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

6 months to
11 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 15 17
Rank change year-on-year 0 +2 -13
Contract jobs citing SQL 228 152 145
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.05% 9.63% 8.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 40.86% 39.90% 36.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 152 93 99
10th Percentile £364 £346 £260
25th Percentile £456 £413 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.10% -2.00% -5.12%
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £649 £648 £700
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile £38.80 £37.50 -
25th Percentile £43.00 £41.25 -
Median hourly rate £50.00 £47.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - -
75th Percentile - £53.75 -
90th Percentile - £57.50 -
England median hourly rate £49.36 £52.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -5.98% +16.67% -2.17%

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 558 381 396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.60% 24.14% 22.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 374 220 282
10th Percentile £365 £352 £276
25th Percentile £455 £410 £376
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £575 £589 £597
90th Percentile £636 £700 £688
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 10 9
10th Percentile £40.20 £16.98 £17.43
25th Percentile £46.50 £17.81 £17.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £23.87 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year +109.47% +29.03% -15.91%
75th Percentile £56.88 £33.44 £19.25
90th Percentile £69.25 £53.25 £25.80
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.17% +0.80% -3.85%

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 11 January 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 11 January 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 11 January 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 0 96 £515 +2.75% 35
Birmingham -8 55 £482 -13.36% 38
Warwickshire -11 25 £525 -4.55% 14
Herefordshire -3 17 £575 +4.55% 8
Worcestershire -14 7 £650 +57.58% 6
Coventry -23 7 £273 -42.63% 16
Solihull +3 5 £600 +22.70% 2
Staffordshire -7 3 £463 +27.59% 13
Wolverhampton +4 1 - - 8
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 38 (16.67%) WebLogic
2 36 (15.79%) SAS
3 24 (10.53%) Apache
4 15 (6.58%) Confluence
5 9 (3.95%) nginx
5 9 (3.95%) SharePoint
6 8 (3.51%) JBoss
6 8 (3.51%) Tuxedo
7 3 (1.32%) Apache Pig
8 2 (0.88%) Anypoint
8 2 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.88%) Apache Spark
8 2 (0.88%) Liferay
9 1 (0.44%) CMS
9 1 (0.44%) Drupal
9 1 (0.44%) FileNet
9 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Exchange
Applications
1 11 (4.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 9 (3.95%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (0.88%) Maya
3 2 (0.88%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.88%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.88%) NUKE
4 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
4 1 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.44%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (1.32%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.32%) Oracle EBS
1 3 (1.32%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.88%) Maximo
2 2 (0.88%) Primavera
2 2 (0.88%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.44%) Aareon QL
3 1 (0.44%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.44%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.44%) OPENHousing
3 1 (0.44%) Orchard Housing
