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

6 months to
1 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 11 18
Rank change year-on-year +5 +7 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 449 182 145
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.38% 12.25% 7.07%
As % of the Programming Languages category 61.51% 47.40% 33.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 348 120 98
10th Percentile £355 £235 £259
25th Percentile £406 £388 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +5.88% -11.46%
75th Percentile £512 £538 £550
90th Percentile £577 £625 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 19 2
10th Percentile £52.05 £30.88 £30.73
25th Percentile £53.25 £33.91 £31.26
Median hourly rate £56.00 £50.00 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +55.52% +27.33%
75th Percentile £58.25 - £33.04
90th Percentile £59.15 - £33.57
England median hourly rate £45.00 £42.82 £42.50
% change year-on-year +5.10% +0.74% -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 730 384 432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.76% 25.84% 21.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 542 238 305
10th Percentile £356 £269 £260
25th Percentile £413 £400 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £570
90th Percentile £622 £638 £638
England median daily rate £518 £520 £543
% change year-on-year -0.48% -4.15% -2.25%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 22 15
10th Percentile £46.25 £28.18 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £33.91 £47.75
Median hourly rate £59.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.00% -13.04% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile £69.77 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.75 £64.50
% change year-on-year +14.54% -12.02% +3.20%

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 1 July 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 1 July 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 +5 190 £459 -0.22% 15
Birmingham -5 72 £469 -6.20% 43
Warwickshire -17 58 £500 +21.21% 28
Coventry +1 44 £407 +30.24% 11
Solihull -13 17 £481 +14.52% 4
Worcestershire +5 10 £425 -39.29% 10
Staffordshire +5 9 £431 -21.59% 12
Herefordshire -1 9 £538 +34.38% 4
Dudley - 8 £410 - 3
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 3
Wednesbury - 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 63 (14.03%) SAS
2 34 (7.57%) Confluence
3 15 (3.34%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.90%) Tuxedo
5 9 (2.00%) Apache
6 7 (1.56%) Oracle Workflow
7 6 (1.34%) Oracle Self-Service HR
8 5 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
9 3 (0.67%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.67%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.67%) Microsoft Exchange
9 3 (0.67%) SharePoint
10 1 (0.22%) Apache Geronimo
10 1 (0.22%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.22%) CMS
10 1 (0.22%) IIS
10 1 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.22%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.22%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.11%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.67%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.45%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.45%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 11 (2.45%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.34%) Oracle HRMS
3 3 (0.67%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.22%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 135 (30.07%) AWS
2 108 (24.05%) Azure
3 65 (14.48%) Power Platform
4 42 (9.35%) Azure DevOps
5 33 (7.35%) Amazon S3
6 31 (6.90%) Azure Data Factory
7 26 (5.79%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 22 (4.90%) Amazon EC2
9 21 (4.68%) GitHub
9 21 (4.68%) Serverless
10 20 (4.45%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 16 (3.56%) Snowflake
12 15 (3.34%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (3.34%) AWS KMS
