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

6 months to
12 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 78 82 57
Rank change year-on-year +4 -25 +35
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 96 37 53
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.73% 2.03% 2.78%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.21% 2.30% 3.41%
Number of daily rates quoted 38 22 36
10th Percentile £401 £515 £344
25th Percentile £440 £538 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £466 £575 £475
Median % change year-on-year -18.90% +21.05% -20.83%
75th Percentile £551 £626 £588
90th Percentile £599 £638 £613
England median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +4.03%
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 2,987 1,611 1,554
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 85.00% 88.32% 81.53%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,836 1,039 1,011
10th Percentile £313 £235 £250
25th Percentile £413 £396 £396
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £519
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.66% +3.80%
75th Percentile £577 £588 £625
90th Percentile £674 £663 £725
England median daily rate £525 £508 £525
% change year-on-year +3.45% -3.33% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 206 103 40
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.62 £14.14
25th Percentile £17.64 £16.07 £15.13
Median hourly rate £29.91 £24.34 £22.05
Median % change year-on-year +22.88% +10.41% -19.84%
75th Percentile £53.75 £35.30 £35.63
90th Percentile £68.92 £50.00 £55.03
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% +0.58%

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 12 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 12 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 12 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 +17 32 £470 -33.90% 62
Shropshire -32 22 £450 -18.00% 3
Coventry -11 10 £450 -28.00% 7
Worcestershire +3 8 £575 - 8
Warwickshire -8 8 £600 +33.33% 11
Solihull - 8 - - 5
Herefordshire +5 6 - - 2
Staffordshire -12 2 - - 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 9 (9.38%) Confluence
2 4 (4.17%) Apache
3 3 (3.13%) SAS
4 1 (1.04%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.04%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.04%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.04%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (1.04%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.08%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 29 (30.21%) AWS
2 21 (21.88%) Azure
3 12 (12.50%) Serverless
4 10 (10.42%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 10 (10.42%) Amazon S3
4 10 (10.42%) GitHub
5 9 (9.38%) AWS Lambda
6 8 (8.33%) Amazon EKS
7 7 (7.29%) Amazon EC2
7 7 (7.29%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (7.29%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (6.25%) Power Platform
9 5 (5.21%) Azure DevOps
10 4 (4.17%) GCP
11 3 (3.13%) Amazon EMR
11 3 (3.13%) Amazon Kinesis
11 3 (3.13%) Azure Machine Learning
11 3 (3.13%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 2 (2.08%) Azure Functions
12 2 (2.08%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.04%) Firewall
1 1 (1.04%) HTTP
1 1 (1.04%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.29%) Relational Database
2 6 (6.25%) Power BI
3 4 (4.17%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (4.17%) MongoDB
3 4 (4.17%) Pentaho
3 4 (4.17%) SQL Server
4 3 (3.13%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (3.13%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (3.13%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (3.13%) BusinessObjects
4 3 (3.13%) Data Lake
4 3 (3.13%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (3.13%) DynamoDB
4 3 (3.13%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.13%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.08%) Ingres
6 1 (1.04%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (1.04%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 14 (14.58%) Git
2 11 (11.46%) GitLab
3 10 (10.42%) Jenkins
3 10 (10.42%) JIRA
4 5 (5.21%) JUnit
4 5 (5.21%) Maven
5 4 (4.17%) Artifactory
5 4 (4.17%) Mockito
6 3 (3.13%) Selenium
6 3 (3.13%) SonarQube
7 2 (2.08%) Cucumber
7 2 (2.08%) MLflow
7 2 (2.08%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (2.08%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (1.04%) CircleCI
8 1 (1.04%) PetaLinux
8 1 (1.04%) Postman
8 1 (1.04%) REST Assured
8 1 (1.04%) Snyk
8 1 (1.04%) Sonatype Nexus
General
1 25 (26.04%) Social Skills
2 21 (21.88%) Public Sector
3 11 (11.46%) Automotive
4 8 (8.33%) Finance
5 6 (6.25%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.17%) Aerospace
6 4 (4.17%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.04%) Military
Job Titles
1 40 (41.67%) Software Engineer
