Developer Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Developer
England > West Midlands

The median Developer daily rate in the West Midlands is £475, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 24 May 2026.

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

6 months to
24 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 29 17 8
Rank change year-on-year -12 -9 +5
Contract jobs requiring a Developer 202 117 224
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 6.35% 8.46% 11.78%
As % of the Job Titles category 6.83% 9.35% 12.84%
Number of daily rates quoted 138 74 170
10th Percentile £361 £363 £259
25th Percentile £404 £410 £313
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £425
Median % change year-on-year - +11.76% -10.53%
75th Percentile £519 £538 £500
90th Percentile £575 £613 £611
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 1 6
10th Percentile - - £38.75
25th Percentile - £56.88 £40.13
Median hourly rate - £58.75 £49.00
Median % change year-on-year - +19.90% +46.77%
75th Percentile - £60.63 £55.94
90th Percentile - - £56.25
England median hourly rate £50.75 £53.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -5.14% -17.69% +0.78%

All Contract IT Job Roles
West Midlands

For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all contract IT job vacancies in the West Midlands. 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 the West Midlands with a recognized job title 2,957 1,252 1,744
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 92.93% 90.53% 91.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,847 815 1,190
10th Percentile £313 £200 £256
25th Percentile £405 £363 £363
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £475
Median % change year-on-year - - -5.00%
75th Percentile £575 £575 £600
90th Percentile £688 £648 £713
England median daily rate £515 £520 £525
% change year-on-year -0.96% -0.95% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 173 76 138
10th Percentile £14.90 £12.62 £12.15
25th Percentile £22.50 £14.00 £15.00
Median hourly rate £33.99 £18.63 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +82.50% -15.34% +10.00%
75th Percentile £59.50 £29.08 £41.44
90th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £45.00 £29.07 £37.18
% change year-on-year +54.80% -21.81% -17.38%

Developer
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings featuring 'Developer' in the job title relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Developer job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Developer
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Developer
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Developer in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 24 May 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Developer in the West Midlands

Developer
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for Developer job vacancies in the West Midlands

Developer
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 Developer within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 24 May 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 -3 78 £475 +4.97% 20
Coventry +5 31 £455 -8.08% 8
Shropshire -39 28 £438 -5.41% 6
Solihull -1 22 £438 -4.89%
Warwickshire -12 18 £528 -8.26% 4
Worcestershire +3 8 £700 - 11
Herefordshire -5 5 £700 - 3
Dudley - 3 £400 - 3
Wolverhampton -5 2 - - 2
Staffordshire -5 2 £325 -27.78% 6
Brierley Hill - 1 £390 - 2
Developer
England

Developer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the West Midlands

For the 6 months to 24 May 2026, Developer 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 West Midlands region featuring Developer in the job title.

1 71 (35.15%) SQL
2 50 (24.75%) CI/CD
3 49 (24.26%) Java
3 49 (24.26%) Security Cleared
4 44 (21.78%) Azure
4 44 (21.78%) SC Cleared
5 43 (21.29%) Agile
6 42 (20.79%) DevOps
7 40 (19.80%) AWS
8 38 (18.81%) Microsoft
9 35 (17.33%) Docker
10 33 (16.34%) Git
11 32 (15.84%) REST
12 31 (15.35%) Containerisation
13 30 (14.85%) Microservices
13 30 (14.85%) PostgreSQL
13 30 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
13 30 (14.85%) Spring
13 30 (14.85%) Spring Boot
14 28 (13.86%) Full-Stack Development
14 28 (13.86%) Node.js
15 27 (13.37%) AngularJS
15 27 (13.37%) JavaScript
16 25 (12.38%) SOAP
17 24 (11.88%) Migration
17 24 (11.88%) Power Platform
17 24 (11.88%) Scrum
17 24 (11.88%) TDD
18 23 (11.39%) Grafana
19 22 (10.89%) Business Intelligence

