SQL Contract Job Trends in the Midlands

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the Midlands requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 9 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
9 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 11 16
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 -5
Contract jobs citing SQL 454 290 228
As % of all contract jobs in the Midlands 9.40% 11.12% 8.46%
As % of the Programming Languages category 46.85% 43.67% 36.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 342 196 136
10th Percentile £346 £270 £309
25th Percentile £413 £366 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year +4.22% +5.88% -10.53%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £502
90th Percentile £610 £625 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 21 3
10th Percentile £20.65 - £34.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £34.47
Median hourly rate £33.25 £50.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.50% +42.86% -16.05%
75th Percentile £49.06 - £43.45
90th Percentile £55.55 - £48.52
England median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -15.00% +20.48% +3.33%

All Programming Languages
Midlands

SQL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 969 664 619
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the Midlands 20.05% 25.47% 22.97%
Number of daily rates quoted 681 456 409
10th Percentile £358 £297 £313
25th Percentile £413 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £475
Median % change year-on-year +5.50% -5.21% -
75th Percentile £563 £535 £550
90th Percentile £638 £620 £636
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 17 24 7
10th Percentile £20.45 £28.53 £28.86
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £34.47
Median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £48.56
Median % change year-on-year -10.00% +2.97% -2.88%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £56.88
90th Percentile £71.70 - £65.25
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +3.17%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the Midlands.

SQL job vacancy trend in the Midlands

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the Midlands over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the Midlands

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the Midlands citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the Midlands over the 6 months to 9 September 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the Midlands

SQL
Contract Job Locations in the Midlands

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median contractor rates quoted in IT jobs citing SQL within the Midlands region over the 6 months to 9 September 2026. 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
West Midlands -3 354 £469 -6.20% 199
East Midlands -4 97 £464 +19.68% 147
SQL
England

