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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 17 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
17 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 89 62 55
Rank change year-on-year -27 -7 -2
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 28 44 73
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the West Midlands 1.53% 2.32% 3.53%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 8.54% 13.75% 23.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 21 19 56
10th Percentile £263 £427 £341
25th Percentile £350 £511 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £567 £519
Median % change year-on-year -9.61% +9.30% +15.28%
75th Percentile £594 £613 £688
90th Percentile £613 £641 £750
England median daily rate £500 £513 £535
% change year-on-year -2.44% -4.21% +1.90%

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 328 320 314
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 17.92% 16.84% 15.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 211 210 217
10th Percentile £320 £312 £313
25th Percentile £413 £363 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £500
75th Percentile £581 £625 £606
90th Percentile £638 £714 £700
England median daily rate £512 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -6.91% - -
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% -
75th Percentile £35.24 £34.73 -
90th Percentile £35.69 £34.89 -
England median hourly rate £42.00 £36.25 £55.00
% change year-on-year +15.85% -34.09% +22.22%

SQL Server
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Job postings citing SQL Server as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for SQL Server 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 17 September 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 17 September 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
Solihull - 6 £594 - 1
Coventry -3 5 £350 -26.32% 3
Shropshire -22 5 £440 -22.40% 2
Birmingham -16 4 £300 -47.09% 17
Warwickshire -16 3 £650 +13.04% 8
Wolverhampton - 1 £550 -
SQL Server
England

