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

6 months to
17 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 12 18
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 -1
Contract jobs citing SQL 352 215 145
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.00% 11.74% 7.63%
As % of the Programming Languages category 45.30% 46.44% 34.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 266 135 88
10th Percentile £360 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £372
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +11.11% -10.00%
75th Percentile £537 £540 £567
90th Percentile £610 £645 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £542
% change year-on-year - -7.79% -1.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 20 3
10th Percentile £20.25 £33.91 £34.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £35.48 £34.47
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +42.86% -
75th Percentile £45.75 - £47.50
90th Percentile £56.75 - £55.00
England median hourly rate £43.75 £50.00 £41.33
% change year-on-year -12.50% +20.98% -8.16%

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 777 463 425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.07% 25.29% 22.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 549 292 267
10th Percentile £375 £316 £313
25th Percentile £416 £413 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - +2.04%
75th Percentile £575 £550 £575
90th Percentile £663 £625 £648
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 23 6
10th Percentile £19.85 £30.25 £34.47
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £40.00
Median hourly rate £51.75 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -11.11% +204.05%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £59.69
90th Percentile - - £67.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +0.78%

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 17 September 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 17 September 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 17 September 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 0 158 £460 -12.38% 27
Birmingham -6 57 £500 +1.21% 138
Warwickshire -14 48 £500 +11.11% 31
Coventry -11 28 £403 +34.50% 22
Staffordshire -2 12 £431 - 29
Solihull -19 11 £538 +19.44% 28
Worcestershire +10 10 £575 -11.54% 11
Dudley - 3 £400 - 5
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 7
Herefordshire -3 2 £425 -26.09% 5
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 36 (10.23%) SAS
2 25 (7.10%) Confluence
3 11 (3.13%) WebLogic
4 6 (1.70%) Oracle Workflow
4 6 (1.70%) Tuxedo
5 5 (1.42%) Apache Spark
6 4 (1.14%) ArcGIS
6 4 (1.14%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 3 (0.85%) Apache
7 3 (0.85%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.85%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
9 1 (0.28%) IIS
9 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (3.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.42%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.57%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (3.69%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.14%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (1.14%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.28%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.28%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (30.97%) AWS
2 87 (24.72%) Azure
3 51 (14.49%) Power Platform
4 39 (11.08%) Azure Data Factory
5 20 (5.68%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (5.40%) Amazon S3
6 19 (5.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 16 (4.55%) Serverless
7 16 (4.55%) Snowflake
8 12 (3.41%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 12 (3.41%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (2.56%) Azure Functions
9 9 (2.56%) dbt
9 9 (2.56%) GitHub
9 9 (2.56%) Microsoft Purview
10 8 (2.27%) AWS KMS
10 8 (2.27%) Azure Storage
10 8 (2.27%) GCP
10 8 (2.27%) Matillion
10 8 (2.27%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.99%) SNMP
2 5 (1.42%) Firewall
2 5 (1.42%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.42%) WinSCP
3 3 (0.85%) SSL
4 1 (0.28%) DHCP
4 1 (0.28%) DNS
4 1 (0.28%) HTTP
4 1 (0.28%) SAN
4 1 (0.28%) Skype
4 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (20.17%) Data Warehouse
2 56 (15.91%) Pentaho
3 50 (14.20%) Power BI
4 24 (6.82%) Oracle Database
5 22 (6.25%) Oracle Reports
5 22 (6.25%) SQL Server
6 20 (5.68%) PostgreSQL
7 17 (4.83%) Data Lake
8 16 (4.55%) Relational Database
9 15 (4.26%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (4.26%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (4.26%) Metadata
9 15 (4.26%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 15 (4.26%) Tableau
10 13 (3.69%) DynamoDB
11 12 (3.41%) BusinessObjects
12 11 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
12 11 (3.13%) Ingres
13 9 (2.56%) Delta Lake
13 9 (2.56%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 71 (20.17%) Git
2 60 (17.05%) GitLab
3 59 (16.76%) JIRA
4 28 (7.95%) Jenkins
5 23 (6.53%) Maven
6 20 (5.68%) Zephyr
7 19 (5.40%) Postman
8 16 (4.55%) JUnit
9 14 (3.98%) Mockito
10 11 (3.13%) Artifactory
11 9 (2.56%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.70%) Bitbucket Server
12 6 (1.70%) DbUnit
12 6 (1.70%) jMock
12 6 (1.70%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (1.42%) Team Foundation Server
14 3 (0.85%) Selenium
14 3 (0.85%) Toad
15 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
15 2 (0.57%) JMeter
General
1 84 (23.86%) Social Skills
2 72 (20.45%) Public Sector
3 61 (17.33%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (8.81%) Finance
5 10 (2.84%) Banking
