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 3 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
3 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 35 46 52
Rank change year-on-year +11 +6 -12
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 57 35 58
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 5.31% 3.02% 3.56%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 5.99% 3.47% 4.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 31 21 35
10th Percentile £303 £413 £413
25th Percentile £425 £425 £456
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £550
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -9.09% -8.33%
75th Percentile £650 £575 £700
90th Percentile £688 £600 £738
North West median daily rate £550 £475 £538
% change year-on-year +15.79% -11.63% -10.42%
Number of hourly rates quoted 3 2 6
10th Percentile £70.70 £63.20 £56.88
25th Percentile £71.75 £64.25 £59.38
Median hourly rate £79.00 £69.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year +13.67% +11.20% +31.58%
75th Percentile £89.75 £73.75 £65.94
90th Percentile £92.90 £74.20 £71.88
North West median hourly rate £55.85 £42.50 £46.18
% change year-on-year +31.42% -7.97% +3.36%

All Process and 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 952 1,010 1,440
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 88.72% 87.14% 88.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 623 580 1,044
10th Percentile £300 £313 £269
25th Percentile £381 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £588
90th Percentile £678 £675 £675
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +1.01%
Number of hourly rates quoted 74 35 56
10th Percentile £17.14 £16.34 £15.72
25th Percentile £19.07 £26.93 £16.28
Median hourly rate £22.63 £33.00 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -31.42% +69.23% -31.58%
75th Percentile £33.00 £61.25 £44.53
90th Percentile £64.63 £73.30 £70.00
North West median hourly rate £29.27 £40.33 £35.50
% change year-on-year -27.41% +13.59% +46.15%

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 3 November 2025.

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 3 November 2025.

