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

6 months to
2 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 12 19
Rank change year-on-year +7 +7 -10
Contract jobs citing SQL 388 142 156
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.25% 10.74% 8.00%
As % of the Programming Languages category 53.74% 43.03% 36.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 297 101 104
10th Percentile £338 £235 £259
25th Percentile £404 £393 £342
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £464 £475 £438
Median % change year-on-year -2.32% +8.57% -16.75%
75th Percentile £525 £600 £575
90th Percentile £575 £700 £625
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% +0.92%
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 £45.25 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -9.50% +17.65% -14.63%

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 722 330 431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.65% 24.96% 22.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 533 208 310
10th Percentile £340 £281 £260
25th Percentile £413 £405 £351
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £475 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.32% +5.56% -14.29%
75th Percentile £542 £580 £575
90th Percentile £619 £689 £639
England median daily rate £501 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.67% -2.42% -5.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 7 12 13
10th Percentile £41.25 £16.78 £32.30
25th Percentile £53.88 £17.00 £40.50
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -64.02% +122.77%
75th Percentile £72.67 £28.32 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £28.75 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -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 2 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 2 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 +3 164 £465 +1.09% 20
Birmingham -7 71 £475 -13.64% 63
Warwickshire -6 36 £413 +75.53% 21
Coventry -4 32 £407 -14.32% 7
Herefordshire -2 20 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull -5 12 £478 +13.81% 5
Worcestershire -5 8 £700 - 6
Dudley - 7 £420 - 3
Staffordshire -2 4 £463 +1.37% 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 62 (15.98%) SAS
2 36 (9.28%) WebLogic
3 15 (3.87%) Confluence
3 15 (3.87%) Tuxedo
4 13 (3.35%) Apache
5 10 (2.58%) SharePoint
6 5 (1.29%) Oracle Self-Service HR
6 5 (1.29%) Oracle Workflow
7 4 (1.03%) Apache Airflow
7 4 (1.03%) JBoss
8 3 (0.77%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.77%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.52%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.52%) Liferay
10 1 (0.26%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.26%) CMS
10 1 (0.26%) Drupal
10 1 (0.26%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.26%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.26%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.84%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.77%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.52%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.52%) Notepad++
4 1 (0.26%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.26%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 5 (1.29%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (1.03%) NEC Housing
2 4 (1.03%) Oracle EBS
3 2 (0.52%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.52%) Maximo
3 2 (0.52%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.52%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.26%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.26%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.26%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.26%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.26%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.26%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 95 (24.48%) AWS
2 89 (22.94%) Azure
3 48 (12.37%) Power Platform
4 34 (8.76%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (7.47%) Amazon S3
6 23 (5.93%) Serverless
7 20 (5.15%) Amazon EC2
7 20 (5.15%) Azure Data Factory
8 19 (4.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 17 (4.38%) GitHub
