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 16 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
16 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 137 68 62
Rank change year-on-year -69 -6 +7
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 23 31 57
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.81% 2.33% 2.92%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.88% 14.03% 19.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 22 46
10th Percentile £381 £364 £302
25th Percentile £419 £475 £391
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £438
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +31.43% -14.22%
75th Percentile £500 £647 £638
90th Percentile £585 £700 £650
England median daily rate £490 £513 £525
% change year-on-year -4.44% -2.38% -4.55%

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 593 221 294
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 20.92% 16.62% 15.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 459 146 222
10th Percentile £358 £356 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £574 £600 £597
90th Percentile £645 £694 £700
England median daily rate £500 £530 £525
% change year-on-year -5.66% +0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 4 1
10th Percentile - £15.80 -
25th Percentile £42.50 £16.57 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £18.00 £40.50
Median % change year-on-year +150.00% -55.56% +125.00%
75th Percentile £47.50 £19.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £49.36 £33.11 £40.25
% change year-on-year +49.08% -17.74% -32.92%

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 16 March 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 16 March 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 -39 11 £439 - 4
Warwickshire -20 3 £500 -13.04% 1
Birmingham -35 3 £580 -8.12% 6
Coventry -26 2 £543 +8.50% 3
Solihull - 2 £487 -
Staffordshire -5 1 £388 +10.71% 4
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 (4.35%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 2 (8.70%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (4.35%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 6 (26.09%) Power Platform
2 5 (21.74%) Azure
3 4 (17.39%) Power Automate
3 4 (17.39%) PowerApps
4 1 (4.35%) AWS
4 1 (4.35%) Azure Data Factory
4 1 (4.35%) Azure Service Bus
4 1 (4.35%) Azure Synapse Analytics
4 1 (4.35%) Dynamics 365
4 1 (4.35%) Entra ID
4 1 (4.35%) GitHub
4 1 (4.35%) GitHub Copilot
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (34.78%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (30.43%) MySQL
2 7 (30.43%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 5 (21.74%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (21.74%) Power BI
4 4 (17.39%) Relational Database
5 3 (13.04%) Ingres
5 3 (13.04%) NoSQL
5 3 (13.04%) RDBMS
6 1 (4.35%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (4.35%) Power Query
6 1 (4.35%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 1 (4.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (4.35%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 3 (13.04%) Git
1 3 (13.04%) Team Foundation Server
2 2 (8.70%) Oracle Forms
3 1 (4.35%) GitLab
3 1 (4.35%) JIRA
3 1 (4.35%) TeamCity
3 1 (4.35%) Visual Studio
General
1 7 (30.43%) Social Skills
2 5 (21.74%) Analytical Skills
3 4 (17.39%) Public Sector
4 2 (8.70%) Finance
4 2 (8.70%) Presentation Skills
5 1 (4.35%) Advertising
5 1 (4.35%) Police
Job Titles
1 7 (30.43%) DBA
2 6 (26.09%) Developer
3 4 (17.39%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 3 (13.04%) Administrator
4 3 (13.04%) Business Developer
4 3 (13.04%) SC Cleared DBA
5 2 (8.70%) Architect
5 2 (8.70%) Data Engineer
5 2 (8.70%) Enterprise Architect
5 2 (8.70%) Senior
5 2 (8.70%) SQL DBA
6 1 (4.35%) .NET Architect
6 1 (4.35%) Business Intelligence Lead
6 1 (4.35%) Kubernetes Architect
6 1 (4.35%) Lead
6 1 (4.35%) Oracle DBA
6 1 (4.35%) Oracle SQL Server DBA
6 1 (4.35%) Senior .NET Developer
6 1 (4.35%) Senior Data Engineer
6 1 (4.35%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 3 (13.04%) .NET
2 2 (8.70%) .NET Framework
2 2 (8.70%) ActiveX
2 2 (8.70%) ADO
2 2 (8.70%) COM
2 2 (8.70%) ODBC
2 2 (8.70%) REST
3 1 (4.35%) .NET Core
3 1 (4.35%) AngularJS
3 1 (4.35%) EDI
3 1 (4.35%) Elastic Stack
3 1 (4.35%) JDBC
3 1 (4.35%) JSP
3 1 (4.35%) LDAP
3 1 (4.35%) SailPoint
3 1 (4.35%) SAML
3 1 (4.35%) Servlets
3 1 (4.35%) Spring
3 1 (4.35%) Web Services
3 1 (4.35%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 1 (4.35%) Data Structures
1 1 (4.35%) Legacy Systems
1 1 (4.35%) Low-Code
1 1 (4.35%) Onboarding
1 1 (4.35%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 1 (4.35%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (43.48%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (34.78%) Performance Tuning
3 7 (30.43%) Data Modelling
3 7 (30.43%) ETL
4 6 (26.09%) Agile
4 6 (26.09%) Business Intelligence
4 6 (26.09%) Data Management
5 5 (21.74%) Capacity Planning
5 5 (21.74%) CI/CD
5 5 (21.74%) Data Governance
5 5 (21.74%) Data Integration
5 5 (21.74%) Data Migration
5 5 (21.74%) Database Security
5 5 (21.74%) Migration
6 4 (17.39%) Data Extraction
6 4 (17.39%) Decision-Making
6 4 (17.39%) Information Security
6 4 (17.39%) User Acceptance Testing
7 3 (13.04%) Data Protection
7 3 (13.04%) DevOps
Programming Languages
1 8 (34.78%) SQL
2 3 (13.04%) Python
3 2 (8.70%) Data Analysis Expressions
3 2 (8.70%) PowerShell
3 2 (8.70%) VB
3 2 (8.70%) VB6
4 1 (4.35%) C#
4 1 (4.35%) Java
4 1 (4.35%) JavaScript
4 1 (4.35%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 7 (30.43%) Security Cleared
2 5 (21.74%) SC Cleared
3 4 (17.39%) Microsoft Certification
3 4 (17.39%) OCP
3 4 (17.39%) Oracle Certification
4 3 (13.04%) BPSS Clearance
5 2 (8.70%) Degree
5 2 (8.70%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (17.39%) QA
2 1 (4.35%) GDPR
System Software
1 1 (4.35%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 2 (8.70%) Kubernetes
Vendors
1 15 (65.22%) Microsoft
2 9 (39.13%) Oracle
3 2 (8.70%) Actian
4 1 (4.35%) Okta
4 1 (4.35%) SAP
4 1 (4.35%) ServiceNow