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

6 months to
14 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 62 67
Rank change year-on-year -6 +5 -33
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 81 37 48
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.14% 2.53% 2.53%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.69% 2.85% 3.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 66 19 20
10th Percentile £409 £343 £364
25th Percentile £455 £419 £417
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year +10.06% -4.60% -7.41%
75th Percentile £575 £534 £600
90th Percentile £892 £593 £675
England median daily rate £550 £601 £600
% change year-on-year -8.41% +0.08% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2 1 9
10th Percentile £58.10 - -
25th Percentile £60.50 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £66.50 £33.54 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +98.27% -41.67% -
75th Percentile £73.00 - £58.75
90th Percentile £75.70 - £72.50
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £62.50
% change year-on-year - +4.00% -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 2,197 1,296 1,592
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.19% 88.77% 84.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,421 809 1,037
10th Percentile £290 £210 £275
25th Percentile £403 £400 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £500 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 80 51 110
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.70 £11.94
25th Percentile £16.21 £15.74 £16.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £20.24 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +6.03% -12.00% +29.94%
75th Percentile £26.98 £33.65 £48.75
90th Percentile £33.20 £52.50 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.77 £35.00 £35.00
% change year-on-year -26.37% - -

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 14 February 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
Hourly Rate Histogram in the West Midlands

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in the West Midlands over the 6 months to 14 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in the West Midlands

