Computer Science Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Computer Science
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Computer Science skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 83 49 59
Rank change year-on-year -34 +10 +53
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 67 52 52
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.55% 3.60% 2.75%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.99% 4.04% 3.28%
Number of daily rates quoted 43 17 35
10th Percentile £176 £165 £369
25th Percentile £293 £406 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £563
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -11.11% +9.76%
75th Percentile £563 £588 £635
90th Percentile £861 £613 £645
England median daily rate £476 £538 £550
% change year-on-year -11.53% -2.27% -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 5
10th Percentile £22.86 - -
25th Percentile £24.88 - £22.33
Median hourly rate £28.26 - £24.65
75th Percentile £31.63 - £72.50
90th Percentile £33.65 - -
England median hourly rate £33.50 £53.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -37.38% -2.73% +4.76%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

Computer Science falls under the Processes and Methodologies category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract job vacancies requiring process or methodology skills in the West Midlands.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 2,242 1,287 1,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.47% 89.13% 83.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,454 807 1,036
10th Percentile £295 £210 £275
25th Percentile £403 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £491
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +4.33% -1.75%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 48 112
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.64 £12.10
25th Percentile £16.25 £15.22 £16.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £20.12 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.66% -12.52% +29.94%
75th Percentile £27.21 £30.95 £49.06
90th Percentile £35.00 £45.13 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.89 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -26.04% - -

Computer Science
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Computer Science relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Computer Science job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Computer Science
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Computer Science.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Computer Science

Computer Science
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Computer Science in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 18 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Computer Science in the West Midlands

Computer Science
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Computer Science.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Computer Science

Computer Science
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Computer Science in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 18 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Computer Science in the West Midlands

Computer Science
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 Computer Science within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 18 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
Birmingham +10 36 £525 +27.27% 20
Warwickshire -18 14 £550 +10.00% 5
Coventry -10 10 £280 - 2
Staffordshire -6 3 £300 +100.00% 6
Solihull - 1 £600 -
Shropshire - 1 - - 9
Computer Science
England

