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 21 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
21 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 105 67 49
Rank change year-on-year -38 -18 +11
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 25 44 73
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.27% 2.35% 3.64%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 6.05% 14.57% 23.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 18 19 54
10th Percentile £263 £361 £314
25th Percentile £320 £524 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £468 £567 £484
Median % change year-on-year -17.55% +17.21% +4.31%
75th Percentile £556 £613 £684
90th Percentile £640 £625 £743
England median daily rate £496 £506 £540
% change year-on-year -2.05% -6.32% -

All Database and Business Intelligence 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 413 302 308
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.04% 16.16% 15.35%
Number of daily rates quoted 281 190 214
10th Percentile £368 £324 £313
25th Percentile £447 £363 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year +2.56% +2.56% -5.71%
75th Percentile £581 £625 £647
90th Percentile £650 £725 £688
England median daily rate £510 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -7.27% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 2 1
10th Percentile £30.70 £34.04 -
25th Percentile £32.74 £34.20 -
Median hourly rate £34.43 £34.47 £31.04
Median % change year-on-year -0.10% +11.03% +158.67%
75th Percentile £35.24 £34.73 -
90th Percentile £35.69 £34.89 -
England median hourly rate £43.50 £33.93 £50.50
% change year-on-year +28.21% -32.81% +1.00%

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 21 October 2025.

