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

6 months to
3 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 12 17
Rank change year-on-year +7 +5 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 414 157 147
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.16% 11.67% 7.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 59.57% 45.64% 34.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 322 112 100
10th Percentile £352 £235 £259
25th Percentile £407 £393 £312
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £461 £425
Median % change year-on-year +0.27% +8.53% -19.05%
75th Percentile £510 £575 £575
90th Percentile £575 £696 £625
England median daily rate £500 £516 £550
% change year-on-year -3.15% -6.14% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 5 1
10th Percentile £52.05 £16.67 -
25th Percentile £53.25 £18.74 -
Median hourly rate £56.00 £33.91 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year +65.14% +11.66% +20.28%
75th Percentile £58.25 - -
90th Percentile £59.15 - -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £43.66 £42.50
% change year-on-year +14.53% +2.72% -13.76%

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 695 344 425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.10% 25.58% 21.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 520 213 309
10th Percentile £349 £239 £260
25th Percentile £412 £400 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £470 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.06% +4.44% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £575
90th Percentile £619 £689 £638
England median daily rate £505 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.81% -2.78% -4.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 15 13
10th Percentile £48.75 £16.85 £40.10
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.87 £55.00
Median hourly rate £61.32 £27.50 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +122.97% -52.17% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £31.33 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 £33.91 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.00% - +4.17%

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 3 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 3 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 +4 179 £462 +0.16% 30
Birmingham -6 73 £469 -14.73% 60
Warwickshire -14 40 £500 +60.64% 16
Coventry -3 31 £425 +8.97% 10
Herefordshire +1 17 £550 -21.43% 1
Solihull -6 15 £478 +13.81% 2
Staffordshire +5 10 £431 -21.59% 16
Worcestershire -2 7 £700 - 8
Dudley - 7 £420 - 2
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 3
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 60 (14.49%) SAS
2 29 (7.00%) WebLogic
3 22 (5.31%) Confluence
4 15 (3.62%) Tuxedo
5 11 (2.66%) SharePoint
6 9 (2.17%) Apache
7 7 (1.69%) Oracle Workflow
8 6 (1.45%) Oracle Self-Service HR
9 5 (1.21%) Apache Airflow
10 4 (0.97%) Microsoft Exchange
11 3 (0.72%) Apache Spark
11 3 (0.72%) Jupyter
12 2 (0.48%) Anypoint
12 2 (0.48%) Liferay
13 1 (0.24%) Apache ServiceMix
13 1 (0.24%) CMS
13 1 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
13 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
13 1 (0.24%) WebSphere
Applications
1 10 (2.42%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.21%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.72%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.48%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Office
5 1 (0.24%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.45%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.97%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.48%) Maximo
4 2 (0.48%) 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
1 100 (24.15%) AWS
2 97 (23.43%) Azure
3 59 (14.25%) Power Platform
4 36 (8.70%) Amazon S3
4 36 (8.70%) Azure DevOps
5 24 (5.80%) Azure Data Factory
6 23 (5.56%) Amazon EC2
6 23 (5.56%) Serverless
7 22 (5.31%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 17 (4.11%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 16 (3.86%) GitHub
