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

6 months to
16 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 21 19 38
Rank change year-on-year -2 +19 +27
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 158 77 60
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 8.14% 7.85% 4.33%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.75% 8.95% 5.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 88 48 26
10th Percentile £400 £379 £441
25th Percentile £450 £400 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £537
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -6.80% -2.45%
75th Percentile £625 £638 £594
90th Percentile £701 £716 £688
North West median daily rate £525 £500 £537
% change year-on-year +5.00% -6.80% -2.45%
Number of hourly rates quoted 24 4 11
10th Percentile £60.95 £71.05 -
25th Percentile £65.00 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £73.50 £80.75 £67.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.98% +20.52% +14.04%
75th Percentile £77.50 £90.31 £72.19
90th Percentile - £93.13 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £73.13 £70.00 £48.00
% change year-on-year +4.47% +45.83% +3.94%

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 1,621 860 1,197
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.51% 87.67% 86.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 985 572 780
10th Percentile £300 £301 £325
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £485 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +7.78% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £575 £588
90th Percentile £675 £700 £688
North West median daily rate £485 £450 £493
% change year-on-year +7.78% -8.72% -1.40%
Number of hourly rates quoted 153 44 77
10th Percentile £22.63 £15.06 £12.50
25th Percentile £30.00 £19.35 £15.92
Median hourly rate £60.50 £24.89 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +143.12% -7.83% +35.00%
75th Percentile £77.00 £65.31 £57.50
90th Percentile £87.00 £78.38 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £53.00 £29.27 £27.25
% change year-on-year +81.07% +7.41% -7.00%

