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

6 months to
7 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 11 16
Rank change year-on-year +4 +5 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 370 163 157
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.14% 11.81% 8.15%
As % of the Programming Languages category 52.11% 44.05% 36.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 279 114 108
10th Percentile £356 £256 £259
25th Percentile £410 £404 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £472 £487 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.08% +8.22% -14.29%
75th Percentile £531 £575 £575
90th Percentile £600 £654 £625
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £18.74 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £46.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -3.23% +9.41% -17.87%

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 710 370 430
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 25.22% 26.81% 22.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 511 227 311
10th Percentile £358 £311 £260
25th Percentile £414 £408 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £485 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.44% +7.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £559 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £696 £650
England median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 16
10th Percentile - £16.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.00 £18.13
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £53.13
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -61.90% -44.08%
75th Percentile £68.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.90 £52.50 £65.63
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 7 March 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 7 March 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 +2 158 £465 -3.93% 31
Birmingham -11 73 £475 -13.64% 56
Warwickshire -13 34 £500 +17.65% 16
Coventry -12 25 £407 -9.56% 11
Herefordshire 0 22 £550 -21.43% 3
Solihull -6 10 £496 +9.02% 8
Worcestershire -8 10 £700 - 14
Dudley - 6 £410 - 6
Staffordshire -7 4 £463 +1.37% 20
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 3
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 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 61 (16.49%) SAS
2 40 (10.81%) WebLogic
3 19 (5.14%) Apache
4 15 (4.05%) Tuxedo
5 13 (3.51%) Confluence
6 9 (2.43%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.16%) JBoss
8 6 (1.62%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.54%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.54%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.54%) CMS
9 2 (0.54%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.54%) Liferay
10 1 (0.27%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.27%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.27%) Drupal
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.27%) nginx
10 1 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (3.51%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.81%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.81%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.27%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.08%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.08%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.81%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.54%) Maximo
3 2 (0.54%) Primavera
3 2 (0.54%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.27%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.27%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.27%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.27%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.27%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 97 (26.22%) AWS
2 86 (23.24%) Azure
3 41 (11.08%) Power Platform
4 35 (9.46%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (7.84%) Serverless
6 28 (7.57%) Amazon S3
7 19 (5.14%) Amazon EC2
7 19 (5.14%) GCP
8 17 (4.59%) GitHub
9 15 (4.05%) Azure Data Factory
9 15 (4.05%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 15 (4.05%) GitHub Actions
10 12 (3.24%) OpenShift
11 10 (2.70%) Azure Key Vault
11 10 (2.70%) Power Automate
12 9 (2.43%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 8 (2.16%) AWS KMS
13 8 (2.16%) Cloud Computing
13 8 (2.16%) Route 53
13 8 (2.16%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.35%) DNS
1 5 (1.35%) Network Security
2 4 (1.08%) Firewall
3 2 (0.54%) DHCP
3 2 (0.54%) LAN
3 2 (0.54%) TCP/IP
3 2 (0.54%) VLAN
3 2 (0.54%) WAN
3 2 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
4 1 (0.27%) BGP
4 1 (0.27%) FTP
4 1 (0.27%) HTTP
4 1 (0.27%) IMAP
4 1 (0.27%) Internet
4 1 (0.27%) MPLS
4 1 (0.27%) OSPF
4 1 (0.27%) SMTP
4 1 (0.27%) SSH
4 1 (0.27%) VPN
4 1 (0.27%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (17.30%) Pentaho
2 36 (9.73%) Power BI
3 34 (9.19%) Data Warehouse
3 34 (9.19%) PostgreSQL
4 30 (8.11%) Amazon RDS
5 24 (6.49%) Relational Database
6 23 (6.22%) MongoDB
7 17 (4.59%) MySQL
7 17 (4.59%) Oracle Database
8 14 (3.78%) Amazon Redshift
9 12 (3.24%) NoSQL
9 12 (3.24%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (2.97%) Tableau
11 9 (2.43%) Redis
12 8 (2.16%) Amazon Aurora
12 8 (2.16%) SQL Server
13 7 (1.89%) BigQuery
13 7 (1.89%) Hadoop
13 7 (1.89%) Metadata
13 7 (1.89%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 92 (24.86%) Git
2 72 (19.46%) Jenkins
3 64 (17.30%) JIRA
4 29 (7.84%) GitLab
5 18 (4.86%) JUnit
6 12 (3.24%) MSI
7 11 (2.97%) Selenium
8 10 (2.70%) Maven
8 10 (2.70%) Mockito
9 9 (2.43%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.16%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.16%) IntelliJ
10 8 (2.16%) Postman
11 7 (1.89%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.62%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 5 (1.35%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (1.35%) DbUnit
13 5 (1.35%) jMock
13 5 (1.35%) Liquibase
14 4 (1.08%) CA Gen
General
1 92 (24.86%) Social Skills
2 65 (17.57%) Public Sector
3 49 (13.24%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (8.38%) Finance
5 14 (3.78%) Banking
6 9 (2.43%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.62%) Legal
