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

6 months to
20 May 2024
Same period 2023 Same period 2022
Rank 61 50 50
Rank change year-on-year -11 0 +5
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 1,375 2,447 4,220
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the UK 3.23% 4.27% 4.78%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 18.87% 23.94% 23.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 961 1,869 3,199
10th Percentile £325 £375 £356
25th Percentile £405 £420 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £525 £513
Median % change year-on-year -3.81% +2.44% +11.41%
75th Percentile £638 £664 £638
90th Percentile £725 £750 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £486 £450
% change year-on-year -2.31% +8.06% +9.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 14 42
10th Percentile £24.15 £23.69 £20.75
25th Percentile £38.22 £33.30 £21.19
Median hourly rate £40.00 £47.00 £47.09
Median % change year-on-year -14.89% -0.18% +81.10%
75th Percentile £46.18 £71.88 £65.22
90th Percentile £62.96 £85.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £37.90 £49.50
% change year-on-year +5.55% -23.44% +90.38%

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 7,287 10,222 17,599
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 17.13% 17.85% 19.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 5,225 7,278 12,532
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 £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 148 175 184
10th Percentile £14.00 £21.24 £15.00
25th Percentile £20.93 £32.30 £22.40
Median hourly rate £40.00 £57.50 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year -30.43% +27.78% +69.81%
75th Percentile £61.53 £73.73 £65.00
90th Percentile £73.25 £79.38 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £39.25 £55.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -28.64% +57.14% +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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -8 1,237 £510 -2.86% 1,198
London +2 823 £535 -6.96% 417
Work from Home -5 543 £500 -4.76% 844
UK excluding London -43 427 £475 -2.31% 867
North of England -15 108 £475 -2.56% 238
South East -48 103 £475 -6.40% 198
Midlands -5 84 £450 +1.41% 193
North West -17 72 £475 - 124
South West -21 69 £550 +10.00% 103
West Midlands -6 45 £518 -0.48% 123
East Midlands +5 36 £445 +11.25% 70
Scotland -13 36 £475 - 46
Yorkshire -12 26 £450 -10.00% 82
East of England -31 23 £475 +11.11% 68
North East +15 10 £475 -5.00% 33
Wales +2 10 £425 -19.05% 21
Northern Ireland -7 1 - - 13

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 (5.24%) SharePoint
2 39 (2.84%) IIS
3 27 (1.96%) Confluence
4 26 (1.89%) Microsoft Exchange
5 25 (1.82%) Apache
6 20 (1.45%) CMS
7 17 (1.24%) Apache Spark
8 11 (0.80%) Tomcat
9 10 (0.73%) JBoss
10 9 (0.65%) nginx
11 7 (0.51%) SAS
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint 2010
11 7 (0.51%) SharePoint Server
12 6 (0.44%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 4 (0.29%) ArcGIS
14 3 (0.22%) Apache Airflow
14 3 (0.22%) Exchange Server 2010
14 3 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 3 (0.22%) Tornado
14 3 (0.22%) WordPress
Applications
1 67 (4.87%) Microsoft Excel
2 28 (2.04%) 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 18 (1.31%) Endur
3 17 (1.24%) Dynamics CRM
4 10 (0.73%) 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%) MIS ActiveH
9 3 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
10 2 (0.15%) BusinessWorks
10 2 (0.15%) Dynamics NAV
10 2 (0.15%) Relativity
10 2 (0.15%) Remedy AR System
10 2 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
