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

6 months to
6 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 25 27 41
Rank change year-on-year +2 +14 +14
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 152 70 50
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.75% 7.00% 4.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.28% 7.92% 4.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 79 41 22
10th Percentile £405 £380 £425
25th Percentile £450 £413 £466
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £538
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -6.98% +1.18%
75th Percentile £650 £650 £638
90th Percentile £728 £716 £718
North West median daily rate £550 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -0.94%
Number of hourly rates quoted 27 4 8
10th Percentile £62.30 £71.05 -
25th Percentile £63.75 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £80.75 £61.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.50% +32.38% -4.31%
75th Percentile £76.00 £90.31 £72.03
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.13 £73.10
North West median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £47.37
% change year-on-year -7.14% +47.77% +2.58%

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 1,638 884 1,055
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.49% 88.40% 87.12%
Number of daily rates quoted 985 566 677
10th Percentile £300 £307 £328
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £588 £600
90th Percentile £675 £674 £700
North West median daily rate £494 £454 £500
% change year-on-year +8.70% -9.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 161 53 52
10th Percentile £21.00 £17.12 £15.93
25th Percentile £29.96 £19.07 £23.95
Median hourly rate £55.00 £22.63 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +143.04% -35.34% +77.22%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £64.06
90th Percentile £85.00 £77.00 £82.15
North West median hourly rate £48.32 £27.90 £32.50
% change year-on-year +73.16% -14.15% -1.52%

