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 20 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
20 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 78 58 90
Rank change year-on-year -20 +32 -67
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 63 53 34
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.95% 2.81% 1.77%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.28% 3.37% 2.09%
Number of daily rates quoted 47 30 23
10th Percentile £418 £338 £385
25th Percentile £466 £359 £488
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £484 £550
Median % change year-on-year +8.58% -12.09% +1.85%
75th Percentile £575 £588 £600
90th Percentile £608 £613 £672
England median daily rate £561 £600 £605
% change year-on-year -6.46% -0.79% +0.79%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £50.00 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

All Process and 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 1,918 1,574 1,626
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 89.75% 83.55% 84.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,218 988 1,099
10th Percentile £263 £250 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £522 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.21% +4.40% -
75th Percentile £588 £619 £600
90th Percentile £675 £716 £713
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 122 45 51
10th Percentile £13.25 £14.70 £15.50
25th Percentile £16.30 £17.25 £17.72
Median hourly rate £23.03 £29.00 £25.00
Median % change year-on-year -20.60% +16.00% +41.08%
75th Percentile £30.82 £35.00 £52.50
90th Percentile £50.00 £51.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £37.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -32.03% -17.78% +26.90%

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 20 November 2025.

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 20 November 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 -28 23 £489 +35.83% 16
Birmingham -5 17 £525 +14.13% 31
Worcestershire -15 7 £575 - 7
Warwickshire -5 6 £500 - 10
Coventry -10 6 £275 -45.00% 11
Staffordshire -1 2 - - 21
Herefordshire -11 2 £550 - 6
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 10 (15.87%) WebLogic
2 8 (12.70%) Apache
2 8 (12.70%) JBoss
3 6 (9.52%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.59%) Confluence
4 1 (1.59%) Tuxedo
Cloud Services
1 38 (60.32%) AWS
2 17 (26.98%) Azure
2 17 (26.98%) GCP
3 15 (23.81%) Serverless
4 8 (12.70%) Cloud Computing
4 8 (12.70%) GitHub
4 8 (12.70%) GitHub Actions
5 6 (9.52%) Azure DevOps
5 6 (9.52%) OpenShift
6 5 (7.94%) Amazon EKS
6 5 (7.94%) AWS CloudFormation
6 5 (7.94%) Azure AKS
6 5 (7.94%) Power Platform
7 4 (6.35%) AWS KMS
7 4 (6.35%) Datadog
7 4 (6.35%) Google Kubernetes Engine
7 4 (6.35%) npm
7 4 (6.35%) Pulumi
8 3 (4.76%) Azure Data Factory
8 3 (4.76%) Microsoft 365
Communications & Networking
1 2 (3.17%) Network Security
2 1 (1.59%) DNS
2 1 (1.59%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (17.46%) MongoDB
2 10 (15.87%) NoSQL
3 6 (9.52%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (3.17%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (3.17%) InfluxDB
4 2 (3.17%) MySQL
4 2 (3.17%) Oracle Database
4 2 (3.17%) Relational Database
5 1 (1.59%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 21 (33.33%) Git
1 21 (33.33%) GitLab
2 17 (26.98%) Jenkins
2 17 (26.98%) JUnit
2 17 (26.98%) Selenium
3 10 (15.87%) Liquibase
4 9 (14.29%) Maven
5 8 (12.70%) Eclipse
5 8 (12.70%) IntelliJ
6 6 (9.52%) CircleCI
6 6 (9.52%) JIRA
7 5 (7.94%) Cucumber
7 5 (7.94%) Mockito
8 4 (6.35%) Artifactory
8 4 (6.35%) Bitbucket
8 4 (6.35%) Cypress.io
8 4 (6.35%) Gradle
8 4 (6.35%) SonarQube
8 4 (6.35%) Sonatype Nexus
8 4 (6.35%) webpack
General
1 35 (55.56%) Social Skills
2 8 (12.70%) Finance
2 8 (12.70%) Financial Institution
2 8 (12.70%) Influencing Skills
3 7 (11.11%) Banking
4 5 (7.94%) Public Sector
5 2 (3.17%) Telecoms
6 1 (1.59%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 21 (33.33%) Software Engineer
2 12 (19.05%) Senior
3 11 (17.46%) DevOps Engineer
4 8 (12.70%) Developer