SQL
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the Midlands by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 36 (7.93%) SAS
2 26 (5.73%) Confluence
3 10 (2.20%) WebLogic
4 8 (1.76%) Oracle Workflow
5 6 (1.32%) Apache Spark
5 6 (1.32%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (1.32%) Oracle Self-Service HR
5 6 (1.32%) Tuxedo
6 5 (1.10%) SharePoint
7 4 (0.88%) Apache
7 4 (0.88%) ArcGIS
8 2 (0.44%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.44%) Jupyter
9 1 (0.22%) IIS
9 1 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.22%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.22%) Skype for Business
9 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
Applications
1 23 (5.07%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.10%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 15 (3.30%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.32%) Oracle HRMS
3 4 (0.88%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.44%) ContrOCC
4 2 (0.44%) Lorenzo
4 2 (0.44%) NetSuite
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Payables
4 2 (0.44%) Oracle Receivables
5 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.22%) Dynamics AX
5 1 (0.22%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.22%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.22%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 147 (32.38%) Azure
2 124 (27.31%) AWS
3 83 (18.28%) Power Platform
4 59 (13.00%) Azure Data Factory
5 40 (8.81%) Azure DevOps
6 33 (7.27%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 29 (6.39%) Serverless
8 23 (5.07%) Amazon S3
9 19 (4.19%) Snowflake
10 17 (3.74%) AWS Lambda
11 15 (3.30%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 14 (3.08%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (3.08%) Entra ID
12 14 (3.08%) GitHub
13 13 (2.86%) Azure Databricks
13 13 (2.86%) Microsoft Purview
14 12 (2.64%) Amazon SQS
14 12 (2.64%) PaaS
15 11 (2.42%) Azure Functions
15 11 (2.42%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 15 (3.30%) Firewall
2 7 (1.54%) SNMP
3 5 (1.10%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.10%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.66%) DNS
4 3 (0.66%) SSL
5 2 (0.44%) DHCP
5 2 (0.44%) SAN
6 1 (0.22%) HTTP
6 1 (0.22%) Network Security
6 1 (0.22%) Reverse Proxy
6 1 (0.22%) Skype
6 1 (0.22%) TCP/IP
6 1 (0.22%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (17.84%) Power BI
2 72 (15.86%) Data Warehouse
3 58 (12.78%) Pentaho
4 36 (7.93%) PostgreSQL
4 36 (7.93%) SQL Server
5 33 (7.27%) Data Lake
6 30 (6.61%) Azure SQL Database
7 29 (6.39%) Relational Database
8 26 (5.73%) Oracle Database
9 20 (4.41%) Oracle Reports
10 18 (3.96%) Amazon RDS
11 16 (3.52%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 15 (3.30%) Metadata
12 15 (3.30%) NoSQL
12 15 (3.30%) Tableau
13 14 (3.08%) Amazon Redshift
13 14 (3.08%) DynamoDB
14 13 (2.86%) Delta Lake
15 12 (2.64%) BusinessObjects
16 11 (2.42%) Ingres
Development Applications
1 75 (16.52%) Git
2 61 (13.44%) GitLab
3 60 (13.22%) JIRA
4 31 (6.83%) Jenkins
5 24 (5.29%) Maven
6 21 (4.63%) Postman
7 20 (4.41%) Zephyr
8 17 (3.74%) JUnit
9 15 (3.30%) Mockito
10 12 (2.64%) SonarQube
11 11 (2.42%) Artifactory
12 8 (1.76%) Oracle Forms
13 7 (1.54%) DbUnit
13 7 (1.54%) Selenium
14 6 (1.32%) Bitbucket Server
14 6 (1.32%) jMock
15 5 (1.10%) Team Foundation Server
16 4 (0.88%) Cypress.io
16 4 (0.88%) MLflow
16 4 (0.88%) TestRail
General
1 121 (26.65%) Social Skills
2 84 (18.50%) Analytical Skills
3 76 (16.74%) Public Sector
4 45 (9.91%) Finance
5 17 (3.74%) Manufacturing
6 14 (3.08%) Banking
7 13 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
8 8 (1.76%) Marketing
9 6 (1.32%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 6 (1.32%) Retail
10 5 (1.10%) Presentation Skills
11 4 (0.88%) Local Government
11 4 (0.88%) Military
12 3 (0.66%) Billing
12 3 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
13 2 (0.44%) Front Office
13 2 (0.44%) Legal
13 2 (0.44%) Police
14 1 (0.22%) Aerospace
14 1 (0.22%) Law
Job Titles
1 157 (34.58%) Data Engineer
2 80 (17.62%) Developer
3 67 (14.76%) Senior
4 41 (9.03%) Analyst
5 27 (5.95%) Senior Data Engineer
6 21 (4.63%) Java Developer
7 20 (4.41%) Architect
8 19 (4.19%) SQL Developer
9 18 (3.96%) Senior Developer
10 16 (3.52%) Azure Engineer
11 15 (3.30%) AWS Engineer
11 15 (3.30%) Data Analyst
11 15 (3.30%) Lead
11 15 (3.30%) Tester
12 14 (3.08%) Consultant
13 13 (2.86%) Data Architect
14 12 (2.64%) Cloud Engineer
15 11 (2.42%) Java Engineer
15 11 (2.42%) QA Tester
15 11 (2.42%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 25 (5.51%) REST
2 21 (4.63%) Terraform
3 20 (4.41%) Spring
3 20 (4.41%) Spring Boot
4 18 (3.96%) PySpark
5 17 (3.74%) JPA
6 15 (3.30%) .NET
6 15 (3.30%) RESTful
7 14 (3.08%) SOAP
8 13 (2.86%) Web Services
