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

6 months to
13 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 11 21
Rank change year-on-year +4 +10 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 441 203 127
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.72% 11.91% 6.78%
As % of the Programming Languages category 56.68% 48.22% 31.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 340 130 84
10th Percentile £358 £235 £310
25th Percentile £406 £400 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £459 £453 £428
Median % change year-on-year +1.25% +6.04% -14.50%
75th Percentile £500 £538 £575
90th Percentile £575 £625 £626
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -0.46%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 20 2
10th Percentile - £32.39 £30.73
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £31.26
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +55.52% +27.33%
75th Percentile £53.75 - £33.04
90th Percentile £57.35 - £33.57
England median hourly rate £45.00 £37.50 £42.00
% change year-on-year +20.00% -10.71% -8.46%

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 778 421 399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.43% 24.71% 21.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 566 261 273
10th Percentile £363 £275 £313
25th Percentile £413 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £467 £475 £492
Median % change year-on-year -1.79% -3.36% -1.70%
75th Percentile £538 £538 £575
90th Percentile £626 £613 £648
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +1.94% -6.36% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 13 23 10
10th Percentile £21.25 £28.18 £33.57
25th Percentile £26.25 £33.91 £40.13
Median hourly rate £58.00 £50.00 £55.63
Median % change year-on-year +16.00% -10.11% +125.89%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £58.13
90th Percentile - - £60.38
England median hourly rate £65.00 £57.13 £65.00
% change year-on-year +13.79% -12.12% +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 13 August 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 13 August 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 13 August 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 +3 199 £459 -12.15% 18
Birmingham -2 59 £475 - 71
Warwickshire -9 57 £500 +17.65% 19
Coventry +2 46 £407 +30.24% 14
Solihull -17 15 £481 +10.57% 12
Worcestershire +10 10 £425 -39.29% 9
Staffordshire +1 9 £431 - 20
Dudley - 9 £400 - 1
Herefordshire -3 4 £700 +75.00% 3
Wolverhampton - 3 - - 2
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 -
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 63 (14.29%) SAS
2 28 (6.35%) Confluence
3 17 (3.85%) WebLogic
4 12 (2.72%) Tuxedo
5 7 (1.59%) Oracle Workflow
6 6 (1.36%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 4 (0.91%) Apache Spark
8 3 (0.68%) Jupyter
8 3 (0.68%) Microsoft Exchange
8 3 (0.68%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.45%) Apache
9 2 (0.45%) ArcGIS
10 1 (0.23%) Apache Airflow
10 1 (0.23%) IIS
10 1 (0.23%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.23%) Palantir Foundry
Applications
1 9 (2.04%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.13%) Notepad++
3 2 (0.45%) Chatbot
3 2 (0.45%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.23%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 13 (2.95%) Dynamics CRM
2 6 (1.36%) Oracle HRMS
3 2 (0.45%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.23%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.23%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.23%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle EBS
4 1 (0.23%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.23%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.23%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 126 (28.57%) AWS
2 113 (25.62%) Azure
3 66 (14.97%) Power Platform
