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

6 months to
19 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 13 18
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 -11
Contract jobs citing SQL 308 155 152
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.70% 10.71% 8.09%
As % of the Programming Languages category 47.60% 42.47% 36.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 226 103 104
10th Percentile £358 £335 £259
25th Percentile £420 £425 £300
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £488 £495 £438
Median % change year-on-year -1.52% +13.14% -17.45%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £655 £625
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 0
Median hourly rate £50.00 £60.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% - -
England median hourly rate £49.36 £55.25 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.66% +30.00% -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 647 365 416
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.57% 25.22% 22.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 457 218 299
10th Percentile £365 £341 £260
25th Percentile £429 £409 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.15% +8.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £700 £665
England median daily rate £507 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.52% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 9 12
10th Percentile - £16.95 £17.50
25th Percentile £50.00 £17.00 £17.69
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £53.75
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -62.34% +144.32%
75th Percentile £59.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £54.00 £71.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £61.05
% change year-on-year +3.17% +3.19% -6.08%

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 19 February 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 19 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 +2 123 £472 -3.67% 34
Birmingham -11 71 £488 -11.36% 56
Warwickshire -11 32 £500 - 20
Herefordshire -1 22 £550 -21.43% 4
Coventry -18 17 £407 -9.56% 14
Solihull -3 8 £510 +4.29% 8
Worcestershire -10 8 £675 -3.57% 7
Staffordshire -9 3 £463 +1.37% 19
Dudley - 2 £420 - 2
Brierley Hill - 2 £446 - 3
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 5
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 41 (13.31%) WebLogic
2 40 (12.99%) SAS
3 22 (7.14%) Apache
4 15 (4.87%) Confluence
5 9 (2.92%) SharePoint
5 9 (2.92%) Tuxedo
6 8 (2.60%) JBoss
7 6 (1.95%) Apache Airflow
8 4 (1.30%) nginx
9 2 (0.65%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.65%) Apache Pig
9 2 (0.65%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.65%) CMS
9 2 (0.65%) Liferay
10 1 (0.32%) Apache Geronimo
10 1 (0.32%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.32%) Red Hat Fuse
10 1 (0.32%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.32%) WebSphere
Applications
1 14 (4.55%) Microsoft Excel
2 4 (1.30%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 3 (0.97%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.65%) Maya
4 2 (0.65%) Microsoft Project
4 2 (0.65%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.65%) NUKE
5 1 (0.32%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.32%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 4 (1.30%) NEC Housing
2 3 (0.97%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.97%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.97%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.65%) Maximo
3 2 (0.65%) Primavera
3 2 (0.65%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.32%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.32%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.32%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.32%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.32%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.32%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 84 (27.27%) AWS
2 80 (25.97%) Azure
3 32 (10.39%) Serverless
