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

6 months to
24 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 13 18
Rank change year-on-year 0 +5 -11
Contract jobs citing SQL 263 156 149
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 11.04% 9.89% 8.12%
As % of the Programming Languages category 44.20% 39.80% 36.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 179 95 99
10th Percentile £371 £347 £260
25th Percentile £450 £425 £364
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% +11.11% -15.09%
75th Percentile £550 £581 £575
90th Percentile £640 £645 £659
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 0
10th Percentile £38.80 £37.50 -
25th Percentile £43.00 £41.25 -
Median hourly rate £50.00 £47.50 -
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% - -
75th Percentile - £53.75 -
90th Percentile - £57.50 -
England median hourly rate £50.00 £52.50 £43.00
% change year-on-year -4.76% +22.09% -14.00%

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 595 392 411
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 24.98% 24.86% 22.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 226 292
10th Percentile £390 £356 £275
25th Percentile £456 £413 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £515 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year +3.00% +5.26% -9.52%
75th Percentile £575 £604 £578
90th Percentile £636 £700 £675
England median daily rate £513 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -4.65% -2.27% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 10 9
10th Percentile £40.20 £16.98 £17.43
25th Percentile £46.50 £17.81 £17.50
Median hourly rate £50.00 £23.87 £18.50
Median % change year-on-year +109.47% +29.03% -15.91%
75th Percentile £56.88 £33.44 £50.00
90th Percentile £69.25 £53.25 £61.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.75 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.59% +4.58% -7.69%

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 24 January 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 24 January 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 24 January 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 +1 111 £515 +2.75% 36
Birmingham -12 57 £510 -7.74% 59
Warwickshire -10 30 £513 -10.87% 14
Herefordshire -4 21 £550 - 8
Coventry -20 13 £275 -38.89% 23
Worcestershire -13 8 £675 - 10
Solihull +1 7 £555 +13.50% 1
Staffordshire -9 3 £463 +1.37% 11
Wolverhampton +3 1 - - 9
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 43 (16.35%) SAS
2 41 (15.59%) WebLogic
3 27 (10.27%) Apache
4 16 (6.08%) Confluence
5 8 (3.04%) JBoss
5 8 (3.04%) nginx
5 8 (3.04%) SharePoint
5 8 (3.04%) Tuxedo
6 3 (1.14%) Apache Pig
7 2 (0.76%) Anypoint
7 2 (0.76%) Apache Airflow
7 2 (0.76%) Apache Spark
7 2 (0.76%) CMS
7 2 (0.76%) Liferay
8 1 (0.38%) Drupal
8 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Exchange
8 1 (0.38%) Umbraco
Applications
1 12 (4.56%) Microsoft Excel
2 8 (3.04%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (0.76%) Maya
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 2 (0.76%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.76%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.76%) NUKE
4 1 (0.38%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 3 (1.14%) Dynamics CRM
1 3 (1.14%) Oracle EBS
1 3 (1.14%) Oracle EBS R12
2 2 (0.76%) Maximo
2 2 (0.76%) Primavera
2 2 (0.76%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.38%) Aareon QL
3 1 (0.38%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.38%) NEC Housing
3 1 (0.38%) OPENHousing
3 1 (0.38%) Orchard Housing
3 1 (0.38%) SAP CRM
3 1 (0.38%) SAP ERP
3 1 (0.38%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 87 (33.08%) Azure
2 70 (26.62%) AWS
3 30 (11.41%) Power Platform
3 30 (11.41%) Serverless
