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

6 months to
18 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 52 71
Rank change year-on-year -26 +19 +39
Contract jobs citing Computer Science 66 55 44
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.82% 3.49% 2.46%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.30% 4.00% 2.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 44 21 33
10th Percentile £190 - £382
25th Percentile £298 £375 £450
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £600
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -16.67% +14.29%
75th Percentile £597 £588 £635
90th Percentile £738 £635 £650
England median daily rate £475 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -13.64% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 0 1
10th Percentile £22.86 - -
25th Percentile £24.88 - £22.33
Median hourly rate £28.26 - £24.65
75th Percentile £31.63 - £26.98
90th Percentile £33.65 - -
England median hourly rate £33.50 £52.50 £55.00
% change year-on-year -36.19% -4.55% +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 1,999 1,376 1,531
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.54% 87.37% 85.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,270 865 1,009
10th Percentile £263 £220 £275
25th Percentile £405 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £495
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +6.06% -1.00%
75th Percentile £588 £612 £600
90th Percentile £675 £713 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £538
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.33% -2.27%
Number of hourly rates quoted 87 47 77
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £13.88
25th Percentile £16.19 £16.51 £17.72
Median hourly rate £20.50 £21.59 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year -5.05% -12.41% +39.27%
75th Percentile £26.18 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.60 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £40.00
% change year-on-year -28.14% -12.50% +14.29%

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 January 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 January 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 January 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 +20 36 £525 -22.22% 18
Warwickshire -20 12 £550 +10.00% 6
Coventry -11 9 £265 -33.75% 6
Staffordshire 0 3 £300 +100.00% 4
Solihull - 3 £600 -
Worcestershire -26 1 £575 - 3
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 (3.03%) OpenStack
2 1 (1.52%) nginx
2 1 (1.52%) SharePoint
Business Applications
1 3 (4.55%) Dynamics CRM
2 1 (1.52%) Maximo
Cloud Services
1 20 (30.30%) AWS
1 20 (30.30%) GCP
2 15 (22.73%) Serverless
3 12 (18.18%) Azure
4 5 (7.58%) Power Platform
5 4 (6.06%) AWS KMS
6 3 (4.55%) Azure ExpressRoute
6 3 (4.55%) Dynamics 365
6 3 (4.55%) Virtual Private Cloud
7 2 (3.03%) AWS Direct Connect
7 2 (3.03%) Azure DevOps
7 2 (3.03%) Azure Machine Learning
7 2 (3.03%) Azure Synapse Analytics
7 2 (3.03%) GitHub
7 2 (3.03%) IaaS
7 2 (3.03%) PaaS
7 2 (3.03%) Power Automate
7 2 (3.03%) PowerApps
7 2 (3.03%) SaaS
8 1 (1.52%) Azure Service Bus
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.06%) Firewall
1 4 (6.06%) LAN
1 4 (6.06%) WAN
1 4 (6.06%) Wireless
2 3 (4.55%) BGP
2 3 (4.55%) Cisco ASA
2 3 (4.55%) DHCP
2 3 (4.55%) DNS
2 3 (4.55%) EIGRP
2 3 (4.55%) IPv4
2 3 (4.55%) IPv6
2 3 (4.55%) MPLS
2 3 (4.55%) OSPF
2 3 (4.55%) SD-WAN
2 3 (4.55%) VLAN
2 3 (4.55%) VPN
2 3 (4.55%) VXLAN
2 3 (4.55%) WLAN
3 2 (3.03%) Cisco ISE
3 2 (3.03%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (22.73%) Elasticsearch
1 15 (22.73%) NoSQL
2 10 (15.15%) PostgreSQL
3 2 (3.03%) Power BI
3 2 (3.03%) Relational Database
4 1 (1.52%) Data Mining
4 1 (1.52%) Data Warehouse
4 1 (1.52%) MySQL
4 1 (1.52%) RDBMS
4 1 (1.52%) SQL Server Reporting Services
Development Applications
1 14 (21.21%) GitLab
1 14 (21.21%) Jenkins
2 10 (15.15%) Liquibase
3 4 (6.06%) JIRA
4 2 (3.03%) Selenium
5 1 (1.52%) AdminStudio
5 1 (1.52%) Artifactory
5 1 (1.52%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.52%) CircleCI
5 1 (1.52%) Cypress.io
5 1 (1.52%) Git
5 1 (1.52%) Gradle
5 1 (1.52%) InstallShield
5 1 (1.52%) JUnit
5 1 (1.52%) Maven
5 1 (1.52%) MSI
5 1 (1.52%) SoapUI
5 1 (1.52%) SonarQube
5 1 (1.52%) Sonatype Nexus
5 1 (1.52%) webpack
General
1 46 (69.70%) Social Skills
2 21 (31.82%) Analytical Skills
3 19 (28.79%) Finance
4 10 (15.15%) Banking
4 10 (15.15%) Financial Institution
