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

6 months to
3 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 5 10 17
Rank change year-on-year +5 +7 -4
Contract jobs citing SQL 425 175 147
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.31% 12.49% 7.56%
As % of the Programming Languages category 61.59% 46.54% 33.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 337 117 104
10th Percentile £351 £235 £259
25th Percentile £406 £388 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £460 £454 £425
Median % change year-on-year +1.39% +6.75% -15.00%
75th Percentile £515 £538 £550
90th Percentile £575 £643 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £545
% change year-on-year - -8.26% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 13 2
10th Percentile £52.05 £21.77 £30.73
25th Percentile £53.25 - £31.26
Median hourly rate £56.00 £33.91 £32.15
Median % change year-on-year +65.14% +5.47% +27.33%
75th Percentile £58.25 £50.00 £33.04
90th Percentile £59.15 - £33.57
England median hourly rate £47.50 £37.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +28.38% -12.94% -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 690 376 441
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 21.60% 26.84% 22.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 521 228 321
10th Percentile £350 £235 £260
25th Percentile £412 £400 £345
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £460 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.96% +2.22% -14.29%
75th Percentile £538 £544 £550
90th Percentile £619 £652 £638
England median daily rate £513 £525 £543
% change year-on-year -2.38% -3.23% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 16 15
10th Percentile £48.75 £23.46 £36.36
25th Percentile £56.50 £29.04 £47.75
Median hourly rate £61.32 £33.91 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +80.82% -41.03% +96.13%
75th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £58.75
90th Percentile £77.50 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +4.84% -0.80% -

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 3 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 3 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 +2 186 £459 -0.22% 23
Birmingham -6 72 £472 -7.81% 50
Warwickshire -14 51 £513 +28.13% 21
Coventry -5 32 £416 +21.02% 12
Solihull -10 18 £478 +13.81% 2
Staffordshire +4 10 £450 -18.18% 13
Herefordshire -1 10 £544 -1.14% 2
Worcestershire +5 9 £425 -39.29% 5
Dudley - 7 £420 - 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 63 (14.82%) SAS
2 35 (8.24%) Confluence
3 23 (5.41%) WebLogic
4 10 (2.35%) Tuxedo
5 9 (2.12%) Apache
6 7 (1.65%) Oracle Workflow
7 6 (1.41%) Oracle Self-Service HR
8 5 (1.18%) Apache Airflow
8 5 (1.18%) SharePoint
9 3 (0.71%) Apache Spark
9 3 (0.71%) Jupyter
9 3 (0.71%) Microsoft Exchange
10 2 (0.47%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.47%) Liferay
11 1 (0.24%) Apache ServiceMix
11 1 (0.24%) CMS
11 1 (0.24%) Oracle SOA Suite
11 1 (0.24%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.24%) Umbraco
11 1 (0.24%) WebSphere
Applications
1 12 (2.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.18%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.71%) MS Visio
4 2 (0.47%) Chatbot
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft Office
4 2 (0.47%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 1 (0.24%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 6 (1.41%) Oracle HRMS
2 4 (0.94%) NEC Housing
3 3 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.71%) Oracle EBS
4 2 (0.47%) Oracle EBS R12
4 2 (0.47%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
5 1 (0.24%) Aareon QL
5 1 (0.24%) MIS ActiveH
5 1 (0.24%) OPENHousing
5 1 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
5 1 (0.24%) Orchard Housing
5 1 (0.24%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.24%) SAP S/4HANA
