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 24 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
24 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 118 73 61
Rank change year-on-year -45 -12 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 16 47 60
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.75% 2.47% 3.14%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.74% 15.51% 20.91%
Number of daily rates quoted 12 26 48
10th Percentile £263 £359 £309
25th Percentile £334 £475 £392
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £438 £567 £450
Median % change year-on-year -22.84% +26.00% -
75th Percentile £616 £613 £650
90th Percentile £670 £625 £750
England median daily rate £480 £500 £550
% change year-on-year -4.00% -9.09% -

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 428 303 287
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 20.10% 15.96% 15.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 299 189 205
10th Percentile £386 £348 £315
25th Percentile £453 £406 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% +5.26% -7.32%
75th Percentile £581 £619 £600
90th Percentile £651 £713 £694
England median daily rate £500 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -9.09% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 4 1
10th Percentile £30.70 - -
25th Percentile £32.74 £17.00 -
Median hourly rate £34.43 £25.97 £31.04
Median % change year-on-year +32.60% -16.35% +158.67%
75th Percentile £35.24 £34.20 -
90th Percentile £35.69 £34.68 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £35.00 £47.70
% change year-on-year +28.57% -26.62% -4.50%

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 24 November 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 24 November 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 -14 4 £275 -45.00% 5
Birmingham -19 4 £513 -9.61% 20
Shropshire -40 3 £375 -33.86% 8
Warwickshire -20 2 £675 +17.39% 6
Wolverhampton - 1 £550 - 1
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 10 (62.50%) Azure
2 4 (25.00%) AWS
3 2 (12.50%) Amazon EC2
3 2 (12.50%) AWS Lambda
3 2 (12.50%) Azure Data Factory
3 2 (12.50%) Azure Synapse Analytics
3 2 (12.50%) Microsoft 365
3 2 (12.50%) Power Platform
3 2 (12.50%) Serverless
4 1 (6.25%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 1 (6.25%) AWS CloudTrail
4 1 (6.25%) AWS KMS
4 1 (6.25%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (6.25%) Dynamics 365
4 1 (6.25%) Entra ID
4 1 (6.25%) GCP
4 1 (6.25%) Power Automate
4 1 (6.25%) PowerApps
4 1 (6.25%) SuccessFactors
4 1 (6.25%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 2 (12.50%) Firewall
2 1 (6.25%) DHCP
2 1 (6.25%) DNS
2 1 (6.25%) iSCSI
2 1 (6.25%) LAN
2 1 (6.25%) NAS
2 1 (6.25%) SAN
2 1 (6.25%) VLAN
2 1 (6.25%) VSAN
2 1 (6.25%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 3 (18.75%) Data Warehouse
1 3 (18.75%) Relational Database
2 2 (12.50%) Amazon RDS
2 2 (12.50%) DB2
2 2 (12.50%) SQL Server Reporting Services
3 1 (6.25%) Azure SQL Database
3 1 (6.25%) Metadata
3 1 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (6.25%) Power BI
3 1 (6.25%) SAP HANA
3 1 (6.25%) SQL Server Analysis Services
Development Applications
1 1 (6.25%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 4 (25.00%) Analytical Skills
1 4 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 3 (18.75%) Finance
3 1 (6.25%) General Ledger
3 1 (6.25%) Public Sector
Job Titles
1 4 (25.00%) Support Engineer
2 3 (18.75%) Developer
3 2 (12.50%) 2nd/3rd Line Support
3 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Server Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Server Support
3 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Support
3 2 (12.50%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Azure Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Cognos Support
3 2 (12.50%) Consultant
3 2 (12.50%) Data Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Firewall Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Firewall Support
3 2 (12.50%) Platform Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Platform Support Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Server Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Server Support
3 2 (12.50%) Windows Engineer
3 2 (12.50%) Windows Support 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%) 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 3 (18.75%) PKI
2 2 (12.50%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (6.25%) Client/Server
3 1 (6.25%) Data Structures
3 1 (6.25%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (6.25%) Linux Command Line
3 1 (6.25%) Management Information System
3 1 (6.25%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 6 (37.50%) Windows
2 5 (31.25%) Linux
3 3 (18.75%) Windows Server
4 2 (12.50%) Unix
4 2 (12.50%) Windows 10
5 1 (6.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (6.25%) SUSE
5 1 (6.25%) Ubuntu
5 1 (6.25%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 5 (31.25%) ETL
1 5 (31.25%) Migration
1 5 (31.25%) Problem-Solving
2 4 (25.00%) Business Intelligence
2 4 (25.00%) Performance Tuning
3 3 (18.75%) Agile
3 3 (18.75%) AI
3 3 (18.75%) Analytics
3 3 (18.75%) Disaster Recovery
3 3 (18.75%) ITIL
4 2 (12.50%) Containerisation
4 2 (12.50%) Data Management
4 2 (12.50%) Data Modelling
4 2 (12.50%) DevOps
4 2 (12.50%) High Availability
4 2 (12.50%) Scrum
4 2 (12.50%) SDLC
4 2 (12.50%) Service Management
5 1 (6.25%) Project Management
5 1 (6.25%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 9 (56.25%) 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%) AWS Certification
2 1 (6.25%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
2 1 (6.25%) Computer Science Degree
2 1 (6.25%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
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 4 (25.00%) Active Directory
2 3 (18.75%) Hyper-V
3 2 (12.50%) Docker
3 2 (12.50%) VMware Infrastructure
3 2 (12.50%) vSphere
4 1 (6.25%) Virtual Machines
4 1 (6.25%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 2 (12.50%) Kubernetes
1 2 (12.50%) Microsoft Intune
1 2 (12.50%) SCCM
1 2 (12.50%) SCOM
2 1 (6.25%) PowerCLI
2 1 (6.25%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 8 (50.00%) Microsoft
2 4 (25.00%) Oracle
2 4 (25.00%) VMware
3 2 (12.50%) CheckPoint
3 2 (12.50%) Cognos
3 2 (12.50%) IBM
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%) SAP
4 1 (6.25%) Veeam