5 6 (9.09%) Public Sector
6 3 (4.55%) Influencing Skills
6 3 (4.55%) Legal
7 2 (3.03%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (3.03%) Marketing
7 2 (3.03%) Presentation Skills
8 1 (1.52%) Digital Healthcare
8 1 (1.52%) German Language
Job Titles
1 14 (21.21%) Site Engineer
1 14 (21.21%) Site Reliability Engineer
1 14 (21.21%) Splunk Engineer
2 12 (18.18%) Cloud Engineer
3 10 (15.15%) GCP Engineer
4 9 (13.64%) Senior
4 9 (13.64%) Software Engineer
5 7 (10.61%) Senior Software Engineer
6 6 (9.09%) AWS Engineer
6 6 (9.09%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 5 (7.58%) AWS Software Engineer
7 5 (7.58%) Delivery Manager
7 5 (7.58%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (6.06%) Architect
8 4 (6.06%) Developer
8 4 (6.06%) GCP Software Engineer
8 4 (6.06%) Senior Cloud Engineer
8 4 (6.06%) Senior DevOps
8 4 (6.06%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 4 (6.06%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 30 (45.45%) Elastic Stack
2 17 (25.76%) REST
3 15 (22.73%) RESTful
4 3 (4.55%) .NET
4 3 (4.55%) HTML
5 2 (3.03%) JSON
5 2 (3.03%) OAuth
6 1 (1.52%) ASP.NET Web API
6 1 (1.52%) OAuth2
6 1 (1.52%) SAML
6 1 (1.52%) SOAP
6 1 (1.52%) Software Packaging
6 1 (1.52%) XML
6 1 (1.52%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (22.73%) Management Information System
2 14 (21.21%) Public Cloud
3 13 (19.70%) Distributed Systems
4 11 (16.67%) Cloud Native
5 3 (4.55%) Algorithms
5 3 (4.55%) Data Centre
6 2 (3.03%) IoT
7 1 (1.52%) Analytical Mindset
7 1 (1.52%) CMDB
7 1 (1.52%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (1.52%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.52%) Onboarding
7 1 (1.52%) Private Cloud
7 1 (1.52%) Product Ownership
7 1 (1.52%) Security Posture
Operating Systems
1 29 (43.94%) Linux
2 14 (21.21%) Unix
3 3 (4.55%) Windows
3 3 (4.55%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.52%) Mac OS
4 1 (1.52%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (57.58%) DevOps
2 33 (50.00%) Containerisation
3 27 (40.91%) Agile
3 27 (40.91%) Problem-Solving
4 21 (31.82%) Change Management
5 20 (30.30%) CI/CD
6 18 (27.27%) Incident Response
7 17 (25.76%) Infrastructure as Code
8 16 (24.24%) Cybersecurity
8 16 (24.24%) Migration
8 16 (24.24%) Validation
9 15 (22.73%) Dashboard Development
9 15 (22.73%) Data Modelling
9 15 (22.73%) Knowledge Transfer
9 15 (22.73%) Microservices
9 15 (22.73%) Performance Metrics
9 15 (22.73%) Root Cause Analysis
9 15 (22.73%) Site Reliability Engineering
10 14 (21.21%) Cost Optimisation
10 14 (21.21%) Observability
Programming Languages
1 38 (57.58%) Python
2 16 (24.24%) Bash
2 16 (24.24%) Go
3 13 (19.70%) SQL
4 3 (4.55%) C#
4 3 (4.55%) JavaScript
5 2 (3.03%) Java
5 2 (3.03%) PowerShell
6 1 (1.52%) C++
6 1 (1.52%) R
6 1 (1.52%) Scala
6 1 (1.52%) TypeScript
6 1 (1.52%) VBScript
Qualifications
1 56 (84.85%) Degree
2 44 (66.67%) Computer Science Degree
3 16 (24.24%) Master's Degree
4 7 (10.61%) Security Cleared
5 6 (9.09%) AWS Certification
6 5 (7.58%) PRINCE2 Certification
7 4 (6.06%) Azure Certification
8 3 (4.55%) (ISC)2 CCSP
8 3 (4.55%) CCIE
8 3 (4.55%) CCIE Security
8 3 (4.55%) CCNP
8 3 (4.55%) CCSP
8 3 (4.55%) Cisco Certification
8 3 (4.55%) CISSP
8 3 (4.55%) DBS Check
9 2 (3.03%) AWS Certified Developer
9 2 (3.03%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
9 2 (3.03%) JNCIE
9 2 (3.03%) JNCIP
9 2 (3.03%) SC Cleared
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 4 (6.06%) Data Quality
1 4 (6.06%) GDPR
1 4 (6.06%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 3 (4.55%) ISO 19650
2 3 (4.55%) NIST
2 3 (4.55%) PCI DSS
2 3 (4.55%) QA
System Software
1 30 (45.45%) Docker
2 4 (6.06%) VMware Infrastructure
3 3 (4.55%) VMware NSX
4 1 (1.52%) Active Directory
4 1 (1.52%) Hyper-V
Systems Management
1 32 (48.48%) Ansible
1 32 (48.48%) Kubernetes
2 20 (30.30%) Terraform
3 15 (22.73%) Grafana
3 15 (22.73%) Kibana
3 15 (22.73%) Prometheus
3 15 (22.73%) Puppet
4 1 (1.52%) logstash
4 1 (1.52%) Microsoft Intune
4 1 (1.52%) Podman
4 1 (1.52%) Progress Chef
4 1 (1.52%) SCCM
4 1 (1.52%) Single Sign-On
4 1 (1.52%) WSUS
Vendors
1 29 (43.94%) Splunk
2 11 (16.67%) Microsoft
3 9 (13.64%) Google
4 4 (6.06%) Cisco
4 4 (6.06%) VMware
5 3 (4.55%) F5
5 3 (4.55%) Fortinet
5 3 (4.55%) Meraki
5 3 (4.55%) Palo Alto
5 3 (4.55%) SolarWinds
6 2 (3.03%) Databricks
6 2 (3.03%) Forcepoint
6 2 (3.03%) Juniper
7 1 (1.52%) Atlassian
7 1 (1.52%) IBM
7 1 (1.52%) JD Edwards
7 1 (1.52%) Pega
7 1 (1.52%) SAP
7 1 (1.52%) ServiceNow