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

6 months to
6 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 10 18
Rank change year-on-year +5 +8 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 425 158 146
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.40% 11.64% 7.58%
As % of the Programming Languages category 60.37% 45.40% 34.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 329 112 99
10th Percentile £357 £235 £259
25th Percentile £408 £393 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £461 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.27% +8.53% -19.05%
75th Percentile £511 £575 £575
90th Percentile £575 £696 £625
England median daily rate £500 £518 £550
% change year-on-year -3.38% -5.91% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 1
10th Percentile £52.05 £16.67 -
25th Percentile £53.25 £18.74 -
Median hourly rate £56.00 £33.91 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +65.14% +11.66% +20.28%
75th Percentile £58.25 - -
90th Percentile £59.15 - -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £43.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +14.53% +2.72% -14.26%

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 704 348 426
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.19% 25.64% 22.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 525 216 309
10th Percentile £350 £244 £260
25th Percentile £413 £401 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year - +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £550
90th Percentile £619 £689 £638
England median daily rate £506 £525 £541
% change year-on-year -3.62% -2.91% -3.92%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 15 13
10th Percentile £48.75 £16.85 £40.10
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.87 £55.00
Median hourly rate £61.32 £27.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +122.97% -52.17% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £31.33 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £33.91 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - +4.17%

