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

6 months to
15 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 11 18
Rank change year-on-year +4 +7 -6
Contract jobs citing SQL 452 193 141
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.33% 12.02% 6.90%
As % of the Programming Languages category 59.24% 48.01% 32.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 349 126 103
10th Percentile £356 £235 £259
25th Percentile £410 £388 £325
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £450 £425
Median % change year-on-year +2.00% +5.88% -13.04%
75th Percentile £506 £534 £550
90th Percentile £575 £631 £626
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -0.93%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 19 2
10th Percentile £52.05 £30.88 £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 £45.00 £40.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year +11.11% -4.71% -14.26%

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 763 402 432
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.51% 25.05% 21.14%
Number of daily rates quoted 565 251 306
10th Percentile £358 £250 £260
25th Percentile £413 £394 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -10.00%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £574
90th Percentile £625 £645 £638
England median daily rate £520 £520 £540
% change year-on-year - -3.70% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 9 22 15
10th Percentile £46.25 £28.18 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £33.91 £47.75
Median hourly rate £59.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +19.00% -13.04% +133.50%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.75
90th Percentile £69.77 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.04% -11.54% +4.00%

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 15 July 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 15 July 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 +4 187 £459 -0.22% 17
Birmingham -2 79 £469 -6.20% 47
Warwickshire -16 60 £500 +17.65% 24
Coventry -1 44 £416 +33.12% 12
Solihull -13 18 £496 +17.98% 3
Worcestershire +4 10 £425 -39.29% 7
Staffordshire +5 9 £431 - 26
Herefordshire -1 8 £619 +54.69% 4
Dudley - 8 £410 - 3
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 16
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 61 (13.50%) SAS
2 34 (7.52%) Confluence
3 14 (3.10%) WebLogic
4 13 (2.88%) Tuxedo
5 7 (1.55%) Oracle Workflow
6 6 (1.33%) Apache
6 6 (1.33%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 5 (1.11%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.66%) Apache Spark
8 3 (0.66%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.66%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.66%) SharePoint
9 1 (0.22%) Apache Geronimo
9 1 (0.22%) Apache ServiceMix
9 1 (0.22%) CMS
9 1 (0.22%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.22%) Red Hat Fuse
9 1 (0.22%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.22%) Umbraco
9 1 (0.22%) WebSphere
Applications
1 14 (3.10%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.11%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.66%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.44%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.44%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.22%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 14 (3.10%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.33%) Oracle HRMS
3 3 (0.66%) NEC Housing
4 2 (0.44%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.22%) Aladdin
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle EBS
5 1 (0.22%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.22%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.22%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.22%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 129 (28.54%) AWS
2 111 (24.56%) Azure
3 69 (15.27%) Power Platform
4 41 (9.07%) Azure DevOps
5 34 (7.52%) Amazon S3
6 33 (7.30%) Azure Data Factory
7 26 (5.75%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 25 (5.53%) Serverless
