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

6 months to
18 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 35 29
Rank change year-on-year +14 -6 +28
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 104 48 78
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.67% 4.71% 4.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.70% 5.17% 5.71%
Number of daily rates quoted 53 37 40
10th Percentile £400 £413 £456
25th Percentile £450 £425 £494
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -8.33%
75th Percentile £600 £700 £681
90th Percentile £638 £725 £704
North West median daily rate £500 £550 £549
% change year-on-year -9.09% +0.18% -8.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 0 7
10th Percentile - - £54.45
25th Percentile £52.50 - £60.00
Median hourly rate £57.50 - £70.00
75th Percentile £75.63 - £72.50
90th Percentile £77.50 - £75.90
North West median hourly rate £57.50 £67.00 £46.91
% change year-on-year -14.18% +42.83% +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 1,195 929 1,365
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 88.13% 91.08% 86.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 814 596 956
10th Percentile £305 £294 £313
25th Percentile £381 £385 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £453 £500
Median % change year-on-year -0.55% -9.50% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £678 £666
North West median daily rate £450 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 86 32 72
10th Percentile £17.21 £15.92 £12.50
25th Percentile £23.54 £20.75 £13.50
Median hourly rate £46.25 £32.50 £25.10
Median % change year-on-year +42.31% +29.51% -36.47%
75th Percentile £64.69 £34.56 £51.88
90th Percentile £77.50 £60.00 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £42.69 £31.52 £28.30
% change year-on-year +35.42% +11.38% -24.53%

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 18 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 18 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 18 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 +5 3 £400 -42.86% 3
Cheadle - 2 £550 - 5
Bolton - 2 £550 - 1
Stockport - 1 £600 - 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 (0.96%) Apache
1 1 (0.96%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (0.96%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 38 (36.54%) AWS
2 15 (14.42%) Azure
3 14 (13.46%) Serverless
4 11 (10.58%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (8.65%) GitHub
6 8 (7.69%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (6.73%) GCP
8 6 (5.77%) Amazon EC2
8 6 (5.77%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (5.77%) GitHub Actions
9 5 (4.81%) Amazon EKS
9 5 (4.81%) Amazon EventBridge
10 4 (3.85%) Amazon MSK
10 4 (3.85%) Amazon S3
10 4 (3.85%) AWS Fargate
11 3 (2.88%) Power Platform
11 3 (2.88%) SaaS
12 2 (1.92%) Azure Functions
12 2 (1.92%) Azure Logic Apps
12 2 (1.92%) Firebase
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (9.62%) MongoDB
2 7 (6.73%) DynamoDB
2 7 (6.73%) MySQL
2 7 (6.73%) NoSQL
2 7 (6.73%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (5.77%) Elasticsearch
4 5 (4.81%) Amazon Aurora
4 5 (4.81%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (3.85%) Apache Cassandra
5 4 (3.85%) DocumentDB
6 3 (2.88%) Redis
7 1 (0.96%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.96%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.96%) ObjectStore
7 1 (0.96%) Power BI
7 1 (0.96%) Relational Database
7 1 (0.96%) SQL Server
Development Applications
1 17 (16.35%) GitLab
2 13 (12.50%) Gradle
3 11 (10.58%) IntelliJ
4 7 (6.73%) Git
5 6 (5.77%) CocoaPods
6 3 (2.88%) JMeter
6 3 (2.88%) Mockito
6 3 (2.88%) Postman
6 3 (2.88%) Selenium
7 2 (1.92%) Artifactory
7 2 (1.92%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.92%) Jenkins
7 2 (1.92%) Maven
7 2 (1.92%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.96%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.96%) fastlane
8 1 (0.96%) JIRA
General
1 15 (14.42%) Social Skills
2 7 (6.73%) Public Sector
3 5 (4.81%) Retail