3 1 (0.44%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.44%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.44%) SAP GRC
3 1 (0.44%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 74 (32.46%) Azure
2 59 (25.88%) AWS
3 29 (12.72%) Power Platform
3 29 (12.72%) Serverless
4 21 (9.21%) Amazon S3
5 18 (7.89%) Amazon EC2
6 16 (7.02%) Azure DevOps
7 15 (6.58%) Azure Monitor
7 15 (6.58%) GCP
8 12 (5.26%) Microsoft 365
9 10 (4.39%) GitHub
9 10 (4.39%) Power Automate
10 9 (3.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 9 (3.95%) Amazon ECS
10 9 (3.95%) Amazon ELB
10 9 (3.95%) AWS KMS
10 9 (3.95%) Azure Data Factory
10 9 (3.95%) GitHub Actions
10 9 (3.95%) PowerApps
10 9 (3.95%) Virtual Private Cloud
Communications & Networking
1 10 (4.39%) DNS
1 10 (4.39%) Firewall
2 9 (3.95%) FTP
2 9 (3.95%) HTTP
2 9 (3.95%) IMAP
2 9 (3.95%) OpenLDAP
2 9 (3.95%) SMTP
2 9 (3.95%) SSH
3 4 (1.75%) Network Security
Database & Business Intelligence
1 40 (17.54%) Pentaho
2 32 (14.04%) PostgreSQL
3 23 (10.09%) Amazon RDS
4 22 (9.65%) Power BI
5 17 (7.46%) MongoDB
6 16 (7.02%) Relational Database
7 13 (5.70%) Oracle Database
8 12 (5.26%) MySQL
9 9 (3.95%) Amazon Aurora
10 8 (3.51%) Data Warehouse
10 8 (3.51%) Redis
11 7 (3.07%) NoSQL
12 6 (2.63%) Hadoop
12 6 (2.63%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 5 (2.19%) Data Mining
13 5 (2.19%) SQL Server
14 4 (1.75%) Amazon Redshift
14 4 (1.75%) Apache Hive
14 4 (1.75%) Oracle Reports
14 4 (1.75%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 73 (32.02%) Git
2 58 (25.44%) Jenkins
3 56 (24.56%) JIRA
4 10 (4.39%) Selenium
5 9 (3.95%) GitLab
5 9 (3.95%) JUnit
5 9 (3.95%) MSI
5 9 (3.95%) Vagrant
6 8 (3.51%) Eclipse
6 8 (3.51%) IntelliJ
7 4 (1.75%) Liquibase
7 4 (1.75%) Toad
8 2 (0.88%) ERwin
8 2 (0.88%) Gatling
8 2 (0.88%) Oracle APEX
8 2 (0.88%) SoapUI
9 1 (0.44%) AdminStudio
9 1 (0.44%) InstallShield
9 1 (0.44%) Maven
9 1 (0.44%) Oracle Forms
General
1 80 (35.09%) Social Skills
2 43 (18.86%) Public Sector
3 25 (10.96%) Analytical Skills
4 17 (7.46%) Finance
5 16 (7.02%) Presentation Skills
6 8 (3.51%) Banking
6 8 (3.51%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (2.63%) Legal
8 4 (1.75%) Financial Institution
8 4 (1.75%) Manufacturing
9 3 (1.32%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (1.32%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.88%) Automotive
10 2 (0.88%) Games
10 2 (0.88%) Marketing
10 2 (0.88%) Retail
11 1 (0.44%) Billing
11 1 (0.44%) General Ledger
11 1 (0.44%) Law
11 1 (0.44%) Military
Job Titles
1 37 (16.23%) Developer
2 35 (15.35%) Data Engineer
3 16 (7.02%) Analyst
3 16 (7.02%) Consultant
3 16 (7.02%) Platform Engineer
4 15 (6.58%) DevOps Engineer
5 14 (6.14%) Senior
6 12 (5.26%) AWS Engineer
7 10 (4.39%) AWS DevOps
7 10 (4.39%) AWS DevOps Engineer
7 10 (4.39%) Cloud Platform Engineer
7 10 (4.39%) Java Engineer
8 9 (3.95%) AWS Platform Engineer
8 9 (3.95%) Python Developer
8 9 (3.95%) Software Engineer
9 8 (3.51%) Backend Developer
9 8 (3.51%) Data Scientist
9 8 (3.51%) DBA
9 8 (3.51%) Monitoring Engineer
9 8 (3.51%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (13.60%) REST
2 22 (9.65%) Spring
3 19 (8.33%) XML
4 13 (5.70%) HTML
4 13 (5.70%) RESTful
5 12 (5.26%) Spring Boot
6 11 (4.82%) FastAPI
6 11 (4.82%) Flask
7 10 (4.39%) JSON
7 10 (4.39%) SOAP
8 9 (3.95%) Hibernate
8 9 (3.95%) LDAP
9 8 (3.51%) .NET
9 8 (3.51%) EJB
9 8 (3.51%) GraphQL
9 8 (3.51%) HTML5
9 8 (3.51%) J2EE
9 8 (3.51%) J2SE
9 8 (3.51%) Play Framework
9 8 (3.51%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 21 (9.21%) Cloud Native
2 9 (3.95%) Replication
3 6 (2.63%) Algorithms
3 6 (2.63%) Legacy Systems
4 5 (2.19%) Data Structures
4 5 (2.19%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (1.75%) Onboarding
