SQL Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

SQL (Structured Query Language)
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring SQL skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 6 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 11 20
Rank change year-on-year +4 +9 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 441 201 124
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.65% 11.99% 6.67%
As % of the Programming Languages category 55.96% 48.32% 31.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 339 132 84
10th Percentile £358 £235 £310
25th Percentile £406 £397 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £452 £425
Median % change year-on-year +1.66% +6.24% -15.00%
75th Percentile £500 £538 £575
90th Percentile £575 £625 £626
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 19 2
10th Percentile - £30.88 £30.73
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £31.26
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +55.52% +27.33%
75th Percentile £53.75 - £33.04
90th Percentile £57.35 - £33.57
England median hourly rate £45.00 £37.25 £41.50
% change year-on-year +20.81% -10.24% -9.55%

All Programming Languages
West Midlands

SQL falls under the Programming Languages category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring coding skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for coding skills 788 416 391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.60% 24.82% 21.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 577 262 270
10th Percentile £363 £256 £313
25th Percentile £413 £388 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £475
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% -3.16% -5.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £575
90th Percentile £641 £613 £650
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 22 10
10th Percentile £21.25 £28.18 £33.57
25th Percentile £29.38 £33.91 £40.13
Median hourly rate £58.00 £50.00 £55.63
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -10.11% +125.89%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.13
90th Percentile - - £60.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

SQL
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing SQL relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

SQL job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

SQL
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SQL.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SQL

SQL
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing SQL in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for SQL in the West Midlands

SQL
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SQL.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing SQL

SQL
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing SQL in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 6 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for SQL in the West Midlands

SQL
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 within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 6 August 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 +2 196 £459 -11.69% 21
Birmingham +1 61 £475 - 43
Warwickshire -14 58 £500 +17.65% 15
Coventry 0 46 £407 +30.24% 12
Solihull -20 16 £528 +25.71% 6
Worcestershire +8 10 £425 -39.29% 8
Staffordshire +1 9 £431 - 20
Dudley - 8 £410 - 3
Herefordshire -4 4 £700 +75.00% 5
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 4
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wednesbury - 1 - -
SQL
England