SQL Server
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 2 (7.14%) IIS
Applications
1 2 (7.14%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 1 (3.57%) SAP GRC
1 1 (3.57%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 19 (67.86%) Azure
2 6 (21.43%) AWS
3 5 (17.86%) Serverless
4 4 (14.29%) Azure API Management
4 4 (14.29%) Azure Data Factory
4 4 (14.29%) Azure DevOps
4 4 (14.29%) Azure Logic Apps
5 3 (10.71%) Azure Event Grid
5 3 (10.71%) Azure Functions
5 3 (10.71%) Azure Monitor
5 3 (10.71%) Azure Service Bus
5 3 (10.71%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 3 (10.71%) GCP
6 2 (7.14%) Amazon EC2
6 2 (7.14%) AWS Lambda
6 2 (7.14%) Microsoft 365
7 1 (3.57%) AWS KMS
7 1 (3.57%) Dynamics 365
7 1 (3.57%) Power Platform
7 1 (3.57%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 2 (7.14%) Firewall
2 1 (3.57%) DHCP
2 1 (3.57%) DNS
2 1 (3.57%) iSCSI
2 1 (3.57%) LAN
2 1 (3.57%) NAS
2 1 (3.57%) SAN
2 1 (3.57%) VLAN
2 1 (3.57%) VSAN
2 1 (3.57%) WAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 6 (21.43%) Relational Database
2 5 (17.86%) NoSQL
2 5 (17.86%) PostgreSQL
3 3 (10.71%) Data Warehouse
3 3 (10.71%) SQL Server Integration Services
4 2 (7.14%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (7.14%) Azure SQL Database
4 2 (7.14%) DB2
4 2 (7.14%) Elasticsearch
4 2 (7.14%) Tableau
5 1 (3.57%) Metadata
5 1 (3.57%) Microsoft Analysis Services
5 1 (3.57%) MySQL
5 1 (3.57%) Power BI
5 1 (3.57%) SAP HANA
5 1 (3.57%) Semantic Layer
Development Applications
1 1 (3.57%) SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)
General
1 8 (28.57%) Social Skills
2 6 (21.43%) Finance
3 5 (17.86%) Public Sector
4 3 (10.71%) Analytical Skills
5 2 (7.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 1 (3.57%) General Ledger
6 1 (3.57%) Law
6 1 (3.57%) Presentation Skills
Job Titles
1 6 (21.43%) Developer
2 4 (14.29%) Data Engineer
2 4 (14.29%) Support Engineer
3 3 (10.71%) .NET Developer
3 3 (10.71%) Analyst
3 3 (10.71%) Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Enterprise Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Enterprise Solutions Architect
3 3 (10.71%) Solutions Architect
4 2 (7.14%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Cognos Support
4 2 (7.14%) Consultant
4 2 (7.14%) DBA
4 2 (7.14%) Firewall Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Firewall Support
4 2 (7.14%) Server Engineer
4 2 (7.14%) Server Support
4 2 (7.14%) SQL DBA
4 2 (7.14%) Support Analyst
4 2 (7.14%) Windows Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (35.71%) .NET
2 5 (17.86%) Web Services
3 4 (14.29%) .NET Framework
3 4 (14.29%) RESTful
4 3 (10.71%) HTML
5 2 (7.14%) Middleware
6 1 (3.57%) ASP.NET
6 1 (3.57%) ASP.NET MVC
6 1 (3.57%) CSS
6 1 (3.57%) Entity Framework
6 1 (3.57%) JSON
6 1 (3.57%) LINQ
6 1 (3.57%) Razor View Engine
6 1 (3.57%) REST
6 1 (3.57%) SAP Basis
6 1 (3.57%) SAP Fiori
6 1 (3.57%) SOAP
6 1 (3.57%) Spring
6 1 (3.57%) Spring Boot
6 1 (3.57%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 3 (10.71%) Distributed Systems
1 3 (10.71%) PKI
2 2 (7.14%) Legacy Systems
3 1 (3.57%) Client/Server
3 1 (3.57%) Linux Command Line
3 1 (3.57%) Management Information System
3 1 (3.57%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 6 (21.43%) Windows
2 5 (17.86%) Linux
3 3 (10.71%) Windows Server
4 2 (7.14%) Unix
4 2 (7.14%) Windows 10
5 1 (3.57%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (3.57%) SUSE
5 1 (3.57%) Ubuntu
5 1 (3.57%) VMS
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (46.43%) Problem-Solving
2 9 (32.14%) DevOps
3 8 (28.57%) Agile
3 8 (28.57%) ETL
3 8 (28.57%) ITIL
3 8 (28.57%) Performance Tuning
4 7 (25.00%) CI/CD
5 6 (21.43%) Analytics
6 5 (17.86%) Disaster Recovery
6 5 (17.86%) Migration
7 4 (14.29%) Service Management
8 3 (10.71%) API Design
8 3 (10.71%) Artificial Intelligence
8 3 (10.71%) Business Intelligence
8 3 (10.71%) Change Management
8 3 (10.71%) Coaching
8 3 (10.71%) Data Integration
8 3 (10.71%) Database Security
8 3 (10.71%) Problem Management
8 3 (10.71%) TOGAF
Programming Languages
1 14 (50.00%) SQL
2 6 (21.43%) C#
3 4 (14.29%) JavaScript
3 4 (14.29%) PowerShell
4 2 (7.14%) Python
5 1 (3.57%) Java
5 1 (3.57%) Shell Script
5 1 (3.57%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 6 (21.43%) Degree
2 5 (17.86%) Security Cleared
3 2 (7.14%) ITIL Certification
3 2 (7.14%) SC Cleared
3 2 (7.14%) Tableau Certification
4 1 (3.57%) AWS Certification
4 1 (3.57%) AWS Certified SysOps Administrator
4 1 (3.57%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
4 1 (3.57%) CTC Cleared
4 1 (3.57%) DV Cleared
4 1 (3.57%) VMware Certified Professional (VCP)
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (10.71%) QA
2 2 (7.14%) Data Quality
3 1 (3.57%) Accessibility
3 1 (3.57%) GDPR
3 1 (3.57%) SLA
System Software
1 6 (21.43%) Active Directory
2 4 (14.29%) Virtual Machines
3 3 (10.71%) Hyper-V
4 2 (7.14%) Docker
4 2 (7.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 2 (7.14%) vSphere
5 1 (3.57%) VMware NSX
Systems Management
1 7 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 2 (7.14%) Grafana
2 2 (7.14%) Microsoft Intune
2 2 (7.14%) SCCM
2 2 (7.14%) SCOM
3 1 (3.57%) PowerCLI
3 1 (3.57%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 15 (53.57%) Microsoft
2 5 (17.86%) Oracle
3 4 (14.29%) VMware
4 3 (10.71%) Google
5 2 (7.14%) CheckPoint
5 2 (7.14%) Cisco
5 2 (7.14%) Cognos
5 2 (7.14%) IBM
5 2 (7.14%) Salesforce
6 1 (3.57%) Adobe
6 1 (3.57%) Ariba
6 1 (3.57%) Atlassian
6 1 (3.57%) Concur
6 1 (3.57%) iManage
6 1 (3.57%) SAP
6 1 (3.57%) Veeam