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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 11 19
Rank change year-on-year +3 +8 -11
Contract jobs citing SQL 348 163 155
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.80% 11.83% 8.08%
As % of the Programming Languages category 50.73% 44.90% 36.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 265 111 106
10th Percentile £354 £263 £259
25th Percentile £413 £411 £308
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £489 £438
Median % change year-on-year -2.86% +11.77% -16.67%
75th Percentile £533 £575 £570
90th Percentile £600 £650 £618
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £18.74 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -16.67%

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 686 363 423
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 25.24% 26.34% 22.05%
Number of daily rates quoted 495 220 304
10th Percentile £358 £341 £260
25th Percentile £425 £410 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £487 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.64% +8.22% -14.29%
75th Percentile £560 £575 £575
90th Percentile £633 £700 £650
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 15
10th Percentile - £16.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.00 £18.00
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -59.52% +127.27%
75th Percentile £68.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.90 £52.50 £67.00
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 2 March 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 2 March 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 +2 157 £465 -4.52% 32
Birmingham -13 70 £481 -12.90% 71
Warwickshire -11 31 £500 +17.65% 18
Herefordshire 0 21 £550 -21.43% 4
Coventry -15 21 £407 -9.56% 16
Solihull -5 9 £510 +12.21% 9
Worcestershire -10 9 £700 - 21
Staffordshire -9 3 £463 +1.37% 27
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 3
Dudley - 2 £420 - 5
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 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 58 (16.67%) SAS
2 40 (11.49%) WebLogic
3 19 (5.46%) Apache
4 15 (4.31%) Tuxedo
5 13 (3.74%) Confluence
6 9 (2.59%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.30%) JBoss
8 6 (1.72%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.57%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.57%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.57%) CMS
9 2 (0.57%) Liferay
10 1 (0.29%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.29%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.29%) Drupal
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.29%) nginx
10 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.29%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.29%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (3.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.86%) Microsoft Office
3 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.57%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.29%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.15%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.15%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.86%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.86%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.57%) Maximo
3 2 (0.57%) Primavera
3 2 (0.57%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.29%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.29%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.29%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.29%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 91 (26.15%) AWS
2 77 (22.13%) Azure
3 36 (10.34%) Power Platform
4 30 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
5 28 (8.05%) Serverless
6 27 (7.76%) Amazon S3
7 19 (5.46%) Amazon EC2
7 19 (5.46%) GCP
8 14 (4.02%) Azure Data Factory
8 14 (4.02%) GitHub
9 12 (3.45%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 12 (3.45%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (3.45%) OpenShift
10 10 (2.87%) Power Automate
11 9 (2.59%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 9 (2.59%) Azure Key Vault
12 8 (2.30%) AWS KMS
12 8 (2.30%) Cloud Computing
12 8 (2.30%) PowerApps
12 8 (2.30%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.15%) Network Security
2 3 (0.86%) DNS
3 2 (0.57%) Firewall
4 1 (0.29%) AMQP
4 1 (0.29%) FTP
4 1 (0.29%) HTTP
4 1 (0.29%) IMAP
4 1 (0.29%) OpenLDAP
4 1 (0.29%) SMTP
4 1 (0.29%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 62 (17.82%) Pentaho
2 32 (9.20%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (8.91%) Power BI
4 30 (8.62%) Amazon RDS
5 28 (8.05%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (6.90%) Relational Database
7 23 (6.61%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.89%) Oracle Database
9 15 (4.31%) MySQL
10 12 (3.45%) Oracle Reports
11 11 (3.16%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (3.16%) NoSQL
12 9 (2.59%) Tableau
13 8 (2.30%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (2.30%) Redis
14 7 (2.01%) BigQuery
14 7 (2.01%) DynamoDB
14 7 (2.01%) Hadoop
14 7 (2.01%) Metadata
14 7 (2.01%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 90 (25.86%) Git
2 70 (20.11%) Jenkins
3 61 (17.53%) JIRA
4 29 (8.33%) GitLab
5 18 (5.17%) JUnit
6 12 (3.45%) MSI
7 11 (3.16%) Selenium
8 10 (2.87%) Maven
8 10 (2.87%) Mockito
9 9 (2.59%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.30%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.30%) IntelliJ
11 7 (2.01%) Postman
11 7 (2.01%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.72%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 5 (1.44%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (1.44%) DbUnit
13 5 (1.44%) jMock
13 5 (1.44%) Liquibase
14 4 (1.15%) CA Gen
General
1 87 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 64 (18.39%) Public Sector
3 46 (13.22%) Analytical Skills
4 26 (7.47%) Finance
5 13 (3.74%) Banking
6 9 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.30%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.72%) Legal
9 5 (1.44%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.15%) Advertising
