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

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 14 16
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing SQL 361 208 164
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 10.08% 10.99% 8.76%
As % of the Programming Languages category 42.82% 43.61% 37.88%
Number of daily rates quoted 270 128 101
10th Percentile £374 £354 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £511 £450
Median % change year-on-year -8.04% +13.44% -5.26%
75th Percentile £540 £595 £567
90th Percentile £610 £690 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 19 3
10th Percentile £20.05 £33.91 £34.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £43.00 £34.47
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +42.86% -
75th Percentile £21.75 - £47.50
90th Percentile £38.40 - £55.00
England median hourly rate £45.90 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -8.20% +25.00% -11.11%

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 843 477 433
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 23.53% 25.20% 23.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 598 304 258
10th Percentile £395 £350 £313
25th Percentile £419 £425 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.41% +4.16%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £658 £638 £650
England median daily rate £525 £513 £543
% change year-on-year +2.44% -5.53% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 20 4
10th Percentile £19.25 £33.91 £34.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £35.48 £34.73
Median hourly rate £35.80 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.40% +5.26% +156.76%
75th Percentile £50.25 - £63.75
90th Percentile £67.84 - £70.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.04% -13.08% +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 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -1 164 £459 -12.57% 16
Birmingham -5 52 £510 +2.00% 93
Warwickshire -11 50 £500 +3.90% 33
Coventry -1 39 £415 +38.68% 20
Worcestershire +11 10 £575 -11.54% 6
Staffordshire -5 10 £431 - 24
Solihull -24 7 £600 +33.33% 12
Dudley - 3 £400 - 4
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 3
Herefordshire -3 1 - - 5
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 42 (11.63%) SAS
2 30 (8.31%) Confluence
3 17 (4.71%) WebLogic
4 11 (3.05%) Apache
5 10 (2.77%) Apache Spark
6 6 (1.66%) Tuxedo
7 4 (1.11%) ArcGIS
8 3 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.83%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.55%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.28%) IIS
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
10 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 12 (3.32%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.83%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.55%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 14 (3.88%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.11%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.28%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.28%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 132 (36.57%) AWS
2 89 (24.65%) Azure
3 54 (14.96%) Power Platform
4 41 (11.36%) Azure Data Factory
5 22 (6.09%) Azure DevOps
6 20 (5.54%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 20 (5.54%) Snowflake
7 18 (4.99%) Amazon S3
8 16 (4.43%) Serverless
9 12 (3.32%) GitHub
10 10 (2.77%) GCP
10 10 (2.77%) Microsoft Purview
11 9 (2.49%) Amazon EMR
