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 15 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 89 81 53
Rank change year-on-year -8 -28 +37
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 79 39 58
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.27% 2.28% 3.10%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.66% 2.58% 3.78%
Number of daily rates quoted 36 19 42
10th Percentile £390 £454 £351
25th Percentile £420 £531 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £575 £448
Median % change year-on-year -21.74% +28.49% -25.42%
75th Percentile £513 £606 £538
90th Percentile £606 £638 £588
England median daily rate £555 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -7.50% -4.00% +4.17%
Number of hourly rates quoted 8 0 6
10th Percentile - - £53.13
25th Percentile £55.00 - £56.25
Median hourly rate £66.50 - £56.88
75th Percentile £77.50 - £58.75
90th Percentile - - £66.88
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 2,972 1,514 1,533
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.23% 88.43% 81.98%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,884 961 1,038
10th Percentile £313 £235 £274
25th Percentile £406 £380 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.06% -3.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £625
90th Percentile £669 £650 £725
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 181 106 60
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.62 £13.16
25th Percentile £19.34 £14.81 £14.93
Median hourly rate £30.73 £24.34 £24.31
Median % change year-on-year +26.25% +0.11% -9.95%
75th Percentile £53.75 £35.45 £39.06
90th Percentile £70.59 £50.00 £56.25
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +3.61%

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 15 August 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 15 August 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 15 August 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 -31 26 £447 -17.22% 4
Birmingham -10 15 £569 - 89
Coventry -15 11 £450 -16.28% 5
Warwickshire -8 9 £600 +33.33% 17
Worcestershire -2 7 £575 - 7
Herefordshire +2 6 - - 1
Solihull - 3 - - 4
Staffordshire -4 2 - - 8
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 11 (13.92%) Confluence
2 6 (7.59%) SAS
3 2 (2.53%) Apache
4 1 (1.27%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.27%) Tuxedo
4 1 (1.27%) WebLogic
Applications
1 2 (2.53%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.53%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 20 (25.32%) Azure
2 17 (21.52%) AWS
3 11 (13.92%) Power Platform
4 8 (10.13%) Serverless
5 7 (8.86%) Amazon CloudWatch
5 7 (8.86%) Amazon S3
5 7 (8.86%) GitHub
6 6 (7.59%) AWS Lambda
7 5 (6.33%) Amazon EKS
7 5 (6.33%) Azure Machine Learning
7 5 (6.33%) Azure Synapse Analytics
8 4 (5.06%) Amazon EC2
8 4 (5.06%) Amazon ECS
8 4 (5.06%) Azure DevOps
8 4 (5.06%) GitHub Actions
9 3 (3.80%) Amazon EMR
9 3 (3.80%) Amazon Kinesis
9 3 (3.80%) GCP
10 2 (2.53%) Azure Monitor
11 1 (1.27%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.27%) 3GPP
1 1 (1.27%) Firewall
1 1 (1.27%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 11 (13.92%) Power BI
2 7 (8.86%) Pentaho
3 6 (7.59%) Amazon Redshift
3 6 (7.59%) BusinessObjects
4 4 (5.06%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (5.06%) Relational Database
4 4 (5.06%) SQL Server
5 3 (3.80%) Amazon Athena
5 3 (3.80%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (3.80%) Apache Hive
5 3 (3.80%) Apache Iceberg
5 3 (3.80%) Data Lake
5 3 (3.80%) Data Warehouse
5 3 (3.80%) DynamoDB
5 3 (3.80%) Hadoop
5 3 (3.80%) Impala
5 3 (3.80%) MySQL
6 2 (2.53%) Ingres
7 1 (1.27%) MongoDB
7 1 (1.27%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 12 (15.19%) JIRA
2 10 (12.66%) Git
2 10 (12.66%) GitLab
3 8 (10.13%) Jenkins
4 4 (5.06%) Bitbucket
4 4 (5.06%) MLflow
5 3 (3.80%) Artifactory
6 2 (2.53%) Atlassian Bamboo
6 2 (2.53%) Team Foundation Server
7 1 (1.27%) CircleCI
7 1 (1.27%) Cypress.io
7 1 (1.27%) Gradle
7 1 (1.27%) JUnit
7 1 (1.27%) Maven
7 1 (1.27%) Oracle Forms
7 1 (1.27%) Selenium
7 1 (1.27%) SonarQube
7 1 (1.27%) Sonatype Nexus
7 1 (1.27%) Visual Studio
7 1 (1.27%) webpack
General
