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

6 months to
10 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 6 10 18
Rank change year-on-year +4 +8 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 426 179 149
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.28% 12.34% 7.38%
As % of the Programming Languages category 62.83% 46.13% 32.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 335 119 103
10th Percentile £351 £235 £259
25th Percentile £406 £394 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £454 £425
Median % change year-on-year +1.17% +6.75% -15.00%
75th Percentile £513 £548 £550
90th Percentile £575 £640 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £540
% change year-on-year - -7.41% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 15 2
10th Percentile £52.05 £24.81 £30.73
25th Percentile £53.25 £33.91 £31.26
Median hourly rate £56.00 £50.00 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year +12.00% +55.52% +27.33%
75th Percentile £58.25 - £33.04
90th Percentile £59.15 - £33.57
England median hourly rate £47.50 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +17.28% -4.71% -15.00%

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 678 388 453
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.14% 26.76% 22.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 510 236 323
10th Percentile £350 £278 £260
25th Percentile £410 £400 £348
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £463 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.41% +2.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £549 £550
90th Percentile £625 £650 £638
England median daily rate £513 £524 £540
% change year-on-year -2.10% -3.06% -4.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 18 15
10th Percentile £46.25 £25.35 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £30.48 £47.75
Median hourly rate £59.50 £33.91 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +75.46% -41.03% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £69.77 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £58.88 £62.50
% change year-on-year +10.40% -5.80% -

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 June 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 10 June 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 +4 182 £459 -0.22% 22
Birmingham -9 72 £469 -9.55% 49
Warwickshire -12 53 £513 +28.13% 24
Coventry -5 33 £416 +33.12% 15
Solihull -10 18 £478 +13.81% 3
Worcestershire +6 10 £425 -39.29% 8
Herefordshire 0 9 £538 -2.27% 1
Staffordshire +3 8 £413 -25.00% 13
Dudley - 8 £410 - 3
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 1
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 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 64 (15.02%) SAS
2 35 (8.22%) Confluence
3 17 (3.99%) WebLogic
4 13 (3.05%) Tuxedo
5 9 (2.11%) Apache
6 7 (1.64%) Oracle Workflow
7 6 (1.41%) Oracle Self-Service HR
8 5 (1.17%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (1.17%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.70%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.70%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.70%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.23%) Apache Geronimo
10 1 (0.23%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.23%) CMS
10 1 (0.23%) IIS
10 1 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Fuse
10 1 (0.23%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.23%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.17%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.70%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.41%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.94%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.70%) Dynamics CRM
4 2 (0.47%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.23%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.23%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS R12
5 1 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.23%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.23%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.23%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 128 (30.05%) AWS
