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

6 months to
28 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 23 38 26
Rank change year-on-year +15 -12 +32
Contract jobs citing Software Engineering 105 51 81
As % of all contract jobs in Manchester 7.48% 4.96% 5.20%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 8.58% 5.45% 5.99%
Number of daily rates quoted 54 41 41
10th Percentile £400 £413 £456
25th Percentile £462 £425 £500
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £550 £550 £550
Median % change year-on-year - - -4.72%
75th Percentile £625 £713 £675
90th Percentile £646 £725 £700
North West median daily rate £525 £550 £550
% change year-on-year -4.55% - -8.33%
Number of hourly rates quoted 22 0 8
10th Percentile - - £55.53
25th Percentile £52.50 - £60.63
Median hourly rate £57.50 - £70.00
75th Percentile £75.63 - £72.50
90th Percentile £77.50 - £75.05
North West median hourly rate £57.50 £67.00 £46.91
% change year-on-year -14.18% +42.83% +15.57%

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 1,224 936 1,353
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in Manchester 87.24% 90.96% 86.79%
Number of daily rates quoted 824 615 946
10th Percentile £311 £294 £313
25th Percentile £383 £398 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £460 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.17% -8.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £575 £575
90th Percentile £638 £675 £672
North West median daily rate £451 £475 £500
% change year-on-year -5.05% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 84 31 73
10th Percentile £19.75 £15.90 £12.50
25th Percentile £22.68 £21.75 £13.50
Median hourly rate £55.00 £32.50 £26.00
Median % change year-on-year +69.23% +25.00% -33.33%
75th Percentile £67.19 £35.38 £61.25
90th Percentile £78.38 £60.00 £77.75
North West median hourly rate £45.00 £31.64 £26.00
% change year-on-year +42.23% +21.69% -30.67%

