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 1 March 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
1 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 68 63 55
Rank change year-on-year -5 -8 -22
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 86 36 57
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 3.16% 2.60% 2.98%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.71% 2.89% 3.54%
Number of daily rates quoted 70 19 26
10th Percentile £412 £343 £358
25th Percentile £443 £438 £414
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £477 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.55% -4.60% -7.41%
75th Percentile £575 £534 £555
90th Percentile £892 £593 £668
England median daily rate £550 £600 £600
% change year-on-year -8.33% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 1 11
10th Percentile - - -
25th Percentile £56.50 - £46.25
Median hourly rate £58.00 £33.54 £57.50
Median % change year-on-year +72.93% -41.67% -
75th Percentile £68.50 - £58.75
90th Percentile £73.90 - £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 2,317 1,246 1,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.15% 89.96% 84.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,530 802 1,066
10th Percentile £300 £210 £275
25th Percentile £402 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £497 £500 £475
Median % change year-on-year -0.57% +5.26% -5.00%
75th Percentile £581 £600 £600
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
England median daily rate £505 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -3.81% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 81 53 112
10th Percentile £14.00 £12.62 £12.10
25th Percentile £16.10 £14.70 £16.54
Median hourly rate £21.46 £18.74 £23.00
Median % change year-on-year +14.51% -18.52% +29.87%
75th Percentile £27.21 £30.00 £45.00
90th Percentile £47.50 £35.00 £66.63
England median hourly rate £28.55 £35.00 £34.21
% change year-on-year -18.43% +2.31% -2.92%

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 1 March 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 1 March 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 1 March 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
Shropshire -20 31 £453 -7.65% 29
Birmingham -5 24 £525 +23.53% 20
Warwickshire -12 9 £520 - 6
Worcestershire -12 6 £575 -2.13% 8
Coventry -20 6 £275 -39.73% 2
Herefordshire -12 5 £550 +4.76%
Staffordshire -2 2 - - 7
Solihull -5 2 £1,375 - 3
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 13 (15.12%) WebLogic
2 9 (10.47%) Apache
3 8 (9.30%) Confluence
3 8 (9.30%) JBoss
4 5 (5.81%) OpenStack
5 3 (3.49%) SAS
Applications
1 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Excel
1 2 (2.33%) Microsoft Office
Cloud Services
1 43 (50.00%) AWS
2 19 (22.09%) Azure
3 17 (19.77%) GCP
3 17 (19.77%) Serverless
4 8 (9.30%) Cloud Computing
4 8 (9.30%) GitHub
4 8 (9.30%) OpenShift
5 7 (8.14%) GitHub Actions
5 7 (8.14%) Power Platform
6 6 (6.98%) Azure DevOps
7 4 (4.65%) Amazon EC2
7 4 (4.65%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (4.65%) Amazon S3
7 4 (4.65%) AWS KMS
7 4 (4.65%) AWS Lambda
8 3 (3.49%) Azure AKS
8 3 (3.49%) Azure Logic Apps
8 3 (3.49%) Google Kubernetes Engine
8 3 (3.49%) Microsoft 365
8 3 (3.49%) Pulumi
Communications & Networking
1 4 (4.65%) Network Security
2 3 (3.49%) 3GPP
3 1 (1.16%) AMQP
3 1 (1.16%) HTTP
3 1 (1.16%) RTCP
3 1 (1.16%) RTP
3 1 (1.16%) XCAP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 16 (18.60%) MongoDB
2 10 (11.63%) NoSQL
2 10 (11.63%) PostgreSQL
3 8 (9.30%) Relational Database
4 7 (8.14%) MySQL
5 5 (5.81%) InfluxDB
5 5 (5.81%) Pentaho
6 4 (4.65%) Amazon RDS
6 4 (4.65%) Oracle Database
6 4 (4.65%) Power BI
7 3 (3.49%) Amazon Redshift
7 3 (3.49%) Apache Hive
7 3 (3.49%) BusinessObjects
7 3 (3.49%) Hadoop
7 3 (3.49%) Impala
Development Applications
1 25 (29.07%) Git
1 25 (29.07%) GitLab
2 22 (25.58%) Jenkins
3 16 (18.60%) JUnit
3 16 (18.60%) Selenium
4 13 (15.12%) JIRA
5 10 (11.63%) Liquibase
6 8 (9.30%) Eclipse
6 8 (9.30%) IntelliJ
6 8 (9.30%) Maven
7 6 (6.98%) Bitbucket
8 5 (5.81%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 5 (5.81%) CircleCI
8 5 (5.81%) Cucumber
8 5 (5.81%) Mockito
9 4 (4.65%) Artifactory
10 3 (3.49%) Cypress.io
10 3 (3.49%) Gradle
10 3 (3.49%) Snyk
10 3 (3.49%) webpack
General
1 36 (41.86%) Social Skills
2 15 (17.44%) Finance
3 11 (12.79%) Banking
4 10 (11.63%) Influencing Skills
