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

6 months to
3 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 11 21
Rank change year-on-year -4 +10 -7
Contract jobs citing SQL 359 203 129
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.45% 11.57% 6.81%
As % of the Programming Languages category 48.06% 45.52% 31.93%
Number of daily rates quoted 272 126 78
10th Percentile £358 £280 £300
25th Percentile £413 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £488 £438
Median % change year-on-year -3.79% +11.43% -13.37%
75th Percentile £526 £538 £550
90th Percentile £610 £638 £626
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -7.06% -0.37%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 20 3
10th Percentile £20.25 £33.91 £31.08
25th Percentile £21.25 £35.48 £32.15
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £33.93
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +47.36% +34.38%
75th Percentile £45.75 - £34.47
90th Percentile £56.75 - £34.79
England median hourly rate £43.75 £50.00 £42.00
% change year-on-year -12.50% +19.05% +5.00%

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 747 446 404
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.75% 25.43% 21.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 531 277 263
10th Percentile £368 £306 £313
25th Percentile £415 £413 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -
75th Percentile £571 £540 £575
90th Percentile £656 £625 £648
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 23 6
10th Percentile - £30.25 £32.15
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £34.20
Median hourly rate £52.50 £50.00 £45.00
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% +11.11% +93.80%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £57.81
90th Percentile - - £66.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £55.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +18.18% -15.38% +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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -1 152 £465 -11.43% 10
Birmingham -3 57 £500 +5.26% 80
Warwickshire -13 51 £500 +14.29% 15
Coventry -3 39 £416 +39.01% 13
Solihull -21 11 £538 +19.44% 14
Worcestershire +11 10 £450 -30.77% 12
Staffordshire -1 10 £431 - 21
Dudley - 4 £400 - 5
Herefordshire -3 3 £563 +40.63% 3
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 4
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 (10.03%) SAS
2 24 (6.69%) Confluence
3 10 (2.79%) WebLogic
4 8 (2.23%) Oracle Workflow
5 6 (1.67%) Oracle Self-Service HR
5 6 (1.67%) Tuxedo
6 5 (1.39%) Apache Spark
7 4 (1.11%) ArcGIS
7 4 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
7 4 (1.11%) SharePoint
8 3 (0.84%) Apache
9 2 (0.56%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.28%) IIS
10 1 (0.28%) Jupyter
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 10 (2.79%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.39%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.56%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (3.62%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.67%) Oracle HRMS
3 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.28%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.28%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.28%) SAP EWM
3 1 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 109 (30.36%) AWS
2 102 (28.41%) Azure
3 56 (15.60%) Power Platform
4 43 (11.98%) Azure Data Factory
5 30 (8.36%) Azure DevOps
6 26 (7.24%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 20 (5.57%) Serverless
8 18 (5.01%) Amazon S3
9 16 (4.46%) Snowflake
10 15 (4.18%) GitHub
11 13 (3.62%) Microsoft Purview
12 12 (3.34%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 12 (3.34%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (2.79%) AWS Lambda
13 10 (2.79%) GitHub Actions
14 9 (2.51%) Azure Functions
14 9 (2.51%) dbt
15 8 (2.23%) AWS KMS
15 8 (2.23%) Azure Storage
15 8 (2.23%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 10 (2.79%) Firewall
2 7 (1.95%) SNMP
3 5 (1.39%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.39%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.84%) DHCP
4 3 (0.84%) DNS
4 3 (0.84%) SSL
4 3 (0.84%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.56%) LAN
5 2 (0.56%) VLAN
5 2 (0.56%) VPN
5 2 (0.56%) WAN
5 2 (0.56%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.28%) 4G
6 1 (0.28%) BGP
6 1 (0.28%) HTTP
6 1 (0.28%) Internet
6 1 (0.28%) MPLS
6 1 (0.28%) OSPF
6 1 (0.28%) SAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 69 (19.22%) Data Warehouse
2 58 (16.16%) Pentaho
3 54 (15.04%) Power BI
4 25 (6.96%) Oracle Database
5 22 (6.13%) SQL Server
6 21 (5.85%) PostgreSQL
7 18 (5.01%) Azure SQL Database
7 18 (5.01%) Oracle Reports
8 17 (4.74%) Data Lake
9 16 (4.46%) Relational Database
10 15 (4.18%) Amazon RDS
10 15 (4.18%) Metadata
10 15 (4.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 15 (4.18%) Tableau
11 13 (3.62%) Delta Lake
12 12 (3.34%) BusinessObjects
12 12 (3.34%) DynamoDB
13 11 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
13 11 (3.06%) Ingres
14 9 (2.51%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 70 (19.50%) Git
2 59 (16.43%) GitLab
3 58 (16.16%) JIRA
4 28 (7.80%) Jenkins
5 22 (6.13%) Maven
6 21 (5.85%) Postman
7 20 (5.57%) Zephyr
8 16 (4.46%) JUnit
9 14 (3.90%) Mockito
10 11 (3.06%) Artifactory
11 9 (2.51%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.67%) Bitbucket Server
12 6 (1.67%) DbUnit
12 6 (1.67%) jMock
12 6 (1.67%) Oracle Forms
12 6 (1.67%) Selenium
13 5 (1.39%) MLflow