SQL
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 62 (14.06%) SAS
2 31 (7.03%) Confluence
3 21 (4.76%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.95%) Tuxedo
5 7 (1.59%) Oracle Workflow
6 6 (1.36%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 4 (0.91%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.91%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.45%) Apache
10 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.23%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.23%) IIS
10 1 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 11 (2.49%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.13%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.68%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.45%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (3.17%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.36%) Oracle HRMS
3 2 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.23%) NEC Housing
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.23%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 126 (28.57%) AWS
2 112 (25.40%) Azure
3 68 (15.42%) Power Platform
4 41 (9.30%) Azure Data Factory
4 41 (9.30%) Azure DevOps
5 30 (6.80%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 26 (5.90%) Amazon S3
7 22 (4.99%) Serverless
8 20 (4.54%) Snowflake
9 19 (4.31%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 19 (4.31%) Amazon EC2
10 18 (4.08%) GitHub
11 15 (3.40%) Amazon SQS
11 15 (3.40%) AWS KMS
11 15 (3.40%) Route 53
12 13 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (2.95%) Microsoft Purview
13 12 (2.72%) Matillion
14 10 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
15 9 (2.04%) Azure Functions
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.04%) Firewall
2 7 (1.59%) SNMP
3 5 (1.13%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.13%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.68%) DNS
4 3 (0.68%) SSL
5 2 (0.45%) DHCP
5 2 (0.45%) LAN
5 2 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.45%) VLAN
5 2 (0.45%) VPN
5 2 (0.45%) WAN
5 2 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.23%) 4G
6 1 (0.23%) Internet
6 1 (0.23%) MPLS
6 1 (0.23%) Network Security
6 1 (0.23%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.23%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.23%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 81 (18.37%) Data Warehouse
1 81 (18.37%) Pentaho
2 66 (14.97%) Power BI
3 34 (7.71%) PostgreSQL
4 25 (5.67%) Amazon RDS
5 23 (5.22%) Oracle Database
6 22 (4.99%) Oracle Reports
6 22 (4.99%) SQL Server
7 19 (4.31%) Azure SQL Database
7 19 (4.31%) DynamoDB
7 19 (4.31%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 19 (4.31%) Tableau
8 18 (4.08%) Data Lake
9 17 (3.85%) Amazon Redshift
10 15 (3.40%) Amazon Aurora
10 15 (3.40%) BusinessObjects
10 15 (3.40%) Delta Lake
10 15 (3.40%) Metadata
10 15 (3.40%) Relational Database
11 13 (2.95%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 97 (22.00%) Git
2 77 (17.46%) JIRA
3 66 (14.97%) GitLab
4 53 (12.02%) Jenkins
5 26 (5.90%) Maven
6 24 (5.44%) Postman
7 23 (5.22%) Zephyr
8 20 (4.54%) JUnit
9 18 (4.08%) Mockito
10 16 (3.63%) SonarQube
11 11 (2.49%) Artifactory
11 11 (2.49%) Bitbucket Server
11 11 (2.49%) DbUnit
11 11 (2.49%) jMock
12 7 (1.59%) Selenium
13 5 (1.13%) MLflow
13 5 (1.13%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (1.13%) Team Foundation Server
14 4 (0.91%) CA Gen
14 4 (0.91%) TestRail
General
1 102 (23.13%) Social Skills
2 84 (19.05%) Public Sector
3 71 (16.10%) Analytical Skills
4 39 (8.84%) Finance
5 10 (2.27%) Banking
5 10 (2.27%) Manufacturing
6 7 (1.59%) Marketing
6 7 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
7 5 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (0.91%) Advertising
8 4 (0.91%) Retail
9 3 (0.68%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.68%) Military
9 3 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.45%) Billing
10 2 (0.45%) Front Office
10 2 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.45%) Legal
11 1 (0.23%) Local Government
11 1 (0.23%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 187 (42.40%) Data Engineer
2 73 (16.55%) Developer
3 56 (12.70%) Senior
4 36 (8.16%) Analyst
5 32 (7.26%) Java Developer
6 31 (7.03%) Senior Data Engineer
7 20 (4.54%) Tester
8 16 (3.63%) QA Tester
9 14 (3.17%) Architect
9 14 (3.17%) AWS Engineer
9 14 (3.17%) Lead
10 13 (2.95%) AWS Data Engineer
10 13 (2.95%) Data Analyst
11 11 (2.49%) Azure Engineer
11 11 (2.49%) Full-Stack Developer
11 11 (2.49%) SAS Engineer
12 10 (2.27%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 10 (2.27%) Software Engineer
