SQL Server Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring SQL Server skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 131 73 68
Rank change year-on-year -58 -5 -10
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 25 28 46
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.79% 2.05% 2.44%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 4.17% 12.02% 15.23%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 20 32
10th Percentile £381 £346 £320
25th Percentile £409 £479 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £449 £575 £518
Median % change year-on-year -22.00% +11.11% -0.48%
75th Percentile £489 £619 £638
90th Percentile £535 £666 £654
England median daily rate £486 £525 £506
% change year-on-year -7.38% +3.70% -3.57%

All Database & BI Skills
West Midlands

SQL Server falls under the Databases and Business Intelligence category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring database or business intelligence skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for database or business intelligence skills 599 233 302
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 18.89% 17.04% 15.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 462 153 228
10th Percentile £350 £277 £275
25th Percentile £413 £410 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £474 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -5.25% +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £568 £600 £584
90th Percentile £670 £655 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 2 1
10th Percentile £33.38 £15.63 -
25th Percentile £42.50 £16.15 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £17.59 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +155.86% -56.57% +60.40%
75th Percentile £53.75 £18.45 -
90th Percentile £68.00 £18.62 -
England median hourly rate £43.75 £32.43 £40.00
% change year-on-year +34.91% -18.93% -28.19%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

SQL Server job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

SQL Server
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

SQL Server
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL Server in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 22 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL Server in the West Midlands

SQL Server
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

SQL Server
Contract Job Locations in the West Midlands

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 West Midlands region over the 6 months to 22 May 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
Shropshire -38 10 £442 +0.34% 4
Birmingham -34 5 £438 -32.69% 8
Coventry -16 3 £543 +9.60% 2
Warwickshire -21 3 £500 -13.04% 7
Solihull -17 2 £487 -18.13%
Staffordshire - 1 £388 -
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West 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 1 (4.00%) Apache Spark
1 1 (4.00%) Microsoft Exchange
1 1 (4.00%) Oracle SOA Suite
1 1 (4.00%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 2 (8.00%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (4.00%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 6 (24.00%) Azure
1 6 (24.00%) Power Platform
2 5 (20.00%) PowerApps
3 4 (16.00%) Power Automate
4 2 (8.00%) AWS
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Data Factory
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Service Bus
5 1 (4.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 1 (4.00%) dbt
5 1 (4.00%) Entra ID
5 1 (4.00%) GitHub
5 1 (4.00%) GitHub Copilot
5 1 (4.00%) IBM Cloud
5 1 (4.00%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (40.00%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (28.00%) MySQL
3 6 (24.00%) Data Warehouse
3 6 (24.00%) Power BI
4 5 (20.00%) Relational Database
4 5 (20.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
5 4 (16.00%) RDBMS
6 3 (12.00%) Ingres
6 3 (12.00%) NoSQL
7 2 (8.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 1 (4.00%) Azure SQL Database
8 1 (4.00%) Data Lake
8 1 (4.00%) DB2
8 1 (4.00%) Oracle Database
8 1 (4.00%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (4.00%) Oracle Reports
8 1 (4.00%) Power Query
8 1 (4.00%) Spark SQL
8 1 (4.00%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 4 (16.00%) Git
2 3 (12.00%) Team Foundation Server
3 2 (8.00%) Oracle Forms
4 1 (4.00%) GitLab
4 1 (4.00%) JIRA
4 1 (4.00%) TeamCity
4 1 (4.00%) Visual Studio
General
1 8 (32.00%) Social Skills
2 6 (24.00%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (16.00%) Public Sector
4 2 (8.00%) Finance
4 2 (8.00%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (4.00%) Advertising
5 1 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
5 1 (4.00%) Police
5 1 (4.00%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 9 (36.00%) DBA
2 7 (28.00%) Developer
3 4 (16.00%) Administrator
3 4 (16.00%) Senior
4 3 (12.00%) Business Developer
4 3 (12.00%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 3 (12.00%) SC Cleared DBA
4 3 (12.00%) SQL DBA
5 2 (8.00%) Architect
5 2 (8.00%) Data Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Enterprise Architect
5 2 (8.00%) Oracle DBA
5 2 (8.00%) Senior Data Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Senior Developer
6 1 (4.00%) .NET Architect
6 1 (4.00%) .NET Developer
6 1 (4.00%) Kubernetes Architect
6 1 (4.00%) Senior .NET Developer
6 1 (4.00%) SQL Developer
6 1 (4.00%) SQL Server DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (12.00%) .NET
1 3 (12.00%) REST
2 2 (8.00%) .NET Framework
2 2 (8.00%) ActiveX
2 2 (8.00%) ADO
2 2 (8.00%) COM
2 2 (8.00%) ODBC
3 1 (4.00%) .NET Core
3 1 (4.00%) AngularJS
3 1 (4.00%) EDI
3 1 (4.00%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (4.00%) Itk
3 1 (4.00%) JDBC
3 1 (4.00%) JSP
3 1 (4.00%) LDAP
3 1 (4.00%) PySpark
3 1 (4.00%) React
3 1 (4.00%) SailPoint
3 1 (4.00%) SAML
3 1 (4.00%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 1 (4.00%) Algorithms
1 1 (4.00%) Legacy Systems
1 1 (4.00%) Low-Code
1 1 (4.00%) Onboarding
1 1 (4.00%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (4.00%) AIX
1 1 (4.00%) Linux
1 1 (4.00%) Solaris
1 1 (4.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (32.00%) Data Modelling
2 8 (32.00%) ETL
2 8 (32.00%) Performance Tuning
3 7 (28.00%) Data Management
3 7 (28.00%) Database Security
4 6 (24.00%) Agile
4 6 (24.00%) Business Intelligence
4 6 (24.00%) Migration
5 5 (20.00%) Capacity Planning
5 5 (20.00%) CI/CD
5 5 (20.00%) Data Integration
5 5 (20.00%) Data Migration
6 4 (16.00%) Data Extraction
6 4 (16.00%) Data Governance
6 4 (16.00%) Data Protection
6 4 (16.00%) DevOps
6 4 (16.00%) User Acceptance Testing
6 4 (16.00%) Validation
7 3 (12.00%) Information Security
Programming Languages
1 13 (52.00%) SQL
2 5 (20.00%) Python
3 2 (8.00%) Java
3 2 (8.00%) PowerShell
3 2 (8.00%) VB
3 2 (8.00%) VB6
4 1 (4.00%) C
4 1 (4.00%) C#
4 1 (4.00%) C++
4 1 (4.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 1 (4.00%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (28.00%) Security Cleared
2 5 (20.00%) SC Cleared
3 4 (16.00%) Microsoft Certification
3 4 (16.00%) OCP
3 4 (16.00%) Oracle Certification
4 3 (12.00%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (8.00%) Degree
5 2 (8.00%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (20.00%) QA
2 1 (4.00%) Data Quality
2 1 (4.00%) GDPR
2 1 (4.00%) ISO 22301
2 1 (4.00%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 2 (8.00%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (4.00%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 2 (8.00%) Kubernetes
2 1 (4.00%) Data Guard
2 1 (4.00%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 14 (56.00%) Microsoft
2 12 (48.00%) Oracle
3 2 (8.00%) Actian
4 1 (4.00%) IBM
4 1 (4.00%) Okta
4 1 (4.00%) SAP
4 1 (4.00%) ServiceNow