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 10 April 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
10 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 12 18
Rank change year-on-year +7 +6 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 405 145 154
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.40% 10.80% 7.99%
As % of the Programming Languages category 55.71% 43.28% 36.32%
Number of daily rates quoted 311 106 105
10th Percentile £350 £235 £259
25th Percentile £404 £394 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £472 £450
Median % change year-on-year -2.54% +4.89% -15.97%
75th Percentile £519 £575 £575
90th Percentile £575 £681 £619
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% +1.85%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 2 1
10th Percentile - £15.63 -
25th Percentile £51.25 £16.15 -
Median hourly rate £52.50 £17.59 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +198.51% -42.09% +23.33%
75th Percentile £53.75 £18.45 -
90th Percentile - £18.62 -
England median hourly rate £48.11 £52.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -8.36% +23.53% -13.26%

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 727 335 424
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.06% 24.96% 21.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 536 214 311
10th Percentile £350 £281 £260
25th Percentile £412 £406 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £477 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +0.32% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £540 £589 £575
90th Percentile £619 £689 £638
England median daily rate £501 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.42% -4.78%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 12 13
10th Percentile £43.75 £16.78 £40.10
25th Percentile £55.19 £17.00 £55.00
Median hourly rate £60.57 £20.24 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +199.25% -64.80% +127.72%
75th Percentile £70.25 £28.32 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £28.75 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -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 10 April 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 10 April 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 +4 176 £464 +0.87% 20
Birmingham -6 74 £460 -16.45% 63
Warwickshire -7 37 £414 +76.06% 21
Coventry -4 32 £407 -14.32% 7
Herefordshire 0 19 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull -5 12 £478 +13.81% 5
Worcestershire -5 7 £700 - 6
Dudley - 7 £420 - 3
Staffordshire +3 6 £450 -18.18% 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 67 (16.54%) SAS
2 36 (8.89%) WebLogic
3 15 (3.70%) Confluence
3 15 (3.70%) Tuxedo
4 13 (3.21%) Apache
5 10 (2.47%) SharePoint
6 7 (1.73%) Oracle Workflow
7 6 (1.48%) Oracle Self-Service HR
8 5 (1.23%) Apache Airflow
9 4 (0.99%) JBoss
10 3 (0.74%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.74%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.49%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.49%) Apache Spark
11 2 (0.49%) Liferay
12 1 (0.25%) Apache Geronimo
12 1 (0.25%) Apache ServiceMix
12 1 (0.25%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.25%) Red Hat Fuse
12 1 (0.25%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.23%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.74%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.25%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.48%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.99%) NEC Housing
2 4 (0.99%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.49%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.49%) Maximo
3 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.49%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.25%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.25%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.25%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.25%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.25%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.25%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.25%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 96 (23.70%) AWS
2 90 (22.22%) Azure
3 50 (12.35%) Power Platform
4 33 (8.15%) Azure DevOps
5 31 (7.65%) Amazon S3
6 22 (5.43%) Amazon EC2
