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 8 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
8 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 124 56 61
Rank change year-on-year -68 +5 +12
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 16 47 53
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.69% 2.94% 3.04%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.73% 16.97% 18.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 28 44
10th Percentile £263 £361 £379
25th Percentile £338 £475 £398
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £414 £567 £488
Median % change year-on-year -27.03% +16.31% +8.33%
75th Percentile £575 £620 £648
90th Percentile £624 £700 £750
England median daily rate £485 £505 £550
% change year-on-year -4.06% -8.18% -

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 429 277 282
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 18.62% 17.31% 16.18%
Number of daily rates quoted 303 174 207
10th Percentile £380 £363 £313
25th Percentile £456 £425 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £519 £525 £475
Median % change year-on-year -1.24% +10.53% -8.48%
75th Percentile £575 £625 £638
90th Percentile £650 £709 £700
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 3 1
Median hourly rate £36.00 £18.00 £31.04
Median % change year-on-year +100.00% -42.01% +158.67%
England median hourly rate £54.70 £42.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year +30.24% -9.05% -16.04%

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 8 January 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 8 January 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 -36 6 £403 -29.01%
Birmingham -24 4 £513 -9.61% 6
Coventry -15 2 £275 -45.00% 2
Staffordshire -1 1 £388 +10.71% 4
Warwickshire -22 1 £700 +21.74% 1
Wolverhampton - 1 £550 - 3
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:

Business Applications
1 1 (6.25%) Dynamics NAV
1 1 (6.25%) SAP GRC
1 1 (6.25%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 7 (43.75%) Azure
2 5 (31.25%) Power Platform
3 4 (25.00%) Power Automate
3 4 (25.00%) PowerApps
4 2 (12.50%) Azure Data Factory
4 2 (12.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 2 (12.50%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (6.25%) Amazon EC2
5 1 (6.25%) AWS
5 1 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
5 1 (6.25%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (6.25%) Entra ID
5 1 (6.25%) GCP
5 1 (6.25%) IaaS
5 1 (6.25%) PaaS
5 1 (6.25%) Serverless
5 1 (6.25%) SuccessFactors
Communications & Networking
1 2 (12.50%) Firewall
2 1 (6.25%) NAS
2 1 (6.25%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (31.25%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 4 (25.00%) Data Warehouse
2 4 (25.00%) Power BI
3 1 (6.25%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (6.25%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (6.25%) Metadata
3 1 (6.25%) MySQL
3 1 (6.25%) NoSQL
3 1 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (6.25%) Relational Database
3 1 (6.25%) SAP HANA
3 1 (6.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 1 (6.25%) GitLab
1 1 (6.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
1 1 (6.25%) TeamCity
General
1 5 (31.25%) Analytical Skills
2 4 (25.00%) Social Skills
3 2 (12.50%) Finance
4 1 (6.25%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 6 (37.50%) Developer
2 4 (25.00%) Business Intelligence Developer
3 3 (18.75%) Business Developer
4 2 (12.50%) 2nd/3rd Line Support
4 2 (12.50%) 2nd/3rd Line Support Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Server Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Server Support
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Support
4 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Azure Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Data Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Firewall Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Firewall Support
4 2 (12.50%) Server Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Server Support
4 2 (12.50%) Support Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Windows Engineer
4 2 (12.50%) Windows Support Engineer
5 1 (6.25%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 1 (6.25%) .NET
1 1 (6.25%) .NET Core
1 1 (6.25%) .NET Framework
1 1 (6.25%) AngularJS
1 1 (6.25%) ASP.NET
1 1 (6.25%) ASP.NET MVC
1 1 (6.25%) ASP.NET Web API
1 1 (6.25%) CSS
1 1 (6.25%) Elastic Stack
1 1 (6.25%) Entity Framework
1 1 (6.25%) HTML
1 1 (6.25%) LINQ
1 1 (6.25%) Razor View Engine
1 1 (6.25%) REST
1 1 (6.25%) RESTful
1 1 (6.25%) SAP Basis
1 1 (6.25%) SAP Fiori
1 1 (6.25%) Spring
1 1 (6.25%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 2 (12.50%) Legacy Systems
1 2 (12.50%) PKI
2 1 (6.25%) Client/Server
2 1 (6.25%) Data Structures
2 1 (6.25%) Distributed Systems
2 1 (6.25%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 3 (18.75%) Windows
2 2 (12.50%) Linux
2 2 (12.50%) Unix
2 2 (12.50%) Windows 10
2 2 (12.50%) Windows Server
3 1 (6.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 6 (37.50%) ETL
1 6 (37.50%) Problem-Solving
2 5 (31.25%) Business Intelligence
2 5 (31.25%) Data Modelling
3 4 (25.00%) Data Extraction
3 4 (25.00%) Data Governance
3 4 (25.00%) Data Integration
3 4 (25.00%) Decision-Making
3 4 (25.00%) Information Security
3 4 (25.00%) Migration
4 3 (18.75%) Agile
4 3 (18.75%) AI
5 2 (12.50%) Containerisation
5 2 (12.50%) Data Management
5 2 (12.50%) Performance Tuning
5 2 (12.50%) Scrum
5 2 (12.50%) SDLC
6 1 (6.25%) Data Engineering
6 1 (6.25%) Security Patching
6 1 (6.25%) Sprint Retrospective
Programming Languages
1 5 (31.25%) SQL
2 3 (18.75%) JavaScript
3 2 (12.50%) PowerShell
3 2 (12.50%) Python
4 1 (6.25%) C#
4 1 (6.25%) Data Analysis Expressions
4 1 (6.25%) Java
4 1 (6.25%) Shell Script
4 1 (6.25%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 2 (12.50%) Degree
2 1 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
2 1 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 1 (6.25%) Accessibility
1 1 (6.25%) GDPR
1 1 (6.25%) QA
1 1 (6.25%) SLA
System Software
1 3 (18.75%) Active Directory
1 3 (18.75%) Hyper-V
2 2 (12.50%) Docker
2 2 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (12.50%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) Kubernetes
1 2 (12.50%) Microsoft Intune
1 2 (12.50%) SCCM
1 2 (12.50%) SCOM
Vendors
1 10 (62.50%) Microsoft
2 3 (18.75%) VMware
3 2 (12.50%) CheckPoint
4 1 (6.25%) Adobe
4 1 (6.25%) Ariba
4 1 (6.25%) Atlassian
4 1 (6.25%) Concur
4 1 (6.25%) Google
4 1 (6.25%) iManage
4 1 (6.25%) Oracle
4 1 (6.25%) SAP