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 26 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 12 18
Rank change year-on-year +6 +6 -9
Contract jobs citing SQL 374 140 160
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.02% 10.61% 8.14%
As % of the Programming Languages category 52.68% 43.34% 36.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 287 100 107
10th Percentile £334 £235 £259
25th Percentile £404 £393 £316
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £476 £425
Median % change year-on-year -2.31% +12.00% -19.81%
75th Percentile £525 £581 £575
90th Percentile £575 £700 £625
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 1
Median hourly rate - £17.59 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year - -42.09% +23.33%
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -15.00%

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 710 323 443
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.71% 24.49% 22.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 205 319
10th Percentile £350 £302 £260
25th Percentile £413 £408 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.68% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £689 £650
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.42% -5.61%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 11 14
10th Percentile £41.38 £16.75 £17.90
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.00 £32.78
Median hourly rate £60.57 £20.24 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +199.25% -64.02% +91.86%
75th Percentile £75.08 £28.47 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £28.75 £68.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -4.38%

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 26 March 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
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 26 March 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 +4 153 £465 +0.54% 20
Birmingham -9 71 £475 -13.64% 63
Warwickshire -7 36 £413 +32.53% 21
Coventry -3 32 £407 -14.32% 7
Herefordshire -1 20 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull -6 11 £478 +13.81% 5
Worcestershire -7 9 £700 - 6
Dudley - 7 £420 - 3
Staffordshire -8 4 £463 +27.59% 12
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 4
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 57 (15.24%) SAS
2 36 (9.63%) WebLogic
3 15 (4.01%) Apache
3 15 (4.01%) Confluence
3 15 (4.01%) Tuxedo
4 10 (2.67%) SharePoint
5 6 (1.60%) Apache Airflow
6 4 (1.07%) JBoss
7 3 (0.80%) Jupyter
7 3 (0.80%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.80%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 3 (0.80%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.53%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.53%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.53%) Liferay
9 1 (0.27%) Apache ServiceMix
9 1 (0.27%) CMS
9 1 (0.27%) Drupal
9 1 (0.27%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.94%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.80%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.07%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.07%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.80%) Oracle HRMS
3 2 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.53%) Maximo
3 2 (0.53%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.53%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.27%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.27%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.27%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.27%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 93 (24.87%) AWS
2 92 (24.60%) Azure
3 47 (12.57%) Power Platform
4 34 (9.09%) Azure DevOps
5 28 (7.49%) Amazon S3
6 25 (6.68%) Serverless
7 20 (5.35%) Azure Data Factory
8 19 (5.08%) Amazon EC2
8 19 (5.08%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 18 (4.81%) GitHub
10 16 (4.28%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (3.48%) GCP
12 12 (3.21%) OpenShift
13 11 (2.94%) Power Automate
14 10 (2.67%) AWS Lambda
15 9 (2.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
16 8 (2.14%) AWS KMS
16 8 (2.14%) Azure Key Vault
16 8 (2.14%) Route 53
16 8 (2.14%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.14%) Firewall
2 5 (1.34%) Network Security
3 4 (1.07%) DNS
4 3 (0.80%) SSL
5 2 (0.53%) DHCP
5 2 (0.53%) LAN
5 2 (0.53%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.53%) VLAN
5 2 (0.53%) VPN
5 2 (0.53%) WAN
5 2 (0.53%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.27%) 4G
6 1 (0.27%) AMQP
6 1 (0.27%) BGP
6 1 (0.27%) Internet
6 1 (0.27%) MPLS
6 1 (0.27%) OSPF
6 1 (0.27%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.27%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.27%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (16.31%) Pentaho
2 42 (11.23%) Power BI
3 37 (9.89%) Data Warehouse
4 30 (8.02%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (7.75%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (5.35%) Relational Database
7 19 (5.08%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.55%) Oracle Database
9 15 (4.01%) Amazon Redshift
10 14 (3.74%) MySQL
11 13 (3.48%) NoSQL
11 13 (3.48%) Tableau
12 11 (2.94%) Oracle Reports
13 8 (2.14%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (2.14%) BigQuery
13 8 (2.14%) DynamoDB
13 8 (2.14%) SQL Server
14 7 (1.87%) Delta Lake
14 7 (1.87%) Metadata
14 7 (1.87%) Redis
Development Applications
1 79 (21.12%) Git
2 65 (17.38%) Jenkins
3 63 (16.84%) JIRA
4 27 (7.22%) GitLab
5 15 (4.01%) JUnit
6 13 (3.48%) MSI
7 11 (2.94%) Maven
7 11 (2.94%) Mockito
8 10 (2.67%) Postman
8 10 (2.67%) Selenium
9 9 (2.41%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.14%) SonarQube
11 6 (1.60%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 6 (1.60%) Bitbucket Server
11 6 (1.60%) DbUnit
11 6 (1.60%) jMock
12 4 (1.07%) CA Gen
12 4 (1.07%) Eclipse
12 4 (1.07%) IntelliJ
12 4 (1.07%) Toad
General
1 89 (23.80%) Social Skills
2 69 (18.45%) Public Sector
3 55 (14.71%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (8.02%) Finance
5 14 (3.74%) Banking
6 8 (2.14%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.60%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (1.60%) Legal
7 6 (1.60%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.07%) Advertising
