Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in Birmingham

Software Engineer
West Midlands > Birmingham

The median Software Engineer daily rate in Birmingham is £530, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 13 January 2026.

The table below compares current contractor rates and summary statistics with the previous two years.

6 months to
13 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 64 63 65
Rank change year-on-year -1 +2 +7
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 13 4 4
As % of all contract jobs in Birmingham 1.69% 0.63% 0.58%
As % of the Job Titles category 1.91% 0.67% 0.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 13 2 4
10th Percentile £500 £418 £483
25th Percentile £515 £425 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £450 £525
Median % change year-on-year +17.78% -14.29% -8.70%
75th Percentile £892 £475 £563
90th Percentile - £483 £585
West Midlands median daily rate £528 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +11.05% -5.00% -7.41%

All Contract IT Job Roles
Birmingham

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in Birmingham. Most job vacancies include a discernible job title that can be normalized. As such, the figures in the second row provide an indication of the number of contract jobs in our overall sample.

Contract vacancies in Birmingham with a recognized job title 682 596 649
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 88.46% 94.60% 93.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 440 406 428
10th Percentile £213 £193 £252
25th Percentile £398 £363 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £500 £461
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% +8.40% -2.89%
75th Percentile £588 £624 £575
90th Percentile £651 £738 £675
West Midlands median daily rate £500 £500 £475
% change year-on-year - +5.26% -4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 13 27
10th Percentile £13.25 £20.80 £13.78
25th Percentile £13.75 £25.56 £17.75
Median hourly rate £20.50 £30.45 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year -32.68% -35.89% +137.50%
75th Percentile £27.50 £52.50 £67.50
90th Percentile £33.00 £56.85 £69.25
West Midlands median hourly rate £25.00 £23.82 £25.96
% change year-on-year +4.95% -8.23% +46.47%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in Birmingham

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Software Engineer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Birmingham.

Software Engineer job vacancy trend in Birmingham

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Birmingham.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Birmingham

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in Birmingham

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in Birmingham over the 6 months to 13 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in Birmingham

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in Birmingham

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Birmingham.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Software Engineer job vacancies in Birmingham

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham

For the 6 months to 13 January 2026, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number of co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the Birmingham region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 13 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 11 (84.62%) Agile
2 11 (84.62%) DevOps
2 11 (84.62%) Python
3 10 (76.92%) AWS
3 10 (76.92%) CI/CD
4 9 (69.23%) Computer Science
4 9 (69.23%) Computer Science Degree
4 9 (69.23%) Containerisation
4 9 (69.23%) Cryptography
4 9 (69.23%) Degree
4 9 (69.23%) Docker
4 9 (69.23%) Elastic Stack
4 9 (69.23%) GCP
4 9 (69.23%) Go
4 9 (69.23%) Grafana
4 9 (69.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 9 (69.23%) Kubernetes
4 9 (69.23%) Linux
4 9 (69.23%) Liquibase
4 9 (69.23%) Microservices
4 9 (69.23%) NoSQL
4 9 (69.23%) Prometheus
4 9 (69.23%) REST
4 9 (69.23%) RESTful
4 9 (69.23%) Root Cause Analysis
4 9 (69.23%) Serverless
4 9 (69.23%) Splunk
4 9 (69.23%) Terraform
5 8 (61.54%) Ansible

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Birmingham 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:

Cloud Services
1 10 (76.92%) AWS
2 9 (69.23%) GCP
2 9 (69.23%) Serverless
3 3 (23.08%) AWS KMS
4 1 (7.69%) Azure
4 1 (7.69%) Azure DevOps
4 1 (7.69%) Azure Monitor
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (69.23%) NoSQL
2 3 (23.08%) PostgreSQL
3 1 (7.69%) MongoDB
Development Applications
1 9 (69.23%) Liquibase
2 7 (53.85%) GitLab
2 7 (53.85%) Jenkins
General
1 9 (69.23%) Social Skills
2 8 (61.54%) Banking
3 7 (53.85%) Finance
3 7 (53.85%) Financial Institution
4 1 (7.69%) Analytical Skills
4 1 (7.69%) Influencing Skills
4 1 (7.69%) Public Sector
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 9 (69.23%) Elastic Stack
1 9 (69.23%) REST
1 9 (69.23%) RESTful
2 1 (7.69%) .NET
2 1 (7.69%) .NET Core
2 1 (7.69%) FastAPI
2 1 (7.69%) Flask
Miscellaneous
1 9 (69.23%) Cloud Native
1 9 (69.23%) Public Cloud
2 7 (53.85%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (7.69%) Greenfield Project
3 1 (7.69%) Product Ownership
Operating Systems
1 9 (69.23%) Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 13 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 11 (84.62%) Agile
2 11 (84.62%) DevOps
3 10 (76.92%) CI/CD
4 9 (69.23%) Computer Science
4 9 (69.23%) Containerisation
4 9 (69.23%) Cryptography
4 9 (69.23%) Infrastructure as Code
4 9 (69.23%) Microservices
4 9 (69.23%) Root Cause Analysis
5 7 (53.85%) Change Management
5 7 (53.85%) Continuous Delivery
5 7 (53.85%) Data Encryption
5 7 (53.85%) High Availability
5 7 (53.85%) Non-Functional Testing
6 6 (46.15%) Continuous Integration
6 6 (46.15%) Cost Optimisation
6 6 (46.15%) Cybersecurity
7 4 (30.77%) Data Security
7 4 (30.77%) Infrastructure Automation
Programming Languages
1 11 (84.62%) Python
2 9 (69.23%) Go
3 5 (38.46%) SQL
4 1 (7.69%) C#
Qualifications
1 9 (69.23%) Computer Science Degree
1 9 (69.23%) Degree
2 7 (53.85%) Master's Degree
3 2 (15.38%) AWS Certification
3 2 (15.38%) AWS Certified Developer
3 2 (15.38%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
4 1 (7.69%) Security Cleared
System Software
1 9 (69.23%) Docker
Systems Management
1 9 (69.23%) Grafana
1 9 (69.23%) Kubernetes
1 9 (69.23%) Prometheus
1 9 (69.23%) Terraform
2 8 (61.54%) Ansible
Vendors
1 9 (69.23%) Splunk
2 2 (15.38%) Google
2 2 (15.38%) Microsoft
3 1 (7.69%) Cadence