10 15 (3.87%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.09%) OpenShift
12 11 (2.84%) Power Automate
13 10 (2.58%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (2.58%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (2.58%) GCP
14 9 (2.32%) Amazon SQS
14 9 (2.32%) AWS KMS
14 9 (2.32%) Route 53
15 8 (2.06%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 8 (2.06%) Firewall
2 5 (1.29%) Network Security
3 4 (1.03%) DNS
4 3 (0.77%) SSL
5 2 (0.52%) DHCP
5 2 (0.52%) LAN
5 2 (0.52%) PuTTY
5 2 (0.52%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.52%) VLAN
5 2 (0.52%) VPN
5 2 (0.52%) WAN
5 2 (0.52%) Wi-Fi
5 2 (0.52%) WinSCP
6 1 (0.26%) 4G
6 1 (0.26%) AMQP
6 1 (0.26%) MPLS
6 1 (0.26%) OSPF
6 1 (0.26%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.26%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.26%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (17.01%) Pentaho
2 43 (11.08%) Power BI
3 41 (10.57%) Data Warehouse
4 31 (7.99%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (7.47%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (5.15%) Relational Database
7 18 (4.64%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.38%) Oracle Database
9 16 (4.12%) Amazon Redshift
9 16 (4.12%) MySQL
10 13 (3.35%) Tableau
11 12 (3.09%) Oracle Reports
12 10 (2.58%) NoSQL
13 9 (2.32%) Amazon Aurora
13 9 (2.32%) DynamoDB
13 9 (2.32%) Metadata
13 9 (2.32%) SQL Server
14 8 (2.06%) BigQuery
15 7 (1.80%) Delta Lake
15 7 (1.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 86 (22.16%) Git
2 69 (17.78%) JIRA
3 68 (17.53%) Jenkins
4 25 (6.44%) GitLab
5 16 (4.12%) JUnit
6 13 (3.35%) MSI
6 13 (3.35%) Postman
7 12 (3.09%) Maven
7 12 (3.09%) Mockito
8 11 (2.84%) Selenium
8 11 (2.84%) Zephyr
9 9 (2.32%) SonarQube
10 7 (1.80%) Bitbucket Server
10 7 (1.80%) DbUnit
10 7 (1.80%) jMock
11 6 (1.55%) Atlassian Bamboo
12 4 (1.03%) CA Gen
12 4 (1.03%) Eclipse
12 4 (1.03%) IntelliJ
12 4 (1.03%) Toad
General
1 92 (23.71%) Social Skills
2 70 (18.04%) Public Sector
3 58 (14.95%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (7.22%) Finance
5 11 (2.84%) Banking
6 8 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.55%) Influencing Skills
7 6 (1.55%) Legal
7 6 (1.55%) Manufacturing
8 4 (1.03%) Advertising
8 4 (1.03%) Organisational Skills
8 4 (1.03%) Retail
9 3 (0.77%) Documentation Skills
9 3 (0.77%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 3 (0.77%) Marketing
10 2 (0.52%) Billing
10 2 (0.52%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.52%) Military
10 2 (0.52%) Telecoms
11 1 (0.26%) Automotive
Job Titles
1 115 (29.64%) Data Engineer
2 68 (17.53%) Developer
3 34 (8.76%) Analyst
4 27 (6.96%) Senior
5 23 (5.93%) Lead
6 22 (5.67%) Java Developer
7 17 (4.38%) Architect
8 16 (4.12%) Data Analyst
9 14 (3.61%) Consultant
9 14 (3.61%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (3.61%) SAS Engineer
9 14 (3.61%) Tester
10 12 (3.09%) Java Engineer
10 12 (3.09%) Site Engineer
10 12 (3.09%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (2.84%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 10 (2.58%) QA Tester
13 9 (2.32%) DBA
13 9 (2.32%) Software Engineer
14 8 (2.06%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (10.31%) Spring
2 37 (9.54%) REST
3 34 (8.76%) Spring Boot
4 21 (5.41%) Flask
5 20 (5.15%) Node.js
6 18 (4.64%) XML
7 16 (4.12%) Hibernate
7 16 (4.12%) RESTful
8 15 (3.87%) SOAP
9 14 (3.61%) JPA
10 12 (3.09%) AngularJS
10 12 (3.09%) Django
10 12 (3.09%) Spring Batch
10 12 (3.09%) YAML
11 11 (2.84%) .NET
11 11 (2.84%) Spring Integration
11 11 (2.84%) Web Services
12 9 (2.32%) ActiveMQ
12 9 (2.32%) JSON
12 9 (2.32%) Spring Cloud
Miscellaneous
1 12 (3.09%) Cloud Native
2 11 (2.84%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.58%) Product Ownership
4 6 (1.55%) Legacy Systems
4 6 (1.55%) SCADA
5 5 (1.29%) Enterprise Software
5 5 (1.29%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.03%) Clustering
6 4 (1.03%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.03%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.03%) Robotics
