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

6 months to
1 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 12 16
Rank change year-on-year -4 +4 +2
Contract jobs citing SQL 353 213 160
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 9.78% 11.53% 8.49%
As % of the Programming Languages category 43.00% 46.51% 36.45%
Number of daily rates quoted 264 131 99
10th Percentile £369 £350 £275
25th Percentile £414 £413 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £469 £500 £450
Median % change year-on-year -6.20% +11.11% -5.26%
75th Percentile £543 £574 £567
90th Percentile £612 £650 £625
England median daily rate £500 £500 £538
% change year-on-year - -6.98% -2.27%
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% -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 821 458 439
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 22.75% 24.78% 23.29%
Number of daily rates quoted 582 288 268
10th Percentile £396 £325 £313
25th Percentile £425 £413 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £491
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% +1.88% +3.32%
75th Percentile £586 £573 £575
90th Percentile £670 £638 £648
England median daily rate £525 £515 £545
% change year-on-year +1.94% -5.50% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 11 21 5
10th Percentile £19.25 - £34.36
25th Percentile £21.25 £33.91 £35.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £50.00 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% -13.04% +210.81%
75th Percentile £63.79 - £60.00
90th Percentile £67.84 - £69.00
England median hourly rate £65.00 £56.25 £65.00
% change year-on-year +15.56% -13.46% +1.56%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -1 156 £460 -12.38% 20
Birmingham -6 59 £500 - 113
Warwickshire -14 50 £500 +8.11% 30
Coventry -9 30 £405 +35.34% 24
Staffordshire -2 12 £431 - 31
Worcestershire +9 10 £575 -11.54% 13
Solihull -20 9 £600 +33.33% 19
Dudley - 3 £400 - 4
Wolverhampton - 3 £350 - 9
Herefordshire -5 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 32 (9.07%) SAS
2 23 (6.52%) Confluence
3 14 (3.97%) WebLogic
4 9 (2.55%) Apache Spark
5 7 (1.98%) Apache
6 6 (1.70%) Tuxedo
7 4 (1.13%) ArcGIS
7 4 (1.13%) Oracle Workflow
8 3 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.85%) SharePoint
9 2 (0.57%) Microsoft Exchange
9 2 (0.57%) Oracle Self-Service HR
10 1 (0.28%) IIS
10 1 (0.28%) Oracle SOA Suite
10 1 (0.28%) Palantir Foundry
10 1 (0.28%) Skype for Business
Applications
1 11 (3.12%) Microsoft Excel
2 5 (1.42%) Notepad++
3 3 (0.85%) Spreadsheet
4 2 (0.57%) Chatbot
5 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
Business Applications
1 13 (3.68%) Dynamics CRM
2 4 (1.13%) ResourceLink
3 2 (0.57%) 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
1 119 (33.71%) AWS
2 87 (24.65%) Azure
3 52 (14.73%) Power Platform
4 41 (11.61%) Azure Data Factory
5 21 (5.95%) Amazon S3
5 21 (5.95%) Snowflake
6 20 (5.67%) Azure DevOps
7 19 (5.38%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 16 (4.53%) Serverless
9 11 (3.12%) Amazon CloudWatch
9 11 (3.12%) Amazon EC2
10 10 (2.83%) GCP
11 9 (2.55%) dbt
11 9 (2.55%) GitHub
11 9 (2.55%) Microsoft Purview
12 8 (2.27%) Amazon EMR
12 8 (2.27%) AWS Lambda
12 8 (2.27%) Azure Functions
12 8 (2.27%) Matillion