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 May 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 6 May 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 +3 185 £464 +0.60% 25
Birmingham -6 75 £460 -16.45% 60
Warwickshire -16 41 £500 +60.64% 16
Coventry 0 31 £425 +8.97% 11
Herefordshire +1 17 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull -8 15 £478 +13.81% 2
Staffordshire +7 11 £431 -21.59% 18
Worcestershire -3 7 £700 - 12
Dudley - 7 £420 - 2
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 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 60 (14.12%) SAS
2 28 (6.59%) WebLogic
3 27 (6.35%) Confluence
4 15 (3.53%) Tuxedo
5 11 (2.59%) SharePoint
6 9 (2.12%) Apache
7 7 (1.65%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (1.41%) Oracle Self-Service HR
9 5 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.94%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.71%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.71%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.47%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.47%) Liferay
13 1 (0.24%) Apache ServiceMix
13 1 (0.24%) CMS
13 1 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Fuse
13 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
13 1 (0.24%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.59%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.18%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.41%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.94%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.47%) Maximo
4 2 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.24%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.24%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.24%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.24%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.24%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 107 (25.18%) AWS
2 98 (23.06%) Azure
3 61 (14.35%) Power Platform
4 36 (8.47%) Amazon S3
4 36 (8.47%) Azure DevOps
5 25 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
6 23 (5.41%) Amazon EC2
6 23 (5.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 23 (5.41%) Serverless
7 17 (4.00%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 16 (3.76%) GitHub
9 14 (3.29%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (3.06%) AWS Lambda
10 13 (3.06%) Snowflake
11 12 (2.82%) Amazon SQS
11 12 (2.82%) AWS KMS
11 12 (2.82%) Power Automate
11 12 (2.82%) Route 53
12 11 (2.59%) OpenShift
13 9 (2.12%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.88%) Firewall
2 5 (1.18%) Network Security
2 5 (1.18%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.18%) WinSCP
3 4 (0.94%) DNS
4 3 (0.71%) SSL
5 2 (0.47%) DHCP
5 2 (0.47%) LAN
5 2 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.47%) VLAN
5 2 (0.47%) VPN
5 2 (0.47%) WAN
5 2 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.24%) 5G
6 1 (0.24%) BGP
6 1 (0.24%) Internet
6 1 (0.24%) MPLS
6 1 (0.24%) OSPF
6 1 (0.24%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (16.00%) Pentaho
2 57 (13.41%) Data Warehouse
3 55 (12.94%) Power BI
4 37 (8.71%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (6.59%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (5.41%) Relational Database
7 21 (4.94%) Amazon Redshift
8 19 (4.47%) Tableau
9 16 (3.76%) DynamoDB
9 16 (3.76%) Oracle Reports
10 15 (3.53%) BusinessObjects
10 15 (3.53%) Data Lake
11 14 (3.29%) Metadata
11 14 (3.29%) MySQL
11 14 (3.29%) Oracle Database
12 12 (2.82%) Amazon Aurora
12 12 (2.82%) MongoDB
12 12 (2.82%) SQL Server
13 11 (2.59%) Delta Lake
14 10 (2.35%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 78 (18.35%) Git
2 71 (16.71%) JIRA
3 58 (13.65%) Jenkins
4 48 (11.29%) GitLab
5 16 (3.76%) Postman
6 15 (3.53%) JUnit
6 15 (3.53%) Maven
6 15 (3.53%) Mockito
6 15 (3.53%) Zephyr
7 13 (3.06%) MSI
8 12 (2.82%) SonarQube
9 9 (2.12%) Bitbucket Server
9 9 (2.12%) DbUnit
9 9 (2.12%) jMock
10 7 (1.65%) Selenium
11 6 (1.41%) Artifactory
12 5 (1.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 4 (0.94%) CA Gen
13 4 (0.94%) MLflow
14 3 (0.71%) Bitbucket
General
1 92 (21.65%) Social Skills
2 77 (18.12%) Public Sector
3 67 (15.76%) Analytical Skills
4 30 (7.06%) Finance
5 11 (2.59%) Banking
6 9 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (1.65%) Legal
8 6 (1.41%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
9 5 (1.18%) Retail
10 4 (0.94%) Advertising
10 4 (0.94%) Marketing
11 3 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.47%) Billing
12 2 (0.47%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.47%) Military
12 2 (0.47%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.24%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 152 (35.76%) Data Engineer
2 71 (16.71%) Developer
3 38 (8.94%) Senior
4 36 (8.47%) Analyst
5 25 (5.88%) Java Developer
6 23 (5.41%) Lead
7 22 (5.18%) Architect
8 18 (4.24%) Data Analyst
8 18 (4.24%) Senior Data Engineer
9 15 (3.53%) SAS Engineer
9 15 (3.53%) Tester
10 14 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
11 12 (2.82%) Consultant
12 11 (2.59%) AWS Data Engineer
12 11 (2.59%) AWS Engineer
12 11 (2.59%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 11 (2.59%) QA Tester
12 11 (2.59%) Site Engineer
12 11 (2.59%) Site Reliability Engineer
13 9 (2.12%) Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (8.24%) Spring
1 35 (8.24%) Spring Boot
2 34 (8.00%) REST
3 22 (5.18%) Node.js
4 19 (4.47%) Flask
5 17 (4.00%) JPA
6 15 (3.53%) Hibernate
6 15 (3.53%) PySpark
6 15 (3.53%) RESTful
6 15 (3.53%) Spring Batch
7 14 (3.29%) SOAP
7 14 (3.29%) Spring Integration
7 14 (3.29%) Web Services
8 13 (3.06%) AngularJS
9 12 (2.82%) ActiveMQ
9 12 (2.82%) Django
9 12 (2.82%) Spring Cloud
9 12 (2.82%) YAML
10 11 (2.59%) .NET
11 9 (2.12%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (3.29%) Cloud Native
2 12 (2.82%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.35%) Product Ownership
4 8 (1.88%) SCADA
5 6 (1.41%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (1.18%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (0.94%) Clustering
7 4 (0.94%) Data Centre
7 4 (0.94%) Data Structures
7 4 (0.94%) Onboarding
7 4 (0.94%) Robotics
7 4 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (0.71%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (0.71%) Credit Risk
8 3 (0.71%) Data Fabric
8 3 (0.71%) Educational Technology
8 3 (0.71%) IoT
9 2 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.47%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 61 (14.35%) Unix
2 41 (9.65%) Linux
3 24 (5.65%) Windows
4 5 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.18%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.24%) VME
5 1 (0.24%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (34.59%) ETL
2 144 (33.88%) Agile
3 137 (32.24%) CI/CD
4 105 (24.71%) Data Modelling
5 100 (23.53%) Analytics
5 100 (23.53%) Business Intelligence
6 99 (23.29%) DevOps
7 85 (20.00%) Data Pipeline
8 82 (19.29%) Problem-Solving
9 80 (18.82%) Test Automation
10 79 (18.59%) Scrum
11 74 (17.41%) Data Integration
12 63 (14.82%) Migration
13 60 (14.12%) Continuous Improvement
14 52 (12.24%) Data Engineering
15 51 (12.00%) Decision-Making
16 49 (11.53%) Validation
17 37 (8.71%) Data Analytics
17 37 (8.71%) Microservices
18 35 (8.24%) Data Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 77 (18.12%) Python
2 70 (16.47%) Java
3 60 (14.12%) PL/SQL
4 34 (8.00%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.47%) JavaScript
6 10 (2.35%) Bash
6 10 (2.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.12%) Go
8 8 (1.88%) C#
9 7 (1.65%) Bicep
10 6 (1.41%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.18%) Perl
11 5 (1.18%) R
12 4 (0.94%) VB
13 3 (0.71%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.71%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.47%) Scala
14 2 (0.47%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.47%) VB6
14 2 (0.47%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 232 (54.59%) Security Cleared
2 208 (48.94%) SC Cleared
3 20 (4.71%) Degree
3 20 (4.71%) ISTQB
4 14 (3.29%) DV Cleared
5 10 (2.35%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.88%) Microsoft Certification
7 5 (1.18%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.18%) Computer Science Degree
7 5 (1.18%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.94%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.94%) PhD
9 3 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 2 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.24%) ACCA
11 1 (0.24%) CIMA
11 1 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.24%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (16.47%) Data Quality
2 38 (8.94%) QA
3 8 (1.88%) SLA
4 7 (1.65%) FATCA
5 6 (1.41%) GDPR
6 4 (0.94%) Accessibility
6 4 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.47%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.24%) PMO
8 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 68 (16.00%) Docker
2 12 (2.82%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.88%) Postfix
4 5 (1.18%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.71%) HDFS
6 3 (0.71%) Oracle Clusterware
6 3 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 68 (16.00%) Kubernetes
2 42 (9.88%) Grafana
3 35 (8.24%) Terraform
4 20 (4.71%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.53%) Ansible
6 11 (2.59%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.94%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.94%) Kibana
7 4 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (0.71%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.47%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.47%) Puppet
10 1 (0.24%) Control-M
10 1 (0.24%) SCCM
10 1 (0.24%) SCOM
10 1 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 150 (35.29%) Oracle
2 84 (19.76%) Talend
3 64 (15.06%) Microsoft
4 63 (14.82%) Informatica
5 46 (10.82%) Denodo
6 25 (5.88%) Databricks
7 24 (5.65%) ServiceNow
8 14 (3.29%) SAP
9 12 (2.82%) Atlassian
9 12 (2.82%) Jaspersoft
10 10 (2.35%) Sage
11 9 (2.12%) Fujitsu
12 8 (1.88%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.88%) Dynatrace
13 7 (1.65%) Google
13 7 (1.65%) NEC
14 5 (1.18%) Red Hat
14 5 (1.18%) VMware
15 4 (0.94%) Splunk
16 3 (0.71%) Teradata