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

6 months to
5 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 80 81 61
Rank change year-on-year +1 -20 +30
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 91 36 49
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.64% 2.04% 2.60%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.11% 2.31% 3.20%
Number of daily rates quoted 37 20 35
10th Percentile £396 £509 £350
25th Percentile £437 £534 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £575 £475
Median % change year-on-year -19.57% +21.05% -20.83%
75th Percentile £551 £597 £588
90th Percentile £603 £638 £613
England median daily rate £551 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.25% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 12 0 4
10th Percentile - - £38.48
25th Percentile - - £45.89
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £53.75
75th Percentile £77.50 - £62.81
90th Percentile - - £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 2,923 1,556 1,530
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.85% 88.06% 81.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,794 990 1,003
10th Percentile £313 £250 £251
25th Percentile £413 £400 £389
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £476 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year -4.80% -2.44% +2.50%
75th Percentile £579 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £653 £725
England median daily rate £525 £509 £525
% change year-on-year +3.05% -2.96% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 198 103 43
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.62 £12.83
25th Percentile £17.64 £15.56 £15.07
Median hourly rate £30.22 £24.34 £21.59
Median % change year-on-year +24.16% +12.74% -21.49%
75th Percentile £53.75 £35.30 £36.25
90th Percentile £70.07 £50.00 £54.50
England median hourly rate £43.56 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +73.20% -41.51% +1.18%

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 5 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 5 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 5 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 +12 29 £470 -11.32% 73
Shropshire -35 22 £450 -18.00% 3
Coventry -16 11 £450 -28.00% 6
Worcestershire 0 8 £575 - 11
Warwickshire -6 8 £600 +33.33% 13
Herefordshire +4 6 - - 2
Solihull - 5 - - 3
Staffordshire -8 2 - - 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 8 (8.79%) Confluence
2 4 (4.40%) Apache
3 3 (3.30%) SAS
4 1 (1.10%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.10%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.10%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.10%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (1.10%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.20%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 25 (27.47%) AWS
2 21 (23.08%) Azure
3 10 (10.99%) Serverless
4 8 (8.79%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 8 (8.79%) Amazon S3
4 8 (8.79%) GitHub
5 7 (7.69%) AWS Lambda
5 7 (7.69%) Power Platform
6 6 (6.59%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (5.49%) Amazon EC2
7 5 (5.49%) Amazon ECS
7 5 (5.49%) Azure DevOps
7 5 (5.49%) GitHub Actions
8 4 (4.40%) Azure Machine Learning
8 4 (4.40%) Azure Synapse Analytics
9 3 (3.30%) Amazon EMR
9 3 (3.30%) Amazon Kinesis
9 3 (3.30%) GCP
10 2 (2.20%) Azure Functions
10 2 (2.20%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.10%) Firewall
1 1 (1.10%) HTTP
1 1 (1.10%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.69%) Power BI
2 6 (6.59%) Relational Database
3 4 (4.40%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (4.40%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.40%) Pentaho
3 4 (4.40%) SQL Server
4 3 (3.30%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (3.30%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (3.30%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (3.30%) BusinessObjects
4 3 (3.30%) Data Lake
4 3 (3.30%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (3.30%) DynamoDB
4 3 (3.30%) NoSQL
5 2 (2.20%) Ingres
5 2 (2.20%) PostgreSQL
6 1 (1.10%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (1.10%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 13 (14.29%) Git
2 11 (12.09%) GitLab
3 9 (9.89%) JIRA
4 7 (7.69%) Jenkins
5 4 (4.40%) Artifactory
5 4 (4.40%) JUnit
5 4 (4.40%) Maven
6 3 (3.30%) MLflow
6 3 (3.30%) Mockito
6 3 (3.30%) Selenium
7 2 (2.20%) Cucumber
7 2 (2.20%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (2.20%) SonarQube
7 2 (2.20%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (1.10%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (1.10%) Bitbucket
8 1 (1.10%) Cypress.io
8 1 (1.10%) Gradle
8 1 (1.10%) Visual Studio
8 1 (1.10%) webpack
General
1 21 (23.08%) Social Skills
2 19 (20.88%) Public Sector
3 11 (12.09%) Automotive
4 8 (8.79%) Finance
5 5 (5.49%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.40%) Aerospace