10 14 (3.38%) GitHub Actions
11 13 (3.14%) AWS Lambda
11 13 (3.14%) Snowflake
12 12 (2.90%) Amazon SQS
12 12 (2.90%) AWS KMS
12 12 (2.90%) Power Automate
12 12 (2.90%) Route 53
13 11 (2.66%) OpenShift
14 9 (2.17%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.93%) Firewall
2 5 (1.21%) Network Security
2 5 (1.21%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.21%) WinSCP
3 4 (0.97%) DNS
4 3 (0.72%) SSL
5 2 (0.48%) DHCP
5 2 (0.48%) LAN
5 2 (0.48%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.48%) VLAN
5 2 (0.48%) VPN
5 2 (0.48%) WAN
5 2 (0.48%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.24%) 4G
6 1 (0.24%) BGP
6 1 (0.24%) Internet
6 1 (0.24%) MPLS
6 1 (0.24%) OSPF
6 1 (0.24%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
Database & Business Intelligence
1 67 (16.18%) Pentaho
2 55 (13.29%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (12.80%) Power BI
4 37 (8.94%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (6.76%) PostgreSQL
6 23 (5.56%) Relational Database
7 21 (5.07%) Amazon Redshift
8 19 (4.59%) Tableau
9 16 (3.86%) DynamoDB
10 15 (3.62%) BusinessObjects
10 15 (3.62%) Oracle Reports
11 14 (3.38%) Data Lake
11 14 (3.38%) Metadata
11 14 (3.38%) MySQL
11 14 (3.38%) Oracle Database
12 13 (3.14%) MongoDB
13 12 (2.90%) Amazon Aurora
13 12 (2.90%) SQL Server
14 11 (2.66%) Delta Lake
15 10 (2.42%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 78 (18.84%) Git
2 65 (15.70%) JIRA
3 57 (13.77%) Jenkins
4 41 (9.90%) GitLab
5 16 (3.86%) Postman
6 15 (3.62%) JUnit
6 15 (3.62%) Maven
6 15 (3.62%) Mockito
7 14 (3.38%) Zephyr
8 13 (3.14%) MSI
9 12 (2.90%) SonarQube
10 9 (2.17%) Bitbucket Server
10 9 (2.17%) DbUnit
10 9 (2.17%) jMock
11 7 (1.69%) Selenium
12 6 (1.45%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 4 (0.97%) CA Gen
13 4 (0.97%) MLflow
14 3 (0.72%) Bitbucket
14 3 (0.72%) TestRail
General
1 88 (21.26%) Social Skills
2 75 (18.12%) Public Sector
3 64 (15.46%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (7.00%) Finance
5 10 (2.42%) Banking
6 9 (2.17%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.45%) Legal
7 6 (1.45%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.21%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.21%) Retail
9 4 (0.97%) Advertising
9 4 (0.97%) Marketing
10 3 (0.72%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.48%) Billing
11 2 (0.48%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.48%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.48%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.48%) Military
11 2 (0.48%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.24%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 148 (35.75%) Data Engineer
2 71 (17.15%) Developer
3 38 (9.18%) Senior
4 35 (8.45%) Analyst
5 25 (6.04%) Java Developer
6 23 (5.56%) Lead
7 18 (4.35%) Architect
7 18 (4.35%) Data Analyst
7 18 (4.35%) Senior Data Engineer
8 15 (3.62%) SAS Engineer
9 14 (3.38%) Full-Stack Developer
9 14 (3.38%) Tester
10 12 (2.90%) Consultant
11 11 (2.66%) AWS Data Engineer
11 11 (2.66%) AWS Engineer
11 11 (2.66%) Business Intelligence Developer
11 11 (2.66%) Site Engineer
11 11 (2.66%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 10 (2.42%) QA Tester
13 9 (2.17%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (8.70%) Spring
1 36 (8.70%) Spring Boot
2 34 (8.21%) REST
3 22 (5.31%) Node.js
4 19 (4.59%) Flask
5 17 (4.11%) JPA
6 15 (3.62%) Hibernate
6 15 (3.62%) PySpark
6 15 (3.62%) RESTful
6 15 (3.62%) Spring Batch
7 14 (3.38%) SOAP
7 14 (3.38%) Spring Integration
7 14 (3.38%) Web Services
8 13 (3.14%) AngularJS
9 12 (2.90%) ActiveMQ
9 12 (2.90%) Django
9 12 (2.90%) Spring Cloud
9 12 (2.90%) YAML
10 11 (2.66%) .NET
11 9 (2.17%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 14 (3.38%) Cloud Native
2 12 (2.90%) Distributed Systems
3 10 (2.42%) Product Ownership
4 8 (1.93%) SCADA
5 6 (1.45%) Legacy Systems
5 6 (1.45%) Linux Command Line
6 5 (1.21%) Enterprise Software
7 4 (0.97%) Clustering
