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 1 June 2024 with a comparison to the same period in the previous 2 years.

6 months to
1 Jun 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 61 53 53
Rank change year-on-year -8 0 +3
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,379 2,328 4,128
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.20% 4.15% 4.71%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 18.89% 23.51% 23.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 970 1,789 3,131
10th Percentile £325 £375 £356
25th Percentile £407 £425 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £509 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.10% +2.44% +10.81%
75th Percentile £638 £656 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £463
% change year-on-year -5.00% +8.11% +12.12%
Number of hourly rates quoted 21 12 39
10th Percentile £36.75 £27.07 £20.60
25th Percentile - £35.10 £20.75
Median hourly rate £40.00 £48.75 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -17.95% +2.63% +90.00%
75th Percentile £46.18 £75.63 £62.93
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £75.17
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £37.90 £48.50
% change year-on-year +5.55% -21.86% +94.00%

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 7,300 9,902 17,265
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 16.95% 17.66% 19.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,235 7,035 12,303
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year -4.46% -0.09% +10.00%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £754 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -5.00% - +11.11%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 179 180
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.45
25th Percentile £20.77 £33.70 £21.69
Median hourly rate £40.00 £60.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.33% +33.33% +69.81%
75th Percentile £56.88 £73.75 £63.60
90th Percentile £72.75 £80.50 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £58.59 £35.00
% change year-on-year -40.26% +67.40% +42.86%

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 1 June 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 1 June 2024.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL Server in the UK

SQL Server
Top 16 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 1 June 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 -7 1,248 £513 -2.38% 977
London +5 831 £538 -6.52% 338
Work from Home -6 541 £501 -4.52% 577
UK excluding London -42 431 £475 -5.00% 675
North of England -16 106 £475 -5.00% 196
South East -54 104 £488 -7.14% 125
Midlands 0 90 £450 +4.23% 164
North West -13 73 £463 -7.50% 107
South West -18 70 £538 +6.17% 77
West Midlands -16 45 £525 +1.69% 102
East Midlands +7 42 £445 +18.67% 62
Scotland -16 36 £475 - 44
Yorkshire -7 23 £450 -10.00% 59
East of England -32 23 £475 +5.56% 63
North East +17 10 £475 -13.64% 32
Wales +1 9 £563 +7.14% 9

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 (5.22%) SharePoint
2 38 (2.76%) IIS
3 28 (2.03%) Microsoft Exchange
4 25 (1.81%) Confluence
5 24 (1.74%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 17 (1.23%) Apache Spark
8 11 (0.80%) JBoss
8 11 (0.80%) Tomcat
9 9 (0.65%) nginx
10 7 (0.51%) SAS
10 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
10 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