1 15 (18.99%) Social Skills
2 13 (16.46%) Public Sector
3 11 (13.92%) Automotive
4 8 (10.13%) Finance
5 4 (5.06%) Aerospace
6 2 (2.53%) Analytical Skills
6 2 (2.53%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.27%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 35 (44.30%) Software Engineer
2 15 (18.99%) Senior
3 14 (17.72%) Lead
4 11 (13.92%) Embedded Engineer
4 11 (13.92%) Embedded Software Engineer
5 6 (7.59%) Developer
6 5 (6.33%) Data Engineer
6 5 (6.33%) Java Engineer
6 5 (6.33%) Lead Software Engineer
6 5 (6.33%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
6 5 (6.33%) Test Automation Engineer
6 5 (6.33%) Test Engineer
7 4 (5.06%) Java Software Engineer
7 4 (5.06%) Scrum Master
7 4 (5.06%) Software Test Engineer
8 3 (3.80%) Analyst
8 3 (3.80%) C# Software Engineer
8 3 (3.80%) Data Scientist
8 3 (3.80%) Delivery Manager
8 3 (3.80%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 10 (12.66%) .NET
2 8 (10.13%) Spring
2 8 (10.13%) Spring Boot
3 7 (8.86%) REST
3 7 (8.86%) RESTful
4 5 (6.33%) Django
5 2 (2.53%) .NET Core
5 2 (2.53%) ADO
5 2 (2.53%) Apache NiFi
5 2 (2.53%) Play Framework
5 2 (2.53%) QML
5 2 (2.53%) Qt
5 2 (2.53%) Web Services
5 2 (2.53%) XML
5 2 (2.53%) Yocto
6 1 (1.27%) ASP.NET Web API
6 1 (1.27%) Elastic Stack
6 1 (1.27%) ODBC
6 1 (1.27%) Playwright
6 1 (1.27%) PostGIS
Miscellaneous
1 15 (18.99%) Cloud Native
2 4 (5.06%) Product Ownership
3 3 (3.80%) Enterprise Software
3 3 (3.80%) Legacy Systems
4 2 (2.53%) Embedded Systems
5 1 (1.27%) Cyber Defence
5 1 (1.27%) Data Centre
5 1 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
5 1 (1.27%) Distributed Systems
5 1 (1.27%) FPGA
5 1 (1.27%) Legacy Applications
5 1 (1.27%) Low-Code
5 1 (1.27%) Private Cloud
5 1 (1.27%) SCADA
5 1 (1.27%) Verilog
5 1 (1.27%) VHDL
5 1 (1.27%) Virtual Team
Operating Systems
1 8 (10.13%) Linux
2 3 (3.80%) Embedded Linux
2 3 (3.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
2 3 (3.80%) Unix
2 3 (3.80%) Windows
3 2 (2.53%) FreeRTOS
4 1 (1.27%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 41 (51.90%) Agile
2 36 (45.57%) CI/CD
3 32 (40.51%) DevOps
4 25 (31.65%) Continuous Improvement
5 23 (29.11%) Scrum
6 17 (21.52%) Test Automation
7 15 (18.99%) Containerisation
8 14 (17.72%) Software Testing
9 13 (16.46%) Sprint Planning
9 13 (16.46%) Stakeholder Management
10 11 (13.92%) Business Intelligence
10 11 (13.92%) Microservices
10 11 (13.92%) Problem-Solving
10 11 (13.92%) Software Delivery
11 10 (12.66%) Technical Leadership
12 9 (11.39%) Infrastructure as Code
13 8 (10.13%) AI
13 8 (10.13%) Mentoring
13 8 (10.13%) Observability
13 8 (10.13%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 21 (26.58%) Python
1 21 (26.58%) SQL
2 17 (21.52%) Java
3 10 (12.66%) C#
4 7 (8.86%) PL/SQL
5 6 (7.59%) C
6 3 (3.80%) C++
6 3 (3.80%) HiveQL
6 3 (3.80%) PowerShell
7 2 (2.53%) JavaScript
7 2 (2.53%) ProC
7 2 (2.53%) Scala
7 2 (2.53%) VB
7 2 (2.53%) VB6
8 1 (1.27%) Bash
8 1 (1.27%) Perl
8 1 (1.27%) Shell Script
8 1 (1.27%) Tcl
8 1 (1.27%) T-SQL
8 1 (1.27%) VBA
Qualifications
1 38 (48.10%) Security Cleared
2 33 (41.77%) SC Cleared
3 6 (7.59%) Degree
4 4 (5.06%) AWS Certification
4 4 (5.06%) BPSS Clearance
4 4 (5.06%) Master's Degree
4 4 (5.06%) PhD
5 3 (3.80%) DV Cleared
6 1 (1.27%) Computer Science Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 9 (11.39%) QA
2 4 (5.06%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.53%) ISO 26262
3 2 (2.53%) MISRA
4 1 (1.27%) FATCA
4 1 (1.27%) GDPR
4 1 (1.27%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 14 (17.72%) Docker
2 3 (3.80%) HDFS
3 1 (1.27%) Active Directory
3 1 (1.27%) Virtual Machines
3 1 (1.27%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 11 (13.92%) Kubernetes
2 10 (12.66%) Terraform
3 8 (10.13%) Grafana
4 6 (7.59%) Ansible
5 1 (1.27%) Podman
5 1 (1.27%) Progress Chef
5 1 (1.27%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.27%) Puppet
Vendors
1 13 (16.46%) Oracle
2 7 (8.86%) Informatica
3 6 (7.59%) Denodo
4 5 (6.33%) Databricks
4 5 (6.33%) Microsoft
5 4 (5.06%) Talend
6 3 (3.80%) Dynatrace
6 3 (3.80%) Red Hat
6 3 (3.80%) ServiceNow
7 2 (2.53%) QNX
7 2 (2.53%) Splunk
8 1 (1.27%) Actian
8 1 (1.27%) Sage
8 1 (1.27%) VMware
8 1 (1.27%) Xilinx