6 22 (5.43%) Serverless
7 21 (5.19%) Azure Data Factory
8 20 (4.94%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 17 (4.20%) GitHub
10 15 (3.70%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (2.96%) OpenShift
11 12 (2.96%) Power Automate
12 11 (2.72%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (2.47%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (2.47%) AWS KMS
13 10 (2.47%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (2.47%) GCP
13 10 (2.47%) Route 53
14 9 (2.22%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.98%) Firewall
2 5 (1.23%) Network Security
2 5 (1.23%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.23%) WinSCP
3 4 (0.99%) DNS
4 3 (0.74%) SSL
5 2 (0.49%) DHCP
5 2 (0.49%) LAN
5 2 (0.49%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.49%) VLAN
5 2 (0.49%) VPN
5 2 (0.49%) WAN
5 2 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.25%) 4G
6 1 (0.25%) 5G
6 1 (0.25%) AMQP
6 1 (0.25%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.25%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.25%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.25%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (16.30%) Pentaho
2 48 (11.85%) Data Warehouse
3 45 (11.11%) Power BI
4 32 (7.90%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (7.16%) PostgreSQL
6 22 (5.43%) Relational Database
7 18 (4.44%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.20%) Amazon Redshift
9 16 (3.95%) MySQL
9 16 (3.95%) Oracle Database
9 16 (3.95%) Tableau
10 13 (3.21%) Metadata
11 12 (2.96%) Oracle Reports
11 12 (2.96%) SQL Server
12 10 (2.47%) Amazon Aurora
12 10 (2.47%) DynamoDB
12 10 (2.47%) NoSQL
13 9 (2.22%) Data Lake
13 9 (2.22%) Delta Lake
13 9 (2.22%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 85 (20.99%) Git
2 69 (17.04%) JIRA
3 67 (16.54%) Jenkins
4 31 (7.65%) GitLab
5 17 (4.20%) JUnit
6 13 (3.21%) Maven
6 13 (3.21%) Mockito
6 13 (3.21%) MSI
6 13 (3.21%) Postman
7 11 (2.72%) Selenium
7 11 (2.72%) Zephyr
8 10 (2.47%) SonarQube
9 7 (1.73%) Bitbucket Server
9 7 (1.73%) DbUnit
9 7 (1.73%) jMock
10 6 (1.48%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 4 (0.99%) CA Gen
11 4 (0.99%) Eclipse
11 4 (0.99%) IntelliJ
11 4 (0.99%) MLflow
General
1 95 (23.46%) Social Skills
2 74 (18.27%) Public Sector
3 61 (15.06%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (6.91%) Finance
5 12 (2.96%) Banking
6 8 (1.98%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.48%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (1.48%) Legal
7 6 (1.48%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.23%) Retail
9 4 (0.99%) Advertising
9 4 (0.99%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.74%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.74%) Marketing
10 3 (0.74%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.49%) Billing
11 2 (0.49%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.49%) Military
11 2 (0.49%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.25%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 130 (32.10%) Data Engineer
2 69 (17.04%) Developer
3 34 (8.40%) Analyst
4 32 (7.90%) Senior
5 24 (5.93%) Java Developer
6 23 (5.68%) Lead
7 17 (4.20%) Architect
7 17 (4.20%) SAS Engineer
8 16 (3.95%) Data Analyst
9 14 (3.46%) Consultant
9 14 (3.46%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (3.46%) Tester
10 12 (2.96%) Java Engineer
10 12 (2.96%) Site Engineer
10 12 (2.96%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (2.72%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 11 (2.72%) Senior Data Engineer
12 10 (2.47%) QA Tester
13 9 (2.22%) DBA
13 9 (2.22%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (9.88%) Spring
2 38 (9.38%) REST
3 36 (8.89%) Spring Boot
4 21 (5.19%) Node.js
5 20 (4.94%) Flask
6 18 (4.44%) XML
7 17 (4.20%) Hibernate
8 16 (3.95%) RESTful
8 16 (3.95%) SOAP
9 15 (3.70%) JPA
10 13 (3.21%) AngularJS
10 13 (3.21%) Spring Batch
11 12 (2.96%) Django
11 12 (2.96%) Spring Integration
11 12 (2.96%) Web Services
11 12 (2.96%) YAML
12 11 (2.72%) .NET
12 11 (2.72%) PySpark
13 10 (2.47%) ActiveMQ
13 10 (2.47%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 11 (2.72%) Cloud Native
1 11 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
2 10 (2.47%) Product Ownership
3 6 (1.48%) Legacy Systems
3 6 (1.48%) Linux Command Line
