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

6 months to
5 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 10 16
Rank change year-on-year +2 +6 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 359 164 155
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.85% 11.91% 8.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 50.99% 45.18% 36.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 273 115 106
10th Percentile £358 £257 £259
25th Percentile £412 £410 £308
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £438
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% +10.86% -16.67%
75th Percentile £533 £575 £570
90th Percentile £600 £654 £618
England median daily rate £500 £520 £550
% change year-on-year -3.85% -5.45% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £18.74 -
England median hourly rate £45.00 £47.50 £42.50
% change year-on-year -5.26% +11.76% -19.05%

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 704 363 425
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 25.20% 26.36% 22.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 508 224 306
10th Percentile £358 £318 £260
25th Percentile £420 £409 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £494 £485 £450
Median % change year-on-year +1.75% +7.78% -14.29%
75th Percentile £559 £575 £575
90th Percentile £629 £698 £650
England median daily rate £507 £525 £544
% change year-on-year -3.43% -3.45% -5.43%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 16
10th Percentile - £16.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.00 £18.13
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £53.13
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -61.90% -44.08%
75th Percentile £68.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.90 £52.50 £65.63
England median hourly rate £65.00 £62.50 £60.00
% change year-on-year +4.00% +4.17% -7.69%

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 5 March 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 5 March 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 +2 158 £465 -3.93% 28
Birmingham -11 71 £481 -12.50% 59
Warwickshire -13 32 £500 +17.65% 17
Herefordshire 0 22 £550 -21.43% 2
Coventry -15 22 £407 -9.56% 11
Solihull -5 10 £496 +9.02% 11
Worcestershire -8 10 £700 - 15
Dudley - 5 £420 - 8
Staffordshire -7 3 £463 +1.37% 19
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 3
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 10
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 60 (16.71%) SAS
2 40 (11.14%) WebLogic
3 19 (5.29%) Apache
4 15 (4.18%) Tuxedo
5 13 (3.62%) Confluence
6 9 (2.51%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.23%) JBoss
8 6 (1.67%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.56%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.56%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.56%) CMS
9 2 (0.56%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.56%) Liferay
10 1 (0.28%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.28%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.28%) Drupal
10 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.28%) nginx
10 1 (0.28%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.28%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (3.62%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.84%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.84%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.56%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.28%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.28%) Mozilla Thunderbird
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.28%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.11%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.11%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.84%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.56%) Maximo
3 2 (0.56%) Primavera
3 2 (0.56%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.28%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.28%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.28%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.28%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.28%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.28%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 93 (25.91%) AWS
