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

6 months to
9 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 13 17
Rank change year-on-year +6 +4 -8
Contract jobs citing SQL 367 154 156
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 13.25% 11.53% 8.04%
As % of the Programming Languages category 52.50% 43.38% 36.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 277 110 106
10th Percentile £355 £252 £259
25th Percentile £408 £404 £327
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -4.08% +8.89% -14.29%
75th Percentile £530 £575 £575
90th Percentile £588 £657 £625
England median daily rate £500 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -4.76% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 1
Median hourly rate - £18.74 £30.37
Median % change year-on-year - -38.29% +153.08%
England median hourly rate £45.00 £50.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year -10.00% +17.65% -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 699 355 431
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 25.23% 26.57% 22.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 505 221 310
10th Percentile £358 £308 £260
25th Percentile £413 £408 £350
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £489 £450
Median % change year-on-year +0.20% +8.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £552 £575 £575
90th Percentile £625 £689 £651
England median daily rate £506 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -3.71% -2.78% -6.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 11 17
10th Percentile - £16.75 £17.50
25th Percentile £56.50 £17.00 £18.25
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -59.52% -47.37%
75th Percentile £68.50 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £73.90 £52.50 £64.25
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 9 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 9 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% 35
Birmingham -12 70 £475 -14.03% 54
Warwickshire -14 34 £500 +17.65% 14
Coventry -9 26 £407 -12.00% 14
Herefordshire 0 22 £550 -21.43% 2
Worcestershire -8 10 £700 - 11
Solihull -6 9 £481 +5.83% 5
Dudley - 6 £410 - 6
Staffordshire -6 4 £463 +1.37% 19
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 3
Wolverhampton - 2 - - 3
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 61 (16.62%) SAS
2 40 (10.90%) WebLogic
3 19 (5.18%) Apache
4 15 (4.09%) Tuxedo
5 12 (3.27%) Confluence
6 9 (2.45%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.18%) JBoss
8 6 (1.63%) Apache Airflow
9 2 (0.54%) Anypoint
9 2 (0.54%) Apache Spark
9 2 (0.54%) CMS
9 2 (0.54%) Jupyter
9 2 (0.54%) Liferay
10 1 (0.27%) Apache Pig
10 1 (0.27%) Apache ServiceMix
10 1 (0.27%) Drupal
10 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Exchange
10 1 (0.27%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.27%) Umbraco
10 1 (0.27%) WebSphere
Applications
1 13 (3.54%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.82%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.82%) MS Visio
3 2 (0.54%) Microsoft Project
4 1 (0.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.27%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.09%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.09%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.82%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.54%) Dynamics CRM
3 2 (0.54%) Maximo
3 2 (0.54%) Primavera
3 2 (0.54%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.27%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.27%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.27%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.27%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.27%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.27%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.27%) SAP S/4HANA
4 1 (0.27%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 94 (25.61%) AWS
2 85 (23.16%) Azure
3 40 (10.90%) Power Platform