13 7 (1.98%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 7 (1.98%) SNMP
2 5 (1.42%) PuTTY
2 5 (1.42%) WinSCP
3 2 (0.57%) 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%) TCP/IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 68 (19.26%) Data Warehouse
2 52 (14.73%) Pentaho
3 51 (14.45%) Power BI
4 24 (6.80%) Oracle Database
5 23 (6.52%) SQL Server
6 22 (6.23%) Oracle Reports
7 20 (5.67%) Data Lake
8 19 (5.38%) PostgreSQL
9 17 (4.82%) Metadata
9 17 (4.82%) Relational Database
10 15 (4.25%) Azure SQL Database
10 15 (4.25%) SQL Server Integration Services
11 14 (3.97%) Tableau
12 13 (3.68%) Amazon RDS
12 13 (3.68%) DynamoDB
13 12 (3.40%) BusinessObjects
14 11 (3.12%) Delta Lake
14 11 (3.12%) Ingres
15 10 (2.83%) Amazon Redshift
16 9 (2.55%) Snowflake Schema
Development Applications
1 67 (18.98%) Git
2 65 (18.41%) GitLab
3 55 (15.58%) JIRA
4 28 (7.93%) Maven
5 25 (7.08%) Jenkins
6 20 (5.67%) Zephyr
7 18 (5.10%) JUnit
7 18 (5.10%) Postman
8 16 (4.53%) Mockito
9 11 (3.12%) Artifactory
10 8 (2.27%) SonarQube
11 6 (1.70%) Oracle Forms
12 5 (1.42%) Bitbucket Server
12 5 (1.42%) DbUnit
12 5 (1.42%) jMock
12 5 (1.42%) Team Foundation Server
13 3 (0.85%) Toad
14 2 (0.57%) Cypress.io
14 2 (0.57%) JMeter
14 2 (0.57%) Selenium
General
1 82 (23.23%) Social Skills
2 74 (20.96%) Public Sector
3 57 (16.15%) Analytical Skills
4 33 (9.35%) Finance
5 9 (2.55%) Banking
6 8 (2.27%) Manufacturing
6 8 (2.27%) Marketing
7 6 (1.70%) Legal
8 5 (1.42%) Documentation Skills
8 5 (1.42%) Military
8 5 (1.42%) Presentation Skills
8 5 (1.42%) Retail
9 4 (1.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 2 (0.57%) Front Office
10 2 (0.57%) Influencing Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Advertising
11 1 (0.28%) Billing
11 1 (0.28%) Local Government
11 1 (0.28%) Organisational Skills
11 1 (0.28%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 140 (39.66%) Data Engineer
2 53 (15.01%) Developer
3 48 (13.60%) Senior
4 31 (8.78%) Analyst
5 28 (7.93%) Senior Data Engineer
6 27 (7.65%) Java Developer
7 15 (4.25%) AWS Engineer
7 15 (4.25%) Java Engineer
7 15 (4.25%) Tester
8 11 (3.12%) Architect
8 11 (3.12%) AWS Data Engineer
8 11 (3.12%) Lead
8 11 (3.12%) QA Tester
9 10 (2.83%) Azure Engineer
9 10 (2.83%) Data Analyst
9 10 (2.83%) Test Analyst
10 8 (2.27%) Senior Developer
11 7 (1.98%) Azure Data Engineer
11 7 (1.98%) Software Engineer
11 7 (1.98%) SQL Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 24 (6.80%) REST
1 24 (6.80%) Spring
1 24 (6.80%) Spring Boot
2 16 (4.53%) JPA
2 16 (4.53%) PySpark
2 16 (4.53%) SOAP
3 12 (3.40%) Terraform
4 10 (2.83%) OpenAPI
4 10 (2.83%) Web Services
5 8 (2.27%) XML
6 7 (1.98%) ActiveMQ
6 7 (1.98%) AngularJS
6 7 (1.98%) Hibernate
6 7 (1.98%) Spring Batch
6 7 (1.98%) Spring Integration
7 6 (1.70%) .NET
7 6 (1.70%) Oracle Fusion
7 6 (1.70%) RESTful
7 6 (1.70%) Spring Cloud
7 6 (1.70%) Swagger
Miscellaneous
1 17 (4.82%) Linux Command Line
2 15 (4.25%) Cloud Native
3 13 (3.68%) Legacy Systems
4 9 (2.55%) Distributed Systems
5 6 (1.70%) Enterprise Software
5 6 (1.70%) Onboarding
5 6 (1.70%) SCADA
6 5 (1.42%) Data Structures
6 5 (1.42%) Low-Code
6 5 (1.42%) Product Ownership
6 5 (1.42%) Reference Data
6 5 (1.42%) Self-Motivation
7 3 (0.85%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.85%) Data Fabric
