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

6 months to
2 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 20 28
Rank change year-on-year -2 +8 +37
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 149 74 75
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.84% 7.91% 5.17%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.42% 9.00% 6.00%
Number of daily rates quoted 83 47 27
10th Percentile £401 £392 £456
25th Percentile £450 £406 £481
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £625 £650 £588
90th Percentile £650 £716 £680
North West median daily rate £525 £500 £525
% change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 4 12
10th Percentile £58.93 £71.05 -
25th Percentile £62.75 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £75.00 £80.75 £68.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.12% +17.88% +9.60%
75th Percentile £77.50 £90.31 £72.50
90th Percentile - £93.13 £74.30
North West median hourly rate £74.26 £74.50 £48.00
% change year-on-year -0.32% +55.21% +10.64%

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 1,581 822 1,251
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.17% 87.82% 86.22%
Number of daily rates quoted 939 559 819
10th Percentile £300 £306 £323
25th Percentile £400 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £450 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.56% -10.00% -
75th Percentile £581 £575 £588
90th Percentile £670 £692 £688
North West median daily rate £475 £455 £495
% change year-on-year +4.40% -8.08% -1.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 150 33 82
10th Percentile £22.47 £14.20 £12.50
25th Percentile £30.00 £22.16 £14.13
Median hourly rate £55.00 £50.99 £26.76
Median % change year-on-year +7.87% +90.53% +18.93%
75th Percentile £77.00 £72.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £87.75 £83.35 £74.30
North West median hourly rate £50.00 £31.76 £30.00
% change year-on-year +57.43% +5.87% -1.77%

