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

6 months to
19 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 76 87 60
Rank change year-on-year +11 -27 +32
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 99 34 55
As % of all contract jobs in the West Midlands 2.80% 1.86% 2.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 3.29% 2.09% 3.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 40 19 36
10th Percentile £418 £430 £344
25th Percentile £435 £515 £358
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £575 £475
Median % change year-on-year -18.35% +21.05% -20.83%
75th Percentile £550 £588 £588
90th Percentile £596 £688 £613
England median daily rate £550 £600 £625
% change year-on-year -8.33% -4.00% +2.29%
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 3,007 1,625 1,565
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the West Midlands 84.92% 88.70% 81.77%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,839 1,039 1,005
10th Percentile £313 £249 £250
25th Percentile £413 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £520
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% -3.85% +4.00%
75th Percentile £580 £588 £625
90th Percentile £675 £672 £725
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 218 106 39
10th Percentile £13.45 £12.62 £14.66
25th Percentile £17.57 £16.17 £15.25
Median hourly rate £29.60 £24.34 £26.13
Median % change year-on-year +21.61% -6.83% -5.00%
75th Percentile £53.75 £35.00 £40.25
90th Percentile £68.49 £50.00 £55.65
England median hourly rate £42.50 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +68.99% -41.51% -3.37%

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 19 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 19 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 19 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 +20 37 £470 -33.90% 113
Shropshire -31 22 £450 +1.12% 6
Solihull - 10 £450 - 15
Coventry -13 9 £388 -38.00% 12
Worcestershire +4 8 £575 - 9
Herefordshire +6 6 - - 4
Warwickshire -9 6 £650 +44.44% 21
Staffordshire -11 2 - - 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 9 (9.09%) Confluence
2 4 (4.04%) Apache
3 3 (3.03%) SAS
4 1 (1.01%) Apache Airflow
4 1 (1.01%) Apache Spark
4 1 (1.01%) OpenStack
4 1 (1.01%) Oracle Workflow
4 1 (1.01%) Tuxedo
Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Chatbot
Business Applications
1 2 (2.02%) Dynamics CRM
Cloud Services
1 32 (32.32%) AWS
2 18 (18.18%) Azure
3 12 (12.12%) Serverless
4 10 (10.10%) Amazon CloudWatch
4 10 (10.10%) Amazon S3
5 9 (9.09%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (9.09%) GitHub
6 8 (8.08%) Amazon EKS
7 7 (7.07%) Amazon EC2
7 7 (7.07%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (7.07%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (5.05%) Azure DevOps
8 5 (5.05%) Power Platform
9 4 (4.04%) GCP
10 3 (3.03%) Amazon EMR
10 3 (3.03%) Amazon Kinesis
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Functions
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Machine Learning
11 2 (2.02%) Azure Synapse Analytics
12 1 (1.01%) Miro
Communications & Networking
1 1 (1.01%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 7 (7.07%) MongoDB
1 7 (7.07%) Relational Database
2 5 (5.05%) Power BI
3 4 (4.04%) Amazon Athena
3 4 (4.04%) Pentaho
3 4 (4.04%) SQL Server
4 3 (3.03%) Amazon RDS
4 3 (3.03%) Amazon Redshift
4 3 (3.03%) Apache Iceberg
4 3 (3.03%) BusinessObjects
4 3 (3.03%) Data Lake
4 3 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 3 (3.03%) DynamoDB
4 3 (3.03%) NoSQL
4 3 (3.03%) PostgreSQL
5 2 (2.02%) Ingres
6 1 (1.01%) Azure SQL Database
6 1 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
6 1 (1.01%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 14 (14.14%) Git
2 11 (11.11%) GitLab
3 10 (10.10%) Jenkins
3 10 (10.10%) JIRA
4 5 (5.05%) JUnit
4 5 (5.05%) Maven
5 4 (4.04%) Artifactory
5 4 (4.04%) Mockito
6 3 (3.03%) Selenium
6 3 (3.03%) SonarQube
7 2 (2.02%) Cucumber
7 2 (2.02%) Oracle Forms
7 2 (2.02%) Team Foundation Server
8 1 (1.01%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (1.01%) Bitbucket
8 1 (1.01%) Cypress.io
8 1 (1.01%) Gradle
8 1 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
8 1 (1.01%) Visual Studio
8 1 (1.01%) webpack
General
1 27 (27.27%) Social Skills
2 19 (19.19%) Public Sector
3 11 (11.11%) Automotive
