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 19 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 109 73 70
Rank change year-on-year -36 -3 -20
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 57 32 43
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.66% 1.97% 2.14%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 7.96% 11.59% 14.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 21 26
10th Percentile £306 £350 £351
25th Percentile £425 £420 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £473 £575 £493
Median % change year-on-year -17.74% +16.75% -6.19%
75th Percentile £603 £613 £638
90th Percentile £638 £663 £703
England median daily rate £489 £509 £503
% change year-on-year -3.93% +1.09% -4.14%

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 716 276 297
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 20.87% 16.96% 14.81%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 177 211
10th Percentile £352 £275 £310
25th Percentile £413 £400 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year -0.63% +5.56% -13.46%
75th Percentile £573 £575 £606
90th Percentile £670 £631 £725
England median daily rate £500 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 5 2
10th Percentile £21.25 £16.67 £34.59
25th Percentile £25.79 £18.74 £35.57
Median hourly rate £45.00 £29.33 £37.22
Median % change year-on-year +53.43% -21.19% +47.39%
75th Percentile £58.75 £33.88 £38.86
90th Percentile £74.88 £34.54 £39.84
England median hourly rate £39.50 £34.58 £40.00
% change year-on-year +14.24% -13.56% -29.76%

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 19 July 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 19 July 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 -42 16 £450 +2.27% 2
Birmingham -13 15 £625 +8.70% 4
Warwickshire -13 10 £575 -6.12% 1
Coventry -17 9 £313 -32.07% 2
Solihull -21 3 £492 -17.21% 3
Herefordshire - 2 - -
Worcestershire - 1 £450 - 8
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 11 (19.30%) SharePoint
2 5 (8.77%) Tuxedo
3 1 (1.75%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.75%) IIS
3 1 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
3 1 (1.75%) Oracle SOA Suite
3 1 (1.75%) Oracle Workflow
Applications
1 2 (3.51%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 7 (12.28%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.75%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
2 1 (1.75%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 32 (56.14%) Azure
2 9 (15.79%) AWS
3 8 (14.04%) Power Automate
4 7 (12.28%) Azure DevOps
4 7 (12.28%) Dynamics 365
5 6 (10.53%) GitHub
5 6 (10.53%) GitHub Copilot
6 5 (8.77%) Serverless
7 4 (7.02%) Azure Functions
7 4 (7.02%) PaaS
7 4 (7.02%) Power Platform
8 3 (5.26%) Azure Data Factory
9 2 (3.51%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 2 (3.51%) PowerApps
10 1 (1.75%) Amazon EMR
10 1 (1.75%) Azure Service Bus
10 1 (1.75%) dbt
10 1 (1.75%) GCP
10 1 (1.75%) Microsoft Purview
10 1 (1.75%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 19 (33.33%) PostgreSQL
2 11 (19.30%) MySQL
2 11 (19.30%) Relational Database
3 10 (17.54%) RDBMS
4 8 (14.04%) Ingres
5 5 (8.77%) Azure SQL Database
5 5 (8.77%) Data Warehouse
6 4 (7.02%) Power BI
6 4 (7.02%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (3.51%) Data Lake
7 2 (3.51%) NoSQL
7 2 (3.51%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 1 (1.75%) Amazon Athena
8 1 (1.75%) Delta Lake
8 1 (1.75%) Elasticsearch
8 1 (1.75%) Metadata
8 1 (1.75%) Oracle Database
8 1 (1.75%) Oracle Database 12c
8 1 (1.75%) Power Query
8 1 (1.75%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 9 (15.79%) Git
2 8 (14.04%) Team Foundation Server
3 7 (12.28%) Cypress.io
3 7 (12.28%) Oracle Forms
3 7 (12.28%) Postman
3 7 (12.28%) Selenium
3 7 (12.28%) WebDriver
4 4 (7.02%) Cucumber
5 3 (5.26%) Protractor
6 1 (1.75%) JIRA
6 1 (1.75%) MLflow
6 1 (1.75%) Visual Studio
General
1 20 (35.09%) Social Skills