11 6 (0.44%) Oracle Self-Service HR
12 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
12 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
13 2 (0.15%) Exchange Server 2013
13 2 (0.15%) Jadu
13 2 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 2 (0.15%) WebSphere
Applications
1 63 (4.57%) Microsoft Excel
2 25 (1.81%) Microsoft Office
3 19 (1.38%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 4 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.073%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.073%) Microsoft PowerPoint
6 1 (0.073%) PTC Creo
6 1 (0.073%) Windchill
Business Applications
1 19 (1.38%) Teamcenter
2 18 (1.31%) Endur
3 17 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.73%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 9 (0.65%) Temenos T24
6 8 (0.58%) DELMIA
7 7 (0.51%) OPENHousing
8 6 (0.44%) NEC Housing
9 5 (0.36%) MIS ActiveH
10 4 (0.29%) Elite 3E
10 4 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
11 2 (0.15%) BusinessWorks
11 2 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
11 2 (0.15%) Relativity
11 2 (0.15%) Remedy AR System
11 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
11 2 (0.15%) SAP ERP
11 2 (0.15%) Veritas eDiscovery
11 2 (0.15%) Visualfiles
12 1 (0.073%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 651 (47.21%) Azure
2 277 (20.09%) Azure DevOps
3 220 (15.95%) Power Platform
4 168 (12.18%) AWS
5 101 (7.32%) Entra ID
6 87 (6.31%) Azure Service Bus
6 87 (6.31%) Microsoft 365
7 78 (5.66%) Azure Data Factory
8 77 (5.58%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 74 (5.37%) GitHub
10 64 (4.64%) PowerApps
11 55 (3.99%) Power Automate
12 52 (3.77%) Serverless
13 49 (3.55%) Azure Monitor
14 44 (3.19%) Azure Functions
15 42 (3.05%) PaaS
16 36 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
17 30 (2.18%) Snowflake
18 28 (2.03%) SaaS
19 26 (1.89%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 47 (3.41%) Firewall
2 42 (3.05%) DNS
3 27 (1.96%) SAN
4 22 (1.60%) Internet
5 21 (1.52%) DHCP
6 17 (1.23%) LAN
7 16 (1.16%) WAN
8 15 (1.09%) FTP
9 14 (1.02%) NAS
10 12 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
11 8 (0.58%) MPLS
12 6 (0.44%) SSH
12 6 (0.44%) SSL
12 6 (0.44%) TCP/IP
12 6 (0.44%) VPN
13 4 (0.29%) Cisco IOS
13 4 (0.29%) HTTP
13 4 (0.29%) Network Security
13 4 (0.29%) VLAN
13 4 (0.29%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 196 (14.21%) Power BI
2 144 (10.44%) Relational Database
2 144 (10.44%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 143 (10.37%) Data Warehouse
4 115 (8.34%) MySQL
5 101 (7.32%) SQL Server Reporting Services
6 88 (6.38%) PostgreSQL
7 65 (4.71%) Azure SQL Database
8 64 (4.64%) NoSQL
9 57 (4.13%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 54 (3.92%) Oracle Database
11 43 (3.12%) Metadata
11 43 (3.12%) RDBMS
12 41 (2.97%) Data Lake
13 40 (2.90%) MongoDB
14 36 (2.61%) Oracle Reports
15 32 (2.32%) Tableau
16 29 (2.10%) Microsoft Analysis Services
17 25 (1.81%) Redis
18 23 (1.67%) Big Data
Development Applications
1 134 (9.72%) Git
2 77 (5.58%) JIRA
3 55 (3.99%) Visual Studio
4 47 (3.41%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.97%) SpecFlow
6 37 (2.68%) Selenium
7 32 (2.32%) TeamCity
8 30 (2.18%) GitLab
8 30 (2.18%) Jenkins
9 23 (1.67%) Team Foundation Server
10 19 (1.38%) WebDriver
11 16 (1.16%) Bitbucket
12 15 (1.09%) JMeter
13 14 (1.02%) Octopus Deploy
14 10 (0.73%) Postman
14 10 (0.73%) SonarQube