12 15 (3.34%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (3.34%) Route 53
13 13 (2.90%) dbt
14 11 (2.45%) GCP
14 11 (2.45%) Matillion
15 9 (2.00%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.78%) Firewall
2 7 (1.56%) SNMP
3 5 (1.11%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.11%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.67%) DNS
4 3 (0.67%) SSL
5 2 (0.45%) DHCP
5 2 (0.45%) LAN
5 2 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.45%) VLAN
5 2 (0.45%) VPN
5 2 (0.45%) WAN
5 2 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.22%) 4G
6 1 (0.22%) AMQP
6 1 (0.22%) Internet
6 1 (0.22%) Network Security
6 1 (0.22%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.22%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.22%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 75 (16.70%) Pentaho
2 73 (16.26%) Data Warehouse
3 63 (14.03%) Power BI
4 32 (7.13%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (6.68%) Amazon RDS
6 26 (5.79%) Relational Database
7 23 (5.12%) Tableau
8 22 (4.90%) Amazon Redshift
9 21 (4.68%) Oracle Reports
9 21 (4.68%) SQL Server
10 20 (4.45%) Oracle Database
11 19 (4.23%) DynamoDB
12 17 (3.79%) Data Lake
13 15 (3.34%) Amazon Aurora
13 15 (3.34%) Azure SQL Database
13 15 (3.34%) BusinessObjects
13 15 (3.34%) Ingres
13 15 (3.34%) Metadata
13 15 (3.34%) MySQL
14 14 (3.12%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 86 (19.15%) Git
2 74 (16.48%) JIRA
3 66 (14.70%) GitLab
4 55 (12.25%) Jenkins
5 22 (4.90%) Zephyr
6 21 (4.68%) JUnit
6 21 (4.68%) Postman
7 20 (4.45%) Maven
8 19 (4.23%) Mockito
9 16 (3.56%) SonarQube
10 11 (2.45%) Artifactory
10 11 (2.45%) Bitbucket Server
10 11 (2.45%) DbUnit
10 11 (2.45%) jMock
11 8 (1.78%) Team Foundation Server
12 7 (1.56%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (1.56%) Selenium
13 5 (1.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 4 (0.89%) Cypress.io
14 4 (0.89%) WebDriver
General
1 107 (23.83%) Social Skills
2 80 (17.82%) Public Sector
3 72 (16.04%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (8.02%) Finance
5 11 (2.45%) Banking
6 10 (2.23%) Manufacturing
7 7 (1.56%) Presentation Skills
7 7 (1.56%) Retail
8 6 (1.34%) Marketing
9 5 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (0.89%) Advertising
10 4 (0.89%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.67%) Billing
11 3 (0.67%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.67%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.45%) Legal
13 1 (0.22%) Automotive
13 1 (0.22%) Military
13 1 (0.22%) Publishing
13 1 (0.22%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 177 (39.42%) Data Engineer
2 77 (17.15%) Developer
3 54 (12.03%) Senior
4 38 (8.46%) Analyst
5 29 (6.46%) Java Developer
6 27 (6.01%) Senior Data Engineer
7 23 (5.12%) Lead
8 21 (4.68%) Architect
9 20 (4.45%) Tester
10 19 (4.23%) Data Analyst
11 17 (3.79%) QA Tester
12 14 (3.12%) Full-Stack Developer
12 14 (3.12%) SAS Engineer
13 12 (2.67%) AWS Data Engineer
13 12 (2.67%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.23%) Business Intelligence Developer
14 10 (2.23%) Senior Developer
14 10 (2.23%) Software Engineer
14 10 (2.23%) SQL Developer
15 9 (2.00%) Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (7.35%) Spring
1 33 (7.35%) Spring Boot
2 30 (6.68%) REST
3 24 (5.35%) Node.js
4 21 (4.68%) JPA
5 18 (4.01%) PySpark
5 18 (4.01%) SOAP
6 17 (3.79%) Hibernate
6 17 (3.79%) Spring Batch
6 17 (3.79%) Spring Integration
6 17 (3.79%) Web Services
7 16 (3.56%) AngularJS
7 16 (3.56%) Flask
8 15 (3.34%) ActiveMQ
9 14 (3.12%) Spring Cloud
10 13 (2.90%) RESTful
11 12 (2.67%) .NET
11 12 (2.67%) Django
12 11 (2.45%) Bootstrap
12 11 (2.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 16 (3.56%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (3.34%) Cloud Native
3 9 (2.00%) Legacy Systems
3 9 (2.00%) SCADA
4 7 (1.56%) Product Ownership
5 6 (1.34%) Linux Command Line
5 6 (1.34%) Low-Code
6 4 (0.89%) Clustering
6 4 (0.89%) Data Centre