7 3 (0.85%) IoT
8 2 (0.57%) BYOD
8 2 (0.57%) Legacy Applications
8 2 (0.57%) Operational Technology
8 2 (0.57%) Video\Live Streaming
9 1 (0.28%) Housing Association
Operating Systems
1 39 (11.05%) Linux
1 39 (11.05%) Unix
2 20 (5.67%) Windows
3 5 (1.42%) Windows Server
4 1 (0.28%) AIX
4 1 (0.28%) CentOS
4 1 (0.28%) HPUX
4 1 (0.28%) Solaris
4 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2003
4 1 (0.28%) Windows Server 2019
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (41.08%) ETL
2 134 (37.96%) Agile
3 110 (31.16%) Data Modelling
4 87 (24.65%) Data Pipeline
5 79 (22.38%) Analytics
6 78 (22.10%) Test Automation
7 73 (20.68%) Business Intelligence
7 73 (20.68%) CI/CD
8 72 (20.40%) Migration
9 66 (18.70%) Problem-Solving
10 64 (18.13%) Data Engineering
11 63 (17.85%) Data Integration
12 51 (14.45%) Continuous Improvement
13 49 (13.88%) Validation
14 46 (13.03%) Scrum
15 44 (12.46%) Data Migration
15 44 (12.46%) DevOps
16 37 (10.48%) Decision-Making
17 35 (9.92%) AI
18 33 (9.35%) Data Transformation
Programming Languages
1 73 (20.68%) Python
2 53 (15.01%) Java
3 45 (12.75%) PL/SQL
4 26 (7.37%) Shell Script
5 13 (3.68%) C
6 9 (2.55%) Bash
7 8 (2.27%) Data Analysis Expressions
7 8 (2.27%) ProC
7 8 (2.27%) T-SQL
8 6 (1.70%) VB
8 6 (1.70%) VB6
9 5 (1.42%) COBOL
9 5 (1.42%) JavaScript
9 5 (1.42%) Scala
10 4 (1.13%) C#
11 3 (0.85%) Bicep
12 2 (0.57%) PowerShell
12 2 (0.57%) R
12 2 (0.57%) TypeScript
12 2 (0.57%) VB.NET
Qualifications
1 182 (51.56%) Security Cleared
2 159 (45.04%) SC Cleared
3 31 (8.78%) BPSS Clearance
4 26 (7.37%) ISTQB
5 8 (2.27%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 6 (1.70%) Degree
7 5 (1.42%) Azure Certification
7 5 (1.42%) DV Cleared
8 4 (1.13%) ISEB
9 3 (0.85%) AWS Certification
10 2 (0.57%) CISA
10 2 (0.57%) CISM
10 2 (0.57%) CISSP
10 2 (0.57%) Computer Science Degree
10 2 (0.57%) CRISC
10 2 (0.57%) DBS Check
10 2 (0.57%) ISO 27001 Lead Auditor
10 2 (0.57%) ISO 27001 Lead Implementer
11 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Certification
11 1 (0.28%) OCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (14.73%) Data Quality
2 45 (12.75%) QA
3 6 (1.70%) SLA
4 5 (1.42%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 4 (1.13%) FATCA
5 4 (1.13%) GDPR
6 2 (0.57%) Accessibility
6 2 (0.57%) COBIT
6 2 (0.57%) GRC
6 2 (0.57%) NIST
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 21 (5.95%) Docker
2 5 (1.42%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.13%) Postfix
4 3 (0.85%) Oracle RAC
5 2 (0.57%) Hyper-V
5 2 (0.57%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 29 (8.22%) Kubernetes
2 12 (3.40%) Grafana
3 10 (2.83%) Kibana
4 7 (1.98%) WMI
5 2 (0.57%) Data Guard
5 2 (0.57%) Oracle RMAN
5 2 (0.57%) Prometheus
6 1 (0.28%) HP Quality Center
6 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
6 1 (0.28%) SCCM
Vendors
1 149 (42.21%) Oracle
2 64 (18.13%) Talend
3 50 (14.16%) Microsoft
4 46 (13.03%) Informatica
5 43 (12.18%) Databricks
6 35 (9.92%) Denodo
7 14 (3.97%) SAP
8 10 (2.83%) ServiceNow
9 9 (2.55%) Google
9 9 (2.55%) Splunk
10 7 (1.98%) Cisco
10 7 (1.98%) F5
10 7 (1.98%) Fortinet
10 7 (1.98%) Jaspersoft
10 7 (1.98%) Palo Alto
10 7 (1.98%) SolarWinds
11 6 (1.70%) IBM
12 5 (1.42%) Actian
12 5 (1.42%) Atlassian
12 5 (1.42%) Sage