7 3 (3.30%) Organisational Skills
8 1 (1.10%) Military
Job Titles
1 38 (41.76%) Software Engineer
2 21 (23.08%) Senior
3 16 (17.58%) Lead
4 12 (13.19%) Developer
5 11 (12.09%) Embedded Engineer
5 11 (12.09%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 8 (8.79%) Automation Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Java Developer
7 5 (5.49%) Lead Software Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Scrum Master
7 5 (5.49%) Senior Developer
7 5 (5.49%) Test Automation Engineer
7 5 (5.49%) Test Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) C# Software Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) DevOps Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Java Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Senior Software Engineer
8 4 (4.40%) Software Test Engineer
9 3 (3.30%) Data Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 14 (15.38%) .NET
2 13 (14.29%) REST
2 13 (14.29%) Spring
2 13 (14.29%) Spring Boot
3 11 (12.09%) Terraform
4 10 (10.99%) RESTful
5 5 (5.49%) .NET Core
5 5 (5.49%) Django
6 4 (4.40%) Kafka
6 4 (4.40%) Web Services
7 3 (3.30%) .NET Framework
7 3 (3.30%) Apache NiFi
7 3 (3.30%) gRPC
7 3 (3.30%) JPA
7 3 (3.30%) JSON
7 3 (3.30%) Playwright
7 3 (3.30%) Protocol Buffers
7 3 (3.30%) SOAP
8 2 (2.20%) GraalVM
8 2 (2.20%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 21 (23.08%) Cloud Native
2 7 (7.69%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.40%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (3.30%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.20%) Distributed Systems
5 2 (2.20%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (2.20%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.10%) AI Agents
6 1 (1.10%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (1.10%) Data Protection Act
6 1 (1.10%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (1.10%) FPGA
6 1 (1.10%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.10%) LIMS
6 1 (1.10%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.10%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.10%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.10%) SCADA
6 1 (1.10%) Verilog
6 1 (1.10%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 8 (8.79%) Linux
2 5 (5.49%) Windows
3 3 (3.30%) Embedded Linux
3 3 (3.30%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.20%) FreeRTOS
4 2 (2.20%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (48.35%) Agile
2 40 (43.96%) CI/CD
3 36 (39.56%) DevOps
4 30 (32.97%) Continuous Improvement
5 26 (28.57%) Scrum
6 23 (25.27%) Test Automation
7 18 (19.78%) Microservices
8 17 (18.68%) Containerisation
8 17 (18.68%) Software Testing
9 16 (17.58%) Stakeholder Management
10 15 (16.48%) Sprint Planning
11 14 (15.38%) SDLC
12 13 (14.29%) Problem-Solving
13 12 (13.19%) Mentoring
13 12 (13.19%) Software Delivery
13 12 (13.19%) Technical Leadership
14 11 (12.09%) Infrastructure as Code
15 10 (10.99%) Observability
16 9 (9.89%) Coaching
17 8 (8.79%) Validation
Programming Languages
1 21 (23.08%) Java
2 19 (20.88%) Python
3 18 (19.78%) SQL
4 13 (14.29%) C#
5 6 (6.59%) C
6 4 (4.40%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.40%) PowerShell
6 4 (4.40%) TypeScript
7 3 (3.30%) C++
7 3 (3.30%) Kotlin
7 3 (3.30%) PL/SQL
8 2 (2.20%) ProC
8 2 (2.20%) Scala
8 2 (2.20%) VB
8 2 (2.20%) VB6
9 1 (1.10%) Bash
9 1 (1.10%) SystemVerilog
9 1 (1.10%) Tcl
9 1 (1.10%) T-SQL
9 1 (1.10%) VBA
Qualifications
1 37 (40.66%) Security Cleared
2 32 (35.16%) SC Cleared
3 6 (6.59%) BPSS Clearance
4 5 (5.49%) AWS Certification
4 5 (5.49%) Degree
5 4 (4.40%) DV Cleared
5 4 (4.40%) Master's Degree
6 3 (3.30%) PhD
7 2 (2.20%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (12.09%) QA
2 4 (4.40%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.20%) ISO 26262
3 2 (2.20%) MISRA
3 2 (2.20%) WCAG
4 1 (1.10%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 1 (1.10%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.10%) FATCA
4 1 (1.10%) GDPR
4 1 (1.10%) GMP
4 1 (1.10%) GxP
4 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 17025
4 1 (1.10%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 15 (16.48%) Docker
2 1 (1.10%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.10%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.10%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 12 (13.19%) Kubernetes
2 8 (8.79%) Grafana
3 4 (4.40%) Ansible
4 2 (2.20%) Kibana
4 2 (2.20%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.10%) Podman
5 1 (1.10%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.10%) Puppet
Vendors
1 11 (12.09%) Oracle
2 5 (5.49%) Databricks
2 5 (5.49%) Microsoft
3 4 (4.40%) Informatica
4 3 (3.30%) Denodo
4 3 (3.30%) Dynatrace
4 3 (3.30%) Red Hat
4 3 (3.30%) ServiceNow
5 2 (2.20%) QNX
5 2 (2.20%) Splunk
6 1 (1.10%) Actian
6 1 (1.10%) OpenAI
6 1 (1.10%) Sage
6 1 (1.10%) Talend
6 1 (1.10%) VMware
6 1 (1.10%) Xilinx