4 45 (10.20%) Azure Data Factory
5 38 (8.62%) Azure DevOps
6 31 (7.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 24 (5.44%) Amazon S3
8 22 (4.99%) Serverless
9 21 (4.76%) Snowflake
10 18 (4.08%) GitHub
11 17 (3.85%) Amazon CloudWatch
11 17 (3.85%) Amazon EC2
12 14 (3.17%) Microsoft Purview
13 13 (2.95%) Amazon SQS
13 13 (2.95%) AWS KMS
13 13 (2.95%) GitHub Actions
13 13 (2.95%) Route 53
14 12 (2.72%) Matillion
15 10 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
16 9 (2.04%) Azure Storage
Communications & Networking
1 9 (2.04%) Firewall
2 7 (1.59%) SNMP
3 5 (1.13%) PuTTY
3 5 (1.13%) WinSCP
4 3 (0.68%) DNS
4 3 (0.68%) SSL
5 2 (0.45%) DHCP
5 2 (0.45%) LAN
5 2 (0.45%) TCP/IP
5 2 (0.45%) VLAN
5 2 (0.45%) VPN
5 2 (0.45%) WAN
5 2 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
6 1 (0.23%) 4G
6 1 (0.23%) Internet
6 1 (0.23%) MPLS
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 88 (19.95%) Data Warehouse
2 82 (18.59%) Pentaho
3 64 (14.51%) Power BI
4 33 (7.48%) PostgreSQL
5 23 (5.22%) Amazon RDS
5 23 (5.22%) Oracle Database
5 23 (5.22%) Oracle Reports
6 22 (4.99%) SQL Server
7 20 (4.54%) Data Lake
7 20 (4.54%) SQL Server Integration Services
8 19 (4.31%) Azure SQL Database
9 18 (4.08%) Tableau
10 17 (3.85%) Amazon Redshift
10 17 (3.85%) DynamoDB
11 16 (3.63%) Metadata
11 16 (3.63%) Relational Database
12 15 (3.40%) BusinessObjects
12 15 (3.40%) Delta Lake
13 14 (3.17%) MySQL
14 13 (2.95%) Amazon Aurora
Development Applications
1 98 (22.22%) Git
2 79 (17.91%) JIRA
3 65 (14.74%) GitLab
4 51 (11.56%) Jenkins
5 29 (6.58%) Postman
6 28 (6.35%) Zephyr
7 24 (5.44%) Maven
8 18 (4.08%) JUnit
9 16 (3.63%) Mockito
10 14 (3.17%) SonarQube
11 11 (2.49%) Artifactory
12 10 (2.27%) Bitbucket Server
12 10 (2.27%) DbUnit
12 10 (2.27%) jMock
13 7 (1.59%) Selenium
14 5 (1.13%) MLflow
14 5 (1.13%) Oracle Forms
14 5 (1.13%) Team Foundation Server
15 4 (0.91%) Cypress.io
15 4 (0.91%) TestRail
General
1 104 (23.58%) Social Skills
2 82 (18.59%) Public Sector
3 72 (16.33%) Analytical Skills
4 38 (8.62%) Finance
5 12 (2.72%) Manufacturing
6 9 (2.04%) Banking
7 7 (1.59%) Marketing
7 7 (1.59%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.13%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.13%) Retail
9 4 (0.91%) Advertising
9 4 (0.91%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 3 (0.68%) Military
10 3 (0.68%) Organisational Skills
11 2 (0.45%) Billing
11 2 (0.45%) Front Office
11 2 (0.45%) Influencing Skills
11 2 (0.45%) Legal
12 1 (0.23%) Local Government
12 1 (0.23%) Publishing
Job Titles
1 187 (42.40%) Data Engineer
2 71 (16.10%) Developer
3 55 (12.47%) Senior
4 35 (7.94%) Analyst
5 31 (7.03%) Senior Data Engineer
6 30 (6.80%) Java Developer
7 24 (5.44%) Tester
8 19 (4.31%) QA Tester
9 15 (3.40%) Architect
9 15 (3.40%) AWS Engineer
10 13 (2.95%) AWS Data Engineer
10 13 (2.95%) Data Analyst
11 12 (2.72%) Lead
12 11 (2.49%) Azure Engineer
12 11 (2.49%) Full-Stack Developer
12 11 (2.49%) SAS Engineer
12 11 (2.49%) Test Analyst
13 10 (2.27%) Data Architect
13 10 (2.27%) SQL Developer
14 9 (2.04%) Business Intelligence Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 28 (6.35%) Spring Boot
2 27 (6.12%) Spring
3 26 (5.90%) REST
4 20 (4.54%) PySpark
5 19 (4.31%) Node.js
6 18 (4.08%) JPA
7 17 (3.85%) Web Services
8 16 (3.63%) SOAP
9 15 (3.40%) Hibernate
9 15 (3.40%) Spring Batch
9 15 (3.40%) Spring Integration
10 13 (2.95%) ActiveMQ
10 13 (2.95%) AngularJS
10 13 (2.95%) Flask
11 12 (2.72%) Spring Cloud
12 10 (2.27%) Bootstrap
12 10 (2.27%) Django
12 10 (2.27%) PowerMock
12 10 (2.27%) RESTful
12 10 (2.27%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 17 (3.85%) Cloud Native
2 12 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
2 12 (2.72%) Legacy Systems
2 12 (2.72%) Linux Command Line
2 12 (2.72%) SCADA
3 9 (2.04%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (1.36%) IoT
5 5 (1.13%) Low-Code
6 4 (0.91%) Onboarding
