
9 12 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
10 10 (0.72%) VPN
11 8 (0.58%) MPLS
11 8 (0.58%) TCP/IP
12 6 (0.43%) SSL
12 6 (0.43%) Wireless
13 5 (0.36%) Network Security
13 5 (0.36%) SSH
13 5 (0.36%) VLAN
14 4 (0.29%) Cisco IOS
14 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
Database & Business Intelligence
1 193 (13.98%) Power BI
2 147 (10.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 139 (10.07%) Data Warehouse
3 139 (10.07%) Relational Database
4 118 (8.54%) MySQL
5 100 (7.24%) PostgreSQL
6 98 (7.10%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 59 (4.27%) NoSQL
7 59 (4.27%) SQL Server Analysis Services
8 57 (4.13%) Azure SQL Database
9 52 (3.77%) Oracle Database
10 45 (3.26%) Metadata
11 44 (3.19%) RDBMS
12 41 (2.97%) MongoDB
13 38 (2.75%) Data Lake
14 36 (2.61%) Oracle Reports
15 30 (2.17%) Microsoft Analysis Services
16 29 (2.10%) Tableau
17 25 (1.81%) Big Data
18 21 (1.52%) Redis
Development Applications
1 140 (10.14%) Git
2 87 (6.30%) JIRA
3 59 (4.27%) Visual Studio
4 47 (3.40%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.97%) SpecFlow
6 38 (2.75%) Selenium
7 33 (2.39%) TeamCity
8 31 (2.24%) Jenkins
9 29 (2.10%) GitLab
10 21 (1.52%) Team Foundation Server
11 19 (1.38%) WebDriver
12 17 (1.23%) Bitbucket
13 15 (1.09%) Octopus Deploy
14 14 (1.01%) JMeter
15 10 (0.72%) Cucumber
15 10 (0.72%) ERwin
15 10 (0.72%) NUnit
15 10 (0.72%) Postman
15 10 (0.72%) SonarQube
16 9 (0.65%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 308 (22.30%) Social Skills
2 291 (21.07%) Finance
3 152 (11.01%) Analytical Skills
4 141 (10.21%) Public Sector
5 126 (9.12%) Banking
6 49 (3.55%) Back Office
7 36 (2.61%) Front Office
8 31 (2.24%) Manufacturing
9 30 (2.17%) Investment Banking
10 29 (2.10%) Financial Institution
11 25 (1.81%) Marketing
11 25 (1.81%) Telecoms
12 24 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Local Government
14 18 (1.30%) Retail
15 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
15 16 (1.16%) Electronics
15 16 (1.16%) Publishing
16 14 (1.01%) Legal
17 11 (0.80%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 551 (39.90%) Developer
2 231 (16.73%) Senior
3 147 (10.64%) Senior Developer
4 134 (9.70%) .NET Developer
5 126 (9.12%) C# Developer
6 95 (6.88%) Analyst
7 93 (6.73%) Architect
8 92 (6.66%) DBA
9 86 (6.23%) Data Engineer
10 73 (5.29%) SQL DBA
11 68 (4.92%) Software Developer
12 61 (4.42%) Lead
13 60 (4.34%) SQL Developer
14 58 (4.20%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 55 (3.98%) Azure Developer
16 50 (3.62%) Consultant
16 50 (3.62%) Senior Software Developer
17 49 (3.55%) Administrator
18 48 (3.48%) Full Stack Developer
19 44 (3.19%) C# .NET Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 437 (31.64%) .NET
2 169 (12.24%) XML
3 149 (10.79%) .NET Core
4 142 (10.28%) HTML
5 137 (9.92%) .NET Framework
6 110 (7.97%) AngularJS
7 108 (7.82%) ASP.NET
8 101 (7.31%) React
9 100 (7.24%) CSS
10 66 (4.78%) Web Services
11 60 (4.34%) REST
12 49 (3.55%) Entity Framework
13 48 (3.48%) SOAP
14 47 (3.40%) JSON
15 46 (3.33%) Kafka
16 41 (2.97%) RESTful
17 38 (2.75%) WCF
18 36 (2.61%) SailPoint
19 35 (2.53%) jQuery
20 33 (2.39%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 72 (5.21%) Product Ownership
2 68 (4.92%) Onboarding
3 59 (4.27%) Replication
4 47 (3.40%) Clustering
5 31 (2.24%) Public Cloud
6 25 (1.81%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.74%) Management Information System
8 23 (1.67%) Hedge funds
9 22 (1.59%) Distributed Systems
10 21 (1.52%) Client/Server
10 21 (1.52%) Cloud Native
11 19 (1.38%) Derivative
11 19 (1.38%) Enterprise Software
12 17 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
13 15 (1.09%) PKI
13 15 (1.09%) Renewable Energy
14 14 (1.01%) Data Structures
14 14 (1.01%) NHS
15 13 (0.94%) Blog
16 12 (0.87%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 270 (19.55%) Windows
2 132 (9.56%) Windows Server
3 128 (9.27%) Linux
4 61 (4.42%) Unix
5 44 (3.19%) Windows Server 2016
6 43 (3.11%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (2.46%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 24 (1.74%) Windows 10
9 17 (1.23%) Windows Server 2012
