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 26 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 11 19
Rank change year-on-year +1 +8 -11
Contract jobs citing SQL 346 161 153
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 12.73% 11.38% 8.20%
As % of the Programming Languages category 50.00% 44.23% 36.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 261 108 105
10th Percentile £352 £309 £259
25th Percentile £413 £422 £306
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £490 £450
Median % change year-on-year -3.06% +8.89% -14.37%
75th Percentile £537 £575 £575
90th Percentile £600 £652 £625
England median daily rate £500 £521 £550
% change year-on-year -4.08% -5.23% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 0
Median hourly rate £50.00 £60.00 -
Median % change year-on-year -16.67% - -
England median hourly rate £47.50 £52.75 £42.50
% change year-on-year -9.95% +24.12% -15.42%

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 692 364 414
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 25.45% 25.72% 22.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 499 217 299
10th Percentile £358 £347 £260
25th Percentile £425 £410 £353
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £489 £450
Median % change year-on-year +2.25% +8.67% -14.29%
75th Percentile £564 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £700 £661
England median daily rate £509 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.05% -4.55% -4.35%
Number of hourly rates quoted 4 9 13
10th Percentile £51.95 £16.95 £17.50
25th Percentile £54.88 £17.00 £17.75
Median hourly rate £58.00 £20.24 £50.00
Median % change year-on-year +186.56% -59.52% +127.27%
75th Percentile £64.00 £28.75 £58.75
90th Percentile £72.10 £54.00 £69.75
England median hourly rate £65.00 £63.00 £60.00
% change year-on-year +3.17% +5.00% -7.16%

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 26 February 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 26 February 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 +2 157 £467 -4.66% 31
Birmingham -12 73 £481 -12.90% 59
Warwickshire -10 29 £500 - 17
Herefordshire -2 22 £550 -21.43% 3
Coventry -16 19 £407 -9.56% 13
Solihull -5 10 £510 +4.29% 6
Worcestershire -8 9 £700 - 12
Staffordshire -11 3 £463 +1.37% 18
Brierley Hill - 3 £395 - 3
Dudley - 2 £420 - 5
Wolverhampton - 1 - - 5
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 57 (16.47%) SAS
2 41 (11.85%) WebLogic
3 22 (6.36%) Apache
4 15 (4.34%) Confluence
5 13 (3.76%) Tuxedo
6 9 (2.60%) SharePoint
7 8 (2.31%) JBoss
8 6 (1.73%) Apache Airflow
9 3 (0.87%) nginx
10 2 (0.58%) Anypoint
10 2 (0.58%) Apache Spark
10 2 (0.58%) CMS
10 2 (0.58%) Liferay
11 1 (0.29%) Apache Geronimo
11 1 (0.29%) Apache Pig
11 1 (0.29%) Apache ServiceMix
11 1 (0.29%) Jupyter
11 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Exchange
11 1 (0.29%) Red Hat Fuse
11 1 (0.29%) Tomcat
Applications
1 13 (3.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 3 (0.87%) Microsoft Office
2 3 (0.87%) Mozilla Thunderbird
3 2 (0.58%) Microsoft Project
3 2 (0.58%) MS Visio
4 1 (0.29%) Maya
4 1 (0.29%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 1 (0.29%) NUKE
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle Smart View
4 1 (0.29%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 4 (1.16%) NEC Housing
1 4 (1.16%) Oracle EBS
2 3 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
2 3 (0.87%) Oracle EBS R12
3 2 (0.58%) Maximo
3 2 (0.58%) Primavera
3 2 (0.58%) SAP FI
4 1 (0.29%) Aareon QL
4 1 (0.29%) MIS ActiveH
4 1 (0.29%) OPENHousing
4 1 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
4 1 (0.29%) Orchard Housing
4 1 (0.29%) SAP ERP