5 4 (1.75%) Product Ownership
5 4 (1.75%) Public Cloud
6 3 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
6 3 (1.32%) IoT
7 2 (0.88%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.88%) Animation
7 2 (0.88%) Data Centre
7 2 (0.88%) Derivative
7 2 (0.88%) Mainframe
7 2 (0.88%) Management Information System
7 2 (0.88%) Renewable Energy
8 1 (0.44%) Client/Server
8 1 (0.44%) Greenfield Project
Operating Systems
1 43 (18.86%) Linux
2 40 (17.54%) Windows
3 32 (14.04%) Unix
4 10 (4.39%) VMS
5 9 (3.95%) Amazon Linux
5 9 (3.95%) Ubuntu
6 1 (0.44%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.44%) VME
6 1 (0.44%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 100 (43.86%) CI/CD
2 88 (38.60%) DevOps
3 83 (36.40%) Agile
4 70 (30.70%) Analytics
5 69 (30.26%) Business Intelligence
6 68 (29.82%) Problem-Solving
7 59 (25.88%) Continuous Improvement
8 57 (25.00%) ETL
9 51 (22.37%) Data Modelling
9 51 (22.37%) Scrum
10 48 (21.05%) Data Pipeline
11 41 (17.98%) Test Automation
12 39 (17.11%) Deployment Automation
13 36 (15.79%) Data Integration
14 34 (14.91%) Data Analytics
14 34 (14.91%) Data Virtualisation
15 33 (14.47%) Visualisation
16 31 (13.60%) Microservices
17 28 (12.28%) Business Analytics
18 24 (10.53%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 61 (26.75%) Python
2 47 (20.61%) Java
3 17 (7.46%) Scala
4 16 (7.02%) Go
5 14 (6.14%) PL/SQL
6 12 (5.26%) PowerShell
6 12 (5.26%) Shell Script
7 9 (3.95%) Groovy
8 7 (3.07%) JavaScript
8 7 (3.07%) VBA
9 6 (2.63%) R
10 5 (2.19%) C#
10 5 (2.19%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 3 (1.32%) C++
11 3 (1.32%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.88%) COBOL
12 2 (0.88%) Kotlin
12 2 (0.88%) Tcl
13 1 (0.44%) Perl
13 1 (0.44%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 106 (46.49%) Security Cleared
2 94 (41.23%) SC Cleared
3 25 (10.96%) Degree
4 16 (7.02%) AWS Certification
4 16 (7.02%) DV Cleared
5 11 (4.82%) Azure Certification
5 11 (4.82%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (2.19%) Master's Degree
7 4 (1.75%) BPSS Clearance
8 3 (1.32%) Microsoft Certification
9 2 (0.88%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (0.88%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (0.88%) ISEB
9 2 (0.88%) ISTQB
9 2 (0.88%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 1 (0.44%) IIBA
10 1 (0.44%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (18.86%) Data Quality
2 6 (2.63%) Accessibility
3 4 (1.75%) QA
4 1 (0.44%) GDPR
4 1 (0.44%) PMO
4 1 (0.44%) SLA
4 1 (0.44%) WCAG
System Software
1 78 (34.21%) Docker
2 9 (3.95%) DFS Replication
2 9 (3.95%) Dovecot
2 9 (3.95%) Postfix
2 9 (3.95%) Squid
3 3 (1.32%) Active Directory
3 3 (1.32%) Oracle Clusterware
3 3 (1.32%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 70 (30.70%) Kubernetes
2 31 (13.60%) Grafana
3 29 (12.72%) Prometheus
4 25 (10.96%) Terraform
5 14 (6.14%) Ansible
6 10 (4.39%) Puppet
7 9 (3.95%) Nessus
7 9 (3.95%) Proxmox
8 8 (3.51%) Progress Chef
9 4 (1.75%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (1.32%) Data Guard
10 3 (1.32%) Kibana
11 2 (0.88%) Docker Swarm
12 1 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.44%) SCCM
12 1 (0.44%) WSUS
Vendors
1 75 (32.89%) Oracle
2 41 (17.98%) Talend
3 36 (15.79%) Microsoft
4 35 (15.35%) Denodo
5 24 (10.53%) Splunk
6 16 (7.02%) Dynatrace
7 14 (6.14%) AppDynamics
8 13 (5.70%) Cisco
8 13 (5.70%) ServiceNow
9 11 (4.82%) Google
10 10 (4.39%) SAP
10 10 (4.39%) webMethods
11 9 (3.95%) Jaspersoft
12 8 (3.51%) Databricks
13 6 (2.63%) Fujitsu
14 5 (2.19%) Informatica
15 3 (1.32%) Ariba
15 3 (1.32%) IBM
16 2 (0.88%) Adobe
16 2 (0.88%) Calypso