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

6 months to
24 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 15 11 17
Rank change year-on-year -4 +6 0
Contract jobs citing SQL 356 216 154
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.94% 11.86% 8.16%
As % of the Programming Languages category 43.95% 46.15% 35.16%
Number of daily rates quoted 266 136 97
10th Percentile £367 £315 £310
25th Percentile £413 £413 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £538 £551 £567
90th Percentile £610 £650 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £539
% change year-on-year - -7.28% -1.95%
Number of hourly rates quoted 6 20 3
10th Percentile £20.25 £33.91 £34.14
25th Percentile £21.25 £35.48 £34.47
Median hourly rate £21.50 £50.00 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -57.00% +42.86% -
75th Percentile £45.75 - £47.50
90th Percentile £56.75 - £55.00
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.58
% change year-on-year -10.00% +23.22% -11.56%

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 810 468 438
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.63% 25.70% 23.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 569 296 270
10th Percentile £380 £323 £313
25th Percentile £420 £413 £383
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £496
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +0.86% +4.37%
75th Percentile £575 £559 £575
90th Percentile £666 £629 £650
England median daily rate £525 £515 £550
% change year-on-year +2.04% -6.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 22 6
10th Percentile £19.85 - £34.47
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £40.00
Median hourly rate £51.75 £50.00 £56.25
Median % change year-on-year +3.50% -11.11% +204.05%
75th Percentile £67.84 - £59.69
90th Percentile - - £67.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.00 £65.00
% change year-on-year +16.07% -13.85% -

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 24 September 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 24 September 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 24 September 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 -1 160 £465 -11.43% 23
Birmingham -6 58 £500 - 130
Warwickshire -12 49 £513 +12.33% 42
Coventry -10 29 £403 +34.50% 30
Staffordshire -2 12 £431 - 31
Worcestershire +12 10 £575 -11.54% 17
Solihull -20 10 £600 +33.33% 17
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 9
Dudley - 3 £400 - 5
Herefordshire -4 2 £425 -30.61% 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 36 (10.11%) SAS
2 25 (7.02%) Confluence
3 11 (3.09%) WebLogic
4 6 (1.69%) Apache Spark
4 6 (1.69%) Tuxedo
5 5 (1.40%) Oracle Workflow
6 4 (1.12%) Apache
6 4 (1.12%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
7 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Exchange
7 3 (0.84%) Oracle Self-Service HR
7 3 (0.84%) SharePoint
8 1 (0.28%) IIS
8 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
8 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
8 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (3.09%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.40%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.84%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.56%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (3.65%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.12%) ResourceLink
3 3 (0.84%) Oracle HRMS
4 1 (0.28%) Aladdin
4 1 (0.28%) Dynamics AX
4 1 (0.28%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.28%) SAP EWM
4 1 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
4 1 (0.28%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 116 (32.58%) AWS
2 85 (23.88%) Azure
3 51 (14.33%) Power Platform
4 38 (10.67%) Azure Data Factory
5 21 (5.90%) Amazon S3