10 2 (0.15%) Veritas eDiscovery
10 2 (0.15%) Visualfiles
11 1 (0.073%) Epicor Tropos
11 1 (0.073%) Oracle Retail
Cloud Services
1 635 (46.18%) Azure
2 279 (20.29%) Azure DevOps
3 221 (16.07%) Power Platform
4 168 (12.22%) AWS
5 95 (6.91%) Entra ID
6 84 (6.11%) Azure Service Bus
6 84 (6.11%) Microsoft 365
7 80 (5.82%) Azure Data Factory
8 79 (5.75%) Azure Cosmos DB
9 71 (5.16%) GitHub
10 63 (4.58%) PowerApps
11 55 (4.00%) Power Automate
11 55 (4.00%) Serverless
12 50 (3.64%) Azure Monitor
13 47 (3.42%) Azure Functions
14 41 (2.98%) PaaS
15 35 (2.55%) Azure Logic Apps
16 29 (2.11%) SaaS
17 27 (1.96%) Dynamics 365
17 27 (1.96%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 51 (3.71%) Firewall
2 45 (3.27%) DNS
3 27 (1.96%) SAN
4 23 (1.67%) DHCP
5 21 (1.53%) 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
1 195 (14.18%) Power BI
2 146 (10.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 137 (9.96%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (9.82%) Relational Database
5 114 (8.29%) MySQL
6 100 (7.27%) SQL Server Reporting Services
7 93 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
8 59 (4.29%) NoSQL
9 58 (4.22%) Azure SQL Database
9 58 (4.22%) SQL Server Analysis Services
10 51 (3.71%) Oracle Database
11 45 (3.27%) Metadata
12 40 (2.91%) Data Lake
12 40 (2.91%) MongoDB
12 40 (2.91%) RDBMS
13 36 (2.62%) Oracle Reports
14 31 (2.25%) Microsoft Analysis Services
15 29 (2.11%) Tableau
16 23 (1.67%) Big Data
17 22 (1.60%) Redis
Development Applications
1 138 (10.04%) Git
2 84 (6.11%) JIRA
3 58 (4.22%) Visual Studio
4 47 (3.42%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
5 41 (2.98%) SpecFlow
6 38 (2.76%) Selenium
7 33 (2.40%) TeamCity
8 31 (2.25%) GitLab
9 30 (2.18%) Jenkins
10 23 (1.67%) Team Foundation Server
11 19 (1.38%) WebDriver
12 15 (1.09%) Bitbucket
12 15 (1.09%) Octopus Deploy
13 14 (1.02%) JMeter
14 10 (0.73%) Cucumber
14 10 (0.73%) ERwin
14 10 (0.73%) NUnit
14 10 (0.73%) Postman
14 10 (0.73%) SonarQube
15 9 (0.65%) Visual Studio Team System
General
1 306 (22.25%) Social Skills
2 288 (20.95%) Finance
3 151 (10.98%) Analytical Skills
4 140 (10.18%) Public Sector
5 121 (8.80%) Banking
6 50 (3.64%) Back Office
7 37 (2.69%) Front Office
8 30 (2.18%) Investment Banking
9 29 (2.11%) Financial Institution
9 29 (2.11%) Manufacturing
10 24 (1.75%) Marketing
10 24 (1.75%) Telecoms
11 23 (1.67%) Presentation Skills
12 19 (1.38%) Local Government
13 18 (1.31%) Retail
14 16 (1.16%) Documentation Skills
14 16 (1.16%) Legal
14 16 (1.16%) Publishing
15 15 (1.09%) Electronics
16 13 (0.95%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 550 (40.00%) Developer
2 228 (16.58%) Senior
3 148 (10.76%) Senior Developer
4 131 (9.53%) .NET Developer
5 124 (9.02%) C# Developer
6 95 (6.91%) Architect
7 94 (6.84%) Analyst
8 87 (6.33%) DBA
9 85 (6.18%) Data Engineer
10 70 (5.09%) Software Developer
10 70 (5.09%) SQL DBA
11 61 (4.44%) Lead
12 60 (4.36%) SQL Developer
13 58 (4.22%) Infrastructure Engineer
14 55 (4.00%) Azure Developer
15 52 (3.78%) Consultant
16 50 (3.64%) Administrator
16 50 (3.64%) Senior Software Developer
17 49 (3.56%) Full Stack Developer
18 42 (3.05%) Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 440 (32.00%) .NET
2 170 (12.36%) XML
3 149 (10.84%) .NET Core
4 145 (10.55%) HTML
5 139 (10.11%) .NET Framework
6 109 (7.93%) AngularJS
7 108 (7.85%) ASP.NET
8 103 (7.49%) CSS
9 100 (7.27%) React
10 66 (4.80%) Web Services
11 60 (4.36%) REST
12 51 (3.71%) Entity Framework
13 48 (3.49%) SOAP
14 46 (3.35%) JSON
15 44 (3.20%) RESTful
16 42 (3.05%) Kafka
17 39 (2.84%) WCF
18 37 (2.69%) jQuery
18 37 (2.69%) SailPoint
19 33 (2.40%) ASP.NET MVC
Miscellaneous
1 71 (5.16%) Product Ownership