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 2 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 2 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 2 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
Salford +1 3 £400 -27.27% 10
Bolton - 3 £550 - 8
Stockport - 2 £600 - 3
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 (1.34%) Apache
1 2 (1.34%) Apache Spark
1 2 (1.34%) CMS
2 1 (0.67%) Adobe Experience Manager
2 1 (0.67%) Confluence
2 1 (0.67%) SAS
Cloud Services
1 76 (51.01%) AWS
2 24 (16.11%) Azure
3 18 (12.08%) Serverless
4 12 (8.05%) GCP
5 9 (6.04%) Amazon S3
5 9 (6.04%) AWS Lambda
6 7 (4.70%) GitHub
7 6 (4.03%) Amazon ECS
8 5 (3.36%) AWS Fargate
8 5 (3.36%) SaaS
9 4 (2.68%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (2.68%) CloudFront
9 4 (2.68%) GitHub Actions
10 3 (2.01%) Amazon ElastiCache
11 2 (1.34%) Amazon EC2
11 2 (1.34%) Amazon EventBridge
11 2 (1.34%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 2 (1.34%) Azure Cognitive Search
11 2 (1.34%) Cloud Computing
11 2 (1.34%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 1 (0.67%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (5.37%) DynamoDB
1 8 (5.37%) MySQL
2 7 (4.70%) Elasticsearch
2 7 (4.70%) PostgreSQL
3 6 (4.03%) NoSQL
3 6 (4.03%) SQL Server
4 5 (3.36%) Amazon RDS
5 4 (2.68%) Relational Database
6 3 (2.01%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 2 (1.34%) MongoDB
8 1 (0.67%) Amazon Redshift
8 1 (0.67%) Data Vault
Development Applications
1 13 (8.72%) Git
2 7 (4.70%) Selenium
3 5 (3.36%) GitLab
3 5 (3.36%) Gradle
4 4 (2.68%) Cucumber
4 4 (2.68%) Cypress.io
4 4 (2.68%) JIRA
4 4 (2.68%) JMeter
4 4 (2.68%) Postman
5 3 (2.01%) Claude Code
5 3 (2.01%) CocoaPods
6 2 (1.34%) IntelliJ
6 2 (1.34%) Maven
7 1 (0.67%) Gatling
7 1 (0.67%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.67%) JUnit
7 1 (0.67%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.67%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.67%) SonarQube
General
1 35 (23.49%) Social Skills
2 15 (10.07%) Retail
3 13 (8.72%) Public Sector
4 11 (7.38%) Finance
5 4 (2.68%) Analytical Skills
6 3 (2.01%) Banking
6 3 (2.01%) Military
7 2 (1.34%) Automotive
7 2 (1.34%) Documentation Skills
7 2 (1.34%) Influencing Skills
7 2 (1.34%) Marketing
8 1 (0.67%) Health Technology
8 1 (0.67%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 105 (70.47%) Software Engineer
2 38 (25.50%) Senior
3 34 (22.82%) Senior Software Engineer
4 22 (14.77%) Java Engineer
5 21 (14.09%) Java Software Engineer
5 21 (14.09%) Lead
6 12 (8.05%) Developer
7 10 (6.71%) AWS Engineer
7 10 (6.71%) AWS Software Engineer
7 10 (6.71%) Lead Software Engineer
8 8 (5.37%) Java Developer
9 7 (4.70%) Architect
9 7 (4.70%) Principal Engineer
9 7 (4.70%) Principal Software Engineer
10 6 (4.03%) Cloud Engineer
10 6 (4.03%) Cloud Software Engineer
10 6 (4.03%) Migration Engineer
11 5 (3.36%) Lead Developer
11 5 (3.36%) Python Software Engineer
11 5 (3.36%) Senior Java Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (25.50%) Spring
2 35 (23.49%) Spring Boot
3 31 (20.81%) React
4 23 (15.44%) Node.js
5 17 (11.41%) .NET
6 12 (8.05%) REST
7 11 (7.38%) Kafka
7 11 (7.38%) RESTful
8 9 (6.04%) Next.js
9 8 (5.37%) GraphQL
10 7 (4.70%) AngularJS
10 7 (4.70%) AWS CDK
10 7 (4.70%) CSS
11 5 (3.36%) HTML
11 5 (3.36%) Nunjucks
11 5 (3.36%) Playwright
12 4 (2.68%) MACH
12 4 (2.68%) OAuth
12 4 (2.68%) RabbitMQ
12 4 (2.68%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 32 (21.48%) Cloud Native
2 18 (12.08%) Product Ownership
3 9 (6.04%) Distributed Systems
4 4 (2.68%) Enterprise Software
4 4 (2.68%) Onboarding
5 3 (2.01%) Legacy Systems
5 3 (2.01%) Mobile App
6 2 (1.34%) Credit Risk
6 2 (1.34%) Distributed Architecture
6 2 (1.34%) Educational Technology
6 2 (1.34%) Private Cloud
6 2 (1.34%) Public Cloud
7 1 (0.67%) Algorithms
7 1 (0.67%) CMDB
7 1 (0.67%) Culture of Ownership
7 1 (0.67%) Data Protection Act
7 1 (0.67%) NHS
7 1 (0.67%) Replication
7 1 (0.67%) RISC-V
7 1 (0.67%) SCADA
Operating Systems
1 9 (6.04%) Linux
2 3 (2.01%) Apple iOS
3 1 (0.67%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 61 (40.94%) CI/CD
2 49 (32.89%) Agile
3 33 (22.15%) Microservices
4 32 (21.48%) DevOps
5 26 (17.45%) Full-Stack Development
6 25 (16.78%) Event-Driven
7 24 (16.11%) Test Automation
8 23 (15.44%) Event-Driven Architecture
9 21 (14.09%) AI
9 21 (14.09%) Infrastructure as Code
10 18 (12.08%) TDD
11 17 (11.41%) Observability
12 16 (10.74%) Machine Learning
13 15 (10.07%) Continuous Improvement
13 15 (10.07%) Migration
13 15 (10.07%) Technical Leadership
14 12 (8.05%) Decision-Making
14 12 (8.05%) Problem-Solving
14 12 (8.05%) SDLC
14 12 (8.05%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 66 (44.30%) Java
2 34 (22.82%) TypeScript
3 26 (17.45%) JavaScript
4 25 (16.78%) Python
5 15 (10.07%) C#
6 12 (8.05%) SQL
7 8 (5.37%) Kotlin
8 7 (4.70%) Go
8 7 (4.70%) Rust
9 5 (3.36%) C++
10 3 (2.01%) Objective-C
10 3 (2.01%) Swift
11 2 (1.34%) Scala
12 1 (0.67%) Ada
12 1 (0.67%) C
Qualifications
1 16 (10.74%) Security Cleared
2 9 (6.04%) SC Cleared
3 8 (5.37%) AWS Certification
4 7 (4.70%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
5 5 (3.36%) Degree
5 5 (3.36%) DV Cleared
6 3 (2.01%) BPSS Clearance
7 2 (1.34%) Microsoft Certified Professional
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (4.70%) QA
2 6 (4.03%) Accessibility
3 4 (2.68%) GDPR
3 4 (2.68%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.67%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.67%) Def Stans
4 1 (0.67%) DO-178B
4 1 (0.67%) MISRA
System Software
1 30 (20.13%) Docker
2 1 (0.67%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 29 (19.46%) Kubernetes
2 18 (12.08%) Terraform
3 6 (4.03%) Grafana
4 4 (2.68%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 6 (4.03%) Microsoft
2 5 (3.36%) OpenAI
3 3 (2.01%) Google
3 3 (2.01%) PagerDuty
4 2 (1.34%) Foundry
4 2 (1.34%) SAP
5 1 (0.67%) Adobe
5 1 (0.67%) Databricks
5 1 (0.67%) Informatica
5 1 (0.67%) Oracle
5 1 (0.67%) ServiceNow
5 1 (0.67%) Siemens
5 1 (0.67%) Sitecore