4 36 (9.81%) Azure DevOps
5 27 (7.36%) Amazon S3
5 27 (7.36%) Serverless
6 18 (4.90%) Amazon EC2
7 17 (4.63%) GCP
7 17 (4.63%) GitHub
8 15 (4.09%) Azure Data Factory
8 15 (4.09%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 15 (4.09%) GitHub Actions
9 12 (3.27%) OpenShift
10 10 (2.72%) Azure Key Vault
11 9 (2.45%) Power Automate
12 8 (2.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 8 (2.18%) Cloud Computing
12 8 (2.18%) Snowflake
13 7 (1.91%) Amazon SQS
13 7 (1.91%) Route 53
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.36%) Network Security
2 4 (1.09%) DNS
3 3 (0.82%) Firewall
4 2 (0.54%) DHCP
4 2 (0.54%) LAN
4 2 (0.54%) TCP/IP
4 2 (0.54%) VLAN
4 2 (0.54%) WAN
4 2 (0.54%) Wi-Fi
5 1 (0.27%) 4G
5 1 (0.27%) 5G
5 1 (0.27%) AMQP
5 1 (0.27%) BGP
5 1 (0.27%) Internet
5 1 (0.27%) MPLS
5 1 (0.27%) OSPF
5 1 (0.27%) tcpdump
5 1 (0.27%) VPN
5 1 (0.27%) Wireshark
5 1 (0.27%) WPA2
Database & Business Intelligence
1 64 (17.44%) Pentaho
2 36 (9.81%) Power BI
3 34 (9.26%) Data Warehouse
4 33 (8.99%) PostgreSQL
5 29 (7.90%) Amazon RDS
6 24 (6.54%) Relational Database
7 23 (6.27%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.63%) MySQL
8 17 (4.63%) Oracle Database
9 14 (3.81%) Amazon Redshift
10 12 (3.27%) Oracle Reports
11 11 (3.00%) Tableau
12 10 (2.72%) NoSQL
13 9 (2.45%) Redis
14 8 (2.18%) SQL Server
15 7 (1.91%) BigQuery
15 7 (1.91%) DynamoDB
15 7 (1.91%) Hadoop
15 7 (1.91%) Metadata
15 7 (1.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
Development Applications
1 91 (24.80%) Git
2 69 (18.80%) Jenkins
3 63 (17.17%) JIRA
4 27 (7.36%) GitLab
5 18 (4.90%) JUnit
6 12 (3.27%) MSI
7 11 (3.00%) Selenium
8 10 (2.72%) Maven
8 10 (2.72%) Mockito
9 9 (2.45%) Zephyr
10 8 (2.18%) Eclipse
10 8 (2.18%) IntelliJ
10 8 (2.18%) Postman
11 7 (1.91%) SonarQube
12 6 (1.63%) Atlassian Bamboo
13 5 (1.36%) Bitbucket Server
13 5 (1.36%) DbUnit
13 5 (1.36%) jMock
14 4 (1.09%) CA Gen
14 4 (1.09%) Toad
General
1 88 (23.98%) Social Skills
2 64 (17.44%) Public Sector
3 48 (13.08%) Analytical Skills
4 29 (7.90%) Finance
5 12 (3.27%) Banking
6 9 (2.45%) Influencing Skills
7 8 (2.18%) Presentation Skills
8 6 (1.63%) Legal
9 5 (1.36%) Manufacturing
9 5 (1.36%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.09%) Advertising
10 4 (1.09%) Retail
11 3 (0.82%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 3 (0.82%) Marketing
12 2 (0.54%) Financial Institution
12 2 (0.54%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.54%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.27%) Automotive
13 1 (0.27%) Law
Job Titles
1 101 (27.52%) Data Engineer
2 70 (19.07%) Developer
3 30 (8.17%) Analyst
4 22 (5.99%) Lead
4 22 (5.99%) Senior
5 20 (5.45%) Java Developer
6 16 (4.36%) Consultant
7 15 (4.09%) SAS Engineer
8 14 (3.81%) Architect
8 14 (3.81%) Data Analyst
9 13 (3.54%) Java Engineer
9 13 (3.54%) Software Engineer
10 12 (3.27%) Full-Stack Developer
10 12 (3.27%) Site Engineer
10 12 (3.27%) Site Reliability Engineer
10 12 (3.27%) Tester
11 10 (2.72%) Python Developer
12 9 (2.45%) Business Intelligence Developer
12 9 (2.45%) DBA
12 9 (2.45%) QA Tester
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 42 (11.44%) REST
1 42 (11.44%) Spring
2 32 (8.72%) Spring Boot
3 23 (6.27%) Flask
3 23 (6.27%) Node.js
4 22 (5.99%) XML
5 18 (4.90%) SOAP
6 17 (4.63%) Hibernate
7 15 (4.09%) RESTful
8 13 (3.54%) JSON
9 12 (3.27%) FastAPI
10 11 (3.00%) Django
10 11 (3.00%) HTML
10 11 (3.00%) JPA
10 11 (3.00%) YAML
11 10 (2.72%) AngularJS
11 10 (2.72%) Spring Batch
11 10 (2.72%) Web Services
12 9 (2.45%) HTML5
12 9 (2.45%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 19 (5.18%) Cloud Native
2 10 (2.72%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.18%) Product Ownership
4 7 (1.91%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.36%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.09%) Clustering
6 4 (1.09%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.09%) Data Protection Act