2 70 (5.09%) Onboarding
3 57 (4.15%) Replication
4 48 (3.49%) Clustering
5 29 (2.11%) Public Cloud
6 26 (1.89%) Data Centre
7 24 (1.75%) Client/Server
8 23 (1.67%) Management Information System
9 22 (1.60%) Hedge funds
10 21 (1.53%) Distributed Systems
11 20 (1.45%) Enterprise Software
12 19 (1.38%) Cloud Native
13 18 (1.31%) Derivative
14 17 (1.24%) Linux Command Line
15 15 (1.09%) PKI
16 14 (1.02%) Data Structures
16 14 (1.02%) NHS
16 14 (1.02%) Renewable Energy
17 13 (0.95%) Blog
18 12 (0.87%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 277 (20.15%) Windows
2 134 (9.75%) Windows Server
3 128 (9.31%) Linux
4 61 (4.44%) Unix
5 44 (3.20%) Windows Server 2016
6 43 (3.13%) Windows Server 2019
7 34 (2.47%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 24 (1.75%) Windows 10
9 17 (1.24%) 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
1 435 (31.64%) Agile
2 402 (29.24%) DevOps
3 228 (16.58%) Business Intelligence
4 199 (14.47%) CI/CD
4 199 (14.47%) Problem-Solving
5 194 (14.11%) Scrum
6 186 (13.53%) Migration
7 167 (12.15%) ETL
8 141 (10.25%) Data Modelling
9 118 (8.58%) TDD
10 99 (7.20%) OO
11 89 (6.47%) Disaster Recovery
12 86 (6.25%) Test Automation
13 84 (6.11%) MVC
13 84 (6.11%) SDLC
14 81 (5.89%) Software Engineering
15 80 (5.82%) Analytics
15 80 (5.82%) Data Analysis
15 80 (5.82%) High Availability
16 77 (5.60%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 728 (52.95%) SQL
2 518 (37.67%) C#
3 277 (20.15%) PowerShell
4 176 (12.80%) JavaScript
5 146 (10.62%) T-SQL
6 144 (10.47%) Python
7 132 (9.60%) Java
8 102 (7.42%) Bicep
9 84 (6.11%) PL/SQL
10 63 (4.58%) TypeScript
11 28 (2.04%) VBA
12 27 (1.96%) Bash
13 22 (1.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
14 21 (1.53%) C
14 21 (1.53%) Shell Script
15 19 (1.38%) VB
16 18 (1.31%) VB.NET
17 16 (1.16%) PHP
18 14 (1.02%) C++
19 10 (0.73%) XPath
Qualifications
1 191 (13.89%) Security Cleared
2 148 (10.76%) Degree
3 113 (8.22%) SC Cleared
4 61 (4.44%) DV Cleared
5 49 (3.56%) Computer Science Degree
6 35 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
7 16 (1.16%) BPSS Clearance
8 15 (1.09%) Azure Certification
8 15 (1.09%) Master's Degree
9 14 (1.02%) MCSE
10 12 (0.87%) 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
1 117 (8.51%) QA
2 49 (3.56%) Data Quality
3 38 (2.76%) Accessibility
4 27 (1.96%) WCAG
5 14 (1.02%) GDPR
6 13 (0.95%) MiFID
6 13 (0.95%) 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
1 275 (20.00%) Active Directory
2 49 (3.56%) VMware Infrastructure
3 47 (3.42%) Docker
4 28 (2.04%) IAG
5 25 (1.82%) ACF2
5 25 (1.82%) RACF
6 21 (1.53%) 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%) KVM
12 1 (0.073%) vCloud
12 1 (0.073%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 56 (4.07%) Terraform
2 55 (4.00%) Kubernetes
3 48 (3.49%) Ansible
4 38 (2.76%) SCCM
5 31 (2.25%) Single Sign-On
6 22 (1.60%) Active Directory Federation Services
7 21 (1.53%) Microsoft Clustering
8 20 (1.45%) Puppet
9 17 (1.24%) Progress Chef
10 15 (1.09%) Grafana
11 14 (1.02%) Nagios
11 14 (1.02%) Prometheus
12 11 (0.80%) Microsoft Intune
12 11 (0.80%) Nessus
13 10 (0.73%) Graylog
14 9 (0.65%) Jamf Pro
15 8 (0.58%) NetBackup
15 8 (0.58%) SCOM
16 7 (0.51%) vCenter Server
17 6 (0.44%) HP Fortify
Vendors
1 537 (39.05%) Microsoft
2 303 (22.04%) Oracle
3 74 (5.38%) VMware
4 55 (4.00%) SAP
5 53 (3.85%) ServiceNow
6 48 (3.49%) Databricks
7 40 (2.91%) Sybase
8 34 (2.47%) Red Hat
9 30 (2.18%) Informatica
10 28 (2.04%) Citrix
10 28 (2.04%) Veeam
11 20 (1.45%) CyberArk
11 20 (1.45%) Splunk
12 19 (1.38%) Sparx
13 17 (1.24%) IBM
14 16 (1.16%) CA
15 15 (1.09%) Salesforce
16 13 (0.95%) AVEVA
16 13 (0.95%) Cisco
16 13 (0.95%) Qualys