Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in the West Midlands

Software Engineering
England > West Midlands

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the West Midlands requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 22 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 84 69 63
Rank change year-on-year -15 -6 -33
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 64 35 46
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.71% 2.20% 2.57%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.16% 2.52% 3.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 17 21
10th Percentile £415 £361 £378
25th Percentile £468 £413 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.14% -2.00% -7.41%
75th Percentile £588 £538 £600
90th Percentile £892 £598 £660
England median daily rate £550 £600 £624
% change year-on-year -8.33% -3.88% +4.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 1 1 6
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £72.50 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £75.00 £33.54 £47.50
Median % change year-on-year +123.61% -29.39% -
75th Percentile £77.50 - £56.25
90th Percentile - - £65.63
England median hourly rate £65.00 £64.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year +1.56% +2.40% -3.85%

All Process & Methodology Skills
West Midlands

Software Engineering 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 2,027 1,390 1,520
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.74% 87.53% 84.96%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,299 865 1,001
10th Percentile £267 £213 £275
25th Percentile £403 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £490
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% +7.14% -2.00%
75th Percentile £588 £613 £600
90th Percentile £675 £711 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £535
% change year-on-year -4.76% -1.87% -2.73%
Number of hourly rates quoted 85 49 85
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £13.50
25th Percentile £16.13 £16.26 £17.72
Median hourly rate £20.00 £21.59 £24.65
Median % change year-on-year -7.36% -12.41% +39.27%
75th Percentile £25.15 £33.54 £48.75
90th Percentile £35.60 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £34.50 £38.00
% change year-on-year -27.10% -9.21% +8.57%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

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

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in the West Midlands

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 22 January 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in the West Midlands