10 4 (1.15%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.15%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.15%) Marketing
10 4 (1.15%) Retail
11 3 (0.86%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.86%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.57%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.57%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.29%) Automotive
13 1 (0.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 91 (26.15%) Data Engineer
2 63 (18.10%) Developer
3 30 (8.62%) Analyst
4 21 (6.03%) Lead
4 21 (6.03%) Senior
5 20 (5.75%) Java Developer
6 16 (4.60%) Consultant
7 15 (4.31%) Software Engineer
8 14 (4.02%) Data Analyst
8 14 (4.02%) SAS Engineer
9 13 (3.74%) Architect
9 13 (3.74%) Java Engineer
10 12 (3.45%) Site Engineer
10 12 (3.45%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 11 (3.16%) Tester
12 9 (2.59%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 9 (2.59%) DBA
12 9 (2.59%) Python Developer
12 9 (2.59%) QA Tester
13 8 (2.30%) Backend Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (12.07%) REST
1 42 (12.07%) Spring
2 32 (9.20%) Spring Boot
3 22 (6.32%) XML
4 18 (5.17%) Flask
4 18 (5.17%) Node.js
4 18 (5.17%) SOAP
5 17 (4.89%) Hibernate
5 17 (4.89%) RESTful
6 13 (3.74%) JSON
7 12 (3.45%) HTML
8 11 (3.16%) FastAPI
8 11 (3.16%) JPA
9 10 (2.87%) AngularJS
9 10 (2.87%) Spring Batch
9 10 (2.87%) Web Services
10 9 (2.59%) .NET
10 9 (2.59%) HTML5
10 9 (2.59%) J2EE
11 8 (2.30%) Spring Integration
Miscellaneous
1 20 (5.75%) Cloud Native
2 12 (3.45%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.30%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.44%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.44%) Onboarding
5 5 (1.44%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.15%) Clustering
6 4 (1.15%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.15%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.15%) Robotics
7 3 (0.86%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.86%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.57%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.57%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.57%) Derivative
8 2 (0.57%) IoT
8 2 (0.57%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.29%) Greenfield Project
9 1 (0.29%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 43 (12.36%) Unix
2 38 (10.92%) Linux
3 24 (6.90%) Windows
4 6 (1.72%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.29%) Amazon Linux
5 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.29%) VME
5 1 (0.29%) VMS
5 1 (0.29%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 138 (39.66%) CI/CD
2 124 (35.63%) Agile
3 108 (31.03%) ETL
4 106 (30.46%) DevOps
5 95 (27.30%) Problem-Solving
6 90 (25.86%) Analytics
7 79 (22.70%) Scrum
8 76 (21.84%) Business Intelligence
9 75 (21.55%) Data Modelling
10 72 (20.69%) Continuous Improvement
11 66 (18.97%) Test Automation
12 60 (17.24%) Data Pipeline
13 59 (16.95%) Data Integration
14 49 (14.08%) Microservices
15 43 (12.36%) Deployment Automation
16 42 (12.07%) Data Analytics
17 41 (11.78%) Data Virtualisation
18 39 (11.21%) Migration
18 39 (11.21%) Software Engineering
19 35 (10.06%) Business Analytics
Programming Languages
1 84 (24.14%) Java
2 68 (19.54%) Python
3 40 (11.49%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.76%) Shell Script
5 17 (4.89%) Go
6 14 (4.02%) Scala
7 13 (3.74%) JavaScript
8 7 (2.01%) Bash
8 7 (2.01%) C#
8 7 (2.01%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.72%) Perl
10 5 (1.44%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.44%) R
10 5 (1.44%) VBA
11 4 (1.15%) Bicep
11 4 (1.15%) VB
12 3 (0.86%) HiveQL
13 2 (0.57%) COBOL
13 2 (0.57%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.57%) VB6
Qualifications
1 178 (51.15%) Security Cleared
2 161 (46.26%) SC Cleared
3 20 (5.75%) Degree
4 16 (4.60%) DV Cleared
5 14 (4.02%) ISTQB
6 10 (2.87%) Computer Science Degree
7 8 (2.30%) AWS Certification
7 8 (2.30%) BPSS Clearance
8 7 (2.01%) Azure Certification
9 6 (1.72%) Master's Degree
9 6 (1.72%) Microsoft Certification
10 5 (1.44%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.57%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.57%) ISEB
11 2 (0.57%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.57%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.29%) ACCA
12 1 (0.29%) CIMA
12 1 (0.29%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 62 (17.82%) Data Quality
2 23 (6.61%) QA
3 5 (1.44%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.86%) FATCA
4 3 (0.86%) SLA
5 1 (0.29%) GDPR
5 1 (0.29%) PMO
5 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 88 (25.29%) Docker
2 6 (1.72%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.44%) Postfix
4 3 (0.86%) HDFS
4 3 (0.86%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (0.86%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.29%) DFS Replication
5 1 (0.29%) Dovecot
5 1 (0.29%) Squid
Systems Management
1 87 (25.00%) Kubernetes
2 39 (11.21%) Grafana
3 29 (8.33%) Terraform
4 27 (7.76%) Prometheus
5 22 (6.32%) Ansible
6 12 (3.45%) Progress Chef
7 10 (2.87%) Puppet
8 5 (1.44%) Kibana
9 4 (1.15%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.86%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.86%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.57%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.57%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.29%) Control-M
12 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.29%) Nessus
12 1 (0.29%) Proxmox
12 1 (0.29%) SCCM
12 1 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 112 (32.18%) Oracle
2 68 (19.54%) Talend
3 42 (12.07%) Microsoft
4 38 (10.92%) Denodo
5 32 (9.20%) Informatica
6 17 (4.89%) ServiceNow
7 14 (4.02%) Google
8 13 (3.74%) SAP
9 12 (3.45%) Splunk
10 10 (2.87%) Databricks
10 10 (2.87%) webMethods
11 9 (2.59%) Fujitsu
12 8 (2.30%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (2.01%) NEC
14 6 (1.72%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.72%) Red Hat
14 6 (1.72%) Sage
15 5 (1.44%) Atlassian
15 5 (1.44%) Cloudera
16 3 (0.86%) Anaplan