4 23 (8.75%) Azure DevOps
5 21 (7.98%) Amazon S3
6 18 (6.84%) Amazon EC2
7 16 (6.08%) GCP
8 15 (5.70%) Azure Monitor
9 13 (4.94%) GitHub
10 12 (4.56%) Azure Data Factory
10 12 (4.56%) GitHub Actions
11 11 (4.18%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 11 (4.18%) Microsoft 365
11 11 (4.18%) OpenShift
12 10 (3.80%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (3.80%) Power Automate
13 9 (3.42%) PowerApps
14 8 (3.04%) Amazon ECS
14 8 (3.04%) AWS KMS
Communications & Networking
1 9 (3.42%) DNS
1 9 (3.42%) Firewall
2 8 (3.04%) FTP
2 8 (3.04%) HTTP
2 8 (3.04%) IMAP
2 8 (3.04%) OpenLDAP
2 8 (3.04%) SMTP
2 8 (3.04%) SSH
3 4 (1.52%) Network Security
4 1 (0.38%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 47 (17.87%) Pentaho
2 32 (12.17%) PostgreSQL
3 26 (9.89%) Amazon RDS
4 24 (9.13%) Power BI
5 19 (7.22%) MongoDB
6 18 (6.84%) Relational Database
7 13 (4.94%) Oracle Database
8 12 (4.56%) MySQL
9 11 (4.18%) NoSQL
10 10 (3.80%) Data Warehouse
11 9 (3.42%) Redis
12 8 (3.04%) Amazon Aurora
13 6 (2.28%) Hadoop
13 6 (2.28%) SAS Enterprise Guide
13 6 (2.28%) Tableau
14 5 (1.90%) Data Mining
14 5 (1.90%) InfluxDB
15 4 (1.52%) Apache Hive
15 4 (1.52%) Oracle Reports
16 3 (1.14%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 77 (29.28%) Git
2 63 (23.95%) Jenkins
3 59 (22.43%) JIRA
4 14 (5.32%) GitLab
5 11 (4.18%) JUnit
6 10 (3.80%) Selenium
7 9 (3.42%) MSI
8 8 (3.04%) Eclipse
8 8 (3.04%) IntelliJ
8 8 (3.04%) Vagrant
9 4 (1.52%) Liquibase
9 4 (1.52%) Toad
10 3 (1.14%) Maven
10 3 (1.14%) Mockito
11 2 (0.76%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 2 (0.76%) ERwin
11 2 (0.76%) Gatling
11 2 (0.76%) Oracle APEX
11 2 (0.76%) Oracle Forms
11 2 (0.76%) SoapUI
General
1 85 (32.32%) Social Skills
2 47 (17.87%) Public Sector
3 28 (10.65%) Analytical Skills
4 20 (7.60%) Finance
5 15 (5.70%) Presentation Skills
6 10 (3.80%) Banking
7 8 (3.04%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (2.28%) Legal
9 5 (1.90%) Retail
10 4 (1.52%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.52%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.52%) Marketing
11 3 (1.14%) Automotive
11 3 (1.14%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (1.14%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.76%) Billing
12 2 (0.76%) Games
12 2 (0.76%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.76%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 1 (0.38%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 44 (16.73%) Developer
2 42 (15.97%) Data Engineer
3 19 (7.22%) Analyst
4 15 (5.70%) Consultant
4 15 (5.70%) Platform Engineer
4 15 (5.70%) Senior
5 14 (5.32%) DevOps Engineer
6 12 (4.56%) Architect
6 12 (4.56%) Lead
7 11 (4.18%) AWS Engineer
7 11 (4.18%) Site Engineer
7 11 (4.18%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 10 (3.80%) Java Engineer
8 10 (3.80%) Python Developer
8 10 (3.80%) SAS Engineer
9 9 (3.42%) AWS DevOps
9 9 (3.42%) AWS DevOps Engineer
9 9 (3.42%) Backend Developer
9 9 (3.42%) Cloud Platform Engineer
9 9 (3.42%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (12.17%) REST
2 24 (9.13%) Spring
3 19 (7.22%) XML
4 15 (5.70%) HTML
5 14 (5.32%) RESTful
5 14 (5.32%) Spring Boot
6 13 (4.94%) Flask
7 12 (4.56%) FastAPI
8 10 (3.80%) .NET
8 10 (3.80%) JSON
8 10 (3.80%) SOAP
9 9 (3.42%) GraphQL
9 9 (3.42%) Hibernate
9 9 (3.42%) HTML5
9 9 (3.42%) WebSockets
10 8 (3.04%) EJB
10 8 (3.04%) gRPC
10 8 (3.04%) J2EE
10 8 (3.04%) Node.js
10 8 (3.04%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 22 (8.37%) Cloud Native
2 8 (3.04%) Replication
3 7 (2.66%) Product Ownership
4 6 (2.28%) Algorithms
5 5 (1.90%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.90%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
6 4 (1.52%) Public Cloud
