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

6 months to
18 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 62 50 51
Rank change year-on-year -12 +1 +3
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,379 2,438 4,199
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.24% 4.28% 4.80%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 18.88% 23.97% 24.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 962 1,862 3,181
10th Percentile £325 £375 £356
25th Percentile £408 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +2.44% +11.41%
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% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 14 43
10th Percentile £25.55 £23.69 £20.75
25th Percentile £38.81 £33.30 £21.63
Median hourly rate £40.00 £47.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -14.89% -1.05% +82.69%
75th Percentile £49.04 £71.88 £64.68
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £37.90 £51.03
% change year-on-year +5.55% -25.73% +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 7,304 10,170 17,461
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.15% 17.86% 19.95%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,237 7,238 12,433
10th Percentile £350 £375 £375
25th Percentile £425 £450 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £545 £549
Median % change year-on-year -3.67% -0.73% +9.80%
75th Percentile £650 £663 £650
90th Percentile £775 £751 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £500 £495
% change year-on-year -5.00% +1.01% +11.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 148 178 185
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.98 £32.30 £22.50
Median hourly rate £40.00 £58.59 £46.00
Median % change year-on-year -31.73% +27.37% +75.24%
75th Percentile £61.53 £73.41 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £79.28 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £56.40 £35.00
% change year-on-year -29.08% +61.14% +45.83%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 1,240 £513 -2.38% 1,141
London +2 826 £538 -6.52% 393
Work from Home -4 545 £500 -4.76% 826
UK excluding London -41 427 £475 -2.06% 834
North of England -12 108 £475 -2.56% 224
South East -42 102 £475 -6.40% 191
Midlands 0 84 £450 +4.35% 195
North West -14 72 £475 - 121
South West -21 69 £550 +10.00% 96
West Midlands -1 45 £518 -0.48% 122
Scotland -16 37 £475 - 45
East Midlands +4 36 £445 +11.25% 73
Yorkshire -16 26 £450 -10.00% 74
East of England -35 23 £475 +11.76% 64
North East +15 10 £475 -5.00% 30
Wales 0 10 £425 -19.05% 20
Northern Ireland -6 1 - - 12

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 73 (5.29%) SharePoint
2 38 (2.76%) IIS
3 28 (2.03%) Confluence
4 26 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
5 25 (1.81%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 17 (1.23%) Apache Spark
8 11 (0.80%) Tomcat
9 10 (0.73%) 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 (0.44%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.44%) Tornado
14 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
15 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
15 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
15 3 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 3 (0.22%) WordPress
Applications
1 68 (4.93%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.03%) Microsoft Office
3 22 (1.60%) MS Visio
4 8 (0.58%) CATIA
5 3 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
6 1 (0.073%) Chatbot
6 1 (0.073%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 19 (1.38%) Teamcenter
2 17 (1.23%) Dynamics CRM
2 17 (1.23%) Endur
3 10 (0.73%) 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
7 4 (0.29%) NEC Housing
8 3 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
8 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
9 2 (0.15%) BusinessWorks
9 2 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
9 2 (0.15%) Relativity
9 2 (0.15%) Remedy AR System
9 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
9 2 (0.15%) Veritas eDiscovery
9 2 (0.15%) Visualfiles
10 1 (0.073%) Payment Gateway
10 1 (0.073%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 640 (46.41%) Azure