Developer Skill Set
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 9 (4.46%) Confluence
2 6 (2.97%) WebLogic
3 2 (0.99%) Apache
3 2 (0.99%) Apache Spark
3 2 (0.99%) SharePoint
4 1 (0.50%) ArcGIS
4 1 (0.50%) OpenStack
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle SOA Suite
4 1 (0.50%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (0.50%) SAS
4 1 (0.50%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 1 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 16 (7.92%) Teamcenter
2 1 (0.50%) SAP EWM
2 1 (0.50%) SAP S/4HANA
Cloud Services
1 44 (21.78%) Azure
2 40 (19.80%) AWS
3 24 (11.88%) Power Platform
4 21 (10.40%) Amazon S3
4 21 (10.40%) Amazon SQS
5 20 (9.90%) Azure DevOps
6 18 (8.91%) Amazon CloudWatch
7 17 (8.42%) Amazon EC2
7 17 (8.42%) AWS KMS
7 17 (8.42%) Route 53
8 12 (5.94%) GitHub
9 11 (5.45%) Power Automate
10 9 (4.46%) PowerApps
10 9 (4.46%) Serverless
11 8 (3.96%) GitHub Actions
12 7 (3.47%) Dynamics 365
13 5 (2.48%) Azure Key Vault
14 4 (1.98%) Azure Data Factory
14 4 (1.98%) GCP
15 3 (1.49%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.50%) Firewall
1 1 (0.50%) SSL
1 1 (0.50%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 30 (14.85%) PostgreSQL
2 19 (9.41%) Amazon RDS
2 19 (9.41%) DynamoDB
2 19 (9.41%) Power BI
3 17 (8.42%) Amazon Aurora
4 10 (4.95%) Data Warehouse
5 9 (4.46%) Relational Database
6 7 (3.47%) SQL Server
7 6 (2.97%) Power Query
8 5 (2.48%) Redis
9 4 (1.98%) Metadata
9 4 (1.98%) SQL Server Reporting Services
9 4 (1.98%) WebFOCUS
10 3 (1.49%) MongoDB
10 3 (1.49%) NoSQL
11 2 (0.99%) IDMS
12 1 (0.50%) Azure SQL Database
12 1 (0.50%) BusinessObjects XI
12 1 (0.50%) MariaDB
12 1 (0.50%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 33 (16.34%) Git
2 19 (9.41%) JUnit
2 19 (9.41%) Maven
2 19 (9.41%) Mockito
3 18 (8.91%) Jenkins
4 17 (8.42%) SonarQube
5 13 (6.44%) DbUnit
5 13 (6.44%) JIRA
5 13 (6.44%) jMock
6 11 (5.45%) Bitbucket Server
7 5 (2.48%) Team Foundation Server
7 5 (2.48%) Visual Studio
8 2 (0.99%) GitLab
9 1 (0.50%) Atlassian Bamboo
9 1 (0.50%) CA Gen
9 1 (0.50%) Cypress.io
9 1 (0.50%) Hudson
9 1 (0.50%) MSTest
9 1 (0.50%) NUnit
General
1 39 (19.31%) Public Sector
2 28 (13.86%) Analytical Skills
3 20 (9.90%) Social Skills
4 12 (5.94%) Finance
5 7 (3.47%) Banking
6 4 (1.98%) Marketing
7 3 (1.49%) Presentation Skills
8 2 (0.99%) Advertising
9 1 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.50%) Law
9 1 (0.50%) Legal
9 1 (0.50%) Pharmaceutical
9 1 (0.50%) Police
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 32 (15.84%) REST
2 30 (14.85%) Spring
2 30 (14.85%) Spring Boot
3 28 (13.86%) Node.js
4 27 (13.37%) AngularJS
5 25 (12.38%) SOAP
6 21 (10.40%) JPA
6 21 (10.40%) Web Services
7 19 (9.41%) Hibernate
7 19 (9.41%) React
7 19 (9.41%) Spring Batch
7 19 (9.41%) Spring Integration
8 17 (8.42%) ActiveMQ