6 8 (2.27%) Manufacturing
6 8 (2.27%) Marketing
7 6 (1.70%) Legal
8 5 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.42%) Retail
9 4 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.14%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.14%) Military
10 2 (0.57%) Front Office
11 1 (0.28%) Advertising
11 1 (0.28%) Billing
11 1 (0.28%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Local Government
11 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 143 (40.63%) Data Engineer
2 53 (15.06%) Developer
3 44 (12.50%) Senior
4 31 (8.81%) Analyst
5 26 (7.39%) Java Developer
6 25 (7.10%) Senior Data Engineer
7 15 (4.26%) Lead
7 15 (4.26%) Tester
8 13 (3.69%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (3.41%) Java Engineer
10 11 (3.13%) Architect
10 11 (3.13%) QA Tester
11 10 (2.84%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (2.84%) Data Analyst
11 10 (2.84%) Test Analyst
12 9 (2.56%) AWS Data Engineer
13 8 (2.27%) SQL Developer
14 7 (1.99%) Business Intelligence Developer
14 7 (1.99%) Senior Developer
14 7 (1.99%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (6.53%) REST
1 23 (6.53%) Spring
1 23 (6.53%) Spring Boot
2 18 (5.11%) SOAP
3 15 (4.26%) JPA
3 15 (4.26%) PySpark
4 12 (3.41%) Terraform
4 12 (3.41%) Web Services
5 9 (2.56%) Hibernate
5 9 (2.56%) Spring Batch
5 9 (2.56%) Spring Integration
6 8 (2.27%) ActiveMQ
6 8 (2.27%) AngularJS
6 8 (2.27%) XML
7 7 (1.99%) .NET
7 7 (1.99%) OpenAPI
7 7 (1.99%) Spring Cloud
8 6 (1.70%) ADO
8 6 (1.70%) Oracle Fusion
8 6 (1.70%) PowerMock
Miscellaneous
1 14 (3.98%) Linux Command Line
2 13 (3.69%) Legacy Systems
3 11 (3.13%) Cloud Native
4 9 (2.56%) SCADA
5 8 (2.27%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.42%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.42%) Low-Code
7 5 (1.42%) Reference Data
7 5 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (0.85%) Credit Risk
8 3 (0.85%) Data Fabric
8 3 (0.85%) IoT
8 3 (0.85%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.57%) BYOD
9 2 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (0.57%) Management Information System
9 2 (0.57%) Operational Technology
9 2 (0.57%) Product Ownership
9 2 (0.57%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 42 (11.93%) Unix
2 39 (11.08%) Linux
3 23 (6.53%) Windows
4 8 (2.27%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.28%) AIX
5 1 (0.28%) CentOS
5 1 (0.28%) HPUX
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 146 (41.48%) ETL
2 129 (36.65%) Agile
3 113 (32.10%) Data Modelling
4 88 (25.00%) Data Pipeline
5 81 (23.01%) Analytics
6 80 (22.73%) Business Intelligence
7 79 (22.44%) Test Automation
8 77 (21.88%) CI/CD
9 73 (20.74%) Migration
10 72 (20.45%) Problem-Solving
11 63 (17.90%) Data Integration
12 61 (17.33%) Data Engineering
13 51 (14.49%) Validation
14 48 (13.64%) Continuous Improvement
15 47 (13.35%) DevOps
15 47 (13.35%) Scrum
16 44 (12.50%) Data Migration
17 37 (10.51%) Decision-Making
18 33 (9.38%) AI
19 31 (8.81%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 71 (20.17%) Python
2 51 (14.49%) PL/SQL
3 46 (13.07%) Java
4 23 (6.53%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.69%) C
6 10 (2.84%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.56%) Bash
8 8 (2.27%) ProC
8 8 (2.27%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.70%) VB
9 6 (1.70%) VB6
10 5 (1.42%) C#
10 5 (1.42%) COBOL
10 5 (1.42%) JavaScript
11 3 (0.85%) Bicep
12 2 (0.57%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.57%) R
12 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.57%) VB.NET
13 1 (0.28%) Ada
Qualifications
1 187 (53.13%) Security Cleared
2 165 (46.88%) SC Cleared
3 29 (8.24%) BPSS Clearance
4 26 (7.39%) ISTQB
5 8 (2.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 7 (1.99%) Degree
7 6 (1.70%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.42%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.14%) ISEB
10 3 (0.85%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.57%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.28%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.28%) MCSE
12 1 (0.28%) OCP
12 1 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.28%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (14.20%) Data Quality
2 46 (13.07%) QA
3 6 (1.70%) SLA
4 4 (1.14%) FATCA
4 4 (1.14%) GDPR
5 3 (0.85%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.57%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.57%) GRC
7 1 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.28%) GMP
7 1 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.28%) GxP
7 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 24 (6.82%) Docker
2 8 (2.27%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.42%) Postfix
3 5 (1.42%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.85%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.85%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.57%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 28 (7.95%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.98%) Grafana
3 7 (1.99%) WMI
4 6 (1.70%) Kibana
5 3 (0.85%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.57%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) SCCM
7 1 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 152 (43.18%) Oracle
2 69 (19.60%) Talend
3 53 (15.06%) Microsoft
4 45 (12.78%) Informatica
5 40 (11.36%) Denodo
6 39 (11.08%) Databricks
7 13 (3.69%) SAP
7 13 (3.69%) ServiceNow
8 9 (2.56%) Atlassian
8 9 (2.56%) Google
8 9 (2.56%) Splunk
9 8 (2.27%) Cisco
9 8 (2.27%) Jaspersoft
10 7 (1.99%) F5
10 7 (1.99%) Fortinet
10 7 (1.99%) Palo Alto
10 7 (1.99%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.70%) VMware
12 5 (1.42%) IBM
12 5 (1.42%) Sage