2 279 (20.23%) Azure DevOps
3 224 (16.24%) Power Platform
4 168 (12.18%) AWS
5 95 (6.89%) Entra ID
6 85 (6.16%) Microsoft 365
7 84 (6.09%) Azure Service Bus
8 80 (5.80%) Azure Data Factory
9 79 (5.73%) Azure Cosmos DB
10 72 (5.22%) GitHub
11 64 (4.64%) PowerApps
12 56 (4.06%) Power Automate
12 56 (4.06%) Serverless
13 50 (3.63%) Azure Monitor
14 48 (3.48%) Azure Functions
15 41 (2.97%) PaaS
16 36 (2.61%) Azure Logic Apps
17 29 (2.10%) SaaS
18 27 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
18 27 (1.96%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 51 (3.70%) Firewall
2 45 (3.26%) DNS
3 27 (1.96%) SAN
4 23 (1.67%) DHCP
5 20 (1.45%) Internet
6 18 (1.31%) LAN
6 18 (1.31%) WAN
7 15 (1.09%) NAS
8 14 (1.02%) FTP
9 12 (0.87%) Wi-Fi
10 8 (0.58%) MPLS
10 8 (0.58%) VPN
11 6 (0.44%) SSH
11 6 (0.44%) SSL
11 6 (0.44%) TCP/IP
11 6 (0.44%) Wireless
12 5 (0.36%) Network Security
13 4 (0.29%) Cisco IOS
13 4 (0.29%) Fibre Channel
13 4 (0.29%) VLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 198 (14.36%) Power BI
2 147 (10.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 137 (9.93%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (9.79%) Relational Database
5 114 (8.27%) MySQL
6 100 (7.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 94 (6.82%) PostgreSQL
8 60 (4.35%) NoSQL
9 59 (4.28%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 58 (4.21%) Azure SQL Database
11 50 (3.63%) Oracle Database
12 45 (3.26%) Metadata
13 40 (2.90%) MongoDB
13 40 (2.90%) RDBMS
14 39 (2.83%) Data Lake
15 36 (2.61%) Oracle Reports
16 31 (2.25%) Microsoft Analysis Services
17 29 (2.10%) Tableau
18 24 (1.74%) Big Data
19 22 (1.60%) Redis
Development Applications
1 138 (10.01%) Git
2 85 (6.16%) JIRA
3 58 (4.21%) Visual Studio
4 47 (3.41%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.97%) SpecFlow
6 38 (2.76%) Selenium
7 33 (2.39%) TeamCity
8 32 (2.32%) GitLab
9 30 (2.18%) Jenkins
10 23 (1.67%) Team Foundation Server
11 19 (1.38%) WebDriver
12 16 (1.16%) Bitbucket
13 15 (1.09%) Octopus Deploy
14 14 (1.02%) JMeter
15 10 (0.73%) Cucumber
15 10 (0.73%) ERwin
15 10 (0.73%) NUnit
15 10 (0.73%) Postman
15 10 (0.73%) SonarQube
16 9 (0.65%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 308 (22.34%) Social Skills
2 289 (20.96%) Finance
3 152 (11.02%) Analytical Skills
4 142 (10.30%) Public Sector
5 126 (9.14%) Banking
6 50 (3.63%) Back Office
7 38 (2.76%) Front Office
8 31 (2.25%) Investment Banking
8 31 (2.25%) Manufacturing
9 29 (2.10%) Financial Institution
10 25 (1.81%) Marketing
10 25 (1.81%) Telecoms
11 24 (1.74%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.38%) Local Government
13 18 (1.31%) Retail
14 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 16 (1.16%) Electronics
14 16 (1.16%) Legal
14 16 (1.16%) Publishing
15 13 (0.94%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 551 (39.96%) Developer
2 228 (16.53%) Senior
3 148 (10.73%) Senior Developer
4 130 (9.43%) .NET Developer
5 124 (8.99%) C# Developer
6 94 (6.82%) Analyst
6 94 (6.82%) Architect
7 87 (6.31%) DBA
8 85 (6.16%) Data Engineer
9 70 (5.08%) Software Developer
9 70 (5.08%) SQL DBA
10 61 (4.42%) Lead
11 59 (4.28%) SQL Developer
12 58 (4.21%) Infrastructure Engineer
13 55 (3.99%) Azure Developer
14 52 (3.77%) Consultant
15 50 (3.63%) Senior Software Developer
16 49 (3.55%) Administrator
16 49 (3.55%) Full Stack Developer
17 42 (3.05%) Business Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 438 (31.76%) .NET
2 170 (12.33%) XML
3 149 (10.80%) .NET Core
4 145 (10.51%) HTML
5 138 (10.01%) .NET Framework
6 109 (7.90%) AngularJS
7 108 (7.83%) ASP.NET
8 103 (7.47%) CSS
8 103 (7.47%) React
9 66 (4.79%) Web Services
10 60 (4.35%) REST
11 51 (3.70%) Entity Framework
12 48 (3.48%) SOAP
13 46 (3.34%) JSON
14 45 (3.26%) Kafka
15 44 (3.19%) RESTful
16 38 (2.76%) WCF
17 37 (2.68%) jQuery
17 37 (2.68%) SailPoint
18 33 (2.39%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 72 (5.22%) Product Ownership
2 69 (5.00%) Onboarding
3 57 (4.13%) Replication
4 48 (3.48%) Clustering
5 29 (2.10%) Public Cloud
6 26 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.74%) Management Information System
