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 26 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 94 57
Rank change year-on-year +18 -37 +35
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 99 32 55
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.76% 1.74% 2.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.26% 1.95% 3.50%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 18 35
10th Percentile £418 £428 £343
25th Percentile £445 £515 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £575 £475
Median % change year-on-year -18.26% +21.05% -20.83%
75th Percentile £551 £588 £588
90th Percentile £672 £714 £613
England median daily rate £550 £588 £615
% change year-on-year -6.38% -4.47% +1.49%
Number of hourly rates quoted 10 0 4
10th Percentile - - £38.48
25th Percentile - - £45.89
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £53.75
75th Percentile - - £62.81
90th Percentile £77.50 - £70.13
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.50
% change year-on-year - -0.76% +0.77%

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 3,041 1,637 1,570
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.90% 89.11% 82.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,860 1,045 993
10th Percentile £315 £249 £250
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £675 £725
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 218 109 39
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.62 £14.70
25th Percentile £17.50 £16.30 £16.38
Median hourly rate £28.30 £23.05 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year +22.75% -11.77% -5.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 £33.88 £40.25
90th Percentile £67.84 £50.00 £55.65
England median hourly rate £41.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +65.23% -41.51% -1.94%

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 26 September 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 26 September 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 26 September 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 +18 37 £470 -11.32% 106
Shropshire -36 22 £459 +6.74% 5
Solihull - 10 £450 - 12
Coventry -15 9 £388 -38.00% 15
Herefordshire +7 6 - - 6
Warwickshire -8 6 £650 +44.44% 30
Worcestershire +2 5 £575 - 15
Staffordshire -11 3 £725 - 16
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 7 (7.07%) Confluence
2 3 (3.03%) Apache
2 3 (3.03%) SAS
3 1 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (1.01%) Apache Spark
3 1 (1.01%) OpenStack
3 1 (1.01%) Oracle Workflow
3 1 (1.01%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 35 (35.35%) AWS
2 18 (18.18%) Azure
3 12 (12.12%) Serverless
4 10 (10.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 10 (10.10%) Amazon S3
4 10 (10.10%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (9.09%) GitHub
6 8 (8.08%) Amazon EKS
7 7 (7.07%) Amazon EC2
7 7 (7.07%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (7.07%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (5.05%) Power Platform
9 4 (4.04%) GCP
10 3 (3.03%) Amazon EMR
10 3 (3.03%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Functions
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 1 (1.01%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.01%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (10.10%) MongoDB
2 9 (9.09%) Relational Database
3 5 (5.05%) NoSQL
3 5 (5.05%) Power BI
4 4 (4.04%) Amazon Athena
4 4 (4.04%) DynamoDB
4 4 (4.04%) Pentaho
4 4 (4.04%) SQL Server
5 3 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
5 3 (3.03%) Apache Iceberg
5 3 (3.03%) BusinessObjects
5 3 (3.03%) Data Lake
5 3 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (2.02%) Ingres
7 1 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
7 1 (1.01%) MySQL
7 1 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
7 1 (1.01%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 12 (12.12%) Git
2 11 (11.11%) GitLab
3 10 (10.10%) Jenkins
4 9 (9.09%) JIRA
5 6 (6.06%) JUnit
5 6 (6.06%) Maven
6 5 (5.05%) Mockito
7 3 (3.03%) Artifactory
7 3 (3.03%) Selenium
7 3 (3.03%) SonarQube
8 2 (2.02%) Cucumber
8 2 (2.02%) Oracle Forms
8 2 (2.02%) Team Foundation Server
9 1 (1.01%) Bitbucket
9 1 (1.01%) CircleCI
9 1 (1.01%) Cypress.io
9 1 (1.01%) Gradle
9 1 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
9 1 (1.01%) Visual Studio
9 1 (1.01%) webpack
General
1 27 (27.27%) Social Skills
2 18 (18.18%) Public Sector
3 11 (11.11%) Automotive
4 8 (8.08%) Finance