15 9 (0.65%) Cucumber
15 9 (0.65%) ERwin
15 9 (0.65%) NUnit
16 8 (0.58%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 310 (22.48%) Social Skills
2 282 (20.45%) Finance
3 153 (11.09%) Analytical Skills
4 137 (9.93%) Public Sector
5 121 (8.77%) Banking
6 50 (3.63%) Back Office
7 39 (2.83%) Front Office
8 32 (2.32%) Investment Banking
9 29 (2.10%) Financial Institution
10 26 (1.89%) Manufacturing
11 21 (1.52%) Marketing
11 21 (1.52%) Telecoms
12 20 (1.45%) Presentation Skills
13 19 (1.38%) Local Government
14 17 (1.23%) Legal
15 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
15 16 (1.16%) Retail
16 15 (1.09%) Publishing
17 13 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
18 12 (0.87%) Electronics
Job Titles
1 561 (40.68%) Developer
2 219 (15.88%) Senior
3 144 (10.44%) Senior Developer
4 134 (9.72%) .NET Developer
5 125 (9.06%) C# Developer
6 95 (6.89%) Analyst
6 95 (6.89%) Data Engineer
7 94 (6.82%) Architect
8 80 (5.80%) DBA
9 69 (5.00%) Software Developer
10 65 (4.71%) SQL DBA
11 62 (4.50%) SQL Developer
12 59 (4.28%) Lead
13 55 (3.99%) Azure Developer
14 53 (3.84%) Full Stack Developer
14 53 (3.84%) Infrastructure Engineer
15 52 (3.77%) Consultant
16 51 (3.70%) Administrator
17 49 (3.55%) Senior Software Developer
18 45 (3.26%) Business Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 446 (32.34%) .NET
2 166 (12.04%) XML
3 151 (10.95%) HTML
4 146 (10.59%) .NET Core
5 144 (10.44%) .NET Framework
6 112 (8.12%) ASP.NET
7 109 (7.90%) CSS
8 108 (7.83%) AngularJS
9 100 (7.25%) React
10 69 (5.00%) Web Services
11 57 (4.13%) REST
12 56 (4.06%) Entity Framework
13 48 (3.48%) SOAP
14 46 (3.34%) Kafka
14 46 (3.34%) RESTful
15 41 (2.97%) WCF
16 40 (2.90%) JSON
17 38 (2.76%) jQuery
18 37 (2.68%) SailPoint
19 33 (2.39%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 72 (5.22%) Onboarding
2 69 (5.00%) Product Ownership
3 53 (3.84%) Replication
4 46 (3.34%) Clustering
5 29 (2.10%) Public Cloud
6 27 (1.96%) Data Centre
7 25 (1.81%) Management Information System
8 24 (1.74%) Client/Server
9 22 (1.60%) Enterprise Software
9 22 (1.60%) Hedge funds
10 20 (1.45%) Distributed Systems
11 17 (1.23%) Derivative
12 16 (1.16%) Cloud Native
12 16 (1.16%) Linux Command Line
13 15 (1.09%) Legacy Systems
13 15 (1.09%) PKI
13 15 (1.09%) Self-Motivation
14 14 (1.02%) Data Structures
14 14 (1.02%) Renewable Energy
15 13 (0.94%) Blog
Operating Systems
1 281 (20.38%) Windows
2 134 (9.72%) Linux
3 133 (9.64%) Windows Server
4 63 (4.57%) Unix
5 43 (3.12%) Windows Server 2016
5 43 (3.12%) Windows Server 2019
6 35 (2.54%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 24 (1.74%) Windows 10
8 17 (1.23%) Windows Server 2012
9 10 (0.73%) Android
9 10 (0.73%) zOS
10 9 (0.65%) VMS
11 8 (0.58%) Apple iOS
11 8 (0.58%) Windows 7
12 7 (0.51%) Ubuntu
13 6 (0.44%) CentOS
13 6 (0.44%) Windows Server 2008
14 3 (0.22%) Mac OS X
15 2 (0.15%) Mac OS
15 2 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 429 (31.11%) Agile
2 394 (28.57%) DevOps
3 223 (16.17%) Business Intelligence
4 197 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
5 192 (13.92%) Scrum
6 189 (13.71%) CI/CD
7 180 (13.05%) Migration
8 166 (12.04%) ETL
9 147 (10.66%) Data Modelling
10 119 (8.63%) TDD
11 97 (7.03%) OO
12 92 (6.67%) Disaster Recovery
13 87 (6.31%) MVC
14 84 (6.09%) SDLC
15 83 (6.02%) Analytics
15 83 (6.02%) Test Automation
16 82 (5.95%) Computer Science
17 79 (5.73%) Full Stack Development