4 29 (9.42%) Azure DevOps
4 29 (9.42%) Power Platform
5 26 (8.44%) Amazon S3
6 22 (7.14%) GCP
7 18 (5.84%) Amazon EC2
8 15 (4.87%) GitHub
9 13 (4.22%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (3.90%) Azure Data Factory
10 12 (3.90%) OpenShift
11 11 (3.57%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 10 (3.25%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (3.25%) Power Automate
13 8 (2.60%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (2.60%) Cloud Computing
13 8 (2.60%) PowerApps
14 7 (2.27%) Microsoft 365
14 7 (2.27%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 6 (1.95%) DNS
2 5 (1.62%) Firewall
3 4 (1.30%) FTP
3 4 (1.30%) HTTP
3 4 (1.30%) IMAP
3 4 (1.30%) Network Security
3 4 (1.30%) OpenLDAP
3 4 (1.30%) SMTP
3 4 (1.30%) SSH
4 1 (0.32%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 45 (14.61%) Pentaho
2 32 (10.39%) PostgreSQL
3 28 (9.09%) Amazon RDS
4 26 (8.44%) Relational Database
5 24 (7.79%) Power BI
6 23 (7.47%) MongoDB
7 17 (5.52%) Oracle Database
8 15 (4.87%) MySQL
9 13 (4.22%) Data Warehouse
10 11 (3.57%) NoSQL
11 9 (2.92%) Redis
12 8 (2.60%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (2.60%) Tableau
13 7 (2.27%) Amazon Aurora
13 7 (2.27%) BigQuery
13 7 (2.27%) SQL Server
14 6 (1.95%) SAS Enterprise Guide
15 5 (1.62%) Hadoop
15 5 (1.62%) InfluxDB
15 5 (1.62%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 71 (23.05%) Git
2 54 (17.53%) Jenkins
3 48 (15.58%) JIRA
4 19 (6.17%) GitLab
5 14 (4.55%) JUnit
6 10 (3.25%) MSI
6 10 (3.25%) Selenium
7 8 (2.60%) Eclipse
7 8 (2.60%) IntelliJ
8 6 (1.95%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 6 (1.95%) Maven
8 6 (1.95%) Mockito
9 5 (1.62%) Liquibase
10 4 (1.30%) SonarQube
10 4 (1.30%) Toad
10 4 (1.30%) Vagrant
11 3 (0.97%) Oracle Forms
11 3 (0.97%) Team Foundation Server
12 2 (0.65%) DbUnit
12 2 (0.65%) SoapUI
General
1 85 (27.60%) Social Skills
2 57 (18.51%) Public Sector
3 40 (12.99%) Analytical Skills
4 23 (7.47%) Finance
5 12 (3.90%) Banking
6 10 (3.25%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (2.92%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.95%) Legal
8 6 (1.95%) Manufacturing
9 4 (1.30%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.30%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.30%) Retail
10 3 (0.97%) Automotive
10 3 (0.97%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.97%) Marketing
11 2 (0.65%) Games
11 2 (0.65%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.65%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.65%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.32%) Police
Job Titles
1 65 (21.10%) Data Engineer
2 58 (18.83%) Developer
3 28 (9.09%) Analyst
4 20 (6.49%) Lead
5 17 (5.52%) Senior
6 16 (5.19%) Java Developer
7 15 (4.87%) Consultant
8 13 (4.22%) Data Analyst
8 13 (4.22%) Java Engineer
8 13 (4.22%) Software Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Architect
9 12 (3.90%) SAS Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Site Engineer
9 12 (3.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 10 (3.25%) Python Developer
11 9 (2.92%) Backend Developer
11 9 (2.92%) DBA
11 9 (2.92%) DevOps Engineer
12 7 (2.27%) GCP Developer
12 7 (2.27%) Platform Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (12.34%) REST
1 38 (12.34%) Spring
2 28 (9.09%) Spring Boot
3 22 (7.14%) XML
4 16 (5.19%) Flask
4 16 (5.19%) RESTful
5 15 (4.87%) Node.js
6 14 (4.55%) HTML
6 14 (4.55%) SOAP
7 13 (4.22%) Hibernate
7 13 (4.22%) JSON
8 12 (3.90%) FastAPI
9 10 (3.25%) .NET
10 9 (2.92%) GraphQL
10 9 (2.92%) HTML5
10 9 (2.92%) J2EE
10 9 (2.92%) WebSockets
11 8 (2.60%) EJB
11 8 (2.60%) gRPC
11 8 (2.60%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 24 (7.79%) Cloud Native
2 9 (2.92%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.60%) Product Ownership
4 6 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.62%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.62%) Onboarding
5 5 (1.62%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.30%) Clustering
6 4 (1.30%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.30%) Replication
