Software Engineer Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Software Engineer
England > West Midlands

The median Software Engineer daily rate in the West Midlands is £530, according to job vacancies posted in the 6 months leading up to 19 September 2025.

The table below provides contractor rate benchmarking and summary statistics, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 111 102 107
Rank change year-on-year -9 +5 -47
Contract jobs requiring a Software Engineer 10 12 13
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the West Midlands 0.55% 0.63% 0.63%
As % of the Job Titles category 0.61% 0.67% 0.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 5 5 10
10th Percentile £463 £388 £520
25th Percentile £515 £463 £550
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £530 £492 £600
Median % change year-on-year +7.83% -18.08% +16.05%
75th Percentile £892 £588 -
90th Percentile - £670 £605
England median daily rate £638 £625 £590
% change year-on-year +2.00% +5.93% -1.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 2 0
Median hourly rate - £47.50 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.85 £65.00
% change year-on-year -1.29% +1.31% +8.33%

All Contract IT Job Vacancies
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 1,635 1,788 1,962
% of contract IT jobs with a recognized job title 89.30% 93.42% 95.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,056 1,152 1,335
10th Percentile £235 £231 £229
25th Percentile £375 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £491 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.80% - +1.01%
75th Percentile £582 £624 £600
90th Percentile £650 £713 £725
England median daily rate £508 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -3.33% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 108 63 58
10th Percentile £12.62 £12.62 £14.42
25th Percentile £14.00 £14.63 £17.03
Median hourly rate £25.15 £21.00 £21.00
Median % change year-on-year +19.76% - +16.67%
75th Percentile £40.07 £33.74 £30.78
90th Percentile £50.00 £52.00 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £46.18 £45.00
% change year-on-year -45.54% +2.62% +73.08%

Software Engineer
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Job postings that featured Software Engineer in the job title as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineer in the West Midlands

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Software Engineer
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineer in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 19 September 2025.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineer in the West Midlands

Software Engineer
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

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

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

Software Engineer
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 Software Engineer within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 19 September 2025. 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 -13 6 £429 +2.57% 5
Birmingham +5 4 £711 +49.68% 20
Software Engineer
England

Software Engineer Skill Set
Top 30 Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands

For the 6 months to 19 September 2025, Software Engineer contract job roles required the following skills and capabilities in order of popularity. The figures indicate the absolute number co-occurrences and as a proportion of all contract job ads across the West Midlands region featuring Software Engineer in the job title.

1 10 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 8 (80.00%) Agile
3 7 (70.00%) REST
3 7 (70.00%) DevOps
3 7 (70.00%) CI/CD
4 6 (60.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 6 (60.00%) Social Skills
4 6 (60.00%) Microservices
4 6 (60.00%) Docker
4 6 (60.00%) AWS
5 5 (50.00%) SQL
6 4 (40.00%) Linux
6 4 (40.00%) Python
6 4 (40.00%) Cryptography
6 4 (40.00%) RESTful
6 4 (40.00%) Continuous Integration
6 4 (40.00%) Degree
6 4 (40.00%) Computer Science
6 4 (40.00%) Splunk
6 4 (40.00%) NoSQL
6 4 (40.00%) Root Cause Analysis
6 4 (40.00%) Cybersecurity
6 4 (40.00%) Go
6 4 (40.00%) Ansible
6 4 (40.00%) Kubernetes
6 4 (40.00%) Continuous Delivery
6 4 (40.00%) Public Cloud
6 4 (40.00%) GCP
6 4 (40.00%) Liquibase
6 4 (40.00%) Elastic Stack

Software Engineer Skill Set
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 3 (30.00%) WebLogic
2 2 (20.00%) Apache
2 2 (20.00%) JBoss
3 1 (10.00%) Tuxedo
Cloud Services
1 6 (60.00%) AWS
2 4 (40.00%) GCP
2 4 (40.00%) Serverless
3 2 (20.00%) Cloud Computing
4 1 (10.00%) Power Platform
Database & Business Intelligence
1 4 (40.00%) NoSQL
2 2 (20.00%) MongoDB
3 1 (10.00%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 4 (40.00%) Liquibase
2 2 (20.00%) Eclipse
2 2 (20.00%) Git
2 2 (20.00%) GitLab
2 2 (20.00%) IntelliJ
2 2 (20.00%) Jenkins
2 2 (20.00%) JUnit
2 2 (20.00%) Selenium
General
1 6 (60.00%) Social Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Banking
2 2 (20.00%) Finance
2 2 (20.00%) Financial Institution
2 2 (20.00%) Influencing Skills
2 2 (20.00%) Manufacturing
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 7 (70.00%) REST
2 4 (40.00%) Elastic Stack
2 4 (40.00%) RESTful
3 3 (30.00%) JSON
3 3 (30.00%) SOAP
3 3 (30.00%) Spring
4 2 (20.00%) EJB
4 2 (20.00%) Hibernate
4 2 (20.00%) HTML
4 2 (20.00%) HTML5
4 2 (20.00%) J2EE
4 2 (20.00%) J2SE
4 2 (20.00%) Play Framework
4 2 (20.00%) XML
5 1 (10.00%) OpenAPI
5 1 (10.00%) Spring Boot
5 1 (10.00%) Swagger
5 1 (10.00%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 4 (40.00%) Cloud Native
1 4 (40.00%) Public Cloud
2 2 (20.00%) Distributed Systems
3 1 (10.00%) Legacy Systems
Operating Systems
1 4 (40.00%) Linux
2 2 (20.00%) Unix
Processes & Methodologies
1 10 (100.00%) Software Engineering
2 8 (80.00%) Agile
3 7 (70.00%) CI/CD
3 7 (70.00%) DevOps
4 6 (60.00%) Infrastructure as Code
4 6 (60.00%) Microservices
5 4 (40.00%) Computer Science
5 4 (40.00%) Containerisation
5 4 (40.00%) Continuous Delivery
5 4 (40.00%) Continuous Integration
5 4 (40.00%) Cost Optimisation
5 4 (40.00%) Cryptography
5 4 (40.00%) Cybersecurity
5 4 (40.00%) Infrastructure Automation
5 4 (40.00%) Problem-Solving
5 4 (40.00%) Root Cause Analysis
6 3 (30.00%) Scrum
7 2 (20.00%) Change Management
7 2 (20.00%) Data Security
7 2 (20.00%) Open Source
Programming Languages
1 5 (50.00%) SQL
2 4 (40.00%) Go
2 4 (40.00%) Python
3 3 (30.00%) Java
3 3 (30.00%) Scala
4 1 (10.00%) Bash
4 1 (10.00%) C
4 1 (10.00%) Korn
4 1 (10.00%) PL/SQL
4 1 (10.00%) Shell Script
Qualifications
1 4 (40.00%) Computer Science Degree
1 4 (40.00%) Degree
2 2 (20.00%) Master's Degree
2 2 (20.00%) SC Cleared
2 2 (20.00%) Security Cleared
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Certification
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Certified Developer
3 1 (10.00%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
System Software
1 6 (60.00%) Docker
Systems Management
1 4 (40.00%) Ansible
1 4 (40.00%) Grafana
1 4 (40.00%) Kubernetes
1 4 (40.00%) Prometheus
1 4 (40.00%) Terraform
2 2 (20.00%) Puppet
Vendors
1 4 (40.00%) Splunk
2 3 (30.00%) webMethods
3 2 (20.00%) Microsoft
4 1 (10.00%) Google
4 1 (10.00%) Oracle
4 1 (10.00%) ServiceNow
4 1 (10.00%) Trillium