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 4 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 32 45 40
Rank change year-on-year +13 -5 +6
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 70 37 64
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 5.95% 3.51% 4.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 6.64% 3.88% 4.70%
Number of daily rates quoted 38 27 39
10th Percentile £340 £413 £437
25th Percentile £428 £425 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £475 £575
Median % change year-on-year +15.79% -17.39% -4.17%
75th Percentile £638 £575 £700
90th Percentile £661 £718 £738
North West median daily rate £550 £475 £539
% change year-on-year +15.79% -11.83% -10.21%
Number of hourly rates quoted 14 0 4
10th Percentile - - £59.50
25th Percentile £52.50 - £60.63
Median hourly rate £55.00 - £63.75
75th Percentile £61.25 - £69.06
90th Percentile £67.38 - £74.13
North West median hourly rate £55.00 £47.59 £46.18
% change year-on-year +15.57% +3.05% +2.62%

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 1,055 954 1,361
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 89.63% 90.51% 87.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 719 568 986
10th Percentile £306 £294 £302
25th Percentile £381 £400 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.70% -7.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £638 £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 75 36 46
10th Percentile £17.30 £15.95 £14.89
25th Percentile £19.75 £20.75 £17.26
Median hourly rate £29.60 £32.00 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.50% +6.67% -25.00%
75th Percentile £57.50 £33.75 £59.38
90th Percentile £64.50 £62.50 £75.63
North West median hourly rate £41.03 £29.62 £38.00
% change year-on-year +38.54% -22.07% +15.61%

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 4 January 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 4 January 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 4 January 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
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 (1.43%) Apache
1 1 (1.43%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (1.43%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 19 (27.14%) AWS
2 7 (10.00%) AWS Lambda
2 7 (10.00%) Serverless
3 5 (7.14%) Amazon ECS
3 5 (7.14%) Amazon EKS
3 5 (7.14%) Amazon SQS
3 5 (7.14%) GitHub
4 4 (5.71%) Amazon EC2
4 4 (5.71%) Amazon EventBridge
4 4 (5.71%) Amazon MSK
4 4 (5.71%) Azure
4 4 (5.71%) GitHub Actions
5 2 (2.86%) Amazon S3
5 2 (2.86%) Firebase
5 2 (2.86%) GCP
6 1 (1.43%) Amazon Kinesis
6 1 (1.43%) Amazon SageMaker
6 1 (1.43%) AWS Fargate
6 1 (1.43%) Entra ID
6 1 (1.43%) OpenShift
Database & Business Intelligence
1 10 (14.29%) MongoDB
2 6 (8.57%) PostgreSQL
3 5 (7.14%) Amazon Aurora
3 5 (7.14%) DynamoDB
3 5 (7.14%) MySQL
3 5 (7.14%) NoSQL
4 4 (5.71%) Apache Cassandra
4 4 (5.71%) DocumentDB
5 3 (4.29%) Redis
6 2 (2.86%) Amazon RDS
7 1 (1.43%) Hadoop
7 1 (1.43%) Mixpanel
7 1 (1.43%) ObjectStore
7 1 (1.43%) Power BI
7 1 (1.43%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (21.43%) GitLab
2 10 (14.29%) Gradle
2 10 (14.29%) IntelliJ
3 7 (10.00%) Jenkins
4 6 (8.57%) Git
5 5 (7.14%) Rational DOORS
6 3 (4.29%) Artifactory
6 3 (4.29%) CocoaPods
6 3 (4.29%) JIRA
6 3 (4.29%) Mockito
7 1 (1.43%) Cucumber
7 1 (1.43%) fastlane
General
1 14 (20.00%) Social Skills
2 9 (12.86%) Public Sector
3 5 (7.14%) Finance
4 3 (4.29%) Games
5 2 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
6 1 (1.43%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (1.43%) Electronics