2 82 (22.84%) Azure
3 39 (10.86%) Power Platform
4 32 (8.91%) Azure DevOps
5 29 (8.08%) Serverless
6 27 (7.52%) Amazon S3
7 19 (5.29%) Amazon EC2
7 19 (5.29%) GCP
8 16 (4.46%) GitHub
9 15 (4.18%) Azure Data Factory
10 14 (3.90%) Azure Synapse Analytics
10 14 (3.90%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.34%) OpenShift
12 10 (2.79%) Azure Key Vault
12 10 (2.79%) Power Automate
13 9 (2.51%) Amazon CloudWatch
14 8 (2.23%) AWS KMS
14 8 (2.23%) Cloud Computing
14 8 (2.23%) PowerApps
14 8 (2.23%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 4 (1.11%) Network Security
2 3 (0.84%) DNS
3 2 (0.56%) Firewall
4 1 (0.28%) AMQP
4 1 (0.28%) FTP
4 1 (0.28%) HTTP
4 1 (0.28%) IMAP
4 1 (0.28%) OpenLDAP
4 1 (0.28%) SMTP
4 1 (0.28%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (17.83%) Pentaho
2 34 (9.47%) PostgreSQL
2 34 (9.47%) Power BI
3 31 (8.64%) Data Warehouse
4 30 (8.36%) Amazon RDS
5 24 (6.69%) Relational Database
6 23 (6.41%) MongoDB
7 17 (4.74%) Oracle Database
8 15 (4.18%) MySQL
9 12 (3.34%) NoSQL
9 12 (3.34%) Oracle Reports
10 11 (3.06%) Amazon Redshift
11 10 (2.79%) Tableau
12 9 (2.51%) Redis
13 8 (2.23%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (2.23%) SQL Server
14 7 (1.95%) BigQuery
14 7 (1.95%) DynamoDB
14 7 (1.95%) Hadoop
14 7 (1.95%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 91 (25.35%) Git
2 72 (20.06%) Jenkins
3 62 (17.27%) JIRA
4 29 (8.08%) GitLab
5 18 (5.01%) JUnit
6 12 (3.34%) MSI
7 11 (3.06%) Selenium
8 10 (2.79%) Maven
8 10 (2.79%) Mockito
9 9 (2.51%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.23%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.23%) IntelliJ
10 8 (2.23%) Postman
11 7 (1.95%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.67%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 5 (1.39%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (1.39%) DbUnit
13 5 (1.39%) jMock
13 5 (1.39%) Liquibase
14 4 (1.11%) CA Gen
General
1 90 (25.07%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.83%) Public Sector
3 46 (12.81%) Analytical Skills
4 28 (7.80%) Finance
5 13 (3.62%) Banking
6 9 (2.51%) Influencing Skills
6 9 (2.51%) Presentation Skills
7 6 (1.67%) Legal
8 5 (1.39%) Manufacturing
8 5 (1.39%) Organisational Skills
9 4 (1.11%) Advertising
9 4 (1.11%) Financial Institution
9 4 (1.11%) Marketing
9 4 (1.11%) Retail
10 3 (0.84%) Documentation Skills
10 3 (0.84%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 2 (0.56%) General Ledger
11 2 (0.56%) Telecoms
12 1 (0.28%) Billing
12 1 (0.28%) Military
Job Titles
1 96 (26.74%) Data Engineer
2 67 (18.66%) Developer
3 30 (8.36%) Analyst
4 22 (6.13%) Senior
5 21 (5.85%) Lead
6 20 (5.57%) Java Developer
7 16 (4.46%) Consultant
8 15 (4.18%) SAS Engineer
8 15 (4.18%) Software Engineer
9 14 (3.90%) Architect
9 14 (3.90%) Data Analyst
10 13 (3.62%) Java Engineer
11 12 (3.34%) Site Engineer
11 12 (3.34%) Site Reliability Engineer
11 12 (3.34%) Tester
12 10 (2.79%) Python Developer
13 9 (2.51%) Backend Developer
13 9 (2.51%) Business Intelligence Developer
13 9 (2.51%) DBA
13 9 (2.51%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 44 (12.26%) REST
2 42 (11.70%) Spring
3 32 (8.91%) Spring Boot
4 22 (6.13%) XML
5 20 (5.57%) Flask
6 19 (5.29%) Node.js
7 18 (5.01%) SOAP
8 17 (4.74%) Hibernate
8 17 (4.74%) RESTful
9 13 (3.62%) JSON
10 12 (3.34%) FastAPI
10 12 (3.34%) HTML
11 11 (3.06%) JPA
12 10 (2.79%) .NET
12 10 (2.79%) AngularJS
12 10 (2.79%) Spring Batch
12 10 (2.79%) Web Services
13 9 (2.51%) GraphQL
13 9 (2.51%) gRPC
13 9 (2.51%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 21 (5.85%) Cloud Native
2 12 (3.34%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.23%) Product Ownership
4 7 (1.95%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.39%) Data Structures
5 5 (1.39%) Onboarding
5 5 (1.39%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.11%) Clustering
