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

6 months to
8 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 17 12 17
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +1
Contract jobs citing SQL 339 210 162
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.54% 11.25% 8.55%
As % of the Programming Languages category 41.85% 45.85% 36.90%
Number of daily rates quoted 252 130 100
10th Percentile £375 £347 £275
25th Percentile £413 £413 £361
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £504 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.65% +11.89% -5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £584 £567
90th Percentile £612 £653 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £535
% change year-on-year - -6.54% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 5 20 3
10th Percentile £20.05 £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 £21.75 - £47.50
90th Percentile £44.55 - £55.00
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -10.00% +25.00% -12.82%

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 810 458 439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.78% 24.53% 23.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 573 291 266
10th Percentile £400 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £425 £379
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £486
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +2.93% +3.63%
75th Percentile £588 £575 £575
90th Percentile £670 £638 £649
England median daily rate £525 £515 £543
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.07% -1.36%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 21 4
10th Percentile £19.25 - £34.25
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £34.73
Median hourly rate £35.80 £50.00 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -28.40% +5.26% +156.76%
75th Percentile £55.38 - £63.75
90th Percentile £67.84 - £70.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% -

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 8 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 8 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 8 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 -3 149 £469 -10.67% 27
Birmingham -6 53 £520 +4.00% 107
Warwickshire -16 49 £500 +3.90% 41
Coventry -6 33 £415 +38.68% 21
Worcestershire +12 10 £575 -11.54% 18
Staffordshire -3 10 £431 - 35
Solihull -22 8 £600 +33.33% 20
Dudley - 3 £400 - 6
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 9
Herefordshire -3 1 - - 6
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 26 (7.67%) SAS
2 23 (6.78%) Confluence
3 15 (4.42%) WebLogic
4 8 (2.36%) Apache
4 8 (2.36%) Apache Spark
5 6 (1.77%) Tuxedo
6 4 (1.18%) ArcGIS
7 3 (0.88%) SharePoint
8 2 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
8 2 (0.59%) Microsoft Exchange
8 2 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
9 1 (0.29%) IIS
9 1 (0.29%) Oracle SOA Suite
9 1 (0.29%) Palantir Foundry
9 1 (0.29%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (3.24%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.88%) Spreadsheet
3 2 (0.59%) Chatbot
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.29%) Notepad++
Business Applications
1 13 (3.83%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.18%) ResourceLink
3 1 (0.29%) Aladdin
3 1 (0.29%) Dynamics AX
3 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
3 1 (0.29%) SAP FI
3 1 (0.29%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
3 1 (0.29%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 115 (33.92%) AWS
2 86 (25.37%) Azure
3 50 (14.75%) Power Platform
4 41 (12.09%) Azure Data Factory
5 21 (6.19%) Azure DevOps
6 19 (5.60%) Amazon S3
6 19 (5.60%) Azure Synapse Analytics
6 19 (5.60%) Snowflake
7 16 (4.72%) Serverless