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 3 November 2025. 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
Cheadle - 5 £625 - 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 1 (1.75%) Apache
1 1 (1.75%) Apache Airflow
1 1 (1.75%) Confluence
Applications
1 1 (1.75%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 21 (36.84%) AWS
2 9 (15.79%) Serverless
3 8 (14.04%) AWS Lambda
4 6 (10.53%) Amazon ECS
4 6 (10.53%) Amazon EKS
4 6 (10.53%) Amazon SQS
4 6 (10.53%) GitHub
5 5 (8.77%) Amazon EC2
5 5 (8.77%) Amazon EventBridge
5 5 (8.77%) Amazon MSK
5 5 (8.77%) GitHub Actions
6 2 (3.51%) Amazon S3
6 2 (3.51%) Azure
6 2 (3.51%) SaaS
7 1 (1.75%) Amazon Cognito
7 1 (1.75%) Amazon SageMaker
7 1 (1.75%) AWS Fargate
7 1 (1.75%) AWS Step Functions
7 1 (1.75%) Power Platform
7 1 (1.75%) Snowflake
Database & Business Intelligence
1 14 (24.56%) MongoDB
2 6 (10.53%) Amazon Aurora
2 6 (10.53%) DynamoDB
2 6 (10.53%) NoSQL
3 5 (8.77%) DocumentDB
4 4 (7.02%) Apache Cassandra
4 4 (7.02%) MySQL
5 3 (5.26%) PostgreSQL
6 2 (3.51%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (1.75%) Hadoop
7 1 (1.75%) ObjectStore
7 1 (1.75%) Power BI
7 1 (1.75%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 9 (15.79%) Jenkins
2 6 (10.53%) Rational DOORS
3 4 (7.02%) Artifactory
3 4 (7.02%) Git
3 4 (7.02%) GitLab
3 4 (7.02%) JIRA
4 3 (5.26%) Mockito
5 1 (1.75%) Bitbucket
5 1 (1.75%) Gradle
5 1 (1.75%) JUnit
5 1 (1.75%) Maven
5 1 (1.75%) Rational Rhapsody
5 1 (1.75%) Robot Framework
5 1 (1.75%) SonarQube
General
1 16 (28.07%) Social Skills
2 12 (21.05%) Public Sector
3 5 (8.77%) Finance
4 4 (7.02%) Military
5 3 (5.26%) Documentation Skills
6 2 (3.51%) Retail
7 1 (1.75%) Analytical Skills
7 1 (1.75%) Electronics
7 1 (1.75%) Influencing Skills
7 1 (1.75%) Manufacturing
7 1 (1.75%) Marketing
7 1 (1.75%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 33 (57.89%) Software Engineer
2 19 (33.33%) Lead
3 15 (26.32%) Lead Software Engineer
4 8 (14.04%) Senior
5 6 (10.53%) Developer
6 5 (8.77%) Senior Software Engineer
7 4 (7.02%) Java Engineer
7 4 (7.02%) Java Software Engineer
8 3 (5.26%) Architect
8 3 (5.26%) DevSecOps Engineer
8 3 (5.26%) Java Developer
8 3 (5.26%) Software Architect
9 2 (3.51%) Engineering Manager
9 2 (3.51%) Full-Stack Engineer
9 2 (3.51%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
9 2 (3.51%) Python Engineer
9 2 (3.51%) Python Software Engineer
9 2 (3.51%) Senior Developer
9 2 (3.51%) Senior Java Developer
9 2 (3.51%) Technical Leader
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 17 (29.82%) Kafka
2 8 (14.04%) Spring
3 6 (10.53%) .NET
3 6 (10.53%) React
3 6 (10.53%) Spring Boot
4 4 (7.02%) AngularJS
4 4 (7.02%) Node.js
5 3 (5.26%) ActiveMQ
5 3 (5.26%) JAX-RS
5 3 (5.26%) REST
5 3 (5.26%) Spring Batch
5 3 (5.26%) Spring Security
6 2 (3.51%) pytest
6 2 (3.51%) RESTful
7 1 (1.75%) JavaFX
7 1 (1.75%) Pandas
7 1 (1.75%) scikit-learn
7 1 (1.75%) Swing
7 1 (1.75%) TensorFlow
7 1 (1.75%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 8 (14.04%) Cloud Native
2 5 (8.77%) Distributed Systems
3 4 (7.02%) Data Protection Act
4 3 (5.26%) Greenfield Project
5 2 (3.51%) Embedded Systems
5 2 (3.51%) Product Ownership
6 1 (1.75%) Cyber Threat
6 1 (1.75%) Enterprise Software
6 1 (1.75%) Tandem
Operating Systems
1 8 (14.04%) Linux
2 3 (5.26%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (42.11%) Agile
1 24 (42.11%) CI/CD
1 24 (42.11%) Microservices
2 20 (35.09%) Containerisation
3 19 (33.33%) DevOps
4 14 (24.56%) TDD
5 9 (15.79%) Mentoring
5 9 (15.79%) Software Architecture
6 7 (12.28%) Coaching
6 7 (12.28%) Problem-Solving
6 7 (12.28%) Stakeholder Management
6 7 (12.28%) Technical Leadership
6 7 (12.28%) UML
7 6 (10.53%) Event-Driven
7 6 (10.53%) Full-Stack Development
7 6 (10.53%) Infrastructure as Code
7 6 (10.53%) Scrum
8 5 (8.77%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 5 (8.77%) Unit Testing
9 4 (7.02%) Kanban
Programming Languages
1 29 (50.88%) Java
2 15 (26.32%) Python
3 13 (22.81%) SQL
4 7 (12.28%) Bash
4 7 (12.28%) TypeScript
5 6 (10.53%) C++
6 4 (7.02%) JavaScript
7 3 (5.26%) C
8 1 (1.75%) C#
8 1 (1.75%) Go
8 1 (1.75%) Rust
Qualifications
1 15 (26.32%) Security Cleared
2 9 (15.79%) SC Cleared
3 2 (3.51%) BPSS Clearance
4 1 (1.75%) Degree
4 1 (1.75%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.75%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 3 (5.26%) IEC 61508
1 3 (5.26%) IEC 62304
1 3 (5.26%) ISO 26262
2 1 (1.75%) Accessibility
2 1 (1.75%) QA
System Software
1 14 (24.56%) Docker
2 1 (1.75%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 17 (29.82%) Kubernetes
2 10 (17.54%) Terraform
3 5 (8.77%) Ansible
4 3 (5.26%) Podman
4 3 (5.26%) SELinux
5 1 (1.75%) Argo
5 1 (1.75%) vCenter Server
Vendors
1 4 (7.02%) Atlassian
2 3 (5.26%) Red Hat
3 1 (1.75%) Google
3 1 (1.75%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.75%) Oracle
3 1 (1.75%) Ping Identity
3 1 (1.75%) Salesforce
3 1 (1.75%) SAP
3 1 (1.75%) SendGrid
3 1 (1.75%) VMware