Rather than go through agencies, who charge a big fat fee and often only serve as an obstruction between employer and potential employee, you can apply direct to the company, if you can find them. Coder Stack only posts jobs direct from employers.

Below is an independent list I've put together of software development firms in Birmingham, UK. If you know any I have missed, please do let me know in the comments. Thanks, and good luck in your search.

Proteus Software is based at Birmingham Business Park, B37 7YD, and they produce warehouse management software using Progress infrastructure software.

Borwell Software is a Small, Professional Software House based in Malvern that creates bespoke applications for Unix, Windows and iPhone.

iWeb technologies is another software house, this one in Aston Science Park in central Birmingham.

Aspera Solutions is a software house based in Blythe Valley Business Park in Solihull who specialise in ERP. However their head office is in Dublin and it's not clear how many (if any) development staff are based in Birmingham.

Dynistics is a stupidly-named software firm in Blythe Valley Park B90 8AJ who produce reporting software known as Active Dashboards. This product transforms existing business intelligence and presents it in a range of graphical charts. Here's an interesting news item about them.

Vector provides OEMs and suppliers of automotive and related industries a professional and open development platform of tools, software components and services for creating embedded systems. The development department appears to be based in Stuttgart, Germany.

IMI, the large chemical and engineering firm, employ nationwide, including in Birmingham and Lichfield.

Misys is a large global application software and services provider that produce a range of high level software. They're listed as one of the top 10 businesses in the Birmingham area, although I don't know how much if any development is carried out in that area.

Specialist Computer Centres call themselves a technology solutions provider specialising in IT infrastructure. They're pretty well established, and have a web development team based in Birmingham UK that takes on contracts for blue-chip clients. They mainly work in .NET. SCH is the parent company.

Kalexiko is a small web development agency started by two people who took their degree together. They claim, "We will continue to build the very latest web developments into clearly beautiful, easy-use websites that do a great job for you. We'll continue to develop our team to offer you the works, both in-house and from trusted partners. The proof: our top team of in-house partners and classy freelancers keeps growing, never shrinking". Well that's proof isn't it??

Packt Publishing is a computer book publishing company based in Acocks Green in Birmingham UK. They claim to have "a large and fast growing online customer base. With a highly ranked website and innovating constantly into new business areas, we are at the cutting edge of digital publishing, web marketing and ecommerce development. Our unique strategy of publishing highly focused books on new and ground breaking technologies has driven rapid growth and we are now poised for expansion."

We Build Websites are currently looking "for a highly skilled Web Developer to join their existing team. In this role you will be part of a dynamic company producing high end code using a variety of industry standard frameworks and technologies. This role is a mixture of front-end and back-end work using PHP technologies".

Smartphone Media (Halesowen, Birmingham, UK) "was set up to meet the demand from customers to engage with their target audience using their preferred medium of choice. We integrate strategic, creative, technical and marketing/PR services to offer a full-service approach to the planning, execution, release and awareness of smartphone applications (apps) and the optimisation of websites for access via smartphones. We create apps for Apple’ s iPhone and iPod Touch, Blackberry smartphones, Android powered smartphones like Google’ s Nexus One and Symbian powered smartphones."

Asidua employs "over 120 professionals and continues to expand: most employees are located at the company's corporate headquarters in Belfast; with other Asidua offices near Birmingham and in Dublin. Asidua is a software consultancy and services company, headquartered in Belfast with engineering and sales offices in Birmingham and Dublin. Asidua delivers world-class integration, software and consultancy services to government and corporate clients."

Dotted Eyes operate out of Bromsgrove in the West Midlands, and provide mapping solutions for business. "Serving some 900 customers UK-wide, through expert consultancy, training and product development in healthcare, local government, not-for-profit and the commercial sector, Dotted Eyes’ mantra is to ‘simplify, automate and integrate’ data and information. Dotted Eyes maintains long standing expert partnerships with location data providers such as Ordnance Survey and Pitney Bowes Business Insight."