5 21 (5.90%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (5.34%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 18 (5.06%) Snowflake
8 16 (4.49%) Serverless
9 12 (3.37%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 12 (3.37%) Amazon EC2
10 9 (2.53%) dbt
10 9 (2.53%) GitHub
10 9 (2.53%) Microsoft Purview
11 8 (2.25%) AWS KMS
11 8 (2.25%) AWS Lambda
11 8 (2.25%) Azure Functions
11 8 (2.25%) GCP
11 8 (2.25%) Matillion
11 8 (2.25%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.97%) SNMP
2 5 (1.40%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.40%) WinSCP
3 3 (0.84%) Firewall
4 1 (0.28%) DHCP
4 1 (0.28%) DNS
4 1 (0.28%) HTTP
4 1 (0.28%) SAN
4 1 (0.28%) Skype
4 1 (0.28%) SSL
4 1 (0.28%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 71 (19.94%) Data Warehouse
2 56 (15.73%) Pentaho
3 50 (14.04%) Power BI
4 24 (6.74%) Oracle Database
4 24 (6.74%) SQL Server
5 22 (6.18%) Oracle Reports
6 20 (5.62%) PostgreSQL
7 18 (5.06%) Data Lake
8 17 (4.78%) Relational Database
9 15 (4.21%) Amazon RDS
9 15 (4.21%) Azure SQL Database
9 15 (4.21%) Metadata
9 15 (4.21%) SQL Server Integration Services
10 14 (3.93%) DynamoDB
10 14 (3.93%) Tableau
11 12 (3.37%) BusinessObjects
12 11 (3.09%) Ingres
13 10 (2.81%) Amazon Redshift
14 9 (2.53%) Delta Lake
14 9 (2.53%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 71 (19.94%) Git
2 63 (17.70%) GitLab
3 59 (16.57%) JIRA
4 29 (8.15%) Jenkins
5 26 (7.30%) Maven
6 20 (5.62%) Zephyr
7 19 (5.34%) JUnit
7 19 (5.34%) Postman
8 17 (4.78%) Mockito
9 11 (3.09%) Artifactory
10 9 (2.53%) SonarQube
11 6 (1.69%) Bitbucket Server
11 6 (1.69%) DbUnit
11 6 (1.69%) jMock
11 6 (1.69%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (1.40%) Team Foundation Server
13 3 (0.84%) Selenium
13 3 (0.84%) Toad
14 2 (0.56%) Cypress.io
14 2 (0.56%) JMeter
General
1 82 (23.03%) Social Skills
2 72 (20.22%) Public Sector
3 59 (16.57%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.27%) Finance
5 11 (3.09%) Banking
6 8 (2.25%) Manufacturing
6 8 (2.25%) Marketing
7 6 (1.69%) Legal
8 5 (1.40%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.40%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.40%) Retail
9 4 (1.12%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 4 (1.12%) Military
10 2 (0.56%) Front Office
10 2 (0.56%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Advertising
11 1 (0.28%) Billing
11 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Publishing
11 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 143 (40.17%) Data Engineer
2 55 (15.45%) Developer
3 47 (13.20%) Senior
4 31 (8.71%) Analyst
5 26 (7.30%) Java Developer
6 25 (7.02%) Senior Data Engineer
7 15 (4.21%) Tester
8 14 (3.93%) AWS Engineer
8 14 (3.93%) Java Engineer
9 12 (3.37%) Lead
10 11 (3.09%) Architect
10 11 (3.09%) QA Tester
11 10 (2.81%) AWS Data Engineer
11 10 (2.81%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (2.81%) Data Analyst
11 10 (2.81%) Test Analyst
12 9 (2.53%) Senior Developer
13 8 (2.25%) SQL Developer
14 7 (1.97%) Business Intelligence Developer
14 7 (1.97%) Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (7.30%) REST
2 25 (7.02%) Spring
2 25 (7.02%) Spring Boot
3 17 (4.78%) JPA
3 17 (4.78%) SOAP
4 15 (4.21%) PySpark
5 12 (3.37%) Terraform
6 11 (3.09%) Web Services
7 10 (2.81%) OpenAPI
8 8 (2.25%) ActiveMQ
8 8 (2.25%) AngularJS
8 8 (2.25%) Hibernate
8 8 (2.25%) Spring Batch
8 8 (2.25%) Spring Integration
8 8 (2.25%) XML
9 7 (1.97%) .NET
9 7 (1.97%) RESTful
9 7 (1.97%) Spring Cloud
10 6 (1.69%) ADO
10 6 (1.69%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 14 (3.93%) Cloud Native
1 14 (3.93%) Linux Command Line
2 13 (3.65%) Legacy Systems
3 9 (2.53%) Distributed Systems
4 7 (1.97%) SCADA
5 6 (1.69%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (1.69%) Self-Motivation