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 14 February 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 +4 25 £525 +23.53% 18
Shropshire -20 25 £460 -6.12% 16
Warwickshire -12 8 £520 - 8
Worcestershire -12 7 £575 -2.13% 5
Coventry -13 6 £275 -40.54% 4
Herefordshire -14 5 £550 +4.76%
Staffordshire -2 2 - - 8
Solihull -3 2 £1,375 - 2
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 12 (14.81%) WebLogic
2 9 (11.11%) Apache
3 8 (9.88%) JBoss
4 6 (7.41%) OpenStack
5 4 (4.94%) Confluence
Applications
1 2 (2.47%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (2.47%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 44 (54.32%) AWS
2 20 (24.69%) Azure
3 19 (23.46%) GCP
4 18 (22.22%) Serverless
5 9 (11.11%) GitHub
5 9 (11.11%) OpenShift
6 8 (9.88%) Cloud Computing
6 8 (9.88%) GitHub Actions
7 7 (8.64%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (6.17%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (4.94%) Amazon EC2
9 4 (4.94%) Amazon S3
9 4 (4.94%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (4.94%) AWS Lambda
9 4 (4.94%) Azure AKS
9 4 (4.94%) Datadog
9 4 (4.94%) Google Kubernetes Engine
9 4 (4.94%) npm
9 4 (4.94%) Power Platform
9 4 (4.94%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.94%) Network Security
2 2 (2.47%) 3GPP
3 1 (1.23%) AMQP
3 1 (1.23%) HTTP
3 1 (1.23%) RTCP
3 1 (1.23%) RTP
3 1 (1.23%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 15 (18.52%) MongoDB
2 11 (13.58%) NoSQL
3 8 (9.88%) Relational Database
4 7 (8.64%) PostgreSQL
5 5 (6.17%) InfluxDB
6 4 (4.94%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (4.94%) MySQL
6 4 (4.94%) Oracle Database
7 2 (2.47%) Pentaho
8 1 (1.23%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 25 (30.86%) Git
2 23 (28.40%) GitLab
3 20 (24.69%) Jenkins
4 17 (20.99%) JUnit
4 17 (20.99%) Selenium
5 11 (13.58%) Liquibase
6 9 (11.11%) JIRA
6 9 (11.11%) Maven
7 8 (9.88%) Eclipse
7 8 (9.88%) IntelliJ
8 6 (7.41%) CircleCI
9 5 (6.17%) Artifactory
9 5 (6.17%) Cucumber
9 5 (6.17%) Mockito
10 4 (4.94%) Atlassian Bamboo
10 4 (4.94%) Bitbucket
10 4 (4.94%) Cypress.io
10 4 (4.94%) Gradle
10 4 (4.94%) Postman
10 4 (4.94%) Snyk
General
1 36 (44.44%) Social Skills
2 15 (18.52%) Finance
3 11 (13.58%) Banking
4 10 (12.35%) Influencing Skills
5 8 (9.88%) Financial Institution
6 6 (7.41%) Public Sector
7 4 (4.94%) Analytical Skills
8 3 (3.70%) Telecoms
9 2 (2.47%) Electronics
9 2 (2.47%) Retail
Job Titles
1 31 (38.27%) Software Engineer
2 17 (20.99%) Senior
3 11 (13.58%) Developer
3 11 (13.58%) Senior Software Engineer
4 10 (12.35%) DevOps Engineer
5 8 (9.88%) Cloud Engineer
6 7 (8.64%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 6 (7.41%) AWS Engineer
7 6 (7.41%) GCP Engineer
7 6 (7.41%) Java Developer
7 6 (7.41%) Senior DevOps
7 6 (7.41%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) AWS Software Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Engineering Specialist
8 5 (6.17%) GCP Software Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Java Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Lead
8 5 (6.17%) Senior Cloud Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Site Engineer
8 5 (6.17%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (35.80%) REST
2 21 (25.93%) JSON
3 20 (24.69%) Spring
4 17 (20.99%) Elastic Stack
5 15 (18.52%) RESTful
6 13 (16.05%) HTML
6 13 (16.05%) Spring Boot
6 13 (16.05%) XML
7 8 (9.88%) EJB
7 8 (9.88%) Hibernate
7 8 (9.88%) HTML5
7 8 (9.88%) J2EE
7 8 (9.88%) J2SE
7 8 (9.88%) Play Framework
7 8 (9.88%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (9.88%) SOAP
8 7 (8.64%) .NET
8 7 (8.64%) React
9 6 (7.41%) Playwright
10 5 (6.17%) GraalVM
Miscellaneous
1 12 (14.81%) Cloud Native
2 11 (13.58%) Public Cloud
3 10 (12.35%) Product Ownership
4 9 (11.11%) Distributed Systems
5 4 (4.94%) Private Cloud
6 3 (3.70%) Data Centre
7 2 (2.47%) Greenfield Project
8 1 (1.23%) Embedded Systems
8 1 (1.23%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.23%) FPGA
8 1 (1.23%) Media Streaming
8 1 (1.23%) Mobile App
8 1 (1.23%) Mobile Banking
8 1 (1.23%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 28 (34.57%) Linux
2 10 (12.35%) Unix
3 6 (7.41%) Windows
4 4 (4.94%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.47%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.23%) Android
6 1 (1.23%) Windows 10
6 1 (1.23%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (56.79%) Agile
2 44 (54.32%) CI/CD
3 39 (48.15%) Microservices
4 36 (44.44%) DevOps
5 27 (33.33%) Infrastructure as Code
6 25 (30.86%) Continuous Improvement
7 24 (29.63%) Containerisation
8 21 (25.93%) Problem-Solving
8 21 (25.93%) Scrum
9 19 (23.46%) Continuous Delivery
10 16 (19.75%) Continuous Integration
11 15 (18.52%) Mentoring
12 14 (17.28%) Infrastructure Automation
13 12 (14.81%) Computer Science
13 12 (14.81%) Test Automation
14 11 (13.58%) Configuration Management
15 10 (12.35%) Cryptography
15 10 (12.35%) Non-Functional Testing
15 10 (12.35%) Root Cause Analysis
15 10 (12.35%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 34 (41.98%) SQL
2 30 (37.04%) Java
3 26 (32.10%) Python
4 17 (20.99%) Go
5 11 (13.58%) Shell Script
6 8 (9.88%) Scala
7 5 (6.17%) C#
7 5 (6.17%) Kotlin
8 4 (4.94%) JavaScript
8 4 (4.94%) Perl
9 3 (3.70%) C++
10 2 (2.47%) PL/SQL
10 2 (2.47%) PowerShell
10 2 (2.47%) Swift
10 2 (2.47%) TypeScript
10 2 (2.47%) VB
Qualifications
1 27 (33.33%) Security Cleared
2 19 (23.46%) SC Cleared
3 14 (17.28%) Degree
4 11 (13.58%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (11.11%) DV Cleared
5 9 (11.11%) Master's Degree
6 2 (2.47%) AWS Certification
6 2 (2.47%) AWS Certified Developer
6 2 (2.47%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
6 2 (2.47%) BPSS Clearance
6 2 (2.47%) ISTQB
6 2 (2.47%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
6 2 (2.47%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
7 1 (1.23%) CISM
7 1 (1.23%) CISSP
7 1 (1.23%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (6.17%) WCAG
2 3 (3.70%) QA
3 2 (2.47%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.47%) FATCA
3 2 (2.47%) SLA
4 1 (1.23%) Data Quality
System Software
1 32 (39.51%) Docker
Systems Management
1 36 (44.44%) Kubernetes
2 28 (34.57%) Grafana
3 24 (29.63%) Terraform
4 23 (28.40%) Ansible
5 20 (24.69%) Prometheus
6 14 (17.28%) Puppet
7 9 (11.11%) Progress Chef
8 5 (6.17%) Kibana
9 4 (4.94%) Podman
10 3 (3.70%) Argo
10 3 (3.70%) Docker Swarm
11 2 (2.47%) HP ALM
11 2 (2.47%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 16 (19.75%) Splunk
2 10 (12.35%) Microsoft
3 9 (11.11%) Oracle
4 8 (9.88%) webMethods
5 5 (6.17%) Google
5 5 (6.17%) Red Hat
6 2 (2.47%) HP
6 2 (2.47%) SAP
6 2 (2.47%) Talend
7 1 (1.23%) Atlassian
7 1 (1.23%) Cadence
7 1 (1.23%) CyberArk
7 1 (1.23%) Databricks
7 1 (1.23%) Sage
7 1 (1.23%) Salesforce