Mobilefun employ a fairly large number of PHP developers, making "web and mobile applications which are used by thousands of customers every day .. PHP/MySQL web development in a LAMP environment. Working as part of a fast-paced, dynamic team, you will develop a wide variety of PHP/MySQL e-commerce web applications. As well as application development, you will be involved in usability, SEO, mobile applications, back-end systems development and providing support. Key technologies include MySQL, PHP5, Zend Framework, Linux, Apache, HTML, CSS, Javascript, JQuery, etc. ."

Big Room Internet are yet another digital design agency, although they possibly have above average code quality, as it appears Rob Allen is an employee, and I've encountered his blog before, and I even think I recognise his Zend Framework book cover.

Scorchsoft are yet another digital design thingie in Birmingham. As are Sprike (PHP, MySQL, Photoshop (slicing, editing), jQuery and Javascript).

Delcam undertake "development, sales and support of software, Delcam is unique in being the only international CADCAM software supplier with its own toolroom. Based alongside the company’s development headquarters in Birmingham, UK ..". They code mostly in C++.

Something a little different is Cooperative Web, which is a cooperative of software developers and related personnel. This means that every employee jointly owns the company. Dan Maharry works with them - he was an editor and author with Wrox Press in its original form when I was also working there. He was primarily interested in Microsoft technologies, and this appears to be Cooperative Web's focus also. The company is based in Longbridge, Birmingham UK.

FCL is a small outfit based in Aston Science Park in central Birmingham. They specialise in financial software, such as Sage 200, Sage line 100, and Microsoft Navision.

Kintec are in the Kings Heath area of Birmingham. They call themselves 'software outsourcers', meaning that they will take on internal software projects for third parties. Their website is pretty shit at the moment, however they've only been established since 2010. They apparently have 30 developers, but whether any are based in the UK is not certain.

BlueCube Media, just another digital design agency.

Opace are another digital design agency, but not one that appears to do much in-house coding. Impression from the web site is that these are not a technical firm, and they mainly appear to install open source packages such as Joomla.

e-foreknowledge are another digital design agency.

IO Studios - yes another digital design agency.

Eigen Software specialise in software for the 'compensation claim' industry. They appear to be a fairly small company - my money is on them being a two-bit Microsoft shop, although the technology they use is not mentioned on the site. They claim to have been established in 2003, and were still operating last year.

ExciteNet appear to be a one man operation.

Fast Fwd Multimedia is another web development agency - perhaps with a greater focus on development rather than design as in many of the other companies. They "design websites and build internet applications, and also provide consulting services for cloud computing, IT systems and change management".

Warwick

First Utility are a company which supplies energy efficiency tools such as smart meters. Some of these have a web interface, which is built in PHP / MySQL using the Yii framework. Internally, they use RESTful web services for interprocess communication. They also have a web portal which is built in Drupal.

Manchester

Tecmark is "a UK based Digital Marketing Agency specialising in mobile app development and marketing and Search Engine Optimisation. We have offices in Manchester and London. Tecmark also designs, develops and delivers mobile applications across all the major platforms: iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Phone 7".

London

Simply Business are primarily based in London, and provide corporate insurance services. They do have what they call 'satellite' offices in Northampton and Birmingham, but it seems dev is mostly stationed in the capital. They seem to work mostly in Java.

The BBC naturally have a lot of technology staff. These now appear to be primarily based out of London, although there may be some New Media posts still located in Birmingham.

Bristol

Legal and General do some degree of in-house web development, employing roles such as "Experienced Web Analyst for support of L&G Investments (L&GI) website projects and continued support of L&GI ongoing Business As Usual website development requirements" in their Kingsbury offices. Some of the web roles are categorised under 'marketing'.

Wales

Laura Ashley's MIT department is based in Newtown, Wales. They employ Java, PHP and VB people to support, maintain and develop the Laura Ashley business system applications and websites. Apply to HR Department, Laura Ashley Limited, Unit A, Vastre Enterprise Park, Newtown, Powys, SY16 1DZ

Reading

The SciSys Group have UK offices in Chippenham, and Darmstadt in Germany. They provide ICT services, e-Business and advanced technology solutions "in a broad spectrum of market sectors including space, utilities, defence, government, communication, business services, media and broadcast and transport". They use Java.

France

Open Wide are a technology company that use a variety of open source technologies, including Java, C and PHP. PHP jobs tend to be based in Lyon, the others in Paris.