8 10 (2.95%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 10 (2.95%) GCP
8 10 (2.95%) Microsoft Purview
9 9 (2.65%) Amazon EC2
9 9 (2.65%) GitHub
10 8 (2.36%) Amazon EMR
10 8 (2.36%) AWS Lambda
10 8 (2.36%) Azure Functions
10 8 (2.36%) dbt
11 7 (2.06%) Azure Storage
11 7 (2.06%) Matillion
Communications & Networking
1 7 (2.06%) SNMP
2 2 (0.59%) Firewall
3 1 (0.29%) DHCP
3 1 (0.29%) DNS
3 1 (0.29%) HTTP
3 1 (0.29%) PuTTY
3 1 (0.29%) SAN
3 1 (0.29%) Skype
3 1 (0.29%) TCP/IP
3 1 (0.29%) WinSCP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (17.99%) Data Warehouse
2 57 (16.81%) Pentaho
3 49 (14.45%) Power BI
4 23 (6.78%) Oracle Database
5 22 (6.49%) Oracle Reports
5 22 (6.49%) SQL Server
6 17 (5.01%) Data Lake
6 17 (5.01%) PostgreSQL
7 15 (4.42%) Relational Database
8 14 (4.13%) Azure SQL Database
8 14 (4.13%) SQL Server Integration Services
9 12 (3.54%) Amazon RDS
9 12 (3.54%) DynamoDB
9 12 (3.54%) Metadata
10 11 (3.24%) Ingres
10 11 (3.24%) Tableau
11 10 (2.95%) Delta Lake
12 8 (2.36%) Amazon Redshift
12 8 (2.36%) BusinessObjects
12 8 (2.36%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 66 (19.47%) Git
2 65 (19.17%) GitLab
3 57 (16.81%) JIRA
4 27 (7.96%) Maven
5 24 (7.08%) Jenkins
6 20 (5.90%) Zephyr
7 18 (5.31%) Postman
8 17 (5.01%) JUnit
9 15 (4.42%) Mockito
10 11 (3.24%) Artifactory
11 7 (2.06%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.77%) Oracle Forms
13 5 (1.47%) Team Foundation Server
13 5 (1.47%) Toad
14 4 (1.18%) Bitbucket Server
14 4 (1.18%) DbUnit
14 4 (1.18%) jMock
15 2 (0.59%) Cypress.io
15 2 (0.59%) JMeter
15 2 (0.59%) TestRail
General
1 76 (22.42%) Social Skills
2 74 (21.83%) Public Sector
3 53 (15.63%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.73%) Finance
5 9 (2.65%) Banking
6 8 (2.36%) Manufacturing
6 8 (2.36%) Marketing
7 6 (1.77%) Legal
8 5 (1.47%) Military
8 5 (1.47%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.47%) Retail
9 4 (1.18%) Documentation Skills
9 4 (1.18%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.59%) Front Office
10 2 (0.59%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.29%) Advertising
11 1 (0.29%) Billing
11 1 (0.29%) Local Government
11 1 (0.29%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 127 (37.46%) Data Engineer
2 52 (15.34%) Developer
3 45 (13.27%) Senior
4 33 (9.73%) Analyst
5 26 (7.67%) Java Developer
6 25 (7.37%) Senior Data Engineer
7 15 (4.42%) Java Engineer
7 15 (4.42%) Tester
8 13 (3.83%) AWS Engineer
9 12 (3.54%) QA Tester
9 12 (3.54%) Test Analyst
10 11 (3.24%) Architect
10 11 (3.24%) Lead
11 10 (2.95%) Azure Engineer
11 10 (2.95%) Data Analyst
12 9 (2.65%) AWS Data Engineer
13 7 (2.06%) Azure Data Engineer
13 7 (2.06%) Junior
13 7 (2.06%) Software Engineer
13 7 (2.06%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 23 (6.78%) REST
1 23 (6.78%) Spring
1 23 (6.78%) Spring Boot
2 15 (4.42%) JPA
2 15 (4.42%) SOAP
3 14 (4.13%) PySpark
4 10 (2.95%) OpenAPI
4 10 (2.95%) Terraform
4 10 (2.95%) XML
5 9 (2.65%) Web Services
6 6 (1.77%) .NET
6 6 (1.77%) ActiveMQ
6 6 (1.77%) ADO
6 6 (1.77%) AngularJS
6 6 (1.77%) Hibernate
6 6 (1.77%) JSON
6 6 (1.77%) Oracle Fusion
6 6 (1.77%) Spring Batch
6 6 (1.77%) Spring Integration
6 6 (1.77%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 15 (4.42%) Cloud Native
2 13 (3.83%) Legacy Systems
2 13 (3.83%) Linux Command Line
3 8 (2.36%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (1.77%) Enterprise Software
4 6 (1.77%) Onboarding
4 6 (1.77%) Product Ownership
4 6 (1.77%) SCADA
5 5 (1.47%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.47%) Low-Code
5 5 (1.47%) Reference Data
6 4 (1.18%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (0.88%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.88%) Data Fabric
7 3 (0.88%) IoT
8 2 (0.59%) BYOD