5 7 (11.11%) Cloud Engineer
5 7 (11.11%) Senior Software Engineer
6 6 (9.52%) AWS Engineer
6 6 (9.52%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 5 (7.94%) AWS Software Engineer
7 5 (7.94%) GCP Engineer
7 5 (7.94%) Java Developer
7 5 (7.94%) Java Engineer
7 5 (7.94%) Lead
8 4 (6.35%) Engineering Specialist
8 4 (6.35%) GCP Software Engineer
8 4 (6.35%) Python Engineer
8 4 (6.35%) Senior Cloud Engineer
8 4 (6.35%) Senior DevOps
8 4 (6.35%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 2 (3.17%) Site Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (41.27%) REST
2 18 (28.57%) JSON
2 18 (28.57%) Spring
3 17 (26.98%) Elastic Stack
4 13 (20.63%) HTML
5 12 (19.05%) RESTful
6 10 (15.87%) Spring Boot
7 9 (14.29%) SOAP
8 8 (12.70%) EJB
8 8 (12.70%) Hibernate
8 8 (12.70%) HTML5
8 8 (12.70%) J2EE
8 8 (12.70%) J2SE
8 8 (12.70%) Play Framework
8 8 (12.70%) XML
9 6 (9.52%) React
10 5 (7.94%) Gherkin
10 5 (7.94%) OAuth2
10 5 (7.94%) OpenID
10 5 (7.94%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 11 (17.46%) Cloud Native
2 10 (15.87%) Public Cloud
3 8 (12.70%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (7.94%) Product Ownership
5 4 (6.35%) Private Cloud
6 2 (3.17%) SCADA
7 1 (1.59%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.59%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (1.59%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 21 (33.33%) Linux
2 8 (12.70%) Unix
3 5 (7.94%) Windows
4 2 (3.17%) Windows Server
5 1 (1.59%) Amazon Linux
5 1 (1.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 1 (1.59%) Ubuntu
5 1 (1.59%) Windows 10
Processes & Methodologies
1 42 (66.67%) Agile
2 36 (57.14%) CI/CD
3 34 (53.97%) DevOps
4 33 (52.38%) Microservices
5 25 (39.68%) Infrastructure as Code
6 22 (34.92%) Containerisation
7 19 (30.16%) Continuous Improvement
8 18 (28.57%) Continuous Delivery
8 18 (28.57%) Problem-Solving
9 17 (26.98%) Computer Science
9 17 (26.98%) Scrum
10 16 (25.40%) Continuous Integration
11 13 (20.63%) Infrastructure Automation
12 12 (19.05%) Mentoring
13 10 (15.87%) Cryptography
13 10 (15.87%) Root Cause Analysis
14 9 (14.29%) High Availability
15 8 (12.70%) Cybersecurity
15 8 (12.70%) Non-Functional Testing
15 8 (12.70%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 23 (36.51%) Python
1 23 (36.51%) SQL
2 19 (30.16%) Java
3 16 (25.40%) Go
4 9 (14.29%) Scala
5 4 (6.35%) Shell Script
6 3 (4.76%) Bash
6 3 (4.76%) JavaScript
6 3 (4.76%) Kotlin
7 2 (3.17%) C#
8 1 (1.59%) C
8 1 (1.59%) Korn
8 1 (1.59%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (1.59%) Perl
8 1 (1.59%) PL/SQL
8 1 (1.59%) PowerShell
8 1 (1.59%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 20 (31.75%) Security Cleared
2 17 (26.98%) Degree
3 15 (23.81%) Computer Science Degree
4 11 (17.46%) SC Cleared
5 9 (14.29%) DV Cleared
5 9 (14.29%) Master's Degree
6 2 (3.17%) AWS Certification
6 2 (3.17%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (3.17%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 1 (1.59%) BPSS Clearance
7 1 (1.59%) CISM
7 1 (1.59%) CISSP
7 1 (1.59%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 6 (9.52%) WCAG
2 5 (7.94%) QA
3 3 (4.76%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.59%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.59%) IEC 61131
4 1 (1.59%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 31 (49.21%) Docker
2 1 (1.59%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.59%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 31 (49.21%) Kubernetes
2 23 (36.51%) Grafana
3 20 (31.75%) Ansible
3 20 (31.75%) Terraform
4 16 (25.40%) Prometheus
5 14 (22.22%) Puppet
6 7 (11.11%) Progress Chef
7 5 (7.94%) Kibana
8 4 (6.35%) Podman
9 3 (4.76%) Argo
10 1 (1.59%) Consul
10 1 (1.59%) Docker Swarm
Vendors
1 15 (23.81%) Splunk
2 9 (14.29%) webMethods
3 7 (11.11%) Microsoft
4 4 (6.35%) Oracle
5 2 (3.17%) Atlassian
5 2 (3.17%) Google
6 1 (1.59%) CyberArk
6 1 (1.59%) Databricks
6 1 (1.59%) MuleSoft
6 1 (1.59%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.59%) Red Hat
6 1 (1.59%) Salesforce
6 1 (1.59%) ServiceNow
6 1 (1.59%) Siemens
6 1 (1.59%) Trillium