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 22 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
22 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 96 63 79
Rank change year-on-year -33 +16 -55
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 39 53 39
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 1.98% 2.81% 1.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 2.19% 3.39% 2.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 28 34 29
10th Percentile £428 £341 £401
25th Percentile £499 £358 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £544 £460 £600
Median % change year-on-year +18.21% -23.33% +11.11%
75th Percentile £588 £588 -
90th Percentile £714 £613 £663
England median daily rate £575 £600 £616
% change year-on-year -4.17% -2.56% +2.63%
Number of hourly rates quoted 0 3 0
Median hourly rate - £50.00 -
England median hourly rate £65.00 £65.00 £65.00

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 1,778 1,564 1,693
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 90.39% 83.06% 85.08%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,131 990 1,136
10th Percentile £263 £248 £263
25th Percentile £400 £388 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £513 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.44% +2.50% -
75th Percentile £588 £625 £600
90th Percentile £675 £725 £725
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 117 40 56
10th Percentile £12.62 £14.66 £16.22
25th Percentile £16.30 £16.81 £20.64
Median hourly rate £24.34 £23.89 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +1.88% -13.13% +55.19%
75th Percentile £31.00 £35.00 £44.69
90th Percentile £50.00 £52.78 £67.50
England median hourly rate £25.15 £41.16 £44.50
% change year-on-year -38.89% -7.52% +27.14%

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 22 October 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 22 October 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
Birmingham -4 11 £530 +11.58% 34
Shropshire -38 11 £525 +46.65% 5
Worcestershire -13 9 £575 - 6
Warwickshire -4 4 £450 - 19
Staffordshire +1 2 - - 12
Coventry -8 2 £450 -10.00% 7
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 5 (12.82%) WebLogic
2 4 (10.26%) Apache
2 4 (10.26%) JBoss
2 4 (10.26%) OpenStack
3 1 (2.56%) Tuxedo
Cloud Services
1 25 (64.10%) AWS
2 14 (35.90%) GCP
3 9 (23.08%) Azure
3 9 (23.08%) Serverless
4 6 (15.38%) Azure DevOps
5 5 (12.82%) AWS CloudFormation
5 5 (12.82%) Azure AKS
5 5 (12.82%) GitHub
5 5 (12.82%) GitHub Actions
6 4 (10.26%) Amazon EKS
6 4 (10.26%) AWS KMS
6 4 (10.26%) Cloud Computing
6 4 (10.26%) Datadog
6 4 (10.26%) Google Kubernetes Engine
6 4 (10.26%) npm
6 4 (10.26%) OpenShift
6 4 (10.26%) Pulumi
7 1 (2.56%) Amazon ECS
7 1 (2.56%) Azure Monitor
7 1 (2.56%) Power Platform
Communications & Networking
1 1 (2.56%) DNS
1 1 (2.56%) Firewall
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (23.08%) NoSQL
2 6 (15.38%) MongoDB
3 5 (12.82%) PostgreSQL
4 2 (5.13%) Oracle Database
5 1 (2.56%) MySQL
Development Applications
1 15 (38.46%) GitLab
2 12 (30.77%) Jenkins
3 11 (28.21%) Git
3 11 (28.21%) JUnit
3 11 (28.21%) Selenium
4 9 (23.08%) Liquibase
5 7 (17.95%) Maven
6 4 (10.26%) Artifactory
6 4 (10.26%) Bitbucket
6 4 (10.26%) CircleCI
6 4 (10.26%) Cypress.io
6 4 (10.26%) Eclipse
6 4 (10.26%) Gradle
6 4 (10.26%) IntelliJ
6 4 (10.26%) Postman
6 4 (10.26%) Snyk
6 4 (10.26%) SonarQube
6 4 (10.26%) Sonatype Nexus
6 4 (10.26%) webpack
7 3 (7.69%) Cucumber
General
1 19 (48.72%) Social Skills
2 7 (17.95%) Finance
2 7 (17.95%) Financial Institution
3 6 (15.38%) Banking
4 4 (10.26%) Influencing Skills