8 4 (1.07%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.07%) Retail
9 3 (0.80%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.80%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.80%) Marketing
10 2 (0.53%) Billing
10 2 (0.53%) Financial Institution
10 2 (0.53%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.53%) Military
10 2 (0.53%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 105 (28.07%) Data Engineer
2 67 (17.91%) Developer
3 34 (9.09%) Analyst
4 28 (7.49%) Senior
5 25 (6.68%) Lead
6 21 (5.61%) Java Developer
7 17 (4.55%) Architect
8 16 (4.28%) Data Analyst
9 14 (3.74%) Consultant
9 14 (3.74%) Full-Stack Developer
10 13 (3.48%) SAS Engineer
11 12 (3.21%) Java Engineer
11 12 (3.21%) Site Engineer
11 12 (3.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 12 (3.21%) Tester
12 11 (2.94%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 10 (2.67%) Software Engineer
14 9 (2.41%) DBA
14 9 (2.41%) QA Tester
14 9 (2.41%) Senior Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (10.70%) Spring
2 37 (9.89%) REST
3 34 (9.09%) Spring Boot
4 22 (5.88%) Flask
5 20 (5.35%) Node.js
6 18 (4.81%) XML
7 16 (4.28%) RESTful
8 15 (4.01%) Hibernate
9 14 (3.74%) SOAP
10 13 (3.48%) JPA
11 12 (3.21%) Django
11 12 (3.21%) Spring Batch
11 12 (3.21%) YAML
12 11 (2.94%) AngularJS
13 10 (2.67%) .NET
13 10 (2.67%) FastAPI
13 10 (2.67%) Spring Integration
13 10 (2.67%) Web Services
14 9 (2.41%) JSON
15 8 (2.14%) HTML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (4.01%) Cloud Native
2 11 (2.94%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.67%) Product Ownership
4 6 (1.60%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (1.60%) SCADA
5 5 (1.34%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.34%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (1.34%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.07%) Clustering
6 4 (1.07%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.07%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.07%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.07%) Robotics
7 3 (0.80%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (0.80%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.80%) IoT
7 3 (0.80%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.53%) Derivative
8 2 (0.53%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.53%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 39 (10.43%) Linux
1 39 (10.43%) Unix
2 29 (7.75%) Windows
3 6 (1.60%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.27%) VME
5 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (37.17%) CI/CD
2 124 (33.16%) Agile
3 118 (31.55%) ETL
4 102 (27.27%) DevOps
5 93 (24.87%) Analytics
6 88 (23.53%) Problem-Solving
7 84 (22.46%) Business Intelligence
8 82 (21.93%) Data Modelling
9 72 (19.25%) Scrum
10 68 (18.18%) Test Automation
11 65 (17.38%) Continuous Improvement
11 65 (17.38%) Data Pipeline
12 64 (17.11%) Data Integration
13 44 (11.76%) Microservices
13 44 (11.76%) Migration
14 42 (11.23%) Validation
15 40 (10.70%) Data Engineering
16 39 (10.43%) Decision-Making
17 38 (10.16%) Data Analytics
18 37 (9.89%) Data Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 80 (21.39%) Java
2 69 (18.45%) Python
3 42 (11.23%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.22%) Shell Script
5 19 (5.08%) JavaScript
6 14 (3.74%) Go
7 9 (2.41%) Bash
7 9 (2.41%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.41%) Scala
8 7 (1.87%) Bicep
8 7 (1.87%) C#
9 6 (1.60%) Perl
10 5 (1.34%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.34%) R
11 4 (1.07%) VB
12 3 (0.80%) HiveQL
12 3 (0.80%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.53%) COBOL
13 2 (0.53%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.53%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 184 (49.20%) Security Cleared
2 163 (43.58%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.35%) Degree
4 15 (4.01%) DV Cleared
4 15 (4.01%) ISTQB
5 8 (2.14%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.14%) Microsoft Certification
6 7 (1.87%) Computer Science Degree
6 7 (1.87%) Master's Degree
7 6 (1.60%) AWS Certification
8 5 (1.34%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 4 (1.07%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.07%) PhD
10 2 (0.53%) ISEB
10 2 (0.53%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 2 (0.53%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.27%) ACCA
11 1 (0.27%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.27%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (18.18%) Data Quality
2 28 (7.49%) QA
3 5 (1.34%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.34%) SLA
4 4 (1.07%) GDPR
5 3 (0.80%) FATCA
5 3 (0.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.53%) GRC
7 1 (0.27%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.27%) PMO
7 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 82 (21.93%) Docker
2 11 (2.94%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.34%) Postfix
4 4 (1.07%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.80%) HDFS
5 3 (0.80%) Oracle Clusterware
5 3 (0.80%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.80%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.27%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 84 (22.46%) Kubernetes
2 39 (10.43%) Grafana
3 30 (8.02%) Terraform
4 24 (6.42%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.35%) Ansible
6 12 (3.21%) Progress Chef
7 6 (1.60%) Puppet
8 5 (1.34%) Kibana
9 4 (1.07%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.80%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.80%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.53%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.53%) HP Quality Center
11 2 (0.53%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.27%) Control-M
12 1 (0.27%) SCCM
12 1 (0.27%) SCOM
12 1 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 116 (31.02%) Oracle
2 70 (18.72%) Talend
3 58 (15.51%) Microsoft
4 41 (10.96%) Informatica
5 37 (9.89%) Denodo
6 24 (6.42%) ServiceNow
7 17 (4.55%) Databricks
8 15 (4.01%) SAP
9 9 (2.41%) Fujitsu
9 9 (2.41%) Google
10 8 (2.14%) Atlassian
10 8 (2.14%) Jaspersoft
10 8 (2.14%) Splunk
11 7 (1.87%) Cloudera
11 7 (1.87%) NEC
11 7 (1.87%) Sage
12 6 (1.60%) Dynatrace
12 6 (1.60%) Red Hat
12 6 (1.60%) webMethods
13 5 (1.34%) VMware