5 5 (5.05%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
7 2 (2.02%) Aerospace
8 1 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 37 (37.37%) Software Engineer
2 27 (27.27%) Senior
3 20 (20.20%) Lead
4 19 (19.19%) Developer
5 10 (10.10%) Java Developer
6 9 (9.09%) Embedded Engineer
6 9 (9.09%) Embedded Software Engineer
7 8 (8.08%) Automation Engineer
7 8 (8.08%) Senior Developer
8 7 (7.07%) Java Engineer
8 7 (7.07%) Scrum Master
8 7 (7.07%) Senior Software Engineer
9 5 (5.05%) Java Software Engineer
9 5 (5.05%) Lead Software Engineer
9 5 (5.05%) Test Automation Engineer
9 5 (5.05%) Test Engineer
10 4 (4.04%) Java Scrum Master
10 4 (4.04%) Software Test Engineer
10 4 (4.04%) Technical Leader
11 3 (3.03%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 21 (21.21%) Spring
1 21 (21.21%) Spring Boot
2 16 (16.16%) REST
3 13 (13.13%) .NET
4 12 (12.12%) RESTful
5 8 (8.08%) Kafka
5 8 (8.08%) Terraform
6 6 (6.06%) JPA
7 5 (5.05%) Django
7 5 (5.05%) Web Services
8 4 (4.04%) .NET Core
8 4 (4.04%) SOAP
9 3 (3.03%) .NET Framework
9 3 (3.03%) AngularJS
9 3 (3.03%) gRPC
9 3 (3.03%) Hibernate
9 3 (3.03%) JSON
9 3 (3.03%) Protocol Buffers
9 3 (3.03%) React
10 2 (2.02%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 24 (24.24%) Cloud Native
2 11 (11.11%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (3.03%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.02%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.02%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.01%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.01%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.01%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (1.01%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.01%) LIMS
6 1 (1.01%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.01%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.01%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 5 (5.05%) Linux
2 3 (3.03%) Windows
3 2 (2.02%) Embedded Linux
3 2 (2.02%) FreeRTOS
3 2 (2.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 1 (1.01%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 47 (47.47%) Agile
2 38 (38.38%) CI/CD
3 34 (34.34%) Continuous Improvement
3 34 (34.34%) DevOps
4 29 (29.29%) Scrum
5 27 (27.27%) Test Automation
6 25 (25.25%) Microservices
7 22 (22.22%) Stakeholder Management
8 19 (19.19%) Software Testing
9 17 (17.17%) Sprint Planning
10 16 (16.16%) Containerisation
10 16 (16.16%) Problem-Solving
10 16 (16.16%) SDLC
10 16 (16.16%) Technical Leadership
11 15 (15.15%) Mentoring
12 14 (14.14%) Code Quality
13 13 (13.13%) Observability
14 12 (12.12%) Clean Code
14 12 (12.12%) Infrastructure as Code
15 11 (11.11%) Software Delivery
Programming Languages
1 35 (35.35%) Java
2 17 (17.17%) SQL
3 16 (16.16%) Python
4 12 (12.12%) C#
5 7 (7.07%) TypeScript
6 5 (5.05%) C
6 5 (5.05%) JavaScript
6 5 (5.05%) Kotlin
7 3 (3.03%) C++
7 3 (3.03%) PowerShell
8 2 (2.02%) PL/SQL
8 2 (2.02%) ProC
8 2 (2.02%) Scala
8 2 (2.02%) VB
8 2 (2.02%) VB6
9 1 (1.01%) Bash
9 1 (1.01%) Shell Script
9 1 (1.01%) T-SQL
9 1 (1.01%) VBA
Qualifications
1 40 (40.40%) Security Cleared
2 36 (36.36%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.07%) AWS Certification
3 7 (7.07%) BPSS Clearance
4 3 (3.03%) Degree
4 3 (3.03%) DV Cleared
5 2 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 2 (2.02%) Master's Degree
6 1 (1.01%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (12.12%) QA
2 4 (4.04%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.02%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.02%) ISO 26262
3 2 (2.02%) MISRA
3 2 (2.02%) WCAG
4 1 (1.01%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 1 (1.01%) FATCA
4 1 (1.01%) GMP
4 1 (1.01%) GxP
4 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 17025
System Software
1 14 (14.14%) Docker
Systems Management
1 10 (10.10%) Kubernetes
2 8 (8.08%) Grafana
3 4 (4.04%) Ansible
4 3 (3.03%) Kibana
4 3 (3.03%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.01%) Control-M
5 1 (1.01%) Podman
5 1 (1.01%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.01%) Puppet
Vendors
1 10 (10.10%) Oracle
2 4 (4.04%) Informatica
2 4 (4.04%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.03%) Databricks
3 3 (3.03%) Denodo
3 3 (3.03%) Dynatrace
4 2 (2.02%) QNX
4 2 (2.02%) Red Hat
4 2 (2.02%) ServiceNow
5 1 (1.01%) Actian
5 1 (1.01%) Google
5 1 (1.01%) IBM
5 1 (1.01%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.01%) Sage
5 1 (1.01%) Splunk
5 1 (1.01%) Talend