8 5 (1.35%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.35%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.08%) Advertising
9 4 (1.08%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.08%) Marketing
9 4 (1.08%) Retail
10 3 (0.81%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.81%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.54%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.54%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.27%) Automotive
12 1 (0.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 101 (27.30%) Data Engineer
2 70 (18.92%) Developer
3 30 (8.11%) Analyst
4 24 (6.49%) Senior
5 22 (5.95%) Lead
6 20 (5.41%) Java Developer
7 16 (4.32%) Consultant
8 15 (4.05%) SAS Engineer
8 15 (4.05%) Software Engineer
9 14 (3.78%) Architect
9 14 (3.78%) Data Analyst
10 13 (3.51%) Java Engineer
11 12 (3.24%) Site Engineer
11 12 (3.24%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 12 (3.24%) Tester
12 11 (2.97%) Full-Stack Developer
13 10 (2.70%) Python Developer
14 9 (2.43%) Backend Developer
14 9 (2.43%) Business Intelligence Developer
14 9 (2.43%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (11.89%) REST
2 42 (11.35%) Spring
3 32 (8.65%) Spring Boot
4 22 (5.95%) Flask
4 22 (5.95%) Node.js
4 22 (5.95%) XML
5 18 (4.86%) SOAP
6 17 (4.59%) Hibernate
6 17 (4.59%) RESTful
7 13 (3.51%) JSON
8 12 (3.24%) FastAPI
8 12 (3.24%) HTML
9 11 (2.97%) JPA
10 10 (2.70%) .NET
10 10 (2.70%) AngularJS
10 10 (2.70%) Django
10 10 (2.70%) Spring Batch
10 10 (2.70%) Web Services
10 10 (2.70%) YAML
11 9 (2.43%) J2EE
Miscellaneous
1 21 (5.68%) Cloud Native
2 12 (3.24%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.16%) Product Ownership
4 7 (1.89%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.35%) Onboarding
5 5 (1.35%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.08%) Clustering
6 4 (1.08%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.08%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.08%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.08%) Robotics
7 3 (0.81%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (0.81%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.54%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.54%) Derivative
8 2 (0.54%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.54%) IoT
8 2 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.27%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 43 (11.62%) Unix
2 38 (10.27%) Linux
3 25 (6.76%) Windows
4 6 (1.62%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.27%) Amazon Linux
5 1 (0.27%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.27%) VME
5 1 (0.27%) VMS
5 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (39.73%) CI/CD
2 130 (35.14%) Agile
3 118 (31.89%) ETL
4 114 (30.81%) DevOps
5 97 (26.22%) Problem-Solving
6 95 (25.68%) Analytics
7 83 (22.43%) Business Intelligence
8 81 (21.89%) Data Modelling
9 80 (21.62%) Scrum
10 74 (20.00%) Continuous Improvement
11 69 (18.65%) Test Automation
12 67 (18.11%) Data Pipeline
13 64 (17.30%) Data Integration
14 50 (13.51%) Microservices
15 44 (11.89%) Deployment Automation
16 43 (11.62%) Data Analytics
17 42 (11.35%) Data Virtualisation
17 42 (11.35%) Migration
18 40 (10.81%) Software Engineering
19 39 (10.54%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 84 (22.70%) Java
2 76 (20.54%) Python
3 40 (10.81%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.30%) Shell Script
5 18 (4.86%) Go
6 17 (4.59%) JavaScript
7 15 (4.05%) Scala
8 8 (2.16%) Bash
9 7 (1.89%) C#
9 7 (1.89%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 6 (1.62%) Perl
11 5 (1.35%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.35%) R
11 5 (1.35%) VBA
12 4 (1.08%) Bicep
12 4 (1.08%) VB
13 3 (0.81%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.81%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.54%) Kotlin
14 2 (0.54%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 185 (50.00%) Security Cleared
2 166 (44.86%) SC Cleared
3 22 (5.95%) Degree
4 17 (4.59%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.78%) ISTQB
6 10 (2.70%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.16%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.89%) Azure Certification
9 7 (1.89%) Master's Degree
10 6 (1.62%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (1.35%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.54%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.54%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.54%) ISEB
12 2 (0.54%) PhD
12 2 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 2 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.27%) ACCA
13 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (17.84%) Data Quality
2 24 (6.49%) QA
3 5 (1.35%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.35%) SLA
4 3 (0.81%) FATCA
5 1 (0.27%) GDPR
5 1 (0.27%) PMO
5 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 92 (24.86%) Docker
2 6 (1.62%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.35%) Postfix
4 3 (0.81%) HDFS
4 3 (0.81%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (0.81%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.27%) DFS Replication
5 1 (0.27%) Dovecot
5 1 (0.27%) Squid
Systems Management
1 91 (24.59%) Kubernetes
2 42 (11.35%) Grafana
3 30 (8.11%) Terraform
4 28 (7.57%) Prometheus
5 22 (5.95%) Ansible
6 12 (3.24%) Progress Chef
7 10 (2.70%) Puppet
8 5 (1.35%) Kibana
9 4 (1.08%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.81%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.81%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.54%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.27%) Control-M
12 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.27%) Nessus
12 1 (0.27%) Proxmox
12 1 (0.27%) SCCM
12 1 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 113 (30.54%) Oracle
2 72 (19.46%) Talend
3 50 (13.51%) Microsoft
4 41 (11.08%) Denodo
5 36 (9.73%) Informatica
6 20 (5.41%) ServiceNow
7 15 (4.05%) SAP
8 14 (3.78%) Google
9 12 (3.24%) Databricks
9 12 (3.24%) Splunk
10 10 (2.70%) webMethods
11 9 (2.43%) Fujitsu
12 8 (2.16%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (1.89%) NEC
14 6 (1.62%) Cloudera
14 6 (1.62%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.62%) Red Hat
14 6 (1.62%) Sage
15 5 (1.35%) Atlassian
16 3 (0.81%) Teradata