Software Engineering Contract Job Trends in Manchester

Software Engineering
North West > Manchester

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in Manchester requiring Software Engineering skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 4 February 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 40 31
Rank change year-on-year +13 -9 +29
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 93 46 78
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.28% 4.46% 4.85%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.25% 4.90% 5.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 48 35 42
10th Percentile £387 £405 £456
25th Percentile £433 £425 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £700 £694
90th Percentile £641 £713 £734
North West median daily rate £503 £550 £549
% change year-on-year -8.64% +0.18% -8.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 20 0 5
10th Percentile - - £52.30
25th Percentile £52.50 - £58.75
Median hourly rate £56.25 - £62.50
75th Percentile £70.00 - £72.50
90th Percentile £77.50 - £77.60
North West median hourly rate £55.00 £49.00 £46.91
% change year-on-year +12.24% +4.46% +10.03%

All Process & Methodology Skills
Manchester

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 Manchester.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 1,127 938 1,396
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 88.25% 90.98% 86.76%
Number of daily rates quoted 775 589 985
10th Percentile £306 £294 £306
25th Percentile £375 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -10.00% -
75th Percentile £571 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £676 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 79 31 67
10th Percentile £17.27 £15.90 £12.50
25th Percentile £24.08 £20.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £45.00 £32.50 £23.45
Median % change year-on-year +38.46% +38.59% -42.80%
75th Percentile £61.25 £33.75 £48.50
90th Percentile £76.30 £60.00 £73.00
North West median hourly rate £41.94 £31.51 £30.00
% change year-on-year +33.10% +5.03% -19.57%

Software Engineering
Job Vacancy Trend in Manchester

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Software Engineering relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester.

Software Engineering job vacancy trend in Manchester

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Daily Rate Histogram in Manchester

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Software Engineering in Manchester over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Software Engineering in Manchester

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Trend in Manchester

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in Manchester citing Software Engineering

Software Engineering
Hourly Rate Histogram in Manchester

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Software Engineering in Manchester over the 6 months to 4 February 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Software Engineering in Manchester

Software Engineering
Contract Job Locations in Manchester

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 Manchester region over the 6 months to 4 February 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
Salford +4 3 £400 -42.86% 7
Cheadle - 3 £550 - 1
Bolton - 2 £550 -
Software Engineering
North West