6 4 (0.89%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (0.89%) Robotics
6 4 (0.89%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (0.67%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.67%) Data Fabric
7 3 (0.67%) Data Structures
7 3 (0.67%) Educational Technology
7 3 (0.67%) IoT
7 3 (0.67%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.45%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.45%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 61 (13.59%) Unix
2 47 (10.47%) Linux
3 22 (4.90%) Windows
4 6 (1.34%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.22%) AIX
6 1 (0.22%) HPUX
6 1 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 179 (39.87%) ETL
2 161 (35.86%) Agile
3 139 (30.96%) CI/CD
4 127 (28.29%) Data Modelling
5 109 (24.28%) Analytics
6 102 (22.72%) Business Intelligence
7 98 (21.83%) Test Automation
8 97 (21.60%) Data Pipeline
9 96 (21.38%) Problem-Solving
10 94 (20.94%) DevOps
11 81 (18.04%) Data Integration
12 78 (17.37%) Migration
13 76 (16.93%) Scrum
14 63 (14.03%) Validation
15 61 (13.59%) Data Engineering
16 55 (12.25%) Continuous Improvement
17 53 (11.80%) Decision-Making
18 43 (9.58%) Data Migration
19 41 (9.13%) AI
20 38 (8.46%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 87 (19.38%) Python
2 64 (14.25%) PL/SQL
3 60 (13.36%) Java
4 27 (6.01%) Shell Script
5 18 (4.01%) JavaScript
6 13 (2.90%) C
7 12 (2.67%) Bash
7 12 (2.67%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (2.23%) VB
9 8 (1.78%) ProC
9 8 (1.78%) VB6
10 7 (1.56%) C#
11 6 (1.34%) Bicep
12 5 (1.11%) Go
12 5 (1.11%) Perl
13 4 (0.89%) PowerShell
13 4 (0.89%) T-SQL
13 4 (0.89%) TypeScript
14 3 (0.67%) HiveQL
15 2 (0.45%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 239 (53.23%) Security Cleared
2 217 (48.33%) SC Cleared
3 27 (6.01%) ISTQB
4 15 (3.34%) Degree
5 13 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.78%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.34%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.11%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.11%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.89%) PhD
10 3 (0.67%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.67%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.45%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.45%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.45%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.22%) ACCA
12 1 (0.22%) CIMA
12 1 (0.22%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.22%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (15.59%) Data Quality
2 52 (11.58%) QA
3 11 (2.45%) SLA
4 7 (1.56%) FATCA
5 5 (1.11%) GDPR
6 4 (0.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.45%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.45%) GRC
8 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 60 (13.36%) Docker
2 10 (2.23%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.00%) Postfix
4 4 (0.89%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.67%) HDFS
5 3 (0.67%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.67%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 50 (11.14%) Kubernetes
2 36 (8.02%) Grafana
3 28 (6.24%) Terraform
4 13 (2.90%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.78%) Ansible
6 7 (1.56%) WMI
7 4 (0.89%) Kibana
7 4 (0.89%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.45%) Data Guard
8 2 (0.45%) HP ALM
8 2 (0.45%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
9 1 (0.22%) Control-M
9 1 (0.22%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.22%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 181 (40.31%) Oracle
2 98 (21.83%) Talend
3 75 (16.70%) Informatica
4 62 (13.81%) Microsoft
5 51 (11.36%) Denodo
6 35 (7.80%) Databricks
7 30 (6.68%) ServiceNow
8 16 (3.56%) SAP
9 15 (3.34%) Jaspersoft
10 14 (3.12%) Atlassian
11 11 (2.45%) Cloudera
12 10 (2.23%) Sage
12 10 (2.23%) Splunk
13 9 (2.00%) Cisco
13 9 (2.00%) Google
14 8 (1.78%) Fortinet
15 7 (1.56%) Actian
15 7 (1.56%) Dynatrace
15 7 (1.56%) F5
15 7 (1.56%) SolarWinds