8 17 (8.42%) RESTful
9 16 (7.92%) Spring Cloud
10 15 (7.43%) Flask
11 13 (6.44%) PowerMock
12 11 (5.45%) Bootstrap
12 11 (5.45%) Django
12 11 (5.45%) YAML
Miscellaneous
1 15 (7.43%) Distributed Systems
2 9 (4.46%) Cloud Native
3 6 (2.97%) Product Ownership
4 3 (1.49%) Algorithms
4 3 (1.49%) Credit Risk
5 2 (0.99%) BYOD
5 2 (0.99%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (0.50%) Client/Server
6 1 (0.50%) CMDB
6 1 (0.50%) Data Centre
6 1 (0.50%) Learning Management System
6 1 (0.50%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (0.50%) Linux Command Line
6 1 (0.50%) Onboarding
6 1 (0.50%) Robotics
Operating Systems
1 15 (7.43%) Linux
2 3 (1.49%) Unix
3 2 (0.99%) Android
4 1 (0.50%) Apple iOS
4 1 (0.50%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 50 (24.75%) CI/CD
2 43 (21.29%) Agile
3 42 (20.79%) DevOps
4 31 (15.35%) Containerisation
5 30 (14.85%) Microservices
5 30 (14.85%) Problem-Solving
6 28 (13.86%) Full-Stack Development
7 24 (11.88%) Migration
7 24 (11.88%) Scrum
7 24 (11.88%) TDD
8 22 (10.89%) Business Intelligence
9 21 (10.40%) Data Modelling
10 20 (9.90%) Workflow
11 19 (9.41%) Kanban
12 18 (8.91%) ETL
13 17 (8.42%) Data Integration
13 17 (8.42%) Decision-Making
14 14 (6.93%) BDD
14 14 (6.93%) Continuous Integration
14 14 (6.93%) Performance Tuning
Programming Languages
1 71 (35.15%) SQL
2 49 (24.26%) Java
3 27 (13.37%) JavaScript
4 22 (10.89%) Python
5 10 (4.95%) C#
6 8 (3.96%) Data Analysis Expressions
6 8 (3.96%) PL/SQL
7 5 (2.48%) VB
7 5 (2.48%) VB6
7 5 (2.48%) VBA
8 4 (1.98%) Go
8 4 (1.98%) TypeScript
9 3 (1.49%) R
9 3 (1.49%) Shell Script
10 2 (0.99%) Kotlin
10 2 (0.99%) Scala
10 2 (0.99%) VB.NET
11 1 (0.50%) Bicep
11 1 (0.50%) C
11 1 (0.50%) Swift
Qualifications
1 49 (24.26%) Security Cleared
2 44 (21.78%) SC Cleared
3 9 (4.46%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (2.48%) AWS Certification
4 5 (2.48%) Azure Certification
5 4 (1.98%) DV Cleared
6 2 (0.99%) Microsoft Certification
7 1 (0.50%) Computer Science Degree
7 1 (0.50%) Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (3.47%) QA
2 2 (0.99%) Accessibility
2 2 (0.99%) GRC
2 2 (0.99%) WCAG
3 1 (0.50%) Data Quality
System Software
1 35 (17.33%) Docker
2 11 (5.45%) Postfix
3 1 (0.50%) Oracle RAC
Systems Management
1 23 (11.39%) Grafana
2 14 (6.93%) Kubernetes
3 11 (5.45%) Prometheus
4 5 (2.48%) Single Sign-On
5 4 (1.98%) Terraform
6 3 (1.49%) Control-M
6 3 (1.49%) IBM Guardium
6 3 (1.49%) Nessus
7 2 (0.99%) Kibana
8 1 (0.50%) Ansible
Vendors
1 38 (18.81%) Microsoft
2 17 (8.42%) Jaspersoft
3 15 (7.43%) Atlassian
4 9 (4.46%) Oracle
5 5 (2.48%) Siemens
5 5 (2.48%) Talend
6 3 (1.49%) ServiceNow
6 3 (1.49%) Tenable
7 2 (0.99%) IFS
7 2 (0.99%) NEC
7 2 (0.99%) Pega
7 2 (0.99%) SAP
8 1 (0.50%) Google
8 1 (0.50%) Infor
8 1 (0.50%) Informatica
8 1 (0.50%) Red Hat
8 1 (0.50%) Splunk