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 20 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 10 16
Rank change year-on-year +5 +6 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 411 168 153
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.01% 12.04% 8.11%
As % of the Programming Languages category 61.62% 46.54% 35.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 325 113 102
10th Percentile £354 £235 £259
25th Percentile £406 £388 £311
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £460 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% +8.24% -15.00%
75th Percentile £511 £575 £575
90th Percentile £575 £661 £625
England median daily rate £500 £513 £550
% change year-on-year -2.44% -6.82% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 7 1
10th Percentile £52.05 £17.36 -
25th Percentile £53.25 £26.33 -
Median hourly rate £56.00 £33.91 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +65.14% +11.66% +20.28%
75th Percentile £58.25 £41.96 -
90th Percentile £59.15 £50.00 -
England median hourly rate £47.50 £46.50 £44.25
% change year-on-year +2.15% +5.08% -11.12%

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 667 361 432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.11% 25.88% 22.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 502 218 313
10th Percentile £350 £235 £260
25th Percentile £412 £400 £328
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.45% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £556 £550
90th Percentile £619 £679 £638
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -2.22%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 14 13
10th Percentile £48.75 £16.83 £40.10
25th Percentile £56.50 £19.12 £55.00
Median hourly rate £61.32 £28.18 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +117.59% -50.99% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £33.91 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £50.00 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £62.50
% change year-on-year +3.59% +0.40% -

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 20 May 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 20 May 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 +3 173 £462 +0.43% 10
Birmingham -2 74 £450 -18.18% 67
Warwickshire -15 46 £500 +60.64% 18
Coventry -4 32 £416 +21.02% 38
Solihull -7 17 £478 +13.81% 2
Herefordshire +2 14 £544 -1.14% 1
Staffordshire +4 10 £450 -18.18% 8
Worcestershire 0 9 £425 -39.29% 10
Dudley - 7 £420 - 3
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 1
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 2
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 58 (14.11%) SAS
2 28 (6.81%) WebLogic
3 27 (6.57%) Confluence
4 15 (3.65%) Tuxedo
5 9 (2.19%) Apache
6 8 (1.95%) SharePoint
7 7 (1.70%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (1.46%) Oracle Self-Service HR
9 5 (1.22%) Apache Airflow
10 3 (0.73%) Apache Spark
10 3 (0.73%) Jupyter
10 3 (0.73%) Microsoft Exchange
11 2 (0.49%) Anypoint
11 2 (0.49%) Liferay
12 1 (0.24%) Apache Geronimo
12 1 (0.24%) Apache ServiceMix
12 1 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
12 1 (0.24%) Red Hat Fuse
12 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
12 1 (0.24%) WebSphere
Applications
1 11 (2.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.22%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.73%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.49%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.49%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.46%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.97%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.73%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.73%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.49%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.24%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.24%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.24%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.24%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.24%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 106 (25.79%) AWS