12 8 (2.22%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (2.22%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (2.22%) Azure Functions
12 8 (2.22%) dbt
13 7 (1.94%) Azure Storage
13 7 (1.94%) Matillion
13 7 (1.94%) Tricentis Tosca
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.94%) SNMP
2 2 (0.55%) Firewall
3 1 (0.28%) DHCP
3 1 (0.28%) DNS
3 1 (0.28%) HTTP
3 1 (0.28%) SAN
3 1 (0.28%) Skype
3 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 63 (17.45%) Pentaho
2 62 (17.17%) Data Warehouse
3 53 (14.68%) Power BI
4 24 (6.65%) Oracle Reports
5 22 (6.09%) Oracle Database
5 22 (6.09%) SQL Server
6 18 (4.99%) Data Lake
7 16 (4.43%) Relational Database
8 15 (4.16%) PostgreSQL
9 14 (3.88%) Azure SQL Database
9 14 (3.88%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 12 (3.32%) Metadata
11 11 (3.05%) Delta Lake
11 11 (3.05%) Ingres
11 11 (3.05%) Tableau
12 10 (2.77%) Amazon RDS
12 10 (2.77%) DynamoDB
13 8 (2.22%) Amazon Redshift
13 8 (2.22%) MongoDB
13 8 (2.22%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 77 (21.33%) Git
2 67 (18.56%) GitLab
2 67 (18.56%) JIRA
3 30 (8.31%) Jenkins
4 26 (7.20%) Maven
5 21 (5.82%) Zephyr
6 19 (5.26%) Postman
7 18 (4.99%) JUnit
8 14 (3.88%) Mockito
9 11 (3.05%) Artifactory
10 7 (1.94%) SonarQube
10 7 (1.94%) Toad
11 6 (1.66%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (1.39%) Team Foundation Server
13 4 (1.11%) Selenium
14 3 (0.83%) Bitbucket Server
14 3 (0.83%) Cucumber
14 3 (0.83%) DbUnit
14 3 (0.83%) Gatling
14 3 (0.83%) jMock
General
1 82 (22.71%) Social Skills
2 74 (20.50%) Public Sector
3 59 (16.34%) Analytical Skills
4 36 (9.97%) Finance
5 8 (2.22%) Banking
5 8 (2.22%) Manufacturing
5 8 (2.22%) Marketing
5 8 (2.22%) Retail
6 6 (1.66%) Legal
7 5 (1.39%) Military
7 5 (1.39%) Presentation Skills
8 4 (1.11%) Documentation Skills
8 4 (1.11%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 2 (0.55%) Front Office
9 2 (0.55%) Influencing Skills
10 1 (0.28%) Advertising
10 1 (0.28%) Billing
10 1 (0.28%) Games
10 1 (0.28%) Law
10 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 134 (37.12%) Data Engineer
2 49 (13.57%) Developer
3 45 (12.47%) Analyst
4 43 (11.91%) Senior
5 25 (6.93%) Senior Data Engineer
6 23 (6.37%) Java Developer
6 23 (6.37%) Test Analyst
7 19 (5.26%) Data Analyst
8 16 (4.43%) Java Engineer
9 15 (4.16%) Tester
10 13 (3.60%) AWS Engineer
10 13 (3.60%) Lead
11 12 (3.32%) QA Tester
12 11 (3.05%) Architect
13 10 (2.77%) Azure Engineer
14 9 (2.49%) AWS Data Engineer
15 8 (2.22%) SAP Analyst
15 8 (2.22%) SAP Test Analyst
16 7 (1.94%) SQL Developer
16 7 (1.94%) Test Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (5.82%) REST
1 21 (5.82%) Spring
1 21 (5.82%) Spring Boot
2 15 (4.16%) PySpark
3 14 (3.88%) JPA
4 13 (3.60%) SOAP
5 12 (3.32%) XML
6 11 (3.05%) JSON
6 11 (3.05%) OpenAPI
7 10 (2.77%) Terraform
8 7 (1.94%) ADO
8 7 (1.94%) Swagger
8 7 (1.94%) Web Services
9 6 (1.66%) .NET
9 6 (1.66%) Oracle Fusion
10 5 (1.39%) COM
10 5 (1.39%) ODBC
10 5 (1.39%) RESTful
11 4 (1.11%) ActiveMQ
11 4 (1.11%) Hibernate
Miscellaneous
1 23 (6.37%) Cloud Native
2 13 (3.60%) Legacy Systems
3 11 (3.05%) Linux Command Line
4 8 (2.22%) Distributed Systems
5 7 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
6 6 (1.66%) Onboarding
6 6 (1.66%) Product Ownership
6 6 (1.66%) SCADA
7 5 (1.39%) Data Structures
7 5 (1.39%) Low-Code
7 5 (1.39%) Reference Data
8 4 (1.11%) Self-Motivation
9 3 (0.83%) Credit Risk
9 3 (0.83%) Data Fabric
9 3 (0.83%) IoT