Computer Science
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 2 (2.99%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.49%) Oracle SOA Suite
2 1 (1.49%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 2 (2.99%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.49%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 19 (28.36%) GCP
2 18 (26.87%) AWS
3 14 (20.90%) Serverless
4 10 (14.93%) Azure
5 4 (5.97%) AWS KMS
6 3 (4.48%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 3 (4.48%) Power Platform
6 3 (4.48%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 2 (2.99%) AWS Direct Connect
7 2 (2.99%) Dynamics 365
7 2 (2.99%) IaaS
7 2 (2.99%) Microsoft 365
7 2 (2.99%) PaaS
7 2 (2.99%) SaaS
8 1 (1.49%) Azure Logic Apps
8 1 (1.49%) Azure Service Bus
8 1 (1.49%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 1 (1.49%) OCI
8 1 (1.49%) Power Automate
8 1 (1.49%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 5 (7.46%) LAN
1 5 (7.46%) WAN
2 4 (5.97%) Firewall
2 4 (5.97%) Wireless
3 3 (4.48%) BGP
3 3 (4.48%) Cisco ASA
3 3 (4.48%) DHCP
3 3 (4.48%) DNS
3 3 (4.48%) EIGRP
3 3 (4.48%) IPv4
3 3 (4.48%) IPv6
3 3 (4.48%) MPLS
3 3 (4.48%) OSPF
3 3 (4.48%) SD-WAN
3 3 (4.48%) VLAN
3 3 (4.48%) VPN
3 3 (4.48%) VXLAN
3 3 (4.48%) WLAN
4 2 (2.99%) Cisco ISE
4 2 (2.99%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (23.88%) Elasticsearch
2 15 (22.39%) NoSQL
3 10 (14.93%) PostgreSQL
4 1 (1.49%) Data Mining
4 1 (1.49%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.49%) MySQL
4 1 (1.49%) Power BI
4 1 (1.49%) RDBMS
4 1 (1.49%) Relational Database
4 1 (1.49%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 13 (19.40%) GitLab
1 13 (19.40%) Jenkins
2 10 (14.93%) Liquibase
3 3 (4.48%) JIRA
4 1 (1.49%) AdminStudio
4 1 (1.49%) InstallShield
4 1 (1.49%) MLflow
4 1 (1.49%) MSI
4 1 (1.49%) REST Assured
4 1 (1.49%) Selenium
4 1 (1.49%) SoapUI
General
1 46 (68.66%) Social Skills
2 20 (29.85%) Analytical Skills
2 20 (29.85%) Finance
3 10 (14.93%) Banking
3 10 (14.93%) Financial Institution
4 4 (5.97%) Public Sector
5 3 (4.48%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (4.48%) Legal
6 2 (2.99%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (2.99%) Presentation Skills
7 1 (1.49%) German Language
7 1 (1.49%) Marketing
Job Titles
1 14 (20.90%) Site Engineer
1 14 (20.90%) Site Reliability Engineer
1 14 (20.90%) Splunk Engineer
2 12 (17.91%) Cloud Engineer
2 12 (17.91%) Senior
3 10 (14.93%) GCP Engineer
4 9 (13.43%) Software Engineer
5 7 (10.45%) Senior Software Engineer
6 6 (8.96%) AWS Engineer
6 6 (8.96%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 5 (7.46%) Architect
7 5 (7.46%) AWS Software Engineer
7 5 (7.46%) Delivery Manager
8 4 (5.97%) Analyst
8 4 (5.97%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (5.97%) GCP Software Engineer
8 4 (5.97%) Senior Cloud Engineer
8 4 (5.97%) Senior DevOps
8 4 (5.97%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 4 (5.97%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (44.78%) Elastic Stack
2 16 (23.88%) REST
3 14 (20.90%) RESTful
4 2 (2.99%) .NET
5 1 (1.49%) ASP.NET Web API
5 1 (1.49%) HTML
5 1 (1.49%) Middleware
5 1 (1.49%) OAuth
5 1 (1.49%) Oracle Fusion
5 1 (1.49%) SAML
5 1 (1.49%) Software Packaging
Miscellaneous
1 16 (23.88%) Management Information System
2 14 (20.90%) Public Cloud
3 13 (19.40%) Distributed Systems
4 10 (14.93%) Cloud Native
5 3 (4.48%) Data Centre
6 2 (2.99%) Algorithms
6 2 (2.99%) Product Ownership
6 2 (2.99%) Security Posture
7 1 (1.49%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.49%) CMDB
7 1 (1.49%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.49%) IoT
7 1 (1.49%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.49%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 28 (41.79%) Linux
2 14 (20.90%) Unix
3 4 (5.97%) Windows
3 4 (5.97%) Windows 10
4 2 (2.99%) Mac OS
5 1 (1.49%) Apple iOS
5 1 (1.49%) Windows 7
5 1 (1.49%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 36 (53.73%) DevOps
2 31 (46.27%) Containerisation
3 27 (40.30%) Problem-Solving
4 26 (38.81%) Agile
5 22 (32.84%) Change Management
6 19 (28.36%) Incident Response
7 18 (26.87%) CI/CD
8 17 (25.37%) Cybersecurity
8 17 (25.37%) Migration
9 16 (23.88%) Infrastructure as Code
9 16 (23.88%) Knowledge Transfer
9 16 (23.88%) Validation
10 15 (22.39%) Dashboard Development
10 15 (22.39%) Data Modelling
10 15 (22.39%) Performance Metrics
10 15 (22.39%) Root Cause Analysis
10 15 (22.39%) Site Reliability Engineering
11 14 (20.90%) Data Ingestion
11 14 (20.90%) Microservices
11 14 (20.90%) Proactive Monitoring
Programming Languages
1 34 (50.75%) Python
2 15 (22.39%) Bash
2 15 (22.39%) Go
3 11 (16.42%) SQL
4 3 (4.48%) PowerShell
5 2 (2.99%) C#
5 2 (2.99%) JavaScript
6 1 (1.49%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.49%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 56 (83.58%) Degree
2 44 (65.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 17 (25.37%) Master's Degree
4 6 (8.96%) AWS Certification
4 6 (8.96%) PRINCE2 Certification
5 5 (7.46%) Security Cleared
6 4 (5.97%) Azure Certification
7 3 (4.48%) (ISC)2 CCSP
7 3 (4.48%) CCIE
7 3 (4.48%) CCIE Security
7 3 (4.48%) CCNP
7 3 (4.48%) CCSP
7 3 (4.48%) Cisco Certification
7 3 (4.48%) CISSP
7 3 (4.48%) DBS Check
8 2 (2.99%) BPSS Clearance
8 2 (2.99%) JNCIE
8 2 (2.99%) JNCIP
8 2 (2.99%) PMI Certification
8 2 (2.99%) PMP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (5.97%) Data Quality
1 4 (5.97%) GDPR
1 4 (5.97%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (4.48%) ISO 19650
2 3 (4.48%) NIST
2 3 (4.48%) PCI DSS
2 3 (4.48%) QA
3 1 (1.49%) GAAP
3 1 (1.49%) IFRS
3 1 (1.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
System Software
1 28 (41.79%) Docker
2 5 (7.46%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (4.48%) VMware NSX
4 2 (2.99%) Active Directory
5 1 (1.49%) BitLocker
5 1 (1.49%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 32 (47.76%) Ansible
1 32 (47.76%) Kubernetes
2 20 (29.85%) Terraform
3 16 (23.88%) Kibana
4 14 (20.90%) Grafana
4 14 (20.90%) Prometheus
4 14 (20.90%) Puppet
5 2 (2.99%) logstash
5 2 (2.99%) Microsoft Intune
5 2 (2.99%) SCCM
6 1 (1.49%) AirWatch
6 1 (1.49%) Jamf Pro
6 1 (1.49%) Single Sign-On
6 1 (1.49%) WSUS
Vendors
1 28 (41.79%) Splunk
2 10 (14.93%) Microsoft
3 9 (13.43%) Google
4 5 (7.46%) VMware
5 4 (5.97%) Cisco
6 3 (4.48%) F5
6 3 (4.48%) Fortinet
6 3 (4.48%) Meraki
6 3 (4.48%) Palo Alto
6 3 (4.48%) SolarWinds
7 2 (2.99%) Forcepoint
7 2 (2.99%) JD Edwards
7 2 (2.99%) Juniper
7 2 (2.99%) SAP
8 1 (1.49%) Atlassian
8 1 (1.49%) CheckPoint
8 1 (1.49%) IBM
8 1 (1.49%) MobileIron
8 1 (1.49%) Oracle
8 1 (1.49%) ServiceNow