8 2 (0.59%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.59%) Operational Technology
9 1 (0.29%) Housing Association
9 1 (0.29%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 34 (10.03%) Linux
2 30 (8.85%) Unix
3 22 (6.49%) Windows
4 5 (1.47%) Windows Server
5 1 (0.29%) AIX
5 1 (0.29%) CentOS
5 1 (0.29%) HPUX
5 1 (0.29%) Solaris
5 1 (0.29%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2003
5 1 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (41.00%) ETL
2 129 (38.05%) Agile
3 105 (30.97%) Data Modelling
4 84 (24.78%) Test Automation
5 82 (24.19%) Data Pipeline
6 75 (22.12%) Analytics
7 68 (20.06%) Business Intelligence
7 68 (20.06%) CI/CD
8 66 (19.47%) Migration
9 64 (18.88%) Problem-Solving
10 63 (18.58%) Data Engineering
11 59 (17.40%) Data Integration
12 50 (14.75%) Continuous Improvement
13 48 (14.16%) Validation
14 47 (13.86%) Scrum
15 44 (12.98%) Data Migration
15 44 (12.98%) DevOps
16 35 (10.32%) Decision-Making
17 32 (9.44%) AI
17 32 (9.44%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 70 (20.65%) Python
2 54 (15.93%) Java
3 41 (12.09%) PL/SQL
4 22 (6.49%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.83%) C
6 9 (2.65%) T-SQL
7 8 (2.36%) Bash
7 8 (2.36%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.36%) ProC
8 6 (1.77%) VB
8 6 (1.77%) VB6
9 5 (1.47%) COBOL
9 5 (1.47%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.47%) Scala
10 4 (1.18%) C#
11 3 (0.88%) Bicep
12 2 (0.59%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.59%) R
12 2 (0.59%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.59%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 172 (50.74%) Security Cleared
2 151 (44.54%) SC Cleared
3 35 (10.32%) BPSS Clearance
4 27 (7.96%) ISTQB
5 9 (2.65%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (1.77%) Degree
7 5 (1.47%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.47%) DV Cleared
7 5 (1.47%) ISEB
8 3 (0.88%) AWS Certification
9 2 (0.59%) CISA
9 2 (0.59%) CISM
9 2 (0.59%) CISSP
9 2 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
9 2 (0.59%) CRISC
9 2 (0.59%) DBS Check
9 2 (0.59%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
9 2 (0.59%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
10 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Certification
10 1 (0.29%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 49 (14.45%) Data Quality
2 47 (13.86%) QA
3 5 (1.47%) SLA
4 4 (1.18%) FATCA
4 4 (1.18%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 3 (0.88%) GDPR
6 2 (0.59%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.59%) COBIT
6 2 (0.59%) GRC
6 2 (0.59%) NIST
7 1 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
7 1 (0.29%) GMP
7 1 (0.29%) Government Security Classifications
7 1 (0.29%) GxP
7 1 (0.29%) ISO/IEC 17025
7 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 19 (5.60%) Docker
2 5 (1.47%) Active Directory
3 3 (0.88%) Oracle RAC
3 3 (0.88%) Postfix
4 2 (0.59%) Hyper-V
4 2 (0.59%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 29 (8.55%) Kubernetes
2 10 (2.95%) Grafana
2 10 (2.95%) Kibana
3 7 (2.06%) WMI
4 2 (0.59%) Data Guard
4 2 (0.59%) Oracle RMAN
5 1 (0.29%) HP Quality Center
5 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
5 1 (0.29%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.29%) SCCM
Vendors
1 141 (41.59%) Oracle
2 65 (19.17%) Talend
3 48 (14.16%) Microsoft
4 44 (12.98%) Informatica
5 41 (12.09%) Databricks
6 29 (8.55%) Denodo
7 15 (4.42%) SAP
8 10 (2.95%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.65%) Google
9 9 (2.65%) Splunk
10 7 (2.06%) Cisco
10 7 (2.06%) F5
10 7 (2.06%) Fortinet
10 7 (2.06%) Palo Alto
10 7 (2.06%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.77%) IBM
11 6 (1.77%) Jaspersoft
12 5 (1.47%) Actian
12 5 (1.47%) Sage
13 4 (1.18%) Dynatrace