4 8 (8.08%) Finance
5 6 (6.06%) Analytical Skills
6 4 (4.04%) Aerospace
6 4 (4.04%) Organisational Skills
7 1 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 40 (40.40%) Software Engineer
2 25 (25.25%) Senior
3 20 (20.20%) Lead
4 16 (16.16%) Developer
5 11 (11.11%) Embedded Engineer
5 11 (11.11%) Embedded Software Engineer
6 9 (9.09%) Java Developer
7 8 (8.08%) Automation Engineer
8 7 (7.07%) Java Engineer
8 7 (7.07%) Scrum Master
8 7 (7.07%) Senior Developer
8 7 (7.07%) Senior Software Engineer
9 6 (6.06%) Java Software Engineer
10 5 (5.05%) Lead Software Engineer
10 5 (5.05%) Test Automation Engineer
10 5 (5.05%) Test Engineer
11 4 (4.04%) DevOps Engineer
11 4 (4.04%) SC Cleared Software Engineer
11 4 (4.04%) Software Test Engineer
11 4 (4.04%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (19.19%) Spring
1 19 (19.19%) Spring Boot
2 15 (15.15%) REST
3 13 (13.13%) .NET
4 12 (12.12%) RESTful
5 10 (10.10%) Terraform
6 7 (7.07%) Kafka
7 5 (5.05%) Django
7 5 (5.05%) Web Services
8 4 (4.04%) .NET Core
8 4 (4.04%) JPA
8 4 (4.04%) SOAP
9 3 (3.03%) .NET Framework
9 3 (3.03%) Apache NiFi
9 3 (3.03%) gRPC
9 3 (3.03%) JSON
9 3 (3.03%) Protocol Buffers
10 2 (2.02%) AngularJS
10 2 (2.02%) OAuth2
10 2 (2.02%) Play Framework
Miscellaneous
1 24 (24.24%) Cloud Native
2 10 (10.10%) Product Ownership
3 4 (4.04%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (4.04%) Enterprise Software
4 3 (3.03%) Legacy Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Data Protection Act
5 2 (2.02%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (2.02%) Self-Motivation
5 2 (2.02%) Virtual Team
6 1 (1.01%) Cyber Defence
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Applications
6 1 (1.01%) Distributed Architecture
6 1 (1.01%) FPGA
6 1 (1.01%) Legacy Applications
6 1 (1.01%) LIMS
6 1 (1.01%) Low-Code
6 1 (1.01%) Management Information System
6 1 (1.01%) Private Cloud
6 1 (1.01%) Verilog
6 1 (1.01%) VHDL
Operating Systems
1 7 (7.07%) Linux
2 4 (4.04%) Windows
3 3 (3.03%) Embedded Linux
3 3 (3.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.02%) FreeRTOS
5 1 (1.01%) Windows Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 44 (44.44%) Agile
2 41 (41.41%) CI/CD
3 37 (37.37%) DevOps
4 35 (35.35%) Continuous Improvement
5 29 (29.29%) Scrum
6 26 (26.26%) Test Automation
7 23 (23.23%) Microservices
8 21 (21.21%) Stakeholder Management
9 18 (18.18%) Software Testing
9 18 (18.18%) Sprint Planning
10 17 (17.17%) Containerisation
11 16 (16.16%) Technical Leadership
12 15 (15.15%) Problem-Solving
12 15 (15.15%) SDLC
13 13 (13.13%) Infrastructure as Code
13 13 (13.13%) Observability
13 13 (13.13%) Software Delivery
14 12 (12.12%) Mentoring
14 12 (12.12%) TDD
15 11 (11.11%) Clean Code
Programming Languages
1 31 (31.31%) Java
2 17 (17.17%) Python
3 15 (15.15%) SQL
4 12 (12.12%) C#
5 7 (7.07%) TypeScript
6 6 (6.06%) C
7 5 (5.05%) Kotlin
8 4 (4.04%) JavaScript
8 4 (4.04%) PowerShell
9 3 (3.03%) C++
10 2 (2.02%) PL/SQL
10 2 (2.02%) ProC
10 2 (2.02%) Scala
10 2 (2.02%) VB
10 2 (2.02%) VB6
11 1 (1.01%) Bash
11 1 (1.01%) SystemVerilog
11 1 (1.01%) Tcl
11 1 (1.01%) T-SQL
11 1 (1.01%) VBA
Qualifications
1 44 (44.44%) Security Cleared
2 39 (39.39%) SC Cleared
3 7 (7.07%) AWS Certification
4 6 (6.06%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (4.04%) DV Cleared
6 3 (3.03%) Degree
7 2 (2.02%) Computer Science Degree
7 2 (2.02%) Master's Degree
8 1 (1.01%) PhD
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 12 (12.12%) QA
2 4 (4.04%) Accessibility
3 2 (2.02%) Data Quality
3 2 (2.02%) ISO 26262
3 2 (2.02%) MISRA
3 2 (2.02%) WCAG
4 1 (1.01%) 21 CFR Part 11
4 1 (1.01%) FATCA
4 1 (1.01%) GDPR
4 1 (1.01%) GMP
4 1 (1.01%) GxP
4 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 17025
4 1 (1.01%) ISO/IEC 27001
System Software
1 15 (15.15%) Docker
Systems Management
1 11 (11.11%) Kubernetes
2 9 (9.09%) Grafana
3 5 (5.05%) Ansible
4 3 (3.03%) Prometheus
5 2 (2.02%) Kibana
6 1 (1.01%) Control-M
6 1 (1.01%) Podman
6 1 (1.01%) Progress Chef
6 1 (1.01%) Puppet
Vendors
1 10 (10.10%) Oracle
2 4 (4.04%) Informatica
3 3 (3.03%) Databricks
3 3 (3.03%) Denodo
3 3 (3.03%) Dynatrace
3 3 (3.03%) Microsoft
3 3 (3.03%) Red Hat
3 3 (3.03%) ServiceNow
4 2 (2.02%) QNX
4 2 (2.02%) Splunk
5 1 (1.01%) Actian
5 1 (1.01%) IBM
5 1 (1.01%) OpenAI
5 1 (1.01%) Sage
5 1 (1.01%) Talend
5 1 (1.01%) Xilinx