3 6 (1.48%) SCADA
4 5 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (0.99%) Clustering
5 4 (0.99%) Data Centre
5 4 (0.99%) Data Structures
5 4 (0.99%) Robotics
5 4 (0.99%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (0.74%) Analytical Mindset
6 3 (0.74%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.74%) Educational Technology
6 3 (0.74%) IoT
6 3 (0.74%) Onboarding
6 3 (0.74%) Public Cloud
7 2 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.49%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 55 (13.58%) Unix
2 42 (10.37%) Linux
3 29 (7.16%) Windows
4 6 (1.48%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (1.23%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.25%) VME
6 1 (0.25%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 144 (35.56%) CI/CD
2 137 (33.83%) ETL
3 136 (33.58%) Agile
4 106 (26.17%) DevOps
5 99 (24.44%) Analytics
6 98 (24.20%) Business Intelligence
7 93 (22.96%) Problem-Solving
8 92 (22.72%) Data Modelling
9 80 (19.75%) Scrum
10 73 (18.02%) Data Pipeline
10 73 (18.02%) Test Automation
11 71 (17.53%) Continuous Improvement
12 70 (17.28%) Data Integration
13 53 (13.09%) Migration
14 47 (11.60%) Validation
15 44 (10.86%) Data Engineering
15 44 (10.86%) Microservices
16 41 (10.12%) Data Virtualisation
16 41 (10.12%) Decision-Making
17 40 (9.88%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 79 (19.51%) Java
2 70 (17.28%) Python
3 51 (12.59%) PL/SQL
4 36 (8.89%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.69%) JavaScript
6 11 (2.72%) Go
7 10 (2.47%) Bash
8 9 (2.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (1.98%) C#
10 7 (1.73%) Bicep
11 6 (1.48%) Perl
11 6 (1.48%) Scala
12 5 (1.23%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.23%) R
13 4 (0.99%) VB
14 3 (0.74%) HiveQL
14 3 (0.74%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.49%) Kotlin
15 2 (0.49%) T-SQL
15 2 (0.49%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 208 (51.36%) Security Cleared
2 184 (45.43%) SC Cleared
3 19 (4.69%) Degree
4 17 (4.20%) ISTQB
5 14 (3.46%) DV Cleared
6 9 (2.22%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (1.98%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.48%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.48%) Master's Degree
9 5 (1.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 4 (0.99%) AWS Certification
10 4 (0.99%) Azure Certification
10 4 (0.99%) PhD
11 2 (0.49%) ISEB
11 2 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified Developer
12 1 (0.25%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 1 (0.25%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.25%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 71 (17.53%) Data Quality
2 32 (7.90%) QA
3 6 (1.48%) SLA
4 5 (1.23%) GDPR
5 4 (0.99%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.99%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.74%) FATCA
7 2 (0.49%) GRC
8 1 (0.25%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.25%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.25%) PMO
8 1 (0.25%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.25%) WCAG
System Software
1 85 (20.99%) Docker
2 11 (2.72%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.48%) Postfix
4 4 (0.99%) Oracle RAC
4 4 (0.99%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.74%) HDFS
5 3 (0.74%) Oracle Clusterware
5 3 (0.74%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.25%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 83 (20.49%) Kubernetes
2 39 (9.63%) Grafana
3 31 (7.65%) Terraform
4 22 (5.43%) Prometheus
5 17 (4.20%) Ansible
6 12 (2.96%) Progress Chef
7 6 (1.48%) Puppet
8 4 (0.99%) Kibana
9 3 (0.74%) Data Guard
9 3 (0.74%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (0.74%) Oracle RMAN
10 2 (0.49%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.25%) Control-M
11 1 (0.25%) SCCM
11 1 (0.25%) SCOM
11 1 (0.25%) WSUS
Vendors
1 139 (34.32%) Oracle
2 79 (19.51%) Talend
3 60 (14.81%) Microsoft
4 51 (12.59%) Informatica
5 47 (11.60%) Denodo
6 24 (5.93%) ServiceNow
7 20 (4.94%) Databricks
8 17 (4.20%) SAP
9 10 (2.47%) Atlassian
9 10 (2.47%) Jaspersoft
10 9 (2.22%) Fujitsu
11 8 (1.98%) Cloudera
12 7 (1.73%) Google
12 7 (1.73%) NEC
12 7 (1.73%) Sage
13 6 (1.48%) Red Hat
13 6 (1.48%) Splunk
13 6 (1.48%) webMethods
14 5 (1.23%) Dynatrace
14 5 (1.23%) VMware