7 3 (0.97%) Algorithms
7 3 (0.97%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.65%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.65%) Animation
8 2 (0.65%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.65%) Derivative
8 2 (0.65%) Enterprise Software
8 2 (0.65%) IoT
8 2 (0.65%) Renewable Energy
9 1 (0.32%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 42 (13.64%) Linux
2 36 (11.69%) Unix
3 28 (9.09%) Windows
4 6 (1.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 4 (1.30%) Amazon Linux
5 4 (1.30%) Ubuntu
5 4 (1.30%) VMS
6 1 (0.32%) VME
6 1 (0.32%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.32%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 122 (39.61%) CI/CD
2 99 (32.14%) Agile
3 91 (29.55%) DevOps
4 85 (27.60%) Problem-Solving
5 73 (23.70%) Analytics
6 72 (23.38%) ETL
7 62 (20.13%) Business Intelligence
8 60 (19.48%) Continuous Improvement
9 56 (18.18%) Data Modelling
10 54 (17.53%) Scrum
11 48 (15.58%) Data Pipeline
12 46 (14.94%) Microservices
13 45 (14.61%) Data Integration
14 40 (12.99%) Test Automation
15 36 (11.69%) Software Engineering
16 33 (10.71%) Deployment Automation
17 31 (10.06%) Containerisation
17 31 (10.06%) Data Engineering
18 29 (9.42%) Migration
19 28 (9.09%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 80 (25.97%) Java
2 73 (23.70%) Python
3 32 (10.39%) PL/SQL
4 27 (8.77%) Shell Script
5 18 (5.84%) Go
6 15 (4.87%) Scala
7 12 (3.90%) JavaScript
8 8 (2.60%) PowerShell
9 7 (2.27%) Bash
9 7 (2.27%) C#
9 7 (2.27%) VBA
10 6 (1.95%) Perl
11 5 (1.62%) R
12 4 (1.30%) Bicep
12 4 (1.30%) Data Analysis Expressions
12 4 (1.30%) Groovy
12 4 (1.30%) TypeScript
12 4 (1.30%) VB
13 2 (0.65%) C++
13 2 (0.65%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 143 (46.43%) Security Cleared
2 128 (41.56%) SC Cleared
3 21 (6.82%) Degree
4 18 (5.84%) DV Cleared
5 10 (3.25%) AWS Certification
6 9 (2.92%) Azure Certification
6 9 (2.92%) BPSS Clearance
6 9 (2.92%) Computer Science Degree
7 6 (1.95%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.62%) ISTQB
8 5 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (1.30%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified Developer
10 2 (0.65%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
10 2 (0.65%) ISEB
10 2 (0.65%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 2 (0.65%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.32%) ACCA
11 1 (0.32%) CIMA
11 1 (0.32%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (14.94%) Data Quality
2 13 (4.22%) QA
3 5 (1.62%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.97%) FATCA
4 3 (0.97%) SLA
5 1 (0.32%) GDPR
5 1 (0.32%) PMO
5 1 (0.32%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.32%) WCAG
System Software
1 77 (25.00%) Docker
2 6 (1.95%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.62%) Postfix
4 4 (1.30%) DFS Replication
4 4 (1.30%) Dovecot
4 4 (1.30%) Squid
5 3 (0.97%) Oracle Clusterware
5 3 (0.97%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 77 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 36 (11.69%) Grafana
3 32 (10.39%) Terraform
4 30 (9.74%) Prometheus
5 19 (6.17%) Ansible
6 12 (3.90%) Progress Chef
7 10 (3.25%) Puppet
8 5 (1.62%) Kibana
9 4 (1.30%) Nessus
9 4 (1.30%) Oracle RMAN
9 4 (1.30%) Proxmox
10 3 (0.97%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.97%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.65%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.65%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.32%) Control-M
12 1 (0.32%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.32%) SCCM
12 1 (0.32%) WSUS
Vendors
1 87 (28.25%) Oracle
2 50 (16.23%) Talend
3 39 (12.66%) Microsoft
4 26 (8.44%) Denodo
5 21 (6.82%) Informatica
6 18 (5.84%) ServiceNow
7 17 (5.52%) Google
8 16 (5.19%) Splunk
9 11 (3.57%) SAP
10 10 (3.25%) webMethods
11 9 (2.92%) Dynatrace
12 8 (2.60%) Databricks
13 7 (2.27%) Fujitsu
13 7 (2.27%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (2.27%) NEC
14 6 (1.95%) Red Hat
15 5 (1.62%) Cloudera
16 4 (1.30%) AppDynamics
16 4 (1.30%) Cisco
17 3 (0.97%) Cognos