9 11 (2.42%) Hibernate
10 10 (2.20%) Node.js
10 10 (2.20%) Spring Batch
10 10 (2.20%) Spring Integration
11 9 (1.98%) ActiveMQ
11 9 (1.98%) AngularJS
11 9 (1.98%) XML
12 7 (1.54%) Kafka
12 7 (1.54%) OpenAPI
12 7 (1.54%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 18 (3.96%) Cloud Native
2 15 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
3 13 (2.86%) Linux Command Line
4 12 (2.64%) SCADA
5 11 (2.42%) Distributed Systems
6 10 (2.20%) Data Structures
7 8 (1.76%) Enterprise Software
7 8 (1.76%) Management Information System
8 7 (1.54%) IoT
9 5 (1.10%) Low-Code
9 5 (1.10%) Self-Motivation
10 4 (0.88%) Product Ownership
11 3 (0.66%) Credit Risk
11 3 (0.66%) Data Fabric
11 3 (0.66%) Onboarding
12 2 (0.44%) Legacy Applications
12 2 (0.44%) NHS
12 2 (0.44%) Operational Technology
12 2 (0.44%) Reference Data
12 2 (0.44%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 45 (9.91%) Linux
1 45 (9.91%) Unix
2 26 (5.73%) Windows
3 10 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 3 (0.66%) Ubuntu
5 2 (0.44%) HPUX
5 2 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (0.44%) Windows Server 2019
6 1 (0.22%) AIX
6 1 (0.22%) CentOS
6 1 (0.22%) Data ONTAP
6 1 (0.22%) Solaris
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2003
6 1 (0.22%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 169 (37.22%) ETL
2 147 (32.38%) Agile
3 137 (30.18%) Data Modelling
4 114 (25.11%) Business Intelligence
5 107 (23.57%) Data Pipeline
6 105 (23.13%) CI/CD
7 100 (22.03%) Analytics
7 100 (22.03%) Problem-Solving
8 95 (20.93%) Migration
9 84 (18.50%) Test Automation
10 79 (17.40%) Validation
11 77 (16.96%) Data Engineering
11 77 (16.96%) DevOps
12 72 (15.86%) Data Integration
13 57 (12.56%) Scrum
14 54 (11.89%) Data Migration
15 52 (11.45%) Continuous Improvement
15 52 (11.45%) Decision-Making
16 46 (10.13%) AI
17 38 (8.37%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 96 (21.15%) Python
2 53 (11.67%) PL/SQL
3 42 (9.25%) Java
4 23 (5.07%) Shell Script
5 13 (2.86%) C
6 12 (2.64%) C#
7 11 (2.42%) PowerShell
8 10 (2.20%) Bash
8 10 (2.20%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (2.20%) JavaScript
9 9 (1.98%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.76%) Bicep
10 8 (1.76%) ProC
11 6 (1.32%) VB
11 6 (1.32%) VB6
12 4 (0.88%) COBOL
12 4 (0.88%) R
13 3 (0.66%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.44%) VB.NET
15 1 (0.22%) C++
Qualifications
1 199 (43.83%) Security Cleared
2 170 (37.44%) SC Cleared
3 26 (5.73%) ISTQB
4 24 (5.29%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (3.96%) Degree
6 8 (1.76%) DV Cleared
6 8 (1.76%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 7 (1.54%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.32%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.32%) Master's Degree
9 5 (1.10%) ACCA
9 5 (1.10%) CIMA
9 5 (1.10%) Microsoft Certification
10 4 (0.88%) ISEB
11 3 (0.66%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.66%) PhD
12 1 (0.22%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.22%) MCSE
12 1 (0.22%) OCP
12 1 (0.22%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (16.08%) Data Quality
2 49 (10.79%) QA
3 11 (2.42%) GDPR
4 6 (1.32%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.32%) SLA
5 4 (0.88%) FATCA
6 2 (0.44%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.44%) California Consumer Privacy Act
6 2 (0.44%) GRC
7 1 (0.22%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.22%) GMP
7 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.22%) GxP
7 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.22%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 37 (8.15%) Docker
2 13 (2.86%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.32%) Virtual Machines
3 6 (1.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.10%) Postfix
5 3 (0.66%) Hyper-V
5 3 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
6 1 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 39 (8.59%) Kubernetes
2 17 (3.74%) Grafana
3 7 (1.54%) WMI
4 6 (1.32%) Kibana
5 4 (0.88%) Prometheus
6 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.44%) Data Guard
7 2 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
7 2 (0.44%) SCCM
8 1 (0.22%) Ansible
8 1 (0.22%) Failover Clustering
8 1 (0.22%) HP Quality Center
8 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Clustering
8 1 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 168 (37.00%) Oracle
2 75 (16.52%) Microsoft
3 72 (15.86%) Databricks
4 70 (15.42%) Talend
5 49 (10.79%) Informatica
6 40 (8.81%) Denodo
7 22 (4.85%) SAP
8 17 (3.74%) ServiceNow
9 10 (2.20%) Atlassian
10 8 (1.76%) Cisco
10 8 (1.76%) Google
10 8 (1.76%) Jaspersoft
11 7 (1.54%) F5
11 7 (1.54%) Fortinet
11 7 (1.54%) Palo Alto
11 7 (1.54%) SolarWinds
11 7 (1.54%) Splunk
11 7 (1.54%) VMware
12 6 (1.32%) IBM
12 6 (1.32%) Sage