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 vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 18 September 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
18 Sep 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 80 58 94
Rank change year-on-year -22 +36 -67
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 41 54 28
As % of all contract jobs advertised in the West Midlands 2.23% 2.83% 1.36%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.52% 3.46% 1.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 24 36 19
10th Percentile £438 £344 £390
25th Percentile £523 £358 £538
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £575 £475 £600
Median % change year-on-year +21.05% -20.83% +13.21%
75th Percentile £625 £588 -
90th Percentile £638 £613 £640
England median daily rate £600 £625 £611
% change year-on-year -4.00% +2.29% +1.83%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 4 0
Median hourly rate - £53.75 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.50 £65.00
% change year-on-year -0.76% +0.77% +4.70%

All Process and 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 1,630 1,561 1,762
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 88.73% 81.77% 85.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,046 1,005 1,180
10th Percentile £250 £250 £263
25th Percentile £400 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% +4.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £663 £725 £725
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 104 40 48
10th Percentile £12.62 £14.48 £14.42
25th Percentile £16.13 £15.22 £19.56
Median hourly rate £24.34 £24.31 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +0.11% -11.59% +52.78%
75th Percentile £35.15 £37.63 £44.69
90th Percentile £50.00 £55.45 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £43.00 £43.90
% change year-on-year -41.51% -2.05% +51.38%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in the West Midlands

Job postings citing Software Engineering as a proportion of all IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands.

Job vacancy trend for Software Engineering 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 18 September 2025.

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
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 18 September 2025. 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 -21 16 £539 +50.42% 17
Worcestershire -6 9 £575 - 14
Birmingham -7 7 £711 +49.68% 40
Warwickshire -6 4 £450 - 25
Staffordshire +2 2 - - 37
Herefordshire +8 1 - - 1
Coventry -6 1 £625 +31.58% 7
Software Engineering
England

Software Engineering
Co-occurring Skills and Capabilities in the West Midlands by Category

The follow tables expand on the table above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. The same employment type, locality and period is covered with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each of the following categories:

