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 27 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 125 60 60
Rank change year-on-year -65 0 +11
Contract jobs citing SQL Server 22 41 50
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 0.80% 2.91% 2.65%
As % of the Database & Business Intelligence category 3.90% 17.52% 18.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 20 26 42
10th Percentile £353 £397 £324
25th Percentile £390 £481 £395
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £444 £567 £438
Median % change year-on-year -21.65% +29.60% -2.78%
75th Percentile £484 £625 £638
90th Percentile £585 £700 £650
England median daily rate £480 £523 £538
% change year-on-year -8.22% -2.70% -2.27%

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 564 234 272
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 20.61% 16.63% 14.44%
Number of daily rates quoted 429 155 207
10th Percentile £357 £363 £304
25th Percentile £425 £425 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +11.11% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £581 £613
90th Percentile £645 £683 £700
England median daily rate £500 £538 £533
% change year-on-year -6.98% +0.84% -3.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 0
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £42.50 £17.00 -
Median hourly rate £45.00 £18.00 -
Median % change year-on-year +150.00% - -
75th Percentile £47.50 £19.00 -
90th Percentile - - -
England median hourly rate £53.25 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +31.48% -4.71% -24.01%

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 27 February 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 27 February 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 -43 11 £439 -22.53% 4
Coventry -20 4 £368 -26.50% 2
Birmingham -38 3 £580 +2.29% 6
Warwickshire -16 2 £500 -6.98% 4
Staffordshire -6 1 £388 +10.71% 3
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 (4.55%) Microsoft Exchange
Business Applications
1 1 (4.55%) Dynamics NAV
Cloud Services
1 6 (27.27%) Azure
2 5 (22.73%) Power Platform
3 4 (18.18%) Power Automate
3 4 (18.18%) PowerApps
4 2 (9.09%) Microsoft 365
5 1 (4.55%) Azure Data Factory
5 1 (4.55%) Azure Service Bus
5 1 (4.55%) Azure Synapse Analytics
5 1 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
5 1 (4.55%) Entra ID
5 1 (4.55%) GitHub
5 1 (4.55%) GitHub Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 2 (9.09%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (31.82%) SQL Server Reporting Services
2 6 (27.27%) MySQL
3 5 (22.73%) Data Warehouse
3 5 (22.73%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (18.18%) Power BI
4 4 (18.18%) Relational Database
5 3 (13.64%) Ingres
5 3 (13.64%) RDBMS
6 1 (4.55%) NoSQL
6 1 (4.55%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (4.55%) SQL Server Analysis Services
6 1 (4.55%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 1 (4.55%) Tableau
Development Applications
1 3 (13.64%) Git
1 3 (13.64%) Team Foundation Server
2 2 (9.09%) Oracle Forms
3 1 (4.55%) GitLab
3 1 (4.55%) JIRA
3 1 (4.55%) TeamCity
3 1 (4.55%) Visual Studio
General
1 5 (22.73%) Analytical Skills
1 5 (22.73%) Social Skills
2 3 (13.64%) Public Sector
3 1 (4.55%) Advertising
3 1 (4.55%) Police
Job Titles
1 7 (31.82%) DBA
2 6 (27.27%) Developer
3 4 (18.18%) Business Intelligence Developer
4 3 (13.64%) Administrator
4 3 (13.64%) Business Developer
4 3 (13.64%) SC Cleared DBA
5 2 (9.09%) 2nd/3rd Line Support
5 2 (9.09%) 2nd/3rd Line Support Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) 3rd Line Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) 3rd Line Support
5 2 (9.09%) 3rd Line Support Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Azure Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Data Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Firewall Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Firewall Support
5 2 (9.09%) Senior
5 2 (9.09%) Server Engineer
5 2 (9.09%) Server Support
5 2 (9.09%) SQL DBA
5 2 (9.09%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 2 (9.09%) ActiveX
1 2 (9.09%) ADO
1 2 (9.09%) COM
1 2 (9.09%) ODBC
1 2 (9.09%) REST
2 1 (4.55%) .NET
2 1 (4.55%) .NET Core
2 1 (4.55%) AngularJS
2 1 (4.55%) EDI
2 1 (4.55%) Elastic Stack
2 1 (4.55%) JDBC
2 1 (4.55%) JSP
2 1 (4.55%) LDAP
2 1 (4.55%) React
2 1 (4.55%) SailPoint
2 1 (4.55%) SAML
2 1 (4.55%) Servlets
2 1 (4.55%) Spring
2 1 (4.55%) Web Services
2 1 (4.55%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 2 (9.09%) PKI
2 1 (4.55%) Data Structures
2 1 (4.55%) Legacy Systems
2 1 (4.55%) Low-Code
2 1 (4.55%) Onboarding
2 1 (4.55%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 2 (9.09%) Windows
1 2 (9.09%) Windows 10
1 2 (9.09%) Windows Server
2 1 (4.55%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (45.45%) Problem-Solving
2 8 (36.36%) Performance Tuning
3 7 (31.82%) ETL
3 7 (31.82%) Migration
4 6 (27.27%) Data Management
4 6 (27.27%) Data Modelling
5 5 (22.73%) Business Intelligence
5 5 (22.73%) Capacity Planning
5 5 (22.73%) Data Integration
5 5 (22.73%) Data Migration
5 5 (22.73%) Database Security
6 4 (18.18%) Agile
6 4 (18.18%) Data Extraction
6 4 (18.18%) Data Governance
6 4 (18.18%) Decision-Making
6 4 (18.18%) Information Security
6 4 (18.18%) User Acceptance Testing
7 3 (13.64%) Operational Acceptance Testing
7 3 (13.64%) Runbook
7 3 (13.64%) System Integration Testing
Programming Languages
1 7 (31.82%) SQL
2 2 (9.09%) PowerShell
2 2 (9.09%) Python
2 2 (9.09%) VB
2 2 (9.09%) VB6
3 1 (4.55%) C#
3 1 (4.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
3 1 (4.55%) Java
3 1 (4.55%) JavaScript
3 1 (4.55%) PL/SQL
Qualifications
1 6 (27.27%) Security Cleared
2 5 (22.73%) SC Cleared
3 4 (18.18%) Microsoft Certification
3 4 (18.18%) OCP
3 4 (18.18%) Oracle Certification
4 2 (9.09%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (18.18%) QA
2 1 (4.55%) GDPR
System Software
1 3 (13.64%) Active Directory
2 2 (9.09%) Hyper-V
2 2 (9.09%) VMware Infrastructure
2 2 (9.09%) vSphere
Systems Management
1 2 (9.09%) Microsoft Intune
1 2 (9.09%) SCCM
1 2 (9.09%) SCOM
Vendors
1 15 (68.18%) Microsoft
2 8 (36.36%) Oracle
3 2 (9.09%) Actian
3 2 (9.09%) CheckPoint
3 2 (9.09%) VMware
4 1 (4.55%) Okta
4 1 (4.55%) SAP
4 1 (4.55%) ServiceNow