4 1 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 95 (27.46%) AWS
2 82 (23.70%) Azure
3 33 (9.54%) Power Platform
4 30 (8.67%) Azure DevOps
4 30 (8.67%) Serverless
5 29 (8.38%) Amazon S3
6 21 (6.07%) Amazon EC2
7 19 (5.49%) GCP
8 15 (4.34%) GitHub
9 14 (4.05%) Azure Data Factory
10 13 (3.76%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (3.47%) Azure Synapse Analytics
11 12 (3.47%) OpenShift
12 11 (3.18%) Amazon CloudWatch
13 10 (2.89%) AWS KMS
13 10 (2.89%) Azure Key Vault
13 10 (2.89%) Power Automate
13 10 (2.89%) Route 53
14 8 (2.31%) Cloud Computing
14 8 (2.31%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (1.45%) DNS
2 4 (1.16%) Firewall
2 4 (1.16%) Network Security
3 3 (0.87%) FTP
3 3 (0.87%) HTTP
3 3 (0.87%) IMAP
3 3 (0.87%) OpenLDAP
3 3 (0.87%) SMTP
3 3 (0.87%) SSH
4 1 (0.29%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 61 (17.63%) Pentaho
2 35 (10.12%) PostgreSQL
3 31 (8.96%) Amazon RDS
4 28 (8.09%) Power BI
5 26 (7.51%) Data Warehouse
6 24 (6.94%) Relational Database
7 23 (6.65%) MongoDB
8 17 (4.91%) Oracle Database
9 15 (4.34%) MySQL
10 12 (3.47%) Oracle Reports
11 11 (3.18%) Amazon Redshift
11 11 (3.18%) NoSQL
12 10 (2.89%) Amazon Aurora
13 9 (2.60%) Redis
14 8 (2.31%) Tableau
15 7 (2.02%) BigQuery
15 7 (2.02%) DynamoDB
15 7 (2.02%) Hadoop
15 7 (2.02%) SQL Server
16 6 (1.73%) SAS Enterprise Guide
Development Applications
1 92 (26.59%) Git
2 72 (20.81%) Jenkins
3 61 (17.63%) JIRA
4 28 (8.09%) GitLab
5 18 (5.20%) JUnit
6 10 (2.89%) Maven
6 10 (2.89%) Mockito
6 10 (2.89%) MSI
6 10 (2.89%) Selenium
7 9 (2.60%) Zephyr
8 8 (2.31%) Eclipse
8 8 (2.31%) IntelliJ
9 7 (2.02%) Postman
9 7 (2.02%) SonarQube
10 6 (1.73%) Atlassian Bamboo
11 5 (1.45%) Bitbucket Server
11 5 (1.45%) DbUnit
11 5 (1.45%) jMock
11 5 (1.45%) Liquibase
12 4 (1.16%) CA Gen
General
1 91 (26.30%) Social Skills
2 66 (19.08%) Public Sector
3 45 (13.01%) Analytical Skills
4 25 (7.23%) Finance
5 13 (3.76%) Banking
6 10 (2.89%) Presentation Skills
7 9 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
8 6 (1.73%) Legal
9 5 (1.45%) Manufacturing
10 4 (1.16%) Advertising
10 4 (1.16%) Financial Institution
10 4 (1.16%) Marketing
10 4 (1.16%) Organisational Skills
10 4 (1.16%) Retail
11 3 (0.87%) Documentation Skills
11 3 (0.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 2 (0.58%) Automotive
12 2 (0.58%) General Ledger
12 2 (0.58%) Telecoms
13 1 (0.29%) Law
Job Titles
1 87 (25.14%) Data Engineer
2 63 (18.21%) Developer
3 30 (8.67%) Analyst
4 21 (6.07%) Lead
5 20 (5.78%) Java Developer
6 19 (5.49%) Senior
7 16 (4.62%) Consultant
8 15 (4.34%) Software Engineer
9 14 (4.05%) Data Analyst
9 14 (4.05%) SAS Engineer
10 13 (3.76%) Java Engineer
11 12 (3.47%) Architect
11 12 (3.47%) Site Engineer
11 12 (3.47%) Site Reliability Engineer
12 11 (3.18%) Tester
13 10 (2.89%) Python Developer
14 9 (2.60%) Backend Developer
14 9 (2.60%) DBA
14 9 (2.60%) QA Tester
15 8 (2.31%) Full-Stack Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 43 (12.43%) REST
2 42 (12.14%) Spring
3 32 (9.25%) Spring Boot
4 22 (6.36%) XML
5 18 (5.20%) Flask
5 18 (5.20%) RESTful
5 18 (5.20%) SOAP
6 17 (4.91%) Hibernate
6 17 (4.91%) Node.js
7 13 (3.76%) HTML
7 13 (3.76%) JSON
8 12 (3.47%) FastAPI
9 11 (3.18%) AngularJS
9 11 (3.18%) JPA
10 10 (2.89%) Spring Batch
10 10 (2.89%) Web Services
11 9 (2.60%) .NET
11 9 (2.60%) HTML5
11 9 (2.60%) J2EE
11 9 (2.60%) WebSockets
Miscellaneous
1 22 (6.36%) Cloud Native
2 12 (3.47%) Distributed Systems
3 8 (2.31%) Product Ownership
4 7 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
5 5 (1.45%) Public Cloud
6 4 (1.16%) Clustering
6 4 (1.16%) Data Centre
6 4 (1.16%) Data Structures
6 4 (1.16%) Onboarding