2 16 (28.07%) Public Sector
3 12 (21.05%) Analytical Skills
4 8 (14.04%) Finance
5 7 (12.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
6 2 (3.51%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.75%) Advertising
7 1 (1.75%) Law
7 1 (1.75%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.75%) Police
7 1 (1.75%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 16 (28.07%) Senior
2 12 (21.05%) DBA
3 8 (14.04%) Administrator
3 8 (14.04%) SharePoint Engineer
4 7 (12.28%) Analyst
4 7 (12.28%) Test Analyst
5 6 (10.53%) Developer
6 5 (8.77%) Data Engineer
6 5 (8.77%) Database Engineer
6 5 (8.77%) Lead
6 5 (8.77%) SC Cleared DBA
7 4 (7.02%) Lead Test Analyst
7 4 (7.02%) Oracle Database Engineer
7 4 (7.02%) Senior Analyst
7 4 (7.02%) Senior Data Engineer
7 4 (7.02%) Senior Developer
7 4 (7.02%) Senior Test Analyst
7 4 (7.02%) Test Leader
8 3 (5.26%) Architect
8 3 (5.26%) SQL DBA
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (12.28%) ADO
1 7 (12.28%) COM
1 7 (12.28%) Gherkin
1 7 (12.28%) ODBC
2 6 (10.53%) .NET
3 3 (5.26%) JSON
3 3 (5.26%) REST
3 3 (5.26%) XML
3 3 (5.26%) XSLT
4 2 (3.51%) .NET Framework
4 2 (3.51%) ActiveX
4 2 (3.51%) PySpark
5 1 (1.75%) .NET Core
5 1 (1.75%) AngularJS
5 1 (1.75%) Itk
5 1 (1.75%) LDAP
5 1 (1.75%) React
5 1 (1.75%) SailPoint
5 1 (1.75%) SAML
5 1 (1.75%) Spring
Miscellaneous
1 6 (10.53%) Low-Code
2 4 (7.02%) Management Information System
2 4 (7.02%) Virtual Team
3 3 (5.26%) Taxonomies
4 1 (1.75%) Algorithms
4 1 (1.75%) Data Centre
4 1 (1.75%) Enterprise Storage
4 1 (1.75%) Legacy Systems
4 1 (1.75%) Onboarding
4 1 (1.75%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.75%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 1 (1.75%) AIX
1 1 (1.75%) Linux
1 1 (1.75%) Solaris
1 1 (1.75%) VMS
1 1 (1.75%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 20 (35.09%) Agile
2 16 (28.07%) Problem-Solving
3 14 (24.56%) DevOps
3 14 (24.56%) Technical Leadership
4 13 (22.81%) Migration
4 13 (22.81%) Performance Tuning
5 11 (19.30%) Continuous Improvement
5 11 (19.30%) Data Management
5 11 (19.30%) Data Migration
5 11 (19.30%) Database Security
5 11 (19.30%) User Acceptance Testing
6 10 (17.54%) Data Modelling
6 10 (17.54%) Test Automation
7 9 (15.79%) Capacity Planning
7 9 (15.79%) Data Protection
7 9 (15.79%) Validation
8 8 (14.04%) Mentoring
8 8 (14.04%) Operational Acceptance Testing
8 8 (14.04%) Runbook
8 8 (14.04%) System Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 26 (45.61%) SQL
2 7 (12.28%) C#
2 7 (12.28%) VB
2 7 (12.28%) VB6
3 5 (8.77%) Python
4 4 (7.02%) C
4 4 (7.02%) JavaScript
5 2 (3.51%) Java
5 2 (3.51%) PowerShell
5 2 (3.51%) T-SQL
6 1 (1.75%) Bicep
6 1 (1.75%) C++
6 1 (1.75%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 13 (22.81%) Security Cleared
2 12 (21.05%) Microsoft Certification
2 12 (21.05%) SC Cleared
3 8 (14.04%) OCP
3 8 (14.04%) Oracle Certification
4 7 (12.28%) ISTQB
5 3 (5.26%) Degree
5 3 (5.26%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (3.51%) ITIL Certification
7 1 (1.75%) AWS Certification
7 1 (1.75%) Azure Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (22.81%) QA
2 8 (14.04%) GDPR
3 7 (12.28%) Accessibility
3 7 (12.28%) WCAG
4 2 (3.51%) Data Quality
5 1 (1.75%) ISO 22301
5 1 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 2 (3.51%) Oracle RAC
2 1 (1.75%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.75%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.75%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 2 (3.51%) Kubernetes
2 1 (1.75%) Data Guard
2 1 (1.75%) Oracle RMAN
2 1 (1.75%) PowerCLI
2 1 (1.75%) Single Sign-On
2 1 (1.75%) Terraform
Vendors
1 27 (47.37%) Microsoft
2 25 (43.86%) Oracle
3 7 (12.28%) Actian
4 3 (5.26%) Databricks
5 2 (3.51%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.75%) Cisco
6 1 (1.75%) Dell
6 1 (1.75%) EMC
6 1 (1.75%) IBM
6 1 (1.75%) Isilon
6 1 (1.75%) Okta
6 1 (1.75%) SAP
6 1 (1.75%) Sparx
6 1 (1.75%) SYSPRO
6 1 (1.75%) VMware