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

6 months to
16 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 27 26 30
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +51
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 107 69 80
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 6.53% 7.47% 5.18%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 7.76% 8.26% 5.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 56 50 39
10th Percentile £400 £400 £456
25th Percentile £450 £453 £469
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £503 £530 £548
Median % change year-on-year -5.19% -3.28% +4.38%
75th Percentile £625 £700 £622
90th Percentile £638 £725 £688
North West median daily rate £500 £516 £548
% change year-on-year -3.05% -5.89% -8.67%
Number of hourly rates quoted 23 1 10
10th Percentile - - £52.05
25th Percentile £52.50 £76.25 £52.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £82.50 £62.50
Median % change year-on-year -30.30% +32.00% +56.25%
75th Percentile £73.75 £88.75 £72.34
90th Percentile £77.50 - £73.35
North West median hourly rate £57.50 £70.54 £48.22
% change year-on-year -18.49% +46.30% +18.79%

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 1,379 835 1,352
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 84.14% 90.37% 87.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 889 584 935
10th Percentile £305 £302 £313
25th Percentile £384 £400 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £465 £463 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.54% -7.50% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £588
90th Percentile £650 £697 £694
North West median daily rate £463 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 97 33 72
10th Percentile £21.28 £15.93 £12.41
25th Percentile £30.00 £24.25 £13.50
Median hourly rate £57.50 £32.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +76.92% +25.00% -30.67%
75th Percentile £76.00 £60.00 £57.50
90th Percentile £92.00 £74.75 £72.50
North West median hourly rate £45.46 £31.76 £21.00
% change year-on-year +43.14% +51.24% -40.00%

