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

6 months to
27 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 22 25 40
Rank change year-on-year +3 +15 +18
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 160 72 45
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 8.05% 7.00% 3.73%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 9.63% 7.85% 4.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 81 39 21
10th Percentile £406 £361 £413
25th Percentile £450 £400 £425
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +10.00% -4.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £638 £545 £650
90th Percentile £725 £658 £725
North West median daily rate £550 £500 £500
% change year-on-year +10.00% - -6.98%
Number of hourly rates quoted 33 4 6
10th Percentile - £71.05 -
25th Percentile £62.50 £72.63 £52.50
Median hourly rate £65.00 £80.75 £55.00
Median % change year-on-year -19.50% +46.82% -13.73%
75th Percentile £76.00 £90.31 £68.00
90th Percentile £77.00 £93.13 £73.00
North West median hourly rate £65.00 £70.00 £46.18
% change year-on-year -7.14% +51.58% -

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 1,661 917 1,047
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 83.55% 89.12% 86.82%
Number of daily rates quoted 1,001 585 653
10th Percentile £308 £303 £326
25th Percentile £403 £400 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £600 £575 £600
90th Percentile £694 £662 £713
North West median daily rate £500 £450 £500
% change year-on-year +11.11% -10.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 165 63 43
10th Percentile £21.00 £14.20 £15.94
25th Percentile £29.96 £19.07 £22.75
Median hourly rate £50.00 £22.63 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +120.95% -35.34% +79.49%
75th Percentile £75.00 £55.25 £60.25
90th Percentile £80.00 £74.75 £73.90
North West median hourly rate £45.50 £25.15 £35.36
% change year-on-year +80.91% -28.87% +1.03%