6 4 (0.91%) Product Ownership
6 4 (0.91%) Robotics
6 4 (0.91%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (0.68%) Data Fabric
7 3 (0.68%) Data Structures
8 2 (0.45%) BYOD
8 2 (0.45%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.45%) Data Protection Act
8 2 (0.45%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.45%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.45%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 56 (12.70%) Unix
2 42 (9.52%) Linux
3 23 (5.22%) Windows
4 7 (1.59%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.23%) AIX
5 1 (0.23%) HPUX
5 1 (0.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.23%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (44.44%) ETL
2 166 (37.64%) Agile
3 141 (31.97%) Data Modelling
4 118 (26.76%) CI/CD
5 112 (25.40%) Data Pipeline
6 111 (25.17%) Test Automation
7 107 (24.26%) Analytics
7 107 (24.26%) Business Intelligence
8 93 (21.09%) Problem-Solving
9 90 (20.41%) Data Integration
10 88 (19.95%) DevOps
11 78 (17.69%) Migration
12 73 (16.55%) Scrum
13 69 (15.65%) Data Engineering
14 61 (13.83%) Validation
15 60 (13.61%) Continuous Improvement
16 50 (11.34%) Decision-Making
17 48 (10.88%) Data Migration
18 42 (9.52%) AI
19 35 (7.94%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 88 (19.95%) Python
2 65 (14.74%) PL/SQL
3 54 (12.24%) Java
4 21 (4.76%) Shell Script
5 16 (3.63%) Bash
6 15 (3.40%) JavaScript
7 13 (2.95%) C
8 12 (2.72%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 10 (2.27%) T-SQL
10 8 (1.81%) ProC
11 6 (1.36%) Bicep
11 6 (1.36%) VB
11 6 (1.36%) VB6
12 5 (1.13%) C#
13 3 (0.68%) Go
13 3 (0.68%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.68%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.45%) COBOL
14 2 (0.45%) PowerShell
14 2 (0.45%) R
Qualifications
1 240 (54.42%) Security Cleared
2 214 (48.53%) SC Cleared
3 35 (7.94%) ISTQB
4 21 (4.76%) BPSS Clearance
5 11 (2.49%) Degree
6 9 (2.04%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 6 (1.36%) Azure Certification
7 6 (1.36%) DV Cleared
8 4 (0.91%) AWS Certification
8 4 (0.91%) ISEB
8 4 (0.91%) Master's Degree
8 4 (0.91%) Microsoft Certification
8 4 (0.91%) PhD
9 1 (0.23%) Cisco Certification
9 1 (0.23%) Computer Science Degree
9 1 (0.23%) ITIL Certification
9 1 (0.23%) MCSE
9 1 (0.23%) OCP
9 1 (0.23%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 70 (15.87%) Data Quality
2 53 (12.02%) QA
3 9 (2.04%) SLA
4 7 (1.59%) GDPR
5 6 (1.36%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 4 (0.91%) FATCA
7 2 (0.45%) Accessibility
7 2 (0.45%) GRC
8 1 (0.23%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.23%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.23%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.23%) WCAG
System Software
1 52 (11.79%) Docker
2 9 (2.04%) Active Directory
3 8 (1.81%) Postfix
4 5 (1.13%) VMware Infrastructure
5 3 (0.68%) HDFS
5 3 (0.68%) Oracle RAC
5 3 (0.68%) Virtual Machines
6 1 (0.23%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.23%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 45 (10.20%) Kubernetes
2 27 (6.12%) Grafana
3 17 (3.85%) Terraform
4 7 (1.59%) Prometheus
4 7 (1.59%) WMI
5 3 (0.68%) Ansible
5 3 (0.68%) Kibana
6 2 (0.45%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.45%) Microsoft Intune
6 2 (0.45%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.23%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.23%) SCCM
7 1 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 183 (41.50%) Oracle
2 98 (22.22%) Talend
3 73 (16.55%) Informatica
4 71 (16.10%) Microsoft
5 55 (12.47%) Denodo
6 44 (9.98%) Databricks
7 28 (6.35%) ServiceNow
8 20 (4.54%) SAP
9 13 (2.95%) Atlassian
9 13 (2.95%) Jaspersoft
10 11 (2.49%) Cloudera
10 11 (2.49%) Sage
11 9 (2.04%) Cisco
12 8 (1.81%) Fortinet
13 7 (1.59%) F5
13 7 (1.59%) Palo Alto
13 7 (1.59%) SolarWinds
13 7 (1.59%) Splunk
14 6 (1.36%) VMware
15 5 (1.13%) Actian