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 28 February 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 28 February 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 28 February 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 +4 3 £400 -44.13%
Bolton - 2 £550 - 2
Cheadle - 2 £550 - 4
Stockport - 1 £600 -
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 (0.95%) Apache
1 1 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
Applications
1 1 (0.95%) Chatbot
Cloud Services
1 37 (35.24%) AWS
2 16 (15.24%) Azure
3 14 (13.33%) Serverless
4 11 (10.48%) AWS Lambda
5 10 (9.52%) GitHub
6 8 (7.62%) Amazon ECS
7 7 (6.67%) GCP
7 7 (6.67%) GitHub Actions
8 5 (4.76%) Amazon EC2
8 5 (4.76%) Amazon EKS
8 5 (4.76%) Amazon EventBridge
8 5 (4.76%) Amazon SQS
9 4 (3.81%) Amazon MSK
9 4 (3.81%) Amazon S3
9 4 (3.81%) AWS Fargate
10 3 (2.86%) Power Platform
10 3 (2.86%) SaaS
11 2 (1.90%) Amazon OpenSearch
11 2 (1.90%) Azure Functions
11 2 (1.90%) Azure Logic Apps
Database & Business Intelligence
1 8 (7.62%) MongoDB
2 7 (6.67%) DynamoDB
2 7 (6.67%) Elasticsearch
2 7 (6.67%) NoSQL
3 5 (4.76%) Amazon Aurora
3 5 (4.76%) Amazon RDS
3 5 (4.76%) MySQL
3 5 (4.76%) PostgreSQL
4 4 (3.81%) DocumentDB
5 3 (2.86%) Redis
6 2 (1.90%) Apache Cassandra
6 2 (1.90%) SQL Server
7 1 (0.95%) Hadoop
7 1 (0.95%) Mixpanel
7 1 (0.95%) ObjectStore
7 1 (0.95%) Power BI
7 1 (0.95%) Relational Database
Development Applications
1 16 (15.24%) GitLab
2 13 (12.38%) Gradle
3 11 (10.48%) IntelliJ
4 7 (6.67%) Git
5 6 (5.71%) CocoaPods
6 3 (2.86%) JMeter
6 3 (2.86%) Postman
6 3 (2.86%) Selenium
7 2 (1.90%) Artifactory
7 2 (1.90%) Cypress.io
7 2 (1.90%) Jenkins
7 2 (1.90%) Maven
7 2 (1.90%) Rational DOORS
8 1 (0.95%) Cucumber
8 1 (0.95%) fastlane
8 1 (0.95%) JIRA
8 1 (0.95%) Mockito
General
1 15 (14.29%) Social Skills
2 7 (6.67%) Retail
3 5 (4.76%) Finance
4 4 (3.81%) Public Sector
5 3 (2.86%) Documentation Skills
5 3 (2.86%) Games
6 1 (0.95%) Analytical Skills
6 1 (0.95%) Automotive
6 1 (0.95%) Influencing Skills
6 1 (0.95%) Organisational Skills
Job Titles
1 71 (67.62%) Software Engineer
2 23 (21.90%) Senior
3 20 (19.05%) Java Engineer
4 19 (18.10%) Java Software Engineer
4 19 (18.10%) Senior Software Engineer
5 10 (9.52%) Lead
6 6 (5.71%) iOS Software Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Principal Engineer
6 6 (5.71%) Principal Software Engineer
7 5 (4.76%) Developer
7 5 (4.76%) Lead Software Engineer
8 4 (3.81%) Architect
8 4 (3.81%) DV Cleared Software Engineer
8 4 (3.81%) Front-End Engineer (Client-Side Engineer)
9 3 (2.86%) Engineering Manager
9 3 (2.86%) Integration Engineer
9 3 (2.86%) Java Developer
9 3 (2.86%) Senior Java Engineer
9 3 (2.86%) Software Integration Engineer
10 2 (1.90%) Resourcer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 26 (24.76%) Spring
1 26 (24.76%) Spring Boot
2 18 (17.14%) React
3 12 (11.43%) Kafka
3 12 (11.43%) REST
4 11 (10.48%) OpenTelemetry
5 10 (9.52%) Node.js
6 9 (8.57%) .NET
7 8 (7.62%) GraphQL
7 8 (7.62%) RESTful
8 6 (5.71%) AngularJS
9 4 (3.81%) Core Media
9 4 (3.81%) CSS
9 4 (3.81%) JSON
9 4 (3.81%) RabbitMQ
10 3 (2.86%) OAuth
10 3 (2.86%) OAuth2
10 3 (2.86%) OpenID
10 3 (2.86%) Spring Security
10 3 (2.86%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 13 (12.38%) Product Ownership
2 11 (10.48%) Cloud Native
3 8 (7.62%) Distributed Systems
4 6 (5.71%) Data Protection Act
5 4 (3.81%) Mobile App
6 3 (2.86%) Greenfield Project
7 2 (1.90%) Embedded Systems
7 2 (1.90%) Onboarding
8 1 (0.95%) Culture of Ownership
8 1 (0.95%) Distributed Architecture
8 1 (0.95%) Enterprise Software
8 1 (0.95%) Legacy Systems
8 1 (0.95%) NHS
8 1 (0.95%) Private Cloud
8 1 (0.95%) SCADA
8 1 (0.95%) Self-Motivation
Operating Systems
1 8 (7.62%) Linux
2 7 (6.67%) Apple iOS
3 2 (1.90%) Android
4 1 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Processes & Methodologies
1 33 (31.43%) Agile
2 29 (27.62%) CI/CD
3 26 (24.76%) DevOps
4 25 (23.81%) Microservices
5 20 (19.05%) TDD
6 15 (14.29%) Full-Stack Development
7 13 (12.38%) Containerisation
7 13 (12.38%) Observability
8 12 (11.43%) Event-Driven
8 12 (11.43%) Machine Learning
9 11 (10.48%) Code Quality
9 11 (10.48%) Mentoring
10 10 (9.52%) Event-Driven Architecture
10 10 (9.52%) Roadmaps
11 9 (8.57%) Technical Leadership
11 9 (8.57%) Test Automation
11 9 (8.57%) User Experience
12 8 (7.62%) Continuous Improvement
12 8 (7.62%) Design Patterns
12 8 (7.62%) Problem-Solving
Programming Languages
1 49 (46.67%) Java
2 22 (20.95%) TypeScript
3 17 (16.19%) Python
4 14 (13.33%) JavaScript
4 14 (13.33%) Kotlin
5 9 (8.57%) SQL
6 7 (6.67%) Go
6 7 (6.67%) Rust
7 6 (5.71%) C#
7 6 (5.71%) Objective-C
7 6 (5.71%) Swift
8 2 (1.90%) C
8 2 (1.90%) C++
8 2 (1.90%) Ruby
9 1 (0.95%) Bash
Qualifications
1 11 (10.48%) Security Cleared
2 7 (6.67%) AWS Certification
2 7 (6.67%) AWS Certified Solutions Architect
3 6 (5.71%) DV Cleared
4 4 (3.81%) SC Cleared
5 2 (1.90%) BPSS Clearance
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 5 (4.76%) Accessibility
2 4 (3.81%) QA
3 2 (1.90%) IEC 61508
3 2 (1.90%) IEC 62304
3 2 (1.90%) ISO 26262
4 1 (0.95%) Data Quality
4 1 (0.95%) HL7
System Software
1 16 (15.24%) Docker
2 1 (0.95%) Active Directory
Systems Management
1 27 (25.71%) Kubernetes
2 16 (15.24%) Terraform
3 15 (14.29%) Grafana
4 3 (2.86%) Prometheus
5 1 (0.95%) Ansible
5 1 (0.95%) Single Sign-On
Vendors
1 3 (2.86%) Microsoft
1 3 (2.86%) PagerDuty
2 2 (1.90%) Atlassian
2 2 (1.90%) Foundry
2 2 (1.90%) Google
2 2 (1.90%) OpenAI
3 1 (0.95%) Oracle
3 1 (0.95%) Red Hat
3 1 (0.95%) Salesforce
3 1 (0.95%) SAP
3 1 (0.95%) Siemens
3 1 (0.95%) Sitecore
3 1 (0.95%) VMware