6 4 (1.11%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.11%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.11%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.11%) Robotics
7 3 (0.84%) Credit Risk
8 2 (0.56%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.56%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.56%) Derivative
8 2 (0.56%) IoT
8 2 (0.56%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.28%) Educational Technology
9 1 (0.28%) Low-Code
Operating Systems
1 43 (11.98%) Unix
2 38 (10.58%) Linux
3 24 (6.69%) Windows
4 6 (1.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Amazon Linux
5 1 (0.28%) Ubuntu
5 1 (0.28%) VME
5 1 (0.28%) VMS
5 1 (0.28%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.28%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 143 (39.83%) CI/CD
2 127 (35.38%) Agile
3 114 (31.75%) ETL
4 110 (30.64%) DevOps
5 96 (26.74%) Problem-Solving
6 94 (26.18%) Analytics
7 80 (22.28%) Business Intelligence
7 80 (22.28%) Data Modelling
7 80 (22.28%) Scrum
8 73 (20.33%) Continuous Improvement
9 69 (19.22%) Test Automation
10 65 (18.11%) Data Pipeline
11 62 (17.27%) Data Integration
12 50 (13.93%) Microservices
13 44 (12.26%) Deployment Automation
14 43 (11.98%) Data Analytics
15 42 (11.70%) Data Virtualisation
16 41 (11.42%) Migration
17 39 (10.86%) Software Engineering
18 37 (10.31%) Data Engineering
Programming Languages
1 84 (23.40%) Java
2 72 (20.06%) Python
3 40 (11.14%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.52%) Shell Script
5 18 (5.01%) Go
6 14 (3.90%) JavaScript
6 14 (3.90%) Scala
7 8 (2.23%) Bash
8 7 (1.95%) C#
8 7 (1.95%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.67%) Perl
10 5 (1.39%) PowerShell
10 5 (1.39%) R
10 5 (1.39%) VBA
11 4 (1.11%) Bicep
11 4 (1.11%) VB
12 3 (0.84%) HiveQL
13 2 (0.56%) Kotlin
13 2 (0.56%) T-SQL
13 2 (0.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 180 (50.14%) Security Cleared
2 163 (45.40%) SC Cleared
3 21 (5.85%) Degree
4 17 (4.74%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.90%) ISTQB
6 10 (2.79%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.51%) BPSS Clearance
8 8 (2.23%) AWS Certification
9 7 (1.95%) Azure Certification
10 6 (1.67%) Master's Degree
10 6 (1.67%) Microsoft Certification
11 5 (1.39%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
12 2 (0.56%) AWS Certified Developer
12 2 (0.56%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
12 2 (0.56%) ISEB
12 2 (0.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 2 (0.56%) TOGAF Certification
13 1 (0.28%) ACCA
13 1 (0.28%) ITIL Certification
13 1 (0.28%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 65 (18.11%) Data Quality
2 23 (6.41%) QA
3 5 (1.39%) Accessibility
4 4 (1.11%) SLA
5 3 (0.84%) FATCA
6 1 (0.28%) GDPR
6 1 (0.28%) PMO
6 1 (0.28%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.28%) WCAG
System Software
1 90 (25.07%) Docker
2 6 (1.67%) Active Directory
3 5 (1.39%) Postfix
4 3 (0.84%) HDFS
4 3 (0.84%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (0.84%) Oracle RAC
5 1 (0.28%) DFS Replication
5 1 (0.28%) Dovecot
5 1 (0.28%) Squid
Systems Management
1 90 (25.07%) Kubernetes
2 40 (11.14%) Grafana
3 29 (8.08%) Terraform
4 28 (7.80%) Prometheus
5 22 (6.13%) Ansible
6 12 (3.34%) Progress Chef
7 10 (2.79%) Puppet
8 5 (1.39%) Kibana
9 4 (1.11%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.84%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.84%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.56%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.56%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.28%) Control-M
12 1 (0.28%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.28%) Nessus
12 1 (0.28%) Proxmox
12 1 (0.28%) SCCM
12 1 (0.28%) WSUS
Vendors
1 113 (31.48%) Oracle
2 70 (19.50%) Talend
3 47 (13.09%) Microsoft
4 39 (10.86%) Denodo
5 34 (9.47%) Informatica
6 19 (5.29%) ServiceNow
7 14 (3.90%) Google
7 14 (3.90%) SAP
8 12 (3.34%) Splunk
9 11 (3.06%) Databricks
10 10 (2.79%) webMethods
11 9 (2.51%) Fujitsu
12 8 (2.23%) Jaspersoft
13 7 (1.95%) NEC
14 6 (1.67%) Cloudera
14 6 (1.67%) Dynatrace
14 6 (1.67%) Red Hat
14 6 (1.67%) Sage
15 5 (1.39%) Atlassian
16 3 (0.84%) Teradata