2 95 (22.30%) Azure
3 58 (13.62%) Power Platform
4 42 (9.86%) Azure DevOps
5 33 (7.75%) Amazon S3
6 24 (5.63%) Azure Data Factory
7 22 (5.16%) Amazon EC2
7 22 (5.16%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 21 (4.93%) GitHub
9 20 (4.69%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 17 (3.99%) Serverless
11 16 (3.76%) Snowflake
12 15 (3.52%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (3.52%) AWS KMS
12 15 (3.52%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (3.52%) Route 53
13 9 (2.11%) AWS Lambda
13 9 (2.11%) GCP
14 8 (1.88%) dbt
14 8 (1.88%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.88%) Firewall
2 6 (1.41%) SNMP
3 5 (1.17%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.17%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.70%) DNS
4 3 (0.70%) SSL
5 2 (0.47%) DHCP
5 2 (0.47%) LAN
5 2 (0.47%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.47%) VLAN
5 2 (0.47%) VPN
5 2 (0.47%) WAN
5 2 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.23%) 4G
6 1 (0.23%) AMQP
6 1 (0.23%) Internet
6 1 (0.23%) Network Security
6 1 (0.23%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.23%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.23%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 73 (17.14%) Pentaho
2 67 (15.73%) Data Warehouse
3 56 (13.15%) Power BI
4 32 (7.51%) PostgreSQL
5 30 (7.04%) Amazon RDS
6 24 (5.63%) Relational Database
7 22 (5.16%) Amazon Redshift
8 21 (4.93%) Oracle Reports
8 21 (4.93%) Tableau
9 19 (4.46%) DynamoDB
9 19 (4.46%) Oracle Database
9 19 (4.46%) SQL Server
10 16 (3.76%) Data Lake
11 15 (3.52%) Amazon Aurora
11 15 (3.52%) BusinessObjects
11 15 (3.52%) MySQL
12 14 (3.29%) Metadata
13 12 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
13 12 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 11 (2.58%) Ingres
Development Applications
1 81 (19.01%) Git
2 76 (17.84%) JIRA
3 63 (14.79%) GitLab
4 56 (13.15%) Jenkins
5 22 (5.16%) Zephyr
6 21 (4.93%) Postman
7 19 (4.46%) JUnit
8 18 (4.23%) Maven
9 17 (3.99%) Mockito
10 16 (3.76%) SonarQube
11 11 (2.58%) Artifactory
11 11 (2.58%) Bitbucket Server
11 11 (2.58%) DbUnit
11 11 (2.58%) jMock
12 7 (1.64%) Selenium
12 7 (1.64%) Team Foundation Server
13 6 (1.41%) Oracle Forms
14 5 (1.17%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 5 (1.17%) MSI
15 4 (0.94%) Cypress.io
General
1 102 (23.94%) Social Skills
2 80 (18.78%) Public Sector
3 68 (15.96%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (7.51%) Finance
5 11 (2.58%) Banking
6 7 (1.64%) Manufacturing
6 7 (1.64%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.41%) Marketing
8 5 (1.17%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.17%) Retail
9 4 (0.94%) Advertising
10 3 (0.70%) Billing
10 3 (0.70%) Influencing Skills
10 3 (0.70%) Legal
10 3 (0.70%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.47%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 1 (0.23%) Military
12 1 (0.23%) Publishing
12 1 (0.23%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 165 (38.73%) Data Engineer
2 71 (16.67%) Developer
3 48 (11.27%) Senior
4 39 (9.15%) Analyst
5 27 (6.34%) Java Developer
6 22 (5.16%) Senior Data Engineer
7 21 (4.93%) Architect
8 20 (4.69%) Tester
9 19 (4.46%) Data Analyst
9 19 (4.46%) Lead
10 17 (3.99%) QA Tester
11 15 (3.52%) SAS Engineer
12 14 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
13 12 (2.82%) AWS Data Engineer
13 12 (2.82%) AWS Engineer
14 9 (2.11%) DBA
14 9 (2.11%) Senior Developer
14 9 (2.11%) SQL Developer
14 9 (2.11%) Unix Engineer
15 8 (1.88%) Business Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 31 (7.28%) REST
1 31 (7.28%) Spring
1 31 (7.28%) Spring Boot
2 24 (5.63%) Node.js
3 19 (4.46%) JPA
4 18 (4.23%) SOAP
5 17 (3.99%) Hibernate
5 17 (3.99%) Spring Batch
5 17 (3.99%) Spring Integration
5 17 (3.99%) Web Services
6 16 (3.76%) AngularJS
6 16 (3.76%) Flask
7 15 (3.52%) ActiveMQ
7 15 (3.52%) PySpark
8 14 (3.29%) Spring Cloud
9 13 (3.05%) RESTful
10 12 (2.82%) Django
10 12 (2.82%) YAML
11 11 (2.58%) Bootstrap
11 11 (2.58%) PowerMock
Miscellaneous