2 23 (23.96%) Senior
3 19 (19.79%) Lead
4 13 (13.54%) Developer
5 11 (11.46%) Embedded Engineer
5 11 (11.46%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 8 (8.33%) Automation Engineer
7 7 (7.29%) Scrum Master
8 6 (6.25%) Java Developer
8 6 (6.25%) Java Engineer
8 6 (6.25%) Senior Developer
8 6 (6.25%) Senior Software Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Java Software Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Lead Software Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Test Automation Engineer
9 5 (5.21%) Test Engineer
10 4 (4.17%) C# Software Engineer
10 4 (4.17%) DevOps Engineer
10 4 (4.17%) Software Test Engineer
10 4 (4.17%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 16 (16.67%) Spring
1 16 (16.67%) Spring Boot
2 15 (15.63%) REST
3 14 (14.58%) .NET
4 13 (13.54%) RESTful
5 11 (11.46%) Terraform
6 5 (5.21%) .NET Core
6 5 (5.21%) Django
6 5 (5.21%) Web Services
7 4 (4.17%) JPA
7 4 (4.17%) Kafka
7 4 (4.17%) SOAP
8 3 (3.13%) .NET Framework
8 3 (3.13%) Apache NiFi
8 3 (3.13%) gRPC
8 3 (3.13%) JSON
8 3 (3.13%) Playwright
8 3 (3.13%) Protocol Buffers
9 2 (2.08%) GraalVM
9 2 (2.08%) Yocto
Miscellaneous
1 24 (25.00%) Cloud Native
2 10 (10.42%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.17%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (3.13%) Distributed Systems
4 3 (3.13%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.08%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.08%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (2.08%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.08%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.04%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (1.04%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (1.04%) FPGA
6 1 (1.04%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.04%) LIMS
6 1 (1.04%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.04%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.04%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.04%) SCADA
6 1 (1.04%) Verilog
6 1 (1.04%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 8 (8.33%) Linux
2 5 (5.21%) Windows
3 3 (3.13%) Embedded Linux
3 3 (3.13%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.08%) FreeRTOS
4 2 (2.08%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 46 (47.92%) Agile
2 43 (44.79%) CI/CD
3 39 (40.63%) DevOps
4 34 (35.42%) Continuous Improvement
5 29 (30.21%) Scrum
6 26 (27.08%) Test Automation
7 22 (22.92%) Microservices
8 19 (19.79%) Containerisation
8 19 (19.79%) Stakeholder Management
9 18 (18.75%) Sprint Planning
10 17 (17.71%) Software Testing
11 15 (15.63%) SDLC
12 14 (14.58%) Infrastructure as Code
12 14 (14.58%) Problem-Solving
12 14 (14.58%) Technical Leadership
13 13 (13.54%) Observability
14 12 (12.50%) Mentoring
14 12 (12.50%) Software Delivery
15 11 (11.46%) Code Quality
15 11 (11.46%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 27 (28.13%) Java
2 18 (18.75%) Python
3 17 (17.71%) SQL
4 13 (13.54%) C#
5 6 (6.25%) C
5 6 (6.25%) TypeScript
6 4 (4.17%) JavaScript
6 4 (4.17%) Kotlin
6 4 (4.17%) PowerShell
7 3 (3.13%) C++
7 3 (3.13%) PL/SQL
8 2 (2.08%) ProC
8 2 (2.08%) Scala
8 2 (2.08%) VB
8 2 (2.08%) VB6
9 1 (1.04%) Bash
9 1 (1.04%) SystemVerilog
9 1 (1.04%) Tcl
9 1 (1.04%) T-SQL
9 1 (1.04%) VBA
Qualifications
1 41 (42.71%) Security Cleared
2 36 (37.50%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.29%) AWS Certification
4 6 (6.25%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (4.17%) Degree
5 4 (4.17%) DV Cleared
6 3 (3.13%) Master's Degree
7 2 (2.08%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (2.08%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 13 (13.54%) QA
2 3 (3.13%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.08%) ISO 26262
3 2 (2.08%) MISRA
3 2 (2.08%) WCAG
4 1 (1.04%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 1 (1.04%) Accessibility
4 1 (1.04%) FATCA
4 1 (1.04%) GDPR
4 1 (1.04%) GMP
4 1 (1.04%) GxP
4 1 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 17025
4 1 (1.04%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 17 (17.71%) Docker
2 1 (1.04%) Active Directory
2 1 (1.04%) Virtual Machines
2 1 (1.04%) VMware Infrastructure
Systems Management
1 12 (12.50%) Kubernetes
2 9 (9.38%) Grafana
3 5 (5.21%) Ansible
4 3 (3.13%) Prometheus
5 2 (2.08%) Kibana
6 1 (1.04%) Control-M
6 1 (1.04%) Podman
6 1 (1.04%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.04%) Puppet
Vendors
1 11 (11.46%) Oracle
2 4 (4.17%) Databricks
2 4 (4.17%) Informatica
2 4 (4.17%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.13%) Denodo
3 3 (3.13%) Dynatrace
3 3 (3.13%) Red Hat
3 3 (3.13%) ServiceNow
4 2 (2.08%) QNX
4 2 (2.08%) Splunk
5 1 (1.04%) Actian
5 1 (1.04%) IBM
5 1 (1.04%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.04%) Sage
5 1 (1.04%) Talend
5 1 (1.04%) VMware
5 1 (1.04%) Xilinx