17 79 (5.73%) Software Engineering
18 76 (5.51%) High Availability
Programming Languages
1 722 (52.36%) SQL
2 521 (37.78%) C#
3 275 (19.94%) PowerShell
4 175 (12.69%) JavaScript
5 148 (10.73%) T-SQL
6 141 (10.22%) Python
7 129 (9.35%) Java
8 100 (7.25%) Bicep
9 83 (6.02%) PL/SQL
10 61 (4.42%) TypeScript
11 29 (2.10%) Bash
12 28 (2.03%) Shell Script
12 28 (2.03%) VBA
13 23 (1.67%) VB
14 22 (1.60%) C
14 22 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
15 18 (1.31%) VB.NET
16 17 (1.23%) PHP
17 16 (1.16%) C++
18 10 (0.73%) Perl
Qualifications
1 189 (13.71%) Security Cleared
2 157 (11.39%) Degree
3 111 (8.05%) SC Cleared
4 60 (4.35%) DV Cleared
5 51 (3.70%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 19 (1.38%) Master's Degree
8 16 (1.16%) Azure Certification
8 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
9 14 (1.02%) MCSE
10 11 (0.80%) ISTQB
11 8 (0.58%) MCITP
11 8 (0.58%) MCTS
12 6 (0.44%) AWS Certification
12 6 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation 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
1 116 (8.41%) QA
2 46 (3.34%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.76%) Accessibility
4 26 (1.89%) WCAG
5 14 (1.02%) SLA
6 13 (0.94%) GDPR
6 13 (0.94%) MiFID
7 7 (0.51%) EMIR
8 5 (0.36%) Dodd-Frank
8 5 (0.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 4 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 27002 (supersedes ISO/IEC 17799)
9 4 (0.29%) NIST
10 3 (0.22%) California Consumer Privacy Act
10 3 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 12207
10 3 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.15%) GxP
11 2 (0.15%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.15%) IFRS 17
11 2 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 277 (20.09%) Active Directory
2 51 (3.70%) VMware Infrastructure
3 45 (3.26%) Docker
4 28 (2.03%) IAG
5 25 (1.81%) ACF2
5 25 (1.81%) RACF
6 24 (1.74%) Virtual Machines
7 13 (0.94%) Hyper-V
8 11 (0.80%) Virtual Servers
8 11 (0.80%) vSphere
9 9 (0.65%) VMware ESXi
10 8 (0.58%) VMware Workstation
11 3 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 2 (0.15%) Apache ZooKeeper
12 2 (0.15%) Microsoft Virtual Server
12 2 (0.15%) Virtual Desktop
12 2 (0.15%) VirtualBox
12 2 (0.15%) VMware NSX
13 1 (0.073%) KVM
13 1 (0.073%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 56 (4.06%) Kubernetes
2 52 (3.77%) Terraform
3 45 (3.26%) Ansible
4 41 (2.97%) SCCM
5 31 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
6 21 (1.52%) Puppet
7 20 (1.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 20 (1.45%) Microsoft Clustering
8 18 (1.31%) Progress Chef
9 15 (1.09%) Grafana
10 14 (1.02%) Nagios
10 14 (1.02%) Prometheus
11 12 (0.87%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.80%) Nessus
13 10 (0.73%) Graylog
14 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
14 9 (0.65%) SCOM
15 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
16 7 (0.51%) Red Hat Satellite
17 6 (0.44%) WSUS
Vendors
1 543 (39.38%) Microsoft
2 304 (22.04%) Oracle
3 73 (5.29%) VMware
4 53 (3.84%) SAP
4 53 (3.84%) ServiceNow
5 43 (3.12%) Sybase
6 42 (3.05%) Databricks
7 35 (2.54%) Red Hat
8 33 (2.39%) Informatica
9 31 (2.25%) Citrix
10 24 (1.74%) Veeam
11 21 (1.52%) CyberArk
11 21 (1.52%) Splunk
12 19 (1.38%) Sparx
13 18 (1.31%) Salesforce
14 17 (1.23%) CA
15 16 (1.16%) IBM
16 14 (1.02%) Qualys
17 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
18 12 (0.87%) Cisco