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in the West Midlands

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the West Midlands citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
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 Engineering within the West Midlands region over the 6 months to 22 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 +7 20 £525 +23.53% 27
Shropshire -31 19 £478 -1.14% 23
Worcestershire -13 8 £575 -2.13% 5
Herefordshire -14 5 £550 +4.76% 2
Coventry -14 5 £273 -37.71% 7
Solihull 0 2 £1,375 - 2
Staffordshire 0 2 - - 16
Warwickshire -11 2 £550 - 8
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
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 (14.06%) Apache
1 9 (14.06%) WebLogic
2 8 (12.50%) JBoss
3 7 (10.94%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.56%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.56%) Microsoft Excel
1 1 (1.56%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 38 (59.38%) AWS
2 18 (28.13%) Serverless
3 17 (26.56%) Azure
3 17 (26.56%) GCP
4 10 (15.63%) OpenShift
5 8 (12.50%) Cloud Computing
5 8 (12.50%) GitHub
5 8 (12.50%) GitHub Actions
6 7 (10.94%) Azure DevOps
7 6 (9.38%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (7.81%) AWS CloudFormation
8 5 (7.81%) Azure AKS
8 5 (7.81%) Datadog
8 5 (7.81%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 5 (7.81%) npm
8 5 (7.81%) Pulumi
9 4 (6.25%) Amazon EC2
9 4 (6.25%) Amazon S3
9 4 (6.25%) AWS KMS
9 4 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 4 (6.25%) Network Security
2 1 (1.56%) AMQP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (17.19%) MongoDB
2 10 (15.63%) NoSQL
3 6 (9.38%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (9.38%) Relational Database
4 5 (7.81%) InfluxDB
5 4 (6.25%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (3.13%) MySQL
6 2 (3.13%) Oracle Database
7 1 (1.56%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 23 (35.94%) GitLab
2 22 (34.38%) Git
3 20 (31.25%) Jenkins
4 18 (28.13%) JUnit
4 18 (28.13%) Selenium
5 10 (15.63%) Liquibase
5 10 (15.63%) Maven
6 8 (12.50%) Eclipse
6 8 (12.50%) IntelliJ
7 7 (10.94%) CircleCI
8 6 (9.38%) Artifactory
9 5 (7.81%) Bitbucket
9 5 (7.81%) Cucumber
9 5 (7.81%) Cypress.io
9 5 (7.81%) Gradle
9 5 (7.81%) JIRA
9 5 (7.81%) Mockito
9 5 (7.81%) SonarQube
9 5 (7.81%) Sonatype Nexus
9 5 (7.81%) webpack
General
1 31 (48.44%) Social Skills
2 11 (17.19%) Finance
3 9 (14.06%) Banking
3 9 (14.06%) Influencing Skills
4 8 (12.50%) Financial Institution
5 3 (4.69%) Public Sector
6 2 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (3.13%) Electronics
6 2 (3.13%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 24 (37.50%) Software Engineer
2 13 (20.31%) Senior
3 10 (15.63%) DevOps Engineer
4 8 (12.50%) Developer
4 8 (12.50%) Senior Software Engineer
5 7 (10.94%) Cloud Engineer
6 6 (9.38%) AWS Engineer
6 6 (9.38%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) AWS Software Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) Engineering Specialist
7 5 (7.81%) GCP Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) Java Developer
7 5 (7.81%) Java Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) Senior DevOps
7 5 (7.81%) Senior DevOps Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) Site Engineer
7 5 (7.81%) Site Reliability Engineer
8 4 (6.25%) GCP Software Engineer
8 4 (6.25%) Lead
8 4 (6.25%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (42.19%) REST
2 18 (28.13%) JSON
3 17 (26.56%) Elastic Stack
4 16 (25.00%) Spring
5 13 (20.31%) HTML
6 12 (18.75%) RESTful
7 9 (14.06%) Spring Boot
8 8 (12.50%) EJB
8 8 (12.50%) Hibernate
8 8 (12.50%) HTML5
8 8 (12.50%) J2EE
8 8 (12.50%) J2SE
8 8 (12.50%) Play Framework
8 8 (12.50%) RabbitMQ
8 8 (12.50%) SOAP
8 8 (12.50%) XML
9 7 (10.94%) React
10 5 (7.81%) Gherkin
10 5 (7.81%) OAuth2
10 5 (7.81%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 10 (15.63%) Cloud Native
1 10 (15.63%) Public Cloud
2 8 (12.50%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (9.38%) Product Ownership
4 5 (7.81%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.56%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (1.56%) Enterprise Software
5 1 (1.56%) FPGA
5 1 (1.56%) Greenfield Project
5 1 (1.56%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 25 (39.06%) Linux
2 8 (12.50%) Unix
3 6 (9.38%) Windows
4 1 (1.56%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.56%) Windows 10
4 1 (1.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 38 (59.38%) Agile
2 37 (57.81%) CI/CD
3 33 (51.56%) Microservices
4 32 (50.00%) DevOps
5 26 (40.63%) Infrastructure as Code
6 23 (35.94%) Containerisation
7 21 (32.81%) Continuous Improvement
8 20 (31.25%) Continuous Delivery
9 17 (26.56%) Scrum
10 16 (25.00%) Problem-Solving
11 15 (23.44%) Continuous Integration
12 13 (20.31%) Computer Science
13 12 (18.75%) Infrastructure Automation
13 12 (18.75%) Mentoring
14 11 (17.19%) Configuration Management
15 10 (15.63%) Cryptography
15 10 (15.63%) Root Cause Analysis
15 10 (15.63%) Software Delivery
15 10 (15.63%) Task Automation
15 10 (15.63%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 26 (40.63%) SQL
2 25 (39.06%) Python
3 20 (31.25%) Java
4 17 (26.56%) Go
5 8 (12.50%) Scala
6 6 (9.38%) Shell Script
7 3 (4.69%) C++
7 3 (4.69%) JavaScript
7 3 (4.69%) Kotlin
8 2 (3.13%) PowerShell
8 2 (3.13%) TypeScript
9 1 (1.56%) Bash
9 1 (1.56%) C#
9 1 (1.56%) Perl
9 1 (1.56%) PL/SQL
9 1 (1.56%) VB
Qualifications
1 22 (34.38%) Security Cleared
2 14 (21.88%) Degree
2 14 (21.88%) SC Cleared
3 11 (17.19%) Computer Science Degree
4 10 (15.63%) DV Cleared
5 9 (14.06%) Master's Degree
6 2 (3.13%) AWS Certification
6 2 (3.13%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (3.13%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 1 (1.56%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.56%) CISM
7 1 (1.56%) CISSP
7 1 (1.56%) ISTQB
7 1 (1.56%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 1 (1.56%) PhD
7 1 (1.56%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (7.81%) WCAG
2 2 (3.13%) Accessibility
2 2 (3.13%) QA
3 1 (1.56%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.56%) SLA
System Software
1 31 (48.44%) Docker
Systems Management
1 33 (51.56%) Kubernetes
2 27 (42.19%) Grafana
3 23 (35.94%) Ansible
3 23 (35.94%) Terraform
4 20 (31.25%) Prometheus
5 15 (23.44%) Puppet
6 10 (15.63%) Progress Chef
7 5 (7.81%) Kibana
7 5 (7.81%) Podman
8 3 (4.69%) Argo
8 3 (4.69%) Docker Swarm
9 1 (1.56%) HP ALM
9 1 (1.56%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 15 (23.44%) Splunk
2 9 (14.06%) Microsoft
3 8 (12.50%) webMethods
4 4 (6.25%) Oracle
5 2 (3.13%) Google
5 2 (3.13%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.56%) Atlassian
6 1 (1.56%) Cadence
6 1 (1.56%) CyberArk
6 1 (1.56%) Databricks
6 1 (1.56%) HP
6 1 (1.56%) SAP