Software Engineering
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in Manchester 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 1 (1.08%) Apache
1 1 (1.08%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (1.08%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 31 (33.33%) AWS
2 14 (15.05%) Serverless
3 13 (13.98%) Azure
4 11 (11.83%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (9.68%) GitHub
6 8 (8.60%) Amazon ECS
7 6 (6.45%) Amazon EC2
7 6 (6.45%) Amazon SQS
7 6 (6.45%) GCP
7 6 (6.45%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (5.38%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (5.38%) Amazon EventBridge
9 4 (4.30%) Amazon MSK
9 4 (4.30%) Amazon S3
9 4 (4.30%) AWS Fargate
10 3 (3.23%) Power Platform
10 3 (3.23%) SaaS
11 2 (2.15%) Azure AI
11 2 (2.15%) Azure Functions
11 2 (2.15%) Azure Logic Apps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (10.75%) MongoDB
2 7 (7.53%) DynamoDB
2 7 (7.53%) MySQL
2 7 (7.53%) NoSQL
2 7 (7.53%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (5.38%) Amazon Aurora
3 5 (5.38%) Amazon RDS
4 4 (4.30%) Apache Cassandra
4 4 (4.30%) DocumentDB
5 3 (3.23%) Redis
6 2 (2.15%) Elasticsearch
7 1 (1.08%) Hadoop
7 1 (1.08%) Mixpanel
7 1 (1.08%) ObjectStore
7 1 (1.08%) Power BI
7 1 (1.08%) Relational Database
7 1 (1.08%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (18.28%) GitLab
2 13 (13.98%) Gradle
3 11 (11.83%) IntelliJ
4 7 (7.53%) Git
5 6 (6.45%) CocoaPods
6 3 (3.23%) Artifactory
6 3 (3.23%) Jenkins
6 3 (3.23%) JMeter
6 3 (3.23%) Mockito
6 3 (3.23%) Postman
6 3 (3.23%) Selenium
7 2 (2.15%) Cypress.io
7 2 (2.15%) Maven
7 2 (2.15%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (1.08%) Cucumber
8 1 (1.08%) fastlane
General
1 14 (15.05%) Social Skills
2 8 (8.60%) Public Sector
3 6 (6.45%) Finance
4 3 (3.23%) Documentation Skills
4 3 (3.23%) Games
5 2 (2.15%) Retail
6 1 (1.08%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.08%) Automotive
6 1 (1.08%) Electronics
6 1 (1.08%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.08%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.08%) Marketing
6 1 (1.08%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.08%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 59 (63.44%) Software Engineer
2 23 (24.73%) Senior
3 19 (20.43%) Java Engineer
4 18 (19.35%) Java Software Engineer
5 17 (18.28%) Senior Software Engineer
6 8 (8.60%) Lead
7 6 (6.45%) iOS Software Engineer
8 5 (5.38%) Architect
8 5 (5.38%) Developer
9 4 (4.30%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 4 (4.30%) Java Developer
9 4 (4.30%) Lead Software Engineer
10 3 (3.23%) Engineering Manager
10 3 (3.23%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
10 3 (3.23%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
10 3 (3.23%) Integration Engineer
10 3 (3.23%) Python Engineer
10 3 (3.23%) Senior Developer
10 3 (3.23%) Software Architect
10 3 (3.23%) Software Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (31.18%) Spring
2 28 (30.11%) Spring Boot
3 16 (17.20%) React
4 14 (15.05%) Kafka
5 12 (12.90%) REST
6 11 (11.83%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (10.75%) Node.js
8 7 (7.53%) RESTful
9 6 (6.45%) .NET
9 6 (6.45%) AngularJS
9 6 (6.45%) GraphQL
10 5 (5.38%) Spring Security
11 4 (4.30%) Core Media
11 4 (4.30%) JSON
11 4 (4.30%) RabbitMQ
12 3 (3.23%) JAX-RS
12 3 (3.23%) OAuth
12 3 (3.23%) OAuth2
12 3 (3.23%) OpenID
12 3 (3.23%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 10 (10.75%) Cloud Native
2 9 (9.68%) Product Ownership
3 8 (8.60%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (5.38%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (4.30%) Mobile App
6 3 (3.23%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (2.15%) Embedded Systems
7 2 (2.15%) Onboarding
8 1 (1.08%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (1.08%) NHS
8 1 (1.08%) Private Cloud
8 1 (1.08%) SCADA
8 1 (1.08%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 7 (7.53%) Apple iOS
2 6 (6.45%) Linux
3 3 (3.23%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.15%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 30 (32.26%) Agile
2 28 (30.11%) CI/CD
3 27 (29.03%) Microservices
4 22 (23.66%) TDD
5 19 (20.43%) DevOps
6 17 (18.28%) Full-Stack Development
7 16 (17.20%) Containerisation
8 11 (11.83%) Event-Driven
9 10 (10.75%) Code Quality
9 10 (10.75%) Observability
10 9 (9.68%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 9 (9.68%) User Experience
11 8 (8.60%) Design Patterns
11 8 (8.60%) Machine Learning
11 8 (8.60%) Mentoring
11 8 (8.60%) Problem-Solving
11 8 (8.60%) Roadmaps
11 8 (8.60%) Technical Leadership
12 7 (7.53%) Scrum
12 7 (7.53%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 46 (49.46%) Java
2 17 (18.28%) TypeScript
3 14 (15.05%) Kotlin
3 14 (15.05%) Python
4 10 (10.75%) SQL
5 9 (9.68%) JavaScript
6 6 (6.45%) Go
6 6 (6.45%) Objective-C
6 6 (6.45%) Swift
7 4 (4.30%) Bash
8 3 (3.23%) C
8 3 (3.23%) C#
8 3 (3.23%) C++
8 3 (3.23%) Rust
9 2 (2.15%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 10 (10.75%) Security Cleared
2 6 (6.45%) SC Cleared
3 3 (3.23%) BPSS Clearance
3 3 (3.23%) DV Cleared
4 2 (2.15%) AWS Certification
4 2 (2.15%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (5.38%) Accessibility
2 4 (4.30%) QA
3 3 (3.23%) IEC 61508
3 3 (3.23%) IEC 62304
3 3 (3.23%) ISO 26262
4 1 (1.08%) Data Quality
4 1 (1.08%) HL7
System Software
1 15 (16.13%) Docker
2 1 (1.08%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 28 (30.11%) Kubernetes
2 15 (16.13%) Grafana
3 11 (11.83%) Terraform
4 3 (3.23%) Prometheus
5 1 (1.08%) Ansible
5 1 (1.08%) Argo
5 1 (1.08%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 3 (3.23%) Atlassian
1 3 (3.23%) Microsoft
1 3 (3.23%) PagerDuty
1 3 (3.23%) Red Hat
2 2 (2.15%) Foundry
2 2 (2.15%) OpenAI
2 2 (2.15%) Oracle
2 2 (2.15%) Salesforce
2 2 (2.15%) SAP
3 1 (1.08%) Google
3 1 (1.08%) Siemens
3 1 (1.08%) VMware