2 93 (22.63%) Azure
3 60 (14.60%) Power Platform
4 38 (9.25%) Azure DevOps
5 34 (8.27%) Amazon S3
6 23 (5.60%) Amazon EC2
6 23 (5.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 21 (5.11%) Azure Data Factory
8 20 (4.87%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 18 (4.38%) Serverless
10 16 (3.89%) GitHub
11 15 (3.65%) Amazon SQS
11 15 (3.65%) AWS KMS
11 15 (3.65%) Route 53
11 15 (3.65%) Snowflake
12 14 (3.41%) GitHub Actions
13 11 (2.68%) AWS Lambda
14 8 (1.95%) GCP
14 8 (1.95%) OpenShift
14 8 (1.95%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.95%) Firewall
2 5 (1.22%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.22%) SNMP
2 5 (1.22%) WinSCP
3 3 (0.73%) DNS
3 3 (0.73%) Network Security
3 3 (0.73%) SSL
4 2 (0.49%) DHCP
4 2 (0.49%) LAN
4 2 (0.49%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.49%) VLAN
4 2 (0.49%) VPN
4 2 (0.49%) WAN
4 2 (0.49%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.24%) BGP
5 1 (0.24%) Internet
5 1 (0.24%) MPLS
5 1 (0.24%) OSPF
5 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.24%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 66 (16.06%) Pentaho
2 58 (14.11%) Data Warehouse
3 57 (13.87%) Power BI
4 34 (8.27%) Amazon RDS
5 29 (7.06%) PostgreSQL
6 20 (4.87%) Relational Database
6 20 (4.87%) Tableau
7 19 (4.62%) Amazon Redshift
7 19 (4.62%) DynamoDB
8 16 (3.89%) Oracle Database
9 15 (3.65%) Amazon Aurora
9 15 (3.65%) BusinessObjects
9 15 (3.65%) Data Lake
9 15 (3.65%) Oracle Reports
10 14 (3.41%) Metadata
11 12 (2.92%) SQL Server
12 11 (2.68%) Delta Lake
12 11 (2.68%) MySQL
12 11 (2.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 10 (2.43%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 72 (17.52%) Git
2 64 (15.57%) JIRA
3 53 (12.90%) Jenkins
4 49 (11.92%) GitLab
5 19 (4.62%) JUnit
5 19 (4.62%) Maven
6 18 (4.38%) Mockito
7 17 (4.14%) Postman
8 16 (3.89%) SonarQube
9 15 (3.65%) Zephyr
10 12 (2.92%) MSI
11 11 (2.68%) Bitbucket Server
11 11 (2.68%) DbUnit
11 11 (2.68%) jMock
12 6 (1.46%) Artifactory
12 6 (1.46%) Selenium
13 5 (1.22%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 4 (0.97%) CA Gen
14 4 (0.97%) MLflow
14 4 (0.97%) TestRail
General
1 91 (22.14%) Social Skills
2 77 (18.73%) Public Sector
3 66 (16.06%) Analytical Skills
4 31 (7.54%) Finance
5 11 (2.68%) Banking
6 9 (2.19%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.46%) Manufacturing
7 6 (1.46%) Marketing
8 5 (1.22%) Retail
9 4 (0.97%) Advertising
10 3 (0.73%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.73%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.73%) Legal
10 3 (0.73%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.49%) Billing
11 2 (0.49%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.49%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.49%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.24%) Automotive
12 1 (0.24%) Law
Job Titles
1 149 (36.25%) Data Engineer
2 71 (17.27%) Developer
3 40 (9.73%) Senior
4 38 (9.25%) Analyst
5 28 (6.81%) Java Developer
6 22 (5.35%) Architect
6 22 (5.35%) Lead
7 20 (4.87%) Senior Data Engineer
8 19 (4.62%) Data Analyst
9 14 (3.41%) Full-Stack Developer
10 13 (3.16%) SAS Engineer
10 13 (3.16%) Tester
11 11 (2.68%) AWS Data Engineer
11 11 (2.68%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (2.68%) QA Tester
12 10 (2.43%) Senior Developer
13 9 (2.19%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 9 (2.19%) DBA
14 8 (1.95%) Senior Java Developer
14 8 (1.95%) Unix Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (8.76%) Spring
1 36 (8.76%) Spring Boot
2 33 (8.03%) REST
3 24 (5.84%) Node.js
4 20 (4.87%) JPA
5 18 (4.38%) Hibernate
5 18 (4.38%) SOAP
6 17 (4.14%) Spring Batch
6 17 (4.14%) Spring Integration
6 17 (4.14%) Web Services
7 16 (3.89%) AngularJS
7 16 (3.89%) Flask
8 15 (3.65%) ActiveMQ
8 15 (3.65%) PySpark
9 14 (3.41%) RESTful
9 14 (3.41%) Spring Cloud
10 12 (2.92%) .NET
10 12 (2.92%) Django
10 12 (2.92%) YAML
11 11 (2.68%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 15 (3.65%) Cloud Native
2 14 (3.41%) Distributed Systems