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 27 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 27 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 27 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 -
Stockport - 1 - - 5
Bolton - 1 - - 8
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 3 (1.88%) Apache
1 3 (1.88%) Apache Spark
1 3 (1.88%) Confluence
2 2 (1.25%) CMS
2 2 (1.25%) SAS
3 1 (0.63%) Adobe Experience Manager
3 1 (0.63%) Jupyter
3 1 (0.63%) nginx
Cloud Services
1 90 (56.25%) AWS
2 17 (10.63%) Serverless
3 13 (8.13%) Azure
4 10 (6.25%) AWS Lambda
5 9 (5.63%) Anthropic Claude
6 8 (5.00%) Amazon S3
6 8 (5.00%) GCP
6 8 (5.00%) GitHub
6 8 (5.00%) Google Gemini
7 7 (4.38%) GitHub Actions
8 6 (3.75%) Amazon ECS
8 6 (3.75%) Amazon SQS
8 6 (3.75%) GitHub Copilot
9 4 (2.50%) Amazon EKS
9 4 (2.50%) CloudFront
9 4 (2.50%) SaaS
10 3 (1.88%) Amazon CloudWatch
10 3 (1.88%) Amazon OpenSearch
10 3 (1.88%) AWS CloudFormation
10 3 (1.88%) AWS Fargate
Communications & Networking
1 4 (2.50%) HTTP
2 3 (1.88%) Firewall
3 2 (1.25%) VPN
4 1 (0.63%) Network Security
4 1 (0.63%) Reverse Proxy
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (6.25%) DynamoDB
1 10 (6.25%) MySQL
1 10 (6.25%) PostgreSQL
2 8 (5.00%) NoSQL
3 5 (3.13%) Relational Database
4 4 (2.50%) SQL Server
4 4 (2.50%) SQL Server Integration Services
5 3 (1.88%) Elasticsearch
5 3 (1.88%) MongoDB
6 2 (1.25%) Amazon RDS
6 2 (1.25%) Amazon Redshift
6 2 (1.25%) Data Vault
7 1 (0.63%) Oracle Database
7 1 (0.63%) SAP HANA
Development Applications
1 17 (10.63%) Git
2 10 (6.25%) Claude Code
3 5 (3.13%) Cucumber
3 5 (3.13%) JIRA
4 4 (2.50%) JUnit
4 4 (2.50%) Selenium
5 3 (1.88%) Mockito
6 2 (1.25%) Cypress.io
6 2 (1.25%) GitLab
7 1 (0.63%) Gatling
7 1 (0.63%) Gradle
7 1 (0.63%) Jenkins
7 1 (0.63%) JMeter
7 1 (0.63%) Postman
7 1 (0.63%) REST Assured
7 1 (0.63%) Robot Framework
7 1 (0.63%) SonarQube
General
1 40 (25.00%) Social Skills
2 17 (10.63%) Finance
3 15 (9.38%) Public Sector
4 14 (8.75%) Retail
5 8 (5.00%) Banking
6 5 (3.13%) Analytical Skills
7 4 (2.50%) Military
8 3 (1.88%) Influencing Skills
9 2 (1.25%) Marketing
10 1 (0.63%) Automotive
10 1 (0.63%) Documentation Skills
10 1 (0.63%) Health Technology
10 1 (0.63%) iGaming
10 1 (0.63%) Manufacturing
Job Titles
1 100 (62.50%) Software Engineer
2 40 (25.00%) Senior
3 27 (16.88%) Java Engineer
4 26 (16.25%) Senior Software Engineer
5 24 (15.00%) Java Software Engineer
6 23 (14.38%) Lead
7 20 (12.50%) Developer
8 18 (11.25%) AWS Engineer
9 16 (10.00%) AWS Software Engineer
10 12 (7.50%) Java Developer
11 10 (6.25%) Embedded Engineer
11 10 (6.25%) Embedded Software Engineer
12 9 (5.63%) Lead Software Engineer
13 7 (4.38%) Full-Stack Developer
13 7 (4.38%) Lead Developer
13 7 (4.38%) Python Engineer
13 7 (4.38%) Senior Developer
14 6 (3.75%) Cloud Engineer
14 6 (3.75%) Cloud Software Engineer
14 6 (3.75%) Engineering Specialist
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 50 (31.25%) Spring
2 47 (29.38%) Spring Boot
3 28 (17.50%) React
4 26 (16.25%) Node.js
5 23 (14.38%) REST
6 22 (13.75%) Terraform
7 18 (11.25%) Kafka
8 16 (10.00%) .NET
9 13 (8.13%) Next.js
10 9 (5.63%) RESTful
11 8 (5.00%) AWS CDK
12 6 (3.75%) Jakarta EE
13 5 (3.13%) AngularJS
13 5 (3.13%) CSS
13 5 (3.13%) HTML
13 5 (3.13%) Nunjucks
14 4 (2.50%) MACH
14 4 (2.50%) OAuth
14 4 (2.50%) OpenID
15 3 (1.88%) Express.js
Miscellaneous
1 49 (30.63%) Cloud Native
2 21 (13.13%) Distributed Systems
3 7 (4.38%) Product Ownership
4 6 (3.75%) Onboarding
5 4 (2.50%) Enterprise Software
6 3 (1.88%) Culture of Ownership
7 2 (1.25%) AI Agents
7 2 (1.25%) Credit Risk
7 2 (1.25%) Data Protection Act
7 2 (1.25%) Educational Technology
7 2 (1.25%) Legacy Systems
7 2 (1.25%) Private Cloud
7 2 (1.25%) 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%) Online Gambling
8 1 (0.63%) PKI
8 1 (0.63%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 6 (3.75%) Linux
2 2 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
3 1 (0.63%) Windows
Processes & Methodologies
1 71 (44.38%) CI/CD
2 56 (35.00%) Agile
3 47 (29.38%) Microservices
4 36 (22.50%) DevOps
5 35 (21.88%) Test Automation
6 32 (20.00%) Event-Driven
7 31 (19.38%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 30 (18.75%) Infrastructure as Code
9 28 (17.50%) AI
10 24 (15.00%) Full-Stack Development
10 24 (15.00%) Observability
11 23 (14.38%) Continuous Improvement
12 21 (13.13%) SDLC
13 19 (11.88%) Mentoring
13 19 (11.88%) Technical Leadership
14 17 (10.63%) Code Quality
15 16 (10.00%) Decision-Making
15 16 (10.00%) Migration
15 16 (10.00%) Problem-Solving
16 15 (9.38%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 70 (43.75%) Java
2 30 (18.75%) TypeScript
3 24 (15.00%) Python
4 21 (13.13%) JavaScript
5 18 (11.25%) SQL
6 10 (6.25%) C#
6 10 (6.25%) Kotlin
7 5 (3.13%) C++
8 3 (1.88%) Rust
8 3 (1.88%) Scala
9 1 (0.63%) Ada
9 1 (0.63%) C
9 1 (0.63%) Go
Qualifications
1 14 (8.75%) Security Cleared
2 10 (6.25%) SC Cleared
3 7 (4.38%) Degree
4 6 (3.75%) BPSS Clearance
5 4 (2.50%) AWS Certification
6 3 (1.88%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
7 2 (1.25%) Microsoft Certified Professional
8 1 (0.63%) CEH
8 1 (0.63%) Master's Degree
8 1 (0.63%) SANS
8 1 (0.63%) TOGAF Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 10 (6.25%) QA
2 7 (4.38%) Accessibility
3 6 (3.75%) GDPR
4 4 (2.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 3 (1.88%) Data Quality
6 1 (0.63%) Def Stans
6 1 (0.63%) DO-178B
6 1 (0.63%) MISRA
6 1 (0.63%) NIST
System Software
1 33 (20.63%) Docker
2 1 (0.63%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 35 (21.88%) Kubernetes
2 1 (0.63%) Grafana
2 1 (0.63%) Istio
2 1 (0.63%) Network Intrusion Detection System
2 1 (0.63%) Prometheus
Vendors
1 7 (4.38%) Microsoft
2 3 (1.88%) OpenAI
2 3 (1.88%) SAP
3 2 (1.25%) Databricks
3 2 (1.25%) Google
3 2 (1.25%) Informatica
4 1 (0.63%) Adobe
4 1 (0.63%) BiZZdesign
4 1 (0.63%) CheckPoint
4 1 (0.63%) Cisco
4 1 (0.63%) F5
4 1 (0.63%) Intel
4 1 (0.63%) Oracle
4 1 (0.63%) ServiceNow