6 5 (1.40%) Data Structures
6 5 (1.40%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.40%) Product Ownership
6 5 (1.40%) Reference Data
7 3 (0.84%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.84%) Data Fabric
7 3 (0.84%) IoT
7 3 (0.84%) Onboarding
8 2 (0.56%) BYOD
8 2 (0.56%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.56%) Management Information System
8 2 (0.56%) Operational Technology
8 2 (0.56%) Video\Live Streaming
Operating Systems
1 43 (12.08%) Unix
2 38 (10.67%) Linux
3 22 (6.18%) Windows
4 7 (1.97%) 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
1 146 (41.01%) ETL
2 135 (37.92%) Agile
3 112 (31.46%) Data Modelling
4 88 (24.72%) Data Pipeline
5 82 (23.03%) Analytics
5 82 (23.03%) Test Automation
6 79 (22.19%) Business Intelligence
7 77 (21.63%) CI/CD
8 72 (20.22%) Migration
9 70 (19.66%) Problem-Solving
10 64 (17.98%) Data Integration
11 63 (17.70%) Data Engineering
12 50 (14.04%) Continuous Improvement
12 50 (14.04%) Scrum
13 49 (13.76%) Validation
14 48 (13.48%) DevOps
15 44 (12.36%) Data Migration
16 37 (10.39%) AI
17 36 (10.11%) Decision-Making
18 31 (8.71%) Stakeholder Management
Programming Languages
1 72 (20.22%) Python
2 50 (14.04%) Java
3 49 (13.76%) PL/SQL
4 26 (7.30%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.65%) C
6 10 (2.81%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 9 (2.53%) Bash
8 8 (2.25%) ProC
8 8 (2.25%) T-SQL
9 6 (1.69%) VB
9 6 (1.69%) VB6
10 5 (1.40%) C#
10 5 (1.40%) COBOL
10 5 (1.40%) JavaScript
11 4 (1.12%) Scala
12 3 (0.84%) Bicep
13 2 (0.56%) PowerShell
13 2 (0.56%) R
13 2 (0.56%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.56%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 186 (52.25%) Security Cleared
2 164 (46.07%) SC Cleared
3 31 (8.71%) BPSS Clearance
4 26 (7.30%) ISTQB
5 8 (2.25%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 7 (1.97%) Degree
7 6 (1.69%) DV Cleared
8 5 (1.40%) Azure Certification
9 4 (1.12%) ISEB
10 3 (0.84%) AWS Certification
11 2 (0.56%) Computer Science Degree
11 2 (0.56%) DBS Check
11 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Certification
12 1 (0.28%) Cisco Certification
12 1 (0.28%) Master's Degree
12 1 (0.28%) MCSE
12 1 (0.28%) OCP
12 1 (0.28%) Oracle Certification
12 1 (0.28%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 50 (14.04%) Data Quality
2 46 (12.92%) QA
3 6 (1.69%) SLA
4 4 (1.12%) FATCA
4 4 (1.12%) GDPR
5 3 (0.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 2 (0.56%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.56%) GRC
7 1 (0.28%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.28%) GMP
7 1 (0.28%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.28%) GxP
7 1 (0.28%) ISO 22301
7 1 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 25 (7.02%) Docker
2 6 (1.69%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.40%) Postfix
4 3 (0.84%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.84%) VMware Infrastructure
5 2 (0.56%) Hyper-V
6 1 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
Systems Management
1 29 (8.15%) Kubernetes
2 14 (3.93%) Grafana
3 10 (2.81%) Kibana
4 7 (1.97%) WMI
5 3 (0.84%) Prometheus
6 2 (0.56%) Data Guard
6 2 (0.56%) Oracle RMAN
7 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
7 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
7 1 (0.28%) SCCM
7 1 (0.28%) SCOM
Vendors
1 150 (42.13%) Oracle
2 68 (19.10%) Talend
3 53 (14.89%) Microsoft
4 45 (12.64%) Informatica
5 40 (11.24%) Databricks
6 39 (10.96%) Denodo
7 13 (3.65%) SAP
7 13 (3.65%) ServiceNow
8 9 (2.53%) Atlassian
8 9 (2.53%) Google
8 9 (2.53%) Splunk
9 8 (2.25%) Cisco
9 8 (2.25%) Jaspersoft
10 7 (1.97%) F5
10 7 (1.97%) Fortinet
10 7 (1.97%) Palo Alto
10 7 (1.97%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.69%) IBM
12 5 (1.40%) Sage
12 5 (1.40%) VMware