5 1 (0.24%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 122 (28.71%) AWS
2 96 (22.59%) Azure
3 58 (13.65%) Power Platform
4 41 (9.65%) Azure DevOps
5 34 (8.00%) Amazon S3
6 25 (5.88%) Azure Data Factory
7 23 (5.41%) Amazon EC2
7 23 (5.41%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 20 (4.71%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 18 (4.24%) Serverless
10 17 (4.00%) GitHub
11 16 (3.76%) Snowflake
12 15 (3.53%) Amazon SQS
12 15 (3.53%) AWS KMS
12 15 (3.53%) GitHub Actions
12 15 (3.53%) Route 53
13 10 (2.35%) AWS Lambda
14 9 (2.12%) GCP
15 8 (1.88%) Matillion
16 7 (1.65%) dbt
Communications & Networking
1 8 (1.88%) Firewall
2 5 (1.18%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.18%) SNMP
2 5 (1.18%) WinSCP
3 3 (0.71%) DNS
3 3 (0.71%) SSL
4 2 (0.47%) DHCP
4 2 (0.47%) LAN
4 2 (0.47%) Network Security
4 2 (0.47%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.47%) VLAN
4 2 (0.47%) VPN
4 2 (0.47%) WAN
4 2 (0.47%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.24%) 4G
5 1 (0.24%) AMQP
5 1 (0.24%) Internet
5 1 (0.24%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.24%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.24%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 72 (16.94%) Pentaho
2 67 (15.76%) Data Warehouse
3 55 (12.94%) Power BI
4 31 (7.29%) Amazon RDS
4 31 (7.29%) PostgreSQL
5 22 (5.18%) Amazon Redshift
6 21 (4.94%) Oracle Reports
6 21 (4.94%) Tableau
7 20 (4.71%) Oracle Database
7 20 (4.71%) Relational Database
8 19 (4.47%) DynamoDB
9 17 (4.00%) Data Lake
10 15 (3.53%) Amazon Aurora
10 15 (3.53%) BusinessObjects
11 14 (3.29%) Metadata
11 14 (3.29%) MySQL
11 14 (3.29%) SQL Server
12 12 (2.82%) Azure SQL Database
12 12 (2.82%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 10 (2.35%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 77 (18.12%) Git
2 76 (17.88%) JIRA
3 64 (15.06%) GitLab
4 57 (13.41%) Jenkins
5 22 (5.18%) Zephyr
6 21 (4.94%) Postman
7 19 (4.47%) JUnit
8 18 (4.24%) Maven
9 17 (4.00%) Mockito
10 16 (3.76%) SonarQube
11 11 (2.59%) Artifactory
11 11 (2.59%) Bitbucket Server
11 11 (2.59%) DbUnit
11 11 (2.59%) jMock
12 7 (1.65%) MSI
12 7 (1.65%) Selenium
13 5 (1.18%) Atlassian Bamboo
14 4 (0.94%) CA Gen
14 4 (0.94%) JMeter
14 4 (0.94%) WebDriver
General
1 100 (23.53%) Social Skills
2 77 (18.12%) Public Sector
3 69 (16.24%) Analytical Skills
4 32 (7.53%) Finance
5 10 (2.35%) Banking
6 9 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.41%) Manufacturing
7 6 (1.41%) Marketing
8 4 (0.94%) Advertising
8 4 (0.94%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (0.94%) Retail
9 3 (0.71%) Billing
9 3 (0.71%) Influencing Skills
9 3 (0.71%) Legal
9 3 (0.71%) Organisational Skills
10 2 (0.47%) General Ledger
10 2 (0.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 1 (0.24%) Police
11 1 (0.24%) Publishing
11 1 (0.24%) Social Housing
Job Titles
1 164 (38.59%) Data Engineer
2 69 (16.24%) Developer
3 42 (9.88%) Senior
4 39 (9.18%) Analyst
5 27 (6.35%) Java Developer
6 23 (5.41%) Architect
7 22 (5.18%) Lead
7 22 (5.18%) Senior Data Engineer
8 20 (4.71%) Tester
9 19 (4.47%) Data Analyst
10 17 (4.00%) QA Tester
11 15 (3.53%) SAS Engineer
12 14 (3.29%) Full-Stack Developer
13 12 (2.82%) AWS Data Engineer
13 12 (2.82%) AWS Engineer
14 10 (2.35%) DBA
15 9 (2.12%) Senior Developer
15 9 (2.12%) Unix Engineer
16 8 (1.88%) Business Analyst
17 7 (1.65%) Data Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (8.24%) Spring
1 35 (8.24%) Spring Boot
2 31 (7.29%) REST
3 24 (5.65%) Node.js
4 19 (4.47%) JPA
5 18 (4.24%) SOAP
6 17 (4.00%) Hibernate
6 17 (4.00%) Spring Batch
6 17 (4.00%) Spring Integration
6 17 (4.00%) Web Services
7 16 (3.76%) AngularJS
7 16 (3.76%) Flask
8 15 (3.53%) ActiveMQ
8 15 (3.53%) PySpark
9 14 (3.29%) Spring Cloud
10 13 (3.06%) RESTful
11 12 (2.82%) .NET
11 12 (2.82%) Django
11 12 (2.82%) YAML
12 11 (2.59%) Bootstrap
Miscellaneous
1 15 (3.53%) Cloud Native
1 15 (3.53%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (2.12%) SCADA
