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 13 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 102 96 67
Rank change year-on-year -6 -29 -18
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 70 28 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.00% 1.54% 2.30%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 10.99% 8.70% 13.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 57 21 19
10th Percentile £306 £263 £427
25th Percentile £405 £350 £511
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £513 £567
Median % change year-on-year -10.24% -9.61% +10.63%
75th Percentile £588 £594 £613
90th Percentile £638 £613 £641
England median daily rate £488 £500 £505
% change year-on-year -2.50% -0.99% -3.81%

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 637 322 321
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 18.21% 17.67% 16.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 460 207 211
10th Percentile £360 £316 £313
25th Percentile £413 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £588 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £630 £713
England median daily rate £503 £512 £550
% change year-on-year -1.76% -6.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 4 2
10th Percentile £20.65 £30.70 £34.04
25th Percentile £21.25 £32.74 £34.20
Median hourly rate £24.40 £34.43 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year -29.13% -0.10% +22.46%
75th Percentile £58.75 £35.24 £34.73
90th Percentile £74.88 £35.69 £34.89
England median hourly rate £38.50 £40.49 £36.25
% change year-on-year -4.91% +11.70% -34.09%

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 13 September 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 13 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
Coventry -5 20 £313 -10.71% 3
Birmingham +4 15 £625 +108.33% 15
Shropshire -36 15 £450 +2.27% 3
Warwickshire -8 8 £650 - 9
Worcestershire - 7 £575 - 2
Herefordshire - 4 - - 2
Solihull -23 1 £600 +0.97% 2
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 20 (28.57%) SharePoint
2 5 (7.14%) Tuxedo
3 3 (4.29%) Microsoft Exchange
4 2 (2.86%) Apache Spark
4 2 (2.86%) Skype for Business
5 1 (1.43%) Apache
5 1 (1.43%) IIS
5 1 (1.43%) Oracle SOA Suite
5 1 (1.43%) Oracle Workflow
Business Applications
1 16 (22.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.43%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (1.43%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 42 (60.00%) Azure
2 18 (25.71%) Power Automate
3 16 (22.86%) Azure DevOps
3 16 (22.86%) Dynamics 365
3 16 (22.86%) Serverless
4 13 (18.57%) Azure Functions
5 10 (14.29%) AWS
5 10 (14.29%) Power Platform
6 7 (10.00%) GitHub
6 7 (10.00%) GitHub Copilot
7 4 (5.71%) Azure Data Factory
7 4 (5.71%) PaaS
8 3 (4.29%) Microsoft 365
9 2 (2.86%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (2.86%) ChatGPT
9 2 (2.86%) Copilot Studio
9 2 (2.86%) GCP
9 2 (2.86%) GitHub Actions
9 2 (2.86%) Microsoft Copilot
9 2 (2.86%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 3 (4.29%) DHCP
1 3 (4.29%) DNS
1 3 (4.29%) Firewall
2 2 (2.86%) SAN
2 2 (2.86%) Skype
2 2 (2.86%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 18 (25.71%) PostgreSQL
2 10 (14.29%) MySQL
3 7 (10.00%) RDBMS
3 7 (10.00%) Relational Database
4 5 (7.14%) Azure SQL Database
4 5 (7.14%) Ingres
5 4 (5.71%) Data Lake
5 4 (5.71%) Data Warehouse
5 4 (5.71%) Power BI
5 4 (5.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (2.86%) Delta Lake
6 2 (2.86%) MongoDB
6 2 (2.86%) Redis
7 1 (1.43%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (1.43%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.43%) Oracle Database 12c
7 1 (1.43%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (1.43%) PowerPivot
7 1 (1.43%) Spark SQL
7 1 (1.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 12 (17.14%) Git
2 10 (14.29%) Cypress.io
2 10 (14.29%) Postman
2 10 (14.29%) Selenium
2 10 (14.29%) WebDriver
3 7 (10.00%) Cucumber
4 5 (7.14%) Oracle Forms
4 5 (7.14%) Team Foundation Server
5 3 (4.29%) Protractor
6 1 (1.43%) MLflow
6 1 (1.43%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 27 (38.57%) Social Skills
2 23 (32.86%) Public Sector
3 17 (24.29%) Analytical Skills
4 16 (22.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 9 (12.86%) Finance
