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

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 20 24 41
Rank change year-on-year +4 +17 +13
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 169 69 45
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 8.51% 6.97% 3.83%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 10.10% 7.86% 4.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 85 39 22
10th Percentile £414 £379 £414
25th Percentile £450 £406 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £513
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -2.44% -6.82%
75th Percentile £638 £575 £638
90th Percentile £733 £658 £718
North West median daily rate £550 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -8.05%
Number of hourly rates quoted 34 4 5
10th Percentile £62.50 £71.05 -
25th Percentile £64.44 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £80.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.50% +46.82% -13.73%
75th Percentile £76.00 £90.31 £71.50
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.13 £73.30
North West median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -7.14% +51.58% -

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 1,673 878 1,024
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 84.28% 88.69% 87.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,016 564 632
10th Percentile £310 £304 £332
25th Percentile £406 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £580 £600
90th Percentile £694 £674 £722
North West median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 162 61 42
10th Percentile £21.00 £14.20 £16.09
25th Percentile £30.00 £19.07 £22.38
Median hourly rate £52.50 £22.63 £34.00
Median % change year-on-year +131.99% -33.44% +74.36%
75th Percentile £75.00 £52.50 £61.38
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £74.20
North West median hourly rate £46.80 £25.15 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.08% -37.63% +18.60%