4 4 (3.85%) Finance
5 3 (2.88%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (2.88%) Games
6 1 (0.96%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (0.96%) Automotive
6 1 (0.96%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.96%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 67 (64.42%) Software Engineer
2 25 (24.04%) Senior
3 20 (19.23%) Java Engineer
4 19 (18.27%) Java Software Engineer
4 19 (18.27%) Senior Software Engineer
5 8 (7.69%) Lead
6 6 (5.77%) Developer
6 6 (5.77%) iOS Software Engineer
7 4 (3.85%) Architect
7 4 (3.85%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
7 4 (3.85%) Java Developer
7 4 (3.85%) Principal Engineer
7 4 (3.85%) Principal Software Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Integration Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Python Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Python Software Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Senior Java Engineer
8 3 (2.88%) Software Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (27.88%) Spring
2 28 (26.92%) Spring Boot
3 17 (16.35%) React
4 14 (13.46%) Kafka
5 12 (11.54%) REST
6 11 (10.58%) OpenTelemetry
7 10 (9.62%) Node.js
8 8 (7.69%) .NET
8 8 (7.69%) GraphQL
9 7 (6.73%) RESTful
10 6 (5.77%) AngularJS
11 5 (4.81%) Spring Security
12 4 (3.85%) Core Media
12 4 (3.85%) CSS
12 4 (3.85%) JSON
12 4 (3.85%) RabbitMQ
13 3 (2.88%) JAX-RS
13 3 (2.88%) OAuth2
13 3 (2.88%) OpenID
13 3 (2.88%) Spring Batch
Miscellaneous
1 11 (10.58%) Cloud Native
1 11 (10.58%) Product Ownership
2 8 (7.69%) Distributed Systems
3 6 (5.77%) Data Protection Act
4 4 (3.85%) Mobile App
5 3 (2.88%) Greenfield Project
6 2 (1.92%) Embedded Systems
6 2 (1.92%) Onboarding
7 1 (0.96%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (0.96%) Distributed Architecture
7 1 (0.96%) Enterprise Software
7 1 (0.96%) Legacy Systems
7 1 (0.96%) NHS
7 1 (0.96%) Private Cloud
7 1 (0.96%) SCADA
7 1 (0.96%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 10 (9.62%) Linux
2 7 (6.73%) Apple iOS
3 3 (2.88%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (1.92%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (29.81%) Agile
2 30 (28.85%) CI/CD
3 27 (25.96%) Microservices
4 25 (24.04%) DevOps
5 22 (21.15%) TDD
6 18 (17.31%) Full-Stack Development
7 15 (14.42%) Containerisation
8 12 (11.54%) Machine Learning
8 12 (11.54%) Observability
9 11 (10.58%) Code Quality
9 11 (10.58%) Event-Driven
10 9 (8.65%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 9 (8.65%) Mentoring
10 9 (8.65%) Roadmaps
10 9 (8.65%) User Experience
11 8 (7.69%) Continuous Improvement
11 8 (7.69%) Design Patterns
11 8 (7.69%) Problem-Solving
11 8 (7.69%) Technical Leadership
11 8 (7.69%) Test Automation
Programming Languages
1 51 (49.04%) Java
2 21 (20.19%) TypeScript
3 18 (17.31%) Python
4 14 (13.46%) Kotlin
5 13 (12.50%) JavaScript
6 10 (9.62%) SQL
7 7 (6.73%) Go
7 7 (6.73%) Rust
8 6 (5.77%) Objective-C
8 6 (5.77%) Swift
9 5 (4.81%) C#
10 4 (3.85%) Bash
11 2 (1.92%) C
11 2 (1.92%) C++
11 2 (1.92%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 12 (11.54%) Security Cleared
2 6 (5.77%) AWS Certification
2 6 (5.77%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
2 6 (5.77%) DV Cleared
3 5 (4.81%) SC Cleared
4 3 (2.88%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (4.81%) Accessibility
2 4 (3.85%) QA
3 2 (1.92%) IEC 61508
3 2 (1.92%) IEC 62304
3 2 (1.92%) ISO 26262
4 1 (0.96%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.96%) HL7
System Software
1 18 (17.31%) Docker
2 1 (0.96%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 30 (28.85%) Kubernetes
2 16 (15.38%) Terraform
3 15 (14.42%) Grafana
4 3 (2.88%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.96%) Ansible
5 1 (0.96%) Argo
5 1 (0.96%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 3 (2.88%) Microsoft
1 3 (2.88%) PagerDuty
1 3 (2.88%) Red Hat
2 2 (1.92%) Atlassian
2 2 (1.92%) Foundry
2 2 (1.92%) Google
2 2 (1.92%) OpenAI
2 2 (1.92%) Oracle
2 2 (1.92%) Salesforce
3 1 (0.96%) SAP
3 1 (0.96%) Siemens
3 1 (0.96%) Sitecore
3 1 (0.96%) VMware