6 4 (1.16%) Robotics
7 3 (0.87%) Credit Risk
7 3 (0.87%) Data Protection Act
7 3 (0.87%) Enterprise Software
7 3 (0.87%) Replication
8 2 (0.58%) Algorithms
8 2 (0.58%) Analytical Mindset
8 2 (0.58%) Derivative
8 2 (0.58%) IoT
8 2 (0.58%) Self-Motivation
9 1 (0.29%) Renewable Energy
Operating Systems
1 44 (12.72%) Linux
2 43 (12.43%) Unix
3 27 (7.80%) Windows
4 6 (1.73%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 3 (0.87%) Amazon Linux
5 3 (0.87%) Ubuntu
5 3 (0.87%) VMS
6 1 (0.29%) VME
6 1 (0.29%) Windows 10
6 1 (0.29%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 139 (40.17%) CI/CD
2 125 (36.13%) Agile
3 109 (31.50%) DevOps
4 104 (30.06%) ETL
5 94 (27.17%) Problem-Solving
6 91 (26.30%) Analytics
7 79 (22.83%) Scrum
8 77 (22.25%) Business Intelligence
9 75 (21.68%) Continuous Improvement
10 72 (20.81%) Data Modelling
11 65 (18.79%) Test Automation
12 58 (16.76%) Data Integration
13 57 (16.47%) Data Pipeline
14 50 (14.45%) Microservices
15 43 (12.43%) Deployment Automation
16 41 (11.85%) Data Analytics
16 41 (11.85%) Data Virtualisation
17 39 (11.27%) Migration
17 39 (11.27%) Software Engineering
18 35 (10.12%) Business Analytics
Programming Languages
1 85 (24.57%) Java
2 72 (20.81%) Python
3 40 (11.56%) PL/SQL
4 27 (7.80%) Shell Script
5 18 (5.20%) Go
6 14 (4.05%) Scala
7 13 (3.76%) JavaScript
8 7 (2.02%) Bash
8 7 (2.02%) C#
8 7 (2.02%) PowerShell
9 6 (1.73%) Data Analysis Expressions
9 6 (1.73%) Perl
10 5 (1.45%) R
10 5 (1.45%) VBA
11 4 (1.16%) Bicep
11 4 (1.16%) VB
12 3 (0.87%) Groovy
12 3 (0.87%) HiveQL
12 3 (0.87%) TypeScript
13 2 (0.58%) COBOL
Qualifications
1 179 (51.73%) Security Cleared
2 163 (47.11%) SC Cleared
3 22 (6.36%) Degree
4 18 (5.20%) DV Cleared
5 13 (3.76%) ISTQB
6 10 (2.89%) AWS Certification
6 10 (2.89%) Computer Science Degree
7 9 (2.60%) Azure Certification
8 8 (2.31%) BPSS Clearance
9 6 (1.73%) Master's Degree
10 5 (1.45%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
10 5 (1.45%) Microsoft Certification
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified Developer
11 2 (0.58%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
11 2 (0.58%) ISEB
11 2 (0.58%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
11 2 (0.58%) TOGAF Certification
12 1 (0.29%) ACCA
12 1 (0.29%) CIMA
12 1 (0.29%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 59 (17.05%) Data Quality
2 22 (6.36%) QA
3 5 (1.45%) Accessibility
4 3 (0.87%) FATCA
4 3 (0.87%) SLA
5 1 (0.29%) GDPR
5 1 (0.29%) PMO
5 1 (0.29%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 1 (0.29%) WCAG
System Software
1 91 (26.30%) Docker
2 7 (2.02%) Postfix
3 6 (1.73%) Active Directory
4 3 (0.87%) DFS Replication
4 3 (0.87%) Dovecot
4 3 (0.87%) HDFS
4 3 (0.87%) Oracle Clusterware
4 3 (0.87%) Oracle RAC
4 3 (0.87%) Squid
Systems Management
1 88 (25.43%) Kubernetes
2 42 (12.14%) Grafana
3 31 (8.96%) Terraform
4 30 (8.67%) Prometheus
5 22 (6.36%) Ansible
6 12 (3.47%) Progress Chef
7 10 (2.89%) Puppet
8 5 (1.45%) Kibana
9 4 (1.16%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.87%) Data Guard
10 3 (0.87%) Docker Swarm
10 3 (0.87%) Nessus
10 3 (0.87%) Proxmox
11 2 (0.58%) HP ALM
11 2 (0.58%) HP Quality Center
12 1 (0.29%) Control-M
12 1 (0.29%) Microsoft Intune
12 1 (0.29%) SCCM
12 1 (0.29%) WSUS
Vendors
1 113 (32.66%) Oracle
2 66 (19.08%) Talend
3 41 (11.85%) Microsoft
4 38 (10.98%) Denodo
5 28 (8.09%) Informatica
6 17 (4.91%) ServiceNow
7 15 (4.34%) Splunk
8 14 (4.05%) Google
9 12 (3.47%) SAP
10 10 (2.89%) Databricks
10 10 (2.89%) Jaspersoft
10 10 (2.89%) webMethods
11 9 (2.60%) Dynatrace
12 7 (2.02%) Fujitsu
12 7 (2.02%) NEC
13 6 (1.73%) Red Hat
13 6 (1.73%) Sage
14 5 (1.45%) Atlassian
14 5 (1.45%) Cloudera
15 4 (1.16%) Cisco