1 16 (3.76%) Distributed Systems
2 15 (3.52%) Cloud Native
3 9 (2.11%) SCADA
4 8 (1.88%) Legacy Systems
5 7 (1.64%) Product Ownership
6 6 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
7 5 (1.17%) Low-Code
8 4 (0.94%) Clustering
8 4 (0.94%) Data Centre
8 4 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (0.94%) Robotics
8 4 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.70%) Credit Risk
9 3 (0.70%) Data Fabric
9 3 (0.70%) Data Structures
9 3 (0.70%) Educational Technology
9 3 (0.70%) IoT
9 3 (0.70%) Onboarding
10 2 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.47%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 62 (14.55%) Unix
2 47 (11.03%) Linux
3 23 (5.40%) Windows
4 6 (1.41%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.17%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.23%) AIX
6 1 (0.23%) HPUX
6 1 (0.23%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 168 (39.44%) ETL
2 154 (36.15%) Agile
3 132 (30.99%) CI/CD
4 114 (26.76%) Data Modelling
5 95 (22.30%) Analytics
5 95 (22.30%) Business Intelligence
5 95 (22.30%) DevOps
6 94 (22.07%) Test Automation
7 90 (21.13%) Data Pipeline
8 88 (20.66%) Problem-Solving
9 80 (18.78%) Data Integration
10 75 (17.61%) Scrum
11 72 (16.90%) Migration
12 57 (13.38%) Validation
13 55 (12.91%) Continuous Improvement
13 55 (12.91%) Data Engineering
14 47 (11.03%) Decision-Making
15 40 (9.39%) Data Migration
16 37 (8.69%) AI
17 36 (8.45%) Data Analytics
Programming Languages
1 74 (17.37%) Python
2 61 (14.32%) PL/SQL
3 57 (13.38%) Java
4 25 (5.87%) Shell Script
5 18 (4.23%) JavaScript
6 13 (3.05%) Bash
7 10 (2.35%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 9 (2.11%) C
8 9 (2.11%) VB
9 7 (1.64%) Bicep
9 7 (1.64%) C#
9 7 (1.64%) VB6
10 5 (1.17%) Go
10 5 (1.17%) Perl
10 5 (1.17%) PowerShell
11 4 (0.94%) ProC
11 4 (0.94%) T-SQL
11 4 (0.94%) TypeScript
12 3 (0.70%) HiveQL
13 1 (0.23%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 233 (54.69%) Security Cleared
2 213 (50.00%) SC Cleared
3 27 (6.34%) ISTQB
4 15 (3.52%) Degree
5 11 (2.58%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.88%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.17%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.17%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.94%) PhD
10 3 (0.70%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.70%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.47%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.23%) ACCA
12 1 (0.23%) CIMA
12 1 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.23%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 64 (15.02%) Data Quality
2 48 (11.27%) QA
3 11 (2.58%) SLA
4 7 (1.64%) FATCA
5 6 (1.41%) GDPR
6 4 (0.94%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.47%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.47%) GRC
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.23%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 62 (14.55%) Docker
2 10 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.11%) Postfix
4 5 (1.17%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.70%) HDFS
6 3 (0.70%) Virtual Machines
7 2 (0.47%) Oracle Clusterware
8 1 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 50 (11.74%) Kubernetes
2 36 (8.45%) Grafana
3 29 (6.81%) Terraform
4 13 (3.05%) Prometheus
5 8 (1.88%) Ansible
6 6 (1.41%) WMI
7 4 (0.94%) Data Guard
7 4 (0.94%) Oracle RMAN
7 4 (0.94%) Progress Chef
8 2 (0.47%) HP ALM
8 2 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
8 2 (0.47%) Kibana
9 1 (0.23%) Control-M
9 1 (0.23%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (0.23%) Microsoft Intune
9 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 176 (41.31%) Oracle
2 96 (22.54%) Talend
3 74 (17.37%) Informatica
4 59 (13.85%) Microsoft
5 51 (11.97%) Denodo
6 29 (6.81%) ServiceNow
7 27 (6.34%) Databricks
8 16 (3.76%) SAP
9 15 (3.52%) Jaspersoft
10 14 (3.29%) Atlassian
11 11 (2.58%) Cloudera
12 10 (2.35%) Sage
13 9 (2.11%) Google
13 9 (2.11%) Splunk
14 8 (1.88%) Cisco
15 7 (1.64%) Dynatrace
15 7 (1.64%) Fortinet
15 7 (1.64%) NEC
16 6 (1.41%) Actian
16 6 (1.41%) Palo Alto