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

6 months to
10 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 12 19
Rank change year-on-year -3 +7 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 349 205 138
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.98% 11.31% 7.26%
As % of the Programming Languages category 46.72% 45.35% 33.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 264 128 82
10th Percentile £359 £291 £279
25th Percentile £413 £402 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £438
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +14.29% -12.50%
75th Percentile £536 £540 £550
90th Percentile £609 £650 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -7.06% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 20 2
10th Percentile £20.25 £33.91 £34.04
25th Percentile £21.25 £35.48 £34.20
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £34.47
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +45.07% +36.50%
75th Percentile £45.75 - £34.73
90th Percentile £56.75 - £34.89
England median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £41.50
% change year-on-year -15.00% +20.48% +3.33%

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 747 452 410
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.36% 24.93% 21.58%
Number of daily rates quoted 526 282 260
10th Percentile £370 £313 £313
25th Percentile £418 £413 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £492
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.73% -1.70%
75th Percentile £575 £548 £575
90th Percentile £656 £632 £650
England median daily rate £525 £513 £550
% change year-on-year +2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 23 5
10th Percentile £19.85 £30.25 £34.36
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £35.00
Median hourly rate £47.50 £50.00 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -9.09% +136.86%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile - - £68.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +17.12% -14.62% +3.17%