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 16 July 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 16 July 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 16 July 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 - 4 £744 - 3
Salford +1 3 £400 - 8
Bolton - 3 £550 - 2
Stockport - 2 £600 - 2
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 (1.27%) Apache
1 2 (1.27%) Apache Spark
1 2 (1.27%) CMS
1 2 (1.27%) SAS
2 1 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.63%) Confluence
Cloud Services
1 82 (51.90%) AWS
2 24 (15.19%) Azure
3 18 (11.39%) Serverless
4 12 (7.59%) GCP
5 11 (6.96%) GitHub
6 10 (6.33%) Amazon S3
7 9 (5.70%) AWS Lambda
8 8 (5.06%) GitHub Actions
9 6 (3.80%) Amazon ECS
9 6 (3.80%) Anthropic Claude
9 6 (3.80%) Google Gemini
9 6 (3.80%) SaaS
10 5 (3.16%) AWS Fargate
11 4 (2.53%) Amazon SQS
11 4 (2.53%) CloudFront
11 4 (2.53%) GitHub Copilot
12 3 (1.90%) Amazon ElastiCache
13 2 (1.27%) Azure AI
13 2 (1.27%) Azure Functions
13 2 (1.27%) Azure Logic Apps
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.63%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.06%) DynamoDB
1 8 (5.06%) MySQL
1 8 (5.06%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (4.43%) Elasticsearch
3 6 (3.80%) NoSQL
3 6 (3.80%) SQL Server
4 5 (3.16%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (2.53%) Relational Database
5 4 (2.53%) SQL Server Integration Services
6 2 (1.27%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.27%) Data Vault
6 2 (1.27%) MongoDB
7 1 (0.63%) Oracle Database
Development Applications
1 17 (10.76%) Git
2 7 (4.43%) Claude Code
2 7 (4.43%) Selenium
3 4 (2.53%) Cucumber
3 4 (2.53%) Cypress.io
3 4 (2.53%) JIRA
3 4 (2.53%) JMeter
3 4 (2.53%) Postman
4 3 (1.90%) CocoaPods
4 3 (1.90%) GitLab
4 3 (1.90%) Gradle
5 2 (1.27%) Maven
6 1 (0.63%) Gatling
6 1 (0.63%) Jenkins
6 1 (0.63%) JUnit
6 1 (0.63%) REST Assured
6 1 (0.63%) Robot Framework
6 1 (0.63%) SonarQube
General
1 35 (22.15%) Social Skills
2 19 (12.03%) Retail
3 13 (8.23%) Public Sector
4 12 (7.59%) Finance
5 4 (2.53%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (1.90%) Banking
6 3 (1.90%) Military
7 2 (1.27%) Automotive
7 2 (1.27%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.27%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.27%) Marketing
8 1 (0.63%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.63%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 110 (69.62%) Software Engineer
2 45 (28.48%) Senior
3 37 (23.42%) Senior Software Engineer
4 22 (13.92%) Lead
5 19 (12.03%) Java Engineer
6 18 (11.39%) Java Software Engineer
7 13 (8.23%) Developer
8 12 (7.59%) AWS Engineer
9 11 (6.96%) AWS Software Engineer
9 11 (6.96%) Lead Software Engineer
10 8 (5.06%) Java Developer
10 8 (5.06%) Principal Engineer
11 7 (4.43%) Architect
11 7 (4.43%) Principal Software Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Cloud Software Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Embedded Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Migration Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Python Engineer
12 6 (3.80%) Python Software Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 35 (22.15%) React
1 35 (22.15%) Spring
2 32 (20.25%) Spring Boot
3 26 (16.46%) Node.js
4 18 (11.39%) .NET
5 16 (10.13%) REST
6 13 (8.23%) Next.js
7 11 (6.96%) Kafka
7 11 (6.96%) RESTful
8 8 (5.06%) GraphQL
9 7 (4.43%) AngularJS
9 7 (4.43%) AWS CDK
9 7 (4.43%) CSS
10 5 (3.16%) HTML
10 5 (3.16%) Nunjucks
10 5 (3.16%) Playwright
11 4 (2.53%) MACH
11 4 (2.53%) OAuth
11 4 (2.53%) RabbitMQ
11 4 (2.53%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 36 (22.78%) Cloud Native
2 17 (10.76%) Product Ownership
3 8 (5.06%) Distributed Systems
4 5 (3.16%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.53%) Culture of Ownership
5 4 (2.53%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
6 3 (1.90%) Mobile App
7 2 (1.27%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.27%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.27%) Distributed Architecture
7 2 (1.27%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.27%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.27%) Public Cloud
8 1 (0.63%) Algorithms
8 1 (0.63%) CMDB
8 1 (0.63%) Data Structures
8 1 (0.63%) NHS
8 1 (0.63%) Replication
8 1 (0.63%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 9 (5.70%) Linux
2 3 (1.90%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.63%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 65 (41.14%) CI/CD
2 53 (33.54%) Agile
3 38 (24.05%) DevOps
4 36 (22.78%) Microservices
5 29 (18.35%) Event-Driven
5 29 (18.35%) Full-Stack Development
6 28 (17.72%) Test Automation
7 27 (17.09%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 26 (16.46%) Infrastructure as Code
9 25 (15.82%) AI
10 21 (13.29%) Observability
11 20 (12.66%) Continuous Improvement
12 18 (11.39%) TDD
12 18 (11.39%) Technical Leadership
13 17 (10.76%) Machine Learning
14 15 (9.49%) Code Quality
14 15 (9.49%) Mentoring
14 15 (9.49%) Migration
14 15 (9.49%) SDLC
15 14 (8.86%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 63 (39.87%) Java
2 38 (24.05%) TypeScript
3 27 (17.09%) Python
4 26 (16.46%) JavaScript
5 15 (9.49%) C#
6 14 (8.86%) SQL
7 7 (4.43%) Go
7 7 (4.43%) Rust
8 6 (3.80%) Kotlin
9 5 (3.16%) C++
10 3 (1.90%) Objective-C
10 3 (1.90%) Scala
10 3 (1.90%) Swift
11 1 (0.63%) Ada
11 1 (0.63%) C
Qualifications
1 17 (10.76%) Security Cleared
2 10 (6.33%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.06%) AWS Certification
4 7 (4.43%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 6 (3.80%) Degree
6 5 (3.16%) BPSS Clearance
6 5 (3.16%) DV Cleared
7 2 (1.27%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 11 (6.96%) QA
2 6 (3.80%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.53%) GDPR
3 4 (2.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 3 (1.90%) Data Quality
5 1 (0.63%) Def Stans
5 1 (0.63%) DO-178B
5 1 (0.63%) MISRA
System Software
1 33 (20.89%) Docker
2 1 (0.63%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 30 (18.99%) Kubernetes
2 23 (14.56%) Terraform
3 4 (2.53%) Grafana
3 4 (2.53%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (3.80%) Microsoft
2 5 (3.16%) OpenAI
3 3 (1.90%) Google
3 3 (1.90%) PagerDuty
4 2 (1.27%) Databricks
4 2 (1.27%) Foundry
4 2 (1.27%) Informatica
4 2 (1.27%) Oracle
4 2 (1.27%) SAP
5 1 (0.63%) Adobe
5 1 (0.63%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.63%) Siemens
5 1 (0.63%) Sitecore