7 3 (1.14%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (1.14%) IoT
8 2 (0.76%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.76%) Animation
8 2 (0.76%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.76%) Derivative
8 2 (0.76%) Mainframe
8 2 (0.76%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.76%) Renewable Energy
9 1 (0.38%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.38%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 48 (18.25%) Linux
2 40 (15.21%) Windows
3 38 (14.45%) Unix
4 8 (3.04%) Amazon Linux
4 8 (3.04%) Ubuntu
4 8 (3.04%) VMS
5 2 (0.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.38%) VME
6 1 (0.38%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 117 (44.49%) CI/CD
2 99 (37.64%) DevOps
3 93 (35.36%) Agile
4 84 (31.94%) Analytics
5 75 (28.52%) Problem-Solving
6 74 (28.14%) Business Intelligence
7 68 (25.86%) Continuous Improvement
8 61 (23.19%) ETL
9 56 (21.29%) Data Modelling
9 56 (21.29%) Scrum
10 51 (19.39%) Data Pipeline
11 47 (17.87%) Test Automation
12 43 (16.35%) Data Integration
13 42 (15.97%) Deployment Automation
14 41 (15.59%) Data Analytics
15 38 (14.45%) Visualisation
16 37 (14.07%) Data Virtualisation
16 37 (14.07%) Microservices
17 33 (12.55%) Business Analytics
18 28 (10.65%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 62 (23.57%) Python
2 50 (19.01%) Java
3 18 (6.84%) Shell Script
4 17 (6.46%) Go
4 17 (6.46%) PL/SQL
4 17 (6.46%) Scala
5 11 (4.18%) JavaScript
5 11 (4.18%) PowerShell
6 8 (3.04%) Groovy
7 7 (2.66%) C#
7 7 (2.66%) VBA
8 6 (2.28%) R
9 5 (1.90%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (1.52%) Bicep
11 3 (1.14%) C++
11 3 (1.14%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.76%) COBOL
12 2 (0.76%) Perl
12 2 (0.76%) Tcl
12 2 (0.76%) VB
Qualifications
1 128 (48.67%) Security Cleared
2 115 (43.73%) SC Cleared
3 27 (10.27%) Degree
4 18 (6.84%) DV Cleared
5 14 (5.32%) AWS Certification
6 12 (4.56%) Azure Certification
7 11 (4.18%) Computer Science Degree
8 7 (2.66%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (2.28%) Master's Degree
10 5 (1.90%) Microsoft Certification
11 3 (1.14%) ISTQB
11 3 (1.14%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.76%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.76%) ISEB
12 2 (0.76%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.38%) ACCA
13 1 (0.38%) CIMA
13 1 (0.38%) PhD
13 1 (0.38%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 47 (17.87%) Data Quality
2 9 (3.42%) QA
3 6 (2.28%) Accessibility
4 2 (0.76%) SLA
5 1 (0.38%) GDPR
5 1 (0.38%) PMO
5 1 (0.38%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.38%) WCAG
System Software
1 86 (32.70%) Docker
2 8 (3.04%) DFS Replication
2 8 (3.04%) Dovecot
2 8 (3.04%) Postfix
2 8 (3.04%) Squid
3 5 (1.90%) Active Directory
4 3 (1.14%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (1.14%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 82 (31.18%) Kubernetes
2 34 (12.93%) Grafana
3 32 (12.17%) Prometheus
4 31 (11.79%) Terraform
5 17 (6.46%) Ansible
6 11 (4.18%) Progress Chef
7 10 (3.80%) Puppet
8 8 (3.04%) Nessus
8 8 (3.04%) Proxmox
9 5 (1.90%) Kibana
10 4 (1.52%) Oracle RMAN
11 3 (1.14%) Data Guard
11 3 (1.14%) Docker Swarm
12 1 (0.38%) HP ALM
12 1 (0.38%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.38%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.38%) SCCM
12 1 (0.38%) WSUS
Vendors
1 87 (33.08%) Oracle
2 49 (18.63%) Talend
3 38 (14.45%) Denodo
3 38 (14.45%) Microsoft
4 24 (9.13%) Splunk
5 19 (7.22%) Dynatrace
6 14 (5.32%) AppDynamics
7 13 (4.94%) Cisco
7 13 (4.94%) ServiceNow
8 12 (4.56%) Google
8 12 (4.56%) SAP
9 10 (3.80%) Informatica
9 10 (3.80%) webMethods
10 8 (3.04%) Databricks
10 8 (3.04%) Jaspersoft
11 6 (2.28%) Fujitsu
12 3 (1.14%) Anaplan
13 2 (0.76%) MuleSoft
13 2 (0.76%) PagerDuty
13 2 (0.76%) Teradata