3 9 (2.19%) SCADA
4 6 (1.46%) Linux Command Line
4 6 (1.46%) Product Ownership
5 4 (0.97%) Clustering
5 4 (0.97%) Data Centre
5 4 (0.97%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (0.97%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (0.97%) Robotics
5 4 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (0.73%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.73%) Data Fabric
6 3 (0.73%) Data Structures
6 3 (0.73%) Educational Technology
6 3 (0.73%) IoT
6 3 (0.73%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.49%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.49%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 61 (14.84%) Unix
2 44 (10.71%) Linux
3 27 (6.57%) Windows
4 5 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.22%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 147 (35.77%) ETL
2 134 (32.60%) Agile
3 131 (31.87%) CI/CD
4 105 (25.55%) Data Modelling
5 97 (23.60%) Business Intelligence
6 94 (22.87%) Analytics
6 94 (22.87%) DevOps
7 83 (20.19%) Data Pipeline
8 79 (19.22%) Test Automation
9 77 (18.73%) Scrum
10 76 (18.49%) Problem-Solving
11 71 (17.27%) Data Integration
12 59 (14.36%) Migration
13 51 (12.41%) Continuous Improvement
13 51 (12.41%) Data Engineering
14 50 (12.17%) Validation
15 48 (11.68%) Decision-Making
16 39 (9.49%) Microservices
17 35 (8.52%) Data Analytics
18 34 (8.27%) AI
Programming Languages
1 72 (17.52%) Python
2 64 (15.57%) Java
3 55 (13.38%) PL/SQL
4 30 (7.30%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.62%) JavaScript
6 11 (2.68%) Bash
6 11 (2.68%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (1.95%) C#
8 7 (1.70%) Bicep
8 7 (1.70%) Go
9 5 (1.22%) Perl
9 5 (1.22%) PowerShell
9 5 (1.22%) R
10 4 (0.97%) TypeScript
10 4 (0.97%) VB
11 3 (0.73%) HiveQL
12 2 (0.49%) Scala
12 2 (0.49%) T-SQL
12 2 (0.49%) VB6
13 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 221 (53.77%) Security Cleared
2 200 (48.66%) SC Cleared
3 20 (4.87%) ISTQB
4 16 (3.89%) Degree
5 11 (2.68%) DV Cleared
6 10 (2.43%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.70%) Microsoft Certification
8 6 (1.46%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.22%) Master's Degree
10 4 (0.97%) PhD
11 3 (0.73%) AWS Certification
11 3 (0.73%) Computer Science Degree
11 3 (0.73%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.49%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 2 (0.49%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.24%) ACCA
13 1 (0.24%) CIMA
13 1 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
13 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.24%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (16.06%) Data Quality
2 38 (9.25%) QA
3 8 (1.95%) SLA
4 7 (1.70%) FATCA
5 6 (1.46%) GDPR
6 4 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.49%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.49%) GRC
8 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 64 (15.57%) Docker
2 10 (2.43%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.19%) Postfix
4 5 (1.22%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.73%) HDFS
6 3 (0.73%) Oracle Clusterware
6 3 (0.73%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 58 (14.11%) Kubernetes
2 40 (9.73%) Grafana
3 32 (7.79%) Terraform
4 17 (4.14%) Prometheus
5 12 (2.92%) Ansible
6 8 (1.95%) Progress Chef
7 5 (1.22%) WMI
8 4 (0.97%) Data Guard
8 4 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
9 3 (0.73%) Kibana
10 2 (0.49%) Docker Swarm
10 2 (0.49%) HP ALM
10 2 (0.49%) HP Quality Center
11 1 (0.24%) Control-M
11 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
11 1 (0.24%) Puppet
11 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 145 (35.28%) Oracle
2 82 (19.95%) Talend
3 67 (16.30%) Informatica
4 61 (14.84%) Microsoft
5 43 (10.46%) Denodo
6 25 (6.08%) Databricks
6 25 (6.08%) ServiceNow
7 15 (3.65%) Jaspersoft
7 15 (3.65%) SAP
8 14 (3.41%) Atlassian
9 10 (2.43%) Sage
10 9 (2.19%) Cloudera
10 9 (2.19%) Fujitsu
10 9 (2.19%) Google
11 8 (1.95%) Splunk
12 7 (1.70%) Cisco
12 7 (1.70%) Dynatrace
12 7 (1.70%) NEC
13 6 (1.46%) Fortinet
14 5 (1.22%) VMware