6 4 (1.09%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.09%) Enterprise Software
6 4 (1.09%) Robotics
7 3 (0.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 3 (0.82%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.82%) Public Cloud
8 2 (0.54%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.54%) Derivative
8 2 (0.54%) Educational Technology
8 2 (0.54%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.27%) Management Information System
9 1 (0.27%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 43 (11.72%) Unix
2 35 (9.54%) Linux
3 24 (6.54%) Windows
4 6 (1.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (0.27%) VME
5 1 (0.27%) Windows 10
5 1 (0.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 145 (39.51%) CI/CD
2 128 (34.88%) Agile
3 118 (32.15%) ETL
4 111 (30.25%) DevOps
5 96 (26.16%) Problem-Solving
6 95 (25.89%) Analytics
7 83 (22.62%) Business Intelligence
8 81 (22.07%) Data Modelling
9 80 (21.80%) Scrum
10 74 (20.16%) Continuous Improvement
11 69 (18.80%) Test Automation
12 67 (18.26%) Data Pipeline
13 65 (17.71%) Data Integration
14 48 (13.08%) Microservices
15 44 (11.99%) Deployment Automation
16 43 (11.72%) Data Analytics
17 42 (11.44%) Data Virtualisation
17 42 (11.44%) Migration
18 39 (10.63%) Data Engineering
19 38 (10.35%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 84 (22.89%) Java
2 73 (19.89%) Python
3 40 (10.90%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.36%) Shell Script
5 17 (4.63%) JavaScript
6 16 (4.36%) Go
7 15 (4.09%) Scala
8 8 (2.18%) Bash
9 7 (1.91%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 6 (1.63%) C#
10 6 (1.63%) Perl
11 5 (1.36%) R
11 5 (1.36%) VBA
12 4 (1.09%) Bicep
12 4 (1.09%) PowerShell
12 4 (1.09%) VB
13 3 (0.82%) HiveQL
13 3 (0.82%) TypeScript
14 2 (0.54%) COBOL
14 2 (0.54%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 183 (49.86%) Security Cleared
2 164 (44.69%) SC Cleared
3 18 (4.90%) Degree
4 17 (4.63%) DV Cleared
5 14 (3.81%) ISTQB
6 9 (2.45%) BPSS Clearance
7 7 (1.91%) Computer Science Degree
8 6 (1.63%) AWS Certification
8 6 (1.63%) Azure Certification
8 6 (1.63%) Microsoft Certification
9 5 (1.36%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
9 5 (1.36%) Master's Degree
10 2 (0.54%) ISEB
10 2 (0.54%) PhD
10 2 (0.54%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
10 2 (0.54%) TOGAF Certification
11 1 (0.27%) ACCA
11 1 (0.27%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 1 (0.27%) CIMA
11 1 (0.27%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 66 (17.98%) Data Quality
2 24 (6.54%) QA
3 5 (1.36%) Accessibility
3 5 (1.36%) SLA
4 3 (0.82%) FATCA
5 1 (0.27%) GDPR
5 1 (0.27%) PMO
5 1 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.27%) WCAG
System Software
1 89 (24.25%) Docker
2 6 (1.63%) Active Directory
3 4 (1.09%) Postfix
4 3 (0.82%) HDFS
4 3 (0.82%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (0.82%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 89 (24.25%) Kubernetes
2 39 (10.63%) Grafana
3 27 (7.36%) Terraform
4 25 (6.81%) Prometheus
5 20 (5.45%) Ansible
6 12 (3.27%) Progress Chef
7 10 (2.72%) Puppet
8 5 (1.36%) Kibana
9 4 (1.09%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.82%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.82%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (0.54%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.54%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.27%) Control-M
12 1 (0.27%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.27%) SCCM
12 1 (0.27%) WSUS
Vendors
1 113 (30.79%) Oracle
2 72 (19.62%) Talend
3 49 (13.35%) Microsoft
4 41 (11.17%) Denodo
5 36 (9.81%) Informatica
6 19 (5.18%) ServiceNow
7 15 (4.09%) SAP
8 13 (3.54%) Google
9 12 (3.27%) Databricks
10 10 (2.72%) Splunk
10 10 (2.72%) webMethods
11 9 (2.45%) Fujitsu
12 7 (1.91%) Jaspersoft
12 7 (1.91%) NEC
13 6 (1.63%) Cloudera
13 6 (1.63%) Dynatrace
13 6 (1.63%) Red Hat
13 6 (1.63%) Sage
14 5 (1.36%) Atlassian
15 3 (0.82%) Anaplan