13 5 (1.39%) Team Foundation Server
14 4 (1.11%) Cypress.io
14 4 (1.11%) TestRail
General
1 87 (24.23%) Social Skills
2 70 (19.50%) Public Sector
3 61 (16.99%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (8.91%) Finance
5 10 (2.79%) Banking
6 9 (2.51%) Manufacturing
7 8 (2.23%) Marketing
8 5 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.39%) Retail
9 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.11%) Military
10 2 (0.56%) Billing
10 2 (0.56%) Front Office
10 2 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
10 2 (0.56%) Legal
11 1 (0.28%) Advertising
11 1 (0.28%) Local Government
11 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 145 (40.39%) Data Engineer
2 49 (13.65%) Developer
2 49 (13.65%) Senior
3 33 (9.19%) Analyst
4 25 (6.96%) Senior Data Engineer
5 20 (5.57%) Java Developer
6 15 (4.18%) Tester
7 14 (3.90%) Architect
7 14 (3.90%) Lead
8 13 (3.62%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (3.34%) Data Analyst
10 11 (3.06%) Java Engineer
10 11 (3.06%) QA Tester
11 10 (2.79%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (2.79%) Test Analyst
12 9 (2.51%) AWS Data Engineer
12 9 (2.51%) Data Architect
13 7 (1.95%) Senior Developer
13 7 (1.95%) Software Engineer
13 7 (1.95%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.85%) REST
2 18 (5.01%) Spring
2 18 (5.01%) Spring Boot
3 17 (4.74%) PySpark
3 17 (4.74%) Terraform
4 15 (4.18%) JPA
5 13 (3.62%) SOAP
6 12 (3.34%) Web Services
7 9 (2.51%) .NET
7 9 (2.51%) Hibernate
7 9 (2.51%) Node.js
7 9 (2.51%) Spring Batch
7 9 (2.51%) Spring Integration
8 8 (2.23%) ActiveMQ
8 8 (2.23%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.23%) XML
9 7 (1.95%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.67%) ADO
10 6 (1.67%) OpenAPI
10 6 (1.67%) PowerMock
Miscellaneous
1 15 (4.18%) Cloud Native
2 13 (3.62%) Linux Command Line
3 12 (3.34%) Legacy Systems
3 12 (3.34%) SCADA
4 8 (2.23%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (1.67%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (1.67%) IoT
6 5 (1.39%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.39%) Self-Motivation
7 4 (1.11%) Product Ownership
8 3 (0.84%) Credit Risk
8 3 (0.84%) Data Fabric
8 3 (0.84%) Data Structures
8 3 (0.84%) Onboarding
9 2 (0.56%) BYOD
9 2 (0.56%) Educational Technology
9 2 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
9 2 (0.56%) Management Information System
9 2 (0.56%) Reference Data
9 2 (0.56%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 42 (11.70%) Unix
2 38 (10.58%) Linux
3 23 (6.41%) Windows
4 8 (2.23%) 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
1 147 (40.95%) ETL
2 131 (36.49%) Agile
3 115 (32.03%) Data Modelling
4 90 (25.07%) CI/CD
4 90 (25.07%) Data Pipeline
5 84 (23.40%) Business Intelligence
6 83 (23.12%) Analytics
7 82 (22.84%) Test Automation
8 71 (19.78%) Problem-Solving
9 69 (19.22%) Data Integration
10 68 (18.94%) Migration
11 61 (16.99%) Data Engineering
12 59 (16.43%) DevOps
13 55 (15.32%) Validation
14 48 (13.37%) Scrum
15 44 (12.26%) Continuous Improvement
16 41 (11.42%) AI
17 40 (11.14%) Data Migration
18 38 (10.58%) Decision-Making
19 30 (8.36%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 77 (21.45%) Python
2 47 (13.09%) PL/SQL
3 39 (10.86%) Java
4 21 (5.85%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.62%) C
6 10 (2.79%) Bash
6 10 (2.79%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 10 (2.79%) JavaScript
7 8 (2.23%) ProC
7 8 (2.23%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.67%) Bicep
8 6 (1.67%) C#
8 6 (1.67%) VB
8 6 (1.67%) VB6
9 4 (1.11%) COBOL
10 3 (0.84%) PowerShell
10 3 (0.84%) TypeScript
11 2 (0.56%) R
11 2 (0.56%) VB.NET
12 1 (0.28%) C++
Qualifications
1 183 (50.97%) Security Cleared
2 158 (44.01%) SC Cleared
3 26 (7.24%) ISTQB
4 24 (6.69%) BPSS Clearance
5 8 (2.23%) Degree
5 8 (2.23%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 7 (1.95%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.39%) Azure Certification
8 4 (1.11%) ISEB
8 4 (1.11%) Master's Degree
8 4 (1.11%) PhD
9 3 (0.84%) AWS Certification
9 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
10 1 (0.28%) MCSE
10 1 (0.28%) OCP
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (14.21%) Data Quality
2 48 (13.37%) QA
3 7 (1.95%) GDPR
4 6 (1.67%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 6 (1.67%) SLA
5 4 (1.11%) FATCA
6 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.56%) GRC
7 1 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.28%) Actionable Recommendations
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 30 (8.36%) Docker
2 9 (2.51%) Active Directory
3 6 (1.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 5 (1.39%) Postfix
5 3 (0.84%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.84%) Virtual Machines
6 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 27 (7.52%) Kubernetes
2 15 (4.18%) Grafana
3 7 (1.95%) WMI
4 6 (1.67%) Kibana
5 4 (1.11%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.56%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.28%) SCCM
7 1 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 150 (41.78%) Oracle
2 70 (19.50%) Talend
3 60 (16.71%) Microsoft
4 49 (13.65%) Informatica
5 43 (11.98%) Databricks
6 40 (11.14%) Denodo
7 16 (4.46%) SAP
8 15 (4.18%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.51%) Atlassian
9 9 (2.51%) Cisco
10 8 (2.23%) Fortinet
10 8 (2.23%) Jaspersoft
11 7 (1.95%) F5
11 7 (1.95%) Palo Alto
11 7 (1.95%) SolarWinds
11 7 (1.95%) Splunk
11 7 (1.95%) VMware
12 6 (1.67%) Google
12 6 (1.67%) Sage
13 5 (1.39%) IBM