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 21 October 2025. 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 -3 5 £350 - 4
Birmingham -12 5 £438 -22.84% 15
Shropshire -35 5 £440 -22.40% 3
Solihull - 3 £320 -
Warwickshire -14 2 £675 +17.39% 6
Wolverhampton - 1 £550 -
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 2 (8.00%) IIS
Business Applications
1 1 (4.00%) SAP GRC
1 1 (4.00%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 19 (76.00%) Azure
2 6 (24.00%) AWS
3 5 (20.00%) Azure Data Factory
3 5 (20.00%) Serverless
4 4 (16.00%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (16.00%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 3 (12.00%) Azure API Management
5 3 (12.00%) Azure Event Grid
5 3 (12.00%) Azure Functions
5 3 (12.00%) Azure Logic Apps
5 3 (12.00%) Azure Monitor
5 3 (12.00%) Azure Service Bus
5 3 (12.00%) GCP
6 2 (8.00%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (8.00%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (8.00%) Microsoft 365
6 2 (8.00%) Power Platform
7 1 (4.00%) Amazon S3
7 1 (4.00%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (4.00%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 2 (8.00%) Firewall
2 1 (4.00%) DHCP
2 1 (4.00%) DNS
2 1 (4.00%) iSCSI
2 1 (4.00%) LAN
2 1 (4.00%) NAS
2 1 (4.00%) SAN
2 1 (4.00%) VLAN
2 1 (4.00%) VSAN
2 1 (4.00%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (24.00%) Relational Database
2 3 (12.00%) Data Warehouse
2 3 (12.00%) SQL Server Integration Services
3 2 (8.00%) Amazon RDS
3 2 (8.00%) Azure SQL Database
3 2 (8.00%) DB2
3 2 (8.00%) Elasticsearch
3 2 (8.00%) NoSQL
3 2 (8.00%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (8.00%) Tableau
4 1 (4.00%) Metadata
4 1 (4.00%) Microsoft Analysis Services
4 1 (4.00%) MySQL
4 1 (4.00%) Power BI
4 1 (4.00%) SAP HANA
4 1 (4.00%) Semantic Layer
4 1 (4.00%) SQL Server Analysis Services
4 1 (4.00%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 1 (4.00%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 7 (28.00%) Social Skills
2 5 (20.00%) Public Sector
3 3 (12.00%) Analytical Skills
3 3 (12.00%) Finance
4 2 (8.00%) Inclusion and Diversity
5 1 (4.00%) General Ledger
Job Titles
1 6 (24.00%) Developer
2 5 (20.00%) Data Engineer
3 4 (16.00%) Support Engineer
4 3 (12.00%) .NET Developer
4 3 (12.00%) Analyst
5 2 (8.00%) 3rd Line Support
5 2 (8.00%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Administrator
5 2 (8.00%) Cognos Support
5 2 (8.00%) Consultant
5 2 (8.00%) DBA
5 2 (8.00%) Firewall Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Firewall Support
5 2 (8.00%) Senior Data Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Server Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Server Support
5 2 (8.00%) SQL DBA
5 2 (8.00%) Support Analyst
5 2 (8.00%) Windows Engineer
5 2 (8.00%) Windows Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (28.00%) .NET
2 5 (20.00%) Web Services
3 4 (16.00%) RESTful
4 3 (12.00%) HTML
5 2 (8.00%) Middleware
6 1 (4.00%) .NET Core
6 1 (4.00%) .NET Framework
6 1 (4.00%) AngularJS
6 1 (4.00%) ASP.NET
6 1 (4.00%) ASP.NET MVC
6 1 (4.00%) ASP.NET Web API
6 1 (4.00%) CSS
6 1 (4.00%) Entity Framework
6 1 (4.00%) LINQ
6 1 (4.00%) Razor View Engine
6 1 (4.00%) REST
6 1 (4.00%) SAP Basis
6 1 (4.00%) SAP Fiori
6 1 (4.00%) Spring
6 1 (4.00%) Spring Boot
Miscellaneous
1 3 (12.00%) Distributed Systems
1 3 (12.00%) PKI
2 2 (8.00%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (4.00%) Client/Server
3 1 (4.00%) Linux Command Line
3 1 (4.00%) Management Information System
3 1 (4.00%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 6 (24.00%) Windows
2 5 (20.00%) Linux
3 3 (12.00%) Windows Server
4 2 (8.00%) Unix
4 2 (8.00%) Windows 10
5 1 (4.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (4.00%) SUSE
5 1 (4.00%) Ubuntu
5 1 (4.00%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (52.00%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (36.00%) ETL
3 8 (32.00%) Performance Tuning
4 7 (28.00%) Analytics
5 6 (24.00%) DevOps
6 5 (20.00%) Agile
6 5 (20.00%) Disaster Recovery
6 5 (20.00%) ITIL
6 5 (20.00%) Migration
7 4 (16.00%) Business Intelligence
7 4 (16.00%) CI/CD
7 4 (16.00%) Service Management
8 3 (12.00%) AI
8 3 (12.00%) API Design
8 3 (12.00%) API Management
8 3 (12.00%) Change Management
8 3 (12.00%) Coaching
8 3 (12.00%) Data Modelling
8 3 (12.00%) Database Security
8 3 (12.00%) Log Analytics
Programming Languages
1 14 (56.00%) SQL
2 6 (24.00%) C#
3 5 (20.00%) JavaScript
4 4 (16.00%) PowerShell
5 3 (12.00%) Python
6 1 (4.00%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 1 (4.00%) Java
6 1 (4.00%) Shell Script
6 1 (4.00%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 5 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 4 (16.00%) Degree
3 2 (8.00%) SC Cleared
3 2 (8.00%) Tableau Certification
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Certification
4 1 (4.00%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
4 1 (4.00%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (4.00%) CTC Cleared
4 1 (4.00%) DV Cleared
4 1 (4.00%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (12.00%) QA
2 2 (8.00%) Data Quality
2 2 (8.00%) GDPR
3 1 (4.00%) Accessibility
3 1 (4.00%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (24.00%) Active Directory
2 4 (16.00%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (12.00%) Hyper-V
4 2 (8.00%) Docker
4 2 (8.00%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (8.00%) vSphere
5 1 (4.00%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 4 (16.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (8.00%) Grafana
2 2 (8.00%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (8.00%) SCCM
2 2 (8.00%) SCOM
3 1 (4.00%) PowerCLI
3 1 (4.00%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 13 (52.00%) Microsoft
2 5 (20.00%) Oracle
3 4 (16.00%) VMware
4 3 (12.00%) Google
5 2 (8.00%) CheckPoint
5 2 (8.00%) Cisco
5 2 (8.00%) Cognos
5 2 (8.00%) IBM
5 2 (8.00%) Salesforce
6 1 (4.00%) Adobe
6 1 (4.00%) Ariba
6 1 (4.00%) Atlassian
6 1 (4.00%) Concur
6 1 (4.00%) iManage
6 1 (4.00%) SAP
6 1 (4.00%) Veeam