10 9 (0.65%) Android
10 9 (0.65%) VMS
10 9 (0.65%) Windows 7
11 8 (0.58%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.58%) Ubuntu
11 8 (0.58%) Windows Server 2008
11 8 (0.58%) zOS
12 5 (0.36%) CentOS
13 2 (0.14%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.14%) Mac OS X
13 2 (0.14%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 449 (32.51%) Agile
2 405 (29.33%) DevOps
3 231 (16.73%) Business Intelligence
4 202 (14.63%) Problem-Solving
5 201 (14.55%) CI/CD
6 197 (14.27%) Scrum
7 192 (13.90%) Migration
8 172 (12.45%) ETL
9 141 (10.21%) Data Modelling
10 119 (8.62%) TDD
11 98 (7.10%) OO
12 93 (6.73%) Disaster Recovery
13 86 (6.23%) Test Automation
14 84 (6.08%) Analytics
14 84 (6.08%) SDLC
14 84 (6.08%) Software Engineering
15 82 (5.94%) MVC
16 80 (5.79%) High Availability
17 79 (5.72%) Data Analysis
18 74 (5.36%) Full Stack Development
Programming Languages
1 731 (52.93%) SQL
2 514 (37.22%) C#
3 278 (20.13%) PowerShell
4 176 (12.74%) JavaScript
5 149 (10.79%) Python
6 147 (10.64%) T-SQL
7 132 (9.56%) Java
8 101 (7.31%) Bicep
9 83 (6.01%) PL/SQL
10 65 (4.71%) TypeScript
11 28 (2.03%) VBA
12 27 (1.96%) Bash
13 23 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 23 (1.67%) Shell Script
14 21 (1.52%) C
15 19 (1.38%) VB
15 19 (1.38%) VB.NET
16 16 (1.16%) PHP
17 14 (1.01%) C++
18 10 (0.72%) XPath
Qualifications
1 195 (14.12%) Security Cleared
2 143 (10.35%) Degree
3 117 (8.47%) SC Cleared
4 62 (4.49%) DV Cleared
5 48 (3.48%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.53%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 14 (1.01%) MCSE
10 12 (0.87%) Azure Certification
10 12 (0.87%) ISTQB
11 8 (0.58%) MCITP
11 8 (0.58%) MCTS
12 6 (0.43%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
13 5 (0.36%) AWS Certification
13 5 (0.36%) CISSP
13 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
14 4 (0.29%) ISEB
15 3 (0.22%) PRINCE2 Certification
15 3 (0.22%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 119 (8.62%) QA
2 52 (3.77%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.75%) Accessibility
4 26 (1.88%) WCAG
5 14 (1.01%) GDPR
6 13 (0.94%) MiFID
6 13 (0.94%) SLA
7 7 (0.51%) EMIR
8 5 (0.36%) Dodd-Frank
9 4 (0.29%) California Consumer Privacy Act
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%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 3 (0.22%) Solvency II
11 2 (0.14%) GxP
11 2 (0.14%) HL7
System Software
1 269 (19.48%) Active Directory
2 48 (3.48%) VMware Infrastructure
3 46 (3.33%) Docker
4 28 (2.03%) IAG
5 25 (1.81%) ACF2
5 25 (1.81%) RACF
6 21 (1.52%) Virtual Machines
7 12 (0.87%) vSphere
8 9 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 9 (0.65%) Virtual Servers
8 9 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
9 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
10 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
10 3 (0.22%) Virtual Desktop
10 3 (0.22%) VMware NSX
11 2 (0.14%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.072%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 1 (0.072%) HDFS
12 1 (0.072%) KVM
12 1 (0.072%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 60 (4.34%) Terraform
2 59 (4.27%) Kubernetes
3 50 (3.62%) Ansible
4 35 (2.53%) SCCM
5 30 (2.17%) Single Sign-On
6 23 (1.67%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Clustering
8 20 (1.45%) Puppet
9 17 (1.23%) Grafana
9 17 (1.23%) Progress Chef
10 16 (1.16%) Nagios
11 15 (1.09%) Prometheus
12 11 (0.80%) Graylog
12 11 (0.80%) Nessus
13 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
14 8 (0.58%) Microsoft Intune
14 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
15 7 (0.51%) vCenter Server
16 6 (0.43%) HP Fortify
16 6 (0.43%) WebInspect
Vendors
1 536 (38.81%) Microsoft
2 305 (22.09%) Oracle
3 72 (5.21%) VMware
4 57 (4.13%) SAP
5 52 (3.77%) Databricks
5 52 (3.77%) ServiceNow
6 40 (2.90%) Sybase
7 33 (2.39%) Red Hat
8 30 (2.17%) Informatica
9 28 (2.03%) Veeam
10 27 (1.96%) Citrix
11 22 (1.59%) Splunk
12 19 (1.38%) CyberArk
12 19 (1.38%) Sparx
13 17 (1.23%) IBM
14 15 (1.09%) Salesforce
15 14 (1.01%) Cisco
16 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
16 13 (0.94%) CA
16 13 (0.94%) Qualys