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 10 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 10 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 10 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 -1 151 £465 -11.43% 20
Birmingham -4 57 £500 - 93
Warwickshire -11 48 £500 +11.11% 14
Coventry -5 31 £415 +38.68% 12
Worcestershire +13 11 £513 -21.15% 11
Staffordshire -3 11 £431 - 21
Solihull -22 11 £538 +19.44% 14
Dudley - 4 £400 - 4
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 4
Herefordshire -4 2 £425 -12.82% 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 36 (10.32%) SAS
2 24 (6.88%) Confluence
3 10 (2.87%) WebLogic
4 8 (2.29%) Oracle Workflow
5 6 (1.72%) Oracle Self-Service HR
5 6 (1.72%) Tuxedo
6 5 (1.43%) Apache Spark
7 4 (1.15%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.86%) Apache
8 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.86%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.57%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.29%) IIS
10 1 (0.29%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (3.15%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.43%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.86%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.57%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (3.72%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.72%) Oracle HRMS
3 3 (0.86%) ResourceLink
4 1 (0.29%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.29%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.29%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.29%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (31.23%) AWS
2 91 (26.07%) Azure
3 51 (14.61%) Power Platform
4 41 (11.75%) Azure Data Factory
5 22 (6.30%) Azure DevOps
5 22 (6.30%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 18 (5.16%) Amazon S3
7 17 (4.87%) Serverless
8 16 (4.58%) Snowflake
9 12 (3.44%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 12 (3.44%) Amazon EC2
10 11 (3.15%) GitHub
11 10 (2.87%) Microsoft Purview
12 9 (2.58%) Azure Functions
12 9 (2.58%) dbt
13 8 (2.29%) AWS KMS
13 8 (2.29%) AWS Lambda
13 8 (2.29%) Azure Storage
13 8 (2.29%) Matillion
13 8 (2.29%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.01%) SNMP
2 6 (1.72%) Firewall
3 5 (1.43%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.43%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.86%) SSL
5 1 (0.29%) DHCP
5 1 (0.29%) DNS
5 1 (0.29%) HTTP
5 1 (0.29%) SAN
5 1 (0.29%) Skype
5 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (19.77%) Data Warehouse
2 58 (16.62%) Pentaho
3 50 (14.33%) Power BI
4 23 (6.59%) Oracle Database
5 22 (6.30%) SQL Server
6 20 (5.73%) Oracle Reports
6 20 (5.73%) PostgreSQL
7 17 (4.87%) Data Lake
8 16 (4.58%) Azure SQL Database
8 16 (4.58%) Relational Database
9 15 (4.30%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (4.30%) Metadata
9 15 (4.30%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 15 (4.30%) Tableau
10 12 (3.44%) BusinessObjects
10 12 (3.44%) DynamoDB
11 11 (3.15%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (3.15%) Delta Lake
11 11 (3.15%) Ingres
12 9 (2.58%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 69 (19.77%) Git
2 59 (16.91%) GitLab
3 58 (16.62%) JIRA
4 28 (8.02%) Jenkins
5 22 (6.30%) Maven
6 20 (5.73%) Postman
6 20 (5.73%) Zephyr
7 16 (4.58%) JUnit
8 14 (4.01%) Mockito
9 11 (3.15%) Artifactory
10 9 (2.58%) SonarQube
11 6 (1.72%) Bitbucket Server
11 6 (1.72%) DbUnit
11 6 (1.72%) jMock
11 6 (1.72%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (1.43%) Selenium
12 5 (1.43%) Team Foundation Server
13 3 (0.86%) Cypress.io
13 3 (0.86%) Toad
13 3 (0.86%) WebDriver
General
1 85 (24.36%) Social Skills
2 68 (19.48%) Public Sector
3 58 (16.62%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (8.88%) Finance
5 10 (2.87%) Banking
6 9 (2.58%) Manufacturing
7 8 (2.29%) Marketing
8 5 (1.43%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.43%) Retail
9 4 (1.15%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.15%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.15%) Legal
9 4 (1.15%) Military
10 2 (0.57%) Billing
10 2 (0.57%) Front Office
11 1 (0.29%) Advertising
11 1 (0.29%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.29%) Local Government
11 1 (0.29%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.29%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 146 (41.83%) Data Engineer
2 47 (13.47%) Senior
3 45 (12.89%) Developer
4 32 (9.17%) Analyst
5 25 (7.16%) Senior Data Engineer
6 20 (5.73%) Java Developer
7 15 (4.30%) Tester
8 13 (3.72%) AWS Engineer
8 13 (3.72%) Lead
9 12 (3.44%) Architect
10 11 (3.15%) Data Analyst
10 11 (3.15%) Java Engineer
10 11 (3.15%) QA Tester
11 10 (2.87%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (2.87%) Test Analyst
12 9 (2.58%) AWS Data Engineer
13 7 (2.01%) Azure Data Engineer
13 7 (2.01%) Oracle Specialist
13 7 (2.01%) SAS Engineer
13 7 (2.01%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (6.02%) REST
2 18 (5.16%) Spring
2 18 (5.16%) Spring Boot
3 16 (4.58%) PySpark
4 15 (4.30%) JPA
4 15 (4.30%) SOAP
5 14 (4.01%) Terraform
6 12 (3.44%) Web Services
7 9 (2.58%) .NET
7 9 (2.58%) Hibernate
7 9 (2.58%) Spring Batch
7 9 (2.58%) Spring Integration
8 8 (2.29%) ActiveMQ
8 8 (2.29%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.29%) XML
9 7 (2.01%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.72%) Bootstrap
10 6 (1.72%) OpenAPI
10 6 (1.72%) PowerMock
10 6 (1.72%) RESTful
Miscellaneous
1 14 (4.01%) Legacy Systems
2 13 (3.72%) Linux Command Line
3 12 (3.44%) Cloud Native
4 10 (2.87%) SCADA
5 8 (2.29%) Distributed Systems
6 6 (1.72%) Enterprise Software
7 5 (1.43%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.43%) Low-Code
7 5 (1.43%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (1.15%) IoT
8 4 (1.15%) Reference Data
9 3 (0.86%) Credit Risk
9 3 (0.86%) Data Fabric
9 3 (0.86%) Onboarding
9 3 (0.86%) Product Ownership
10 2 (0.57%) BYOD
10 2 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.57%) Management Information System
10 2 (0.57%) Operational Technology
10 2 (0.57%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 42 (12.03%) Unix
2 38 (10.89%) Linux
3 23 (6.59%) Windows
4 8 (2.29%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) CentOS
5 1 (0.29%) HPUX
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 148 (42.41%) ETL
2 126 (36.10%) Agile
3 113 (32.38%) Data Modelling
4 91 (26.07%) Data Pipeline
5 81 (23.21%) Business Intelligence
5 81 (23.21%) Test Automation
6 80 (22.92%) Analytics
6 80 (22.92%) CI/CD
7 71 (20.34%) Migration
8 68 (19.48%) Problem-Solving
9 65 (18.62%) Data Integration
10 62 (17.77%) Data Engineering
11 54 (15.47%) Validation
12 50 (14.33%) DevOps
13 47 (13.47%) Scrum
14 44 (12.61%) Continuous Improvement
15 42 (12.03%) Data Migration
16 37 (10.60%) Decision-Making
17 36 (10.32%) AI
18 31 (8.88%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 74 (21.20%) Python
2 49 (14.04%) PL/SQL
3 39 (11.17%) Java
4 21 (6.02%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.72%) C
6 10 (2.87%) Bash
6 10 (2.87%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.29%) ProC
7 8 (2.29%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.72%) C#
8 6 (1.72%) JavaScript
8 6 (1.72%) VB
8 6 (1.72%) VB6
9 4 (1.15%) Bicep
9 4 (1.15%) COBOL
10 2 (0.57%) PowerShell
10 2 (0.57%) R
10 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
10 2 (0.57%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.29%) Ada
Qualifications
1 181 (51.86%) Security Cleared
2 159 (45.56%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.45%) ISTQB
4 24 (6.88%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.29%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (1.72%) Degree
6 6 (1.72%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.43%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.15%) ISEB
9 3 (0.86%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Certification
10 2 (0.57%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.57%) PhD
11 1 (0.29%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.29%) MCSE
11 1 (0.29%) OCP
11 1 (0.29%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (14.33%) Data Quality
2 48 (13.75%) QA
3 6 (1.72%) SLA
4 5 (1.43%) GDPR
5 4 (1.15%) FATCA
5 4 (1.15%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.57%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.57%) GRC
7 1 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.29%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.29%) GMP
7 1 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.29%) GxP
7 1 (0.29%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 26 (7.45%) Docker
2 8 (2.29%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.43%) Postfix
3 5 (1.43%) VMware Infrastructure
4 3 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.86%) Virtual Machines
5 2 (0.57%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 24 (6.88%) Kubernetes
2 14 (4.01%) Grafana
3 7 (2.01%) WMI
4 6 (1.72%) Kibana
5 3 (0.86%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.57%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.29%) SCCM
7 1 (0.29%) SCOM
Vendors
1 150 (42.98%) Oracle
2 70 (20.06%) Talend
3 56 (16.05%) Microsoft
4 47 (13.47%) Informatica
5 42 (12.03%) Databricks
6 40 (11.46%) Denodo
7 15 (4.30%) ServiceNow
8 14 (4.01%) SAP
9 9 (2.58%) Atlassian
10 8 (2.29%) Cisco
10 8 (2.29%) Jaspersoft
11 7 (2.01%) F5
11 7 (2.01%) Fortinet
11 7 (2.01%) Google
11 7 (2.01%) Palo Alto
11 7 (2.01%) SolarWinds
11 7 (2.01%) Splunk
12 6 (1.72%) Sage
12 6 (1.72%) VMware
13 5 (1.43%) IBM