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 6 August 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 6 August 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 6 August 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 - 2
Stockport - 2 £600 - 6
Bolton - 1 - -
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 2 (1.32%) Apache
1 2 (1.32%) Apache Spark
1 2 (1.32%) CMS
1 2 (1.32%) Confluence
1 2 (1.32%) SAS
2 1 (0.66%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.66%) Jupyter
Cloud Services
1 82 (53.95%) AWS
2 15 (9.87%) Azure
3 14 (9.21%) Serverless
4 9 (5.92%) GitHub
5 8 (5.26%) Amazon S3
5 8 (5.26%) Anthropic Claude
5 8 (5.26%) AWS Lambda
5 8 (5.26%) GCP
5 8 (5.26%) GitHub Actions
5 8 (5.26%) Google Gemini
6 6 (3.95%) Amazon ECS
6 6 (3.95%) Amazon SQS
6 6 (3.95%) GitHub Copilot
7 4 (2.63%) Amazon EKS
7 4 (2.63%) Amazon OpenSearch
7 4 (2.63%) AWS CloudFormation
7 4 (2.63%) CloudFront
7 4 (2.63%) SaaS
8 3 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
8 3 (1.97%) Amazon ElastiCache
Communications & Networking
1 2 (1.32%) Firewall
1 2 (1.32%) VPN
2 1 (0.66%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (6.58%) DynamoDB
1 10 (6.58%) PostgreSQL
2 9 (5.92%) MySQL
3 8 (5.26%) Elasticsearch
3 8 (5.26%) NoSQL
4 5 (3.29%) SQL Server
5 4 (2.63%) Relational Database
5 4 (2.63%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (1.32%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (1.32%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.32%) Data Vault
7 1 (0.66%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (11.18%) Git
2 9 (5.92%) Claude Code
3 5 (3.29%) Cucumber
3 5 (3.29%) JIRA
4 4 (2.63%) JUnit
4 4 (2.63%) Selenium
5 3 (1.97%) Mockito
6 2 (1.32%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.32%) GitLab
7 1 (0.66%) Gatling
7 1 (0.66%) Gradle
7 1 (0.66%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.66%) JMeter
7 1 (0.66%) Postman
7 1 (0.66%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.66%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.66%) SonarQube
General
1 32 (21.05%) Social Skills
2 19 (12.50%) Retail
3 14 (9.21%) Finance
4 13 (8.55%) Public Sector
5 6 (3.95%) Banking
6 5 (3.29%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (2.63%) Military
8 2 (1.32%) Influencing Skills
8 2 (1.32%) Marketing
9 1 (0.66%) Automotive
9 1 (0.66%) Documentation Skills
9 1 (0.66%) Health Technology
9 1 (0.66%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 102 (67.11%) Software Engineer
2 35 (23.03%) Senior
3 25 (16.45%) Senior Software Engineer
4 22 (14.47%) Java Engineer
5 21 (13.82%) Java Software Engineer
5 21 (13.82%) Lead
6 17 (11.18%) AWS Engineer
7 16 (10.53%) AWS Software Engineer
8 15 (9.87%) Developer
9 11 (7.24%) Lead Software Engineer
10 10 (6.58%) Embedded Engineer
10 10 (6.58%) Embedded Software Engineer
11 7 (4.61%) Full-Stack Developer
11 7 (4.61%) Python Engineer
12 6 (3.95%) Cloud Engineer
12 6 (3.95%) Cloud Software Engineer
12 6 (3.95%) Java Developer
12 6 (3.95%) Migration Engineer
12 6 (3.95%) Principal Engineer
12 6 (3.95%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 36 (23.68%) Spring
2 33 (21.71%) Spring Boot
3 30 (19.74%) React
4 25 (16.45%) Node.js
5 19 (12.50%) .NET
5 19 (12.50%) REST
6 13 (8.55%) Next.js
7 10 (6.58%) Kafka
8 9 (5.92%) RESTful
9 7 (4.61%) AWS CDK
10 6 (3.95%) CSS
10 6 (3.95%) HTML
11 5 (3.29%) AngularJS
11 5 (3.29%) Nunjucks
12 4 (2.63%) Jakarta EE
12 4 (2.63%) MACH
12 4 (2.63%) OAuth
13 3 (1.97%) Express.js
13 3 (1.97%) Spring MVC
13 3 (1.97%) Spring Security
Miscellaneous
1 41 (26.97%) Cloud Native
2 12 (7.89%) Distributed Systems
3 11 (7.24%) Product Ownership
4 5 (3.29%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.63%) Culture of Ownership
5 4 (2.63%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (1.97%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.32%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.32%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.32%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (1.32%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.32%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.32%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.66%) AI Agents
8 1 (0.66%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.66%) CMDB
8 1 (0.66%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.66%) NHS
8 1 (0.66%) Replication
8 1 (0.66%) RISC-V
Operating Systems
1 11 (7.24%) Linux
2 2 (1.32%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 67 (44.08%) CI/CD
2 53 (34.87%) Agile
3 43 (28.29%) DevOps
4 40 (26.32%) Microservices
5 30 (19.74%) Infrastructure as Code
5 30 (19.74%) Test Automation
6 28 (18.42%) AI
7 27 (17.76%) Event-Driven
7 27 (17.76%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 25 (16.45%) Full-Stack Development
9 23 (15.13%) Continuous Improvement
10 22 (14.47%) Observability
11 19 (12.50%) Mentoring
12 18 (11.84%) Code Quality
13 16 (10.53%) SDLC
13 16 (10.53%) Technical Leadership
14 15 (9.87%) Machine Learning
14 15 (9.87%) Migration
15 14 (9.21%) Root Cause Analysis
15 14 (9.21%) TDD
Programming Languages
1 60 (39.47%) Java
2 33 (21.71%) TypeScript
3 27 (17.76%) JavaScript
3 27 (17.76%) Python
4 19 (12.50%) SQL
5 13 (8.55%) C#
6 8 (5.26%) Rust
7 6 (3.95%) Kotlin
8 5 (3.29%) C++
9 3 (1.97%) Scala
10 2 (1.32%) Go
11 1 (0.66%) Ada
11 1 (0.66%) C
Qualifications
1 16 (10.53%) Security Cleared
2 10 (6.58%) SC Cleared
3 9 (5.92%) AWS Certification
4 8 (5.26%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 6 (3.95%) Degree
6 4 (2.63%) BPSS Clearance
6 4 (2.63%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.32%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.58%) QA
2 6 (3.95%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.63%) GDPR
3 4 (2.63%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 3 (1.97%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.66%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.66%) DO-178B
5 1 (0.66%) MISRA
System Software
1 34 (22.37%) Docker
2 1 (0.66%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 31 (20.39%) Kubernetes
2 28 (18.42%) Terraform
3 1 (0.66%) Grafana
3 1 (0.66%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 5 (3.29%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.97%) Google
2 3 (1.97%) OpenAI
3 2 (1.32%) Databricks
3 2 (1.32%) Informatica
3 2 (1.32%) SAP
4 1 (0.66%) Adobe
4 1 (0.66%) Oracle
4 1 (0.66%) ServiceNow
4 1 (0.66%) Sitecore