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 September 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 September 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 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
Bury - 6 £744 -
Stockport - 1 - - 4
Bolton - 1 - - 11
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 3 (1.78%) Confluence
2 2 (1.18%) Apache
2 2 (1.18%) Apache Spark
2 2 (1.18%) CMS
2 2 (1.18%) SAS
3 1 (0.59%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.59%) Apache Airflow
3 1 (0.59%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.59%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 94 (55.62%) AWS
2 17 (10.06%) Serverless
3 13 (7.69%) Azure
4 10 (5.92%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (5.33%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (4.73%) Amazon S3
6 8 (4.73%) GCP
6 8 (4.73%) GitHub
6 8 (4.73%) Google Gemini
7 7 (4.14%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.55%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (3.55%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.55%) GitHub Copilot
9 4 (2.37%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (2.37%) AWS CloudFormation
9 4 (2.37%) CloudFront
9 4 (2.37%) SaaS
10 3 (1.78%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (1.78%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 3 (1.78%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 5 (2.96%) HTTP
2 3 (1.78%) Firewall
3 2 (1.18%) VPN
4 1 (0.59%) Network Security
4 1 (0.59%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (5.92%) DynamoDB
1 10 (5.92%) MySQL
1 10 (5.92%) NoSQL
1 10 (5.92%) PostgreSQL
2 5 (2.96%) Relational Database
3 3 (1.78%) Elasticsearch
3 3 (1.78%) MongoDB
4 2 (1.18%) Amazon RDS
4 2 (1.18%) Amazon Redshift
4 2 (1.18%) Data Vault
4 2 (1.18%) SQL Server
4 2 (1.18%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 1 (0.59%) Oracle Database
5 1 (0.59%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (10.06%) Git
2 10 (5.92%) Claude Code
3 5 (2.96%) Cucumber
3 5 (2.96%) JIRA
4 4 (2.37%) JUnit
4 4 (2.37%) Selenium
5 3 (1.78%) Mockito
6 2 (1.18%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.18%) GitLab
7 1 (0.59%) CocoaPods
7 1 (0.59%) fastlane
7 1 (0.59%) Gatling
7 1 (0.59%) Gradle
7 1 (0.59%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.59%) JMeter
7 1 (0.59%) Postman
7 1 (0.59%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.59%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.59%) SonarQube
General
1 49 (28.99%) Social Skills
2 16 (9.47%) Finance
2 16 (9.47%) Public Sector
3 14 (8.28%) Retail
4 8 (4.73%) Banking
5 6 (3.55%) Analytical Skills
6 5 (2.96%) Military
7 3 (1.78%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.18%) iGaming
8 2 (1.18%) Marketing
9 1 (0.59%) Automotive
9 1 (0.59%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.59%) Games
9 1 (0.59%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.59%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 102 (60.36%) Software Engineer
2 40 (23.67%) Senior
3 26 (15.38%) Java Engineer
3 26 (15.38%) Senior Software Engineer
4 24 (14.20%) Lead
5 22 (13.02%) Java Software Engineer
6 21 (12.43%) Developer
7 17 (10.06%) AWS Engineer
8 15 (8.88%) AWS Software Engineer
9 12 (7.10%) Java Developer
10 10 (5.92%) Embedded Engineer
10 10 (5.92%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 9 (5.33%) Lead Software Engineer
12 8 (4.73%) Full-Stack Developer
13 7 (4.14%) Full-Stack Engineer
13 7 (4.14%) Lead Developer
13 7 (4.14%) Senior Developer
14 6 (3.55%) Architect
14 6 (3.55%) Lead Java Developer
14 6 (3.55%) Migration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (30.18%) Spring
2 48 (28.40%) Spring Boot
3 31 (18.34%) React
4 26 (15.38%) REST
5 25 (14.79%) Node.js
6 22 (13.02%) Terraform
7 19 (11.24%) Kafka
8 16 (9.47%) .NET
9 13 (7.69%) Next.js
10 9 (5.33%) RESTful
11 6 (3.55%) AngularJS
11 6 (3.55%) AWS CDK
11 6 (3.55%) Jakarta EE
12 5 (2.96%) CSS
12 5 (2.96%) HTML
12 5 (2.96%) Nunjucks
13 4 (2.37%) MACH
13 4 (2.37%) OAuth
13 4 (2.37%) OpenID
13 4 (2.37%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 50 (29.59%) Cloud Native
2 25 (14.79%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.14%) Onboarding
3 7 (4.14%) Product Ownership
4 4 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
5 3 (1.78%) AI Agents
5 3 (1.78%) Culture of Ownership
6 2 (1.18%) Credit Risk
6 2 (1.18%) Data Protection Act
6 2 (1.18%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.18%) Legacy Systems
6 2 (1.18%) Private Cloud
6 2 (1.18%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.59%) CMDB
7 1 (0.59%) Data Structures
7 1 (0.59%) Mobile App
7 1 (0.59%) NHS
7 1 (0.59%) Online Gambling
7 1 (0.59%) PKI
7 1 (0.59%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 6 (3.55%) Linux
2 2 (1.18%) Apple iOS
2 2 (1.18%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.59%) Android
3 1 (0.59%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 74 (43.79%) CI/CD
2 58 (34.32%) Agile
3 50 (29.59%) Microservices
4 39 (23.08%) Test Automation
5 36 (21.30%) DevOps
6 34 (20.12%) Event-Driven
7 33 (19.53%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 30 (17.75%) Full-Stack Development
9 29 (17.16%) AI
9 29 (17.16%) Infrastructure as Code
10 28 (16.57%) Continuous Improvement
11 26 (15.38%) Observability
12 23 (13.61%) Technical Leadership
13 22 (13.02%) SDLC
14 21 (12.43%) Mentoring
15 20 (11.83%) Code Quality
16 18 (10.65%) User Experience
17 17 (10.06%) Decision-Making
17 17 (10.06%) Problem-Solving
18 16 (9.47%) Root Cause Analysis
Programming Languages
1 76 (44.97%) Java
2 31 (18.34%) TypeScript
3 24 (14.20%) JavaScript
4 23 (13.61%) Python
5 19 (11.24%) SQL
6 11 (6.51%) Kotlin
7 10 (5.92%) C#
8 5 (2.96%) C++
9 3 (1.78%) Rust
9 3 (1.78%) Scala
10 1 (0.59%) Ada
10 1 (0.59%) Bash
10 1 (0.59%) C
10 1 (0.59%) Go
10 1 (0.59%) Objective-C
10 1 (0.59%) Perl
10 1 (0.59%) Swift
Qualifications
1 15 (8.88%) Security Cleared
2 11 (6.51%) SC Cleared
3 8 (4.73%) Degree
4 6 (3.55%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.37%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.78%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.18%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.59%) CEH
8 1 (0.59%) Computer Science Degree
8 1 (0.59%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.59%) SANS
8 1 (0.59%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (5.92%) QA
2 8 (4.73%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.37%) GDPR
4 3 (1.78%) Data Quality
5 2 (1.18%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 1 (0.59%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.59%) DO-178B
6 1 (0.59%) MISRA
6 1 (0.59%) NIST
System Software
1 32 (18.93%) Docker
2 1 (0.59%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 35 (20.71%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.59%) Grafana
2 1 (0.59%) Istio
2 1 (0.59%) Network Intrusion Detection System
2 1 (0.59%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (2.96%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.78%) OpenAI
3 2 (1.18%) Databricks
3 2 (1.18%) Google
3 2 (1.18%) Informatica
3 2 (1.18%) SAP
4 1 (0.59%) Adobe
4 1 (0.59%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (0.59%) CheckPoint
4 1 (0.59%) Cisco
4 1 (0.59%) F5
4 1 (0.59%) Intel
4 1 (0.59%) Oracle
4 1 (0.59%) ServiceNow