10 2 (0.55%) BYOD
10 2 (0.55%) Legacy Applications
10 2 (0.55%) Operational Technology
11 1 (0.28%) Distributed Architecture
11 1 (0.28%) Housing Association
Operating Systems
1 32 (8.86%) Linux
2 28 (7.76%) Unix
3 24 (6.65%) Windows
4 5 (1.39%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.28%) AIX
5 1 (0.28%) CentOS
5 1 (0.28%) HPUX
5 1 (0.28%) Solaris
5 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 154 (42.66%) ETL
2 144 (39.89%) Agile
3 114 (31.58%) Data Modelling
4 98 (27.15%) Data Pipeline
5 96 (26.59%) Test Automation
6 87 (24.10%) CI/CD
7 85 (23.55%) Migration
8 78 (21.61%) Analytics
9 73 (20.22%) Data Engineering
9 73 (20.22%) Data Integration
10 72 (19.94%) Business Intelligence
11 68 (18.84%) Validation
12 65 (18.01%) Problem-Solving
13 62 (17.17%) Data Migration
14 52 (14.40%) DevOps
15 50 (13.85%) Continuous Improvement
16 45 (12.47%) Scrum
17 41 (11.36%) Data Transformation
18 36 (9.97%) Decision-Making
19 35 (9.70%) User Acceptance Testing
Programming Languages
1 90 (24.93%) Python
2 57 (15.79%) Java
3 39 (10.80%) PL/SQL
4 23 (6.37%) Shell Script
5 12 (3.32%) C
6 9 (2.49%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.22%) Bash
7 8 (2.22%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.22%) JavaScript
7 8 (2.22%) ProC
8 6 (1.66%) Scala
8 6 (1.66%) VB
8 6 (1.66%) VB6
9 5 (1.39%) COBOL
10 4 (1.11%) C#
11 3 (0.83%) Bicep
12 2 (0.55%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.55%) R
12 2 (0.55%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.55%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 180 (49.86%) Security Cleared
2 159 (44.04%) SC Cleared
3 37 (10.25%) ISTQB
4 36 (9.97%) BPSS Clearance
5 18 (4.99%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 10 (2.77%) AWS Certification
7 7 (1.94%) ISEB
8 6 (1.66%) Degree
9 5 (1.39%) Azure Certification
9 5 (1.39%) DV Cleared
10 2 (0.55%) CISA
10 2 (0.55%) CISM
10 2 (0.55%) CISSP
10 2 (0.55%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.55%) CRISC
10 2 (0.55%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.55%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 2 (0.55%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.28%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 61 (16.90%) Data Quality
2 49 (13.57%) QA
3 15 (4.16%) GDPR
4 5 (1.39%) Accessibility
4 5 (1.39%) SLA
5 4 (1.11%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 3 (0.83%) FATCA
6 3 (0.83%) WCAG
7 2 (0.55%) COBIT
7 2 (0.55%) GRC
7 2 (0.55%) NIST
8 1 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
8 1 (0.28%) GMP
8 1 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
8 1 (0.28%) GxP
8 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 28 (7.76%) Docker
2 5 (1.39%) Active Directory
3 2 (0.55%) Hyper-V
3 2 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
3 2 (0.55%) Postfix
3 2 (0.55%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 39 (10.80%) Kubernetes
2 11 (3.05%) Kibana
3 8 (2.22%) Grafana
4 7 (1.94%) WMI
5 2 (0.55%) Data Guard
5 2 (0.55%) Oracle RMAN
6 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 143 (39.61%) Oracle
2 69 (19.11%) Talend
3 49 (13.57%) Microsoft
4 44 (12.19%) Databricks
4 44 (12.19%) Informatica
5 36 (9.97%) Denodo
6 18 (4.99%) SAP
7 10 (2.77%) ServiceNow
8 9 (2.49%) Google
8 9 (2.49%) Splunk
9 7 (1.94%) Cisco
9 7 (1.94%) F5
9 7 (1.94%) Fortinet
9 7 (1.94%) Palo Alto
9 7 (1.94%) SolarWinds
10 6 (1.66%) IBM
10 6 (1.66%) webMethods
11 5 (1.39%) Actian
11 5 (1.39%) Sage
12 4 (1.11%) Dynatrace