3 7 (1.65%) Product Ownership
4 6 (1.41%) Linux Command Line
5 4 (0.94%) Clustering
5 4 (0.94%) Data Centre
5 4 (0.94%) Enterprise Software
5 4 (0.94%) Legacy Systems
5 4 (0.94%) Robotics
5 4 (0.94%) Self-Motivation
6 3 (0.71%) Credit Risk
6 3 (0.71%) Data Fabric
6 3 (0.71%) Data Structures
6 3 (0.71%) Educational Technology
6 3 (0.71%) IoT
6 3 (0.71%) Onboarding
7 2 (0.47%) Analytical Mindset
7 2 (0.47%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (0.47%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 64 (15.06%) Unix
2 47 (11.06%) Linux
3 23 (5.41%) Windows
4 5 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 5 (1.18%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.24%) AIX
5 1 (0.24%) HPUX
5 1 (0.24%) Solaris
Processes & Methodologies
1 166 (39.06%) ETL
2 147 (34.59%) Agile
3 134 (31.53%) CI/CD
4 113 (26.59%) Data Modelling
5 97 (22.82%) DevOps
6 95 (22.35%) Business Intelligence
6 95 (22.35%) Test Automation
7 94 (22.12%) Analytics
8 89 (20.94%) Data Pipeline
9 84 (19.76%) Problem-Solving
10 79 (18.59%) Data Integration
11 77 (18.12%) Scrum
12 67 (15.76%) Migration
13 54 (12.71%) Continuous Improvement
13 54 (12.71%) Data Engineering
14 53 (12.47%) Validation
15 47 (11.06%) Decision-Making
16 39 (9.18%) Microservices
17 37 (8.71%) AI
18 36 (8.47%) Data Migration
Programming Languages
1 73 (17.18%) Python
2 62 (14.59%) Java
3 60 (14.12%) PL/SQL
4 26 (6.12%) Shell Script
5 19 (4.47%) JavaScript
6 12 (2.82%) Bash
7 9 (2.12%) Data Analysis Expressions
8 8 (1.88%) C#
9 7 (1.65%) Bicep
10 6 (1.41%) Go
11 5 (1.18%) Perl
11 5 (1.18%) PowerShell
12 4 (0.94%) TypeScript
12 4 (0.94%) VB
13 3 (0.71%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.71%) T-SQL
14 2 (0.47%) VB6
15 1 (0.24%) C
15 1 (0.24%) VB.NET
15 1 (0.24%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 233 (54.82%) Security Cleared
2 213 (50.12%) SC Cleared
3 27 (6.35%) ISTQB
4 16 (3.76%) Degree
5 11 (2.59%) BPSS Clearance
6 8 (1.88%) DV Cleared
7 6 (1.41%) Azure Certification
8 5 (1.18%) Master's Degree
8 5 (1.18%) Microsoft Certification
9 4 (0.94%) PhD
10 3 (0.71%) AWS Certification
10 3 (0.71%) Computer Science Degree
10 3 (0.71%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
11 2 (0.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.47%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.24%) ACCA
12 1 (0.24%) CIMA
12 1 (0.24%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.24%) ITIL Certification
12 1 (0.24%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (15.29%) Data Quality
2 45 (10.59%) QA
3 10 (2.35%) SLA
4 7 (1.65%) 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 (0.24%) Actionable Recommendations
8 1 (0.24%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.24%) ISO 22301
8 1 (0.24%) Sarbanes-Oxley
8 1 (0.24%) WCAG
System Software
1 63 (14.82%) Docker
2 10 (2.35%) Active Directory
3 9 (2.12%) Postfix
4 6 (1.41%) Oracle RAC
5 4 (0.94%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.71%) HDFS
6 3 (0.71%) Oracle Clusterware
6 3 (0.71%) Virtual Machines
7 1 (0.24%) Microsoft App-V
Systems Management
1 55 (12.94%) Kubernetes
2 37 (8.71%) Grafana
3 29 (6.82%) Terraform
4 14 (3.29%) Prometheus
5 9 (2.12%) Ansible
6 5 (1.18%) Data Guard
6 5 (1.18%) Oracle RMAN
6 5 (1.18%) Progress Chef
6 5 (1.18%) WMI
7 2 (0.47%) Docker Swarm
7 2 (0.47%) HP ALM
7 2 (0.47%) HP Quality Center
7 2 (0.47%) Kibana
8 1 (0.24%) Control-M
8 1 (0.24%) Microsoft Intune
8 1 (0.24%) Puppet
8 1 (0.24%) SCOM
Vendors
1 167 (39.29%) Oracle
2 95 (22.35%) Talend
3 73 (17.18%) Informatica
4 60 (14.12%) Microsoft
5 51 (12.00%) Denodo
6 28 (6.59%) ServiceNow
7 26 (6.12%) Databricks
8 16 (3.76%) SAP
9 15 (3.53%) Jaspersoft
10 14 (3.29%) Atlassian
11 10 (2.35%) Cloudera
11 10 (2.35%) Sage
12 9 (2.12%) Google
13 8 (1.88%) Splunk
14 7 (1.65%) Cisco
14 7 (1.65%) Dynatrace
14 7 (1.65%) NEC
15 6 (1.41%) Fortinet
16 5 (1.18%) Fujitsu
16 5 (1.18%) SolarWinds