7 3 (0.77%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (0.77%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.77%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (0.77%) Educational Technology
7 3 (0.77%) IoT
7 3 (0.77%) Public Cloud
7 3 (0.77%) Self-Motivation
8 2 (0.52%) Linux Command Line
8 2 (0.52%) Management Information System
Operating Systems
1 46 (11.86%) Unix
2 39 (10.05%) Linux
3 29 (7.47%) Windows
4 6 (1.55%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (1.29%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.26%) VME
6 1 (0.26%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 140 (36.08%) CI/CD
2 130 (33.51%) Agile
3 126 (32.47%) ETL
4 106 (27.32%) DevOps
5 95 (24.48%) Analytics
6 93 (23.97%) Business Intelligence
7 92 (23.71%) Problem-Solving
8 85 (21.91%) Data Modelling
9 76 (19.59%) Scrum
10 73 (18.81%) Test Automation
11 68 (17.53%) Continuous Improvement
11 68 (17.53%) Data Pipeline
12 67 (17.27%) Data Integration
13 47 (12.11%) Migration
14 44 (11.34%) Validation
15 43 (11.08%) Microservices
16 42 (10.82%) Data Engineering
17 40 (10.31%) Data Virtualisation
17 40 (10.31%) Decision-Making
18 39 (10.05%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 78 (20.10%) Java
2 68 (17.53%) Python
3 47 (12.11%) PL/SQL
4 32 (8.25%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.90%) JavaScript
6 12 (3.09%) Go
7 10 (2.58%) Bash
8 9 (2.32%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 8 (2.06%) C#
10 7 (1.80%) Bicep
10 7 (1.80%) Scala
11 6 (1.55%) Perl
12 5 (1.29%) PowerShell
12 5 (1.29%) R
13 4 (1.03%) VB
14 3 (0.77%) HiveQL
14 3 (0.77%) TypeScript
15 2 (0.52%) COBOL
15 2 (0.52%) Kotlin
15 2 (0.52%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 196 (50.52%) Security Cleared
2 174 (44.85%) SC Cleared
3 19 (4.90%) Degree
4 17 (4.38%) ISTQB
5 15 (3.87%) DV Cleared
6 9 (2.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 8 (2.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.55%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.55%) Master's Degree
9 5 (1.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 4 (1.03%) AWS Certification
10 4 (1.03%) Azure Certification
10 4 (1.03%) PhD
11 2 (0.52%) ISEB
11 2 (0.52%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.52%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.26%) ACCA
12 1 (0.26%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.26%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.26%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 69 (17.78%) Data Quality
2 30 (7.73%) QA
3 6 (1.55%) SLA
4 4 (1.03%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.03%) GDPR
5 3 (0.77%) FATCA
5 3 (0.77%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.52%) GRC
7 1 (0.26%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.26%) PMO
7 1 (0.26%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.26%) WCAG
System Software
1 84 (21.65%) Docker
2 11 (2.84%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.55%) Postfix
4 4 (1.03%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.77%) HDFS
5 3 (0.77%) Oracle Clusterware
5 3 (0.77%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.77%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.26%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 84 (21.65%) Kubernetes
2 39 (10.05%) Grafana
3 29 (7.47%) Terraform
4 23 (5.93%) Prometheus
5 19 (4.90%) Ansible
6 12 (3.09%) Progress Chef
7 6 (1.55%) Puppet
8 4 (1.03%) Kibana
8 4 (1.03%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.77%) Data Guard
9 3 (0.77%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.52%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.52%) HP Quality Center
10 2 (0.52%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.26%) Control-M
11 1 (0.26%) SCCM
11 1 (0.26%) SCOM
11 1 (0.26%) WSUS
Vendors
1 127 (32.73%) Oracle
2 76 (19.59%) Talend
3 58 (14.95%) Microsoft
4 45 (11.60%) Informatica
5 44 (11.34%) Denodo
6 24 (6.19%) ServiceNow
7 17 (4.38%) Databricks
8 15 (3.87%) SAP
9 10 (2.58%) Atlassian
10 9 (2.32%) Fujitsu
10 9 (2.32%) Jaspersoft
11 8 (2.06%) Cloudera
12 7 (1.80%) Google
12 7 (1.80%) NEC
12 7 (1.80%) Sage
13 6 (1.55%) Red Hat
13 6 (1.55%) Splunk
13 6 (1.55%) webMethods
14 5 (1.29%) Dynatrace
14 5 (1.29%) VMware