9 22 (4.87%) GitHub
10 21 (4.65%) Amazon EC2
11 20 (4.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 19 (4.20%) Snowflake
13 16 (3.54%) GitHub Actions
14 15 (3.32%) Amazon SQS
14 15 (3.32%) AWS KMS
14 15 (3.32%) dbt
14 15 (3.32%) Route 53
15 12 (2.65%) AWS Lambda
15 12 (2.65%) Matillion
16 10 (2.21%) GCP
Communications & Networking
1 9 (1.99%) Firewall
2 7 (1.55%) SNMP
3 5 (1.11%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.11%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.66%) DNS
4 3 (0.66%) SSL
5 2 (0.44%) DHCP
5 2 (0.44%) LAN
5 2 (0.44%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.44%) VLAN
5 2 (0.44%) VPN
5 2 (0.44%) WAN
5 2 (0.44%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.22%) 5G
6 1 (0.22%) AMQP
6 1 (0.22%) Network Security
6 1 (0.22%) SD-WAN
6 1 (0.22%) tcpdump
6 1 (0.22%) Wireshark
6 1 (0.22%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 77 (17.04%) Data Warehouse
2 72 (15.93%) Pentaho
3 67 (14.82%) Power BI
4 36 (7.96%) PostgreSQL
5 27 (5.97%) Amazon RDS
6 26 (5.75%) Relational Database
6 26 (5.75%) SQL Server
7 23 (5.09%) Amazon Redshift
8 22 (4.87%) Tableau
9 21 (4.65%) Oracle Database
9 21 (4.65%) Oracle Reports
10 19 (4.20%) Azure SQL Database
10 19 (4.20%) DynamoDB
11 18 (3.98%) Metadata
12 17 (3.76%) Data Lake
13 16 (3.54%) MySQL
13 16 (3.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 15 (3.32%) Amazon Aurora
14 15 (3.32%) BusinessObjects
14 15 (3.32%) Ingres
Development Applications
1 90 (19.91%) Git
2 73 (16.15%) JIRA
3 63 (13.94%) GitLab
4 53 (11.73%) Jenkins
5 22 (4.87%) Postman
5 22 (4.87%) Zephyr
6 20 (4.42%) Maven
7 19 (4.20%) JUnit
8 17 (3.76%) Mockito
9 16 (3.54%) SonarQube
10 11 (2.43%) Artifactory
10 11 (2.43%) Bitbucket Server
10 11 (2.43%) DbUnit
10 11 (2.43%) jMock
11 8 (1.77%) Team Foundation Server
12 7 (1.55%) Oracle Forms
12 7 (1.55%) Selenium
13 5 (1.11%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 5 (1.11%) MLflow
14 4 (0.88%) TestRail
General
1 108 (23.89%) Social Skills
2 83 (18.36%) Public Sector
3 75 (16.59%) Analytical Skills
4 42 (9.29%) Finance
5 13 (2.88%) Banking
6 10 (2.21%) Manufacturing
7 9 (1.99%) Marketing
8 7 (1.55%) Presentation Skills
9 5 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
10 4 (0.88%) Advertising
10 4 (0.88%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 4 (0.88%) Retail
11 3 (0.66%) Billing
11 3 (0.66%) Influencing Skills
11 3 (0.66%) Organisational Skills
12 2 (0.44%) Front Office
12 2 (0.44%) Legal
12 2 (0.44%) Military
13 1 (0.22%) General Ledger
13 1 (0.22%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 180 (39.82%) Data Engineer
2 76 (16.81%) Developer
3 60 (13.27%) Senior
4 42 (9.29%) Analyst
5 32 (7.08%) Senior Data Engineer
6 29 (6.42%) Java Developer
7 23 (5.09%) Lead
8 20 (4.42%) Tester
9 19 (4.20%) Data Analyst
10 17 (3.76%) QA Tester
11 16 (3.54%) Architect
12 14 (3.10%) Full-Stack Developer
13 12 (2.65%) AWS Data Engineer
13 12 (2.65%) AWS Engineer
14 11 (2.43%) SAS Engineer
15 10 (2.21%) Azure Engineer
15 10 (2.21%) Business Intelligence Developer
15 10 (2.21%) Senior Developer
15 10 (2.21%) Software Engineer
15 10 (2.21%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 33 (7.30%) Spring
1 33 (7.30%) Spring Boot
2 30 (6.64%) REST
3 24 (5.31%) Node.js
4 19 (4.20%) JPA
4 19 (4.20%) PySpark
5 18 (3.98%) SOAP
6 17 (3.76%) Hibernate
6 17 (3.76%) Spring Batch
6 17 (3.76%) Spring Integration
6 17 (3.76%) Web Services
7 16 (3.54%) AngularJS
7 16 (3.54%) Flask
8 15 (3.32%) ActiveMQ
9 14 (3.10%) Spring Cloud
10 13 (2.88%) RESTful
11 12 (2.65%) .NET
11 12 (2.65%) Django
12 11 (2.43%) Bootstrap
12 11 (2.43%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 19 (4.20%) Cloud Native
2 16 (3.54%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (2.43%) Legacy Systems
4 10 (2.21%) SCADA
5 8 (1.77%) Linux Command Line
6 6 (1.33%) Low-Code
6 6 (1.33%) Product Ownership
7 5 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
8 4 (0.88%) Clustering
8 4 (0.88%) Credit Risk
8 4 (0.88%) Data Centre
8 4 (0.88%) Enterprise Software
8 4 (0.88%) IoT