8 22 (1.60%) Client/Server
8 22 (1.60%) Distributed Systems
8 22 (1.60%) Hedge funds
9 20 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
10 19 (1.38%) Cloud Native
10 19 (1.38%) Derivative
11 17 (1.23%) Linux Command Line
12 15 (1.09%) PKI
12 15 (1.09%) Renewable Energy
13 14 (1.02%) Data Structures
13 14 (1.02%) NHS
14 13 (0.94%) Blog
15 12 (0.87%) Equity Derivative
Operating Systems
1 274 (19.87%) Windows
2 134 (9.72%) Windows Server
3 129 (9.35%) Linux
4 62 (4.50%) Unix
5 44 (3.19%) Windows Server 2016
6 43 (3.12%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (2.47%) 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 (0.15%) Mac OS
13 2 (0.15%) Mac OS X
13 2 (0.15%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 440 (31.91%) Agile
2 406 (29.44%) DevOps
3 231 (16.75%) Business Intelligence
4 202 (14.65%) CI/CD
4 202 (14.65%) Problem-Solving
5 195 (14.14%) Scrum
6 186 (13.49%) Migration
7 168 (12.18%) ETL
8 140 (10.15%) Data Modelling
9 118 (8.56%) TDD
10 99 (7.18%) OO
11 88 (6.38%) Disaster Recovery
12 86 (6.24%) Test Automation
13 84 (6.09%) MVC
13 84 (6.09%) SDLC
13 84 (6.09%) Software Engineering
14 82 (5.95%) Analytics
15 79 (5.73%) High Availability
16 78 (5.66%) Data Analysis
17 75 (5.44%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 730 (52.94%) SQL
2 517 (37.49%) C#
3 278 (20.16%) PowerShell
4 179 (12.98%) JavaScript
5 148 (10.73%) Python
6 145 (10.51%) T-SQL
7 132 (9.57%) Java
8 102 (7.40%) Bicep
9 83 (6.02%) PL/SQL
10 66 (4.79%) TypeScript
11 27 (1.96%) Bash
11 27 (1.96%) VBA
12 23 (1.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 22 (1.60%) Shell Script
14 21 (1.52%) C
15 18 (1.31%) VB
15 18 (1.31%) VB.NET
16 16 (1.16%) PHP
17 14 (1.02%) C++
18 10 (0.73%) XPath
Qualifications
1 192 (13.92%) Security Cleared
2 146 (10.59%) Degree
3 114 (8.27%) SC Cleared
4 62 (4.50%) DV Cleared
5 49 (3.55%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.54%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 14 (1.02%) MCSE
10 13 (0.94%) Azure Certification
11 12 (0.87%) ISTQB
12 8 (0.58%) MCITP
12 8 (0.58%) MCTS
13 6 (0.44%) AWS Certification
13 6 (0.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
14 5 (0.36%) CISSP
14 5 (0.36%) SAP Certification
15 4 (0.29%) ISEB
16 3 (0.22%) PRINCE2 Certification
16 3 (0.22%) SANS
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 116 (8.41%) QA
2 50 (3.63%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.76%) Accessibility
4 27 (1.96%) WCAG
5 14 (1.02%) 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%) 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
11 2 (0.15%) GxP
11 2 (0.15%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.15%) HL7
11 2 (0.15%) PCI DSS
11 2 (0.15%) Solvency II
System Software
1 274 (19.87%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.55%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (3.41%) 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 (0.15%) Apache ZooKeeper
11 2 (0.15%) VirtualBox
12 1 (0.073%) Firmware
12 1 (0.073%) KVM
12 1 (0.073%) vCloud
Systems Management
1 58 (4.21%) Kubernetes
2 56 (4.06%) Terraform
3 48 (3.48%) Ansible
4 38 (2.76%) SCCM
5 31 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
6 22 (1.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 21 (1.52%) Microsoft Clustering
8 20 (1.45%) Puppet
9 17 (1.23%) Progress Chef
10 15 (1.09%) Grafana
11 14 (1.02%) Nagios
11 14 (1.02%) Prometheus
12 11 (0.80%) Nessus
13 10 (0.73%) Graylog
14 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
14 9 (0.65%) Microsoft Intune
15 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
15 8 (0.58%) SCOM
16 7 (0.51%) vCenter Server
17 6 (0.44%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 538 (39.01%) Microsoft
2 306 (22.19%) Oracle
3 74 (5.37%) VMware
4 56 (4.06%) SAP
5 53 (3.84%) ServiceNow
6 52 (3.77%) Databricks
7 40 (2.90%) Sybase
8 34 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 30 (2.18%) Informatica
10 28 (2.03%) Veeam
11 27 (1.96%) Citrix
12 20 (1.45%) CyberArk
12 20 (1.45%) Splunk
13 19 (1.38%) Sparx
14 17 (1.23%) IBM
15 15 (1.09%) Salesforce
16 14 (1.02%) CA
17 13 (0.94%) AVEVA
17 13 (0.94%) Cisco
17 13 (0.94%) Qualys