12 10 (2.27%) SQL Developer
12 10 (2.27%) Test Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (7.26%) Spring Boot
2 31 (7.03%) Spring
3 27 (6.12%) REST
4 22 (4.99%) Node.js
5 20 (4.54%) JPA
6 19 (4.31%) PySpark
7 18 (4.08%) SOAP
8 17 (3.85%) Hibernate
8 17 (3.85%) Spring Batch
8 17 (3.85%) Spring Integration
8 17 (3.85%) Web Services
9 15 (3.40%) ActiveMQ
9 15 (3.40%) AngularJS
10 14 (3.17%) Flask
10 14 (3.17%) Spring Cloud
11 11 (2.49%) Bootstrap
11 11 (2.49%) Django
11 11 (2.49%) PowerMock
11 11 (2.49%) RESTful
11 11 (2.49%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 18 (4.08%) Cloud Native
2 13 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
3 12 (2.72%) Linux Command Line
4 11 (2.49%) Legacy Systems
4 11 (2.49%) SCADA
5 7 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
6 5 (1.13%) IoT
6 5 (1.13%) Low-Code
7 4 (0.91%) Onboarding
7 4 (0.91%) Product Ownership
7 4 (0.91%) Robotics
7 4 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (0.68%) Data Centre
8 3 (0.68%) Data Fabric
8 3 (0.68%) Data Structures
9 2 (0.45%) BYOD
9 2 (0.45%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.45%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.45%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (0.45%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 57 (12.93%) Unix
2 46 (10.43%) Linux
3 24 (5.44%) Windows
4 7 (1.59%) Windows Server
5 3 (0.68%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.23%) AIX
6 1 (0.23%) HPUX
6 1 (0.23%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 189 (42.86%) ETL
2 160 (36.28%) Agile
3 141 (31.97%) Data Modelling
4 121 (27.44%) CI/CD
5 112 (25.40%) Data Pipeline
6 108 (24.49%) Business Intelligence
7 107 (24.26%) Analytics
8 104 (23.58%) Test Automation
9 92 (20.86%) DevOps
9 92 (20.86%) Problem-Solving
10 86 (19.50%) Data Integration
11 74 (16.78%) Scrum
12 72 (16.33%) Migration
13 70 (15.87%) Data Engineering
14 61 (13.83%) Validation
15 58 (13.15%) Continuous Improvement
16 53 (12.02%) Decision-Making
17 43 (9.75%) Data Migration
18 42 (9.52%) AI
19 35 (7.94%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 87 (19.73%) Python
2 65 (14.74%) PL/SQL
3 59 (13.38%) Java
4 23 (5.22%) Shell Script
5 16 (3.63%) Bash
6 14 (3.17%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.95%) C
8 12 (2.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 9 (2.04%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.81%) ProC
11 6 (1.36%) Bicep
11 6 (1.36%) VB
11 6 (1.36%) VB6
12 5 (1.13%) C#
13 4 (0.91%) Go
14 3 (0.68%) HiveQL
14 3 (0.68%) Perl
14 3 (0.68%) PowerShell
14 3 (0.68%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.45%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 238 (53.97%) Security Cleared
2 212 (48.07%) SC Cleared
3 30 (6.80%) ISTQB
4 21 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.49%) Degree
6 6 (1.36%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.13%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.13%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
8 4 (0.91%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.91%) ISEB
8 4 (0.91%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.91%) PhD
9 1 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.23%) MCSE
9 1 (0.23%) OCP
9 1 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (15.65%) Data Quality
2 47 (10.66%) QA
3 9 (2.04%) SLA
4 7 (1.59%) GDPR
5 6 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.91%) FATCA
7 2 (0.45%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.45%) GRC
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 54 (12.24%) Docker
2 9 (2.04%) Active Directory
2 9 (2.04%) Postfix
3 5 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.68%) HDFS
4 3 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
5 1 (0.23%) Hyper-V
5 1 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 47 (10.66%) Kubernetes
2 30 (6.80%) Grafana
3 18 (4.08%) Terraform
4 8 (1.81%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.59%) WMI
6 4 (0.91%) Ansible
7 3 (0.68%) Kibana
8 2 (0.45%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
8 2 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.23%) HP Quality Center
9 1 (0.23%) SCCM
9 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 179 (40.59%) Oracle
2 97 (22.00%) Talend
3 71 (16.10%) Informatica
4 68 (15.42%) Microsoft
5 54 (12.24%) Denodo
6 42 (9.52%) Databricks
7 29 (6.58%) ServiceNow
8 19 (4.31%) SAP
9 15 (3.40%) Jaspersoft
10 14 (3.17%) Atlassian
11 11 (2.49%) Cloudera
12 10 (2.27%) Sage
13 9 (2.04%) Cisco
14 8 (1.81%) Fortinet
14 8 (1.81%) Splunk
15 7 (1.59%) F5
15 7 (1.59%) Palo Alto
15 7 (1.59%) SolarWinds
16 6 (1.36%) VMware
17 5 (1.13%) Google