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 April 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 April 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 April 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 -42.86% 2
Bolton - 2 £550 - 2
Stockport - 1 £600 - 4
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 (1.87%) Apache
1 2 (1.87%) Apache Spark
Cloud Services
1 40 (37.38%) AWS
2 20 (18.69%) Azure
3 11 (10.28%) Serverless
4 9 (8.41%) GCP
4 9 (8.41%) GitHub
5 7 (6.54%) AWS Lambda
6 6 (5.61%) GitHub Actions
7 5 (4.67%) Amazon ECS
8 3 (2.80%) Amazon EKS
8 3 (2.80%) Amazon EventBridge
8 3 (2.80%) Amazon SQS
8 3 (2.80%) AWS Fargate
9 2 (1.87%) Amazon EC2
9 2 (1.87%) Amazon MSK
9 2 (1.87%) Amazon OpenSearch
9 2 (1.87%) Amazon S3
9 2 (1.87%) Azure AI
9 2 (1.87%) Azure Cognitive Search
9 2 (1.87%) Firebase
9 2 (1.87%) SaaS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 9 (8.41%) PostgreSQL
2 7 (6.54%) Elasticsearch
2 7 (6.54%) NoSQL
3 5 (4.67%) MySQL
4 4 (3.74%) DynamoDB
4 4 (3.74%) MongoDB
4 4 (3.74%) SQL Server
5 3 (2.80%) Amazon RDS
5 3 (2.80%) Redis
6 2 (1.87%) Amazon Aurora
6 2 (1.87%) DocumentDB
6 2 (1.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
7 1 (0.93%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.93%) ObjectStore
7 1 (0.93%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 15 (14.02%) GitLab
2 13 (12.15%) Gradle
3 11 (10.28%) Git
3 11 (10.28%) IntelliJ
4 6 (5.61%) CocoaPods
5 5 (4.67%) Selenium
6 4 (3.74%) Postman
7 3 (2.80%) Cypress.io
7 3 (2.80%) JIRA
7 3 (2.80%) JMeter
8 2 (1.87%) Cucumber
8 2 (1.87%) Maven
9 1 (0.93%) fastlane
9 1 (0.93%) Jenkins
9 1 (0.93%) REST Assured
9 1 (0.93%) Robot Framework
9 1 (0.93%) SonarQube
General
1 15 (14.02%) Social Skills
2 10 (9.35%) Retail
3 7 (6.54%) Finance
4 5 (4.67%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.80%) Games
6 2 (1.87%) Automotive
7 1 (0.93%) Documentation Skills
7 1 (0.93%) Marketing
7 1 (0.93%) Military
7 1 (0.93%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 78 (72.90%) Software Engineer
2 27 (25.23%) Senior
3 24 (22.43%) Senior Software Engineer
4 20 (18.69%) Java Engineer
5 19 (17.76%) Java Software Engineer
6 9 (8.41%) Developer
7 8 (7.48%) Lead
8 6 (5.61%) iOS Software Engineer
8 6 (5.61%) Java Developer
8 6 (5.61%) Principal Engineer
8 6 (5.61%) Principal Software Engineer
9 5 (4.67%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
10 4 (3.74%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
10 4 (3.74%) Lead Software Engineer
10 4 (3.74%) Software Developer
11 3 (2.80%) Architect
11 3 (2.80%) Integration Engineer
11 3 (2.80%) Lead Developer
11 3 (2.80%) Lead Java Developer
11 3 (2.80%) Software Integration Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 29 (27.10%) Spring
2 26 (24.30%) Spring Boot
3 22 (20.56%) React
4 14 (13.08%) Node.js
5 12 (11.21%) REST
6 11 (10.28%) OpenTelemetry
7 9 (8.41%) GraphQL
7 9 (8.41%) RESTful
8 8 (7.48%) AngularJS
9 6 (5.61%) .NET
9 6 (5.61%) CSS
9 6 (5.61%) Kafka
10 4 (3.74%) Core Media
10 4 (3.74%) HTML
10 4 (3.74%) JSON
10 4 (3.74%) RabbitMQ
11 3 (2.80%) Express.js
11 3 (2.80%) OAuth2
11 3 (2.80%) OpenID
11 3 (2.80%) Vue
Miscellaneous
1 14 (13.08%) Cloud Native
1 14 (13.08%) Product Ownership
2 4 (3.74%) Distributed Systems
2 4 (3.74%) Mobile App
3 3 (2.80%) Data Protection Act
4 2 (1.87%) Distributed Architecture
4 2 (1.87%) Greenfield Project
4 2 (1.87%) NHS
4 2 (1.87%) Onboarding
5 1 (0.93%) Algorithms
5 1 (0.93%) Culture of Ownership
5 1 (0.93%) Legacy Systems
5 1 (0.93%) Private Cloud
5 1 (0.93%) Replication
5 1 (0.93%) SCADA
5 1 (0.93%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 7 (6.54%) Apple iOS
1 7 (6.54%) Linux
2 2 (1.87%) Android
Processes & Methodologies
1 31 (28.97%) CI/CD
2 27 (25.23%) Agile
3 25 (23.36%) Microservices
4 23 (21.50%) DevOps
5 19 (17.76%) Full-Stack Development
6 15 (14.02%) Observability
6 15 (14.02%) TDD
7 14 (13.08%) Code Quality
7 14 (13.08%) Event-Driven
8 12 (11.21%) Event-Driven Architecture
8 12 (11.21%) Test Automation
9 11 (10.28%) Machine Learning
9 11 (10.28%) Mentoring
10 9 (8.41%) Technical Leadership
10 9 (8.41%) User Experience
11 8 (7.48%) Containerisation
11 8 (7.48%) Continuous Improvement
11 8 (7.48%) Problem-Solving
12 7 (6.54%) Roadmaps
12 7 (6.54%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 53 (49.53%) Java
2 27 (25.23%) TypeScript
3 17 (15.89%) JavaScript
3 17 (15.89%) Python
4 14 (13.08%) Kotlin
5 9 (8.41%) SQL
6 7 (6.54%) Rust
7 6 (5.61%) Go
7 6 (5.61%) Objective-C
7 6 (5.61%) Swift
8 5 (4.67%) C#
9 2 (1.87%) Ruby
10 1 (0.93%) Scala
Qualifications
1 11 (10.28%) Security Cleared
2 7 (6.54%) AWS Certification
2 7 (6.54%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 6 (5.61%) DV Cleared
4 4 (3.74%) SC Cleared
5 1 (0.93%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 7 (6.54%) QA
2 5 (4.67%) Accessibility
3 2 (1.87%) GDPR
3 2 (1.87%) Sarbanes-Oxley
4 1 (0.93%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.93%) HL7
System Software
1 18 (16.82%) Docker
2 1 (0.93%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 30 (28.04%) Kubernetes
2 16 (14.95%) Grafana
3 13 (12.15%) Terraform
4 4 (3.74%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.93%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 4 (3.74%) Microsoft
2 3 (2.80%) OpenAI
2 3 (2.80%) PagerDuty
3 2 (1.87%) Foundry
3 2 (1.87%) SAP
4 1 (0.93%) Google
4 1 (0.93%) Oracle
4 1 (0.93%) Salesforce
4 1 (0.93%) Siemens
4 1 (0.93%) Sitecore
4 1 (0.93%) VMware