8 4 (0.88%) Robotics
9 3 (0.66%) Data Fabric
9 3 (0.66%) Data Structures
9 3 (0.66%) Educational Technology
10 2 (0.44%) Analytical Mindset
10 2 (0.44%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.44%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 57 (12.61%) Unix
2 47 (10.40%) Linux
3 20 (4.42%) Windows
4 7 (1.55%) Windows Server
5 5 (1.11%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 1 (0.22%) AIX
6 1 (0.22%) HPUX
6 1 (0.22%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 183 (40.49%) ETL
2 161 (35.62%) Agile
3 133 (29.42%) CI/CD
3 133 (29.42%) Data Modelling
4 112 (24.78%) Analytics
5 106 (23.45%) Business Intelligence
6 101 (22.35%) Data Pipeline
6 101 (22.35%) Test Automation
7 94 (20.80%) Problem-Solving
8 92 (20.35%) DevOps
9 79 (17.48%) Migration
10 78 (17.26%) Data Integration
11 75 (16.59%) Scrum
12 68 (15.04%) Validation
13 64 (14.16%) Data Engineering
14 59 (13.05%) Continuous Improvement
15 56 (12.39%) Decision-Making
16 43 (9.51%) Data Migration
17 42 (9.29%) AI
18 35 (7.74%) Generative AI
Programming Languages
1 94 (20.80%) Python
2 64 (14.16%) PL/SQL
3 61 (13.50%) Java
4 26 (5.75%) Shell Script
5 18 (3.98%) JavaScript
6 13 (2.88%) C
7 12 (2.65%) Bash
7 12 (2.65%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 10 (2.21%) VB
9 8 (1.77%) ProC
9 8 (1.77%) VB6
10 7 (1.55%) C#
11 5 (1.11%) Bicep
11 5 (1.11%) Go
11 5 (1.11%) Perl
11 5 (1.11%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.88%) PowerShell
12 4 (0.88%) TypeScript
13 3 (0.66%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.66%) R
Qualifications
1 230 (50.88%) Security Cleared
2 207 (45.80%) SC Cleared
3 27 (5.97%) ISTQB
4 17 (3.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 14 (3.10%) Degree
6 8 (1.77%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.11%) Azure Certification
8 4 (0.88%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.88%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.88%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.88%) PhD
9 3 (0.66%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 2 (0.44%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 1 (0.22%) ACCA
11 1 (0.22%) CIMA
11 1 (0.22%) Cisco Certification
11 1 (0.22%) ITIL Certification
11 1 (0.22%) MCSE
11 1 (0.22%) OCP
11 1 (0.22%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 73 (16.15%) Data Quality
2 52 (11.50%) QA
3 11 (2.43%) SLA
4 7 (1.55%) FATCA
5 6 (1.33%) GDPR
6 5 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 2 (0.44%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.44%) GRC
8 1 (0.22%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.22%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.22%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.22%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.22%) WCAG
System Software
1 56 (12.39%) Docker
2 9 (1.99%) Postfix
3 8 (1.77%) Active Directory
4 5 (1.11%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.66%) HDFS
5 3 (0.66%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.66%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.22%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.22%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 45 (9.96%) Kubernetes
2 35 (7.74%) Grafana
3 26 (5.75%) Terraform
4 12 (2.65%) Prometheus
5 7 (1.55%) Ansible
5 7 (1.55%) WMI
6 3 (0.66%) HP Quality Center
6 3 (0.66%) Progress Chef
7 2 (0.44%) Data Guard
7 2 (0.44%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.44%) Kibana
7 2 (0.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 2 (0.44%) Oracle RMAN
8 1 (0.22%) Control-M
8 1 (0.22%) Docker Swarm
8 1 (0.22%) SCCM
8 1 (0.22%) SCOM
Vendors
1 179 (39.60%) Oracle
2 93 (20.58%) Talend
3 72 (15.93%) Informatica
4 68 (15.04%) Microsoft
5 50 (11.06%) Denodo
6 39 (8.63%) Databricks
7 29 (6.42%) ServiceNow
8 17 (3.76%) SAP
9 15 (3.32%) Jaspersoft
10 14 (3.10%) Atlassian
11 11 (2.43%) Cloudera
11 11 (2.43%) Sage
12 10 (2.21%) Splunk
13 9 (1.99%) Cisco
14 8 (1.77%) Fortinet
14 8 (1.77%) Google
15 7 (1.55%) Actian
15 7 (1.55%) F5
15 7 (1.55%) Palo Alto
15 7 (1.55%) SolarWinds