5 8 (9.30%) Financial Institution
6 7 (8.14%) Public Sector
7 4 (4.65%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (4.65%) Telecoms
8 2 (2.33%) Electronics
8 2 (2.33%) Retail
Job Titles
1 35 (40.70%) Software Engineer
2 16 (18.60%) Senior
3 12 (13.95%) Developer
4 10 (11.63%) Senior Software Engineer
5 9 (10.47%) DevOps Engineer
6 8 (9.30%) Cloud Engineer
7 7 (8.14%) Cloud Software Engineer
7 7 (8.14%) Java Developer
7 7 (8.14%) Java Engineer
8 6 (6.98%) AWS Engineer
8 6 (6.98%) Data Engineer
8 6 (6.98%) GCP Engineer
8 6 (6.98%) Senior DevOps
8 6 (6.98%) Senior DevOps Engineer
9 5 (5.81%) AWS Software Engineer
9 5 (5.81%) Engineering Specialist
9 5 (5.81%) GCP Software Engineer
9 5 (5.81%) Lead
9 5 (5.81%) Senior Cloud Engineer
9 5 (5.81%) Site Reliability Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (31.40%) REST
2 22 (25.58%) Spring
3 20 (23.26%) JSON
4 15 (17.44%) Elastic Stack
4 15 (17.44%) Spring Boot
5 14 (16.28%) RESTful
5 14 (16.28%) XML
6 13 (15.12%) HTML
7 8 (9.30%) .NET
7 8 (9.30%) EJB
7 8 (9.30%) Hibernate
7 8 (9.30%) HTML5
7 8 (9.30%) J2EE
7 8 (9.30%) J2SE
7 8 (9.30%) Play Framework
7 8 (9.30%) RabbitMQ
7 8 (9.30%) SOAP
8 7 (8.14%) React
9 6 (6.98%) Playwright
10 5 (5.81%) GraalVM
Miscellaneous
1 11 (12.79%) Cloud Native
2 10 (11.63%) Product Ownership
2 10 (11.63%) Public Cloud
3 9 (10.47%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (4.65%) Data Centre
5 3 (3.49%) Private Cloud
6 2 (2.33%) Greenfield Project
7 1 (1.16%) Embedded Systems
7 1 (1.16%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (1.16%) FPGA
7 1 (1.16%) Media Streaming
7 1 (1.16%) Mobile App
7 1 (1.16%) Mobile Banking
7 1 (1.16%) Onboarding
Operating Systems
1 27 (31.40%) Linux
2 13 (15.12%) Unix
3 6 (6.98%) Windows
4 5 (5.81%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
5 2 (2.33%) Apple iOS
6 1 (1.16%) Android
6 1 (1.16%) Windows 10
6 1 (1.16%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 49 (56.98%) Agile
2 46 (53.49%) CI/CD
3 39 (45.35%) Microservices
4 37 (43.02%) DevOps
5 25 (29.07%) Continuous Improvement
5 25 (29.07%) Infrastructure as Code
5 25 (29.07%) Scrum
6 22 (25.58%) Containerisation
7 21 (24.42%) Problem-Solving
8 18 (20.93%) Continuous Delivery
9 16 (18.60%) Continuous Integration
10 15 (17.44%) Mentoring
11 14 (16.28%) Infrastructure Automation
12 11 (12.79%) Computer Science
12 11 (12.79%) Test Automation
13 10 (11.63%) Configuration Management
13 10 (11.63%) Non-Functional Testing
14 9 (10.47%) High Availability
14 9 (10.47%) Open Source
14 9 (10.47%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 39 (45.35%) SQL
2 36 (41.86%) Java
3 28 (32.56%) Python
4 16 (18.60%) Go
5 12 (13.95%) Shell Script
6 8 (9.30%) Scala
7 6 (6.98%) C#
7 6 (6.98%) PL/SQL
8 5 (5.81%) Kotlin
8 5 (5.81%) Perl
9 4 (4.65%) JavaScript
10 3 (3.49%) C++
10 3 (3.49%) HiveQL
11 2 (2.33%) PowerShell
11 2 (2.33%) Swift
11 2 (2.33%) TypeScript
11 2 (2.33%) VB
Qualifications
1 32 (37.21%) Security Cleared
2 25 (29.07%) SC Cleared
3 14 (16.28%) Degree
4 10 (11.63%) Computer Science Degree
5 9 (10.47%) Master's Degree
6 8 (9.30%) DV Cleared
7 2 (2.33%) AWS Certification
7 2 (2.33%) AWS Certified Developer
7 2 (2.33%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 2 (2.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (2.33%) ISTQB
7 2 (2.33%) ISTQB Foundation Certification
7 2 (2.33%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
8 1 (1.16%) CISM
8 1 (1.16%) CISSP
8 1 (1.16%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.81%) WCAG
2 3 (3.49%) QA
3 2 (2.33%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.33%) FATCA
3 2 (2.33%) SLA
4 1 (1.16%) Data Quality
System Software
1 30 (34.88%) Docker
2 3 (3.49%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 35 (40.70%) Kubernetes
2 29 (33.72%) Grafana
3 24 (27.91%) Ansible
4 22 (25.58%) Terraform
5 18 (20.93%) Prometheus
6 13 (15.12%) Puppet
7 8 (9.30%) Progress Chef
8 5 (5.81%) Kibana
9 3 (3.49%) Argo
9 3 (3.49%) Docker Swarm
9 3 (3.49%) Podman
10 2 (2.33%) HP ALM
10 2 (2.33%) HP Quality Center
Vendors
1 14 (16.28%) Splunk
2 13 (15.12%) Oracle
3 9 (10.47%) Microsoft
4 8 (9.30%) webMethods
5 6 (6.98%) Red Hat
6 5 (5.81%) Google
6 5 (5.81%) Talend
7 3 (3.49%) Denodo
7 3 (3.49%) Informatica
8 2 (2.33%) HP
8 2 (2.33%) SAP
9 1 (1.16%) Atlassian
9 1 (1.16%) Cadence
9 1 (1.16%) CyberArk
9 1 (1.16%) Databricks
9 1 (1.16%) Sage
9 1 (1.16%) Salesforce