Application Platforms
1 5 (12.20%) WebLogic
2 4 (9.76%) Apache
2 4 (9.76%) JBoss
3 3 (7.32%) OpenStack
4 1 (2.44%) Tuxedo
Cloud Services
1 18 (43.90%) AWS
2 14 (34.15%) Azure
3 8 (19.51%) Azure DevOps
3 8 (19.51%) GCP
4 5 (12.20%) AWS CloudFormation
4 5 (12.20%) Serverless
5 4 (9.76%) Azure AKS
5 4 (9.76%) Cloud Computing
5 4 (9.76%) GitHub
5 4 (9.76%) GitHub Actions
6 3 (7.32%) Adobe Analytics
6 3 (7.32%) Amazon EKS
6 3 (7.32%) Datadog
6 3 (7.32%) Google Analytics
6 3 (7.32%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 3 (7.32%) npm
6 3 (7.32%) OpenShift
6 3 (7.32%) Pulumi
7 2 (4.88%) Power Platform
8 1 (2.44%) Amazon ECS
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.44%) DNS
1 1 (2.44%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 5 (12.20%) NoSQL
2 4 (9.76%) MongoDB
3 1 (2.44%) Amazon RDS
3 1 (2.44%) Power BI
Development Applications
1 13 (31.71%) GitLab
2 7 (17.07%) Git
2 7 (17.07%) Jenkins
2 7 (17.07%) JUnit
2 7 (17.07%) Selenium
3 4 (9.76%) Bitbucket
3 4 (9.76%) Eclipse
3 4 (9.76%) IntelliJ
3 4 (9.76%) Liquibase
4 3 (7.32%) Artifactory
4 3 (7.32%) CircleCI
4 3 (7.32%) Cypress.io
4 3 (7.32%) Gradle
4 3 (7.32%) Maven
4 3 (7.32%) Postman
4 3 (7.32%) Snyk
4 3 (7.32%) SonarQube
4 3 (7.32%) Sonatype Nexus
4 3 (7.32%) webpack
5 1 (2.44%) JIRA
General
1 23 (56.10%) Social Skills
2 5 (12.20%) Finance
2 5 (12.20%) Public Sector
3 4 (9.76%) Influencing Skills
4 3 (7.32%) Brand Awareness
4 3 (7.32%) Marketing
5 2 (4.88%) Banking
5 2 (4.88%) Financial Institution
5 2 (4.88%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 16 (39.02%) DevOps Engineer
2 10 (24.39%) Software Engineer
3 4 (9.76%) Developer
3 4 (9.76%) Senior
3 4 (9.76%) Senior Software Engineer
4 3 (7.32%) Campaign Manager
4 3 (7.32%) Operations Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Cloud Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Cloud Software Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Control Systems Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Lead
5 2 (4.88%) Manufacturing Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Senior Cloud Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Senior DevOps
5 2 (4.88%) Senior DevOps Engineer
5 2 (4.88%) Systems Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) GCP DevOps
6 1 (2.44%) GCP DevOps Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) GCP Software Engineer
6 1 (2.44%) Senior AWS DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 12 (29.27%) REST
2 8 (19.51%) Elastic Stack
2 8 (19.51%) JSON
3 6 (14.63%) Spring
4 5 (12.20%) HTML
4 5 (12.20%) SOAP
5 4 (9.76%) EJB
5 4 (9.76%) Hibernate
5 4 (9.76%) HTML5
5 4 (9.76%) J2EE
5 4 (9.76%) J2SE
5 4 (9.76%) Play Framework
5 4 (9.76%) RESTful
5 4 (9.76%) XML
6 3 (7.32%) YAML
7 2 (4.88%) ARM Templates
7 2 (4.88%) React
8 1 (2.44%) Next.js
8 1 (2.44%) OpenAPI
8 1 (2.44%) WireMock
Miscellaneous
1 5 (12.20%) Cloud Native
2 4 (9.76%) PKI
2 4 (9.76%) Public Cloud
3 3 (7.32%) Private Cloud
3 3 (7.32%) Social Media
4 2 (4.88%) Distributed Systems
4 2 (4.88%) SCADA
5 1 (2.44%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (2.44%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 12 (29.27%) Linux
2 4 (9.76%) Unix
3 3 (7.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (4.88%) Windows
5 1 (2.44%) Amazon Linux
5 1 (2.44%) Ubuntu
5 1 (2.44%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 28 (68.29%) DevOps
2 21 (51.22%) CI/CD
3 19 (46.34%) Agile
4 13 (31.71%) Infrastructure as Code
4 13 (31.71%) Problem-Solving
5 12 (29.27%) Computer Science
6 11 (26.83%) Continuous Delivery
6 11 (26.83%) Microservices
7 9 (21.95%) Containerisation
7 9 (21.95%) Continuous Integration
7 9 (21.95%) Test Automation
8 8 (19.51%) Continuous Improvement
8 8 (19.51%) Cost Optimisation
8 8 (19.51%) Infrastructure Automation
8 8 (19.51%) Software Delivery
9 6 (14.63%) Configuration Management
9 6 (14.63%) Decision-Making
9 6 (14.63%) Mentoring
9 6 (14.63%) Scrum
9 6 (14.63%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 8 (19.51%) SQL
2 7 (17.07%) Java
3 6 (14.63%) Go
3 6 (14.63%) Python
4 5 (12.20%) Scala
5 3 (7.32%) Bash
6 1 (2.44%) C
6 1 (2.44%) C#
6 1 (2.44%) JavaScript
6 1 (2.44%) Korn
6 1 (2.44%) Ladder Logic
6 1 (2.44%) PL/SQL
6 1 (2.44%) Shell Script
6 1 (2.44%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 17 (41.46%) Security Cleared
2 12 (29.27%) Degree
3 11 (26.83%) Computer Science Degree
4 9 (21.95%) SC Cleared
5 8 (19.51%) DV Cleared
6 2 (4.88%) Master's Degree
7 1 (2.44%) AWS Certification
7 1 (2.44%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (2.44%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 1 (2.44%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (17.07%) QA
2 1 (2.44%) Accessibility
2 1 (2.44%) IEC 61131
2 1 (2.44%) ISO/IEC 27001
2 1 (2.44%) WCAG
System Software
1 16 (39.02%) Docker
2 1 (2.44%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.44%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 17 (41.46%) Ansible
1 17 (41.46%) Terraform
2 12 (29.27%) Kubernetes
3 8 (19.51%) Puppet
4 7 (17.07%) Grafana
4 7 (17.07%) Prometheus
5 4 (9.76%) Progress Chef
6 3 (7.32%) Opsview
6 3 (7.32%) Podman
7 1 (2.44%) Consul
Vendors
1 8 (19.51%) Splunk
2 5 (12.20%) webMethods
3 4 (9.76%) Google
4 3 (7.32%) Adobe
4 3 (7.32%) PagerDuty
5 2 (4.88%) Microsoft
6 1 (2.44%) Atlassian
6 1 (2.44%) MuleSoft
6 1 (2.44%) OpenAI
6 1 (2.44%) Oracle
6 1 (2.44%) Salesforce
6 1 (2.44%) ServiceNow
6 1 (2.44%) Siemens
6 1 (2.44%) Trillium