7 4 (0.97%) Data Centre
7 4 (0.97%) Onboarding
7 4 (0.97%) Robotics
7 4 (0.97%) Self-Motivation
8 3 (0.72%) Analytical Mindset
8 3 (0.72%) Credit Risk
8 3 (0.72%) Data Fabric
8 3 (0.72%) Data Structures
8 3 (0.72%) Educational Technology
8 3 (0.72%) IoT
9 2 (0.48%) Data Protection Act
9 2 (0.48%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 54 (13.04%) Unix
2 42 (10.14%) Linux
3 24 (5.80%) Windows
4 6 (1.45%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 5 (1.21%) Windows Server
6 1 (0.24%) VME
6 1 (0.24%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (34.54%) ETL
2 135 (32.61%) Agile
2 135 (32.61%) CI/CD
3 98 (23.67%) Analytics
3 98 (23.67%) Business Intelligence
3 98 (23.67%) Data Modelling
3 98 (23.67%) DevOps
4 83 (20.05%) Problem-Solving
5 81 (19.57%) Data Pipeline
6 78 (18.84%) Scrum
7 73 (17.63%) Test Automation
8 71 (17.15%) Data Integration
9 62 (14.98%) Migration
10 59 (14.25%) Continuous Improvement
11 51 (12.32%) Data Engineering
12 49 (11.84%) Validation
13 48 (11.59%) Decision-Making
14 38 (9.18%) Microservices
15 37 (8.94%) Data Analytics
16 35 (8.45%) Data Virtualisation
Programming Languages
1 76 (18.36%) Python
2 71 (17.15%) Java
3 54 (13.04%) PL/SQL
4 35 (8.45%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.59%) JavaScript
6 10 (2.42%) Bash
6 10 (2.42%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.17%) Go
8 8 (1.93%) C#
9 7 (1.69%) Bicep
10 6 (1.45%) Perl
10 6 (1.45%) PowerShell
11 5 (1.21%) R
12 4 (0.97%) VB
13 3 (0.72%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.72%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.48%) Scala
14 2 (0.48%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.48%) VB6
14 2 (0.48%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 225 (54.35%) Security Cleared
2 201 (48.55%) SC Cleared
3 19 (4.59%) Degree
3 19 (4.59%) ISTQB
4 14 (3.38%) DV Cleared
5 8 (1.93%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (1.93%) Microsoft Certification
6 5 (1.21%) Azure Certification
6 5 (1.21%) Computer Science Degree
6 5 (1.21%) Master's Degree
7 4 (0.97%) AWS Certification
7 4 (0.97%) PhD
8 3 (0.72%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 2 (0.48%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
9 2 (0.48%) TOGAF Certification
10 1 (0.24%) ACCA
10 1 (0.24%) CIMA
10 1 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
10 1 (0.24%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 68 (16.43%) Data Quality
2 37 (8.94%) QA
3 7 (1.69%) FATCA
3 7 (1.69%) SLA
4 5 (1.21%) GDPR
5 4 (0.97%) Accessibility
5 4 (0.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.48%) GRC
7 1 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
7 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.24%) PMO
7 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
7 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 68 (16.43%) Docker
2 12 (2.90%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.93%) Postfix
4 5 (1.21%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.97%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.72%) HDFS
6 3 (0.72%) Oracle Clusterware
6 3 (0.72%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 69 (16.67%) Kubernetes
2 42 (10.14%) Grafana
3 35 (8.45%) Terraform
4 20 (4.83%) Prometheus
5 15 (3.62%) Ansible
6 11 (2.66%) Progress Chef
7 4 (0.97%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.97%) Kibana
7 4 (0.97%) Oracle RMAN
8 3 (0.72%) Docker Swarm
9 2 (0.48%) HP ALM
9 2 (0.48%) HP Quality Center
9 2 (0.48%) Microsoft Intune
9 2 (0.48%) Puppet
10 1 (0.24%) Control-M
10 1 (0.24%) SCCM
10 1 (0.24%) SCOM
10 1 (0.24%) WSUS
Vendors
1 143 (34.54%) Oracle
2 77 (18.60%) Talend
3 63 (15.22%) Informatica
4 62 (14.98%) Microsoft
5 40 (9.66%) Denodo
6 25 (6.04%) Databricks
7 24 (5.80%) ServiceNow
8 14 (3.38%) SAP
9 12 (2.90%) Atlassian
9 12 (2.90%) Jaspersoft
10 10 (2.42%) Sage
11 9 (2.17%) Fujitsu
12 8 (1.93%) Cloudera
12 8 (1.93%) Dynatrace
13 7 (1.69%) Google
13 7 (1.69%) NEC
14 6 (1.45%) Red Hat
15 5 (1.21%) VMware
16 4 (0.97%) Splunk
17 3 (0.72%) Anaplan