6 1 (1.43%) Aerospace
6 1 (1.43%) Law
6 1 (1.43%) Legal
6 1 (1.43%) Military
6 1 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.43%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 21 (30.00%) Senior
2 12 (17.14%) Developer
3 11 (15.71%) DBA
4 10 (14.29%) Administrator
4 10 (14.29%) Analyst
4 10 (14.29%) Lead
4 10 (14.29%) Test Analyst
5 8 (11.43%) SharePoint Engineer
6 7 (10.00%) Lead Test Analyst
6 7 (10.00%) Senior Analyst
6 7 (10.00%) Senior Test Analyst
6 7 (10.00%) Test Leader
7 6 (8.57%) Data Engineer
7 6 (8.57%) Dynamics 365 Developer
7 6 (8.57%) Senior Developer
8 5 (7.14%) Principal Engineer
9 4 (5.71%) Database Engineer
9 4 (5.71%) Oracle Database Engineer
9 4 (5.71%) SC Cleared DBA
10 3 (4.29%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (14.29%) Gherkin
2 9 (12.86%) JSON
2 9 (12.86%) XML
2 9 (12.86%) XSLT
3 5 (7.14%) ADO
3 5 (7.14%) COM
3 5 (7.14%) ODBC
4 4 (5.71%) .NET
5 3 (4.29%) CSS
5 3 (4.29%) REST
6 2 (2.86%) GraphQL
6 2 (2.86%) LangChain
6 2 (2.86%) Next.js
6 2 (2.86%) OAuth
6 2 (2.86%) OpenID
6 2 (2.86%) PySpark
6 2 (2.86%) React
6 2 (2.86%) Semantic Kernel
6 2 (2.86%) Tailwind CSS
7 1 (1.43%) .NET Core
Miscellaneous
1 13 (18.57%) Management Information System
2 9 (12.86%) Taxonomies
3 7 (10.00%) Virtual Team
4 6 (8.57%) Onboarding
5 5 (7.14%) Low-Code
6 2 (2.86%) AI Agents
6 2 (2.86%) Cloud Native
6 2 (2.86%) Enterprise Storage
6 2 (2.86%) Linux Command Line
6 2 (2.86%) Replication
7 1 (1.43%) Algorithms
7 1 (1.43%) Data Centre
7 1 (1.43%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.43%) PKI
7 1 (1.43%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 9 (12.86%) Windows
2 4 (5.71%) Linux
3 3 (4.29%) CentOS
3 3 (4.29%) Ubuntu
3 3 (4.29%) Windows Server
4 1 (1.43%) AIX
4 1 (1.43%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.43%) Solaris
4 1 (1.43%) VMS
4 1 (1.43%) Windows Server 2003
4 1 (1.43%) Windows Server 2012
4 1 (1.43%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (37.14%) Agile
2 23 (32.86%) Technical Leadership
3 22 (31.43%) DevOps
3 22 (31.43%) Problem-Solving
4 18 (25.71%) AI
4 18 (25.71%) Continuous Improvement
5 17 (24.29%) Mentoring
6 16 (22.86%) CRM
6 16 (22.86%) Information Security
6 16 (22.86%) Stakeholder Management
7 15 (21.43%) Data Modelling
8 12 (17.14%) Performance Tuning
9 11 (15.71%) Database Security
9 11 (15.71%) Migration
9 11 (15.71%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 11 (15.71%) Test Automation
10 10 (14.29%) API Testing
10 10 (14.29%) BDD
10 10 (14.29%) Data Management
10 10 (14.29%) Load Testing
Programming Languages
1 22 (31.43%) SQL
2 16 (22.86%) C#
3 14 (20.00%) JavaScript
4 5 (7.14%) VB
4 5 (7.14%) VB6
5 4 (5.71%) C
5 4 (5.71%) Python
6 3 (4.29%) PowerShell
7 2 (2.86%) T-SQL
7 2 (2.86%) TypeScript
8 1 (1.43%) Ada
8 1 (1.43%) Bicep
8 1 (1.43%) C++
8 1 (1.43%) Java
Qualifications
1 22 (31.43%) Microsoft Certification
2 19 (27.14%) Security Cleared
3 11 (15.71%) SC Cleared
4 10 (14.29%) ISTQB
5 9 (12.86%) OCP
5 9 (12.86%) Oracle Certification
6 7 (10.00%) DV Cleared
7 4 (5.71%) Azure Certification
7 4 (5.71%) Degree
8 3 (4.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 1 (1.43%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 17 (24.29%) GDPR
2 16 (22.86%) Accessibility
2 16 (22.86%) WCAG
3 13 (18.57%) QA
4 2 (2.86%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.43%) HL7
5 1 (1.43%) ISO 22301
5 1 (1.43%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 4 (5.71%) Active Directory
1 4 (5.71%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (2.86%) Docker
2 2 (2.86%) Hyper-V
2 2 (2.86%) Oracle RAC
3 1 (1.43%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (1.43%) VMware ESXi
3 1 (1.43%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 3 (4.29%) Single Sign-On
2 2 (2.86%) Kubernetes
3 1 (1.43%) Data Guard
3 1 (1.43%) Oracle RMAN
3 1 (1.43%) PowerCLI
Vendors
1 40 (57.14%) Microsoft
2 21 (30.00%) Oracle
3 5 (7.14%) Actian
3 5 (7.14%) Databricks
3 5 (7.14%) SolarWinds
3 5 (7.14%) Splunk
4 4 (5.71%) VMware
5 2 (2.86%) Cisco
5 2 (2.86%) EMC
5 2 (2.86%) OpenAI
5 2 (2.86%) SYSPRO
6 1 (1.43%) CheckPoint
6 1 (1.43%) Dell
6 1 (1.43%) Fortinet
6 1 (1.43%) IBM
6 1 (1.43%) Isilon
6 1 (1.43%) NetApp
6 1 (1.43%) Palo Alto
6 1 (1.43%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.43%) Sparx