6 1 (1.43%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (1.43%) Manufacturing
6 1 (1.43%) Marketing
6 1 (1.43%) Military
6 1 (1.43%) Organisational Skills
6 1 (1.43%) Telecoms
Job Titles
1 42 (60.00%) Software Engineer
2 15 (21.43%) Java Engineer
3 14 (20.00%) Java Software Engineer
4 10 (14.29%) Lead
4 10 (14.29%) Senior
5 6 (8.57%) Lead Software Engineer
6 5 (7.14%) Developer
6 5 (7.14%) Senior Software Engineer
7 4 (5.71%) Architect
8 3 (4.29%) Engineering Manager
8 3 (4.29%) Full-Stack Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Full-Stack Software Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Integration Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) iOS Software Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Java Developer
8 3 (4.29%) Python Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Python Software Engineer
8 3 (4.29%) Senior Developer
8 3 (4.29%) Software Architect
8 3 (4.29%) Software Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 19 (27.14%) Spring
2 18 (25.71%) Spring Boot
3 13 (18.57%) Kafka
4 10 (14.29%) OpenTelemetry
5 9 (12.86%) REST
6 7 (10.00%) React
7 6 (8.57%) .NET
7 6 (8.57%) Node.js
8 5 (7.14%) AngularJS
9 3 (4.29%) ActiveMQ
9 3 (4.29%) JAX-RS
9 3 (4.29%) OAuth
9 3 (4.29%) OAuth2
9 3 (4.29%) OpenID
9 3 (4.29%) Spring Batch
9 3 (4.29%) Spring Security
9 3 (4.29%) Web Services
10 2 (2.86%) Android Jetpack
10 2 (2.86%) Jetpack Compose
11 1 (1.43%) OkHttp
Miscellaneous
1 6 (8.57%) Cloud Native
1 6 (8.57%) Data Protection Act
1 6 (8.57%) Distributed Systems
2 3 (4.29%) Greenfield Project
3 2 (2.86%) Embedded Systems
3 2 (2.86%) Onboarding
3 2 (2.86%) Product Ownership
4 1 (1.43%) Enterprise Software
4 1 (1.43%) Mobile App
4 1 (1.43%) NHS
4 1 (1.43%) Private Cloud
Operating Systems
1 7 (10.00%) Linux
2 4 (5.71%) Apple iOS
3 3 (4.29%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
4 2 (2.86%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 24 (34.29%) CI/CD
2 22 (31.43%) Agile
3 21 (30.00%) Microservices
4 19 (27.14%) DevOps
5 17 (24.29%) Containerisation
5 17 (24.29%) TDD
6 11 (15.71%) Software Architecture
7 10 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
8 8 (11.43%) Technical Leadership
9 7 (10.00%) Code Quality
9 7 (10.00%) Configuration Management
9 7 (10.00%) Mentoring
9 7 (10.00%) Roadmaps
10 6 (8.57%) Data Protection
10 6 (8.57%) Data-Driven Decision Making
10 6 (8.57%) Design Patterns
10 6 (8.57%) Problem-Solving
10 6 (8.57%) Stakeholder Management
10 6 (8.57%) UML
10 6 (8.57%) User Experience
Programming Languages
1 37 (52.86%) Java
2 14 (20.00%) Python
3 13 (18.57%) Kotlin
4 11 (15.71%) SQL
5 7 (10.00%) Bash
5 7 (10.00%) TypeScript
6 6 (8.57%) C++
7 3 (4.29%) C
7 3 (4.29%) JavaScript
7 3 (4.29%) Objective-C
7 3 (4.29%) Swift
8 2 (2.86%) Ruby
9 1 (1.43%) C#
9 1 (1.43%) Go
9 1 (1.43%) Rust
Qualifications
1 14 (20.00%) Security Cleared
2 10 (14.29%) SC Cleared
3 2 (2.86%) BPSS Clearance
3 2 (2.86%) DV Cleared
4 1 (1.43%) Degree
4 1 (1.43%) Postgraduate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (7.14%) Accessibility
2 3 (4.29%) IEC 61508
2 3 (4.29%) IEC 62304
2 3 (4.29%) ISO 26262
2 3 (4.29%) QA
3 1 (1.43%) Data Quality
3 1 (1.43%) HL7
System Software
1 13 (18.57%) Docker
2 1 (1.43%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 25 (35.71%) Kubernetes
2 11 (15.71%) Grafana
3 9 (12.86%) Terraform
4 4 (5.71%) Ansible
5 3 (4.29%) Podman
5 3 (4.29%) SELinux
6 1 (1.43%) Argo
6 1 (1.43%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 3 (4.29%) Atlassian
1 3 (4.29%) Red Hat
2 2 (2.86%) Salesforce
2 2 (2.86%) SAP
3 1 (1.43%) Google
3 1 (1.43%) Microsoft
3 1 (1.43%) Oracle
3 1 (1.43%) VMware