5 3 (7.69%) Public Sector
6 1 (2.56%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (2.56%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 15 (38.46%) Software Engineer
2 12 (30.77%) DevOps Engineer
3 8 (20.51%) Senior
4 6 (15.38%) Cloud Engineer
4 6 (15.38%) Senior Software Engineer
5 5 (12.82%) AWS Engineer
5 5 (12.82%) Cloud Software Engineer
5 5 (12.82%) Developer
5 5 (12.82%) GCP Engineer
6 4 (10.26%) AWS Software Engineer
6 4 (10.26%) GCP Software Engineer
6 4 (10.26%) Java Developer
7 3 (7.69%) Lead
7 3 (7.69%) Senior Cloud Engineer
7 3 (7.69%) Senior DevOps
7 3 (7.69%) Senior DevOps Engineer
8 2 (5.13%) Control Systems Engineer
8 2 (5.13%) GCP DevOps
8 2 (5.13%) GCP DevOps Engineer
8 2 (5.13%) Python Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 18 (46.15%) REST
2 14 (35.90%) Elastic Stack
3 12 (30.77%) JSON
4 10 (25.64%) RESTful
4 10 (25.64%) Spring
5 7 (17.95%) HTML
6 5 (12.82%) SOAP
6 5 (12.82%) Spring Boot
7 4 (10.26%) EJB
7 4 (10.26%) Hibernate
7 4 (10.26%) HTML5
7 4 (10.26%) J2EE
7 4 (10.26%) J2SE
7 4 (10.26%) Play Framework
7 4 (10.26%) React
7 4 (10.26%) XML
7 4 (10.26%) YAML
8 3 (7.69%) Gherkin
8 3 (7.69%) OAuth
8 3 (7.69%) OpenID
Miscellaneous
1 10 (25.64%) Cloud Native
2 9 (23.08%) Public Cloud
3 7 (17.95%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (10.26%) Private Cloud
5 2 (5.13%) SCADA
6 1 (2.56%) Greenfield Project
6 1 (2.56%) Legacy Systems
6 1 (2.56%) Linux Command Line
Operating Systems
1 15 (38.46%) Linux
2 4 (10.26%) Unix
3 2 (5.13%) Windows
4 1 (2.56%) Amazon Linux
4 1 (2.56%) Ubuntu
4 1 (2.56%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 26 (66.67%) DevOps
2 25 (64.10%) Agile
3 23 (58.97%) CI/CD
4 19 (48.72%) Microservices
5 18 (46.15%) Infrastructure as Code
6 16 (41.03%) Computer Science
7 15 (38.46%) Containerisation
8 13 (33.33%) Continuous Delivery
9 11 (28.21%) Continuous Integration
10 10 (25.64%) Continuous Improvement
10 10 (25.64%) Problem-Solving
10 10 (25.64%) Scrum
11 9 (23.08%) Cryptography
11 9 (23.08%) Root Cause Analysis
12 8 (20.51%) Infrastructure Automation
13 7 (17.95%) High Availability
13 7 (17.95%) Non-Functional Testing
13 7 (17.95%) Test Automation
14 6 (15.38%) Change Management
14 6 (15.38%) Configuration Management
Programming Languages
1 12 (30.77%) Python
2 11 (28.21%) Go
3 10 (25.64%) SQL
4 9 (23.08%) Java
5 5 (12.82%) Scala
6 3 (7.69%) Bash
7 2 (5.13%) C#
8 1 (2.56%) C
8 1 (2.56%) JavaScript
8 1 (2.56%) Korn
8 1 (2.56%) Kotlin
8 1 (2.56%) Ladder Logic
8 1 (2.56%) PL/SQL
8 1 (2.56%) Shell Script
8 1 (2.56%) TypeScript
Qualifications
1 16 (41.03%) Degree
2 15 (38.46%) Computer Science Degree
3 14 (35.90%) Security Cleared
4 9 (23.08%) DV Cleared
5 7 (17.95%) Master's Degree
6 4 (10.26%) SC Cleared
7 1 (2.56%) AWS Certification
7 1 (2.56%) AWS Certified Developer
7 1 (2.56%) AWS Certified DevOps Engineer
7 1 (2.56%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (12.82%) QA
2 4 (10.26%) WCAG
3 1 (2.56%) Accessibility
3 1 (2.56%) IEC 61131
3 1 (2.56%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 21 (53.85%) Docker
2 1 (2.56%) Active Directory
2 1 (2.56%) Virtual Desktop
Systems Management
1 20 (51.28%) Kubernetes
2 16 (41.03%) Grafana
3 15 (38.46%) Terraform
4 14 (35.90%) Ansible
5 13 (33.33%) Prometheus
6 9 (23.08%) Puppet
7 5 (12.82%) Progress Chef
8 4 (10.26%) Podman
9 3 (7.69%) Kibana
10 1 (2.56%) Consul
Vendors
1 14 (35.90%) Splunk
2 5 (12.82%) webMethods
3 3 (7.69%) Oracle
4 2 (5.13%) Google
4 2 (5.13%) Microsoft
5 1 (2.56%) Atlassian
5 1 (2.56%) MuleSoft
5 1 (2.56%) OpenAI
5 1 (2.56%) Salesforce
5 1 (2.56%) ServiceNow
5 1 (2.56%) Siemens
5 1 (2.56%) Trillium